Overview
The Secret-Keep Fox Man is the cunning, social voice of Whispering Hollow, a red-amber, mask-marked forest kin of the amber woods who keeps the secrets of the hollow and trades them out at exactly the right price. It stands little over a meter tall, watchful and quick, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept secrets rather than years. Where the dwarves of the delve sing the anvil and the gnomes of the hollows see the machine, the Secret-Keep fox men of the amber woods keep the secret, and they have been keeping the first secret in the first den for a very long time.
Habitat
The Secret-Keep Fox Man keeps to the dens of Whispering Hollow, a range of soft, amber-lit ground where the leaf-litter is deep and the deals are a treaty. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the hollow-slopes, hollows of soft earth and laid root coaxed into a home that catches the warm amber-light on its inner face and the shelter of the hollow on its outer. It favors the older dens where the leaf-litter runs deepest and the keeping is oldest, the places where a secret can be kept without the hollow's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Secret-Keep Fox Man stands about 1.44 m tall, lean and quick, with deep red-amber, bone-white-tipped fur that reads as bright in the amber-light. Its cheek bears the silver mask-marking, the blood's smile, worn as a record of the long art of the deal, and its eyes are large, pale luminous amber, bright and cunning beneath the brow. It wears a patchwork of leather and cloth in muted amber and deep brick and carries a single keeping-stone at its belt, set with a single deal-loop at the brow, the loop of a keeper.
Behaviour
The Secret-Keep Fox Man is cunning, quick, and profoundly certain, a creature of long keeps and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it keeps, often for hours, watching a den or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the secret, 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 Secret-Keep fox man is a debt the hollow will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Secret-Keep fox man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the secret and the hollow itself, not force. Its primary defense is the den, for it knows every corner of the hollow-dens and can lead a pursuer through Whispering Hollow for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Secret-Keep fox man is low and precise, 6 m/s over the leaf-litter and quick, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a root, dimming a light, or keeping a secret until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Secret-Keep fox man is attuned to the long word of the deal, for the deal is the keeping and the keeping is the whole of its power, and a fox man that has a secret and a word and a hollow does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the deal, 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 fox men of the hollow have kept for a very long time, and the keeping is the deal, and the deal is the whole of its power.
Society
The Secret-Keep Fox Men live in Whispering Hollow in dens of fifteen to forty, bound by the secrets they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a fox man that has kept the most and traded 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 den, by a company of amber-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a fox man that breaks a keeping is a fox man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Secret-Keep Fox Man is a culture of the kept secret, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is cunning and quick is the only honest word in the hollow. They keep no records, for a fox man that has kept a secret does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is cunning and quick and does not fade. Their stories are slow and cunning, told in the den at the dusk, and they are stories of secrets kept and bargains traded and the cunning, quick difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every keeping.
Home
Whispering Hollow is the Secret-Keep fox man's home and its keeping, a range of soft, amber-lit ground where the leaf-litter is deep and the deals are a treaty, where the fox men keep their secrets and their cunning, quick words. It is a strange and cunning place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Secret-Keep fox man has learned to live inside that hollow rather than against it. The warm amber-light that runs up through the dens is the hollow's own, a soft red-amber glow that the fox men have come to read as the color of a kept secret.
Relations
The Secret-Keep Fox Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Whispering Hollow, a truce of kept secrets that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the hollow. To the warm amber-light of the hollow-dens the Secret-Keep fox man is a cunning, quick, and absolutely certain presence, an amber-eyed keeper that is at home in the dens and in the leaf-litter, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the keepings pass, for a fox man that has kept you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the hollow, the Secret-Keep Fox Man is the cunning, quick edge of the tale, the place where the secrets are kept and a secret is traded and a bargain is read. It is the figure that keeps a new secret in the dusk and holds the leaf-litter very cunning and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the amber-eyed fox men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old secret cunning and quick and absolutely certain.