Water Gardener
Water Gardeners are a type of Water Elemental found in Creation, born when the slow essence flows and clarity of still waters are disrupted by the powerful flows of winds and storms. They have the appearance of giant Brocaded Carp, their scales bright and iridescent, their movements slow and languid as they move through water or float in the air just above the ground.
The lot of the Gardeners in Creation has long been a difficult one. While the water features of grand palace gardens are sometimes large enough to see them born (indeed, during the Golden Age, the Exalted rulers of Creation ensured Gardeners were in place to keep their ornamental ponds properly serene), the constant movements of rivers and the energetic interactions of essence flows through the Inner Sea mean they are most often born either tending lonely lakes in the shelter of mountains or forests, or in patches of the expansive oceans of the West. In the West, the Gardeners face hostility from both the Storm Mothers who control most of the local spirit courts, and the elementals of air who make constant war upon the elementals of water.
The Gardeners are far from aggressive, and though their Spirit Charms of Ox Body Technique make them durable large numbers were slain by other spirits over the past millennia. While their powers to bring calm to wind and waves in the waters around them might be welcomed by island populations, the power and protection of cults is closed by the fact more potent spirits catch sight of such things and steal them for their own. Gardeners thus had little choice but to seek out powerful patrons, striking deals with summoners and powerful spirits. Until the chaos of the Great Contagion these occurred piecemeal, but that difficult time saw large numbers of the elementals take up an offer from Calm Serenity, the god of Western Peace, who made the spirits an offer of protection if they would serve him. Most readily complied, a tradition that has held in the centuries since, so that the Gardeners are a constant fixture in attendance to Calm Serenity, some divinities in Yu-shan seeing the beings as a part of his panoply.
Water Gardeners, whether swimming in air or water, may be slow but they are stable, and passengers who take seat upon their scales cannot help but feel calm and relaxation in so doing. This means that those riding a Water Gardner are completely relaxed for purposes of Essence regeneration, a reason the elementals are sometimes summoned by Dynastic sorcerers to serve as personal palanquins, despite the stigma such overt sorcery invokes.
