Old Kindly
What it is
Old Kindly (the Burden-Saint, the Chainbearer) is a divine-but-not-god presence that answers when suffering gets too big for a single body, a room, or even Cruinlagh itself to hold. You don’t worship it in temples. You call it in desperation. Its purpose is simple and terrifying: it takes excess torment so the person doesn’t break and the walker doesn’t rot.Appearance
Old Kindly is always described as a figure wrapped in layered aprons of knotted bandage and boiled linen, stiff with old pain, stained nearly black. Chains trail behind it into the dark, pulled tight, always dragging weight you can’t see. Its shoulders are bowed like a mule under load. No one sees its face. You don’t look.How it takes things
Someone whispers “Burden shared.” If it answers, the air goes heavy and sound goes muffled, like wool stuffed in your ears. Kindly lays a gloved hand on the suffering body. The screaming stops. Muscles unlock. The pain doesn’t heal, it just goes quiet enough to survive. If you beg, it can take your fear instead of theirs. After that, you’re steady, functional, “too fine,” and a little less yourself.Where it takes things
No one agrees. People say it drags torment down into the underbone tunnels inside Cruinlagh, or hangs it in a chain-maze where pain is stretched thin and cooled, or carries it to a red chamber under the walker’s heart and feeds it back into Cruinlagh so the city keeps moving. Keepers quietly believe it doesn’t take it anywhere at all. They think Old Kindly just holds it. Forever.Divine Domains
Torment
Relief
Burden
Endurance
(Secondary, whispered) Guilt
Relief
Burden
Endurance
(Secondary, whispered) Guilt
Divine Symbols & Sigils
The Burden Mark
The upright line is the bearer (Kindly, the burden-saint).The looped hook over it is the torment hung on them.
The drag marks are pain being taken away.
Divine Classification
Burden-Saint
Children
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