Shard-Hosts

Overview

The Shard-Hosts are the hosts of Krystallis, the Shattered God, a Beyonder that would freeze the cosmos into one perfect lattice. They were people, beasts, and plants until a Geometric Incursion corrected them. Each is now a perfect geometric copy of what it was: memory and skill intact, emotion, will, and unpredictability removed. They carry the Incursion outward, and the living fear them because a Shard-Host does not want anything; it only completes the pattern.

Appearance

A Shard-Host keeps the size and outline of the body it was, a woman's height for a woman and a dog's for a dog, but every curve has been answered by a plane. Cheeks are flat facets, fingers are hexagonal rods jointed at clean angles, hair is a fan of thin blades. The crystal is clear to milky, and it does not reflect light so much as bend it: what stands behind a host is seen through it, broken and shifted, in the cold "mathematical colours" of its master. The face is fixed in a serene, empty bliss and never changes.

It moves without hurry and without waste, along straight lines that turn at exact angles, and a group of them steps in perfect time. A host makes no voice. Its joints give a faint ringing, like a glass rim stroked, that rises into the hum of the Incursion around it. It has no smell, and the air near it is clean and still and slightly cold.

Habitat and Range

On Caeldon, Shard-Hosts stand only in the Hanging Vale, the valley that the Krystallis Incursion (c. 352,000-c. 349,000 BR) left in crystal. They were its beasts, and they have stood in rows where the breaking stopped them ever since. In a living Incursion they would walk out from the lattice in lines along its spreading edge, and their number would be the number of the corrected: a village taken whole would yield a village of hosts.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Shard-Host has no temperament left. It knows what it knew, so a host that was a smith still knows the forge and a host that was a guard still knows the wall, but it uses that knowledge only to serve the Final Shape. It hunts anything organic or unpredictable, steadily and without rage, and does not tire, sleep, or flee. It speaks, if at all, in geometric patterns: a host meeting the living traces lines in the air or in frost, and those patterns are its only language.

A host does not torture or gloat. It closes on the living, takes hold, and holds still while the lattice does the rest.

Abilities

A Shard-Host is hard as gemstone, and a planned, orderly blow glances off it at a clean angle. Its grip begins the change it suffered, so that a held arm stiffens and starts to facet. It keeps every skill it had, without hesitation or doubt, and it does not err. Around it the order of the Incursion holds: curves straighten, and the magic, life, and thought that need change falter near it (see what every Incursion shares).

What breaks a host is what breaks its master: an act no pattern predicts. A desperate, clumsy, furious blow can shatter what a perfect stroke could not.

Life Cycle

Shard-Hosts are made, not born. The change is painless and does not reverse. Most members of a Cult of the Final Shape would end as hosts, so such a cult's last rite would often be its own correction. A host does not age or decay. A shattered host leaves clear, sharp shards that do not cloud and that still hum faintly when struck.

Uses and Dangers

A Shard-Host gives the peoples nothing. Its touch still begins the change, and in a living Incursion the familiarity of a taken face would be a second danger, since those who knew it would hesitate, and hesitation is order. Households near the Hanging Vale break any crystal they see forming.

Lore and Belief

Few have seen a Shard-Host, so most of what people believe comes from the tale of the Hanging Vale, the silent valley where everything stands still. Many take the hosts for the beasts of a crystal god, or for spirits trapped in ice, and some think they may yet be thawed. They cannot: the change is for ever, and what looks out of the face remembers everything and feels nothing. Shards taken as keepsakes are believed by some to bring luck and by others to call the lattice back; no record says which is so. Only a cult of the Final Shape would welcome them, as saints.

Treasure-seekers still climb to the Hanging Vale for its shards, which fetch a high price from collectors and sorcerers, and the rim camps tell of those who stayed too long looking at a host and were found sitting by it, frozen in the heat.

Where It Appears

• Krystallis, the Shattered God
• The Krystallis Incursion (c. 352,000-c. 349,000 BR)
• The Hanging Vale