Another word for "monster" or "spirit". An emanant is a being of some form of energy, typically routed in the monster realm, sometimes also inhabiting the realm of life and/or the Strands. Emanants can project physical seeming bodies into the realm of life in order to interact with matter there, but they do not use bosons, subatomic particles, molecules, or any other form of matter to do so. And when they stop inhabiting these forms, the false matter evaporates. Some people call this ectoplasm.

A subliminal emanant is an emanant that can only exist in the monster realm and nowhere else. These emanants tend to be small, weak, and simple.

A liminal emanant exists both in the monster realm and the realm of life, and can shift energy between the two realms. These are the most common of the emanants that human beings can encounter and interact with.

A supraliminal emanant exists in the monster realm, the realm of life, and the Strands. The Strands is another realm of existence that is hard to navigate and safer for an emanant to hide in (though not perfectly safe). It is very common for an emanant that reaches a certain size and complexity to start using the Strands in order to hide their extra bulk. However, many other emanants can detect this and tend to shy away from supraliminals in order to avoid being hunted by them. The most common supraliminals are teratovores, usually because supraliminals are complex and old enough to have developed several methods of feeding, and also because being teratovore can be a good way of gaining a lot of energy and bulk fast and maintaining it.

An emanant that feeds by consuming the energy of emotions. Usually it is the emotions generated by life, but some affectivores feed on emanant emotions. It's very rare to be able to feed off of both.

A type of affectivore that feeds off the emotions of dreams, usually nightmares. These emanants can take any form, but the most common is as a headmate or system member that resides in the psyche of a living being, because that is also an easy way to influence dreams to provoke stronger emotions. Such emanants can also eat other emotions, it's just that they've specialized their adaptations for this particular kind of harvest.

An enthalpiphage is an emanant that feeds on some mechanism of physics. Technically, this includes all emanants, but this is a catchall term for those that don't fall into the other categories. The most common form feeds off of waste heat caused by friction, chemical reactions, and radiant energy such as from the sun. By their nature, enthalpiphages must be at least liminal. Most are still fairly simple and small and do not last long before they are consumed by a teratovore. But the oldest enthalpiphages become supraliminal and are very adaptive, and often quite dangerous to tangle with.

An emanant that eats other emanants. Any emanant that attains the adaptation to eat another emanant becomes a teratovore. However, emanants that first manifest as teratovores tend to think and behave in a distinctly predatory way that other emanants must learn how to do.

An emanant that, usually as an adaptation to teratovory, has the ability to cease and control the domains of other emanants. Capredominators are not super common, and they are very dangerous.

A domain is a projection of an emanant's psyche into the physical realm, or real of life. It is protective in that the owner of the domain has complete control over it and the sense of space, energy, and physics within it as if it is a fully lucid dream. Other emanants can enter a domain uninvited, but it is generally unwise to do so as the owner of the domain will become instantly aware of their presence and then can do almost whatever they want with them.

Not all emanants can create domains.

Some teratovores use their domains as traps for their prey.

Carpedominators seek out domains to take over and control, and to root out their owners in order to eat them.