Shadow Walkers are a strange breed that possess the ability to slip between the planes of reality, becoming immaterial. This allows them to hide in the shadows, either hunting from the concealment of near invisibility or evading enemies. Though they become corporeal to mate or to eat, they spend most of the rest of their lives walking in the shadows. Shadow Walkers are wary creatures, though on dark autumn evenings when the leaves fall to swirl in the chill, rain damp air, they may be seen drifting out from the shadows.

Dragons are highly-intelligent reptilian creatures that—from a human perspective, at least—appear to live forever. Many different varieties of dragon exist, each with their own unique qualities, habitats, and behavior. Adolescence in dragons is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling’s wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. In Galsreim, dragons and humans coexist peacefully.

Buttered Ghost likes garter snakes of all kinds, although she only knows three types that live in her territory. On warm days when the snakes are less jittery, she spends hours in the shadows, watching the tiny critters go about their daily business. Outside of the snakes' mating periods, most of her peers would consider snake-watching boring, but this fits her low-energy lifestyle well. Whenever someone mentions snakes, Buttered Ghost perks up, and her light eyes dilate. She temporarily loses her bashful unobtrusiveness to ask what about snakes. Whenever the topic is about killing snakes because the speaker doesn't like them, Buttered Ghost bawls like a baby, swears she'll never talk to that person again, and melts into the shadows.