Gravewight is one of the sub-types of the Darkling seeming. Cold-skinned Changeling who draw comfort from consorting with the dead, both restless and in repose. Theirs is the blessing of the Charnel Sight.
Overview[]
A child’s description of “fairyland” may state definitively that everyone lives forever, that nobody ever dies where the fairies rule. The Gravewights are quite aware of just how terrible that description is. They didn’t just see death during their time in Faerie — it surrounded them, seeping into their very beings until they became death-like themselves. The True Fae themselves may be unaging and all but deathless when in the heart of their realm, but the changelings and hobgoblins that surrounded the True Fae shared considerably less protection.
A Gravewight’s fae mien is touched by death, but in no consistent way. Gravewights can certainly be grotesque, with rictus grins, skeletal thinness or flesh that looks as much like rotten meat as it smells. But they might also be beautiful, marked by a consumptive pallor or a silent, ghostly grace. Some Lost assume that any Gravewight they might see is a member of the Autumn Court. It’s not as simple as that, of course. A Gravewight may care little for the heart-stopping allure of fear, no matter how frightful his appearance may be. Death is something for others to fear. For a Gravewight, it’s a constant companion.
The blessing of Charnel Sight is a situational blessing, but the situation is more likely to arise than one might assume. Gravewights are virtually magnets for ghost activity; there’s something about their presence that seems to draw ghosts to manifest more frequently. The learned suspect that it’s not that the Gravewight somehow attracts ghosts to him, it’s that he’s destined to cross their paths by virtue of what he is. His connection to ghosts is written on his Wyrd, and thus is a difficult fate to escape.
Durance[]
Surreal images of death haunt a Gravewight’s fractured memories of Arcadia. Theirs was the orchard of hanged men, the reef of drowned sailors, a labyrinthine tomb, offal pit, and elegant ossuary. Gravewights may have been corpsekeepers and grave robbers, taking the bodies of those servants who had displeased their Masters and delivering the bodies to their own jailors for some gruesome purpose. Gravewights may also have been repeatedly present at the moment of death, catching the heads that rolled free from an executioner’s axe or watching their banshee Keepers strike down their prey. Gravewights’ “servant’s quarters” may have been tombs or plague pits — placed there because, as the Keeper said: “You’re going to die soon anyway, just not tomorrow.”
Folklore[]
There’s no shortage of legends that feature otherworldly creatures associated with death, without necessarily being the walking dead themselves. The Celtic bean sidhe and bean nighe prophesied death with their very appearance, and they might have brought servants along to attend them on their rounds. A Gravewight may have set the sepulchral table for a hyena-jawed ghul’s feasts, then cleared away the gnawed bones afterwards. She may have followed an Appalachian haint from the wrong crossroads into Faerie, and been wandering through its garden of hanged men ever since. She may have been shackled to a vetala or pishacha as it stalked through graveyards and charnel houses looking for new amusements.
Finding a potential patron legend for a Gravewight is as easy as picking a culture and then looking for something that implies death. Even ghost stories or tales of the walking dead may provide inspiration; there are certainly undead vampires in the World of Darkness, but might there also be deathly vampiric fae who have come a long, long way to prey on mortal blood?
Frailties[]
Repelled by church bells, compelled to wash bloodstains from clothing, repelled or harmed by consecrated grave earth, cannot touch a vampire’s blood, can only wear a dead man’s clothes, cannot cut or untie rope made into a noose
References[]
- CTL: Changeling: The Lost Rulebook, p. 106
- CTL: Winter Masques, p. 69
