Overview
The Gate-Sense Revenant is the tall, narrow, pale shape — heavy through the jaw and shoulder, the head sitting a little too high on the body, like a word that is waiting for an oath, and the whole of it reading as one line from crown to toe that is a vigil, and the vigil is the word the gate keeps for it. It is the first of the Revenants a stranger meets at The Vigil Gate, and the one the gate keeps for the oath no one else is true enough to hold. Where the other revenants of the gate are the oath, the Gate-Sense revenant is the standing behind the oath: the gate speaks to it, and it answers with the vigil.
Habitat
The Gate-Sense Revenant keeps the old ground of The Vigil Gate, a gate of pale stone where the oath is the only honest promise. It needs three things: a gate old enough to hold the vigil, a soul-debt wide enough to feed the sentinel, and a stranger who is worth the name. The vigils are run in bodies of ten to thirty, led by the Oath-Keeper, and the Gate-Sense line is the line the Oath-Keeper reads first, because the line knows every oath in the gate, and the knowing is the vigil, and the vigil is the point.
Appearance
Males stand 1.83 m, heavy through the jaw and shoulder, with a low, barked voice that is the gate's first oath; females stand 1.68 m, leaner and quicker, with a thinner hide and a longer memory, and a revenant female does not avert her gaze, because the vigil answers for her. The hide is a pale grey, the grey of old gate-stone, with a deep sea-black patch at the cheek and a clean, deliberate bone-white at the lip and the finger-tip, the bone-white being the oath made hide, and the depth of the bone-white is the truth of the vigil.
Behaviour
The Gate-Sense Revenant does not move first; it stands, and the standing is the vigil, and the vigil is the behaviour. It moves 6 m/s across the vigil-ring, deliberate and certain, and it does not hurry, because the oath is the only thing in the gate that is worth the hurry, and the oath is never in a hurry. It reads the gate before it moves in it: the shape of an oath by the soul it stirs, the cold of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a name that has been spoken and not kept, all of it arriving before the step is made, and the arrival is the vigil.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the vigil, and the vigil is the promise: the Gate-Sense revenant keeps one oath, and the oath does not come back until the vigil is done, and the nod that is the soul is the last word of the gate. The second weapon is the hand, because the vigil is not always the oath, and the hand that is a little too long for the arm is the word the vigil is too patient for. The defense is the gate, because the pale hide takes a blow the way the gate-stone takes the word, and the jaw is the one part of the body that has been hit the most, and the jaw is the part that has never given.
Magic Alignment
The Gate-Sense Revenant stands in the service of Brakka, the Unbroken Word, the god of the word that does not break, and its magic is the keeping of the oath — the power to make the soul into a promise and the promise into an oath. Gate-Sense is the primary gift: the hide reads the gate, every oath in it, kept and known, and the knowing is the vigil, and the vigil is the point. The secondary gift is the Stone-Sight of the Revenants, and in the Gate-Sense line the sight is the mood of the oath, felt a day before it is broken, and the feeling is the one thing the stone of the gate has never broken.
Society
A Gate-Sense Revenant stands in a vigil of ten to thirty, and the vigil is run by the Oath-Keeper, the one whose vigil is truest, because the vigil is the only ground in the world where the truth is the law. The hierarchy is by the depth of the vigil: the one whose vigil holds longest eats the soul-debt first, and the one whose oath is truest keeps the gate-ring. The young revenants share the oath-line and share the standing, and the standing is the only school the gate has, and the school is the gate, and the gate does not grade, the gate only keeps.
Culture & Lore
The Gate-Sense Revenant keeps its lore in the vigil, and the vigil keeps it better than the oath does, because the vigil is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone breaks. The old revenants say the first Gate-Sense revenant was an oath that learned to stand, and the gate gave it a body because the gate had no other way to keep the vigil. They call the strangers who cross the oath-line "the ones who were worth the soul," and they keep the best of the gate-rings — the bone-white of the ones who were true enough to be a vigil — in the gate, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Vigil Gate, a gate of pale stone, its surface a constant grey shimmer, its silence broken only by the oath and the vigil. The Gate-Sense Revenant is the gate's first voice, and the gate is the revenant's first oath, and the two of them keep each other the way a vigil keeps a name. The soul-debt is kept by the Oath-Keeper, the oath-lines are kept true by the young, and the dead are kept where they fell, which is the one law the gate does not break. When the vigil is kept and the keeping is honest, the Gate-Sense revenant is at home in the way only the true thing can be: as the shape the gate was made to keep.
Relations
The Gate-Sense Revenant keeps a cold, true peace with the rest of the Revenants of The Vigil Gate, a peace of kept oaths that has held as long as the gate has been standing. To Brakka, the Unbroken Word, the Gate-Sense line is the first unbroken word made flesh, and the line keeps a single bone-white bead at the gate-ring for the god, which is the one offering the god has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Gate-Sense Revenant is the first pale test the gate offers, the vigil that asks which of them the oath will keep and which of them the oath must spend. It is the figure that keeps the oath-line while the oaths are made on the ground, and the figure whose vigil is the map the war is kept by, because the gate has read every approach the warrens have taken, and the gate has kept them, and the gate is the one page in the world the war cannot break.