Seers

Overview

The Seers are the natives of the Prophecy's Edge, the cliff where the most heavily weighted future shows as a shimmering horizon. They live inside what they see. They call themselves Keepers of the End, read the future as a sacred text that must be followed, and speak of nothing but what will happen.

Appearance

A Seer looks at first like a calm, ageless person of no particular people, thin from little eating and still in the face. The eyes give it away: they are wholly white or wholly gold, without pupil or iris, and in them the images over the precipice can be seen small and moving, battles and coronations, births and deaths. The gold-eyed are said to see further.

They move slowly, as though already walking a path laid down for them, and never stumble. Their voices are even and certain. They wear plain pale cloth, and they smell, like the plateau, of old parchment and cold air.

Habitat and Range

They live on the plateau, nearest the edge, in small numbers, sometimes alone. They do not build much; shelter on the Edge is a matter of where one is meant to stand.

Behaviour and Temperament

They are calm and resigned, and they speak in declarations: "you will go down by the east path", "the king will die in spring". They think outsiders blind to the inevitable and are neither unkind nor warm to them. They value precision and acceptance, and they hold it sacred to act in keeping with the line they see.

They do not argue. A visitor who refuses what they say is answered with the next thing that will happen.

Abilities

They see the most heavily weighted future with near-perfect clarity, from their next step to events centuries away. They do not age; they exist in a state they call becoming, and they draw sustenance from the certainty of what they see. Their telling adds weight to the line it tells, as all looking at the Edge does.

Life Cycle

Some Seers are believed to have been visitors who looked and did not turn back, and who, unlike the Compelled, accepted the line rather than being crushed by it. Whether any are born on the Edge is not known. They do not age, and how they end is not recorded; a Seer, asked, gives the day.

Uses and Dangers

Rulers, generals, and the desperate send messengers to hear a Seer, and most get what they asked for and more than they wanted. The danger is the telling itself: the future it names grows harder to change, and a ruler who asks has made that future more likely.

Lore and Belief

Most who hear of the Seers believe they see a fixed fate. What they see is the likeliest line, which can still be broken at rising cost; that this is pressure and not destiny is argued only among scholars of the Fate-Songline Doctrine. Others hold the Seers to be oracles of a god, and bring offerings they do not want.

Warlords climb to the Edge before a war to learn how it ends, and the songs are full of the ones who did not like the answer and marched anyway.

Where It Appears

• The Prophecy's Edge
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Resonant Zones