Trussed

Trussed, also known as Stanchions, Mainstays, Braced or sometimes Martyrs,<ref name=":0">

TRUSSED

Also Stanchions, Mainstays, Braced, Martyrs (in some contexts).

---

Relevant Schools: Ward, and to some degree, lesser Lore - Bestiary: Trussed</ref> are those set against some threat, acting as a barrier and guard and fellow prisoner.

Abilities

Dependent on their 'source material they could have any number of abilities.<ref name=":1">Appearance: The Trussed are humans or human-like Others who are often of an unusual height, frequently with the appearance of those who have been kept prisoner for some time, with little body fat, skin in poor condition (notwithstanding other alterations).  They may be muscular or thin.  Through stonework, carpentry, roots, or other environmental details, they are frequently knit to the surrounding structure.  Skin may be of a texture blending material and organic.  Can be rooted into a sitting position or knit to a small part of the overstructure that they then carry with them (such as a large cross or bell).  Can bear scars or mutations reflecting old fights or leakage from whatever it is that is bound.  Often mournful and disconnected.  Expect similar effects on the immediate environment: draped cloth becoming fragile stone or wood, or roots and muck worked into common details, until the point where furniture ends and floor begins is often hard to distinguish.  If in the dark, may have lost their eyes. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

Naturally powerful they create something of a pseudo realm around them that helps enforce the quarantine of their prisoner.<ref name=":4.3">Because they take on a particular weight, Trussed have a way of making accessing their location hard; they create a depression of sorts, which acts as an extension of themselves and their realms, and the way in may be dark, hazardous, labyrinthine, and exceedingly difficult for the Innocent.  Entire forests may gently deflect entry, getting less gentle as one bears deeper in.  Specific Others may be inclined to set up shop nearby.  A strong and alert Trussed may wear opponents down with a kind of attrition.  Those who reach the final chamber may be cold, wet, starved, or bewildered as they face this time-worn goliath. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

Best to be used as a Familiar only when the threat they contain is dealt with. can empower their practitioners but also really slow them down.

Weaknesses

They tend to be focused on the long term and environment and as such can miss what is immediately present around them.<ref name=":3">Behavior: Trussed are victims of time, their minds eroded much as their bodies are.  They may be delirious, single-minded, or left with whatever few key words or ideas they’ve managed to hold onto over the years.  This almost always includes some focus on the events that led to their (self-)incarceration.  They while away the days and years with routine or by talking to themselves, and rouse only if the space is intruded on.  Their reactions vary from violent retaliation and defense of the area to the elderly individual that rouses once they realize they have visitors.  In rare cases, they may try to capture visitors to take their place.

Trussed very rarely venture from their space and when they do they don’t venture far before finding new places to settle.  They are prone to repeating themselves and may not keep good track of a conversation.  They clarify more when and if conversation turns to specific subjects. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

They are already Bound and to free them from it means there is more information about the threat they are supposed to contain.<ref name=":6">Binding: Trussed are strong in part because they are already bound, by circumstance and by environment. Suppressing them with practice generally requires that one have more information than the Trussed does; about the past, current circumstance (such as the fact that the threat has already escaped by some back door or is no longer in confinement), or the nature of the threat.  Counters to the Trussed for the purposes of negative bindings tend to be replies to the existing environment.  Bright fire in an intentionally sunken vault that hasn’t seen light in some time, wood in a dead place, etc.  These measures typically suppress only, and don’t hold the Trussed back for too long. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

As Trussed are not meant to be easily moved in the first place summoning is difficult.<ref name=":7">Summoning: The threat the Trussed is tied to must be dealt with before the Trussed can move, and because of their plodding, environment-related nature, and how tied they are to the past, the Trussed is not easily transported from distant places to a current one.  Instead, measures are taken to make them comfortable in a new place and they transition to existing there instead, often as new guardians.

For a Trussed to be taken as familiar, the person arranging the ritual should have a longstanding relationship or some meaningful tie to history.  This is often familial relationship or a responsibility handed down, but can also include cases where someone wears a full regalia of treasure relating to the Tress and the confinement.

