The albys is a labile, shape-shifting spirit of the Tuvan wilds, most often encountered at dawn along the forest edge as a beautiful 'hostess of the taiga'. The lure is a deception: raising its long dark hair, the albys reveals a countenance so terrifying that the one who beholds it falls into the fits of madness that Tuvans call albystaar. That affliction is also a summons, for a person seized by the albys may become a shaman of its lineage, the albystan hamnaan hamnar, 'those who shamanize from the albys'. Though the word names a whole order of such spirits, tradition treats the albys as an individual apparition met face to face, and it stands among the 'dark agencies' from which a portion of Tuvan shamanic power is drawn.