Building Otter's World

Otter's World

The lych

The lych are spirits of the dead. There are three kinds.

The lych – the least powerful and most common of the dead have no more specific name -- have no bodies and no minds; nothing but hunger. The lych appear as a shadow with nothing to cast it - but since they are found only in shadow, they are hard to see. If you are in a shadowy place, or an undefended dwelling, you may be surrounded by them now. Watch for movement where no movement should be, or strangely thickened darkness. Like drops of water, lych are drawn to each other - where there is one, there are usually many.

The gast are stronger than the lych, but rarer. They too appear as shadows, but shadows with some shape: you might glimpse a hand, sometimes, or an eye – or from a distance, think you are seeing a burnt stump or a twisted heap of stone. Unlike the lych, the gast can think, can lie in wait, or plan a hunt. The mind of a single gast can change a handful of slip into a wolf pack. They can move small things- a branch, a stone - in the physical world.

The ee are more powerful still. Alone among the lych, they are – or can be, or can seem – cruel, and it is therefore thought that the ee are human, can remember their human life, and hold old human grudges. Certainly the ee can appear human, especially in bad light, or to the uncautious eye. They are feared for their ability to possess a human being, controlling and soon devouring her from the inside. For this ability, they are sometimes called "wasp-kind." The word "gorwyd" refers to a person so possessed, or an ee so clothed.

The ee are so rare that even the shadow drawn see them only once or twice a winter. In the sunlit country, they are mostly stories.

Lych are repelled by running water, sunlight, and reflective surfaces such as polished silver. They least of them can't bear even dappled sunlight; the most powerful could perhaps cross a birch meadow. Even a small stream would stop most of them, but wider, faster water is safer. Reflections confuse them.

Human binders add to these natural protections with a magic that depends on knots and coloured threads. The power of a binding depends on the strength of the binder.

A well-knotted binding is proof against the lych even in large numbers. Outside such a binding, one must wear the knots. Most children could make a knot of coloured string that would prevent the common sort of lych from pulling them apart. However, the knot itself will loosen then, and lych have strength in numbers. No one not well trained and powerful would go into a shadowy place alone.

The sunlit people

Most of the people of Otter's world live on the harshly beautiful tall-grass prairies, where they hunt buffalo and grow corn and hemp. The bare hills offer few places for the lych to hide: there are tales that each solitary cottonwoods is home to a hundred lych, which circle the tree slowly, keeping in its shadow in the swing of the sun. The prairie, then, offers safety, meat, and grain in abundance.

There are not, however, any trees, and even stone is very rare. The sunlit people depend on a trade with the shadowed people for such essentials as wood, flint axes and arrowheads, and coloured yarns.

The shadowed people

Rising from the prairies are the Shadowed Hills - small mountains, dark with pine forest, riddled with caves and small quick streams, rich in plants, wood, stone, and silver. The shadowed people live in a single large town cleared from the forest, defended by rivers and huge bindings like walls of yarn. The current incarnation of this town is Westmost. The people of Westmost are artisans: they make arrows, dyes, dyed cloth and yarn, knapped stone, and many things made of wood. Nearby in the tiny hamlet Little Rushes, people pan and work silver. The people of the Shadowed Hills keep chickens and grow vegetables, but depend on trade with the sunlit people for furs, grain, and dried meats.

Most of the people of the hills have some binding power - enough to tie a binding knot for themselves, certainly, or to ward their own doors. They are, consequently, mostly women: few people untouched by power care to live in such a place, and power runs in the female line.

The shadow drawn

The shadow drawn live in Westmost, too, but they are not artisans: they are hunters. They gather useful things from the forest: dye plants, wood, flint and quartz, medicinal herbs, cedar bark, game animals, etc. The whole human society ultimately depends on this handful of women and their dangerous work – but nevertheless, they are not much loved.

The river walkers

The river walkers are traders; they walk between Westmost and the sunlit places in groups, with their goods on their backs or in travois. They follow the path of the river - walking in the shallow water as often as not. Westmost is called that not because there is no land further west – there is, but no one knows anything about it, because no river runs in that direction. (It is near the continental divide.) They are mostly men, and are thought to be clownish and canny.