What Is a Whatsit?

“Whatsit” is the accepted Beandom term for a nonhuman creature or person whose precise origin is unknown. The word is therefore a classification of uncertainty rather than a complete biological description. It tells an observer what has not been established, but very little about the individual standing in front of them.

This distinction matters because the Beandom contains an extraordinary variety of magical peoples. A being may have unusual features, mixed traits, or no surviving record of ancestry without being nameless, mindless, or interchangeable. The category describes an unanswered question. It should not become the answer to every question about the person.

Whatsit or Whosit?

The terms sound similar enough to produce mistakes in speech, scholarship, and forms prepared by clerks who believe one blank box should cover both. The Encyclopedia recommends checking whether the individual is human before confidently adding or removing the letter a.

Appearance and Diversity

Whatsits should not be assumed to share one standard appearance. The category exists precisely because origins are uncertain and traits do not fit an established classification. Grimblewaith’s short stature, rough features, sparse hair, and unusual hands describe Grimblewaith; they do not establish a universal Whatsit anatomy.

This diversity makes visual stereotypes especially unreliable. A Whatsit may be recognizable as unfamiliar without resembling any other Whatsit in the surviving record. Attempts to define the entire category from one portrait have been rejected by the Encyclopedia’s Committee for Not Making Things Worse.

Work and Social Roles

Historical commentary records Whatsits filling many practical positions, including scarecrows, tax collectors, and models for masks. Grimblewaith’s career adds evil sidekick and Beandom Highway Patrol officer to the list. The variety proves that unknown ancestry does not prevent participation in ordinary civic, commercial, or criminal life.

It also reveals a social pattern. Whatsits are frequently assigned work that other people regard as unpleasant, anonymous, frightening, or disposable. Their usefulness is acknowledged more readily than their individuality. A society may trust a Whatsit to collect taxes or frighten birds while remaining strangely reluctant to ask what the Whatsit wants.

Prejudice and Disposable Roles

Words such as “whatchamacallit” can be used dismissively toward Whatsits, reducing a person to the speaker’s inability—or unwillingness—to identify them. Villainous organizations may also treat unusual subordinates as replaceable labor rather than full partners.

Grimblewaith experiences this directly when ELM rejects him as an outdated henchman. The rejection hurts because Grimblewaith had sought purpose inside the role. It ultimately exposes the failure of the hierarchy, not the failure of the person it discarded.

Grimblewaith and the Recorded History of Whatsits

Grimblewaith is the best-documented Whatsit in surviving Beandom literature. His life moves from villainous employment into public service, friendship, personal sacrifice, and a mission requiring him to seek phoenix rebirth magic.

His story is important because it refuses two easy conclusions. First, a Whatsit does not need to become someone else to possess value. Second, magical transformation does not automatically erase the identity that came before. Grimblewaith’s later faekind form matters because the Whatsit making the choice already possesses loyalty, judgment, and courage.

Identity and Transformation

Phoenix regeneration can change an outsider’s form completely, even “down to the soul.” For a Whatsit whose origin is already treated as uncertain, that promise raises difficult questions. Is transformation an escape from prejudice, a practical disguise, a rebirth, or an admission that society was correct to demand something different?

The surviving account does not reduce the answer to appearance. Grimblewaith seeks transformation to rescue another person, not because the Beandom is entitled to a more convenient version of him. His journey places the ethical burden where it belongs: on the purpose of the change and the freedom of the person undergoing it.

Why Whatsits Matter

Whatsits embody one of the Beandom’s central themes: categories are useful until they begin replacing people. The realm is filled with heroic handbooks, villain ratings, magical species, inherited titles, and prophecy labels. Whatsits stand at the edge of those systems, reminding historians that uncertainty should produce curiosity rather than contempt.

The category also creates space for identities whose histories have been lost, mixed, hidden, or never properly recorded. In a world later fractured by catastrophe and centuries of fading magic, “unknown origin” may describe the limits of the archive more accurately than the limits of the individual.

Appearances and Sources

• A Wonderful Week for a Quest — the principal record of Grimblewaith and the social treatment of Whatsits
• The Whatsit’s Rebirth — identity, transformation, public service, and Grimblewaith’s central quest
• Grimblewaith — the full character entry for the best-recorded Whatsit

“Unknown origin” is a statement about the historian’s knowledge. It is not permission to treat the person as unfinished.

—The Chronicler

Related Entries