The purpose of this document is twofold: to create a forum for Sauntiaq to anonymously share their experiences with metaphysicists, and to contextualize some of the physical and metaphysical characteristics of Sauntiaq within the shared history of the ash tundra. It is our hope that through the telling of stories, we may promote a better quality of care and awareness for our Sauntiaq neighbors.

Edited by Dr. Sinuk Vauntariaq, from interviews with Hon. “Ashe” Anu. Additional contributions made by his partner and other collaborators who wish to remain anonymous.

With thanks to the Free Companies of the Ash Tundra, the City of Basedt, Lin Dai, North Mountain University School of Sidereality, Court Normunt, Hon. Anu and his husband, Hon. Brun Nakamura, and the ocean black.

Let me address the myths first:

The disease is not contagious. Sauntiaq cannot create other Sauntiaq through bite or blood ritual or whatever you may have heard. I am not saying this because the risk of transmission is negligible; it is impossible. The world that created Sauntiaq no longer exists. The people that you treat may very well be the last of their kind.

It is not a form of divinity. Sauntiaq may have dilated lifespans from exposure to the eternal storm, but this was a property of the ash tundra that died with the storm. They have been released from its trap, and now age and die normally.

There is no known cure. It is thought that removing the disease from the body would result in death, due to the absence of critical life supporting functions that are carried out by the disease. Though persecution once drove many Sauntiaq to seek cures, this is not common in the present day. The disease itself is benign and easy to manage.

It used to be that death abandoned us in the ash tundra. Time was mutilated, and those who died there were caught in the twain between life and death, their dying dragged into eternity in each cardinal direction. I know that this is hard for you to comprehend, but you must understand that we are trying to describe something that abuts the limits of language. I have met men who were trapped in their bodies for decades. They watched their loved ones make pilgrimages to see them, but they were unable to speak, or cry out, or even lift their eyes to see them. These things don’t give themselves to definition.

The Sauntiaq are those who escaped the trap. They died in the tundra, but were later revived through the ash sickness, the saunt—whatever you want to call it.^[1] I am not sure why this happens. I think it might be beyond our reasoning.

This seems like a blessing to many of you outsiders, but the Sauntiaq were dealt a cruel hand. The ash tundra of old was a mockery of the desert we know today. No plants or animals could live there... The soil was poison, the seasons ran together into an endless winter, and the eternal storm devoured the sun for hours out of the day. Those who didn’t die of exposure often met their end at the hands of their own kin, driven mad by hunger and grief.

This is the world they woke up into. They inherited the knowledge of death, and would soon know the taste of starvation. I am no Sauntiaq, but I have known hunger, so I will tell it to you the best I can.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but it is difficult to find food in a world with no forage or game. There was food—I am living proof of it—but you will not meet many people who are willing to talk about what they’ve done to get it.

Two main sources of food existed in the ash tundra: the ruins of storehouses and ice cellars from the old world, and the holy city Basedt. The former had been run dry by years of scavenging. Those that didn’t stand empty were guarded jealously by the Manazthati, or were locked under the watchful eye of the Free Companies. Casting your lot with them never guaranteed a meal, though. There was never enough.

The City of Basedt, meanwhile, had rich, green gardens and a healthy desert, a healthy tundra. Plants took there. People could live well there. If you could get into Basedt, you would never again have to wonder where your next meal would come from.

And if you were like the rest of us, and couldn’t get in… Nahe, at least you knew where to start looking.

This is where the Sauntiaq get their other name— “hungry ghosts.” Basedt made no effort to discriminate between people like me, who ambushed their Watchmen looking for rations, and those who tried to eke out a good living on the ash tundra. We were all the same to them, woods-touched and monstrous.

What is bitter about this is that the Sauntiaq metabolism is different,^[2] but not in the way that Basedtis thought. Sauntiaq are well-equipped to cope with hunger. Far from ravenous ghosts of the storm, they are comfortable going weeks without eating after a good meal. I have known some Sauntiaq to survive years without food.

