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Awlings
"We get all the credit, love, but every drop we've ever sold came up an Awling pipe first."
-- Ossian OakGall - InkKeeper of the Lower Keep
Awlings are the master engineers of The InkWell. Small, mole-like creatures in coats of soft moleskin, they dig down through the peat and mud beneath the swamp until they strike ink, then build whole works around it: tunnels, reed piping, pumps, valves and levers that carry the ink up to the surface. There it is barrelled and shipped to the InkKeepers, who refine it, mix it and trade it across Threadbare. Every drop of ink in the world began its journey in an Awling's pipe.
| Core Thread | Memory |
| Found | Beneath The InkWell |
| A group is called | A works |
| Known for | Finding ink, building the works that bring it to the surface, and carrying more brass than seems sensible |
An Awling is about the size of a teapot, round and low, with a coat of moleskin, the soft, brushed cloth that never quite shows a stain. Its front paws are broad as spades, and each ends in a single fine point, like the tip of an awl, for piercing the ground. Its eyes are small and dark, and it rarely trusts them, preferring to feel its way by its nose and whiskers.
No Awling is ever seen without its kit. They go about hung with brass: surveying scopes with lenses stacked three or four deep, gauges and dials, plumb lines, valve-keys, coils of reed and pockets full of fittings. An Awling in full kit clinks like a cutlery drawer, and the InkKeepers say you can hear a works coming long before you see it.
Awlings are the finest engineers in Threadbare, and they know it.
A works begins with a survey. An Awling will spend days on a single patch of swamp, peering through its lenses, sniffing the mud and tapping the ground, until it is sure there is ink below. Then it digs, straight down, until it strikes a vein.
What comes next is the clever part. Around the vein the Awlings build a works: a tangle of tunnels and chambers, lined and braced, threaded through with piping cut from the hollow RiffleReeds, and fitted with treadle pumps, brass valves and long rows of levers. Pumped up through the reeds, the ink rises to a spout at the surface, where the Awlings cork it into barrels to be collected by The FirstFont Ferry and carried to the InkKeepers. No two works are ever the same, and no Awling will explain how theirs works to anyone, least of all another Awling.
The springs of the swamp's edges are Awling work too. The coloured springs of the InkWell rise where an old works once ran, and the InkKeepers say that every red, gold or violet spring began as an Awling's tunnel, where the ink has seeped through the peat for so long that its colours have woken.
Awlings never take more than a vein can spare. When a spring begins to run low, they close their valves, cap the pipe and move on, and they will not open it again until the ink has risen of its own accord. The Inklings in every drop come up through an Awling's pipes unharmed, which is why the InkKeepers trust no other ink.
The Awlings draw the ink, and the InkKeepers do everything after: refining it, mixing it, bottling it and carrying it out into the world. Each Keep has its own works nearby, and each works has its own Keep.
In return, the InkKeepers keep the Awlings supplied with fresh reed, brass fittings and, above all, stories. Awlings are fond of a good story, though they would never say so, and on most nights a few can be found in the shadows at the back of a Keep, listening, pretending to oil a valve.
When Null came to the InkWell, the Awlings were chased deep underground. Their works fell silent, their spouts ran dry, and the ink stopped arriving at the Keeps, and from there it stopped arriving everywhere else.
Some Awlings did not escape. They were captured and forced to work on The BlotWorks. Null has no gift for making anything, so the BlotWorks is built on stolen skill: its pipes, pumps and valves are Awling engineering twisted into a machine that drains the swamp instead of tending it. The Awlings who built it know every pipe and valve in it.
- Engineering masters. Awlings are defined by their craft. There is no need to explain how their machines work, only to show that they do, beautifully.
- Brass, lenses and levers. Their kit is brass, glass and reed, all valves, gauges and dials. The palette is warm metal against blue-black ink.
- Proud and private. Awlings are fiercely proud of their works and secretive about how they built them.
- Captured, never harmed. Awlings forced to work on the BlotWorks are trapped and kept at work, but never shown being hurt. Their rescue is a release, not a recovery.
- The InkWell - the swamp beneath which they build their works
- InkKeepers - who refine, mix and trade the ink they draw
- Inklings - who come up through their pipes unharmed
- RiffleReeds - the hollow reeds they cut for piping
- The FirstFont Ferry - the ink ferry that collects their barrels, skippered by Elin EverEbb
- The BlotWorks - Null's rig, built on captured Awling engineering
- Null - who drove them underground
- The Full Stop - the oldest Keep, whose ink came up an Awling pipe like all the rest
- The World of Threadbare - the lore, landscape and denizens of Threadbare
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