The Encyclopedia

Nobody ever remembers buying more than a couple of toys - maybe one of each, if you're that type of collector - and yet it's hard to move sometimes without tripping over one. Even if all of your creatures are much too sophisticated for anything so childish as a toy, even if you've never sent a creature out to scour for boxes, and even if you've never gone fishing in your life, one day you'll stumble over a life figure on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night or pull something off a high shelf and drop a rainbow magiscent on your head.

A few years ago, the castle mages took a head count and realized that the toys outnumbered the living by more than two to one. Even though toys don't eat and don't take up that much space, even Lessux finally agreed that something had to be done. There wasn't quite the same sense of community as there is now, so the fire clan proposed a little something to get people motivated to help out. Everyone would gather toys and turn them in in exchange for prizes, with the person who turned in the most getting bragging rights and maybe a small plaque.

The drive was a success. Too much of one, in fact. Some people dragged two or three hundred toys in the first day and then came back every day after that with that much again. The organizers soon found themselves faced with the problem of what to do with a few hundred thousand toys that nobody really wanted, which was really impressive, as there couldn't have been more than a couple thousand people participating. They couldn't in all conscience re-gift them. There were too many to bury. Amorphous hatchlings couldn't engulf more than a thousand or so before getting indigestion. They couldn't transform that much material or erase it from existence without creating some sort of imbalance, especially with the world being so off-kilter already. They certainly couldn't start throwing everything into the Lost Fields, because the toys would only come back possessed - or worse. That pretty much left burning as the only workable solution.

The burn pile saw a lot of activity over the next few weeks, because burning that many things takes a lot of time and effort. Still, the last toy was finally burned, the smoke cloud dissipated a few days later, and everyone basically forgot about the whole drive and went back about their lives.

Then, someone found a half-burnt arcane snakie in with their sprite midge hatchlings. With as many toys as people had been dragging in, though, it made sense that someone would have accidentally donated a favorite toy and that a hatchling would have convinced, say, an arcane dragon to find it. Soon, though, people were stepping on the half-melted spines of a gilded harkwin toy, feeling an ethereal snakie wind around their wrist, or hearing the click of tiny wyrmling claws as they drifted off to sleep. The toys didn't seem to mean any harm yet, but there were so very many of them and so very few mages to stand against them. Then, mages began to wake from slumber, invisible weights pinning them down and the smell of scorched fabric in the air. One staggered into the infirmary before dawn, a burn mark on his arm in the shape of a poisbian. Another woke to invisible claws in her scalp and the smell of burning hair.

Those few toys that had partially escaped the burning were easy enough to calm, but the ghost toys couldn't be stopped by doors, exorcism, or any spell known to mages. Besides, there were so very many of them and so very few mages. A few creatures had managed to befriend their old toys, accepting their ghostly presence and thus calming them, but too many of the toys had been emptied out of a scouring box or fished from the pond, scarcely wanted from the moment they were found. No living creature could reach them to ease their loneliness or stop them from attacking.

Luckily, not every creature at the castle is alive, or even corporeal. A possession dragon is only comforting if it's attacking a demon on your behalf, but at the time, the castle was also playing host to sudden flocks of drac o wisps. Gentle, peaceful creatures, they were anything but threatening and an instant source of comfort for the lost toys. Each was soon followed by smoke-scented breezes and the occasional more solid figure. When the drac o wisps finally left, as suddenly and mysteriously as they had arrived, all of the tiny restless dead went with them. At least, the manifestations stopped, though there are still odd corners that smell like smoke to this day.

Within a few days, almost everyone had passed the whole thing off as some mass hallucination or some elaborate trick played by the arcane dragons. The only remnants of the whole incident were a few last drac o wisps, some odd burn scars on some of the mages, and the lingering scent of smoke in a few out-of-the-way rooms. Nobody had died, or even been seriously injured. We'd escaped lightly.

For quite some time after that, mages took in only what toys they needed for their creatures. It made sense, after all, not to waste time and energy on dust-collecting clutter when there were cryptograms to solve and shadow-beasts to catch. That didn't last, of course, as memories faded and new mages arrived, and now there's talk of another toy drive and bonfire. There are just too many toys around, and, I fear, not enough drac o wisps around to save us this time when the inevitable happens.