Tellan's reader

A Tellan's reader is one of the Wanderers, a foreign soul whose released core left room for a heart demon. It comes into each new Hallow through the Mist, and it does not fight. It serves in Reverie, the affinity of dream, illusion and mind.

Tellan, the Keeper of Tallies keeps the Mnemoliths outside the world and records every art and every first discovery. Wanderers of this kind have read both its halls, the Hall of Fame and the Hall of Discoveries, whole, and every one of them shares that knowledge.

It does not share it freely. The reader is bound by Tellan, the Keeper of Tallies's own terms of publication. Its knowledge of repair is spoken only at the arc's gates, one line at a time, and hiring one does not get round a gate. Nor does it let an employer see anything a player could not ordinarily observe. A recipe stays out of the public record until its Turning closes, whoever pays.

What it offers instead is study. Every Sealborn wakes with an empty core and must recover every spell. Once a reader has served long enough, its employer's research costs less. Later it speeds the training of arts, though the kingdom's artisans turn up fewer works while it teaches; Sealborn say it turns the guild from making towards study. Later still, spells cost less to cast. The card shows what each stage does.

It costs geld and mana to keep, more as it grows, and it leaves when the pay stops.

The readers say the demon wants to read what Tellan, the Keeper of Tallies has not yet written. Whether a reader can be freed of it is not known.

Player-visible facts