Britannia has recovered, but recovery is not safety. These are the things the realm keeps its bells, bench and burial lamps against, told as its people understand them. Much of it is history and much of it is tale: the worst belongs to the ruin centuries, and most of what remains lies in the marches, the fens and ground never reclaimed. Here too is what a company is likely to meet when it is paid to go where others will not.
Demons
Demons are the powers of Hell: wills from outside the world’s rightful order that came in when the Apocalypse broke it, and were never all driven out again. No lawful bargain can ever be struck with one, and the realm is not eager to say why they are still here.
Old sovereigns of placeSpirits
Spirits are the powers of places. Fords, groves, springs and ridges answer to something older than the Crown’s best paper, and it was there before the Apocalypse and is there still. Britannia was not retaken from emptiness: whole districts stay livable because somebody keeps the terms.
What will not lie quietThe Restless Dead
The dead are the realm’s largest single anxiety, and Britannia has built bell, ledger, watch and office around keeping them in the ground. Most of the time it works; the danger lies in the times it does not.
The sign in the churchyardGhouls
Corpse eaters do not make bad ground; they arrive at it. Clearing them is the commonest paid supernatural work in the realm, and the wisest companies know it is only half the job.
When the land and the living go wrongBlight and Corruption
Blight is corruption: ground that stops keeping faith with itself, and living things cursed in mind or in body. It rarely comes as spectacle. It comes as sour milk, a thin bell and a lane the dogs refuse, long before anyone can prove why.
What no form can holdThe Nameless and the Forbidden
Some of the realm’s dangers are crimes wearing the dress of monsters. One is a thing the law has no word for at all. These are the matters Britannia’s instruments were never built to hold.
Known by Name
Corrupted beasts
Monstrosities
Corpse eaters
The restless dead
Spirits and their servants
Things that defy description