A Little Too Smart

The Esmérel secretary is a breed of long, low-set bandal with short legs and a deep chest, possessed of great speed, stamina, and grace, as well as a remarkable intelligence and ability to memorize and perform complex tasks without distraction. Secretaries nominally weigh around 30 pounds, and come in a variety of coat colors, most notably the blue-merle pattern found in the original Imperial Service lineages.

Historically, the Esmérel secretary was bred out of a number of southern Selenarian herding lineages to serve as aides in the Selenarian imperial bureaucracy, running messages and performing other minor office tasks. (Indeed, many older Service buildings still contain the special doors and passages built for these bandal on their rounds.) In the modern era, they are found in many roles as general assistants and work-partners in the office and in the home, as well as companions and personal helpers.

– Know Your Bandal: A Short Guide to Floofy Cladistics

Esmérel dupe: Found primarily in older paper records, an “Esmérel dupe” is a duplicate index entry dating to the early years of the use of Esmérel secretary bandal in the Imperial Service; specifically, duplicate index entries created by those ingenious devils who discovered that extra ear scritches and belly rubs could be earned by delivering the same document to the archives twice.

– Dictionary of Imperial Service Jargon, 36th ed.