When the priests had finished their work, bestowing their benedictions on the new citizens-to-be, they relinquished the repository to a solemn line of villagers carrying ropes and soft leather cuffs. Among them were many fishermen, these being the best and most knowledgeable people when it came to the securing of bindings and knots.
One by one they tied the visitors to their beds. Not to make prisoners of these nascent friends and neighbors, but for their own good. Tradition held that travelers newly deprived of their faces were not always immediately receptive to the painless transformation, and tended to go on wild, mad rampages of despair and self-destruction, injuring themselves and sometimes other unwary Tiloeans. So they would be kept secured until they came, each in his or her own fashion, to accept the inevitability of their new lives.
Earnest attendants maintained a watch until the faces of the visitors began to reflect their new surroundings and the work of the priests. Ears were usually the first to go, followed by nostrils and then the rest. As these rose like newborn moths from the faces of their sleeping owners, they were shooed and herded into the back of the repository and into the great domed chamber where hundreds of other facial elements waited to greet them. One by one, the sleeping countenances of the newcomers were reduced to smooth, featureless blanks.
Commotion filled the room when they began to wake and discover themselves faceless. Instantly, gentling attendants were at the newcomers’ sides, soothing them with soft, wordless sounds and reassuring touches. These would be needed in quantity over the next few days, until the panicked sailors began to exhaust themselves or otherwise calm down.