Keeper of the Rites

— The Keeper of the Rites to Rei, believing her to be Ahrric

The **Keeper of the Rites** is an Umbra Elder. He died 10,044 cycles ago, whispering a prayer. The resting place of the Keeper is in a cave in the Eternal Garden that is surrounded by massive ancient bones, close to the Whispering Sanctum and Ahrric the gardener's home.

It is the Keeper of the Rites' role as an Elder to make sure the Umbra hold to their people's ritualistic ways and perform the rites that is their responsibility to carry out. The Keeper put great emphasis on the fact that merely knowing the words to the incantations of certain rites is not enough, as the words must also become action, a fact that he impatiently reminded Ahrric the gardener of wt the times he had come to speak to the Keeper, disappointed that he has not yet given his life up and joined the Elders in oneness in the mycelium network.

The Keeper is a character in Ahhric's story questline A Dark Pilgrimage, and is the second Elder Ahrric tells Rei to find and talk to, since he is close to the Whispering Sanctum and his hut beside it.

## History

It is unknown what occupation the Keeper of the Rites had before he specialized and took up the mantle of Elder. It is possible that he was a form of priest, overseeing the rites of the Umbra just as he did as an Elder. The Keeper died 10,044 cycles ago.

### A Dark Pilgrimage

When Rei came to the see the Keeper of the Rites on her quest to gain knowledge about the Ultravoid she might use to save her planet from it, using the Spore Song blessing to wake him and make him believe she was Ahrric, the Keeper at first mistook Rei for the gardener and told "him" that he showed great knowledge of the rites for uttering the incantations of the Spore Song in a practised and precise way, but that "he" did not truly understand as the rites were not merely words but also had to become action. The Keeper noted that Ahrric shirked responsibility "like an impudent sporeling" and asked "him" why he refused "to join" them "in oneness" in the mycelium network. At that point, however, he became aware that it was nt Ahrric who had woken him but Rei and became hostile towards her, saying she was a "soul seperated from their time, space, selves, home" referring to the facts that Rei was trapped in a local time-loop created by the Starseed's activation, she was located inside of the Ultravoid rather than outside in the space that her hole planet used to be in, she was not a full being, being one half split from her original being, the other being Echo, and she was away from her home planet both as a visitor to the Ultravoid and because her home planet was no more, unbeknownst to her. Calling Rei a "fiend", the Keeper ordered her to leave. Rei revealed it was true that she was a stranger in the Ultravoid, but noted that she was no fiend and asked the Keeper if he knew where the Remnants had come from. The Keeper saw the question as an unorthodox request and granted her audience, consulting the mycelium network for answers as to the origins of the "malignant forces" of the Remnants, and answered her that the Umbra had indeed seen the "growing piles of swollen dividing masses" that was the Remnants, but let Rei know that the network mumured doubts that her question was genuine and said that she was not all she appeared to be. The Keeper then told Rei that her existence was a profanity, calling her a "Supplicant" and asked her to go and not darken the path of the Umbra "evermore." After this, Rei left to seek the third Elder.

## Physical appearance

The Keeper of the Rites, like other Umbra, was tall and lanky. His body was a deep magenta.

## Personality

The Keeper of the Rites was the most conservative of the Elders and aggresively so, being clearly offensed that Ahrric had not yet performed the Ritual and joined him and the others Umbra in the mycelium network.