Memoryeaters

*'There was a crunch in the leaf litter and Augus’ head snapped up, feeling that old terror surfacing, fearing that the memoryeater had somehow come back.'*

## Introduction

Memoryeaters are underworld creatures. The Nightingale tormented Augus with them, along with slurchers. Augus later used a memoryeater to incapacitate the Raven Prince.

## Physical Description

They appear initially as tiny globules of flesh, and when they move, they skitter. When they grow larger (e.g., the size of an orange), they are 'black and grey and matt in texture, reflecting light dully, [their] tiny black eyes – many of them – seeming to wink'. They also have 'segmented legs' they use to better grip prey, and a 'maw' they used to feed on targets, filled with many 'sharp and long' fangs.

'The Nightingale had once told Augus that memoryeaters typically took millennia to grow to' six feet in height and they typically 'needed thousands, hundreds of thousands of kills behind them.'

At least in pain, shock, or while dying they can emit a shriek 'so high that it' feels like it scours a fae's ears.

## Abilities

Memoryeaters attach themselves like ticks to targets and literally take memories from their prey. Known victims include Augus and the Raven Prince. Memoryeaters start out small in size, but grow as they feed, with the potential to become massive. They can survive without food for at least 150 years. Augus noted that 'underworld creatures didn’t seem to die as fae or humans died. They could be killed, but they didn’t seem to expire on their own. They just became hungrier.'

Augus noted that before the Raven Prince, he'd never seen memoryeaters eat all that quickly, but it might be that the Nightingale controlled the ones Augus knew very tightly.

Once full (though perhaps only when eating a lot in a very small amount of time), they detach from their prey and move as if drunk, when they are weak to being attacked, even at a large size.

Even a powerful and large memoryeater is 'easy enough to kill. Couldn’t die of natural causes, but a knife through the mouth and angled upwards, and it wouldn’t move.'

Their dead bodies decay quite quickly in the fae realm.

## Characters (culture, habits)

Augus explained to Gwyn ap Nudd: 'They are like ticks. They start off tiny when they are born, living in the crevices of skin and scales, attached to demons and other monsters. When they have fed off enough memories, they drop off and become their own semi-sentient creatures. Some become gigantic, behemoths in their own right, having glutted on enough creatures to become too big to even function.

They are not part of a hive mind. The Nightingale can control them because he promises them food, but they have a large appetite and if you promised them more they’d…they’re not loyal. But they are also repugnant and you cannot know the wet slickness of their teeth or how they sift through your memories looking for the ones that, to them, will be the tastiest. You cannot know the poison of it, or the desperate reaching for a blank space once they are done, something removed, a void in the tapestry of your thoughts.'

## Trivia

* Augus still deals with the terror that the memoryeaters will return for him.
* Memoryeaters appear as 'memoryeaters' 17 times and 'memory eaters' 3 times in canon, so 'memoryeaters' has been used for this entry.

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 3 March 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/7625663. Chapter 33: Confession.
2. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 4 July 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/4088631. Chapter 3: Disintegration.
3. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 2 January 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/6705320. Chapter 24: Listen.