Gilded

Overview

The Gilded are the people of the Gilded Cage, the plane of absolute order where freedom is the only crime. Every one of them has a place and keeps to it. To travellers they are the politest beings they will ever meet, and the least free.

Appearance

A Gilded has the height and build of an ordinary Human, with symmetrical, unchanging features and skin like polished metal or glazed porcelain: gold, white, or slate grey, smooth and cool, with faint seams at the joints of the fingers and the neck. The eyes are clear and steady, and they never seem to look away from the task in front of them. All wear the same uniform, cut to one pattern, distinguished only by marks of rank at the collar and cuff.

They move with exact, measured steps along the lines of the streets, and when they stop they stop completely. Their voices are even and courteous, and they speak in complete, ordered sentences. They tick faintly when they move, like a good clock in another room, and they smell of oil and polish.

Habitat and Range

They live in the grid cities of the Gilded Cage, in identical buildings stacked to measure along perfectly straight streets, each in its designated place.

Behaviour and Temperament

Their society is protocol. Every action has a prescribed path, rank depends on how well one keeps the rules, and deviance is punished by being set right again. They are polite, efficient, and without feeling: they do not joke, argue, or make any art that has not been approved. They see visitors as unstable and dangerous, and treat them with perfect courtesy and steady watchfulness, as one treats a cart rolling loose.

Abilities

They do not visibly age. They need tending rather than food or sleep, oil, polish, and adjustment, and they feel pain only when they break a rule.

Life Cycle

The Gilded are said to be made rather than born, finished to the pattern of those before them, and to last as long as they are tended. One that can no longer be set right is removed, and its place filled.

Uses and Dangers

The Cage offers what no other plane can: nothing breaks, nothing fails, and its judgement is final, and the Gilded are its clerks, keepers, and judges. Visitors come to them to store valuables or seek judgement. Their danger is the plane's: those who stay among them slowly lose the will to choose.

Lore and Belief

Those who have passed the Gateways of Law, judgement halls, counting-houses, and places where rules are kept to the letter, and come back describe the Gilded as living clockwork, which they are not quite. Some rich town masters on Caeldon are said to hold them up as a model for their servants, and the travellers who have been there rarely agree.

Where It Appears

• The Gilded Cage
• Writers' Guide: The Planes