Spectre (His Dark Materials)
Encyclopedia : S : SP : SPE : Spectre (His Dark Materials)
A Spectre is a fictional being invented by the fantasy fiction author Philip Pullman for his trilogy, His Dark Materials. They appear in the second and third volumes, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.
These beings are invisible to pre-adolescents, and cannot harm them. To adults, they appear as slight shimmerings in the air, and move with malevolence. If they catch an adult, they eat the adult's soul out (their dæmon), leaving the person as a lifeless zombie. When travelling, all human groups have to by law contain a man and woman on horseback to flee and look after the young. Spectres did not have the ability to fly, so air travel over Cittàgazze was the only safe means possible for an adult to cross the city. Toward the end of The Subtle Knife, Mrs. Coulter teaches the Spectres how to fly.
Spectres cannot be killed by humans, but are warded off by The Subtle Knife. As such, the city that is infested with them, Cittàgazze, is bereft of all adults. It is hinted that spectres exist in Will's (our) universe, as his mentally ill mother can sense them. If this is so however, they must for some reason have no effect on the inhabitants. Angels have some means of neutralizing Spectres.
Spectres are created from the use of the Subtle Knife, a knife that can cut a window into another parallel universe. Whenever it does this, a gap is left that opens into the void between worlds, and a Spectre escapes from this void.
The largest example of such a happening was during the end of The Northern Lights, when Lord Asriel cuts between worlds by harnessing the energy given off when separating Roger from his daemon. This created a fog storm over Cittàgazze, and produced the bulk of the Spectres in the city.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.