Vigil / the Vigilites

The Vigilites are the people of Vigil and the order that runs it: Peren in the main, devout, tight-knit, and soldiered in the Peredhel manner their grandparents carried out with them. On the road they wear loose clothes over thin plate and strap bastard swords on once the last village is behind them; on the walls they carry bows rather than crossbows. Faith runs through their ordinary speech, and a stranger notices it before he notices the armor. They are not many, and they say so plainly: nothing like the numbers of a city such as Haudh-Gwenn, and content with that.

Everything about how they are governed, and how they let a stranger near, is built around one secret. Vëné is buried inside their walls, and the town exists to stand over her.

Office and Choosing

The Lady or Lord Vigil is not elected and does not inherit. The Sword of Vigilance chooses, and it chooses on the day of the last ruler’s burial: after the burial ceremony a second gathering is called, every Vigilite attends, and anyone who holds themselves willing and worthy may step forward, say a prayer and lay a hand on the hilt. They know shortly after. Refusing what comes of it is not really a thing a Vigilite does. To be called to service by a goddess is held to be the highest honor there is, and the answer to being called is to serve.

The other offices are filled by ordinary means. The Custodian is elected by the scholars who keep the town’s histories, from among themselves, on the reasoning that no farmer should be handed the whole of the record; and the ones marked for it are sent outside the walls for years first, to be schooled in whatever the wider world teaches, which in practice has meant the schools of the Arcane Congress that Vigil otherwise distrusts. Venessa Hasek took her training abroad that way. The Commander’s office is the plainest of the three: proven service, dedication and leadership, over enough years that the choice makes itself, which is how Casimir Kasun came to it.

Between rulers a sword-bearer carries the blade. He does not wield it and takes no authority from it; he bears the weight of it across his back and nothing else, and it is meant to be a temporary honor given to one of the most devout in the town. Erwin Emeric has borne it since Octavia was buried, having trained his body for the duty since he was young.

The Assessors

Assessors are the order’s outward face and spend most of their lives away from it, working as diplomats, spies, finders and barristers, while the three at the top of the town almost never leave the country around it. Outside the walls they travel as armed merchants who know the central forest better than anyone, which is a cover and is admitted among themselves to be one. Learning that the deception will be your life’s work is described as a hard medicine to take.

Three rules bind them: never reveal where Vigil is, submit to outside law if taken, never abuse the office. What they are out there for is to find people worth bringing home, tell the town’s stories where they can safely be told, and now and then sponsor a stranger. Sponsorship is rare and personal. The sponsored are not told anything until they have passed an assessment of character, which is not a trial of arms and is conducted by the leadership in the cathedral, in the open, in front of anyone who cares to hear it.

What They Hold

They keep a triad, and their reading of the Martyr is the thing that separated them from home. Peredhel makes her the justification for servitude, sacrifice owed to the nation as a debt. The Vigilites hold that sacrifice is a willing choice made for a just cause and can never be a requirement, and they know their neighbors would call that a schism, or a cult.

They did not simply drop the customs they left. They argued their way out of them. In Ikhtar was refused on the grounds that the founders never had the numbers for it and that a system of that kind cannot be laid on some households and not on others without becoming slavery under another name. The mette-hina is left to each family to settle among themselves, with no law either way, and Peredhel folk have sought Vigil out and joined it precisely because they wanted no part of the rite.

The sayings are worn smooth from use. Speak plain or not at all. The page remembers, when a man’s deeds have finished being spoken. Let it be written, judged, and remembered, over an oath.

Belonging, Leaving, and Friendship

Nobody in Vigil is a prisoner. Anyone may leave, but leaving properly takes long and rigorous training first, because a Vigilite loose in the world is a danger to everyone still inside the walls; and one who skips the training and simply walks out will not be hunted down and dragged back.

An outsider judged worthy may be sworn as a Friend of Vigil on the scroll case: hospitality, the run of the town, training and aid in future, against silence about where Vigil is and how it lives. A friend is given the town’s laws in writing and is welcome to be treated as any townsman’s equal. A friend is not a Vigilite, and the distinction is kept.

Campaign Updates

Rafi sponsored the Valiant Few, the first outsiders he had ever put his name on. His escort rode out of Haudh-Gwenn dressed as merchants and changed into plate and bastard swords once they were clear of the road; when Mikhail cast a small cantrip on the way they halted, took it for Congress work, and had him swear on his honor that he was not there for the Congress and would carry nothing back to it. The oath was sealed with the town’s own formula.

The assessment ran the next day and they passed it. Aldo refused to rank his own deeds against each other, quoting Vigil’s saying about speaking plain, and the Custodian took his side against the Commander. At the end of it the binding oath was offered. Koa and Mikhail swore and are Friends of Vigil; Aldo declined to be bound, which leaves the two who swore unable to tell him what they learned. Resources were offered within reason and none have been called on.

The order is still short a ruler. Octavia was killed in a night raid by Blackguard Jack of the Tillermen, retaliation for captives Vigil had taken, a magic-user among them executed and the rest returned to their town. The sword has chosen nobody since her burial, which has no precedent, and Theresa Sarros holds the office without it. With no Lady Vigil chosen the assessors cannot travel abroad, which is part of why the party were sponsored at all: Vigil has decided they are Eravil’s instrument for putting Haudh-Gwenn back in order.

Mikhail spent the better part of a month afterwards in the town’s library, and nearly everything the party understands about how a curse returns came out of that room. Nobody has been back since. The last word of the order from outside is that a burned criminal cell out of Haudh-Gwenn is running for it, on the strength of some connection of their own and the belief that Vigil grants asylum to the right petitioners. The party discussed sending warning and did not send it.