This chapter is what happens when somebody reads the order’s files and reaches the opposite
conclusion. It covers the cult that came out of that reading, the book it was founded on,
the rite that admits a member, and six creatures who are people first. The alchemy and the
spells both sides use are in chapter 7.
The Lazaret files the cult as the Apocrypha, after their book rather than after the people,
because the book came first and the people are an appendix to it. Its author was a lector
of the order who spent eleven years copying case records in the houses and drew from them
the opposite of everything the order teaches. He did not steal the files. He published,
exactly as doctrine requires, and what he published was an argument that a graft is not an
affliction but an offer. Then he walked out of his house and took a hundred and forty pages
with him.
His followers call themselves the Hands of the Host, and a member is a hand. Their argument
is that a body carrying a parasite is not diminished but occupied, that occupation is the
only company which does not end, and that a body with nothing in it is unfinished.
The True File
The cult calls it the True File. The Lazaret was founded on a document, and everything the
order has written in the years since is a copy of that document, a comment on it, or an
addition to it. The book does not claim to come after it. It claims the order has spent its
entire existence keeping an accurate record of the wrong conclusion, and that the
correction was sitting in its own files the whole time, available to anybody willing to
read them in order.
The Lazaret gives the book a name of its own and will not use the author’s. A file naming a
man invites the question of who else agreed with him, and the order would rather answer
questions about a document.
A hundred and forty pages in a lector’s hand. No illumination, no decoration, ruled
margins, and a case number beside every record in the first part, because the man who
copied them out was trained to keep the reference and could not stop doing it. Those
numbers are the reason the order takes captured copies seriously. Each one leads back to a
house, a year, and a patient who was admitted, treated, and written up by somebody who
thought they were helping.
Every copy is made by hand, and copying is the closest thing the cult has to a third rite.
The work is given to hands whose grade has taken their legs but not their sight. A full
copy takes one of them most of a year.
Parts I through III travel together, and a new cell is founded with them. Part IV arrives
when the cell has held its ground long enough to be worth supplying, which is a judgment
the First Graft makes personally and slowly. Part V arrives in his own hand or not at all.
He writes the workings out one at a time, for one cell at a time, and he has never
explained the criteria.
Part IV
The preparations run longer than the other four parts together, and almost none of it is
original. The order publishes what it learns, so its treatments for all three broods sat in
the case files the author spent eleven years copying. He transcribed them accurately. It is
the single most useful thing the cult owns, and the reason an almoner’s bag holds real
medicine rather than a prop.
A cell can therefore treat a sporing case competently, work a
Spore Load down, dress a rotgill wound, and hand
out the same formulas an officer of the order would hand out, at the same strength, for
nothing. It does this without hesitation and files it under hygiene rather than charity: a
brood that offers nothing to any individual is worth curing, and a cell cannot afford to
lose hands to one on the road.
The inquiline treatments are in part IV as well, transcribed as faithfully as everything
else and never used. Against each of them, in the author’s hand, is a single word:
Refused.
Part V
A hand’s spells are rare for reasons that have nothing to do with difficulty. Most cells
have never seen part V. Cells that have are old, dug in, and have been doing something for
years that persuaded a careful man in another place to write to them.
The Lazaret holds four copies, all incomplete, none with a part V. The counter-work at the
first house is built from them.
What they believe
The True File does not claim the broods are gods. It claims they are the only living things
that have solved the problem every other living thing dies of, and that they are generous
with the solution. A hand does not pray to an inquiline: what the book describes is an offer
of a body, and the cult uses that word for it.
Three doctrines run through the book and appear in every cell, however far apart.
The first is that emptiness is a condition rather than a default. A body with nothing in it
is unfinished, and the discomfort people feel around the marked is recognition rather than
disgust.
The second is that the offer cannot be negotiated. What line a graft takes is decided at
the feeding and not by the one receiving it, so a hand asks for nothing specific and is
given what the parasite decides to give. The cult calls this the assignment. There is no
appeal and no second attempt.
The third is that leaving is worse than dying. A graft can be expelled, and the discipline
that ends one takes a day, which the True File cites as evidence that people do not value
what they have been given.
The Kenotics
The rite is called the Kenotics, and it is the only ceremony the cult performs once.
