Seekers

Seekers are an ethnicity of Keepers who, instead of remaining sedentary, live a nomadic lifestyle. They move through the tunnels surrounding the Heart of Etharai, and travel wherever the magic surrounding them leads.

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

The Seekers speak the same language as the rest of the Keepers, known as Deepspeech. This language is intelligible to those in the pursuit of knowledge, but audible only as groans and mumbles to those with ulterior motives. The speech itself is possible only with the immense amount of magic surrounding the heart, and the very worlds that the Seekers speak are imbued with magic.

Foods & Cuisine

Much like the Keepers, the Seekers primarily subsist off of idyllic mushrooms, which they grow for many different purposes. However, they are not able to farm this in large quantities due to their nomadic lifestyle, so they also hund and eat other animals living around the heart, such as the Aurashrike.

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

One of the most important aspects of Seeker culture is their ability to get up and move at a moments notice. They have dedicated members of their communities, known as Dreamers, whose purpose is to sit and meditate, sensing the tides of magic surrounding them and alerting the community when the flow of magic changes, at which point they will begin to travel again. This travel is led by the Dreamers, who determine the right spot for the group to stop and put together their homes again.

Coming of Age Rites

Like the Keepers, the Seekers also practice the Awakening among members that have proven ready to witness the full knowledge and memory of their society. However, this ritual is facilitated by multiple Dreamers, rather than by one Bringer of Knowledge. In addition, the Dreamers have the role of exchanging knowledge with the Dreamers of any other Seeker or Keeper communities that they come across, then sorting through these memories and assigning them to different Dreamers to compartmentalise the memories. As such, Seeker groups are able to store more knowledge, which is also typically more widespread, than the other Keeper groups are able to do.

Funerary and Memorial customs

The Seekers funerary customs are to erase the body of the dead completely. In a process known as re-energisation, they remove all magical energy from the body of the deceased and return it to the heart, destroying the body in the process. Other methods of burial or other funerary customs are respected, but are seen as wasteful and pointless. The Seekers believe that this method allows one to return to Etharai and become one with its magic, the source of their own lives and where they wish to be returned to when they die.

Encompassed species

• Keeper