Seers

While many can use witchcraft or long drawn out runes or circuits or enchantments, seers have the essence of divination in their blood.

In the dawn of the realms, there came shards of chaos from the place that connects all realms. And when those shards hit the things that would eventually become the sentient beings of the universe, a substrate of these beings were formed. They would become the Seers.

Experiencing time out of order due to the taint of the well of possibility in their blood, they do not get physically changed by it like the fey do. Instead it absorbs into the blood of the seer making moments disjointed from the last. If the life of the rest is a line drawn upon the page, a seer experiences it as a bottle pushed through the page, those of the realms only seeing the outline of the bottle.

Culture

Culture and cultural heritage

Communities of seers spring up across all the realms, the seers of the Oracle Grove a noted example. This helps younger seers be guided by older ones so they may manage what to outsiders looks like madness. Seers without a community tend to be dismissed as insane, as their lack of touch with linear time tends to have them ramble about something in the future or struggling to catch up where in their present they are.

Those made aware of the seers, may seek to find a way to get their child or community member to a community of seers; though given the random nature of non-genetic seers, the journeys have often been long and laborious. Seers can also feel this madness the farther they are from their community, thus those that fall for an outsider have it hardest of all, knowing love and madness from a young age and a knowledge that they will be bound to this life for a long time.

Across the realms, ritual and lore has passed across the realms without travel ever making the journey. It is this sharding that has formed links through time and space that allow ideas and customs to pass through among all the seers. None of this is more apparent in the seer-mark - a collection of 5 dots that are tattooed upon the elbows of members of this substrate.

In Infernus, divination is seen as messing with the crystalline structure of the universe and is forbidden, and seers are mistakenly lumped in with this practice, their communities often hidden across the iron swept landscape lest those with hungry knives enact a behavioural fix.

In Parnathum, the seers are considered strange, but are linked in with the oracles, while any human that mentions Tyr that knows of seers suggest that those in charge of the human lands would kill to possess a seer on their 'payroll'.

Shared customary codes and values

The biggest belief in the universal seer community is the belief that time is malleable. That like folding a piece of paper, you may change the shape of the page, but that time will always exist, and that the knowledge wrought from seeing more of the page should be acted on.

Common Etiquette rules

A common greeting among seers is "Are you present" to indicate whether or not a seer is mentally the age that their body appears at, or if they are ahead or behind in their own timeline. Elders are held in high esteem, whatever their body may appear on the outside, for seers have been known to experience whole decades out of order.

A common parting is "May you been seen again in the blink of an eye."

Common Dress code

It is thought that the conciousness of the seer is kept in the spine, and as such, bare backs are seen as a sign of weakness and vulnerability. This means for species like the demons, a bare backed seer is extremely not a done thing, while Troll seers would not only expose their backs, but would encourage the symbiotic barnacles and lichen to grown down their spines in acts of defiant vulnerability.

Coming of Age Rites

The changing from child to adult mind in a seer is the preventing of a death. All things must die, this is true, but a seer is seen as still a child within their lifetime and community if they cannot bend the page so that someone survives just a little longer. Though the effects of this moment almost always teach a version of hubris - this too is a lesson one must learn, both in the shape and scale of how much influence a seer has on the natural world. The seers come from the infinite chaos and must become aware of how it twists within the real.

Funerary and Memorial customs

While technically birth and death are fixed points within a seer's lifetime - the end is the end, the beginning the beginning, it is often not the way the parchment bends for most seers, with only a few moments left before the body actually perishes. As such, seers often perform a death party when they first see their demise - knowing the moment by sight even if they do not see the physical end until it comes. As most seers build around their communities, these parties carry weight and gravitas, though they are often joyous things for the death is not now, and the community has so much more time with the seer who has seen their end.

See also:

Potash's Dumplings