Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Peculiardom

Peculiars

Otherwise known as syndrigasti (a word meaning "peculiar spirit" in the Old Peculiar language, which is in turn the author's adaptation of Old English, or Anglo-Saxon language), peculiar folk are a branch of humanity possessing a second soul which manifests itself in strange ways such as abnormal characteristics and abilities commonly referred to as peculiarities. Very rarely are peculiar children born to peculiar parents as the essence or gene of peculiarity often skips entire generations, making peculiar population vastly less than that of normal people.

Ymbrynes

An ymbryne (pronounced IMM-brinn) is a specific kind of female peculiar who can transform into distinct birds, control and manipulate time as she sees fit, and govern the peculiar world. Most essentially, the ability to control time lets these women possess a period of historical time by looping it, creating a potentially eternal sanctuary for peculiars. They often set out into the present-day world to rescue peculiars in dire situations or to search for those without an ymbryne. Ymbryne means "revolution" or "circuit" in Old Peculiar.

Council of Ymbrynes

The Council of Ymbrynes is the official government and law of peculiardom. Their responsibilities include the maintenance of loop order, the writing or amending of laws on a regular basis, and the determination of sentences for those convicted of a crime. Members are not specified.

Time loops

Time loops are the fabric of the peculiar world, often referred to as peculiardom. Similar to towns, cities, states, and countries, they act as specific locations. Together they create a vast and quite complex world of varying whereabouts and dates only peculiars are able to enter. Within these loops, peculiars live indefinitely without aging or reliving previous experiences, even as the day around them repeats itself. While it may appear to be a form of eternal youth, it is the suspension of time inevitable. In reality, many, if not all, of Miss Peregrine's children are over fifty years old, but the loop detains them as teenagers and small children physically and mentally. A loop must be reset daily or it will collapse, leaving all peculiars within it exposed to the outside world.

Aging forward

As a result of time loops, those who reside in them may not be able to return to the present day, depending on how long they've been there. In a mere matter of hours outside of the loop, the amount of time evaded will catch up. An example of this is Miss Peregrine's own former ward, a young girl named Charlotte who left the loop while Miss Peregrine was away. She was discovered by police in the mid-1980s and sent to a welfare agency. When Miss Peregrine found her just two days later, she'd already aged thirty-five years. Although she survived the ordeal, the unnatural aging process had caused Charlotte a great deal of mental disorder, and she was sent to live with Miss Nightjar, an ymbryne more suited for her care. The same process of deterioration applies to anything taken out of time loops as another instance was an apple Jacob took back to the inn where he and his father were staying in the present day. He left it on the nightstand next to his bed as he fell asleep that night, but by morning, found it had rotted to the point of disintegrating.

Hollowgast

A word meaning "empty spirit." The hollowgast are monsters who feed on peculiars. They were created by a freak-accident in an unethical and illegal experiment conducted by Miss Peregrine's two brothers. Hundreds had joined their cause, and with the aid of misguided but powerful ymbrynes, it was intended to achieve immortality without the limitations of time loops. Instead, it led to a catastrophic collapse that destroyed half of Siberia where the experiment took place. Everyone involved was presumed dead, but their corpses became deformed and crawled back to a lesser, animalistic state of life. Apart from their shadows, hollows are invisible to all but a gifted few including Abraham and Jacob Portman. They are also identified by the groups of large tentacle-like tongues that occupy their grotesquely stretched mouths. It is speculated that this outcome was the result of being reverse-aged to a time before their souls existed, thus the word hollowgast. Their souls, having been erased, hollows possess no form of peculiarity, rendering them unable to enter time loops.

Wights

If a hollow consumes enough peculiar souls, its original human form is restored, with the exception of irises and pupils leaving the eyes entirely white. Because of this, peculiars refer to these evolved creatures as wights. They possess no extraordinary abilities but are highly skilled in posing as normal people under multiple identities and can even pass into time loops. Much of their existence revolves around procuring peculiars for remaining hollows to devour. Once they set their eyes on a peculiar child, they will follow them around, as they did with Jacob all the way to the island.


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