Theresa Sarros

Theresa Sarros is an Assessor of Vigil and has been styled Lady Vigil since Octavia was buried, which puts them at the head of a town that has spent a hundred and twenty-five years staying off maps. They are Peren and strikingly young, nineteen to twenty-two at a look, and they stood in the middle of the three who assessed the Valiant Few, in fitted armor, plainly the one in charge of the proceeding and plainly new to it.

They hold the office without the Sword of Vigilance, because after Octavia’s burial the sword chose nobody.

Background

They are the grandchild of Xander Sarros, who founded Vigil about a hundred and twenty-five years ago and is still alive inside its walls, sleeping most of the day and rarely himself. Asked whether he was a grandfather or a great-grandfather, they answered grandfather and left the party to do the arithmetic on Peren longevity themselves.

They give the founding as their grandfather’s generation gave it. Xander and the others did not care for how things were done at home in Peredhel, and wanted a more idealistic way of raising their families than the country would allow them. Back home, Theresa says, the views Vigil holds would be seen as a schism, and some would go further and call it a cult. Only the year of the founding is known. The month and the day were never written down.

Vigil does not enforce the mette-hina. A family that wants the rite may have it, and that is left to each family to settle among themselves. Some Peredhel have come over the border and joined Vigil for no other reason than to get out from under it.

They were trained as an assessor, which is the order’s outward-facing work and is lived mostly abroad, under a merchant’s cover, away from the town for years at a time. They were not trained for the seat they now hold.

Personality

They answer thoroughly and a little past the question. Asked what they eat in the morning, they gave the whole regimen and the reason for it: something well rounded, grain and bread and a jam, because once the day’s duties are underway there is not always time to stop and eat, and dinner is therefore enormous. Asked whether they cook it themselves, they said no, and corrected the impression at once. It is a matter of timing rather than of being able. They can. They used to. They do not now.

They are careful about what they will assert. Having laid out why the founders left and what the country would call their beliefs, they added that they were not offering it as fact, only that the party would probably come to the same conclusion once they knew the teachings. They named their own town’s doctrine a schism before anyone else in the room could, and did not soften it.

The nerve is not yet the equal of the office. Through the assessment they were visibly inexperienced, and where Venessa Hasek was merely impressed by what the party said of themselves, Theresa was near flabbergasted.

Relationships

The Custodian and the Commander advise the Lady Vigil and argue in front of the seat, and the Lady Vigil decides. Venessa Hasek and Casimir Kasun did exactly that across the assessment, the Custodian taking Aldo’s side against the Commander in the middle of it. The arrangement is doing more work than it was built for with a young assessor in the seat.

Erwin Emeric carries the sword they do not have. He walks Vigil with the ornate blade strapped across his back and his own beside it, and he will go on carrying it until the sword names somebody.

Rafi found the whole situation strange and said so. He called it strange that Theresa should stand as Lady Vigil without the sword, decided the matter must have been settled while he was away, then apologized for having let outsiders see the tension in the room at all. He corrected himself for using their given name. If Eravil chose Theresa, he said, then Theresa is the right choice.

Current Role

They ran the assessment of the Valiant Few in Vigil’s cathedral and delivered the verdict at the end of it: an assessment that followed the rules, if a good deal more lax than the town would normally run, and one that had weighed not only the merits of the three but what they meant to do next. The party passed. The oath was offered, and Koa and Mikhail took it and are Friends of Vigil.

They came to the party’s quarters afterwards and answered questions for as long as the questions lasted. Nearly a dozen have held the office in the town’s history, and most of them died before their time, two of illness and the rest otherwise. The Commander’s office is won by proven service over enough years that the choice makes itself. Theirs is not won at all. On the day of a ruler’s burial the sword is put forward, anyone who holds themselves willing and worthy lays a hand on the hilt, and the sword judges. It judged nobody this time.

The one question they could not answer was Mikhail’s. He asked about the shimmer he had seen run underground from the obelisk in the graveyard, and the only person in Vigil who might have known was the founder, who was unlikely to be lucid before the party left. Theresa is still in the seat, still without the sword, and Vigil’s assessors cannot travel abroad until one is chosen.