This is hard to appreciate when the average Sauntiaq was malnourished and underfed. Starvation didn't give way to death, but ceaseless hunger and pain. Eventually, a starving Sauntiaq would return to the state of inertia from which they were born. This was a source of intense grief and fear for many of them, who remember what it was like to be trapped between life and death.^[3]

If hunger did not drive a Sauntiaq to distraction, this fear often would. The Free Companies have a phrase for this state, in which Sauntiaq who have gone hungry for too long will do anything to stop the pain: “Stolen self.”

Do not mistake them. This loss of self is not fundamentally different from the behavior of a desperate man, thinking only of his survival. Sauntiaq are no more prone to hunger than any other being. They were made intimate acquaintances with it by Basedti persecution and the horrors of the ash tundra, which prolonged their suffering in a way that you and I cannot comprehend.

Nor do all Sauntiaq share this relationship with hunger. I am aware of some Sauntiaq who experienced hunger as a form of constant, chronic pain with no relief, and others who felt it only as a curtain of numbness. Others experience hunger but paradoxically lose all desire to eat; My partner had no interest in food for almost a year after the onset of the disease. A lucky few have never had to go hungry.

Most Sauntiaq are marked by a distinct form of scar tissue. I do not know the word for this in Satik, but in Sarikote we call it mun, after certain imperfections in our pottery.^[4] I have heard some Sauntiaq call them “marks” as well, though this was used by the Stormwall of Basedt and has negative connotations.

Mun are polychrome black, red, and white scars that form from wounds sustained by the Sauntiaq at their time of death. These are tissues left behind by the disease after it begins to take hold. Its onset is signalled by repairs that the body could not have done on its own, which are necessary for the Sauntiaq to function as a living, breathing person again.^[5]

Sometimes mun form from grave injuries that a Sauntiaq sustains later in life, as well. The regenerative qualities of the disease are well-documented.

Like hunger, no two Sauntiaq have the same relationship with their mun. This is outside of my experience. I can only retell what I have heard.

Few Sauntiaq will talk about their mun, due to their connection to death or other traumatic life events. This is further complicated by the visibility of some mun, which were used by the Stormwall to identify Sauntiaq out in the field. The City of Basedt had no tolerance for them within or outside their walls.

Many Sauntiaq still conceal their mun in memory of the persecution they faced. Though Sauntiaq are a protected class throughout Asthaom and beyond the ocean black, the existence of this document attests to the lack of awareness that the world has for Basedt and the ash tundra, as newcomers to the global theatre.

Not all Sauntiaq carry mun. Some had internal injuries that did not manifest outwardly, and others succumbed to entirely nonviolent or non-injurious causes of death. Sauntiaq with minor mun or no mun could often pass as non-Sauntiaq among Basedtis, though other characteristics of the disease made this difficult in the long term.

Many Sauntiaq have long canines. There is no pattern to their growth; some are large and noticeable, others are small and easily missed. I have heard lost teeth can be re-grown.

Like mun, large canines were a trait used by the Stormwall to identify Sauntiaq. This was notoriously unreliable, though. Basedt itself tells a folktale of a woman who was exiled on suspicion of being a Sauntiaq. She was not, but later became one when she succumbed to the tundra.

The iris is dark and sooty, almost black. There is a film behind the eye that reflects light, like the eyes of night animals.^[6]

The teeth and eyes took the longest to change in a Sauntiaq. Some woke up from death completely transformed, but others experienced the change over the course of weeks to months.

I don’t believe this is a Sauntiaq-specific phenomenon. I have yet to meet a survivor of the ash tundra who didn’t have some form of nightmare-induced sleep disorder. But night terrors are so common among Sauntiaq, even now, that it would be irresponsible not to mention them.

The storm disappeared as suddenly and violently as the day it arrived. Maybe this is the reason the wounds of yesterday are still fresh for so many of us. We never had closure.

The Sauntiaq that come to you now are grappling with 100 years of unfinished business. Any symptoms that they experience cannot be removed from the context that mothered them, and just at it is true of any other group, there is no one treatment plan for helping them manage their condition. In broad strokes some themes emerge, but we know that this document can only capture a pale shadow of the hardy and diverse spirit of Sauntiaq.

As metaphysicists, you will inevitably find that there are limits to the help you can offer. The Free Companies and other focus groups can provide more holistic care to Sauntiaq in these cases. But to have this conversation, you will need the client’s trust, and that can be painful territory for a people who have had many reasons to distrust doctors and physicians.