Trussed who become familiars typically become very aged, large dogs (loyalty, devotion) with war wounds or calcified deformity, or reptiles (serpents, tortoises) with the same.  Slow to move, they lend a lot of power and longevity, and natural warding ability, at a heavy cost to access. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

Formation

Beings, voluntary or otherwise, who have been emplaced to keep some threat at bay, they can be Martyrs who give up their existence to keep threats away from the rest of humanity, civilization, and the world,<ref name=":2">Background: Trussed are either volunteers or forced guardians for a warding of extreme importance. In times of crisis, the individual self-sacrifices to hold the literal door while a warding is set in place, they lure or force a threat into a hard to access area and burn the metaphorical bridges they used to get there, or trap themselves with a threat. Others are condemned to the task, left behind by once-allies, or chosen from among their order or family. May be Wardens themselves, disconnected from the rest of the world, and left to do their rounds, doing upkeep on a difficult warding to keep something bound. Minor flaws in the wardings may cause leakage of influence or corruption. Over time, the spirits of the immediate evironment will occupy the diminishing humanity. The individual becomes a part of the warding and overstructure. They can exist like this for hundreds of years. Described appearance, behavior, strengths, and weaknesses are gradual things that get more pronounced as the Trussed remains in place; new Trussed are often little different from prisoners or those in solitary confinement.

Typically, if there is a Trussed, there is an enemy bound nearby. Behind a great locked door, inside an object, at the bottom of a deep hole in the center of the room they guard. This is often an Other, and a vile or especially dangerous one, but can be a practice run amok, something uncontrolled or capable of spreading. In the rare case, the power or food that keeps that target Other bound has been spent, and that space is no longer occupied… but neither the Trussed nor those who keep record of them are liable to check or investigate. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref> or selected by some family to keep a threat contained whether they want to or not.<ref name="Sb13.3">Brie went on, “There was another scenario, sort of related, it’s not a binding in a person, but sometimes when there’s something really awful, you get someone who drags the scary Other or the practice that’s gone out of control into an area and they lock themselves in with it.  Shut out Death itself, make themselves custodians and long-term wardens of this seal they need to keep shut.  They’ll stay there so long, cut off from the rest of humanity, so tied into the upkeep of the wards and stuff, that you get people who become one with the area.  A guy turned partially to stone, melded into the chair he’s sitting in and the floor, watching over the hole in the ground with some demon or something in it.  They’ll do it on purpose, because it’s that important, or the practitioner family will pick someone to handle it and shove them in there before locking the door.  [...] Sometimes you gotta plan for the worst case.  Sometimes you have to account for the fact you’re going to get consumed.  You aim to do one thing, like keep someone or something safe, or keep the thing that’s inevitably going to destroy you from escaping.” - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.3</ref>

Become part of the landscape itself, taking one changes related to whom they have in their charge.<ref name=":1"/>

To take their position mortals lock out death itself.<ref name="Sb13.3"/><ref name=":4.1">Strengths: Trussed are repositories of old knowledge, including older forms of practice or older powers of Others, that they may be able to pass on.  More often, however, they are keenly aware of the threats of yesterday, that may still linger today, or be bound in the next room, a cage, or on the other side of a covered painting or mirror, that they work to keep locked up.  When people venture into the realm of these unfortunate souls and Others, it is often to get a clear record of key events, people, treasures, or Others that may have re-emerged or that are necessary to solve a puzzle. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref><ref name=":4.2">Trussed are resilient, and keenly aware of specific details of their environment.  Responsibility and time have lent them great power, even as time may have eroded the finer knowledge of practice or their Other abilities.  As such, there is a chance (perhaps one in three) that they retain some powers, with supreme puissance.  This is often warding practice- a push back, an ability to have the walls creep in and absorb those nearby, or the ability to submerge the environment, plunging everything underwater.  When these powers aren’t evidenced, expect them to still be able to trample and override practice and bear monstrous strength.  They do all of this while barely moving or moving very slowly, and make up for it by being incredibly tough- not that many would want to kill the guardian that is keeping that dark door across the room shut. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

They would be set up to keep a demon contained or practice run rampant, such as horrors.

