An illuminated grimoire

The Grimoire the Keepers of the Seams

An account of the three orders, their wars, and the guild that learned to share the dream.

The first people to find the Seams discovered something the rest of the world had lived beside without understanding. Raw mana was crossing from the sisters’ dreams into waking reality. It had helped give rise to life. Taken directly into a living body, it could also change that body beyond recognition.

They traced the mana to Verdya, Cindara and Marelle. Soon, they disagreed over what to do with it. Some believed their sister’s dream should prevail over the others. They gathered mana in its pure form and kept it from anyone outside their own order. Others saw the changes already taking hold of their kin and stepped away.

Part One

The Three Orders

Each order began among the same ancient people. Each found a source of raw mana and drew closer to it. In time, the power they had sought made it impossible to return to the lives they had known.

The Order of the Deep Vines

Verdya’s people

The Deep Vines believed growth required patience, and that they alone were willing to give the world enough of it. They settled at green Seams, took Verdya’s mana into themselves, and guarded what grew nearby.

The change came slowly. Feet held fast to the ground. Skin thickened. Roots passed beneath it and pushed into the soil. Some members still remembered how to walk after years of standing in one place, but the oldest could no longer leave. Their bodies widened, rose and branched. Over ages, they became the forests of the world.

They did not lose one another. Beneath the ground, their roots met. Messages travelled through that network from grove to grove: news of a fire, the passage of a herd, a warning from a forest too distant to see. The Deep Vines learned to shelter the creatures that lived among them. A path might open for an animal fleeing danger and close behind it. A canopy might grow dense over a nest before the storm arrived.

Their harvest was drawn from the oldest green Seams through roots sunk deep into the earth. The longer they remained, the farther those roots spread. During the wars, the order claimed new ground in the name of protection. Forests rose over roads, fields and settlements. The creatures beneath their branches were safe; the people whose homes had stood there were not always welcome.

The Deep Vines still call themselves guardians. They remember every place they failed to protect, and every place they took.

The guild distils Verdya’s green mana into lime cubes

The Order of the Bright End

Cindara’s people

The Bright End followed red mana downward. They found it beneath the land, where heat softens stone and the world moves even when its surface seems still. They believed change should be met head-on. If something had to break, they would be the ones to break it.

In the deepest Seams, raw mana altered them. Their bodies hardened around living heat. They learned to move through molten stone and made their homes where the land itself could flow.

They never stopped fighting. Some battles began over access to a Seam; others began because one part of the order would not yield to another. Their struggles drove against the layers of land above them. The ground shifted. Ridges rose. Where a battle forced its way to the surface, fire and molten stone erupted into the open air.

The Bright End call this the world renewing itself. Those living above a broken mountain have other names for it. Yet the order is not driven by ruin for its own sake. Cindara’s people fear a world held so tightly in place that nothing new can emerge. They believe an ending can make room for a beginning. Their wars show how much that belief can cost everyone else.

They draw their harvest from the red Seams in the molten depths, where they can reach mana at its hottest and least settled. They take it pure, as they always have.

The guild distils Cindara’s red mana into strawberry cubes

The Order of the Remembering Tide

Marelle’s people

The Remembering Tide wanted to understand what lay beyond the knowledge of the other orders. They followed blue mana into the deep ocean, down to Seams beneath the reach of sunlight. They believed that if they could see the world from its deepest places, they could learn what the sisters’ dreams had made.

The ocean changed them. Their bodies grew immense. Some became deep-dwelling beings rarely seen by anyone at the surface. Others became great creatures that rose to breathe before descending again. What they had once been did not disappear from their minds, though it became difficult for the peoples of the shore to recognise it in their shapes.

The Tide kept its knowledge through voices carried across the water. A call passed from one member to another could travel farther than any account written on land. They remembered the first Seams they had found, the wars fought over them, and the names of kin who had vanished into the depths.

They drew blue mana from the ocean’s Seams and moved with the deep currents between them. Alone, one of the Tide could disturb the water around it. When many moved together, they could shift the ocean. Their passage changed currents and struck coastlines that had seemed safely beyond their reach.

The Tide wanted to know the whole world. During the wars, they acted on what they learned without always asking what their movement would do to those who lived at its edges. They remember that, too.

The guild distils Marelle’s blue mana into blueberry cubes

The wars of the orders

At first, the orders fought over Seams. Then they fought over what the world should become.

The Deep Vines spread through the land. The Bright End pushed beneath it. The Remembering Tide moved through the oceans. Each believed its sister’s dream deserved more room. Each took raw mana to strengthen its claim, and each was changed further by doing so.

The Seams widened under the strain. More mana crossed into waking reality. Forests took ground, mountains broke open, and the sea reached places it had never touched before. People who had never seen a Seam lived with the consequences of the orders’ war.

The battles ended, but the orders did not return to their former shapes. The forests remained rooted. The Bright End remained below the land. The Tide remained in the deep water. The world still bears their movements.

Another group had chosen its path before the wars began.

Part Two

The Distillers

The guild of the balanced dream

The first Distillers were kin to the people who formed the three orders. They saw their brothers and sisters draw raw mana into themselves. They saw what each sister’s power could do when it was taken without limit.

They refused to keep mana pure or claim it for one order. They left early and joined together around a different belief: the dreams could be shared, but a mortal should not have to surrender their own nature to carry one.

As the wars spread, people of other races joined them. The guild belongs to no single people and serves no single sister. Its members keep ties to those who came before them. At every harvest they honour the ancestors who found the Seams, including the kin who became forest, fire and creatures of the deep. They remember what those ancestors discovered, and what they lost.

The Distillers’ work takes raw mana that a mortal could not safely eat and brings it into balance with Crota’s Light and Fana’s Shadow. They distil it, bind it and shape it into a cube. The finished cube carries a sister’s dream without giving that dream dominion over the person who eats it. It lets mortals nourish and grow their own mana.

Painted illumination of the distillers at work over their silver braziers
the guild at their braziers — silver, always silver

The guild’s four rites

The Gathering

At dawn and dusk, when the boundary between dream and waking world draws thin, the Distillers come to the Seams.

They begin by naming those who came before them. Then they collect the raw mana that has crossed into the world on its own. They do not cut into a Seam for a larger harvest. The orders widened the breaks in the world to take more. The guild will not repeat that work.

The Balancing

Each harvest bears the character of the sister from whom it came. The Distillers bring that mana into balance with Light and Shadow before it can be made into a cube.

This takes care. Leave too much of the raw dream untouched, and it may change the person who carries it. Bind it too tightly, and little of its power remains. The guild’s craft lies in finding a measure that a mortal can bear while keeping the sister’s dream recognisable.

The Distillation

The balanced mana is strained and infused until it can be held and tasted.

Verdya’s becomes lime: green and sharp, with the slow strength of something taking root. Cindara’s becomes strawberry: red and bright, carrying heat without the violence of the depths. Marelle’s becomes blueberry: blue and deep, a taste that lingers after the rest has passed.

These flavours are the form the Distillers give the harvest. No order can make a cube by taking mana straight from a Seam.

The Knot

The Distiller binds the prepared mana with a knot of the dream, then forms it into a cube. The knot holds the sister’s power and its balance together. If it fails, the cube cannot be shared. If it holds, the mana can pass into mortal hands and be eaten.

The guild does not keep the finished harvest for itself. Cubes pass between its members, to settlements near the Seams, and onward to people who have never stood beside one. The ancient orders guarded power for their own. The Distillers honour their ancestors by sharing what they learned to make.

“Take no dream whole. Keep no harvest alone.”

the oath of the Distillers

Taste the harvest return to the tale