A cell keeps latchkin. This is the practical fact underneath all the liturgy, and it is the
reason the Lazaret hunts cells the way it hunts colonies. A Kenotics requires a live
inquiline in a condition to feed, so every cell of any size maintains a
clutch, feeds it, and loses members to it
at a rate no cell records.
The postulant is brought in, held, and fed on once. The officiant is an ostiary. The
graft is left, the parasite detaches, and the
assignment is read from the marks over the following days. From that hour the postulant is
a hand, and the date is kept the way other people keep a birthday. Before the day is out
they are dosed with Countenance and taught to prepare it, because a hand who cannot be kept
working is of no use to a cell.
The assignment decides what the rest of a hand’s life looks like.
A sallow assignment is fatal, and everyone present knows it when the marks come up. The
cult calls it being called early, treats the death as selection rather than misfortune, and
considers it the most complete of the three outcomes. A hand who draws sallow is
congratulated.
A chantry assignment is the one hands hope for and will not admit to hoping for. Every
spell the host spends deepens the graft, so a caster advances faster than anyone else in
the cell, and the discipline that would expel it is a single day spent casting nothing. A
chantry hand therefore casts daily, without exception, as an act of devotion, which makes
the cult’s spellcasters both its most advanced members and its least stable.
A palimpsest assignment takes memory, a piece at a time, without announcement. The cult
calls it being unwritten and considers it the cleanest of the three, on the grounds that a
hand who has forgotten what they were before cannot be argued back into it.
Ranks and offices
Two ladders run at once. Grade is how deep the graft has gone. Office is what a hand does,
and most of the offices are work that requires walking, talking, lifting, and being trusted
near the living, all of which a graft takes away in that order. The exception is the
sacristan, which can be done sitting down and is therefore the only office a deep grade can
hold.
Nobody holds an office as a promotion. A hand is given one because they are still able to
perform it, and loses it the moment they are not.
Every one of them is a person, and a cell is not a warband. Almoners work alone and in the
open, sextons work at night and at a distance, ostiaries stay with the clutch, and
sacristans do not leave the room they brew in. Hands fight to protect the clutch and rarely
for any other reason. They surrender readily, talk freely, and treat capture as an
opportunity to explain the book.
The cult is written for slow discovery rather than ambush. An almoner met early and liked
does more for the chapter than any encounter that opens with a drawn weapon, and a party
that accepts help from one before learning what they are has already been in reach of the
clutch.
Every hand except the almoner carries a graft and is under Countenance when the party meets
them, which is why none of these blocks shows the penalties of a stage. An almoner carries
nothing at all and examines healthy by any means. A hand caught before Matins is a
different creature, and the Grafted trait on each block says what changes.
Almoners
Almoners are not hands. An almoner is clean, has never been fed on, and cannot be given the
Kenotics until they have brought somebody else in first. One delivered candidate buys the
rite, and nothing else does. The cult treats this as the only loyalty test it needs, on the
grounds that a person who has handed over a stranger has already accepted the book’s
argument in practice.
They arrive during outbreaks, in bad seasons, and wherever a house is admitting more than
it can hold. They carry real medicine and real food and give it away without conditions,
and they do not say who sent them. At a distance a village cannot tell an almoner from an
officer of the Lazaret. Up close it still cannot, because there is nothing under the skin
to find. The resemblance is deliberate and carefully maintained, and it is what gets an
almoner through a gate.
Almoner
Medium Humanoid, Any Evil Alignment
A clean recruiter for the Hands of the Host, and the only member of the cult carrying nothing at all. An almoner arrives during an outbreak with real medicine and real food, gives both away without conditions, and doesn’t say who sent them. They can’t be given the cult’s rite until they have delivered somebody else to it, so every kindness is also an audition.
- AC
- 13
- Initiative
- +2 (12)
- HP
- 39 (6d8+12)
- Speed
- 30 ft.
- Skills
- Deception +7, Insight +4, Medicine +6, Persuasion +7
- Senses
- Passive Perception 12
- Languages
- Common
- Gear
- Knife, Leather Armor
- CR
- 1 (XP 200; PB +2)
Traits
Practiced Hands. The almoner has Advantage on Wisdom (Medicine) checks made to treat a brood disease, and on Charisma (Deception) checks made to pass as an officer of the Lazaret.
Actions
Multiattack. The almoner makes two Knife attacks.
