The Keepers
Being — Survivors of the Fall
Former Highborn who retained fragments of light during the Scorching. Diminished, isolated, and conflicted. They share little to no common culture or doctrine. Dangerous as often as helpful.
Each Keeper encountered by the Kinsfolk during the Wandering offered a real gift paired with a structural cost. In every case except Nareth, some among the Kinsfolk chose to remain behind with the Keeper when the others departed.
The Nine Keepers Encountered
Lodsmack
Tools, hunting, and construction techniques that greatly increased efficiency. Taught the making of weapons, traps, and structures.
Cost: Demanded constant bloodshed; when animals were insufficient, Kinsfolk were pressed into sacrifice.
Stormech
Healing arts, medicine, binding, knots, weaving, and the treatment of wounds.
Cost: Bound some Kinsfolk as prisoners or servants; deliberately kept others ill through drugs and herbs to ensure dependency.
Ashal
Fire-making, spark-stone use, flame keeping, cooking implements, smoking meat for preservation, fire dancing, and branding.
Cost: Demanded worship; required Kinsfolk to be branded with her image as a sign of devotion and service.
Baelor
The art of speaking and withholding speech; creation of new words; persuasion, manipulation, vows, and contracts witnessed by firelight.
Cost: Manipulated Kinsfolk into servitude through binding words, oaths, and agreements they did not fully comprehend.
Vethra
Measurement of time: seasons, days, weeks, months, and years; division of the day into precise parts; basic mathematics.
Cost: Drained life from Kinsfolk and their children; used leeches and insects to harvest blood and distill potions believed to extend life.
Nareth (The Never-Met Keeper)
Seen from afar; his true name unknown. Judged too dangerous after many prior bargains.
Cost: The Kinsfolk turned away, driving them into the desert known as the Salt Road. No knowledge was gained, save the understanding that refusing offered aid may carry unseen costs.
Mordren
Shelter, permanence, and comfort. Vast carved caverns with warm beds, furnaces, and lasting stonework. Taught advanced stone cutting, metallurgy, alloying, and high-heat smithing.
Cost: Enslaved Kinsfolk to keep the forges running; demanded worship; dissenters were fed into the furnaces.
Selcar
Trade, markets, coinage, valuation, profit, crowd-holding, anticipation, greed, and consumer desire.
Cost: Engineered debt and deprivation through manipulation of prices and delayed promises; impoverished the Kinsfolk while enriching himself.
Justar
Writing, law, codes, and record-keeping; establishment of universal rules over personal judgment.
Cost: Exploited loopholes and legal complexity to claim authority; through contracts and documentation, nearly seized total control before revolt forced separation.
Those who stayed behind were diminished; those who left carried knowledge with caution.
See also: Days of Walked Nights · The Crossing