Contents
The Reach has, for as long as anyone has been counting, told stories about cults of the Nameless — secretive groups, scattered across the clusters, who allegedly worship or serve some unnamed thing the working religion does not formally recognize. The stories are inconsistent, contradictory, occasionally embarrassing, and probably partly true in some specifics that no one has been able to identify.
The temple of the Seven, asked about cults of the Nameless, has the same response it has had for four centuries: we do not formally acknowledge what we cannot describe. The Wren Academy’s theology faculty, asked about cults of the Nameless, will produce a small careful pamphlet that distinguishes documented eccentric folk-cults (of which there are perhaps a dozen across reach-history, mostly benign) from rumoured organized cults (of which there is, by the faculty’s careful working judgement, no useful evidence). The Silent Choir, asked about cults of the Nameless, has produced several published statements distancing themselves emphatically. Reach-folk, asked about cults of the Nameless, have opinions.
What follows is the working tavern-summary — gossip, rumour, overheard fragments. The text below should not be read as documentary. It should be read as what people say, which is, as in most matters of folk-religion, not the same thing as what is true and not the same thing as what is false.
The recurring rumours
A small set of stories appears repeatedly, in roughly the same shapes, across reach-clusters:
The Black Reach Inn
A roadside inn allegedly located somewhere in the loose isles between Brassmarket and the Veiled. The inn is said to host, on one night each year, a private gathering — figures who arrive without registering at the harbour, conduct business in a closed room, and depart before dawn. The night varies by storyteller; some say 14 Mistmonth (the anniversary of Mara’s fall), some say Velisar’s Morning, some say a date no two storytellers agree on.
The Black Reach Inn has, depending on the version, been investigated:
- by a Brassmarket harbour-master who did not return (1843 AU clearly an apocryphal date that does not exist)
- by a Wren Academy delegate who returned but would not speak
- by a particularly persistent journalist of the brasswright trade who wrote a single short pamphlet, in 391 AU, dismissing the rumours, and then moved to the Quiet Reach and stopped publishing
The inn is not, in the working harbour-rolls of any reach-cluster, documented to exist. This has not stopped the rumour.
The Pale Watchers
Figures said to appear at sites of recent falls — drift-wreck recovery scenes, places where ships have foundered, the small quiet beaches where bodies sometimes wash up. The Pale Watchers are described, in reach-folk-tale, as thin, not quite right at the joints, and not always there when looked at directly. They do not approach. They do not speak. They are seen, then they are not seen, and the loss-site is undisturbed in their wake.
The Pale Watchers may, in working folk-judgement, be grief hallucinations — the kind of thing the bereaved produce in the days after a loss. The Wren Academy’s natural-philosophy faculty has documented the phenomenon in those terms. The reach-folk who have seen the Pale Watchers do not, by their own report, find the Academy’s documentation reassuring.
The Drowning Houses
Specific houses — the count varies by storyteller; most accounts agree on perhaps three to five — in particular reach-villages where neighbours have heard, on certain nights, singing in a language no one knows. The singing is described as low, slow, and underneath the building, not in any room. The houses have, where investigated, contained no one singing. The neighbours have, where pressed, retracted their accounts. The houses have, in several accounts, been left vacant after their owners moved away and have remained vacant since.
The Drowning Houses are the rumour the temple is, by working observation, quietest about. Priests asked directly will say the houses are ordinary buildings. Priests asked indirectly — over a long evening, after a third drink — have, in some recorded cases, changed the subject.
The Walking Question
The most disturbing of the recurring rumours. Allegedly: groups of strangers, reach-folk by appearance but by no village’s working knowledge, who travel quietly between clusters and seek out people who have suffered the Forgetting (see Why We Don’t Look Down, v7). The strangers approach the affected, ask a single careful question — what was the thing you were trying to remember? — and then leave. The affected, after such a visit, sometimes sleep poorly for a season. Some, in a small minority of recorded cases, leave their villages, and are not heard from again.
The Walking Question rumour is, by Wren Academy theology faculty view, the most likely to be partly real. The faculty has not elaborated.
What people say in taverns
A small selection of overheard fragments from port-taverns of the Quiet Reach and Copper Ring, transcribed by an itinerant scribe across 410-411 AU:
“My grandfather told me the Pale Watchers were the dead, come back to look at us. He told me not to look back. I have not. I would not say I have always not been tempted.”
“The Walking Question came through Pike’s Reach when I was twelve. They did not stop at our house. They stopped at the Berenfeld house, two doors down. The Berenfeld son left for the trade six weeks later. He has not written.”
“The Black Reach Inn does not exist. I have looked. I have not wasted my time. I have only spent it.”
“There is no cult of the Nameless. There are only people who have noticed something, and are not ready to admit they have.”
The fragments do not, in working judgement, prove anything. They are not intended to. They are what people say, recorded faithfully, without the Wren Academy’s polite editorial moderation. Reach-folk who have read them have not, by reach-judgement, found them new.
“I keep this account behind the bar. I show it to travellers who ask. Most travellers, on reading it, ask whether any of it is true. I tell them the same thing I have told all of them: I have served drinks in this tavern thirty-one years, and I have not, in those years, been entirely sure of any answer to that question I have given. I have, however, been sure of some of the questions.”
— attributed to the keeper of an inn outside Crescent Markets, recorded by an itinerant scribe, 411 AU