Knife. Melee Attack Roll: +4, reach 5 ft. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) Piercing damage.
Physic (3/Day). The almoner treats one creature within 5 feet. The target regains 10 (3d6) Hit Points, or loses 1d4 Spore Load, or the Poisoned condition on it ends. The almoner chooses which.
Reactions
Vouch. Trigger: A creature within 30 feet that the almoner can see makes a Charisma (Deception) or Charisma (Persuasion) check about one of the almoner’s allies or the source of their supplies. Response: The check succeeds.
Postulants
A postulant is a hand in their first weeks: fed on once, carrying a graft that has not
moved, and dosed with Countenance from the day of the rite. The grade is defined by what
has not happened yet. Nothing shows, nothing hurts, and the assignment read from the marks
is the only thing about them that has been settled.
Cells give postulants the work that needs a body rather than a judgment — digging,
carrying, standing at doors, walking a measure out to a sexton at the far edge of the
ground. They are not trusted with the clutch, they are not told who the sacristan is, and
they are rarely sent to speak to anyone the cult wants. A postulant recruited by an almoner
has often not met a second hand yet.
Most of them are still being looked for. The cult treats this as an ordinary risk rather
than a secret to keep: a postulant writes home in their own hand, saying they have taken
work and will be some time, and an ostiary reads each letter before it goes.
The grade is also where the cult loses most of the people it takes. A Kenotics that does
not root leaves a postulant clean, which the book counts as a failure rather than a
reprieve, and the second offer covers them like any other.
Postulant
Medium Humanoid, Lawful Evil
The newest grade of the Hands of the Host: days or weeks past the rite, with a graft rooted and nothing yet moved. Postulants dig, carry, and hold doors, and most of them still have family somewhere who are looking for them. A cell gives them the ground before it gives them anyone to talk to.
- AC
- 12
- Initiative
- +1 (11)
- HP
- 44 (8d8+8)
- Speed
- 30 ft.
- Immunities
- Frightened
- Skills
- Athletics +4, Religion +2
- Senses
- Passive Perception 10
- Languages
- Common
- Gear
- Spade
- CR
- 2 (XP 450; PB +2)
Traits
Grafted (Stage 1). The postulant carries an Inquiline graft and is under the effect of a Countenance spell, so it shows none of that stage’s penalties or marks. A postulant met before the effect is renewed has the penalties of stage 1 of its line’s disease.
Actions
Multiattack. The postulant makes two Spade attacks.
Spade. Melee Attack Roll: +4, reach 5 ft. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) Slashing damage.
Offer (1/Day). The postulant holds out an open hand. Wisdom Saving Throw: DC 11, one creature within 5 feet that can see the postulant. A creature that has watched a member of the Hands of the Host die makes this save with Advantage. Failure: The target has Disadvantage on attack rolls against the postulant until the end of the postulant’s next turn.
Sextons
Sextons are the opposite office, and the newest hands hold it. A postulant is given the
ground before any contact with anyone the cult hopes to recruit, on the reasoning that a
hand who will be going into that ground eventually should learn it while they can still
dig. A sexton knows to the hour how long a body stays worth carrying, and treats arriving
late as a personal failure rather than an accident. The office also carries out the second
offer, which is why cells give it to hands too new to have made friends.
Sexton
Medium Humanoid, Lawful Evil
The hand who keeps a cell’s ground and lays out the dead who go into it. A sexton works at night, alone, at a distance from the cell, and knows to the hour how long a body stays worth carrying. The office goes to the newest hands, on the reasoning that whoever will be going into that ground eventually should learn it while they can still dig.
- AC
- 14
- Initiative
- +5 (15)
- HP
- 127 (17d8+51)
- Speed
- 30 ft.
- Skills
- Athletics +7, Perception +4, Stealth +5
- Senses
- Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 14
- Languages
- Common
- Gear
- Hook, Spade, Studded Leather Armor
- CR
- 6 (XP 2,300; PB +3)
Traits
Grafted (Stage 1). The sexton carries an Inquiline graft and is under the effect of a Countenance spell, so it shows none of that stage’s penalties or marks. A sexton met before the effect is renewed has the penalties of stage 1 of its line’s disease.
Ground Sense. The sexton knows the location of every corpse within 60 feet, whether or not anything has been laid in it, and which of them died within the last day.
Nightworker. The sexton has Advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made in Dim Light or Darkness.
