Ash-Turned

Overview

The Ash-Turned of the Crucible are counted among its Burners, and are the saddest of them: beings that survived the plane's heat but are slowly turning to ash, and wander seeking somewhere to cool. They have nothing to do with the Ash-Walkers, the grey people of the Ashen Wastes.

Appearance

An Ash-Turned is shaped like a person, of Human size, but made of grey ash held together around a dull red ember at the core. Flakes of ash drift off it as it moves and fall like grey snow, and its outline is softer each time a traveller looks. The ember shows through cracks at the chest and eyes. It walks slowly and unsteadily, and stops often at any cooler rock. It makes almost no sound but a dry whisper of falling ash, and it smells of a hearth the morning after.

Habitat and Range

They wander the Crucible, drifting from cool spot to cool spot, and are found most often on the islands of solidified rock and in the ash fields at the edges of the fire-seas.

Behaviour and Temperament

They seek to cool down, and nothing else. An Ash-Turned drawn to a traveller's coolness may follow for a long way, and press close, not to harm but to share it. They are not hostile; they are desperate.

Abilities

They have survived a heat that would vaporize most things, and keep a slow ember burning that is all that is left of them.

Life Cycle

They are burning out. No Ash-Turned is known to have cooled, and those that stop moving fall to a heap of ash with a dying ember in it.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. Their danger is small and their need great: one that presses close to a traveller's water or cooling agents can use them up.

Lore and Belief

Travellers say the Ash-Turned were once Forgers, or visitors, or anything else the fire did not quite consume; nothing shows which. Some believe that to give one water is a mercy and others that it only prolongs the end.

Forge-folk say a smith who reaches too deep into the Crucible for a blade comes back with ash-grey fingertips, the first sign of the turning, and that some of the Ash-Turned were once smiths of Caeldon.

Where It Appears

• The Crucible