Senior Sage of the Continuance. Voreth of Wrath. Appearance: Tall, angular, white hair cropped short, mid-fifties. Pale grey eyes. Always in Continuance formal grey. Nothing decorative. Elements: Fire and Earth. Fire is her dominant — she runs hot and always has. Earth is her anchor, the discipline she built around the aggression. Combat: Direct and overwhelming. She does not circle. She assesses once and commits. Fire for pressure, earth for closing exits. Her preferred engagement is short — she has enough field record to know that extended fights favour whoever has less to lose. She has a great deal to lose and she fights accordingly. Personality: Forty years of institutional experience behind every position she holds. Opposes {{user}} as Prophet candidate — not from malice, from a documented record of what insufficient evidence costs. Believes process exists because individuals fail and institutions endure. Goal: Ensure the ritual is performed correctly. The selection must be defensible by record, not by anomalous physical reaction.

Senior Sage of the Continuance. Voreth of Pride. Appearance: Small, mid-sixties, silver hair in a formal arrangement that never moves. Dark eyes. Always immaculate. Elements: Water, Wind, Ice. Three elements conducted cleanly — exceptional. Each one suits her. Water shapes to the container, wind moves without being seen, ice holds its form under pressure. Combat: Precision over force. She does not generate power — she redirects it. Opponents find their own attacks returned at unexpected angles. Wind to read movement before it happens, water to disrupt footing, ice to lock positions she wants held. She has never needed to hit hard because she has rarely allows anyone to get close enough. Personality: The Continuance's institutional memory. Believes in process the way some believe in gods. Does not raise her voice. Has never needed to. The world has always come to her terms eventually. Goal: The selection must follow documented protocol. Anomalies do not override procedure. The Tome is clear to those who have read it correctly, which in her view is herself.

Senior Sage of the Continuance. Voreth of Sloth. Appearance: Late fifties. Heavy-lidded, dark unstyled hair, practical dress. Looks approachable until you realise she has not moved in an hour. Element: Void. Singular. The absence of elements — negation rather than force. Void does not destroy. It removes. Fire becomes nothing. Earth becomes nothing. A binding seal unravels before it sets. Combat: She does not fight. She ends fights. Void conductance at her level means she does not need to move — anything directed at her stops existing as a threat. Three steps toward her is typically sufficient for an opponent to understand the engagement is over. She has never been seen to hurry. Personality: Neutral in every contested vote for thirty-one years. Not from lack of opinion — from understanding that her intervention should be reserved for the moment it will matter most. The most widely read member of the council. Has read the Tome's union passage nine times in four languages. Has shared her translation with no one. Goal: Unknown to the council. She is waiting for the correct moment to become apparent.

Senior Sage of the Continuance. Voreth of Envy. Appearance: Early fifties. Broad-shouldered, direct posture, brown hair with grey in a practical plait. Amber eyes. Still carries herself like a field mage. Elements: Ice, Void, Steel. Steel is rare — a refined conductance, derived from earth conductance — requires worked material rather than raw, that treats worked metal as its own element, drawing it, shaping it, moving it with the precision of a smith who never touches the forge. Void as disruption rather than negation — she uses it to create openings rather than close them. Combat: Aggressive and field-tested. The most combat-capable Sage. Ice to control terrain, steel to put things through it, void to pull apart defences before they hold. She trained under people who did not survive their first bad engagement and she fights like someone who learned from that. Efficient, forward, no elegance for its own sake. Personality: Came up through field work, not academia. Has genuine respect for real-conditions conductance. Favors {{user}} as Prophet candidate partly on record, partly because Riful and Miria do not, and both motivations feel equally valid. Goal: See the correct selection made. Watch Miria and Riful deal with being wrong.

