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WhipStitch
Type: Ringmaster's whip
Made of: Pure Spirit thread
Keeper: Rook RagRavel, His Tattered Majesty, the Rag King of the Performance Playa
Home: The Canopy of Curiosity, at the heart of the Performance Playa
"It never hurt a soul in the audience, love. It just reminds them where they belong."
-- Rook RagRavel - His Tattered Majesty, the Rag King of the Performance Playa
WhipStitch is Rook RagRavel's ringmaster's whip, braided from a single, unbroken strand of pure Spirit thread: the thread that binds one life to another, and the warmth that holds a crowd together (see Core Threads). It glows a soft gold, and it hums faintly whenever people are gathered close.
No one quite agrees on where it came from. Rook says he spun it himself, from the cheers of every audience that ever filled the Canopy of Curiosity, one cheer at a time. The Tattered Troupe say he won it from a KnitWitch in a game of cards. Rook has never said which is true, and he seems to enjoy that very much.
The crack of WhipStitch sounds like a whole audience gasping at once.
- To a crowd, it is a call home. Frightened, scattered or lost, people turn towards its crack and find their way back to their seats, and to each other.
- To the Fray, it is unbearable. Spirit thread is togetherness, and nothing woven by Null can stand it. A Storyvore caught by its crack is driven back, and one struck true unravels into loose thread.
In The Show Must Go On, in the arc for the Never Loom in Act Two of the Threadbare Plot, Storyvores storm the night's great show in the Canopy of Curiosity and its audience scatters across the Playa. Rook gives WhipStitch to the StoryWeaver, who uses it to drive off and unravel the Storyvores while herding the audience safely back inside.
- A call, not a weapon, to people. WhipStitch is never used on the audience, on Threadlings or on animals. Its crack gathers people in.
- Spirit made visible. It should look, sound and feel like togetherness: warm gold light, the gasp of a crowd, the hush before a show.
- Rook's showmanship. Its origin is a story Rook enjoys telling differently every time.
- Rook RagRavel - its keeper, the Rag King of the Performance Playa
- The Canopy of Curiosity and Performance Playa - where it is cracked to open every show
- Core Threads - Spirit, the thread it is made of
- Storyvores - who cannot bear its crack
- Threadbare Plot - the StoryWeaver's journey
TBC
TBC