Overview
The Deep-Sleep Bear Man is the patient, honor-bound voice of Ironwood Grove, a massive, deep-brown furred kin of the deep forest who hibernates as a sacred rite and keeps the grove's long sleep, the hold's patient, territorial, and honor-bound voice. It stands well over two meters tall, watchful and heavy, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept sleeps rather than years. Where the cat men of the warrens keep the grace, the Deep-Sleep bear men of the grove keep the sleep, and they have been keeping the first sleep in the first hold for a very long time.
Habitat
The Deep-Sleep Bear Man keeps to the deep-holds of Ironwood Grove, a range of deep, mossy ground where the ironwood trees run old and the hibernation is a treaty. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the deep-hold walls, hollows of laid root and coaxed moss that catch the warm grove-light on their inner face and the shelter of the grove on their outer. It favors the older deep-holds where the ironwood runs oldest and the keeping is oldest, the places where a sleep can be kept without the grove's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Deep-Sleep Bear Man stands about 1.98 m tall, massive and heavy, with deep brown to black, bone-white-tipped fur that reads as bright in the grove-light. Its left claw bears the claw-notch, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the keeping, and its eyes are deep and patient, bright and certain beneath the brow, the color of the grove-light's own glow at dusk. Its coat is worn thick and deep so it does not catch the sleep, and it wears a patchwork of leather and hide in muted brown and deep black and carries a single sleep-stone at its belt, set with a single deep-loop at the brow, the loop of a keeper.
Behaviour
The Deep-Sleep Bear Man is patient, territorial, and profoundly certain, a creature of long sleeps and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it keeps, often for hours, watching a deep-hold or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the sleep, and only then does it keep, and then with a patience that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Deep-Sleep bear man is a debt the grove will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Deep-Sleep bear man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the sleep and the deep ground itself, not force. Its primary defense is the deep-hold, for it knows every corner of the deep-holds and can lead a pursuer through Ironwood Grove for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Deep-Sleep bear man is heavy and precise, 4 m/s over the mossy ground and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a root, dimming a light, or keeping a sleep until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Deep-Sleep bear man is attuned to the long word of the sleep, for the sleep is the keeping and the keeping is the whole of its power, and a bear man that has a deep-hold and a word and a sleep does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the sleep, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the keeping, which is not a magic but is a thing that the bear men of the grove have kept for a very long time, and the keeping is the sleep, and the sleep is the whole of its power.
Society
The Deep-Sleep Bear Men live in Ironwood Grove in holds of twenty to fifty, bound by the sleeps they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a bear man that has kept the most and guarded the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a keeping and the keeping is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the deep-hold, by a company of patient-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a bear man that breaks a keeping is a bear man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Deep-Sleep Bear Man is a culture of the kept sleep, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is patient and heavy is the only honest word in the grove. They keep no records, for a bear man that has kept a sleep does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is patient and heavy and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told in the deep-hold at the dusk, and they are stories of sleeps kept and hibernations guarded and the patient, heavy difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every keeping.
Home
Ironwood Grove is the Deep-Sleep bear man's home and its keeping, a range of deep, mossy ground where the ironwood trees run old and the hibernation is a treaty, where the bear men keep their sleeps and their patient, heavy words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Deep-Sleep bear man has learned to live inside that deep ground rather than against it. The warm grove-light that runs up through the deep-holds is the grove's own, a soft brown glow that the bear men have come to read as the color of a kept sleep.
Relations
The Deep-Sleep Bear Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Ironwood Grove, a truce of kept sleeps that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the grove. To the warm grove-light of the deep-holds the Deep-Sleep bear man is a patient, heavy, and absolutely certain presence, a patient-eyed keeper that is at home in the deep-holds and in the moss, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the keepings pass, for a bear man that has kept you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the grove, the Deep-Sleep Bear Man is the patient, heavy edge of the tale, the place where the sleeps are kept and a hibernation is guarded and a sleep is read. It is the figure that keeps a new sleep in the dusk and holds the deep ground very patient and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the grove-sense bear men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old sleep patient and heavy and absolutely certain.