Actions
Multiattack. The sexton makes two Spade attacks. It can replace either of them with a Hook attack.
Spade. Melee Attack Roll: +7, reach 5 ft. Hit: 17 (2d12 + 4) Slashing damage.
Hook. Melee Attack Roll: +7, reach 10 ft. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) Piercing damage, and if the target is Large or smaller it is pulled up to 10 feet straight toward the sexton.
Consign (Recharge 5–6). The sexton drives a hook into one creature and hauls it down. Strength Saving Throw: DC 15, one Medium or smaller creature within 10 feet. Failure: 21 (6d6) Bludgeoning damage, and the target is pulled to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the sexton and has the Grappled (escape DC 15) and Prone conditions. Success: Half damage only. While a creature is Grappled this way, the sexton has Advantage on attack rolls against it and moves at full Speed while dragging it.
Reactions
Second Offer. Trigger: A creature within 5 feet of the sexton dies. Response: The sexton takes hold of the corpse and moves up to 15 feet. A corpse carried this way doesn’t slow the sexton and doesn’t count against what it can carry.
Ostiaries
The doorkeeper performs the Kenotics, keeps the clutch fed, and decides who is admitted. In
a cell of any size the ostiary is also the only hand who knows every other hand by name,
which makes the office the cult’s memory and its weakest point.
When measures run short the ostiary decides who is passed over, and there is no doctrine
covering the decision. Cells that have gone short more than once are difficult to approach
and impossible to negotiate with.
Ostiary
Medium Humanoid, Lawful Evil
The doorkeeper of a cell of the Hands of the Host. An ostiary performs the rite, keeps the clutch of latchkin fed, and decides who is admitted, which makes them the only hand in a cell who knows every other hand by name. When measures run short they decide who is passed over, and nothing in the cult’s book covers the decision.
- AC
- 16
- Initiative
- +2 (12)
- HP
- 165 (22d8+66)
- Speed
- 30 ft.
- Skills
- Insight +6, Medicine +6, Perception +6, Persuasion +6
- Senses
- Passive Perception 16
- Languages
- Common
- Gear
- Ceremonial Blade, Chain Shirt, Shield
- CR
- 8 (XP 3,900; PB +3)
Traits
Grafted (Stage 2). The ostiary carries an Inquiline graft and is under the effect of a Countenance spell, so it shows none of that stage’s penalties or marks. An ostiary met before the effect is renewed has the penalties of stage 2 of its line’s disease.
Keeper of the Clutch. Tiny Inquiline creatures don’t attack the ostiary, and the ostiary can direct any such creature within 30 feet as a Bonus Action.
Spellcasting
Casts using WIS as the spellcasting ability, spell save DC 14, +6 to hit with spell attacks.
At Will: Anamnesis, Fair Copy
2/Day Each: Assumption of the Case, Lazaret Sill
1/Day Each: Bloom Interdict
Actions
Multiattack. The ostiary makes two Ceremonial Blade attacks.
Ceremonial Blade. Melee Attack Roll: +5, reach 5 ft. Hit: 11 (2d8 + 2) Slashing damage plus 10 (3d6) Necrotic damage.
Admit (Recharge 5–6). Charisma Saving Throw: DC 14, one creature the ostiary can see within 30 feet. Failure: 22 (5d8) Psychic damage, and the target can’t willingly move away from the ostiary until the end of its next turn. Success: Half damage only.
Reactions
Bar the Door. Trigger: A creature the ostiary can see moves toward the clutch or the sacristy. Response: The ostiary casts Lazaret Sill, if it has a use of that spell remaining.
Ciboria and sacristans
A Ciborium is a hand at stage 3, named for the vessel that holds the host. The graft stands
up under the skin from wrist to collarbone, the legs have mostly stopped being useful, and
what is left is a person who can still think, still speak, and still work with their hands.
That is the office of sacristan. It requires no walking, no lifting, and no contact with
anyone outside the cell, so it falls to a Ciborium who has nothing else left to do. They
keep the clutch, harvest it, brew the day’s measures, and count them.
The quarters sit as deep inside a cell’s holding as the building allows, behind whatever
the cell can put between them and a door. At the first house of the cult they adjoin the
First Graft’s own rooms and share a wall.
