The Drowned Court

Overview

The Drowned Court was the spectral host of Ithaere the Drowned Mother, the Aqua Resonant of the floods that broke the upper Roothollows. Its members were the strong who gave themselves to the water so that a refuge might be spared, and whose Echoes were bound to her service by the giving. She could call them up out of the flood to guard and fight, and while she lasted they were loyal, fearless, and could not be destroyed. It belongs to the deep past of the Roothollow Rupture (c. 335,000-c. 328,000 BR), and lives on in Dark Elf lament.

Appearance

The Court rose from black water in ranks. Each figure came up streaming, the height of the Elf it had been, grey-blue and waterlogged, with the drowned's swollen calm on its face and hair hanging in roots and drift. It was clearly not flesh: the cavern lamps showed through it, and water ran down it that never pooled. Each carried a spear of hardened root and a shield of drowned bark, black and slick. They moved in silence and in step, waist-deep and then on the surface, and the air around them went cold and smelled of silt. Some laments say the guards' mouths moved as they came, shaping the names of the chambers they had died to save.

Habitat and Range

The Court could exist only near water. It rose from the floods that filled the passages, chambers, and refuges of the upper Roothollows, and from the pools where the tithe was paid. When the waters fell and the upper world was sealed (see The Sealing of the Upper Roothollows, c. 328,000-c. 318,000 BR), its places were left ruined and closed.

Behaviour and Temperament

The Court did not choose. It guarded what Ithaere told it to guard and drove back what she told it to drive back, refuges against the flood's other dangers and, near her end, the old passages she tried to keep drowned. It showed no fear and no anger; laments give it something closer to patience, as though it were still waiting for the water to be paid.

Abilities

Bound to Ithaere, the guards could not be killed: a spear through one passed through water, and it came on. They held the water's cold and its weight, and a guard's touch could drag a swimmer down. Every summoning cost the Drowned Mother pain, for she was making the dead live their drowning again, and the Court existed only where water stood.

Uses and Dangers

In the flood years the Court was a refuge's last defence, bought at the price of its strongest. It was also the clearest sign of what Ithaere's mercy cost: every guard was someone who had sunk so that someone else might float. In her last years she raised it against the people who would no longer pay.

Lore and Belief

Ithaere sank into the last of the flood and her Pattern scattered; the Court is not known to have risen since, and nothing in the record shows it outlived her. Dark Elf laments still name its guards, and the Gloamroot Covenant counts them among its oldest griefs. Parents warn that a child who strays near black water will be taken into the Court, and those who work deep basins tell of figures with spears seen standing under still water at the old flood-lines, near the tithe stones that now lie beyond sealed passages. Most say it is the lamplight in the water.

Where It Appears

• Ithaere the Drowned Mother