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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, also known as the Gardener, is a former organ-agent of the Presbyterate that once served as the Prester's stomach.[2] After the last True Khan’s failed invasion of the Elder Continent,[3] the Sacristan was brought as a captive to the island that would later become the Khanate,[4] where it was blinded,[5] grievously wounded, and forced to serve as caretaker of the Khan’s forbidden garden.[6]
The more easily visible portion of the Sacristan wears a straw hat and gardening gloves; the rest of its limbs are fleshy nubs that burrow into the soil like roots.[7] An iron collar etched with the Correspondence encircles its neck (of sorts),[8] forcing it to obey the Khan.[9] It has also been chained, inscribed with countless sigils, and impaled by rusted blades.[10] However, the bulk of its body lies underground, as the Sacristan is a living intestinal tract.[11] This creature wields a spade for both digging and defense,[12] but when attacked, it can also move the blades in its body to slash at an intruder.[13] It possesses an extraordinary sense of smell, and can track even the faintest scent in the garden’s perfumed air.[5]
The plants in the Khan's forbidden garden grow from Elder Continent seeds, which require direct exposure to Stone's power to grow; since close proximity to the Mountain's light incinerates humans, only a being of the Continent like the Sacristan could tend to the garden.[14] It has been dutifully pruning branches, sowing seeds, and gathering the harvest for centuries.[15] The final step in the creation of the Khanate's form of distilled immortality, Year of the Serpent airag,[16] requires the Sacristan to swallow the fruit whole and digest it — a process that takes six hundred years.[17]
↑Arcana, Fallen London"[...] To monitor each city, the College dispatches spies [...] 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?"
↑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."
↑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..."
↑ 5.05.1Arcana, 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."
↑Arcana, Fallen London"This gardener has been twice-tamed [...] 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. [...] It lives in constant agony, obedient to its new master."
↑Arcana, Fallen London"It's not [...] 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). [...]"
↑Arcana, Fallen London"[...] On the inside, where the metal was once pressed against flesh, inscribed Correspondence sigils still glow red-hot."
↑Arcana, Fallen London"This gardener has been twice-tamed [...] First by the College of Mortality in Nidah, and then by the Great Khan's forces in the Fourth City. [...] 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."
↑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."
↑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?"
↑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 [...]"
↑Arcana, Fallen London"[...] At the Mountain's heart, the Garden grows. [...] And the Garden requires a very particular type of gardener. [...] 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."
↑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 [...]"
↑What's Past is Prologue, Fallen London"Sometime in your future, you will drink the Year of the Serpent, and your future itself will stretch into another age." [Quality gained from Arcana.]
↑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."
