Veyr-of-the-Black-Run
- Kind
- Grindyloc
- Domain
- The subterranean channel beneath Bront's pond
- Role
- Route-keeper; first contact between the cove and the roads under it
- Name
- Shortened, badly, from something much longer
The first Grindyloc Shae ever met, and the one who showed her that her mountain has an inside.
The name she uses is a fragment of a far longer Grindyloc name that identifies not just the individual but the water route they hold — Grindyloc names are chart references, and giving a false one is a serious matter rather than a lie. At their first meeting Shae understood almost none of it.
Appearance
Dark green through black, with long webbed hands and yellow eyes made for water with no light in it. A scar crosses one wrist from an older collapse in the passages. After Shae bit the webbing between two of Veyr's fingers during their first encounter, a second and much smaller scar eventually joined it.
Veyr found this funny long before Shae did.
Personality
Cautious, observant, and a good deal less hostile than surface stories about Grindylocs would suggest — which should not be mistaken for softness. Veyr takes boundaries seriously and expects everyone else to do the same. Grindyloc etiquette is built for a place with no line of sight: you announce, you wait, you come in along the marked weed. Doing otherwise is not rudeness, it is an attack, and is answered as one.
Once Shae was established as something other than an intruder, Veyr became openly curious about the tiny surface creature whose family name sounds like moving water.
Powers
| Power | Effect |
|---|---|
| Blackwater Sight | Navigates dark water with little or no light |
| Route Memory | Holds vast networks of underwater passage without a written map |
| Current Reading | Feels change in pressure, flow and direction |
| Weedmark | Cultivates aquatic plants to mark safe passage and boundary |
| Silent Swim | Moves through water without disturbing the surface |
Shae
Their relationship began with Shae being dragged underwater and biting Veyr's hand. It improved.
Veyr is the one who pushed aside the weed curtain and showed her the route-map cut into the stone — hundreds of channels splitting and rejoining, each with a name, and near the edge of it one thin line running down past the pond to her own creek. Above that line somebody had cut a fresh slash into the rock, with grey grit still clinging inside it.
Veyr is also the first person ever to react to the name Rill. Both cultures understand identity through water. They mean entirely different things by it, and the accident of the overlap is most of what they have to build on.
See The Hidden Bell.