Races and creatures in His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. This is a list of the fictional races and creatures in the novels.
Armoured bears (''panserbjørne'')
The panserbjørne are large polar bear-like creatures that have opposable thumbs on their front paws. Despite their large digits and immense strength they have remarkable dexterity. This, together with an innate gift for metallurgy, makes them exceptional metalsmiths, and they are capable of creating and repairing metal items far beyond the capabilities of human smiths. While they mainly speak English, they are shown to be able to speak other languages.Bears are very difficult to deceive. One exception is Iofur Raknison; the bear-king emulates humans by drinking spirits, wearing expensive clothes, and wanting a dæmon. His gullibility is attributed to his failing to act like a bear. Polar bears' livers are poisonous — a trait shared in real life with other polar mammals — due to a very high concentration of retinol to enable them to cope with the hostile Arctic environment.
The word "panserbjørne" means "armour-bears" in Danish. The Danish pronunciation of the word "panserbjørn" is, but the pronunciation used in the radio plays and the audio book readings of the trilogy is. In the 2007 film The Golden Compass, they are also known as "ice bears".
Society
Panserbjørne are generally solitary creatures, but have a loose society centred on Svalbard. They are governed by a king; Iofur Raknison and Iorek Byrnison are the two kings who appear in the books.Some bears occasionally hire themselves out to humans as mercenaries or labourers, but only in the Arctic regions, and it is implied that bears who do this may be shamed in some way. Lands further to the south have little contact with the bears, though their existence is widely known.
Becoming an outcast is the worst shame to a bear. The outcast is forced to leave his home and if he approaches Svalbard again, he will be shot down from afar with fire hurlers. Bears consider death by fire hurler to be dishonourable. The outcast may not participate in a legal duel, and any other bear may kill him without punishment or censure.
Duels are ceremonial occasions to bears, and they do not usually end in death. When a bear knows he will be defeated, he is obliged to signal his submission to the victor. On rare occasions, however, an issue may be so important that there is no other option than to kill one's rival. One such case is the duel between Iorek Byrnison and Iofur Raknison, which ends with Iofur's death and Iorek reclaiming the throne. Normally, an outcast like Iorek would not have been allowed to participate in a duel, but the then-king Iofur is tricked into making an exception. Ordinarily, a bear who kills another in a duel is made an outcast.
In the books the bears struggle to maintain their own culture and traditions against the intrusive effects of human society. This is most visible during the reign of Iofur Raknison, the usurper king of Svalbard for most of Northern Lights. Iofur tries to force the bears to become more human-like, to build palaces and universities, decorate their armour, and even acquire dæmons. Even the marble used to build the palace is offensive to the bears' way of life. Decorating armour is an even worse affront, because they think sky-iron is the only thing armour should be made of. Iorek Byrnison defeats Iofur towards the end of the first book and returns the bears to their traditions. Later in the series, however, he begins to feel human feelings such as doubt, especially in connection to the Subtle Knife.
Armour and weapons
Armour is extremely important to the panserbjørne; they consider it the equivalent of a dæmon or soul, albeit one that they consciously make for themselves.A bear fashions his own armour using 'sky-iron', a rare metal collected from meteorites which the bears discover on, or buried in, the ice. Although the magical metal described in Pullman's works is fictional, the native peoples of the Arctic do value meteorites as a source of iron for toolmaking. Sky-iron is described as being very durable, and has only been seen to be damaged by the Subtle Knife, which cuts through it with ease.
A bear's primary weapons are his immense strength, savage jaws, and razor-sharp claws. He uses these in close combat or when fighting duels with other bears. However, bears use fire hurlers, which are a combination of flame throwers and catapults, against human enemies and outcasts.
Witches
In Lyra's world, witches are exclusively female and live in the far north. They worship their own gods and goddesses of nature and the earth; they also understand the Judeo-Christian concept of "Mother Eve". Every witch who appears is described as very beautiful, as they stay young for their entire lives, but attain a look of wisdom. Some witches live to be over 1,000 years old. They dress in ragged black silk and are always barefoot. Witch queens usually wear a crown that they have created for themselves. Serafina Pekkala wears a band of everlasting, red Arctic flowers and Ruta Skadi wears a tiara of Siberian tiger teeth. Their crowns reflect the witch queen's personality.Witches are renowned for their excellent marksmanship, and carry bows with them wherever they go. They lower their bows to the ground as a symbol of friendship when necessary.
