Corpus Animalium
We are lucky to live in a world that abounds will life of all shape, size and complexity. All manner of creatures walk, crawl, scuttle, slither, fly and swim across and around the Material Plane, many of which are familiar friends to we civilised folk, and many strange and monstrous. If you wish to know the best methods for caring for and curing you common or garden farm animals, or if you who have no idea how to tell apart a cow from a cockatrice, or a mouse from a manticore, this is the text for you. With each passing month, new entries are being compiled for all manner of strange and fascinating creatures from across the land, so do ensure that you sign up to the Royal College's subscription service to receive continuous updates to the Corpus (available at all good bookbinders in the Sultanate of Fashaddon and beyond). After all, we wouldn’t want you being jumped by a Vittra and not knowing what to do about it.Opening lines of the introduction Ingrid Aevardottir's, Corpus Animalium, 552S.E. Edition. The most comprehensive catalogue of any creature that breathes (and some that don’t) that live on the Material Plane of Ulskandar, as collected by the eminent zoologist Ingrid Aevardottir.
Purpose
The original purpose of the Corpus Animalium was to provide a comprehensive overview of animals that had been domesticated for use in agriculture, industry and as household pets and companions by the humanoid species of Ulskandar. The work expands upon their physiology and anatomy, as well as guidance on how to best look after them, encompassing diet, exercise, physical and mental health, along with giving advice on their temperaments and breeding habits. Since undertaking task of writing the Corpus Animalium, Ingrid Aevardottir has greatly expanded the work beyond the sphere of the domesticated animal, so that it now encompasses a wide variety of creatures, and offers field notes centred around how best to deal with animals, particularly the many dangerous predators that roam the continent of Turoza, when they are encountered in the wild.
Historical Details
Background
The Corpus Animalium initially came into being when Ingrid Aevardottir, an acclaimed zoologist from the Kingdom of Kjörnsholm, began to collect the information on the best care and husbandry of agricultural animals in her native Sydlig Province, which to the best of her knowledge had only ever been passed down within families and between farmers and land owners through word of mouth. Having trained extensively in animal husbandry and medicine, Ingrid had encountered a lot of traditional methods of caring for animals, especially when sick, that were either useless in terms of their actual affect, or were downright dangerous to the health of the animal in question, and she saw the first entries of what became the Corpus Animalium as a way to combat false knowledge, and ensure that farmers and the like were able to have access to a comprehensive resource that gave them all of the information they needed.
Ingrid’s work was so well received in Sydlig Province that it became widespread throughout the north of Turoza very quickly, and even attracted the attention of scholars within the Zoology faculty of the Royal College of Social, Scientific, Historical and Philosophical Studies. In the Sultanate of Fashaddon. Seeing Ingrid’s obvious talent for observing and commenting on the behaviour of and care for domestic animals, they offered her a position as an Associate Lecturer in Zoology, with the idea being that she would take on some teaching duties in the Royal College, but spend the majority of her time travelling around the continent, making notes and observation on all manner of creatures that she came across on her travels, with the Royal College footing the bill for her expenses and paying her a generous wage to boot.
Since that time, the Corpus Animalium has expanded in scope enormously and now covers all manner of creatures from the humble farm yard chicken and cow to the likes of Dragons and Elementals. The Corpus Animalium is continuously expanding, as Ingrid Aevardottir is still carrying out her research, and every year new additional pages are printed for the work that people can have bound into their original copies, alongside fresh versions of the book with the additional pages for the year added in.
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