Lumen

Religious leader on Trisurus. See also: The Faith of the World Tree, The Evergrowth Grove, Mandrake.

The Lumen has not taken a step in four hundred years. They stand at the center of the Evergrowth Grove with their roots sunk deep into soil from a dead world, and the whole Grove leans toward them. Visitors who glimpse the Lumen through the white-barked trees often mistake them for a statue. Then the Lumen opens their eyes.

They are the fourth caretaker of the Lumen line since the transplanting eleven centuries ago, and the latest in a succession the Faith of the World Tree traces back to the first companion of the World Tree itself. The name they held before the title is known to perhaps a dozen living mandrakes. None of them use it. Like every Lumen before them, they will be remembered by an epithet the Canopy chooses after their death (see The Line of the Lumen).

Appearance

The Lumen is tall for a mandrake and very old, their bark grown thick and grey-white with lichen. Their crown of leaves turns with the seasons like any mandrake's, but it has thinned to a few long, pale tendrils that move even when the air is still. Their eyes are dark and wide-set. People who have met that gaze describe the same sensation, of being read from the inside out, slowly and without judgment.

They rarely speak aloud. When they do, their Common is careful and old-fashioned, and their voice carries the faint creak of wood under strain. Most of their communication travels through the ground in Root-Speech, which the Grove's caretakers relay to visitors who cannot feel it.

The Caretaker

The Lumen's duties are simple to describe and impossible to complete. They keep the teachings of the faith, tend the Grove's Evergrowth soil, and hold the line of the Lumen unbroken until a successor is ready. They advise the Canopy of Lumen, the loose body of elders who interpret the faith, and their advice tends to arrive a season after it was requested.

Mandrakes across the system travel to the Grove to stand near the Lumen for a day, a month, or a year. The Lumen does not grant audiences in any formal sense. Pilgrims simply plant themselves within reach of the Lumen's root-network and wait. Sooner or later, an answer comes through the soil.

The Lumen has taken few apprentices over four centuries. Their current apprentice is a young mandrake named Taro, who sells wicker charms at the memorial path. The Grove's caretakers call him talented, kind, and alarmingly fast.

Reputation

Within the faith, the Lumen is revered without much ceremony. They are the Lumen, and that is enough. Outside it, they are a quiet curiosity. Arcis grove-families consider the Lumen a living monument. Consortium officials who deal with refugee affairs know them as a reliable advisor who cannot be rushed. Very few people outside the Grove know that the Lumen has strong opinions about the Last Gyre.