Who the sacristan is, is not general knowledge. Most hands never learn, and the ones who do
are the ostiary and whoever carries food in. A sacristan issues measures through a hatch or
a curtain, robed and hooded, with the hands gloved and the arms covered, so that not even
the marks are visible to somebody standing a foot away. A cell that loses its sacristan to
a raid frequently does not know which of its dead it has lost until the following morning.
Taking the sacristy ends a cell faster than fighting it. Every hand in the place is
symptomatic by the following morning, and stage 4 arrives on schedule regardless.
Ciborium
Medium Humanoid, Lawful Evil
The third grade of the Hands of the Host, named for the vessel that holds the host. A ciborium’s graft stands up under the skin in a thick pale line from the wrist to the collarbone, and its legs have mostly stopped being useful. It is found in a room, usually seated, behind whatever the cell could put in the way, and it counts the depth of its own case to the point.
- AC
- 17
- Initiative
- −1 (9)
- HP
- 210 (28d8+84)
- Speed
- 20 ft.
- Immunities
- Charmed, Frightened
- Skills
- Perception +6
- Senses
- Blindsight 30 ft., Passive Perception 16
- Languages
- Common
- Gear
- Cane
- CR
- 12 (XP 8,400; PB +4)
Traits
Grafted (Stage 3). The ciborium carries an Inquiline graft and is under the effect of a Countenance spell, so it shows none of that stage’s penalties. The graft is visible under the skin regardless.
Slow. The ciborium can’t take the Dash action.
Depth. The ciborium tracks the Depth of its own graft, starting a fight with 3 Depth, and knows the count exactly. It can’t take an action, Bonus Action, or Reaction that would bring its own Depth to 6.
Actions
Multiattack. The ciborium makes three Graft attacks. It can replace any of them with a Cane attack, and one of them with a use of Seed.
Graft. Melee Attack Roll: +8, reach 10 ft. Hit: 26 (4d10 + 4) Piercing damage, and the ciborium can spend 1 of its own Depth. If it does, a target that carries a graft gains 1 Depth.
Cane. Melee Attack Roll: +8, reach 5 ft. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) Bludgeoning damage plus 7 (2d6) Poison damage.
Seed. The ciborium spends 3 of its own Depth and can’t take this action with fewer than 3 Depth. Constitution Saving Throw: DC 15, each creature in a 15-foot Emanation originating from the ciborium. Failure: 27 (6d8) Piercing damage, and the target gains 2 Depth. Success: Half damage only, and the target gains 1 Depth. Failure or Success: A target that carries no graft of the ciborium’s line gains one.
Bonus Actions
Vessel. The ciborium takes 1 Depth from one creature within 10 feet that carries a graft, willing or not, and gains 10 Temporary Hit Points.
Reactions
Hold. Trigger: The ciborium takes damage. Response: The ciborium reduces that damage by 10 and gains 1 Depth.
Translation
Translation is the word for what the order would file as a
stage 4 case. In church usage it means both the
moving of a saint’s relics and being taken up without dying, and the cult means both. A
cell that has produced a Translation does not mourn and does not disband. It moves, because
whatever the case became is still nearby and still feeding.
Countenance
Countenance is the cult’s only universal possession. Without it a cell would consist of
people who cannot walk, work, or pass for well, and the True File spends more pages on its
preparation than on anything the cult believes.
A dose is a measure. It is brewed rather than enchanted, which is the reason the cult
functions at all: a hand needs no magic to make one, carry one, or take one. A hand who can
already cast is taught the spell instead and stops queuing for the sacristy, though they do
not stop attending. Both last 24 hours and both are taken at first light. The rules for the
measure are under Draughts and for the spell under
Magic.
A hand under Countenance feels well, looks well, works a full day, and passes any
examination that does not involve magic. Underneath it the graft advances exactly as it
would in somebody screaming. The Lazaret’s catalog files it as symptomatic suppression and
marks it the most dangerous entry in the book, on the grounds that it does no harm whatever
and hides everything. No house stocks it and no house will make one.
Matins
A measure lasts 24 hours and is taken at first light, before food, before work, before
anything. The cult calls the observance Matins after the first office of the day, and it is
the only ceremony a hand performs more than once.
The timing is not devotional in origin. A measure taken at first light lapses at first
light, so every hand in a cell wakes symptomatic and stays that way until they reach the
front of the queue. The line therefore forms in grade order, deepest first: a Postulant can
stand and wait for an hour, and a Ciborium cannot.
