Pinkerton’s Bestiary Log 1

Introduction and Brief Explanation of the Institutions within the Supernatural Community

Hello! As you might’ve already guessed. I’m Pinkerton. John Pinkerton, if it matters. There is some debate as to whether or not my last name is actually Pinkerton, but my father never revealed the truth to me regarding this matter, so I’ve left the subject alone. I suppose I prefer to think of myself as a Pinkerton and wish to spare myself an unnecessary disappointment if I can help it. Perhaps my desire for the truth only goes so far, but that isn’t your problem. Search the truth out for yourself if you like, although I haven’t the slightest idea how you’ll find it.

My congratulations to you for finding this little work of mine, though. I assume you wish to be a hunter if you’re taking the time. But if you’re just here for entertainment, that works too. I shall start by stating what this little book of mine is. In my world, there is a rather large body of work concerning all the things that go bump in the night, but they’re old, written in foreign languages, and filled with various postulations all delivered in a declaratory fashion; that is to say, too many of our predecessors attempted to treat lore as doctrine. I shall do my best to avoid being so definitive, although I will attempt to give the various theories about these creatures and their origins as well as I understand them. It’s not that I don’t understand them; it’s just that if I don’t cover myself with an air of uncertainty, people will accuse me of being reductive.

That being said, this work describes the various creatures I and the Orders have encountered over the years. There are others, but these can be found in the older volumes, and if neither I nor the Order have encountered them, it’s unlikely you will, but not impossible, never impossible. More study is always required.

I do consider myself an authoritative source on these matters. I run a small but profitable agency that deals with such creatures on a regular basis, but of course, please remember that men can be just as monstrous as anything supernatural, sometimes more so. A monster is driven by need, compulsion, and feeding these compulsions often turns that need into malice. A being feels compelled to indulge the darkness and then decides that the only way it can live itself is to embrace that darkness. Men, however, are often malicious simply because they can. There is a fundamental difference here, but I won’t dwell on the matter lest I be accused of being “reductive.”

However, before I begin dwelling on the various things that go bump in the night, we must have a discussion about the various supernatural institutions, both on our side and theirs. The politics of these creatures and nations when they decide to form them is important to understand because one of the first things that must be deduced during a case is whether or not the threat in question is acting independently or if it is tied to an organized body. No good saving a town if that town is later destroyed by some entity’s associates. This is usually easy enough to guess, once you know the players.

First of all, there are the independent agencies, such as my own. They are few and far between, but they do exist. However, I should note that almost none of them have an association with larger righteous institutions such as the Four Orders. Note how I said almost. Honestly, my group is the only one I know of that actively deals with the Orders, but I wouldn’t dream of presuming that there aren’t others. See how careful I’m being?

Normally, these groups are started by an individual who has had a run-in with something uncanny. Filled with a desire to help, they launch their own campaign against the horrors they’ve faced. The nature of these tiny agencies is very fluid. That is to say, most don’t last long. The reason for this is pretty straightforward, their knowledge about the supernatural community is limited, mostly created by experience, and sooner or later this individual or small group of individuals encounters something wholly unknown and is overwhelmed. This situation is made more complicated by the fact that most occult stores work for the bad guys, and disinformation is a favorite go-to tactic of the enemy. But a few endure, and it’s important to remember their lack of knowledge and the defensiveness that lack of knowledge creates. When working with agents from such a group, please instruct them kindly because they will almost always feel at odds with someone connected to a larger body. Think of them as that free-spirited rocker who encounters a larger band for the first time. Until that rocker learns about his more successful counterpart, he will assume you have sold out.

Next are the larger religious institutions. These are known as the Four Orders: the Catholic Order, the Orthodox Order, the Oriental Order (I’m aware of the current nomenclature, but you must forgive them. They’re old.) and the Coptic Order. They exist within their larger religious churches, the Oriental Order being something of a hybrid. There are also subgroups within these orders, such as S.O.L.M. (Sacred Order of the Loving Mantels), who exists within the Coptic Order.