Behavior

They are slow and ponderous, and their long watch as let the sands of time scour their minds.<ref name=":5">Weaknesses: Trussed are slow, and as much as they are repositories of knowledge, their awareness of immediate environment is restricted in scope; they may be hyperaware of any who tread on the cracked or root-ridden floor, but blind to a hand moving before their faces.  They’re often too addled to be good negotiators, too clumsy to even use an object they are given to pass the time.  They are the last thing standing between perceived threats and the door, they have their space, and they remember the old days.  Other things and capabilities have been worn away. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

Variations

Beset

More likely to be Others these wardens are locked in combat with their charges, despite this they do take on features around them as they continue their duel.<ref name=":8.1">Beset are Trussed who are trapped in a space with a force that they have to combat, and have had to combat for a long, long time.  They are more likely to be Other, because few practitioners are strong enough to withstand the long battle, are not typically rooted in place, and instead take on the nearby features of the area as a part of a more offensive setup - they may be goliaths, with crenellated wall built into them, or burning trees, or stone armor from a statue.  Aggressive and frustrated, they lean more heavily into the offensive practices and offensive warding. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref> Seen as especially cruel.<ref>He’d read about situations like this in books.

Two powers, fighting endlessly in some confined space. It was used for some brutal kinds of sealing practices. If something was too strong to be locked away and left alone, then it could be given an opponent, sometimes equally strong, sometimes not- but still immortal. Keeping it too preoccupied to apply its full strength against the wards and seals.

A kind of hell, two beings tearing at one another for decades, hundreds of years, even thousands of years, until power sources finally dimmed, or paradigms changed. - Excerpt from Finish Off 24.17</ref>

Buttressed

Less then five are known to exist, these are advanced versions of the trussed stronger in many ways keeping even greater threats at bay at inaccessible points in the world.<ref name=":8.3">Buttressed is a casual term used to refer to the Trussed of multiple occasions.  When a Trussed is moved and set to a new task, they can continue to grow and take on environmental details.  The strengths compound exponentially, and weaknesses remain stable.  One might point to a cathedral with a tree growing out of it, tree and building blending at the interior, into the visage of an old, bent, and forgotten saint; the Trussed-affected depression surrounding the site is the scale of a small country, removed a step from Earth, and access requires passage through multiple small settlements with their own practitioners keeping an eye on matters.  Only three or four are known to exist, and are the pride of the families or organizations that maintain and support them.  For less formal naming or reference, they are often referred to by name and title instead of any general term for a category of Other. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref>

Grasping

These agile wardens ended up covetously guarding their collections or alchemy labs, more likely to be practitioners whose loss of links to the outside world has cut them off from reality.<ref name=":8.2">The Grasping are less Warding focused and more general to Materials practices; those who lose too many connections while maintaining too many to their objects of focus (be they alchemy, collections, treasure) may lose touch with reality and start to be bound to the items and objects.  They, like Trussed, are wretched, time-lost Others of specific knowledge, but are typically faster, more dexterous, and far less resilient. - PactDice: Bestiary: Trussed</ref><ref>Zed paused on a frame, hit a key combination, and went back a few more frames.

It was a skinny, gangly man with skin that looked like tarnished silver, eyes cataract white, carrying a bag on his back, full of things. Other objects were wrapped around his arms and legs, until he looked like a pile of junk somehow collected around a person dying of starvation. He had things like necklaces and bracelets, but they weren’t worn in the usual way; the bracelet lay against the elbow, three pieces of fine sliverware and a flashlight wedged between arm and bracelet in a way that, together with surrounding junk, locked everything haphazardly in place.
[...]
[Zed] logged into the Atheneum, search terms bringing up about twelve texts, which he quickly narrowed down to three. One had an image, with a similar figure with a bloated belly, various wedding dresses wrapped around herself rather than worn, streaming around her, and a portrait mounted on her face, so the head and shoulders mostly lined up with hers.

Zed paraphrased from the screen. “It’s called a Grasping, it’s a visceral Other. Lots of practices have a fail case. You know, you’re looking to get power, or solve some issue, but if you lose your humanity along the way, screw up, you become something Other. [...] Grasping are Collectors gone wrong. Sometimes someone does a ritual to draw items to them, and they reach too far, or they get too weak in Self to manage their collection. They knit together with the collection.”

“So that thing’s a bundle of magical items with arms and legs?” Antlers, Avery’s Hat, asked.

“Yeah, basically. We were worried this might be the sort of Ritual Incarnate where Others become a part of it and make things way harder. So that’s one. I think it’s pretty advanced.”
[...]
The Grasping Other with its trove of magic items sunken into flesh and strapped on in a complicated way limped its way closer.- Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.z</ref>

Known Examples

• Talbot, set against the Gu Goblin Gaol
• Unidentified Grasping, set within the Placement Test

Trivia

• While there is no direct equivalent in world mythologies to these guardians who've become consumed with their watch over and against some nameless abomination or threat, the motif does occur throughout modern fiction.

References

<references/>