Folk of the Great Bear Rainforest (my British Columbia-inspired fantasy fairy forest)

The Great Bear Rainforest extends north from Saltchuck City for a thousand kilometres. Hundreds of little rivers and creeks fill up from the endless cool rain and run down from the eastern mountains to the rocky coastline. Wet rotting downed trees, moss carpeting thick like fog, and sword ferns taller than your head make overland travel difficult. But some folk do journey through the temperate rainforest—to find medicine for their sick village, to chase a legend up the mountains, to trade bentwood boxes for copper sheets. 

Emily Carr. Among the Firs. 1931. 

Barred Owls

A rare folk, often in search of companionship. They are tall and speak softly. Excellent cooks and usually highly educated, Barred Owls mate for life, and cherish their marriages. A single Barred Owl is usually morose and will mope about until they feel like they're fostering a relationship. Once married, Barred Owls don't mind living amongst other folk. They will find a nice village or homestead, and set up shop as a joint business, providing scribing work, tutoring, personal chef services, or other cerebral positions. 

d10 Barred Owl Proposal Meals

1. Roasted Shrew with Garlic
2. Cedar Tip Cider Cake
3. Shrew Steak with Huckleberry Compote
4. Vole Skewers with Lobster Mushroom
5. Fried Trout Fins
6. Marsh Shrew Stewed with Reed Roots
7. Brook Char Fillet Glazed with Blackberry Reduction
8. Stuffed Shrew with Pine Nuts
9. Vole Tartare with Quail Egg Yolk
10. Chopped Grasshopper and Bittercrest Salad

Beetles

There's nothing a beetle loves more than its ancestors. Most beetles are extremely proud of their ancestors. Any distasteful actions undertaken by a beetle ancestor are openly discussed, with lessons learned taken from these mistakes and atonements undertaken by descendant if necessary. As beetles die, their shiny exoskeletons are used for crafting, usually done by members of the same generation if possible. Spearheads, knife handles, decorative jewellery, wall hangings. 

d6 Beetle Carapace Craftworks

1. Two matching spearheads from a cousin's carapace
2. Well-worn knife handle from a brother's carapace
3. Cut-circles sewn into a chain shirt from a sister's carapace
4. Hollow legs strung into a kilt from an uncle's carapace
5. Beads strung into a dangly necklace from a great-grandparent's carapace
6. Antennae hung loosely from a dogwood bough as a wall tapestry from an entire family's carapaces, tragically killed by a flock of Rose-breasted grosbeaks

Heron

Merchants, academics, naturalists, lovers, poets. A culturally assiduous folk. Herons congregate in cozy, bustling townsites, making wooden homes from scavenged slats and local lumber. These townsites are plunked half on land and half floating on ponds or lakes. Herons walk as comfortably in shallow water as they do on land. Herons love to learn and have no problem sitting still for hours at a time, engrossed in a book or fishing for frogs. 

d4 Heron Merchants and their Secret Intellectual Pursuit

1. Ardea the dried trout monger — loves archaic romantic poetry
2. Fletch the bowyer — devours tomes regarding mollusc biology
3. Robert the parchment maker — delights in obscure mathematic equations
4. Wickersludge the banker — collects weather implements

Racoons

Community-minded sojourners. Racoons often make families in the lands of other folk, placing themselves into marginal positions and peripheral niches: garbage-pickers, border-guards, game-hunters, and nightwatchmen. Racoons view themselves as sibling to all folk—they will befriend and besmirch all equally, basing their opinions on people's actions and not their background. They care about the community, but mostly love setting out on individual actions to better the lives of their neighbours. Hunting for a mystical buck deer, searching for a medicinal spring, or carrying a love letter from a fallen friends. They also love treasure and trinkets, particularly if received as a gift for doing someone a favour. 

d8 Treasured Trinkets

1. Polished silver coin carved with a friend's name
2. A perfect acorn, lacquered for preservation
3. Rough crystal, wrapped on copper wire
4. Jade figurine of the racoon's favourite flower
5. Seashell collected from a distant beach
6. Driftwood in the shape of a heart
7. Sea glass worn smooth
8. Living moss inside a sealed glass bead

