Springwater Herds

Overview

The Springwater Herds are deer that live below the Ageless Spring and drink the water that trickles out of it. Water drawn from the spring does not age, and neither do those who drink it, and so the herds do not grow old: the same hinds and the same stags graze the same valleys for longer than any village beside them can remember. People who live near them hold the herds sacred, and to hunt one is a sacrilege.

Appearance

They are red deer or the smaller roe of their country, as their valley has them, and look like any others at a distance. Close, they are a little too perfect: coats glossy and even, no grey on the muzzle of any of them, no limp, no torn ear that has healed, though old wounds stay as they were, neither healed nor worse. Their eyes are clear and very still. They make the sounds of deer, and they smell faintly of rain and fresh stone, as the spring's air does.

Habitat and Range

They keep to the valleys and brooks below a spring, never far from water that has come out of it, and they do not go into the stillness of the spring itself. A herd is small, a few dozen at most, and it never grows: no calves are born to them that anyone has seen.

Behaviour and Temperament

They graze, browse, and lie up as deer do, but without any season: no rut, no shedding of antlers, no spring calving. They are calm to the point of indifference, and they let a walker come near before they move off. A herd driven from its water grows restless and returns to it if it can.

Abilities

So long as they drink the spring's water, they do not age. That is all they have, and it is not health: a wound they took is never healed, and a beast that breaks a leg stays lame.

Life Cycle

They do not breed and do not age, and they die only by injury, by beasts, or by leaving. One driven far from its water, or one that stops drinking, ages all at once as the years it has held back come due, and dies within days, as those who leave the spring do of Time-Sickness.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing, for nothing may be taken from them. The people of a spring's valley keep hunters, wolves, and dogs away from them as best they can, and treat their presence as the valley's blessing. Their danger is to those who break the rule: a hunter's family carries the shame for generations, and the valley's watchers, sometimes the Lingerers of the spring, are said to deal with strangers who try.

Lore and Belief

Valley folk say the herds are the spring's own and that while they graze, the spring will not fail. Some tell of a hind that has stood by a certain stone since the valley's first farmers came, and they name her. Those who think of the spring's cost say the herds are the most honest sign of it: they do not die, and they do not live either, for nothing in them changes.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Touched Beasts