SILENT bROTHERS »
|| SILENT BROTHERS ||
The Silent Brothers are indeed Shadowhunter's brothers - brothers to all Nephilim. Do not be frightened of them. Their appearance may be disconcerting, or even sickening, to you on first glance, but they are Nephilim, like you, and they fight on the same side, towards the same goals.
It is easy for new Nephilim to look upon the Silent Brothers as somehow more holy or angelic or powerful than the rest of us, but thisis not in factthe case. The Silent Brothers rarely fight and lack any of the many combat runes that Shadowhunters will likely receive to enhance your physical and metal abilities. Instead they have taken Marks upon themselves that grant them access to the more esoteric corners of the Gray Book. They are the Shadowhunters doctors, their scholars, their archivists. To them is given jurisdiction over the dead Nephilim. This of course includes those who rest in the Silent City, but the cemetery of Idris, too, is the Silent Brothers domain.
The Marks that the Silent Brother use in their work are not so much forbidden to other Nephilim as hidden from the Shadowhunter sight. In essence, parts of the Gray Book are locked and invisible to Shadowhunters, and the Marks the Brothers are inscribed with are the key. The Silent Brothers therefore have access to strange magic that you without see performed by other Nephilim. In exchange for their special abilities, they have given up some of their humanity, moving father the Earth and closer to Heaven than the rest of them. They are still human, but their extraordinary nature makes them often disconcerting to us: They leave no footprints, donot cast shadows, do not move their mouths to speak, and do not sleep. Their bodies are tugged upwards by Heaven, just as vampires bodies are tugged downwards by Hell.
The official habit of the Silent Brothers is a parchment-colored, hooded robe, belted at the waist. Novice Silent Brothers will usually have plain robes, while those who have advanced to full Brotherhood will have decorativeMarks circling the cuffs and hem of their robes, in blood red ink. High-ranking Brothers are sometimes known to carry scepters; these scepters are usually pure silver and are also decorated with Marks, with the head carved in a figurative symbolic shape, such as an angel with outstreched wings, a chalice, or the hilt of a sword. Silent Brothers cast no shadows on the rare occasions they are found in the sun; this is widely believed to be an affectation, like the robe, rather than having some actual purpose.
The Silent Brothers much, by Law, have both their eyes and mouths shut with Marks. There are several different Marks that accomplish this, and the different proceses vary, from magically stitching the eyes and mouth shut; to merely keeping the eyes and mouth permanently closed with the Mark of Fattering; to cleanly removing the eyes and/or mouth entirely, leaving blank spaces of flesh where they once were. The latter is, obviously, the most permanent and irreversible of these and is considered the most devout means of Marking oneself as a Silent Brother.
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