His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights (1995) (published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000).
One exception is Iofur Raknison; the bear-king emulates humans by drinking spirits, wearing expensive clothes, and wanting a dæmon.
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.
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.
As the angel Balthamos tells Will Parry: "The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Jehovah, Yahweh, El, Adonai, The King, The Father, The Almighty – those were all names he gave himself.
Their ethnic group is small enough for all Gyptians to know each other by name, yet large enough to gather 170 men to travel north on a rescue mission.
An additional source of inspiration for Pullman's creation of the Gyptians may have been[citation needed] the subculture of cargo narrowboat operators that grew up in the British Isles in the 18th century, in the period between the development of the canals and the emergence of the railways.
The families of these operators were constantly on the move and their children were seldom educated outside the home, as a result, narrowboat people tended to be regarded with suspicion by landsmen.
Gyptians are an honourable people, and appear to owe debts to Lord Asriel for defeating a proposed Watercourse Bill in Parliament, amongst other things.
When travelling, all human groups in Cittàgazze are required by law to include a man and woman on horseback to flee and look after the young in the case of a Spectre attack.
When the effects of a Spectre attack on a human are explained to Will, he hypothesises that they, or similar creatures, may also exist in his world and may cause mental illness.
Stanislaus Grumman uses his skills as a shaman to control one and send it onto a church zeppelin to attack the pilot, causing the craft to crash.
Mrs Coulter convinces a group of Spectres that following her commands would give them more access to prey and is thus able to control them, and is able to make them "forget that they were earthbound" (so that they can fly).
During the final battle of The Amber Spyglass, Spectres fight against Lord Asriel's forces, cornering Lyra and Will's dæmons so as to eliminate the children who have been such thorns in Metatron's side, but are held back by the ghosts (including Lee Scoresby and John Parry) while the children and dæmons escape to the Mulefa world.
These elephant-like creatures evolved a distinct anatomy based on a diamond-framed skeleton without a spine: they have four legs, short horns, and a prehensile trunk that functionally takes the place of hands.
They form close-knit communities, one of the reasons for the closeness may be that – lacking hands – it usually requires two or more Mulefa trunks working together to accomplish complex tasks like tying knots.
One of their few natural enemies are huge white birds called tualapi which regularly destroy settlements with chilling ferocity, and which the Mulefa have no real defence against (save retreating further inland).
The Mulefa's less advanced technology may be due to their limited trunks – the versatility and dexterity of hands giving humans an advantage.
They do however have an extraordinary race memory, remembering all of their history starting from 33,000 years previously, which is when they first interacted with the wheel-pod trees, an event captured in a story that is their creation myth.
The period of 33,000 years coincides with the time frame given in the books for the awakening of human consciousness in other worlds, as evidenced by Mary Malone's anthropological research regarding Dust.
In the television series, there is no indication of the CGI creatures having diamond-form skeletons — they were modelled to a large degree on prehistoric mammals called Chalicotheres, with the addition of a short elephant-like trunk.
They are described as large, white bird-like creatures, with a similar diamond-form skeleton whose wings look like ship sails from a distance.
Just after he killed the first Tualapi he met, Father Gomez watches the reaction of the survivors carefully and comes to the conclusion that the creatures know about death, pain, and fear, which means they can be controlled and used for greater tasks.
Because of this, most Gallivespians join with Lord Asriel against the Authority, and due to their size and proficiency at using tools capable of instant communication (called "lodestone resonators", which are described as using quantum entanglement), are most useful as spies.
In the play adaptation they are depicted as hooded and shrouded, though in the Northern Lights they are described as having flat heads, large, bulging eyes, and wide frog-like mouths.
They at first seem to have no clear grasp of honour or respect even for each other, but Ruta Skadi does stumble, whilst invisible, upon the oldest cliff-ghast of all, a blind patriarch referred to as "grandfather" by all the others who take care of him and feed him.
When the great war begins, they are the only beings known not to take sides, merely waiting to feast on the casualties (although they predict the victory of Lord Asriel's forces).
They also, for reasons never explained beyond that of their Grandfather's advanced age and memory, know of the Æsahættr, the Subtle Knife's existence long before any human or witch outside of Cittàgazze does, and recognise that Lord Asriel will need it in order to win the battle.
They are entitled to deny ghosts guidance to the portal (potentially trapping them in the Land of the Dead for eternity) if they have "nothing of value" to tell (and are old enough to be expected to) or if they lie.