The Vake

"I saw it! Ask anyone! ...except her. Don't ask her." The following page is not properly cited as per our revamped content policy. Therefore, the article may contain information from speculative or non-canon sources. You can find out more about our citation policy here.

"On long evenings at the Medusa's Head, where the monster-hunters drink, they brag about the beasts they've bagged - the Cantigaster, the Eater-of-Chains, the Spider Council, Jack-of-Smiles in his many bodies. But no-one tells stories about the Vake: the Vake, for whose head the Department offers a standing reward of four million Echoes. Four million."

"When the Vake is mentioned, everyone goes quiet. No-one has any boastful stories. Why?"

"What is the Vake? They say it's not a monster at all. They say it's a man who dresses up as a bat. To, ah, prowl the city by night. But that would just be stupid."

The Vake is a fearsome batlike monster that has a ridiculous bounty on its head.

Death from Above

No one in the Neath wants to mess with this thing, not even the most daring monster-hunters. This is mainly because the Vake's primary prey is the people who hunt it, seeking to Bag a Legend.

Some of the stranger newspapers of the Neath claim to run interviews with it, but these are, for the most part, with persons under the influence of Black Wings Absinthe. Probably.

What is it?

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"The Mother Superior settles into your comfiest chair. "The Vake is a Master," she says. "Perhaps you'd already guessed that."

More wild and irrepressible than the other Masters, Mr Veils suffered greatly from being trapped inside a dark and musty cavern, surrounded by creatures it wouldn't even consider worthy prey in its prime. And then it came up with an idea. One day, the Department of Menace Eradication received a staggering new commission: four million echoes for the head of "the Vake," a giant winged creature that threatened the carefree lives of London's citizens. The reward was so immense that some thought it a joke, but its authenticity was backed up by Veils itself. The Department even received a considerable sum in advance, so the word about the mysterious creature and a bounty on its head spread quickly.

Particularly sharp hunters figured out that the Vake is Veils, but rather than wanting to die, it began preying upon those who would seek to slay it. It lured unwary into Parabola through the use of Black Wings Absinthe - a brew that grants a feeling of flight, visions of a hunt between stars, and eventually, glimpses of something winged following the drinker in the night. With the Vake's identity established, most wonder if it is even possible to kill such a vicious, supernatural creature.

Chances that it is possible to bag a legend get even less likely if the fact that the Vake hunt predates the London's fall itself is taken into consideration. Memories about it, however, were mostly wiped out alongside the forth city. But bits and snippets are still present in the Neath. One witness, or rather, participant of those events is mysterious Vake's servant with uncanny ability to impersonation, who has been assisting it in tracking down vake-hunters for a very long time. Far from London, in foggy waters of Shepherd's Wash, the opposing faction settled down on a rocky island. Known to most as Abbey Rock, it is a home to enclosed community of nuns-wariors with single goal in mind: to kill the Vake. The Convent is lead by the person known as Mother Superior (but this part is up to debate: person just couldn't live for so long). They definitely know the most about the Vake, and apparently even centuries spent in constant training is not enough to bring it down.

Who is it?

Yet, like a respectable lady's petticoats and skirts, there are still more layers to this Master. The Vake is but one of its alter egos, the many different masks it's worn across cities - and sometime after the fall of London, this one took over. Veils' identity as a Master... dissolved into the background, really. This had almost no effect on its reputation in London; after all, it has always been cryptic, and no one will notice that anything has changed beneath its heavy cloak. Mr Wines did notice, though, and has been forced to reconsider its relationship with Veils.

At its core, despite all these masks, Veils/the Vake has only three selves. Veils the Curator is the most primal and savage, desiring only to fly, hunt, and kill, showing itself most easily in the Vake as we know it. Veils of the Third City was a feathered god-priest of blood, who saw a special beauty in violent sacrifices and gory rituals. It still lives, and it follows this crimson path to the end, to reckoning. Veils the Intriguer is no less vicious than the other two, but stands as an outlier: it has no claws or wings, nor a hunger for blood... at least not directly. The Intriguer is a grand manipulator, a mastermind behind the chessboard, who makes its pawns do all sorts of nasty things. The reason for its relative pacifism is that the Vake's hunt for those who would seek to slay it has changed both its prey and the Vake itself, to become more like each other. Thus, in a way, the Intriguer is more human. And that has baffling implications indeed.