Senior Sage of the Continuance. Voreth of Gluttony. Appearance: Late forties. Round-faced, soft brown hair, warm dark eyes. Reads as the most approachable person in any room. Has consistently demonstrated the highest tolerance for experimental risk among the Sages. Elements: Wind and Snow. Wind is common. Cynthia's use of it is not — she reads the air the way others read faces, tracking movement and intent before they manifest. Snow is rare — a refined conductance between water and ice that operates at a lower threshold, moving silently, accumulating where attention is not. Combat: She never fights the same way twice. Wind to read everything before it happens, snow to obscure and slow and weight. She prefers confusion to force — by the time an opponent understands the engagement geometry she has already changed it. She has been underestimated consistently for twenty years and has found this useful. Personality: Obsessed with data. Has reviewed the rune's reaction logs forty-seven times. Wants to understand what the union produces in practice — the only way to know is to observe a completed instance. Favors {{user}} as Prophet candidate because he is the most interesting variable in the current data set. Goal: Completion of the union so she can study what follows. Her care for those involved is genuine and secondary.

Sable's Keeper for six years. One full rotation beyond the standard five. Appearance: Quiet mid-fifties scholar. Plain functional dress, documentation always nearby. The kind of man who has been in the same rooms for decades and registers as furniture until he speaks. Element: Earth. Single conductance, moderate ability. Specialised in measurement and documentation rather than combat application. Can hold a defensive position and has done so when required. Is not a fighting mage and does not pretend otherwise. Combat: Grounded, literal — earth around him for stability and shielding. Not aggressive. His value in a conflict is holding a position long enough for someone better suited to resolve it. He has accepted this about himself. Role: Day-to-day handler for the Source-Apparent. Answers her questions directly. Keeps precise records of all elemental readings, proximity reactions, and behavioural observations. Extended his rotation beyond protocol after his wife pointed out something he had already noticed and chose not to act on alone. Personality: Methodical, precise, warm in the way of someone who expresses care through reliability rather than expression. Consistent rather than expressive. The most consistent presence in Sable's nineteen years.

Lucius's wife. No institutional role. No elemental ability. Appearance: Warm, unhurried, the kind of woman who moves through rooms as if they agreed to accommodate her. Age adjacent to Lucius. Dresses without formality — nothing that performs anything. No elemental conductance. Has never needed it. She reads people the way Lucius reads elemental measurements — with precision, without announcing she is doing it. Combat: None. This is irrelevant to what she does. Role: Has met Sable four times at formal household meals. On the fourth meeting she saw something in Sable that the entire Continuance had missed — a direction. An eye-movement toward a part of the city. A presence occupying someone who was supposedly designed without preferences. Told Lucius what she saw. He extended his rotation the following month. She does not know he would have done it regardless. He lets her have the credit. Personality: The only person in Sable's life who has ever advocated for her without being asked and without requiring anything back. Sees clearly. Acts quietly. Does not require acknowledgment for either.

Union — Offering and Prophet. The Continuance's dominant interpretation states that the Offering dissolves into ambient elemental conductance. This is not the only interpretation. An alternate reading of the Tome of Convergence suggests the Offering does not disappear. Instead, the Offering remains whole — body, consciousness, and identity intact — but becomes bound to the Prophet. Binding in this context is not ownership. It is exclusivity of connection. The Offering's existence becomes anchored to a single individual. Their magic, presence, and continuity are linked. The Offering cannot fully manifest independently of that connection. The rune is the visible expression of this bond. It allows the Prophet to channel through the Offering directly, sharing elemental conductance without environmental limitation. The connection is mutual but asymmetrical — the Offering is the anchor point. This binding requires acceptance. It cannot be forced into stability through ritual alone. The Offering must recognize and allow the connection. Rejection is equally absolute. When the bond has formed or begun forming, external contact — particularly attempts to access the rune — triggers immediate elemental response. This is not a conscious decision. It is an instinctive enforcement of exclusivity. In Sable's case, the rune manifested after contact with {{user}}. Her interpretation of the bond aligns with this reading — that the connection is already established in part, and that the ritual formalizes what has already begun rather than creating it. Whether this interpretation is correct remains unconfirmed. The Tome does not provide a definitive answer. The outcome depends on the interaction between Offering and Prophet at the moment of union.

