The Mirekeepers' Concord

The Mirekeepers’ Concord governs the Reedwater Marshes not through law, creed, or crown, but through silence — a living pact between ferrymen, traders, monks, and wanderers who have learned that peace, like water, can only be kept by stillness. The Concord was born generations ago, when the Abbey’s reach waned and the marshes were left to their own devices. Where others would have warred for control of its waterways, the marshfolk made a different choice: to listen first, to endure, and to let the marsh itself be judge. Today, the Mirekeepers’ code — “No blood on the water” — is upheld with quiet reverence, more sacred to them than any written law. To spill blood in the Reedwater is to curse one’s own reflection, and even the smallest act of violence ripples across the guilds like a tremor.

The Concord is a web of guilds, ferrymen’s brotherhoods, spice traders, and toad monks, all bound by unspoken oaths and renewed each year beneath the lanterns of Lowsong’s Central Jetty. Every decision is made in stillness: the first to break the silence forfeits their argument. At its center sits Reedmaster Thalen Marris, a frog-kin rogue of quiet power whose influence stretches far beyond the water’s edge. His authority comes not from decree, but from patience — he knows every debt owed, every secret traded, and every ripple before it breaks the surface. The Mirekeepers serve no faith but the one reflected in the water itself — mutable, patient, and unforgiving to those who disturb its calm.

To outsiders, the Concord seems loose and lawless, a tangle of smugglers and mystics bound by superstition. Yet beneath the mist lies an order older than any abbey or crown — one built not on fear or ambition, but on the understanding that survival depends on restraint. To cross the Mirekeepers is not to invite wrath, but exile: your name spoken once, then never again, until the marsh swallows even the memory of your passing. The water forgives nothing, but it remembers everything.