Rats

Schemers and servants; subordinate yet subjugatory. A rat elected to office can be guaranteed to use subterfuge and face-to-face confident conversation to fight for her electoral promises—and unspoken secret goals of her own. Yet a rat hired as a butler will bow and scrape like no other. A rat cannot abide middling status; they all lay low at the bottom of the barrel until the time comes to raise straight to the top. Rats enjoy mingling with other folk and can be found all throughout the Rainforest. They are difficult to pin down—making friends with a rat usually means poking your way through a labyrinth of strange social code. 

d8 Rat Social Contradictions

1. Insults you to your face yet praises you behind your back
2. Loyal customer to a certain shop yet complains about the service
3. Disobeys all orders from their superior yet gushes about their decision-making abilities
4. Refuses to follow beaten paths yet doesn't leave town anyways
5. Never asks permission before fishing the lake yet only uses legal bait
6. Always silent when with friends yet won't shut up with folk they've just met
7. Treats underlings like trusted siblings yet shrieks at superiors with vitriol
8. Eschews safety while working at log camps yet cares deeply for road safety design

Ravens

Magicians, tricksters, perpetrators of unknown rituals. Ravens are mysterious folk; they generally stick to themselves, and when they do mingle with others, the conversation never seems to make its way into the personal details of the raven's life. Ravens have a cultural affinity for magic, and are often turned to in times of need for spells and ensorcellements. They also make their homes high in the treetops, which other folk sometimes find difficult to climb up towards. 

d6 Raven Magician Spells

1. Sun Steal — darkens completely whatever space the caster is in
2. Beak — a black beak conjures in the air and glides into a target, dealing damage
3. Death Omen — one impending death is known to the caster
4. Rotate — rotates some object, even those of large size or implausibility (e.g. a rooted tree)
5. Black Wing — the caster sprouts oversized black wings and can fly for one hour
6. Disembodied Claws — two thin black clawed feet appear nearby; they mimic the movements of the caster's hands

Seagulls

Proud and loud. Found mostly by the coast, these folk will talk themselves silly (usually praising themselves and their kin) till the sun rises in the east, then eat an entire family's worth of food to themselves, slurping and gulping, before falling asleep in the sand. 

d10 Seagull Braggings

1. I cracked the biggest clamshell you ever did see
2. Once I ate a hundred crabs
3. My brother fought an orca once
4. Me and my sister once flew from here to Saltchuck and back again
5. My feet are bigger than any gull's
6. My chicks have grown faster than anyone else's this year
7. I made more money last year selling barrels than I had in the past decade
8. I once caught a salmon with my beak and sold it to a fisherman for double its worth
9. My cousin ate an entire wedding feast's food once
10. One time I pecked down a hemlock tree

Slugs

Non-binary, gallant, driven. Young adults wear bark armour and align themselves to mythic quests which they know will never be realized—the quests are repeated over and over by young slugs, each striving to add their piece to the endless questing. When two slugs meet on the field they may elect to duel to see who becomes impregnated. Upon defeat they doff their armour and travel to a slug work camp where they will give birth and communally raise the children alongside other slugs who also got impregnated, and trade off shifts harvesting bark, making armour, growing food, caring for younglings, etc. 

d6 Mythic Slug Quests

1. World Peace
2. Justice for All
3. Poverty Eradication
4. Universal Suffrage
5. End to Child Hunger
6. Access to Clean Drinking Water

Sturgeon

Smooth and slow, effectively immortal, gleaning esoteric knowledge from the muddy banks of the river estuaries. Sturgeon continue growing throughout their lives, slowing over time, but still reaching large proportions. Before a hundred years of age, they are usually small enough to climb up from the river deltas and travel on foot through the forest. As long as they stick near the coast, its usually damp enough for their fishy flesh. Once they get too large, they must return to the water where they remain for the rest of their days, becoming more distant from other folk as their minds and bodies become too large to fathom. The elder sturgeon, who lives on the banks of the Salt River near Saltchuck city is over one thousand years old. She will very rarely see petitioners seeking knowledge and advice—those who have spoken to her speak of a tree's length of flesh and milky white eyes larger than a pond, full of deep knowledge. 

d6 Sturgeon Secrets

1. The route to the old abandoned gold mines in the Salt River Canyon
2. How to catch salmon with your bare hands
3. The language of the river stones
4. How to make a marriage last
5. Which riparian plant treats stomachaches best
6. Where to find the Great Bear