Origin & Nature — The Exile-God of Threads
Shuttle’s Shipyard was not raised by engines nor governed by a machine-mind. It is the work and wake of a god in decline — an exile from the Loom Beyond — who fell into the reverse-of-the-world and set its hands to useful craft to keep from unraveling entirely. The city survives because that god still survives, not as a throne-bound tyrant, but as a patient artisan whose body is now scaffolding, whose breath is now the wind that moves the shuttles, whose sleep is the blanket that keeps the void at bay.
The Exile-God
- Names given: The Shuttle, the Thread-Mother, the Knotted Saint, Weaver-in-Exile. None are true names; those were traded to pass between worlds.
- Nature: a deity of passage, fastening, and memory-binding — once able to stitch continents and constellations with a gesture; now bound to mortal cadence and craft.
- Wound: cast out after an unnamed rebellion among the divine. The wound bleeds frayed threads: these are the edges players watch and mend.
Why the Yard Exists and Endures
- Covenant of Use: the god swore (and was compelled) to be of use to mortals in exchange for sanctuary. The city is that sanctuary; its usefulness is the oath kept.
- Body-as-Infrastructure: the Treadwork is the god’s left hand taught to move slowly; Spindle Square is the breath that turns; Edge Thread is the eyelid that refuses to close over the dark.
- Self-Mending: when given thread, story, and craft, the shipyard grows and repairs itself. Not from code, but from ritual: measured knots, sung patterns, and oiled wood answering to old vows.
- Law-as-Liturgy: No Loose Ends, Forget One Thing, Edge Watch are not civic inventions alone — they are the god’s habits, taught to people so the god does not forget how to be itself.
What the Players Feel
- Touch: a warm thrum beneath handrails; the slight give of planks that are more than wood.
- Sight: faint halos at seam-lines when oaths are spoken truthfully; dust glitters when the god breathes.
- Sound: loom-song that answers when you hum the old measures; bells that ring between heartbeats when edges slip.