Life-Bearers

Overview

The Life-Bearers are among the Current-Bound of the Surging Deep: beings that carry the seeds of life to new worlds. In a plane where nothing is wasted and death feeds life, they are its sowers.

Appearance

A Life-Bearer is vast and slow, a long, pale shape like a whale made of mist and moving water, lit within by countless tiny glowing specks, gold, green, and blue, like a night sky inside it. It drifts on the deepest currents, and where it passes the water around it shimmers with the same specks. It sings a long, low song that seems to come from every direction at once, one of the songs of deep creatures that fill the Deep. It smells of rain and green water.

Habitat and Range

They drift on the deepest currents of the Surging Deep, rising towards its edges, where the plane meets the Veil, when they go to carry their seeds.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Life-Bearer gathers the seeds of life, and carries them out, along the flow, to wherever life can take hold. It does not stop for travellers, though it is said to let them ride the current in its wake.

Abilities

It carries life. What it carries can take root where nothing grew before.

Uses and Dangers

They give life, and their wakes are rich with it. They do no harm.

Lore and Belief

Sailors' tales on Caeldon tell of a vast shape full of stars seen far down in the sea, and of new reefs and fishing grounds that came after it; whether any of them saw a Life-Bearer is not known.

Where It Appears

• The Surging Deep
• Writers' Guide: The Planes