The Revenant Vanguard
Introduction
"When the Vanguard appears, the decision has already been made.”
In the ruins of civilization, where survival has become the last unquestioned god, people gather in whatever shapes desperation allows. Militia hardened by hunger. Mutant bands living by instinct. Nomadic Reavers who carve their own law into the dust.
Humanity persists, as it always has, through improvisation; stubborn, adaptable, unwilling to die quietly. But the truth that governs this era did not begin with the Cataclysm thirty years ago. It is older, quieter, and far more humbling: mortals were never the apex. Something else had always walked beside them. Something that thinks faster, strikes cleaner, and never comes unprepared.
The Immortals have kept armies for as long as there have been nights to hide them. Centuries before the Veil tore, before the world burned, before mortals understood what ruled its shadows, the vampire courts trained legions in secret. When the Cataclysm came, these hidden forces simply stepped into the open.
The Revenant Vanguard is one part of that machinery: not the strongest, not the most terrifying, but the most useful. Immortals cannot walk in daylight, cannot blend into settlements, cannot pass unnoticed among the living forever.
The Vanguard can.
They safeguard the Immortal courts, deliver judgment without hesitation, and remove threats before they grow teeth. They are an elite cadre of Revenants: servants shaped into disciplined, conditioned, and utterly loyal specialists in ways only blood and fear can teach.
They are not soldiers.
They are a weapon forged in pain, refined through cruelty, and unleashed only when subtlety and terror must be braided together.
A Hierarchy Carved in Blood
Not every Revenant belongs to the Vanguard. The oath and the blood-rite that binds a mortal to a vampire are only the first step; most who bear it serve as labor, guards, or retainers. The Vanguard are something else entirely: mortals chosen to be sharpened, reshaped, and spent without hesitation. The vampire courts have always known that loyalty is common.
Usefulness, on the other hand, is not.
Before the Cataclysm, only the highest ranks of the Immortals had the authority to form Vanguard cells: Primordials, Chancellors, and a small number of old lords and iron-willed ladies who ruled vast domains and territories. A Vanguard cell was a privilege then; a weapon of status, whispered about but rarely seen.
A Vanguard cell always answered directly to its patron, yet its internal order never followed the feudal structure of the courts. It has always been meritocratic in the cruelest possible sense. Rank is earned through demonstrated efficiency: kills completed without fault, missions that should have failed but did not, and displays of loyalty so absolute they blur the line between obedience and self-erasure. Promotion comes from surviving what should have killed you, or from doing what others refuse to attempt.
Cells operate in small clusters - three to seven members at most. They rarely know how many other cells exist, or where. The Vanguard’s network stretches like a system of nerves: separate, hidden, and only fully understood by the Immortal who owns it. One cell may be quietly deployed to support another, or just as quietly ordered to replace it.
When a mission collapses, survivors of the cell are rarely retrieved. Being left behind is not abandonment. It is evaluation.
Survival becomes verdict.
Returning becomes proof.
And proof becomes permission to serve again.
The Vanguard in the Age of Ash & Blood
The Cataclysm shattered the Immortal hierarchy.
Primordials vanished. Courts burned. Territories collapsed into ash and rumor. Whatever laws the Immortals once followed dissolved overnight, and the world they fed upon tore itself into pieces.
Yet, the Vanguard did not vanish: they adapted.
Cells cut loose from their masters learned to navigate the new chaos, serving whoever had the strength, the blood, or the cruelty to claim them. Some lords forged new power from the wreckage; others clung to old titles that no longer meant anything except memory.
In this broken world, a cell of Vanguard operatives is more than protection: it is proof of authority. Any Immortal who commands one can claim a fragment of the old structure, even if the courts around it have fallen to ash. It is a sign that a lord has resources. Reach. Influence. A sign that someone has survived the fall with enough will left to rule it.
