The Obernewtyn Chronicles is a series of science fiction and fantasy novels by Australian author Isobelle Carmody.

The series has a post apocalyptic setting and depicts a world long after its destruction by a global nuclear holocaust.

The novels deal with themes of responsibility, duty, prejudice, discrimination, tolerance, and human and animal rights.

The Council realised that they had not escaped the effects of the Great White completely unscathed, and began burning any humans or animals born with deformities.

The Council appointed a fledgling religious order called the Herder Faction to oversee these rituals.

The Herders believed that Lud, their name for God, sent the Great White as punishment for a materialistic society.

Those who spoke out against the Herders, or researched the period before the nuclear holocaust or its technology, were declared Seditioners (from the word sedition) and were burnt alive.

The Council and Herder Faction decided that those few people affected by mental mutations, called Misfits, would be sent to the Councilfarms.

Elspeth is not just a Misfit; she is what the animals call the Innle, or Seeker in English, and she must find and destroy the weaponmachines around the world.

However, the Misfits can't hide forever and must find a place in The Land as it enters a period of turmoil, as rebels begin to revolt against the Council and the Herder Faction.

The seven most common Talents, as defined and named by the Misfits of Obernewtyn, are farseeking, coercion, empathy, healing, futuretelling, beastspeaking, and teknopathing.

Each guild is led by a leadership group consisting of a Guildmaster or Guildmistress (who is usually, but not necessarily, Obernewtyn's strongest possessor of that Talent), a Guilden, and one or more Wards.

A side-effect of this never before seen merging was the generation of mental static that cancelled out all other powers, as experienced by Elspeth in The Farseekers and later in The Red Queen.

The beast language also uses different words, such as funaga (human), equine (horse), barud (home), gehdra (the invisible ones), jahran (the cold ones), vlar-rei (children of the waves/dolphins), coldwhite (snow), galta (nothing), shortsleep (sleep), longsleep (death), Innle (seeker), and H'rayka (bringer of death).