Storyvores - endlessm/threadbare GitHub Wiki

See also: Null · The Fray · The Fraying · PomPuffs · The Battle of HemsHollow

"Never fight a Storyvore on an empty stomach. Theirs, I mean. Fill it first, then see how fierce it is." -- Peg PomPocket, PomPuff Collector of HemsHollow

Classification: Child of Null, one of The Fray. Primary range: the frayed roads, and any town that tells stories near the edge of the Fraying. Diet: stories in any form, and PomPuffs above all.

Overview

Storyvores are savage, goblin-like creatures who hunt the frayed roads of Threadbare in chattering, hungry packs. Made almost entirely of mouth and belly, they devour stories in any form: spoken, sung, painted, half-remembered, briefly imagined. A Storyvore can chew the memory of a wedding out of a village in an afternoon and leave only a vague sense that something nice once happened there. They are cowardly alone and ferocious in numbers, and they fear two things above all else: a story told loudly, all the way to its ending, and a StoryWeaver who refuses to be quiet.

Children of Null

Storyvores were long believed to be creatures of the Void, bursting out of it to raid the edges of the world. They are not. Nothing comes out of the Void: it makes nothing, and anything that passes into it is unravelled forever.

Storyvores are among the Children of Null. On the Never Loom, hidden in the Lost Library in the SunSpun Sands, Null weaves them from the last loose fibres that drift at the edge of the Fraying, using Ever's Shuttle, torn from the Eternal Loom. Each one is spun to a hunger for story, and like all the Fray will take any of the three gifts, but it favours Spirit above all. Null wove an enemy for each of the gifts the FirstSpun gave the world, and Storyvores are the enemy of Ever's gift, Spirit. They eat the stories that already exist, so that no one can read them and be inspired to live a better, more informed life, or to hope for a better future. They are Null's third denial, Never, made all mouth and belly: nothing lasts. The Void is drawn to absence, and a people who no longer have their stories to carry them forward are the easiest in Threadbare for it to take. Null sets the packs loose along the Fraying, and they find their own way inward, following the smell of telling.

How They Feed

All Storyvores are drawn to stories. They can hear them, smell them, and even see them on the air: drifting up from the pages of books, spilling from the lips of storytellers, even glimmering in the minds of Patchlings dreaming up a tale of their own. They follow every story back to its source, and devour it there.

A Storyvore does not need a book. It can smell a story through a keyhole, and it will eat one wherever it finds it: from a page, from a painted wall, from a song on the wind, or straight from the lips of a storyteller mid-sentence.

Storyvores are greedy but lazy, and they always start with the easiest part. They chew the endings off bedtime stories and the punchlines off jokes first, because an unfinished story is the softest thing to bite. Then they work backwards, and what they leave behind is not a blank, but a vague, uneasy feeling that something used to be there. A village that has been visited by Storyvores knows that something nice once happened in its square. It simply cannot remember what.

Some packs carry torches. No one is quite sure why. The Observists of the University of the Unseen think it is to hunt for stories after dark. The EverAfters of HemsHollow think it is because even a Storyvore is a little afraid of the dark, and that this is the best joke in Threadbare.

Packs

A lone Storyvore is a coward. It will snatch a story and run, and it will flee from almost anything louder than itself. A pack is something else entirely. Packs roam the frayed roads, travel the seams where whole fabric meets worn, and come out at dusk to circle any town that is still telling stories, testing its walls for a way in.

A town that never stops telling stories is a town that holds the Void at bay. It is also, to a pack of Storyvores, a feast that never ends.

Keeping Them Away

Storyvores cannot be ended for good, not while the Never Loom still stands to weave more. But they can be driven off and outwitted, and like everything in Threadbare, they are not beyond the Void. Those who live near the Fraying rely on a few things:

  • Finish your stories. A story told all the way to its end is whole, and the Fray have no way into things that are whole.
  • Tell them loudly. A Storyvore will not stay where a story is being told at the top of someone's voice, and a StoryWeaver who refuses to be quiet is the thing they fear most.
  • Fill them up. Storyvores love PomPuffs even more than they love stories, and a Storyvore that eats too many falls fast asleep for days. Threadlings call this the PomPocket Plan: fill them up, let them sleep, and let the Void do the rest.

Kinds of Storyvore

All Storyvores hunt stories to their source, but different kinds of Storyvore do it in different ways. Five kinds are known.

Kind Size How it hunts How the StoryWeaver drives it off
Gnashers Small to middling Slow, always hungry, eats anything in its way Finish a story aloud, or fill it with PomPuffs until it sleeps
Nippers Small Hovers, darts, bites through grappling rope mid-swing Swing fast and time it well, or toss a PomPuff to lure it off
Gulpers Large Bounces, lands on its prey and gulps it down Read its bounce and dodge, then slip past while it is dizzy
Bloaters Swells as it eats Gorges until it is fit to burst, then explodes beside the unwary Keep your distance, or lure it into exploding somewhere useful
Gobblers Giant Digs into the ground and waits to snaffle up whoever walks over Read the signs, or drop a PomPuff into the hole and cross while it sleeps

Gnashers

The Storyvores most Threadlings picture, and the ones that roam the frayed roads in chattering, torch-carrying packs. Gnashers are slow, and always hungry. They eat everything and anything in their way: pages and banners, signposts and song sheets, and every story clinging to them, gnashing through it all with no thought for what comes next. A Gnasher is easy to see coming and hard to stop once it has started. Like all Storyvores, it cannot bear a story told all the way to its end, and it cannot resist a PomPuff.

