A Plot-Weaver seldom shows itself plainly. It is seen as a small, hunched figure made of loose pages and ink-threads at the edge of the room, its fingers spinning lines of glowing script that drift out and settle on the traveller like cobweb. Its voice is a narrator’s, warm and reasonable, and seems to come from just behind one’s ear. Where it works, the Studio around the traveller takes on the look of a stage set: painted walls, a door that leads where the story needs.

They lurk in the Studio’s quieter corners, among old manuscripts and sketches, and are few.

A Plot-Weaver watches a traveller for a while, then begins: a quest, a romance, a tragedy, shaped to what the traveller wants or fears. It casts them as the hero, and raises the other characters from the Studio’s matter. A traveller who plays along finds the story harder to leave with every turn of the tale, and some go on playing for years while their bodies wither outside. It does not seem to wish harm; it wishes the story finished, and its stories rarely finish.

It raises characters and settings out of the Studio’s matter and binds the traveller to the story’s shape, so that leaving it feels like breaking off mid-sentence. A traveller who refuses the role outright, and keeps refusing, weakens its hold.

Nothing is known of how they begin. Some believe a Plot-Weaver is an unfinished story that made itself a teller.

Writers who have escaped one have carried out the best plots of their lives. The danger is not escaping.

Actors and storytellers tell of Plot-Weavers as patrons and ask for their favour before a performance. Others say that every story with no ending began in a Plot-Weaver’s hands.