The Bestiary contains a list of templates suitable for use as NPCs. It contains both monsters (beasts, horrors, and similar), as well as templates for mortal NPCs. The narrator should feel free to use a mortal template from the Bestiary to quickly have access to common adversarial mortals (such as a soldier, witch, or thief); alternatively, the narrator may choose to construct any mortal NPC using the rules for player characters. For more details, see the Narrator's Guide.
Each Bestiary entry contains a description of the creature, a table of attributes and other values, a danger rating (used by narrators to provide balanced encounters by aligning to danger points), and a unique set of talents. Talents available to creatures in the Bestiary work similarly to the tales available to players; each may have one or more signatures, which all members of that species innately have at no cost. In addition, each has some number of additional talents - unlike tales, there are not always exactly six, and they are not categorized by tiers. To unlock one of these talents, the danger rating of the creature rises by the value specified in the talent (for example, a creature worth 50 DP that takes a talent worth 20 DP is now a 70 DP creature). Creatures do not need to take their talents in any order, nor do they have any restriction on unlocking them. For more details, see the Narrator's Guide.
Note that some talents (and signatures) in Bestiary entries are weapons. In this case, these weapons are available (if not exclusively) for the creature to use when take the Attack (Weapon) action. These are often natural weapons, such as razor sharp claws or immense fangs, but in some cases may be crafted weapons.
Finally, each Bestiary entry has a suggestion for loot tables - it is at the narrator's discretion if these tables should be used, or modified in any way.
Some entries in the bestiary share common talents, called differentia. These entries are listed below.
Some entries in the bestiary refer to the Lord differentia; these signatures and talents often provided improved attributes, equipment, and more, and are unique to each entry. Importantly, the Lord differentia itself is used to identify which NPCs should (commonly) be allowed to gain weakened conditions as opposed to immediately being unconscious on taking damage beyond their breakpoint (see the [Narrator's Guide]narrators/pcs-vs-npcs for details).