Matins is a queue rather than a service. The cell forms up at the sacristy, each hand takes
their measure at the hatch, and each drinks it there and is seen to. Hands who can cast do
not skip the line. They come to the same place at the same hour and cast in front of the
sacristan instead of drinking. The observance is a roll call as much as a distribution, and
a cell learns who is missing before it learns anything else that morning.
Nobody carries their own except almoners on the road and sextons working ground at a
distance. A hand who has missed a morning cannot hide it, and a hand who has left cannot
get another.
Hands who never go outside take their measure the same as anyone. The penalties of a stage
are not a matter of appearances, and a sacristan without a measure cannot hold a pestle.
The most housebound members of a cell are its most dependent, which includes the sacristan
and the First Graft.
The objection
If a graft is a gift, taking something every morning to blunt it is difficult to defend,
and the True File knows it. The book’s answer is that the symptoms are not the gift. They
are the body’s objection to the gift, produced by an organism that has spent its whole life
alone and cannot be expected to know better. The measure is therefore not a refusal of what
was given, but a treatment of the complaint about it.
Not every hand accepts this. The ones who refuse the measure are called the Unmeasured, and
they are the only members of the cult who are unambiguously admired. They also last about
three weeks and can work for none of them, which is why an ostiary discourages the practice
without ever saying so, and why a cell with more than one is close to losing the hands it
has.
The First Graft
He took his title from the brood rather than from the church he borrowed the rest of the
vocabulary from, and every hand notices it. The ranks beneath him are liturgical because a
rite needs liturgy and most people need a rite. His own title is medical, and it names him
rather than an office.
He has held at stage 3 for decades and has no intention of moving. A graft deepens with
rest, so holding a stage is not passivity and cannot be achieved by doing nothing. It costs
him a program of magical care administered in the exact proportion required, and it
consumes most of what a cell brings him. He has never been Unmeasured. He takes his measure
every morning at a hatch six feet from where he sleeps, and he takes his restorations
besides.
The cult’s official position is that the First Graft remains where he is so that there is
somebody left who can still explain the book. A faction of Ciboria hold that the man who
tells every hand to go all the way has arranged never to arrive. He does not argue with
them, and he has outlived every faction that has raised it.
He was a lector, so he can run a house, keep a file, and read a case of any of the three
broods at a glance. Parties who expect a raving heretic meet a tired administrator who asks
careful questions about their symptoms and is genuinely relieved when the answers are good.
The First Graft
Medium Humanoid, Lawful Evil
The lector who spent eleven years copying case records in the order’s houses, drew the opposite of everything the order teaches out of them, published it, and walked out with a hundred and forty pages. He has held at the third stage for decades and has no intention of moving, which costs him a program of magical care in exactly the proportion required and most of what his cells can bring him. Parties expecting a raving heretic meet a tired administrator who asks careful questions about their symptoms.
- AC
- 17
- Initiative
- +13 (23)
- HP
- 270 (36d8+108)
- Speed
- 30 ft.
- Immunities
- Charmed, Frightened
- Skills
- Deception +9, History +10, Insight +9, Medicine +14, Perception +9
- Senses
- Passive Perception 19
- Languages
- Common, Deep Speech, plus two other languages
- Gear
- Lector’s Blade, Studded Leather Armor
- CR
- 15 (XP 13,000; PB +5)
Traits
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the First Graft fails a saving throw, he can choose to succeed instead.
Grafted (Stage 3). The First Graft carries an Inquiline graft and is under the effect of a Countenance spell, so he shows none of that stage’s penalties or marks.
Held. The First Graft gains no Depth from a Long Rest, from any effect in this library, or from any spell he casts.
Lector’s Eye. The First Graft knows the line, stage, and Depth of every graft, the Spore Load of every creature, and whether anything is laid in any corpse, for every creature and body he can see. No suppression conceals any of it from him.
Spellcasting
Casts using INT as the spellcasting ability, spell save DC 18, +10 to hit with spell attacks.
At Will: Anamnesis, Detect Magic, Fair Copy, Latchwork, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion
3/Day Each: Assumption of the Case, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Exacerbation, Misty Step
2/Day Each: Chantry Tithe, Greater Invisibility, Instar, Wall of Force
1/Day Each: Second Assignment, Sequestration, Telekinesis
Actions
Multiattack. The First Graft makes three Lector’s Blade attacks.
