Overview
The Pit-Sense Leech Folk is the clannish, certain bite of The Gullet Pits, a pale, quick parasitic marsh-kin of the blood pits who senses the pit and keeps the ledger, the pit's clannish, shy, and most certain bite. It stands just under 1.48 m tall, pale and quick, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept debts rather than years. Where the Ledger-Keeper keeps the ledger, the Pit-Sense leech folk of the pit senses the pit itself, and it has been sensing the first debt in the first pit for a very long time.
Habitat
The Pit-Sense Leech Folk keeps to the deep rings of The Gullet Pits, a blood pit of the marsh where the surface is a constant pale shimmer and the air is a constant drip. Its dwellings are hollows of wet stone and kept blood, their floors dissolving and re-forming with the drip, their faces catching the pale shimmer of the pit on the inside and the shelter of the stone on the outside. It favors the deeper rings where the blood runs oldest and the sensing is oldest, the places where a debt can be sensed without the pit's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Pit-Sense Leech Folk is about 1.48 m tall, pale and quick, with wet pale-grey skin that reads as cold in the pale shimmer-light. Its flanks carry the sea-black leech-rings, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the sensing, and its jaw ends in the dull maroon lips of the pit, the color of the pit's own blood at low drip. Its eyes are washed-out pit-white, bright and certain beneath the brow, and they hold still in a way that no other eye in the pit does — they are reading the current.
Behaviour
The Pit-Sense Leech Folk is clannish, shy, and profoundly territorial, a creature of long debts and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It senses before it acts, often for hours, sensing on a ring or a stranger or a debt until it understands the shape of the bite, and only then does it act, 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 Pit-Sense leech folk is a debt the pit will keep long after the sensor has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Pit-Sense leech folk is no open-marsh fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the sense and the pit itself, not force. Its primary defense is the pit, for it knows every hollow of the deep rings and can lead a pursuer through The Gullet Pits until the pursuit loses its nerve and its footing in the dissolving floor. Should it be forced to act, a Pit-Sense leech folk is precise and patient, 3 m/s across the pale shimmer and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, dimming a light, holding a ring, or sensing until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Pit-Sense leech folk is attuned to the long word of the pit, for the word is the sensing and the sensing is the whole of its power, and a leech folk that has a pit and a jaw and a debt does not need a spell that is not its own. Its primary domain is divination, and its named powers are the pit-sense, the dark-sight, and the debt-carry, and it is not attuned to any art that is not the pit's own, and the not being attuned is the whole of its way of being free.
Society
The Pit-Sense Leech Folk keep to The Gullet Pits in clannish, shy pits of ten to thirty, bound by the debts they sense rather than by blood or by place, led by the Ledger-Keeper. There is no elder beyond the Ledger-Keeper, for a leech folk that has sensed the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a sense and the sense is the whole of their society. Decisions are made on the ring, by a company of washed-eyed sensors that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a leech folk that breaks a sensing is a leech folk that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Pit-Sense Leech Folk is a culture of the kept debt, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is clannish and shy is the only honest word in the pit. They keep no records, for a leech folk that has sensed a debt does not need a record, the sensing is the record, and the sensing is clannish and shy and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told on the ring at the low drip, and they are stories of debts sensed and ledgers kept and the clannish, shy difference between them, told in a voice that is dripping and means every sensing.
Home
The Gullet Pits are the Pit-Sense leech folk's home and its sensing, a blood pit of the marsh where the surface is a constant pale shimmer and the air is a constant drip, where the leech folk senses its debts and keeps its clannish, shy words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Pit-Sense leech folk has learned to live in that pit rather than against it. The pale shimmer of the pit that runs across the deep rings is the pit's own, a cold light that the leech folk has come to read as the color of a kept debt.
Relations
The Pit-Sense Leech Folk keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Gullet Pits, a truce of kept debts that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the wet stone. To the pale shimmer of the deep rings the Pit-Sense leech folk is a clannish, shy, and absolutely territorial presence, a washed-eyed sensor that is at home in the rings and on the current, and the shimmer has learned to glow wide and let the senses pass, for a leech folk that has sensed you has decided you are a promise and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the pit, the Pit-Sense Leech Folk is the clannish, shy edge of the tale, the place where the debts are kept and a bite is sensed and a sensing is read. It is the figure that senses a new debt at the low drip and holds the pit very clannish and very shy, and the figure that, when the truce with the debt-carrying leech folk grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old sense clannish and shy and absolutely territorial.