Seal-Knockers

Overview

The Stonewake custodians seal what must be sealed, on the word of whoever holds the reach: a flooding gallery, a contagion, an incursion, a failing reach that would take the network with it. Sometimes people are behind the seal when it closes. Afterwards, sometimes, there is knocking. The Seal-Knockers are what the holds call the knockers behind the seals, and whether the knock is the dead or the living is the oldest question the custodians of the Stonewake Deeps have to answer.

Appearance

Mostly they are heard, not seen: a slow knock on the far side of a sealed door, three blows and a pause, over and over, sometimes for years. Some knock with a hammer's rhythm, as if signalling in a hold's old code. A few custodians who have pressed an ear to the seal tell of a voice, or of breathing, and some of a cold that comes through the stone. Where a seal has been reopened, those who went in found the dead where they fell, and sometimes the marks of their knocking on the door. Kobold vent crews say they have seen pale hands at a grille behind a seal, there and gone.

Habitat and Range

They are heard behind seals across the Deeps and the older holds of the Ironspine: emergency closures, grave closures, and the oldest seals of all, whose signatories are long dead. They are heard most behind seals later judged unjust.

Behaviour and Temperament

They knock. They do not break the seal, or try; they ask to be let out, or to be heard. Those who answer the knock with a knock of their own say it falls silent for a time, and then begins again.

Abilities

Like other remnants they bring cold and dread, and a hold that lives with a Seal-Knocker sleeps badly. A seal opened on one lets out its full weight: the remnant comes through with the bad air and the flood, and clings to whoever opened it.

Uses and Dangers

They are dangerous less for what they do than for what they ask. A seal opened because of a knock may let out the flood, the contagion, or the incursion it was made to hold, and a cascade that takes holds that did nothing wrong. A seal left shut on the living is the thing seal practice is haunted by. Custodians record every knock in the archives, and each time the elders of a reach meet over a knock, they begin with the Measured Seal's question again: must this close?

Lore and Belief

Under the Held Covenant, the dead are sealed with care, and a knock is taken as a sign that the dead behind it were not honoured as having held. Some custodians say the rite of burial can be spoken through the stone to quiet them. Seal practice holds that every knock is the dead, because otherwise the seal was murder; gate practice answers that this is exactly why seal practice wants it so. The Kobold crews of underhouses such as Knockrun knock back on their rounds, and say the dead like to be answered.

Where It Appears

• Overview: The Risen Dead