Threadwrights

To become a Threadwright is to devote a lifetime to the study of memory and meaning. Training often begins in childhood among Sashbound families, where students must first prove their emotional fluency and empathy before even touching Aether-Moss. Initiates must undergo a Memory Pilgrimage to at least two diaspora sanctuaries, participate in an Unspooling Ceremony to sever personal biases, and earn the approval of three Loomseers. It is said that the final test is not passed with answers, but with how well one weeps while listening to another's truth.

Most Threadwrights begin as Scribe-Knots, learning the art of binding and listening from a master over the course of five to ten years. Those who complete their training are named Bound Artisans, allowed to perform minor ceremonies and rites. In time, they may ascend to the role of Circle-Tier Mediator, permitted to oversee community disputes and emotional contracts. Only the most accomplished become Concord-Certified—rare Threadwrights with the authority to invoke the sacred Laws of the Last Loom. Some eventually become Unbound, retiring their threads to serve as mentors or archivists.

Threadwrights rarely accept traditional currency. Instead, they are paid in woven offerings, memory papers, crafted goods, or sacred objects infused with emotional resonance. They are exempt from most forms of civic labor or military draft, housed and fed in diaspora sanctuaries, and granted protection under spiritual and political law. In return, they offer their lives in service to memory.

Threadwrights hold the delicate role of preserving the emotional continuity of the Thalrani people. Their purpose is to bind ceremonially, spiritually, and legally. In every diaspora settlement, Threadwrights are in constant demand, needed to perform funerals, weddings, rites of passage, and negotiations. Without their intercession, no contract or union is considered spiritually valid. Their work transcends simple ritual; they bring order to emotional chaos and meaning to fragmented histories.

While most Threadwrights are of Thalrani descent, a handful of outsiders who have been adopted into the diaspora and proven themselves through years of devotion may rise to the title. Many Threadwrights are non-binary or gender-divergent, occupying a cultural role as “Threefold Intermediaries,” whose perspective allows them to interpret layered memories and experiences.

The tradition of Threadwrights predates the Great Sundering, tracing back to the loom-law scribes of Myriath, who once mediated between city threads and governed interlineage pacts. When the world fractured, the profession endured, adapting to the new reality of diaspora. Threadwrights became the keepers of what remained of memory, of home, and of the spiritual ties no Sundering could sever. Their authority was enshrined in The Laws of the Last Loom and reaffirmed during The Severance War, when they held together what nations could not.

Threadwrights carry a unique needle called the Sash Needle of Twelve Threads, which they use to bind vows into Sashweave cloth. They wear scentcord rings that release memory-linked fragrances, threadglass lenses to detect trauma-knots, and Aether-Moss tablets that retain emotions like ink. Their work relies on sacred materials, including Sashweave, Glowroot salve, and purified moss strands.

Most Threadwrights operate from Loomhalls in diaspora sanctuaries, though some travel with mobile thread-stages to reach remote enclaves. They preside over vowbinding ceremonies, funerary Threadsends, trauma unweavings, ancestral reconciliations, and the rare but world-shaking invocation of The Concord of Threaded Vow.

The work of a Threadwright is not without danger. Overexposure to trauma can result in memory flooding, emotional burnout, or identity dissonance. Many suffer from spiritual exhaustion and long periods of solitude. Despite this, their role is sacred and protected. Impersonating a Threadwright or interfering with a rite is punishable by cultural exile and the ritual severing of one’s Sash.