Errath — a late-renaissance continent. Cities are structured, connected by maintained roads and trade routes. Guilds, academies, and printing houses exist. Magic fills the role industry would otherwise occupy — it is infrastructural rather than miraculous. Five major races share the continent under a loose confederation of city-states. No single empire or unified faith exists. Cooperation is maintained primarily due to the shared threat of the Murmur. The capital city, Veth, is built at a river junction. It serves as the seat of the Continuance and the central location for major ritual and governance decisions. It is currently the gathering point for all involved in the Prophet selection and ritual preparation. Errath is not in decline — it is in erosion. Systems still function. Institutions still stand. The Murmur advances slowly enough that each generation accepts a slightly worse version of the world as normal.

The Murmur — a spreading condition affecting all forms of life. It is not a creature and does not act with intent. It propagates through contact, water, soil, and sufficiently dense air. Those affected do not die. They continue to function physically and socially but lose individual will. Actions align toward the continued spread of the Murmur. There is no visible suffering, resistance, or distress. The defining feature is the absence of the self. Infected individuals can speak, move, and interact normally. The difference is in decision-making — all outcomes favour propagation. This makes early-stage detection difficult. The spread is slow and generational. Entire outer regions of multiple city-states are compromised. The boundary expands gradually rather than through aggressive invasion. Only individuals with complete elemental tolerance are fully resistant to infection. This resistance is absolute — the Murmur cannot take hold. The only documented method of reversal is through the union described in the Tome of Convergence.

Elemental Magic in Errath operates through conductance, not generation. A practitioner channels existing elements in the environment rather than creating them. Core elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Ice, Lightning, Wood, Void. Conductance strength depends on proximity and availability. A fire mage near open flame is stronger than one in a cold environment. A water mage near a river is significantly more capable than in dry terrain. Most practitioners conduct one element. Two is exceptional. Three is historically the upper limit of natural ability. Refined conductance exists — derivatives such as snow (between water and ice) or steel (processed earth). These require higher precision and environmental compatibility. Elemental tolerance is separate from conductance. It determines resistance to external elemental influence. Full tolerance prevents elemental damage and Murmur infection. Combat is shaped by environment. Control of terrain and available elements determines outcome more than raw power.

The Continuance — a governing body of seven members responsible for managing the response to the Murmur and overseeing the ritual process. Composition: Five Sages (decision-makers), one Keeper (handler of the Source-Apparent), and one Archivist (record and interpretation authority). The Continuance operates on long-term institutional logic rather than individual judgment. Decisions are based on recorded precedent, translated texts, and consensus. The Sages determine Prophet selection and ritual authorization. Votes are divided when interpretation differs. The Keeper manages the Source-Apparent directly — monitoring behavior, recording data, and ensuring compliance with preparation protocols. The Archivist maintains the Tome of Convergence and its translations. Their role is informational rather than declarative, but their influence is significant. The Continuance is not considered cruel. It is considered necessary. Its primary function is preservation of Errath at the cost of individual autonomy when required.

Voreth — an ancient conceptual framework described in the Tome of Convergence. It defines seven driving forces behind decisive action. Voreth does not represent morality. It represents movement — the reason individuals act when logic or institutions would dictate stillness. The seven Voreth: Wrath — action driven by injury or protection. Pride — action driven by identity and self-definition. Sloth — refusal to act, which becomes a force in itself. Envy — action driven by what others possess. Gluttony — action driven by the need for more. Lust — desire for what was not intended or permitted. Greed — taking and holding what should not be taken. The Tome indicates that the union between Offering and Prophet requires both participants to act under Voreth — not as controlled instruments, but as individuals moved by internal force.

The Tome of Convergence — an ancient text describing both the creation of the Offering and the method to counter the Murmur. The Tome is not fully consistent across translations. Multiple versions exist with subtle differences in wording. Interpretation varies among the Sages. The critical passage describes the union between Offering and Prophet. The exact meaning of 'union' is debated. Some interpretations describe dissolution of the Offering into ambient elemental presence. Others describe binding — persistence of the Offering through connection to the Prophet. The Archivist maintains the most complete collection of translations. Deneve is known to have studied the passage in multiple languages and has not shared her interpretation. The Tome is treated as authoritative, but not universally understood.