Sael'mundvor
Five feet, white, eyeless, cold to the touch, of the Under Realm and seldom out of it. The eyes were traded for the throat: alone of the kin they carry a pad of fine skin under the jaw that reads the movement of air, and so they alone hear breathing, and they hear a lie in the breath before the word arrives.
They live in the dark for longer than any surface house has kept count, and eat so little that a Sael'mundvor has been known to go a year between meals. They are the judges of last resort: an accord no surface house can settle is carried down to the Deep Ledger, and the Sael'mundvor read it and answer, and the answer is not appealed. There is no Crimson in them, only dark.
Body
Five feet, white and eyeless, born blind and staying so; where the other kin go through the Turning, the Sael'mundvor come out of it with no eyes to open. The pad under the jaw is the trade: fine skin that reads the movement of air, which is a sense no other Sael'mund has and which works on breath.
The rest is the people's. Moist cold skin, no hearing in air worth the name, listening done through stone and water, a spinal bank that regrows a finger in a month and a hand in a season, and the wound of partiality that never closes. They eat so little that the bank refills slowly and they are in no hurry, having nowhere to be.
Country
The Under Realm. The Deep Ledger is a house of the Sael'mundvor down there, where the accords no one on the surface remembers are still read once a year, with nobody present to hear them read. When the grey fungus of slow water emptied two houses within memory, it was the Deep Ledger that kept their accords.
They are seldom out of the dark and nothing about the body suggests they want to be. An Accord House on the surface is lit low as a courtesy to a slow eye. Down here there is no eye and no lamp and no courtesy required.
Society
They judge, and the judgement is final. An accord that no surface house can settle goes down, and what comes back is not argued with, and the houses accept that the way they accept the Question at the end of an elder's life, because the alternative is worse.
The Reader of the Deep Ledger is a Sael'mundvor whose name no surface house has been told, and who is said to have read the Alverian originals aloud once, alone, in the dark. The taboo against translating those originals is absolute. Whether reading them aloud where nobody could hear breaks it is the sort of question this people would write down and not answer.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- How long a Sael'mundvor lives
- Where the Deep Ledger stands in the Under Realm
- What the forgotten accords bind, and whether anyone is still bound
- Who carries a case down, and how they find the way