Overview
The Bridge-Spawn is the broad, patient beast the deep brook keeps for the toll. It stands 90 cm at the shoulder, it moves through the black water with a slow, deliberate way, and it considers the toll a promise rather than a tax. Where the bridge-spawn stands, the brook knows it is answered, and the answering is the whole of the spawn's own, because the spawn that keeps the toll keeps the brook, and the brook is the spawn's own.
Habitat
The Bridge-Spawn keeps the cold water of The Brook Holds — the black stone and the brook and the long, unbroken line of the hold. It is the brook's own, and the brook is the spawn's, and the spawn keeps the brook the way the brook keeps its toll. It needs three things: water that will hold the long stand, a brook deep enough to keep the brood, and a ground of the warm prey that will not run. It is settled at the brook with the Trolls who keep the hold — the spawn is the hold's own toll, and the troll that has not kept its spawn in a season is called the one who forgot the brook. The brood moves with the season the way the trolls do, deeper in the cold months, to the upper brook in the green, because the brood that has not moved with the water has moved without the water, and the moving without the water is the whole of the hunger.
Appearance
The bridge-spawn is the broad, heavy shape — broad through the jaw, heavy through the flank, with the head set forward and the whole of it reading as one low line from nose to rump. The male stands 90 cm at the shoulder and carries 64 kg, broad through the jaw and heavy with the toll; the female stands 85 cm, 52 kg, finer through the neck, with the longer nose and the worse patience, because the patience is the whole of the spawn's own. The skin is warty and deep, grey-green over the back where the brook has kept it wet, darkening to a mud-brown along the flank where the ground rubs it flat; the throat carries a clean bone-white that reads as a flash in the water, and the belly skin is a faded, honest straw. The eye is small, deep-set, a pale blue-grey that reads as the water itself, and it does not glow. The throat-sac is the whole of the voice — a low, wet drone that the brook carries without knowing it carries it, and the drone that is heard is the whole of the answer. Males carry the line in the jaw and the stand; females in the neck and the patience. Elders are marked by a skin gone pale silver-green and a drone that the brook answers a day before the spawn calls — an old bridge-spawn stands no new brook, and the brook that loses the old spawn is called the quiet brook.
Behaviour
The bridge-spawn does not hunt the way the warm prey hunts — it stands. It takes a position at the brook and it stays, because the spawn that moves the stand has moved the toll. The drone is not a call and not a song; it is a low, wet sound that the brook carries without knowing it carries it, and it answers the brook, not the prey to the spawn. When the brook takes, the spawn does not eat first — it takes the toll the prey carried, because the toll is the answer and the meat is only the meat, and the spawn that eats the answer eats the brook's own. It is patient with the brood, worse than the brood, and it will hold a stand through the whole of a frost because the stand that leaves the frost has left the brook. The young are raised in the brood with the trolls' own loud ones, and the young that drone a true brook before the first frost are called the brook-kept. The spawn carries the troll's own regrow — the wound that would kill a dragon closes in hours, and the severed limb regrows in days, and the regrowing is the whole of the brook's own.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the jaw — the broad, deep set that takes the warm prey in the brook's own time, after the stand has done its patient work. The defense is the water and the regrow: the spawn is never where the prey is, it is where the brook stands, and the water that holds the stand holds the spawn, and the wound that would kill a dragon closes in hours. It has no other defense and does not need one, because the beast that owns the toll owns the brook, and the brook is the whole of the hold's own.
Magic Alignment
The bridge-spawn carries the brook's own quiet magic — the brook-sense that reads the cold water a step before the foot lands, the toll-keep that sets the toll before the blow, and the regrow that the brook keeps the way it keeps its drip. It is not spell-work and it is not the gods' work; it is the brook's own, and it is kept the way the brook keeps its water.
Society
The bridge-spawn keeps a brood of two to four at the brook — the patient one stands and the hungry one answers, and the brood is the whole of the spawn's own. The brood that has not kept the same brook for a season is called the loose line, and the hold does not count it. The young are raised in the brood with the trolls, and the spawn that has raised a brook-kept is honoured the way the hold honours its best troll: the brook is left open for a day, and the open brook is the honour. The brook that has lost its drone is called the quiet brook, and the quiet brook is kept in the hold's own scrap-stone until it finds a new stand.
Culture & Lore
The Trolls of The Brook Holds keep the bridge-spawn the way they keep the toll — as the hold's own patience, not as a beast. The old trolls say the first bridge-spawn stood the brook and the hold heard the drone before it saw the spawn, and the hearing was the whole of the first keeping. The spawn is never killed for the meat, because the meat is the meat and the toll is the toll, and the troll that kills the toll kills the brook's own. The brook that a brood has kept for three seasons is left open for a day when the last spawn of the brood dies, and the open brook is the whole of the honour the hold gives.
Home
The bridge-spawn is the own of The Brook Holds — the cold water, the black stone, the long brook. It is settled at the brook with the trolls who keep the hold, and the hold that loses its bridge-spawn loses the toll before it loses the word, because the word will come back when the water warms and the toll will not.
Relations
The Trolls keep the spawn as the toll and stand by its drone. The Goblins of Goblin Warrens know the brook and do not enter it, because the water that is honest will take the goblin as well as the spawn, and the goblin that has been taken does not come back to the warren. The Orc of The Fanghold respects the brood the way it respects the hold — it does not cross it, and the holding of the brood is the whole of the respect. The warm prey of the brook does not know the beast at all, and the not-knowing is the whole of the toll's own.
In the Story
The bridge-spawn has not yet come to the six, but the brook it stands at will — the hold is the first strong ground the Legacy of Steel ever met, and the meeting was the whole of the first word. The drone that answers the brook under the hold's own stone is the drone the six will hear when they hear it, and the hearing is the whole of the story's own, because the story that hears the drone hears the brook, and the brook is the bridge-spawn's own.