Waymoths

Overview

Waymoths are the moths of the Ghost Step. They fly along its road in a slow, unbroken line, not the road as it is but the road as the dead walked it, and where the old road turned off or ran to a place no longer there, the moths still go. Pilgrims follow them; so do the lost.

Appearance

A Waymoth is the size of a large moth of a summer night, its wings soft and broad, sepia and faded white, with a faint glow at their edges like the glow of the zone's Echoes. They fly at the height of a hand-held lamp, one behind another, and a line of them on a dark road looks like a procession carrying lights far off. Their flight is slow and steady, not the flutter of ordinary moths. They make no sound. Their dust smells of dried flowers and old dust.

Habitat and Range

They live along the road of the Ghost Step, from end to end, and thickest along stretches the dead walked most: pilgrimage routes, old trade roads, the ways to battlefields.

Behaviour and Temperament

Waymoths follow the Echoes of the past. They fly where the Path-Echoes walk, and where the road has changed they keep to its old line: through a field where a road once ran, over a ruined bridge, up to a shrine that has fallen. They rest by day on the cracked stones of the road and fly at dusk.

Abilities

They know the old roads, perhaps because they live on the Echoes that walk them, perhaps because they are a kind of Echo themselves. A traveller who follows them walks the road of the dead exactly, and finds what the dead walked to, if any of it remains.

Life Cycle

They breed in the moss and cracks of the old road. Each lives a season, and the line never breaks.

Uses and Dangers

Pilgrims aligned with Umbra Prime follow them to find old holy places, and antiquarians follow them to find lost ruins. Their danger is the zone's: a traveller who follows the moths too far falls into the dead's steps and begins to remember their road as their own, and may fade into an Echo in turn.

Lore and Belief

Along old pilgrimage roads near the Path-Gates that open on the Ghost Step, a line of moths at dusk is taken for the souls of pilgrims still walking, and some leave out lamps for them. Travellers believe that a Waymoth will lead you to your own ancestors' road; nothing shows that they choose whom they lead.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Natives of the Zones