Moon Born (From the Great Draft Exchange!)

I adopted this draft from Jones S of Was it Likely? in Dan D's  Great Draft Exchange! It is still going if you are interested here.

Moonlight is a wondrous substance. In the towers of the Elven Witch Weavers, they raise up vast lenses to collect it on great silver spools for use in weaving together cloaks of invisibility. The Dwarven Gem Crafter Guild bathe their white diamonds and sapphires in moonlight, trapping it's dreamy splendor within.

Amongst humanity, the devices for capturing moonlight have mostly been forgotten or left undiscovered, but in the deep shadows between the hills, in the hidden crevices of the mountains, in those sacred caverns where the lunar glow trickles into a great pond like water from a spring, there they find it. It is well known amongst wise women what this liquid moonlight is used for. They know how it might smooth wrinkles and change faces. They know how it might give beauty or ugliness.  Amongst the Matriarchs of the Faceless Sisters, in their hidden holy cavern where they keep their great lake of liquid moonlight, they offer the power of the substance to their sisterhood of spies, thieves, and assassins.

It is known that a woman should not partake of the liquid moonlight when she is expecting a child, but accidents happen and among the Cult of the Great Mother in the Moonspire Mountains it is a yearly ritual for a pregnant woman to partake of the liquid moonlight.

Those children born to said women are called the Moon Born or phantoms or Moon Ghosts.

They are born from the womb a shining, transparent, mercurial liquid: a form that neither they nor anyone else shall ever see again until the day the Moon Born dies.

As each moon gives way to the next, the Moon Born is compelled to adopt a new form. Not only that but they are also compelled to give up their current identity. Their memories and personalities fade like dreams, giving way to a new person. Each night, as the new moon approaches they are compulsively drawn to moonlight where their forms morph and distort in fits like reality shifting seizures, each night foretelling the approaching change.

Thus, most of them must constantly travel from place to place, never stopping, never setting down roots in any place.

The story of such a wandering Moon Ghost is told in the book: Encounters with the Lunar Shade by folklorist Amadeus Alpatriark concerning the tale of Amaricia Penny, a barmaid who fell in love with a Moon Born:

"He came in the winds of fall just after the New Moon. He looked around the Soggy Hole, looking rather lost, looking like he was trying to find something. From the moment I saw him, I knew he was special. We made love that night, but I woke up finding that he wasn't in the bed I thought maybe he had left me, but no. He was back in the morning, and I thought he might be back to stay, but with each day, something weighed on him, and each new night I found him missing from my bed at the witching hour.

I followed him, weeks later, on the last night I ever saw him. He was standing in the full moon's light, glowing, shining like he was becoming moonlight, himself. I called out and he turned, his eyes widening in surprise, pain, and terrible longing. He reached towards me as he seemed to bloom, his flesh branching off into swirling, sparkling shapes as if to embrace the moon.

Then, standing there, naked and the color of milk, was a woman. She looked at me, the light streaming through the gaps in her midnight hair. There were tears in her eyes. She twirled away and ran, her hair streaming over the hills."

Moon Born have an interesting history with regard to the church. Many Moon Ghosts are said to have taken refuge with the church. In monasteries and cathedrals, a Moon Born might learn the art of writing and be able to retain their own history through each changing form, and a Moon Born might find refuge amongst monks in their uniform clothes: in the company of others putting off their selves.

The theologian, Alexander Velar, wrote of the Moon Born in a sermon delivered in White Haven:

"Has not the Lord made clear that each of our lives is but a passing shade? Has he not shown that all our efforts shall laid to waste, our empires crumble, our temples torn down? He has not given you the phantom which keeps its face for a while and then loses it only to take up another? For such a creature all things are undeniably temporary, even as they are made new with the changing of the moon, everything they are and know is stripped away to make way for the new.  For such a creature what is power or wealth or pleasure? All things are but shifting shades and all the days are meaningless because none of these things remain. Look then instead to that which is eternal, to that which abides, and the greatest of these things is love!"

The church's connection with the Moon Born goes even deeper as the church has recorded and reprinted the scrolls of memory for a Moon Born by the title of The Bell Wringer in Memories of the Bell Wringer:

"I often think that I am cursed above all creatures. I awaken to a pile of paper, a hill of my life that I no longer fully remember. What kind of life can such a thing as I ever hope to truly have? Yet, I know that I am loved and blessed in ways reserved for none other than those like me. I read it over and over again in my scrolls. Each time I awaken to the sunrise and I experience its beauty as if seeing it for the first time. I have the distinct pleasure of seeing the world with new eyes again and again, and I know that my Lord has been good to me.

For I may be little more than a ghost, a passing wind, and these hands that write these words will be replaced by another, but none other is so blessedly able to see the glory of creation made new every morning than I. I give praise to the one that made me and who makes me new again and again that I might never leave the wonder of the present and the joy of each new moment."