Chapter 1: on Swordmutes

On the plane of ILIX A’Noth lies Ellingspree, a great fortress-city carved from the towering husk of a titanic mushroom. Many sorts live and work here, and a more in-depth catalogue could spend volumes detailing the local artistic scene alone, as Ellingspree is home to the discipline of smokecraft, whose practitioners sculpt billowing, flowing statues of smoke by lighting, in a special pipe, a drug crafted from the Ellingspree mushroom itself. (I partook many times while there, and perhaps will one day dedicate a second page of this journal to relay my experiences in that regard. I do recommend the activity should you ever be in the area, nonetheless.)

Yet, those who most fascinated me in Ellingspree were not the artists, nor any of the city’s many other residents. Instead, it was the Order of the Silent Tongue, or the Swordmutes as they are commonly known, an order of warrior-nuns so called because their sisters take vows of total silence. Indeed, they are incapable of speech, or even of small involuntary noises of the mouth such as coughs or throat-clearing. Each wears a magical veil that covers the face entirely, with an embroidered pattern in the shape of an embellished X, which cancels out all sound emanating from the wearer’s face at the conceptual root. While these veils are worn, a Swordmute sister is an aural hole in reality, from which no sound may ever emanate again. Indeed, the sisterhood frowns on the exploitation of loopholes, and most Swordmutes are thus reluctant to engage even in written communication. When they do so, they are inevitably terse and seek to end the conversation as quickly as possible, so that they might return to their duties.

Luckily, their apprentices, who have yet to take the final vow of silence and are thus still permitted the sin of speech, are eager to demonstrate that even while they still can (must, even) engage in the act, they are capable of minimizing their sinfulness by using language for (relative) good. To this end, the eldest of the apprentices serve as mouthpieces for either the Order itself or specific proper sisters, and it is they alone who are permitted to speak at length with outsiders.

From one of these older apprentices, a girl of about 20 named Yelia, I learned much about the Order that many of the other townsfolk of Ellingspree were reluctant to disclose. If, indeed, they knew it at all.

Their primary deity is Stahl, the Glittering Iron. Stahl is widely worshipped throughout the Dream as a god of death. However, this is something of a simplification, as Stahl’s true domain is not death but endings in general. To worship Stahl is to understand that all things are transient, even transience itself. Often, Stahl is depicted with a rather fearsome visage; as a towering skeleton made of unimaginably hard metal, whose gleaming bones will be the very last objects that survive when the Dream eventually collapses in the incomprehensibly-distant future. Stahlites maintain that when all else is quiet, their god will commit holy, ritual suicide, thus bringing the Dream to a final close.

The Swordmutes are wholly dedicated to preparation for this eventuality. A Silent Tongue sister’s day consists of much quiet prayer and meditation, and their central convent (also in Ellingspree) is home to a truly marvelous chamber known as The Room of True Thought. I was given a chance to experience this myself, and I can compare the chamber, which is treated with a magical stone that absorbs not just all sound but all of the senses entirely, only to the most advanced and complex of meditation magic. From an outside observer’s point of view I was inside the chamber for only a few minutes—about seventeen, Yelia informed me—but in those minutes I felt time slow into a thick muddy river around me. I could hear the blood flowing through my veins and feel the individual sparks within my brain. Truly, it was an unforgettable experience, and even more strongly than partaking in smokecraft, I must recommend it to any who can obtain an audience with the Order.

Their reputation, of course, does not stem from practices such as these. In addition to their more peaceful pursuits, the Swordmutes are famous for their defense of Ellingspree itself. The city has no conventional militia, and the Silent Tongue serves to protect the fortress city from monsters, the occasional bandit raid, etc. They are fearsome combatants, employing long, flexible, ribbonlike swords in their art. Yelia informed me that the mastery of these swords forms much of a new proper sister’s post-initiation training, and can take many years to obtain.

This martial aspect, more than anything else, is also why many in Ellingspree remain distrustful of the Order, despite its protection of the city. Taking the common man’s point of view it is not difficult to understand this, given the Swordmutes’ strict adherence to their own doctrine and their general reluctance to communicate with outsiders. Still, my time among them provided ample argument for the Order’s merits. My hope is that one day they and the larger, more secular population of Ellingspree will reach true understanding of each other.

I was able to shadow Yelia for only a day, and my only regret regarding my stay in Ellingspree is that I could not spend two or three more with her there. The young nun developed affections for me, perhaps inevitably, and wished to run away with me to my Tower. I initially thought it poor form to make off with one of the Swordmute apprentices from the Order’s own doorstep, but she was quite insistent. Yelia apprenticed with me for some years after our affair. At present, she is a talented arcanist in her own right, and maintains a geomancy practice on the rural world of Elum Oyet, where she often helps the area’s farmers find groundwater.

Of the Swordmutes themselves, my final assessment is this; may they forgive my small transgression, and continue to prosper in peace!

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