Overview
The Map-Keep Mole Man is the patient, clannish voice of The Deepdelve, a blind, shovel-handed tunnel-sculptor of the river plain who carries the map of the deep in memory and keeps the deep's oldest tunnels, the delve's patient, clannish, and most certain voice. It stands little over a meter tall, watchful and quick, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept maps rather than years. Where the rat men of the underwarrens carry the load, the Map-Keep mole men of the deep keep the map, and they have been keeping the first map in the first tunnel for a very long time.
Habitat
The Map-Keep Mole Man keeps to the oldest tunnels of The Deepdelve, a range of blind, river-fed ground where the deep is a promise and the tunnel is a treaty. Its dwellings are coaxed into the faces of the tunnel-walls, hollows of packed earth and laid stone that catch the dim delve-light on their inner face and the shelter of the deep on their outer. It favors the oldest tunnels where the river runs deepest and the keeping is oldest, the places where a map can be kept without the deep's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Map-Keep Mole Man stands about 1.29 m tall, small and quick, with dust-grey to pale bone skin that reads as bright in the dim delve-light. Its eyes are blind and pale, turned up toward the sound of the world, and its left whisker-braid bears the map-knot, a deliberate mark, one for every tunnel it has mapped, worn as a record of the long art of the keeping. Its hands are shovel-broad, the hands of a being that has kept a map for a hundred years without a tremor, and it wears a patchwork of leather and cloth in muted grey and pale bone and carries a single map-stone at its belt, set with a single tunnel-loop at the brow, the loop of a keeper.
Behaviour
The Map-Keep Mole Man is patient, clannish, and profoundly certain, a creature of long maps and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It listens before it keeps, often for hours, listening to a tunnel or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the map, and only then does it keep, and then with an exactness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Map-Keep mole man is a debt the deep will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Map-Keep mole man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the map and the tunnel itself, not force. Its primary defense is the tunnel, for it knows every corner of the oldest tunnels and can lead a pursuer through The Deepdelve for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Map-Keep mole man is quick and precise, 5 m/s through the tunnels and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a root, dimming a light, or keeping a map until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Map-Keep mole man is attuned to the long word of the tunnel, for the tunnel is the keeping and the keeping is the whole of its power, and a mole man that has a deep and a map and a tunnel does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the tunnel, 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 mole men of the deep have kept for a very long time, and the keeping is the map, and the map is the whole of its power.
Society
The Map-Keep Mole Men live in The Deepdelve in clannish, patient packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the maps they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a mole man that has kept the most and mapped 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 tunnel, by a company of blind-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a mole man that breaks a keeping is a mole man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Map-Keep Mole Man is a culture of the kept map, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is patient and clannish is the only honest word in the deep. They keep no records, for a mole man that has kept a map does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is patient and clannish and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told in the tunnel at the dusk, and they are stories of maps kept and tunnels mapped and the patient, clannish difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every keeping.
Home
The Deepdelve is the Map-Keep mole man's home and its keeping, a range of blind, river-fed ground where the deep is a promise and the tunnel is a treaty, where the mole men keep their maps and their patient, clannish words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Map-Keep mole man has learned to live inside that deep rather than against it. The dim delve-light that runs up through the oldest tunnels is the deep's own, a soft grey glow that the mole men have come to read as the color of a kept map.
Relations
The Map-Keep Mole Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Deepdelve, a truce of kept maps that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the deep. To the dim delve-light of the oldest tunnels the Map-Keep mole man is a patient, clannish, and absolutely certain presence, a blind-eyed keeper that is at home in the tunnels and in the deep, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the keepings pass, for a mole man that has kept you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the deep, the Map-Keep Mole Man is the patient, clannish edge of the tale, the place where the maps are kept and a tunnel is mapped and a keeping is read. It is the figure that keeps a new map in the dusk and holds the tunnel very patient and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the shovel-hand mole men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old map patient and clannish and absolutely certain.