Overview
The Word-Keep Rat Man is the patient, exact voice of The Underwarrens, a clever, grey-furred underwarren kin who keeps the word of the colony and ranks its citizens by whose secret is truest, the colony's patient, exact, and most certain voice. It stands well under a meter tall, watchful and quick, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept words rather than years. Where the fox men of the hollow read the face, the Word-Keep rat men of the underwarrens keep the word, and they have been keeping the first word in the first tunnel for a very long time.
Habitat
The Word-Keep Rat Man keeps to the deep tunnels of The Underwarrens, a range of hidden, waste-fed ground where the undercity is a promise and the secret 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 tunnel-light on their inner face and the shelter of the underwarren on their outer. It favors the older tunnels where the waste runs richest and the keeping is oldest, the places where a word can be kept without the undercity's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Word-Keep Rat Man stands about 0.62 m tall, small and quick, with coarse grey-brown to black fur that reads as bright in the dim tunnel-light. Its whiskers are long and fine, bone-white-tipped, and the word-knot at the root of its left whisker-braid is a deliberate mark, one for every word it has kept, worn as a record of the long art of the secret. Its eyes are small, dark, and certain beneath the brow, the color of the tunnel-light's own glow at dusk. It wears a patchwork of leather and cloth in muted grey and deep brown and carries a single word-stone at its belt, set with a single secret-loop at the brow, the loop of a keeper.
Behaviour
The Word-Keep Rat Man is patient, exact, 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 tunnel or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the secret, 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 Word-Keep rat man is a debt the underwarren will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Word-Keep rat man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the word and the tunnel itself, not force. Its primary defense is the tunnel, for it knows every corner of the deep tunnels and can lead a pursuer through The Underwarrens for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Word-Keep rat 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 word until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Word-Keep rat man is attuned to the long word of the secret, for the secret is the keeping and the keeping is the whole of its power, and a rat man that has a tunnel and a word and a secret does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the secret, 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 rat men of the underwarrens have kept for a very long time, and the keeping is the secret, and the secret is the whole of its power.
Society
The Word-Keep Rat Men live in The Underwarrens in colonies of hundreds, bound by the words they keep together rather than by blood or by place, led by an elected Whisker. There is no elder and no ruler, for a rat man that has kept the most and ranked 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 dark-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a rat man that breaks a keeping is a rat man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Word-Keep Rat Man is a culture of the kept word, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is patient and exact is the only honest word in the underwarren. They keep no records, for a rat man that has kept a word does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is patient and exact and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told in the tunnel at the dusk, and they are stories of words kept and secrets ranked and the patient, exact difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every keeping.
Home
The Underwarrens is the Word-Keep rat man's home and its keeping, a range of hidden, waste-fed ground where the undercity is a promise and the secret is a treaty, where the rat men keep their words and their patient, exact words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Word-Keep rat man has learned to live inside that undercity rather than against it. The dim tunnel-light that runs up through the deep tunnels is the underwarren's own, a soft grey glow that the rat men have come to read as the color of a kept word.
Relations
The Word-Keep Rat Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Underwarrens, a truce of kept words that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the underwarren. To the dim tunnel-light of the deep tunnels the Word-Keep rat man is a patient, exact, and absolutely certain presence, a dark-eyed keeper that is at home in the tunnels and in the undercity, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the keepings pass, for a rat man that has kept you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the underwarren, the Word-Keep Rat Man is the patient, exact edge of the tale, the place where the words are kept and a secret is ranked and a keeping is read. It is the figure that keeps a new word in the dusk and holds the tunnel very patient and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the tunnel-carrying rat men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old word patient and exact and absolutely certain.