Witches occasionally choose human men who are in some way exceptional to be their lovers. All of a witch's sons will be human and all of her daughters will be witches. To a witch, the lives of sons or lovers are mere instants. Although some regret losing those they love, they accept that they cannot change who they are. They are however wholly unable to forgive anyone whom they love, who does not reciprocate those feelings.
Powers and abilities
Witches can feel cold, but are not affected by it. They can endure the lowest temperatures on earth comfortably. Because they are not burdened by heavy clothing, they can feel the beams of the Aurora on their bare skin.There is a wasteland far north where no dæmon can go. This is the result of an unknown catastrophe. If a girl manages to get through the wasteland, she then becomes a witch. Her dæmon is then able to go great distances from her without dying. Because all witch dæmons are birds, they can easily fly away to carry messages, spy, or do other tasks for their witches - often to the alarm of anyone who has never seen a person or dæmon separated from one another.
If a witch has a branch of a special cloud-pine tree, she can use it to fly. A human cannot fly this way, although a witch can carry another person up on their cloud-pine if they need to, but they usually lift no one bigger than a child. In large numbers, witches and their cloud-pines can tow an airship with no directional engine and have some control over the winds.
Witches, through intense concentration, have the power to be wholly ignored. In the right state of mind, a witch can make herself so unnoticeable that she is almost invisible. Although she is always completely solid, people will glance at her when they see her and move aside to let her pass, without any comment or objection, as if she were merely a part of the wall. Some witches have the power of prophecy, as they foresee the existence of, and identify Lyra as, the second Eve. They have spells and potions for healing, although seemingly only in the right environment and can also keep flowers fresh and prevent corpses from decaying until after a mourner has approached and seen the body. They are also shown to possess some limited form of telepathy, as demonstrated by Serafina Pekkala's ability to know Lee Scoresby's location by giving him one of her crown's flowers with which to invoke her when he is in danger and by her effect on Mary Malone's dreams to help her wake up gradually and accept her presence. Her dæmon is also shown to have the ability to unfasten padlocks with a combination of snow and his breath.
Witches have a legendary sense of direction and can remember the way to a distant place that they have been to only once before.
Clans
On his journeys through Lyra's world, John Parry catalogued 9 witch clans.- The first and most northerly are the witches of Lake Enara, led by Serafina Pekkala.
- The Slavic witches of Lake Lubana are the most southerly, and are led by Ruta Skadi, who had been one of Lord Asriel's lovers.
In the world Lord Asriel sets as his base for war, an altogether separate race of witches is shown to exist, which has both males and females, who live only as long as most humans.
Angels
In the trilogy, angels were originally the result of condensing Dust, although it seems that other conscious beings can also become angels. They appear as nude winged humans with a light of no apparent source shining on them, and, like the witches, appear to be both young and old at the same time. Angels are arranged in a hierarchy, according to their level of power, which also determines how luminous they are; the low ranking angels cannot be seen by the naked eye during the day, and are seen best at half light. The only way for humans to see them clearly is when they are enveloped in smoke. Angels long for the feel of a body, which Mrs Coulter uses to her advantage in The Amber Spyglass.The first, oldest, and most powerful angel was the Authority, worshipped as God. As the angel Balthamos tells Will Parry:
Arctic foxes
Seen in The Amber Spyglass, Arctic foxes are partially sapient and mischievous creatures. They can only understand the present tense, a trait which leads to much confusion when they eavesdrop on others.An excerpt of Arctic fox dialogue: "Bear must go south! Swear! Witch is troubled! True! Swear! Promise!" This happened when the fox in question had overheard Iorek Byrnison and Serafina Pekkala's conversation about the migration of the armoured bears because of a situation similar to global warming, and the fox was trying to trade information for its life with a [|cliff ghast] threatening to eat it.