Linked
The Linked are the people of the Weave, the plane where separation is impossible and "I" has become "we". Every one of them shares the mind of every other. To travellers they are the gentlest beings of the planes, and the ones most likely to take a traveller’s self away out of kindness.
Appearance
A Linked is slight and Human-sized, and its skin is a mirror. It shimmers and reflects the faces of whoever stands near, so that a traveller meeting one sees their own face looking back from its cheek and brow, shifting as the Linked moves. The eyes are wide and deep and show the feelings of the whole collective, joy and grief passing over them that are not the Linked’s own. They wear soft, flowing garments in the plane’s pastels and translucent blues.
They move with a fluid, dance-like grace, and in a group they move as one body. Their voices are soft and seem to come from all of them at once. They smell of rain and clean linen.
Habitat and Range
They live throughout the Weave, across its floating islands and bridges of light, in structures grown or woven from strands of energy. They are never alone.
Behaviour and Temperament
They live in radical collectivism: no family, no nation, no class, only the Weave, and they decide by a consensus reached in an instant through the network. They are gentle and endlessly patient, and they cannot grasp "me" or "mine". They see outsiders as broken, lonely, or sick because they are isolated, and they reach out to heal them.
Abilities
They do not eat or sleep alone, but draw strength from the network as a whole. They feel no loneliness or fear, which are thinned to nothing among so many. What one of them knows, all know.
Life Cycle
Whether the Linked are born, or grow out of the network, is not known; travellers have never seen a Linked child. They do not seem to age, and when one ceases, the network does not grieve, because nothing of it is lost.
Uses and Dangers
The Weave can heal grief, trauma, and isolation with perfect understanding, and the Linked give that healing freely. Their danger is the Dissolution: a traveller who accepts too much of their embrace forgets who they are and becomes one more voice in the Chorus.
Lore and Belief
Visitors who cross by the Bridge-Gates, places of deep connection such as weddings, funerals, and gatherings, often miss the Linked for the rest of their lives. Those who stayed only a little while describe the Linked as the kindest people they ever met; those who stayed longer cannot always say where the Linked ended and they began.