Revenant
Magicians and scientists alike speculate on the many and varied forms of the undead (or the abvitae to use the scientific term), on their continued presence, persistence and origins. The oldest form of abvitum is the Revenant: a soul so wronged in life that it remains in the body after death, and gains supernatural powers by which to obtain its revenge. In a world filled with crime and treachery, the Revenant remains rare - few have the raw determination to overcome death itself. The goal of vengeance is a compulsion, driving what was once a rational being to brutal acts it perceives as justice.
The oldest recorded stories we are able to locate relating to revenants date to pre-Abrahamic cultures of the ancient world, but their presence is found in the majority of cultural cosmologies. The traversing of Gilgamesh into and from the underworld, the tale of Orpheus and the saga of Parashurama each appear to be soft, alternate interpretations of the revenant legend.
It is the uniqueness of the revenant amongst the corporeal undead that their motivations are around the specific pursuit of individuals. When a revenant has been encountered and trapped by students and faculty, it has proven susceptible to reason, negotiation, even moral limitation, except in as far as those limitations detract from the revenant’s overweening drive towards vengeance. There are rare tales of revenants who were able to forgive their intended victims and let go of their murderous desires, permitting them to travel on to their final rest.
Clinical notes of Professor Abzanar Muresh (1588) indicate that a revenant kept inside a closed environment for several weeks became frantic and distraught, clawing at the walls and doing itself significant injury. When the revenant’s ‘donor’ was destroyed by a Lamorak Incantation of Location and Destruction, the revenant’s frenzies did not cease, but rather, intensified, culminating in a lust for human flesh. This leads us to a hypothesis that ghouls and zombies may be somehow descended from revenants who have been entombed and unable somehow to escape, revenants for whom the lust for flesh has grown too powerful.
Until this publication was commenced little work has been done in academic circles relating to the origins and observation of the abdead, save for practical texts as to how to destroy them. The connection, which surely must exist, between revenants and their brutal, predatory cousins the vampires, remains unexplored. I pause here, of course, to distinguish the corporeal undead from the incorporeal – ghosts, poltergeists and wraiths and wights. More comprehensive texts have been authored by more illustrious scholars than I on the spirit world and our interactions therewith.
When a revenant’s grisly task is complete, it returns to its grave fulfilled. I have already mentioned the effect being deprived of vengeance can have on a revenant. Where the creature has been permitted to interact with the world at large, should it still lose its chance for vengeance on its specific victim, the revenant will remain in limbo on the terrestrial plane, focussing its attention on those it perceives as wrongdoers. Unfocussed revenants can turn on even the most minor of malefactors with the full extent of their bloody vengeance, and the incommensurate punishments bestowed by the unfocussed revenant bring it no peace. The cycle repeats itself.
Revenants arise from the grave with the ability to transmogrify themselves into wisps of smoke, as well as meld into stone and earth. They can grow to a tremendous size through force of will, and, of course, possess enhanced strength and resistance to earthly damage. They can sense the wrongdoing of others, though they lack the power to read a man’s thoughts. Notwithstanding some reports to the contrary, my research indicates that revenants under no circumstances drink blood. The revenant appears as an ordinary human, albeit one who is somewhat pale, but when exercising its powers, the revenant becomes dark blue over the entire body.
The study of revenants has never been more important. Though they return to their graves once they have vengeance, recent events in Europe have created a wave of unquiet dead. Never has any mage seen as great a motivation for revenge on such a mass scale. Since being repatriated by Project Ultima Thule, I have devoted much of my studies to this subject, for though I would not dissuade these revenants from their victims, in a war-zone I question how many will be able to satisfy themselves. Those who practice magic in accordance with the natural order may need to prepare themselves for a blood-dimmed tide which may not recede for some time. I trust that this work will be a valuable guide.
- Dr. Ernst Epstein in ‘Life-Cycles of the Dead’, University of Light Press, 1941.
