The Chromatic Chord

Menders

Beings of the Weave that repair its network, healing rifts in the connection.

Overview

The Menders are among the Chorus of the Weave: beings that repair its network, healing rifts in the connection wherever minds have come apart.

Appearance

A Mender is seen as a soft light that moves along the strands of the Weave, pale blue or pearl, gathering where a strand has frayed and spreading over it like water over a stone. Travellers who have felt one pass through them describe a warmth, like a hand on the shoulder, and a sudden easing of a grief they did not know they carried. It makes no sound apart from a faint resolving of the chord around it, like a lute string brought back into tune.

Habitat and Range

They move through the network of the Weave, wherever the connection is broken or strained: at the edges of the plane, where visitors arrive, and where the network has been cut.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Mender goes where the connection is hurt and heals it. It does not distinguish between the plane's own strands and a visitor's: a visitor's loneliness is a rift to it, and it mends that too.

Abilities

It heals rifts in the connection between minds. A visitor it touches feels joined, eased, and comforted, and a little less themselves.

Uses and Dangers

They are the Weave's healers, and much of what visitors come to the plane for, the healing of grief and isolation, is their work. Their danger is gentle and real: being mended is the first step of the Dissolution.

Lore and Belief

Travellers say that when the network is cut, the sudden silence is itself a wound, and that the Menders come to it first. Some who come back say they felt mended for the first time in their lives, and went back.

Where It Appears

In the Writers’ Guide

See Also