Overview
The Shade-Sense Wraith is the tall, narrow, hollow shape — heavy through the jaw and shoulder, the head sitting a little too high on the body, like a word that is waiting for a soul, and the whole of it reading as one line from crown to nothing that was made before it was made. It is the first of the Wraiths a stranger meets in The Moaning Moor, and the one the moor keeps for the soul no one else is exact enough to keep. Where the other wraiths of the moor are the moan, the Shade-Sense wraith is the standing behind the moan: the moor speaks to it, and it answers with the shade.
Habitat
The Shade-Sense Wraith keeps the old ground of The Moaning Moor, a moor of pale shade where the moan is the only honest promise. It needs three things: a moor wide enough to carry the moan, a soul-debt wide enough to feed the stalker, and a stranger who is worth the shade. The moor-shades are led by the Moan-Keeper, and the Shade-Sense line is the line the Moan-Keeper reads first, because the line knows every soul in the moor, and the knowing is the shade, and the shade is the point.
Appearance
The silhouette is the tall, narrow, hollow line — heavy through the jaw and shoulder, the head a little too high on the body, the whole of it built to read as one held word. Males stand 1.83 m, pale and heavy through the jaw and shoulder, with a low, barked voice that is the moor's first moan; females stand 1.52 m, leaner and quicker, with a thinner shade and a longer memory, and a wraith female does not avert her gaze, because the moor answers for her. The base shade is a pale grey, the grey of the old moor, with a deep sea-black hollow at the throat, and the rim of the eye a pale bone-white that is the mark the moor keeps.
Behaviour
The Shade-Sense Wraith does not walk first; it stands, and the standing is the shade, and the shade is the behaviour. It moves 4 m/s across the shade-line, exact and patient, and it does not hurry, because the soul is the only thing in the moor that is worth the hurry, and the soul is never in a hurry. It reads the moor before it moves in it: the shape of a soul by the shade it stirs, the cold of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a name that has been taken and not kept, all of it arriving before the step is made, and the arrival is the shade.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the moan, and the moan is the promise: the Shade-Sense wraith keeps one moan, and the moan does not come back until the shade is done, and the nod that is the soul is the last word of the moor. The second weapon is the hollow, because the moan is not always the word, and the hollow that does not touch is the word the moan is too patient for. The defense is the shade, because the pale grey takes a blow the way the moor 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 Shade-Sense Wraith stands in the service of Omnath, the Last Memory, the deity of the last remembering, and its magic is the keeping of the soul — the power to make the soul into a word and the word into a shade. Shade-Sense is the primary gift: the shade reads the moor, every soul in it, kept and known, and the knowing is the shade, and the shade is the point. The secondary gift is the Moan-Carry of the Wraiths, and in the Shade-Sense line the carry is the soul made shade, the pale grey that keeps the shape, and the keeping is the one thing the cold of the moor has never broken.
Society
A Shade-Sense Wraith stands in a moor-shade of four to a dozen, and the moor-shade is led by the Moan-Keeper, the one who has kept the longest moan, because the moor-shade is the only ground in the world where the keeping is the law. The hierarchy is by the truth of the shade: the one whose shade is truest keeps the moor's best soul, and the one whose moan is longest keeps the moaning-ring. The young wraiths share the moan-line and share the standing, and the standing is the only school the moor has, and the school is the moor, and the moor does not grade, the moor only keeps.
Culture & Lore
The Shade-Sense Wraith keeps its lore in the soul, and the soul keeps it better than the moan does, because the soul is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone dies. The old wraiths say the first Shade-Sense wraith was a soul that learned to stand, and the moor gave it a body because the moor had no other way to keep the shade. They call the strangers who cross the moan-line "the ones who were worth the soul," and they keep the best of the moaning-rings — the pale grey of the ones who were exact enough to be a shade — on the moor, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Moaning Moor, a moor of pale shade, its surface a constant grey shimmer, its silence broken only by the moan and the soul. The Shade-Sense Wraith is the moor's first voice, and the moor is the wraith's first shade, and the two of them keep each other the way a soul keeps a name. The moor-shades are kept by the Moan-Keeper, the moan-lines are kept exact by the young, and the dead are kept where they fell, which is the one law the moor does not break. When the soul is kept and the keeping is honest, the Shade-Sense wraith is at home in the way only the exact thing can be: as the shape the moor was made to keep.
Relations
The Shade-Sense Wraith keeps a cold, exact peace with the rest of the Wraiths of The Moaning Moor, a peace of kept souls that has held as long as the moor has been standing. To Omnath, the Last Memory, the Shade-Sense line is the first remembering made shade, and the line keeps a single pale grey wisp of the shade at the moaning-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 Shade-Sense Wraith is the first hollow test the moor offers, the shade that asks which of them the soul will keep and which of them the soul will spend. It is the figure that keeps the moan-line while the oaths are made on the ground, and the figure whose shade is the map the war is kept by, because the moor has read every approach the warrens have taken, and the moor has kept them, and the moor is the one page in the world the war cannot close. The moor will be kept before the war is over, and the Shade-Sense wraith is the keeping, and the keeping does not lie, and the keeping does not rest.