The Stilled

Overview

The Stilled are the people of the Frozen Moment, the realm of time and stasis that holds moments long enough for history to exist. They are guardians of the past, and they spend most of their existence still, waking only when something significant happens.

Appearance

A Stilled is shaped like a person of ordinary height, made of clear crystal and pale blue ice. Light passes through it and breaks into thin colours along its edges, and within it, faint as frost on a window, are lines and shapes like a moment caught: a face, a hand, a falling leaf. Its eyes are always closed, the lids smooth and still. It stands motionless for ages at a time, and when it moves, it moves slowly and deliberately, with a faint ringing, like a glass rubbed at the rim. It speaks only when it must, in a voice clear and cold as a struck bell. It has no smell, and the air around it is still.

Habitat and Range

They stand across the unblemished ice plains and among the frozen waterfalls and statue-like mountains of the Frozen Moment, each beside the moment it guards.

Behaviour and Temperament

They preserve the history of the universe, making sure that no moment is ever lost. Patience, endurance, and the sanctity of the present are what they value. They are calm and unhurried, and they see visitors as frantic and disorderly; they do not understand rushing. A Stilled that has woken will watch what it woke for, and speak to a visitor if the visitor matters to it, and then return to stillness.

Abilities

They do not age, eat, or sleep. They exist in suspended animation, and they wake when a significant event occurs: what counts as significant to them is their own judgement, and travellers have woken them by accident with things they thought small.

Uses and Dangers

They are said to remember any moment they have guarded exactly, and travellers come to the Frozen Moment to recover lost artefacts and to stand where a past event is held, which the Stilled may allow. Their danger is only the plane's: a visitor who stands with them too long may become one of the Frozen.

Lore and Belief

The plane's gates are ancient ruins and places of deep meditation, and those who have returned through them speak of crystal sentinels with closed eyes. Some on Caeldon believe the Stilled are the frozen ancestors of the world, waiting to wake; they are beings of the plane, not anyone's ancestors. They are said to have made guardians for some Ageless Springs.

Where It Appears

• The Frozen Moment
• Writers' Guide: The Planes, The Resonant Zones, The Ten Primes