Ley Moles

Overview

Ley Moles are moles that live along ley lines, the channels where magic is easier to reach. They tunnel down the line and nowhere else, and their molehills march across fields and meadows in long, straight or gently bending rows that follow the line through the ground. Mages who need to know where a line runs, or where it has drifted to, hire a mole-catcher who knows the ley moles.

Appearance

A ley mole is a mole in every way that matters: the length of a hand, velvety and cylindrical, with broad, pink-palmed digging forepaws, a naked pink snout, and eyes too small to see. Its fur is darker than a common mole's, nearly blue-black, and in a certain light it shows a faint sheen like oil on water; old ones grow a few white hairs about the snout. Up close its fur is faintly warm and prickles the palm. It squeaks and chitters underground like any mole, and smells of earth.

Habitat and Range

They are found wherever a ley line crosses soft soil: under fields, meadows, and greens, round ley nodes, and along the drift of a line over the years. Away from a line they are not found, and a line that runs under rock or water loses its moles there and finds them again beyond.

Behaviour and Temperament

A ley mole digs its runs along the line, feeding on worms and grubs like any mole, and it will not dig across it or away from it for long. Where lines knot or narrow at a node the moles crowd, and the ground there is heaved with hills. When a line shifts, over years, its moles shift with it, and an old row of grassed-over hills beside a fresh one shows which way the line has gone.

Abilities

They sense the line through the soil and keep to it. That is the whole of their gift, and it is enough to make them useful.

Life Cycle

They breed as moles do, a litter in a nest of grass deep in the run each spring, and they live a few years. Young moles leave the nest along the line, never across it.

Uses and Dangers

Mages, temple builders, and the founders of sanctuaries hire mole-catchers who read the rows to find a line or a node, and good catchers are paid well and keep their knowledge in the family. Farmers dislike the moles as they dislike any mole, for the hills and the spoiled grass, and some villages over a strong line are plagued with them. Those who live long beside a busy line are the folk most often struck by ley-warp, and some blame the moles for bringing it; the moles only follow the line that brings it.

Lore and Belief

Human village folk say a row of molehills is "a mage's road" and that crossing it at night brings odd dreams. Mole-catchers say their best catch is the one they never make, since a dead ley mole tells nothing, and they lift and move moles rather than kill them. Some mages hold that ley moles are moles the line has changed over many generations; it is a common teaching, and nobody has shown it wrong.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Touched Beasts