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Scarf
Name: [Scarf]
Type: Artefact
Keeper: Echo, LoomWarden of Memory
Made by: The KnitWitches of the Clothborn Coven
Location: Worn by Echo, at the Eternal Loom, Frays End
Status: Unfinished, and always will be
Themes: Perseverance, Memory, Second Chances, Continuity
"Every stitch is someone who came apart and tried again. I have never once been asked to keep a story I was prouder to keep."
-- Echo
[Scarf] is the long, black scarf worn by Echo, LoomWarden of Memory. It is knitted entirely from loose ends: one for every StoryWeaver who has ever been unravelled and rewoven by the KnitWitches. It has been growing since the first StoryWeaver came undone, and it has never been finished.
Echo wears it wound many times about her neck and shoulders, and still it trails behind her to the floor. Threadlings in Frays End like to say that if it were ever unwound, it would reach from the Eternal Loom to the Coven's hearth and back again. No one has tested this. Echo would not allow it.
When a StoryWeaver is unravelled, caught by the Void, eaten by a Storyvore, or undone in any other way, the KnitWitches gather up the thread and reweave them, so that they can try again. A reweaving is always whole, but it is never quite tidy. One loose end is always left over: the thread of the attempt that did not succeed. It cannot be woven back in, because that story has already been told.
The coven does not throw it away. A loose end is a story, and stories belong with Echo. So the thread is carried to the Eternal Loom, and a KnitWitch knits it onto the end of the scarf, one more row. Then Echo tells the story of that row back to the StoryWeaver, word for word: where they were, what undid them, and how they got up again.
Every piece of knitting is finished in the end. The last row is cast off, and the work is bound so that it can be laid flat, whole and done. [Scarf] has no cast-off row, and the coven has sworn it never will. As long as StoryWeavers are made, some will come undone, and as long as they come undone, the KnitWitches will reweave them and the scarf will grow.
In this, it is the answer to Null's third Denial, Never, worn openly at the heart of Frays End. Null could not bear that the Great Weave has no end. The scarf is a small, warm proof that a thing without an end is not a flaw. It is a promise.
Echo holds that a story told once is a single strand, and a story told and retold is plied, until it becomes rope. [Scarf] is the same truth, knitted. Each loose end alone is the frailest thread in Threadbare, the thread of a failure. Knitted together, row on row, they have become one of the strongest things in the world. The KnitWitches say no Void-touched fingers have ever been able to pull a single stitch of it loose.
[Scarf] connects the StoryWeaver's failures to the world's memory: no attempt is wasted, and every one is kept. It makes the bond between Echo and the KnitWitches visible, as one of the Two Needles (see KnitWitches).
Gameplay note (proposal): the scarf could grow visibly with each time the player is unravelled, and Echo could retell the player's own past attempts on request.
For contributors, [Scarf] is the right touchstone for perseverance, learning from failure, and the idea that trying again is part of the story, not a break in it.
- Echo - LoomWarden of Memory, keeper of the scarf
- KnitWitches - who reweave every unravelled StoryWeaver and knit each loose end on
- Clothborn Coven - the house of the High KnitWitches
- StoryWeaver - whose every attempt the scarf remembers
- Null - whose third Denial, Never, the scarf quietly answers
- The Eternal Loom - the heart of Frays End, which mends the Weave