Editing The Sixth Sacristan

<blockquote>''"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?"''<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|Arcana|Fallen London|}}</ref></blockquote>The '''Sixth Sacristan''', also known as the '''Gardener''', is a former organ-agent of the [[Presbyterate]] that once served as the Prester's stomach.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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?'<nowiki/>'''"'''''</ref> After the last True Khan’s failed invasion of the [[The Elder Continent|Elder Continent]],<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> the Sacristan was brought as a captive to the island that would later become the [[The Khanate|Khanate]],<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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..."''</ref> where it was blinded,<ref name=":0">{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> grievously wounded, and forced to serve as caretaker of the Khan’s forbidden garden.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref>

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.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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). [...]"''</ref> An iron collar etched with the [[Correspondence]] encircles its neck (of sorts)<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> forcing it to obey the Khan.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> It has also been chained, inscribed with countless sigils, and impaled by rusted blades.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> The bulk of its body, however, lies underground, as the Sacristan is a living intestinal tract.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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?"''</ref> This creature wields a spade for both digging and defense,<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> but when attacked, it can also move the blades in its body to slash at an intruder.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> It possesses an extraordinary sense of smell, and can track even the faintest scent in the garden’s perfumed air.<ref name=":0" />

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.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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."''</ref> It has been dutifully pruning branches, sowing seeds, and gathering the harvest for centuries.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Arcana|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)."''</ref> The final step in the creation of the Khanate's form of distilled immortality, '''Year of the Serpent airag''',<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/What%27s_Past_is_Prologue|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''.]''</ref> requires the Sacristan to swallow the fruit whole and digest it — a process that takes six hundred years.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/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."''</ref>