The Elders - endlessm/threadbare GitHub Wiki

The Elders of the Eternal Loom, sometimes called the Eternal Elders, are the first of all Threadlings: ancient and quiet keepers of story, woven on the Eternal Loom, the loom of the FirstSpun, by the FirstSpun themselves, and sent down into Threadbare to tend it. Each Elder is a child of one of the FirstSpun in particular: the children of If carry wonder, the children of Once carry memory, and the children of Ever carry spirit. Only Null was woven by all three equally. Whichever thread runs strongest in them, it was Ever who wove each Elder whole and then cut them free. The Elders are the guardians of the Eternal Loom, but they are not bound to it. Most choose to stay at Frays End and tend it. A few have always walked further: to the Fraying, to the Imagine Isles, and in the case of Frith FrayWalker, into the Void itself.

Three Elders are set apart to tend the Loom itself: the LoomWardens, Keepers of the Eternal Loom. There is one for each Core Thread: Whim, a child of If, for Imagination; Echo, a child of Once, for Memory; and Vigil, a child of Ever, for Spirit. The FirstSpun sent them, thousands of years after Knot abandoned the Loom, to keep it and carry on its work. Long afterwards, when the Void was born, Null returned and stole the Loom's three elements, If's Spindle, Once's Warp Stones, and Ever's Shuttle, so that it can now mend the world, but no longer create (see The Eternal Loom).

Each Elder carries a book - worn, irreplaceable - that holds the surviving fragments of a strand of the world's memory. There are nine Elders, three children of each FirstSpun, and before them all there was Null: the first Elder, woven alone as Knot to hold the world together. The other nine were woven thousands of years after Knot first turned from the world and became Not, so that Threadbare would never again rest on a single pair of hands (see The Undoing of Knot). They speak slowly, listen carefully, and forget nothing they have promised to remember. As the Void spreads, and with Frith FrayWalker already lost to it, the Elders look ever more often to the StoryWeaver: the hands that still wander, the heart that still hears.

The Known Elders

Connections

  • If - the FirstSpun of Imagination, the Spinner
  • Once - the FirstSpun of Memory, the Weaver
  • Ever - the FirstSpun of Spirit, the Binder
  • The Eternal Loom - the heart of Frays End, which mends the Weave
  • Null - the Dark Elder and enduring antagonist
  • The Undoing of Knot - how the first Elder fell, and why the nine were woven
  • Frith FrayWalker - Elder lost to the Void
  • Frays End - the last bastion of hope against the Void
  • Threadlings - the people of Threadbare
  • Threadbare Plot - the main story of the game

Resources

Images

elder_idle.png

elder2_idle.png

Audio and source files