THE LORE · THE NORTHERN REACH

The Stillwater Stance

The Stillwater Order's empty-handed discipline: a martial art and a meditation in one, by which a monk empties every want in themselves that a haunting could seize.

The Stance is the Order's whole answer to the Sundering's leftover dead in one practice. Body emptied, wants set down, breath gone still as the tarn — and the Unclosed find nothing left in you to seize; a haunting feeds on what's unfinished in the living as much as on what's unfinished in itself, and an emptied want gives it no purchase. In a fight this reads as an unarmed style that cannot be baited, feinted, or frightened; near the Unclosed it is the only known way to stand in their presence untouched. The Drowned are those who used the Stance to get close to one and then, fatally, reached for it anyway.

KIND

custom

DOMAIN

martial discipline / haunting-resistance

Connected

The Stillwater OrderFACTION · The empty-handed discipline they teach.The SunderingCONCEPT · The Stance gives the Sundering's note nothing to rin…Master Oén of the Empty CupCHARACTER · Sixty years emptied — and now tested by an echo at h…The DrownedFACTION · They misuse the Stance to get close.The First of the DrownedCHARACTER · He used it, then reached.The Wandering CupsFACTION · They teach it on the road.

Type Fields

kindcustom

domainmartial discipline / haunting-resistance

tenetsEmpty the self; give the Unclosed nothing to seize, Cannot be baited, feinted, or frightened, Reach for one and you join the Drowned

All Relationships (10)

references

←The Stillwater Order — The empty-handed discipline they teach.
→The Sundering — The Stance gives the Sundering's note nothing to ring.
←Master Oén of the Empty Cup — Sixty years emptied — and now tested by an echo at his deathbed.
←The Drowned — They misuse the Stance to get close.
←The First of the Drowned — He used it, then reached.
←The Wandering Cups — They teach it on the road.
←quest.the-empty-cup (unresolved) — The first discipline.
←quest.the-masters-refusal (unresolved) — The creed at its hardest.
←Oén's Empty Bowl — Its power is the Stance made an object: it works exactly as well as its carrier is empty.
←Brother Cael of the Wandering Cups — Cael teaches the Stillwater Stance on the road; the drift he fears is exactly the failure mode the Stance is designed to prevent.

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