The Sixth Sacristan

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"Are you quite sure you want to know this?"

Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.

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"It's underground. It's in the walls. It's everywhere! Is this gardener just a gigantic intestinal tract? An intestinal tract with a little straw hat?"[1]

The Sixth Sacristan or just the Gardener is a former organ-agent of the Presbyterate, the Prester’s stomach.[2] IIt was brought to the black rock that would later grow into the Khanate[3] after the last True Khan’s failed invasion of the Elder Continent,[4] forcefully conscripted to serve as the caretaker of the Khan’s secret garden.[5] Since then, it has remained shackled and blind, a grotesque sentinel rooted among forbidden blossoms.[6] Though its eyes were long ago destroyed, the Sacristan possesses an extraordinary sense of smell, allowing it to track even the faintest scent in the garden’s perfumed air.[7] The Sacristan wields a spade for both digging and defense.[8] When roused to violence, it becomes a terrible force: the blades skewered through its body slash and lash at intruders, and it will attempt to constrict and eviscerate trespassers with its many appendages.[9] When wounded, it bleeds a corrosive digestive acid—burning whatever it touches, but sealing the Sacristan’s own wounds.[10]

The Sacristan wears a straw hat and gardening gloves on two appendages. The rest of its limbs are stunted, fleshy nubs that burrow into the soil like roots.[11] It is enormous—a living intestinal tract [12] whose bulk slumbers beneath the earth.[13] The exposed parts of its body are wrapped in iron chains and inscribed with uncountable sigils, skewered by a thousand rusted blades.[14] Around its "neck" is an iron collar etched with the Correspondence,[15] warping its will to the service of the Khan. It lives in constant agony, but obeys.[16]

The Sacristan tends the garden with meticulous care. It prunes the branches of forbidden trees, sows black seeds in cursed soil, and gathers the garden’s harvest into a wicker basket hanging from one "elbow."[17] Only a being like the Sacristan could survive here; the conditions required to cultivate fruits of immortality are utterly inhospitable to mortals.[18] To harvest the fruit of immortality, the Sacristan plucks it from a golden bough, swallows it whole, and lets it pass through the vast labyrinth of its digestive system—a journey that takes six hundred years. At the end of this passage, the fruit is transformed into a bottle of the Year of the Serpent, a drink that grants eternal life.[19]

References

  1. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London
  2. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "[...] To monitor each city, the College dispatches spies. They're typically crushed when the next city falls, but the Fourth City managed to capture one. It still survives, across the zee, in a prison of black rock beneath the Khanate. Now it tends the garden. Who better?'"
  3. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "[...] The last True Khan, they call him now. But the five clans still honour the old alliance. They keep the Great Khan's garden locked. He brought seeds to the Salt Steppes when he knew the Fourth City was doomed. [...] And a gardener too, [...] Still the same one to this day..."
  4. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "When the Great Khan left the Fourth City, he led his forces to the Elder Continent. He fought. He failed to stake new claims. He zailed to the Salt Steppes instead, to the black rock where he founded the Khanate. [...] You'll enter a great chamber, carved into the rock itself, where a secret garden flourishes."
  5. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "You won't have time. You won't be alone. Someone will catch you. Someone who lives in the garden. The Khagan doesn't post guards because there's no need. Not just because the gate is sealed – although that's a factor. Without the Ambassador's help, you'll never open it. No, the Khagan doesn't post guards because the gardener is dangerous enough."
  6. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "[...] It burrows through the soil. It rises, shackled, eyeless, at your side, and it keeps rising."
  7. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "The gardener's head roves left and right. It sniffs. Its eyes are gone, sockets skewered by twin sabres, but it could smell a butterfly ten leagues away – and it smells you."
  8. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "You slip and dodge through loops and tubes. Digestive organs squirm in the soil, chained together by pulsing muscles. The Sacristan raises a spade, drives it down – and hits a pitchfork. You've raided the gardening shed. You repel the attack."
  9. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "More swords rise from the soil – ancient, rust-eaten, impaled in the creature's body. They clatter and clash as the gardener thrashes, whipping its coils around you on every side. You dance through the blades. You duck, leap, and dodge. You parry a scimitar with a shovel."
  10. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "With every blow, the gardener bleeds – not blood, but something milky-white; something with curdled clumps; something that burns whatever it touches. Drops speckle the plants. They scream and wither. The soil sizzles. The Sacristan wriggles, its wounds clotting and closing almost instantly. "Stomach acid. Bile," says the Thirsty Croupier. "How lovely.""
  11. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "It's not a human. It's not a serpent. It's not a Clay Man or a Rubbery Man or any creature that you've seen before, but it's wearing a straw hat and gardening gloves. At least, it's wearing gloves on two appendages; the others are fleshy stumps (there are many others). [...]"
  12. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "It's underground. It's in the walls. It's everywhere! Is this gardener just a gigantic intestinal tract? An intestinal tract with a little straw hat?"
  13. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "It continues to rise, uncoiling higher, until it stretches over your head. It could keep rising; even more of its body is buried underground. Quite a lot more. All around the garden, the soil churns as though filled with worms. "But there's only one," says the Thirsty Croupier. "And it's no worm.""
  14. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "How many needles were plunged into this creature's skin? How much ink was required to tattoo these sigils? Hypnotic glyphs cover its body. Their meanings burn in your mind: I am eternal, and yet my reign is circumscrib’d by Law and Fate. The gardener twists, uprooting more coils from the earth. Coils speared with countless blades."
  15. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "He dumps the iron collar overboard. On the inside, where the metal was once pressed against flesh, inscribed Correspondence sigils still glow red-hot. They send up boiling bubbles as the collar sinks into the Unterzee."
  16. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "This gardener has been twice-tamed," says the Thirsty Croupier. "First by the College of Mortality in Nidah, and then by the Great Khan's forces in the Fourth City. His warriors battled the beast. They drove ten-thousand swords into its back. His priests shackled and bent its mind to serve the Great Khan's court. Its body is still riddled with their blades. Its throat is still pinched by an iron collar. It lives in constant agony, obedient to its new master."
  17. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "With golden shears, the gardener prunes a branch. With a golden spade, the gardener digs little holes and sprinkles seeds inside. Plucking fruit with its gloved hands (if one could call them hands), the gardener deposits the fruit into a wicker basket, which it carries with the handle hooked over an elbow (or something jointed like an elbow)."
  18. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "[...] At the Mountain's heart, the Garden grows. But gardens aren't jungles. They need gardeners. Wilderness versus cultivation: that's the distinction. And the Garden requires a very particular type of gardener. One who can manage eternally-blooming plants. One who can tolerate direct exposure to the Mountain's divinity. One who was born in the light. The Khagan's garden isn't the Garden, but the Great Khan brought seeds from the Elder Continent. Only the Sacristan can tend to them."
  19. ↑ Arcana, Fallen London "You see the Sacristan pluck fruit from a golden bough. You see it swallow the fruit. You see the fruit pass slowly through its throat, through a maze of stomachs, and through leagues of intestinal rope. Finally, after six hundred years, the Sacristan will fill a bottle."
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