Your Guide to: Identifying Charlatans & Daredevils

As a professor of colour-coding and a fellow of the Royal Guild of Identification I’ve been consulted and queried on the troublesome topic of bandits, brigands and ne’er-do-wells very, very frequently, almost as frequently as fruit or ladies.
An often-asked question is ‘how much of it is in the colour?’ and the truth is ‘alot but it’s also in the texture’. In this short guide we hope to give an easy to understand, pocketsize manual to recognizing the Charlatans & Daredevils of these fair Isles.
-Prof. T. S. Bentham


Red: Slender, Speckled and common all year round, no aspirations and often seen sitting on fences and pinching biscuits. Nests in the summer and has broods of 5-6. No need for a wife.
White: A native to the North and a winter visitor to the comfort of the fireside this reclusive hipster has been in decline in recent years and a petition has been started to see them more.
Blackened: Once known as ‘the Greater Dark’, a term now considered archaic and perhaps just wrong, this Charlatan is often found in less rural areas in small groups. Part of the hoodlum family, this species tends to wreak havoc in the evenings and prepare during the day exhibiting little want for sleep. Its cry is horrific and has been known to make a man cry forever.
Green & Lithe: Kept as a good look charm and occasionally a pet in the seventh century by the Boatmen, for its song supposedly turned sour when danger neared. It was introduced to these shores some time later and has stayed here ever since, it must like it here. Breeds in pears.
Orangey: Probably should be from Morocco originally, this rascal type once stole the heart of a young impressionable girl making for a tragic tale. There is only one and when it is murdered (witch is always the fate of the Orangey) it will no longer exist, it is not however the rarest [see: Graph Paper].
Striped: (colloq. the lesser moxther) Eats smoke and smokes the thoughts they wished they’d remembered. It lives among the cold lights and is, of course, a pirate.
Corduroy: “Do you know how far away the moon is? It will never be your friend Katy: it’s simply too far away to be your friend my dear”, and when the moonshine sparkled in the black of her eye out sprang forth the beauteous Corduroy and Brown Paper magpies flying towards the moon to whisper the messages young Katy wanted, so much, to tell it. And this is how the Corduroy came about (sadly the Brown Paper is no longer with us and is often forgotten). They are the only magpies in the Bandit family.
Graph Paper: The rarest of the daredevils and therefore everybody’s favourite. The Graph Paper Daredevil is, perhaps, most at home on a Tuesday. It sketches the outlines of everything that ought to be and never cares to rub out the pencilled accidents (this is where mistakes come from), or so the story goes.
Translucent: Little is known of this variety.
Nocturnal: Living only in the night-time this rogue does not believe the Sun exists for he will never see it. It mayaswell be of Cajun descent and forages only for the bloodberries that make it giddily morose. Two varieties of the Nocturnal have been recorded: the Cardinal and the Ganderian.
Wounded: Steals, thieves and swindles, a pick-pocket of the old fashioned vernacular. Sleeps in wires and feeds on a diet of rust and shrapnel. Migrates to the shadows. It calls at dusk like it’s in excruciating pain hence its name