"Friend of Vigil"

A Friend of Vigil is an outsider the town has judged worthy and taken in without making one of its own. Vigil admits nobody by accident: an assessor sponsors a stranger, the leadership assesses the stranger’s character in the cathedral in front of anyone who cares to listen, and only a stranger who passes is offered the oath at all. A friend is not a Vigilite, and the distinction is kept in the wording and in the ceremony.

What It Buys

The verdict itself grants most of it, before any signature. A friend may visit as often as he likes, may stay inside the walls in comfort and safety, and may deal with the townsfolk as though he were any townsman’s equal. He may join the training. There is no lock on any door in Vigil, and none of them are locked to him either. Beyond that the town will extend what help it reasonably can to a friend’s business in the world, which is more than it will do for anyone standing outside the arrangement.

He is also handed the town’s laws in writing, which is the instrument itself: a scroll listing every law, rule and edict binding on those welcome to live in Vigil without being Vigilites. Most of it is a long, easy, faintly comic list of things not to do inside the walls. The short part is the part that matters.

What It Binds

Outside the walls the rules are few and plainly stated. The name of Vigil may be spoken, because a friend who could not admit the place exists would trip over the first question anyone asked him. The location may not. Neither may the town’s culture nor its secrets: not how its soldiers are trained, not what stands on its library shelves. A friend’s own knowledge remains his own to share, and the distinction is drawn for him at the signing. What is being guarded is Vigil, and most pointedly where Vigil is.

The other half is a duty rather than a gift. A friend is expected to learn the town’s tactics and defensive procedures and to stand in its defense during a time of turmoil while he is inside it. Nobody expects him to march with the army.

Three cases were carried out for three candidates, one each, and the signers checked them against one another before signing. The Custodian signed beside each friend’s name, rolled the scroll, and seated it in the case, whose cap sealed itself shut as it went home. Three prayers closed the rite, one from each of the three at the head of the town, and the last word said over it was welcome, friends of Vigil. Vigil’s Commander Casimir Kasun called the whole ceremony a sham to the faces of the people performing it, and asked whether he might leave.

Breaking It

There is no compulsion in the magic, and it was read for compulsion before it was signed. It is divination and nothing worse: it knows whether a signer is in breach, and all it does about it is break. The case sits on a shelf at Vigil among a great many others, and somebody inventories the shelf. A man’s case is pulled when his honor is called into question, or when he comes back to the town after a long absence.

A cracked case goes to Vigil’s courts, which fall under the Custodian’s purview though she does not judge. Four verdicts are possible. A man may be found innocent of a false cracking, magic being as flawed as everything else in the mortal world, though no case has yet cracked falsely. He may be found justified, the choice he made having been the correct one; and in a narrow band of that, justified and rewarded, where what he did produced a better end than silence would have. Or he may be found guilty, which revokes every permission he holds. Vigil has cells and will use them on a man who murders in its streets, but for divulging the location the sentence is excommunication, banishment for life, and marking, which the Lady Vigil was quick to say means no branding.

The leaders volunteered the mercy without being asked for it. To divulge something for the greater good of all Idir, including Vigil’s own share of it, is very likely a thing that can be explained afterwards and forgiven.

Campaign Updates

Rafi sponsored the Valiant Few, the first outsiders he had ever vouched for, and they passed the assessment. Koa and Mikhail swore and are Friends of Vigil. Aldo would not be bound. He said he valued his freedom, that a slip of the tongue should not be able to make a traitor of a man, and that he would keep Vigil’s secrets without a piece of paper telling him to; he looked for a loophole in the scroll first and did not find one. The consequence was put to the other two before they signed: a man who has not sworn is an outsider, and nothing learned in Vigil may be repeated to him. Both signed anyway, and both said plainly in the same breath that they would break the oath and answer for it if lives or the fate of Idir turned on it. They were told that was the kind of thing that could be forgiven.

Aldo remains outside it. A guard was still posted on the party’s door the next morning on account of his refusal, and Vigil did not say whether a man who declines may take the oath up later. The standing has been spent once, on access rather than aid: Venessa Hasek gave Mikhail the run of the town’s library for the better part of a month, and nearly everything the party understands about how a curse returns came out of it. Resources were offered within reason. None have been called on.

The one precedent for a decline going otherwise belongs to Theresa Sarros, who sponsored two people before ever meeting the company: one joined the town, and the other declined the offer and kept the right to visit whenever they chose. Why that decline cost nothing and Aldo’s cost him everything was never explained.