Lector’s Blade. Melee Attack Roll: +8, reach 5 ft. Hit: 12 (2d8 + 3) Slashing damage plus 10 (3d6) Necrotic damage.
Read the Case (Recharge 5–6). Wisdom Saving Throw: DC 18, one creature the First Graft can see within 60 feet. A creature carrying a graft makes this save with Disadvantage. Failure: 33 (6d10) Psychic damage, and the target has Disadvantage on saving throws until the end of its next turn. Success: Half damage only.
Legendary Actions (3/round)
Immediately after another creature’s turn, this creature can expend a use to take one of the following actions. It regains all expended uses at the start of each of its turns.
Annotate. The First Graft makes one Lector’s Blade attack.
Correct. One creature within 30 feet that carries a graft gains 1 Depth. If this brings the creature to stage 4, stage 4 arrives on its usual schedule rather than at once. The First Graft can’t take this action again until the start of his next turn.
Move. The First Graft moves up to his Speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks. He can’t take this action again until the start of his next turn.
Working with the Necrophore
The cult does not venerate the necrophore. It has an arrangement with one, which the
Lazaret considers the worse of the two.
The problem the arrangement solves is waste. A hand who reaches stage 4 becomes something,
and the cult counts that as the point of everything it does. A hand who dies short of it
becomes nothing at all, and by the book’s own argument has been emptied for no purpose.
Sallow cases are not the problem, whatever a cell’s newer hands assume. A sallow assignment
runs its course, the host dies of it, and the Quagdam
works its way out over the following days and leaves for standing water. The fluke fed the
whole way and goes on feeding after the death, so a sallow corpse is spent by the time
anything else could be laid in it. The cult counts this the most complete Translation of
the three, which is why a Kenotics that comes up sallow is met with congratulation rather
than grief.
The second offer covers the failures instead. Hands killed on the road or in a house. Hands
whose Kenotics did not take, where the parasite fed and nothing rooted. Hands who expelled
a graft, deliberately or by accident, and are now as empty as the day they arrived. Hands
who changed their minds and were brought back.
None of them are executed, and the cult would reject the word. They are given the second
offer, which is done at the ground, within a day, by a sexton, without ceremony of any
kind. The True File is explicit that the manner does not matter and freshness does. That is
the whole of the doctrine on the subject, and it is the passage the Lazaret quotes when it
is asked why the order treats a cell as a colony.
A necrophore lays in the dead and wants nothing from the living, which makes it the only
brood the cult can deal with as a supplier rather than as a subject. A body laid in still
produces. The book calls what comes out the second offer, distinguishes it carefully from
Translation, and does not claim the two are equal.
A cell of any age therefore keeps ground as well as a clutch: a barrow, a plague pit, a
field nobody works any more. Bodies go there fresh and they go there quickly, because a
body is useful for a day and worthless after. Cells that have held the same ground for
years are dangerous out of all proportion to the number of hands living on them.
Refusing the Sporophore
The First Graft rejects the sporophore, and the rejection is doctrine rather than distaste.
A sporophore does not want a person. It wants the ground the person is standing on, and it
takes a wall or a field or a wood with the same appetite it takes a body. The True File
argues that a brood offering nothing to any individual has nothing to offer at all, and
that a hand who kneels to one has mistaken scale for generosity.
Hands who disagree exist anyway. Cells near contaminated ground produce them reliably, and
the cult has no procedure for the problem, because the book never anticipated a heresy
inside a heresy. What becomes of those hands varies by cell and is never written down.
The order’s position
The Lazaret does not recognize the Kenotics as a rite. Its files record voluntary
implantation, the date, the line, and nothing else. No house has ever refused to admit a
hand, because a house does not turn out a patient, and no house has ever cured one, because
the patient does not want it and a Lazaret officer is taught no restoration magic to press
on them anyway.
The book itself is the harder problem. The order publishes what it learns on the principle
that a file nobody has read protects nobody, and the founding argument of the cult was
published under that principle by one of its own. The counter-work is kept at the first
house and copied nowhere. Lectors disagree in writing about whether that is prudence or the
first crack in the only thing the order has ever been certain of, and the disagreement is
itself on file.