The Surveyor

First seen in early 2024 beneath the West Side Market during a joint Kithain-Prodigal operation, The Surveyor is a stocky great horned owl that bears extra taloned limbs when it requires them. In the Dreaming, its feathers shimmer with visions of shifting cityscapes—Cleveland skylines rendered in dreamy and impossible geometries. It carries an ancient theodolite that does not reflect the world as it is, but as it might be.

The Surveyor does not speak in words, but it does listen. It sometimes drags a long cart behind it, filled with topographic scrolls and broken compasses. Some of the maps it etches while wandering the Dreaming-bound roots of Cleveland bear no resemblance to any mortal cartography, but seem to point to hidden places, lost stories, and futures not yet decided. Dreamers who have glimpsed its maps (usually by accident) report an intense surge of poetic inspiration or overwhelming melancholy.

While no one knows exactly what The Surveyor is, most Kithain agree that it is a Dreaming-bound chimera of immense age, possibly born from the hopes of urban planners, explorers, or visionaries whose dreams were lost in bureaucratic decay. A few unconfirmed reports even suggest the creature may have once been human, or a Pooka permanently transformed deep within the Dreaming.

Since its appearance, The Surveyor has been seen sketching obscure graffiti sigils in alleyways, making spirals in gravel or salt near sources of Glamour, and once was found gently placing a tiny topographic model of Edgewater Beach onto a sleeping Boggan's chest.

The Surveyor is most often accompanied—or at least shadowed—by Kylene Fiann, the werewolf ambassador of Cleveland's werewolves. Her pack reportedly follows The Surveyor as its totem, though what wisdom or power they gain from this relationship is unknown. Kylene has attended select Moondog gatherings as a guest of Kaelar and is viewed with wariness by Doan’s Corners, who see the Surveyor—and its shapeshifting Prodigal allies—as part of a delicate and potentially dangerous balance.

Interactions with the Surveyor are generally limited to passive observation. Attempts to speak directly to it have yielded cryptic gestures or the sudden appearance of strange objects in the questioner's pockets—an old transfer token, a broken compass needle, or a coin minted in a year that never happened.

But one thing is clear: The Surveyor is watching, and Cleveland’s layout—physical and metaphysical—is slowly shifting under its gaze.