The Orders control certain regions of the world. I won’t give you a country-by-country breakdown here, but I will give you a general idea. The Catholic and Orthodox Orders share Europe and the Western Hemisphere, although the Catholic Order is most prominent there. The Orthodox Order takes the northernmost portion of Asia, that is to say, some of Eastern Europe and Russia. The Oriental Europe takes essentially all of Asia south of Russia. And the Coptic Order takes the Middle East and Africa. Australia and Antarctica are taken by whoever can get there first. I am being somewhat reductive here, so take care. It is important to make sure you know which branch of the Order controls whatever region you’re working in. They can be a prickly bunch, especially if one branch suspects another of moving in on their turf. However, the situation is so dire in Europe that most of the time the Orders are overwhelmed and are more willing to work together.

I should mention that there are at present no major Protestant equivalents to the Orders. The Protestant denominations are too numerous and too varied in their doctrines for a major institution to arise. What Protestants there are in this world, I being one of them, tend to resent taking orders from a priest, so they usually either start their own agency or find an agency nearby if there is one to be found.

That brings us to the monstrous institutions. I use that term somewhat loosely. Wizards and Witches are not technically monsters, technically. Again, we’ll discuss these various institutions as we go on, but I want to give a general idea of their structure. Like the agencies, they don’t tend to last long. Once a creature gives in to compulsion, they find it increasingly difficult to maintain the discipline needed to work together in an institution. But there are multiple exceptions, the Covenant being chief among them. The Covenant is comprised of the Vorvolakos vampires, a species we’ll discuss shortly. They are the oldest known species, usually the most disciplined of all the various groups, and they have a certain ideological tradition that reaches back into antiquity and has, somehow, survived to the modern day. The reason for this is easy enough to guess. They believe they are superior to humans, and such sentiments sympathetic to the ego tend to endure. They are the most powerful of all the monstrous institutions, which isn’t to say the most numerous. Compared to other monsters, a Vorvolakos is quite rare, so the Covenant is very small in number. According to our records, they’ve never grown larger than twenty-five members, and that was at their peak. The Covenant has gone through stints when no more than five of them have remained, but this is unconfirmed because there are very few records of their movements prior to the Great Vampire Controversy of the 1700s. I spend as much time on them because they are the most likely group to desire payback. If you suspect a vampire of being an Elder, the minimum requirement for being a member of the Covenant, then you almost certainly need to call the Order because your actions will have a certain political blowback that must be dealt with.

Then we have the various institutions that represent the Witches and the Wizards, but these groups are sometimes friends and sometimes foes. When they are involved in a matter, there are political matters afoot that should be relatively easy to suss out with a little time. When encountering such beings, it doesn’t hurt to talk to them before doing whatever you have to do to complete the mission because their egos are often so large they’ll often give a great deal of info because they can’t stop bragging.

Then there are the Fairy Courts, but we’ve had almost no interactions with them or anything from that sector of the veil. To my knowledge, the Faries won’t cause you much trouble unless either you or someone you’re working to protect has struck some kind of deal with them. If that happens, then you’ll have to find one of the magical groups that isn’t a total villain. My advice would be to consult the Order, as they can provide you with a list of Wizard groups that aren’t totally lost to the demonic.

There are other long-lasting groups, but these three will cause you the most immediate trouble if you thwart them. As for the rest of the institution, they are constantly attempting power plays on one another and most often wipe each other out thanks to their own stupidity. Unless you’re dealing with a vampire or something wholly from the magical side, such as a wizard, witch, or fairy, you can usually assume that you are dealing with an isolated actor. Not always, though, but there should be tells if you’re dealing with an exception. The easiest tell is a discernible pattern to an attack. Usually, an independent actor’s attacks will either be random or oriented towards the monster’s close relations: family, friends, and such. If you begin to suspect that a creature is searching out a particular target, then more research is required.

That’s all for the present. In the next log, I shall begin discussing the various creatures I’ve encountered so far.

Respectfully yours

John Pinkerton.

(The first three entries of Pinkerton’s Bestiary will be available to all readers. Beginning with later logs, this series will continue exclusively for paid subscribers, where it expands into deeper worldbuilding, monster descriptions, case histories, and ongoing narrative threads.)

“If you’d like to read more of my work, The Familiar (a dark urban fantasy) comes out February 3^rd, 2026. Gerome is a Familiar who gave his blood to a vampire. But now the vampire wants his wife. This book is the first of a larger series called Annals of S.O.L.M. If you’d like to support my work, The Familiar will be found on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and more. I hope you enjoyed this entry of The Starward Exiles.”