Q. How many distinct forms – as in, injuries won’t transfer between them – do Beings have?
A. Three distinct forms. Human, animal, and monster.
Q. Can the Cows be aurochs? Can Beings in general be extinct animals?
A. The Cows can’t become aurochs, even the one that was originally the Auroch. Once a species or subspecies goes extinct, a Being can no longer take on that form.
Q. Did someBeing inherit the Mouse’s animal form(s)?
A. Beings can’t “inherit” each other’s forms. They’re all individuals, not connected in that way. They’re not like Time Lords!
Q. What makes a name True, since Timothy was able to Contract as Camellia before, I think, he started using it regularly?
A. Your true name is the one you identify with, whether anybody else knows it or not. (Entering into a mystical Name-based contract locks it in, though, so the contract would still apply even if your name changed later on.)
Q. Is there any chance the master of the Being in captivity is dead? Would the Being know even if separated from its master that the contract had been broken by death?
A. If the Being’s most recent Master had died, it would have lost the emotional drive to get back to him, and would instead be driven to find someone new to Contract with. It would probably still have all those clear memories of him, but without the feeling of loving or missing him included.
So Blake and Walker have an incentive to prevent tigers becoming extinct, otherwise Blake won’t be able to become one. Sure there are other big cats I assume she can become (lion is marginally interfertile with tiger for example), but tiger seems to define her.
I have a question I’ve been wondering about: If a Beings master shared a name with somebody, would they be able to say their name? So for example, if a Beings master is named “John Smith” (and this is the name they signed he contract with), if there was another person called called John Smith, would the Being be able to say their name? How would they refer to them?
Excellent question! The Being wouldn’t be able to say the other John Smith’s name either, and would have to come up with some kind of workaround. For instance, Patrick could refer to George Washington as “George” or “the first President” or “the guy on the one-dollar bill.” This gets awkward when your Master has a common word as part of their name, but you still have to work around it. Ann Walker’s Being could say “an assistive walking device” instead of “a walker;” Poe would have to use words like “a basin” or “a small sea” or “Huron/Erie/Superior/[other lake name]” if he needed to refer to a lake.