Nippers

Smaller than Gnashers, and much faster, Nippers hover on stubby, buzzing wings and dart from story to story, snatching them out of the air. They are the bane of anyone crossing by grapple: a Nipper will bite clean through a grappling rope mid-swing, then hover nearby, chattering, to see what happens next. The StoryWeaver must swing fast and time each crossing well, or toss a PomPuff wide to lure the Nippers away from the anchor.

Gulpers

Larger Storyvores that get about by bouncing, round and heavy as a full sack. A Gulper bounces closer and closer, then lands on its prey and gulps it down, stories and all. A StoryWeaver caught by a Gulper unravels into a pile of thread, and is rewoven by the KnitWitches to try again. The trick is to read the rhythm of the bounce, dodge the landing, and slip past while the Gulper is still dizzy.

Bloaters

Bloaters cannot stop eating. They gorge on story after story until they swell up like balloons, then drift, wobbling, towards anyone with more stories to give. When a Bloater gets too close to an unwary StoryWeaver, it explodes with a great bang and is unwoven, bursting into fragments of cloth and a flurry of scattered pages: every book it has swallowed and every page it has consumed, along with half-eaten words and scraps of story, flung far and wide around the blast. A StoryWeaver caught in the blast unravels, and is rewoven by the KnitWitches to try again. A careful StoryWeaver keeps their distance, and a clever one lures a Bloater into exploding where the blast will do some good, such as knocking down a stuck bridge or blowing open a jammed door.

Gobblers

The biggest Storyvores of all. A Gobbler digs itself into the ground and waits, mouth open just beneath the surface, for an unsuspecting StoryWeaver to walk over. Then it snaffles them up. A StoryWeaver swallowed by a Gobbler unravels into a pile of thread, and is rewoven by the KnitWitches to try again. There are always signs, for those who look: the ground ripples faintly, loose scraps of story drift down into a hole that was not there before, and nearby Hushrooms dim their glow. A PomPuff dropped into the hole will send a Gobbler to sleep, and a sleeping Gobbler makes a very good bridge.

The Defenders of the Lost Library

The Never Loom, hidden in The Lost Library in The SunSpun Sands, weaves every kind of Storyvore. Gnashers, Nippers, Gulpers, Bloaters and Gobblers all roam the dunes of the deep desert and defend the Library itself, and every kind has learned to hunt a traveller who crosses by grapple. The Library's guardian is BookBelly, a giant, three-headed Storyvore, swollen with every ending in the Library. Its three heads, Mash, Gnash and Lash, each hunger for a different kind of story: Mash for stories spoken, Gnash for stories written, and Lash for stories told in pictures. See The Denial Looms.

The Battle of HemsHollow

The most famous Storyvore story in Threadbare is The Battle of HemsHollow, the night a pack came for the stories of a small border town and its Lending Library. Peg PomPocket laid a trail of PomPuffs into a cage built by the whole town, and the Storyvores ate until they fell asleep. Then the town lowered the cage into the Void, and all that came back up was the tattered end of the rope. It is one of the very few Storyvore stories in which not a single story was lost, and Threadlings still tell it to Patchlings who are frightened of the dark.

Narrative Function

Storyvores are a challenge met by cleverness rather than force, and each kind asks for a different kind of cleverness: luring them away with PomPuffs, slipping past while they sleep, and keeping stories whole by telling them to the end. The StoryWeaver first learns how they move and behave on Wrangler's Shoal in The Imagine Isles.

For contributors, Storyvores are the right enemy for any quest about a community's stories: the tales a town tells about itself, and what happens when it stops. Keep encounters playful and never cruel. Storyvores may be outwitted, lured, repelled or evaded, but never harmed (see Content Guidelines).

Connections

  • Null - who weaves them on the Never Loom
  • The Fray - the Children of Null, of whom they are one
  • The Fraying - the ever-encroaching borderland of the Void, where Null sets them loose
  • InkDrinkers - Null's creatures that drain ink
  • PomPuffs - their favourite food, and their undoing
  • Peg PomPocket - who lured a pack of Storyvores into a cage of PomPuffs in the Battle of HemsHollow
  • The Battle of HemsHollow - the night a whole town outwitted the Storyvores
  • HemsHollow - the border town whose stories they hunted
  • Ever - the FirstSpun of Spirit, whose gift they were woven to devour
  • The Void - whose work they were woven to hasten, and which unravels them too
  • StoryWeaver - the player, sewn in WeaveWater when a community calls for help

Resources

Images

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Audio and source files