Bestiary — the creature codex

Look up what you’re about to fight — its AS, its DS, what it wards with, what it drops, and which rooms it spawns in — without leaving the client.

What it’s for

You’ve walked into a new hunting ground and something with a scorpion tail is looking at you. The bestiary answers the questions you’d otherwise alt-tab to a wiki for: how hard does it hit, what should your DS be, is it undead, does it skin, and where else does it live. It ships with the client, so it works on a direct connection with no Lich and no browser.

It has two faces, and both read the same bundled codex:

• .bestiary — the command. Prints a styled, clickable page to the bestiary stream.
• Bestiary Browser (the bestiaryview widget) — a GUI window that browses that same codex with a search box and filters.

The codex is shipped data, not your session. It does not watch what you kill and it does not learn. Every VellumFE install carries the identical file, baked from lich-5’s creature templates (the stats) joined against Saga’s spawn tables (the room ranges). Neither face is a live game feed.

Set it up

Bestiary browser is a GUI widget. In the TUI, use .bestiary (add a
'bestiary' text window for a dedicated page view).

Using .bestiary

Run it bare for the menu. .bestiary and .bestiary help print the same eight lines:

Bestiary - creature lookup (bundled codex)
  .bestiary <name>        look up one creature
  .bestiary here          creatures spawning around this room
  .bestiary level <n|a-b> list by level or range
  .bestiary area <name>   list by area/map
  .bestiary family <name> list by family
  .bestiary undead        list undead
  .bestiary search <text> search names

Naming a creature

.bestiary <name> tries three things in order, so you rarely need the full name. It takes an exact name match first, then a unique noun — .bestiary manticore finds the arctic manticore when nothing else ends in that word — then a unique substring.

When none of those lands on exactly one creature, it does not give up: it falls back to a search table of everything that matched, headed Matches for '<your query>'. You get a list to click rather than an error. Only when that table is empty do you see:

[bestiary] no creature matches 'gorbat'.

Everything is clickable

The tables and entries carry more than text. Each cell holds the dot-command it represents, and clicking re-enters the same dispatch as if you’d typed it. In a results table, the level column links to .bestiary level <n>, the name links to that creature’s entry, and the family column links to .bestiary family <x>. Inside an entry, the level, the family and each location name are links too.

Two links leave the codex entirely:

• [go2], on each location line, runs .go2 u<uid> against the first room in that spawn range — native pathing straight to the hunting ground.
• Wiki:, at the foot of the entry, opens that creature’s gswiki page in your browser.

What’s in an entry

An entry is a fixed-width box, 65 columns wide, in this order. Sections with no data are omitted rather than printed empty, so a thin creature gets a short box.

Stats print as an exact number or as a range where the source knows one — a Ranged DS reads 108-114 when the template recorded it that way.

Common setups

Recipe: size up the room you just walked into

You’ve arrived somewhere unfamiliar and want to know what hunts here before something finds you.

.bestiary here

You’ll see a level-separated table of every creature whose spawn ranges cover this room’s uid, sorted by level, under a Spawns around this room heading. Click the name of the one that worries you, and the same window turns into its full entry: its AS on each attack, its DS against melee, ranged and bolt, and whether it skins.

If the client doesn’t know where you are yet, you get this instead of a table:

[bestiary] current room uid unknown.

Walk one room and try again — the uid arrives with the room.

Recipe: find something to hunt at your level

You’re 27 and looking for the next step up.

.bestiary level 28-32

You’ll see one table of every creature in that band, split by a separator row each time the level changes, so the level-28s group visibly apart from the level-29s. Click a family name in the third column to pivot to everything in that family. Click a promising name, then click [go2] on its location line and you are walking there.

Recipe: browse by filter in the GUI

Open the Bestiary Browser and use its toolbar rather than typing commands. Type into the search box, put numbers in the Lvl min and max fields, pick a Family from the dropdown, and toggle Undead on.

You’ll see the count line under the toolbar update as you type, and the four-column table below it (Lvl, Name, Family, HP) narrow in step. Click a name and the window switches to its entry page: the name in gold caps, a row of framed stat chips (HP, ASG, Melee DS, Ranged DS, Bolt DS, UDF, then one chip per attack showing its AS or CS), a TD line, the description, then Locations, Offense, Defense, Treasure and Notes. Click ◂ Back to return to the browse page with your filters still set.

How the two faces differ

Both read the same codex, so the facts never disagree. How you move through them does.

The browser’s filters stack, which the command cannot do — there is no .bestiary family Chimeric undead. The command has here, which the browser does not.

The Bestiary Browser has no page of its own in this manual — it is documented here, because it is the same feature.

Tips & gotchas

⚠️ A subscribed Bestiary window clears on every step; main does not. Navigation is app-style — each lookup replaces the page rather than appending to it. If a window is subscribed to the bestiary stream, it is wiped before each new page is written, so you cannot scroll back to the previous creature. The main-window fallback behaves the opposite way: with no bestiary window in your layout, output goes to main and keeps its scrollback, so every lookup stacks up in your history. Choose deliberately — a dedicated window gives you a clean page, main gives you a trail.

Word wrap is off in the bestiary window on purpose. The entry boxes and tables are drawn at a fixed 65 columns. The preset window is 69 columns wide to fit them with the border. Make it narrower and it scrolls sideways rather than reflowing, which keeps the boxes square.

.bestiary here needs a known room uid. It keys off the same room identity the map uses. Straight after connecting, before the first room arrives, it reports current room uid unknown.

An empty filter prints a line, not an error. .bestiary family Wyrm with no matches gives you No matching creatures. Check your spelling against a family you saw in a real entry, or click one out of a table.

If the codex itself won’t load, every path says so plainly — the command prints [bestiary] bundled codex failed to load. and the GUI widget shows Bundled bestiary failed to load. in place of its toolbar. That indicates a damaged install rather than anything you configured.

The Bestiary Browser is GS4-only. It does not appear in the Windows catalog on other games. The .bestiary command and the bestiary text window are not gated this way, though the codex only describes GemStone IV creatures.

See also

• Text Windows — how stream subscription works, and how to point a window at the bestiary stream
• Widgets overview — the full widget catalog
• Inventory Tools — the other place clickable client output drives commands for you