the Chorus
Beacon's enclosed company of shade-souls — the dead of Canticle, hosted in a glass drum called the Reliquary at the heart of the largest ship. They serve the city at once as historians, as the people's living memory of Threnody and the exodus, and as fabricators: shown raw metal and a schematic, they reshape it into the device the schematic asks for. Each settlement carries a portion of the same mist, divided and transported between communities. STD:TSM:Ch 22
Beacon's keepers of memory and history — the source for what the Threnodites still hold about their exodus, the homeworld they left, and the failed quietude of Hell. Rebeke cites them by name when she explains what their people have lost across the generations. STD:TSM:Ch 12 superseded at STD:TSM:Ch 22
Known facts
- fabricate-with-spiritsAre not only historians — by Rebeke's casual aside, the Beacon spirits collectively called 'the Chorus' are also the people's fabricators, materialising the objects the city needs (much as the spirit accompanying Nomad materialises objects for him). Nomad refuses Aux's eager interest in the comparison.STD:TSM:Ch 15
- self-aware-and-deadly-if-releasedAre at least partially self-aware. They answer questions sometimes and lapse into rote recitation other times, but the people of Beacon all believe that they would tear apart and devour the warmth of any living person who entered the Reliquary with them — and the Chorus itself, in Nomad's hearing, agrees with the description.STD:TSM:Ch 22
- recruits-the-unburnt-deadGrows from the dead. A Beaconite who is not given to the sun is, the city believes, drawn to join the Chorus — mist gathers after such a death and moves to the Reliquary. Rebeke thinks she has seen her own brother's face among them; Zeal gently doubts her.STD:TSM:Ch 22
- fled-evil-and-threnodyRecite, when Nomad meets them at the glass, the bones of their own history: they fled the Evil, then fled Threnody, and came to the land of the twilight rings to make their own world. They name themselves the Chorus of the people, refuse the title of shade, and warn that those who die unsunburnt would otherwise overrun a planet this small.STD:TSM:Ch 22
- first-dead-of-canticleClaim themselves the first who died on Canticle — the first to live in this land and devise the designs of flight, working from the ships that had brought them across. Members of the Chorus speak in contradictory voices about themselves, and may not remember their individual mortal lives.STD:TSM:Ch 22
- assists-with-flight-balanceZeal has told Nomad that the Chorus help Beacon balance the thrust distribution across her ship-cluster as she flies. Hanging beneath the city during the ascent Nomad wonders whether the shades are effectively functioning as a rudimentary Awakened difference engine doing the maths in real time.STD:TSM:Ch 29
Events
- STD:TSM:Ch 22 Meets Nomad at the glass for the first time: a gaunt red-eyed face slams against the barrier; others mass behind it. They recite the bones of their history, name themselves not shades but Chorus, and warn that the dead unburnt by the sun would otherwise consume the living. Then they read Nomad's schematics through the glass and fabricate his engine parts in under an hour.
- STD:TSM:Ch 29 Penned in the Reliquary in the hub beneath Nomad's feet — now crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with the evacuated population packed in around the shade-cage. Zeal has told him the shades are helping the city balance thrust distribution between the engines as it climbs.
Backreferences
- factThrenodites
- factthe Evil
- factthe Chorus
- factthe Chorus
- factthe Chorus
- factthe Chorus
- factthe Reliquary
- factthe Reliquary
- factShade
- factBeacon
- factthe Chorus
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 32
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 39
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 40
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 41
- summarySTD:TSM:Ch 48
- factthe Reliquary