The Six Who Were Sent
The Company is not a guild, not an order, not a title. It is the six who were banished through The Threshold by the same hand and who have kept each other ever since: Uaellaen, Uuaellaen, Rumzuck Umbatsch, Smackage, Wreckreate, and Zahlia. In the old world they were the inner circle of Remedy — the mind, the light, the shield, the heart, the precision, and the charm. In the new world they are the first party of The Forgotten, and the company is the name the camp uses when it means the ones who were sent together, because that fact is the whole of who they are to each other, and the camp has learned that the six answer to no other frame.
The Banishing
The Drop is what made the company a company. Before it, the six were bound by guild and by blood and by choice — after it, they were bound by the single fact that one hand sent all of them through the same seam, and the hand's identity is the open mystery the story keeps. The The Threshold did not let them say goodbye to the old world. Most of the six struck the broken ground of the new world together — on the black line of The Shattered Coast — but one or two landed elsewhere, and the not-knowing who, and where, is the first question the current story is still carrying. The company's first act in the new world was to wait for the stragglers, and the waiting has not ended.
The Six
| Name | Role in the Company |
|---|---|
| Uaellaen | The mind. The one who carries the story — and the one the story is about. |
| Uuaellaen | The light. The archon and high priest who keeps the faith of the six alive in a world whose gods do not answer. |
| Rumzuck Umbatsch | The shield. The brother who stands in front, in every order of the camp, in every argument about where the company stands. |
| Smackage | The heart. The one who notices when someone has gone quiet, and the one who makes the company a place to come back to. |
| Wreckreate | The precision. The erudite wizard who keeps the second notebook — the one written in the new world's rules. |
| Zahlia | The charm. The enchantress who makes the impossible negotiable, and the one the company asks when the door will not open. |
The roles are not ranks. There is no hierarchy in the company — there are only the roles, and the roles fall where they fall, and the one thing the six have not done since the Drop is let one of them go.
Who Is Seventh
The camp asks, in the way camps ask things that are really questions about themselves: who is seventh? The answer the story gives, for now, is the shape of the question. The Forgotten is a guild of the banished and the forgotten — every member of it was cast out by someone, which means the company is not closed, it is complete until proven otherwise. A seventh place in the ring of the campfire is not reserved. It is simply not yet filled. Uaellaen will say only that the old world's Remedy had a place for everyone who was willing to fight, and that the new world's Forgotten has a place for everyone who was forgotten — and that the difference between those two kinds of people is the entire first act of this story.
"You want to know who is seventh? The person who walks in. That is not a dodge. That is the guild's whole law. Remedy took the ones who were willing. The Forgotten takes the ones who were left. The company is just the first six — and the first six are not the last six." — Uaellaen