Sail Witch
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| Sail Witch Artstation |
“The Pentabon Network was alive. When we talk about the prevailing winds of Starbank, it is important to remember that we are not discussing natural phenomena, but a collection of living, sentient organisms. Like all sentients, they desired communication with others. The Pentabon were too big to engage in a verbal dialogue with… anything, really. To call their presence in a region something other than cataclysmic would be a massive understatement. These were Template 2F hurricanes (Square-ADSI), about 1,200 miles in diameter, traveling at Mach 2 (relative to Starbank ISO). Try to imagine that. They were going to run into difficulties - that didn’t stop them from trying. Enter the Sail Witch. Sail Witches acted as the voices of the Pentabons - agents of their will. By all accounts, they were very much individual actors, freelancers, and wildcards. A motley crew. The Pentabon recruited them the only way it could - inaction. By stopping at just the right moment. (Note: our records here mostly come from the Mother Cultures.)
Imagine a sailor caught in a sea storm. The boat is keeled on its side, groaning - a dying ox. She will surely drown after this next swell. Here it comes! But… then it stops. Calm water and clear skies. Nine times out of ten this fortunate soul will walk away spooked, thankful, and eager to forget. But that one, the one who doesn’t forget - that’s the Sail Witch. That sailor is going to spend the next 7 years of her life chasing down the thing that saved her. And if she finds it? The Pentabon will reward that commitment, that loyalty, with power and further purpose.
To the public, Sail Witches were messengers and madwomen. Half the year they were sending and receiving communique for the whole region, green message placards whipping over hills and through forests on a highway of air currents they called the Wickway. For the other half of the year, they were building a boat, or running to get this and that, or hiring the kids to collect dust mites from flower fields. We know that during these months the sail witch would be starving, eschewing sleep, pushing herself to complete a task given to her by the Pentabon. At these times, they could seem inhuman - wild, obsessed - but still kind to a fault. The inner strategy of any single Pentabon remains, to this day, inscrutable, but we know that they repeatedly fell back on that baseline - kindness and courtesy - to maintain a stable relationship with the humans of Starbank. Hence the establishment of the mail service, the earnestness and honesty of their agents, etc. All the usual social accouterments eventually accompanied this relationship: names, regalia, festivals, custom. (See attached emblem of Pentabon 11 from local year 3001.)
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