The Brine Choir

Who they are

The Brine Choir is an off-world people adapted to brine. They came long before the exiles, and they made the deep hypersaline lakes of the dried sea their home. They are many-voiced, translucent and teal-grey, slow and hard to kill. Their heart is the Deep Chantry, in the deepest brine at the Bottom of the World, where their voice is loudest. Their ruler is the Deep Voice.

The Choir holds the salt floor and the brine lakes: the Singing Mere in the Salt Deep, the White Hollow in the Sunken Hearth, right beside the exiles' camp, and the Last Pool far to the east. They are defending their lake homes against the Court's mining.

How they fight

The Choir fights with song. Their Choristers sing the Dirge, a psychic chorus that does little damage but drains an exile's Will with every hit, and keeps it drained until a Mender lifts it. Since every psychic power costs Will, the Dirge starves the crowned. The Choristers also sing at whoever has the least Will left, so an exile who has just cast is the one they find.

Beside the Choristers come three other forms:

• the Descant, a small, quick skirmisher who comes in pairs or packs, throws salt javelins, then closes with a glass knife
• the Antiphon, a melee shock trooper whose keening blade drains Will like the Dirge
• the Bourdon, a giant with a slab blade, which turns up on every siege

Choristers are always the core of a Choir force. Their stats, weapons and behaviour are on the Brine Choir's enemy page.

Against the song

The Dirge can be answered. A Mender's Mend clears it. A Voice at Zenith can learn the Countersong, which stops the drain round the singer and costs each singer that tries its next turn. A bitter tonic from the workshop gives some of it back. See Will.

The rivalry

The Choir and the Glass Court are rivals, and they war on each other at their borders. Taking the Deep Chantry silences the Choir for a time and is half of the campaign's victory. See the war.