The Cuckoos are the most thoroughly defeated faction in the Lands Between's intellectual history, the martial order sworn to Raya Lucaria, the knights the academy kept under contract to wage its wars. Their armour identifies the philosophy: the Cuckoo Knight Armor description records the emblem and the attitude both. 'Armor worn by Raya Lucaria Academy knights. Its left breast is emblazoned with a peering cuckoo, whence came their name. Perhaps the bird's shrewd gaze is an expression of their refusal to be mere servants of the academy.' A cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird's nest; but these Cuckoos never made the nest their own, for they were the academy's knights, and remained so to the last.

Their attempt to break Caria fell short. The Cuckoos of Caria Manor monument records their grave: 'The resting place of the contemptible Cuckoos. Lost in the siege of Caria Manor.' After the academy turned on Caria and loosed its Cuckoo Knights on the manor, almost certainly to depose Rennala and the Carian Royal House together, the Carian Knights and the manor's sorcerers cut them down. Their distinctive Cuckoo Glintstone, in the Glintstone Craftsman's Cookbook, is named a 'faux sorcery' : an imitation, wrought from broken glintstone, of the academy's own glintstone magic. Even their craft was a forgery of the true sorceries of the academy they served.