The Vanguard operate more openly now, but with greater risk. Maintaining a cell takes blood, control, and relentless discipline - things scarce in the wasteland. Some cells roam without a master, carving their own grim niche. Some follow the strongest voice they can find. And a few remain loyal to old oaths, hunting ghosts of orders once spoken in velvet halls.
The hierarchy is gone, but the blade remains. In the world after, the Vanguard carve their allegiance day by day, decision by decision, kill by kill.Still bound by blood
Still sharpened by need
Still the quiet terror behind whatever passes for power.
The Two Faces of the Vanguard
The Revenant Vanguard is not a single discipline. It is a division born from utility: two castes carved from Revenants who proved too valuable to waste as labor or attendants.
From those chosen few, even fewer survive what comes next.
"Revenants serve. The Vanguard delivers.”
The Shadows
The Shadows are the Vanguard’s rarest and most disciplined caste: Revenants selected for clarity of mind, precision, and cunning. Even so, not every chosen candidate survives long enough to earn the title.
Most break in training.
Some lack the instinct.
Many simply cannot endure the rite that binds their will to their patron's shadow.
This final rite defines them. It anchors their soul to the Immortal who owns them. A Shadow who hesitates, doubts, or entertains treason risks having their very shadow seized; a severing of will so complete it leaves nothing human behind.. Those who endure become specialists: infiltrators, trackers, saboteurs, recon operatives who move through settlements like another face in the crowd.
They do not draw attention.
They do not leave evidence.
They do not speak unless ordered to.
Among them, status is earned through precision: a task completed unseen, a rival outmaneuvered without a sound, a secret stolen while the victim sleeps undisturbed.
Shadows are trusted with delicate work because they can think, adapt, and vanish before the world realizes they were ever present.
The Szlachta
Where Shadows rely on subtlety, the Szlachta rely on presence.
Szlachta are Revenants reshaped into living weapons: bodies reforged through blood alchemy and Sanguinis rituals until they stand as towering, chimeric guardians. Their purpose is brutally simple: intimidate, shield their master, and unleash force where subtlety is wasted.
Despite their monstrous form, they are not unpredictable. They are crafted to be exactly what their lord requires.
Szlachta think just enough to follow commands, but not enough to question them. Pain barely registers. Self-preservation matters only when their master demands it. Their silhouette alone is a message: an Immortal of means stands behind this creature.
They are sent to enforce, to break, to scatter resistance and to remind the living that fear is a currency, and the Immortals remain the apex predators.
Becoming Szlachta is often a punishment reserved for captured enemies too strong to waste, or for Revenants who failed as Shadows -
whether through lack of discipline, broken will, or simple disappointment. The Immortals waste nothing.
Nothing in the courts is discarded if it can still claw, scream, or obey.
Tools of the trade
The Vanguard’s equipment has never followed a strict standard, but after the Cataclysm it has become even more improvised, scavenged, and bought in blood. Each cell outfits itself with whatever can be claimed, stolen, or reforged from the ruins.
The Shadows carry light, practical weapons meant for silence and precision. Thin-bladed knives, wire snares, collapsible spears, and crossbows designed to fire without a sound. Their armor is patched leather, cloth reinforced with salvaged plating, and anything that lets them move unseen. Some cells craft their own tools: lockpicks forged from bone, garrotes braided from scavenged wiring, and throwing blades hammered out of old world debris.
Nothing ornate. Nothing wasteful. Every tool chosen because it can disappear into the dark as easily as its wielder.
The Szlachta bear weapons fused into the only material plentiful enough to survive the fall: themselves. Bone-plates grown thick under the skin. Talons sharpened to a killing edge. Metal scraps hammered into bone and grafted along arms, shoulders, and jawlines. They are meant to intimidate as much as to kill, and their gear reflects it: heavy, terrifying, unmistakable.
Disputes within the Vanguard are settled the way they always have been. Through duels. Never ceremonial, never clean. Sometimes they end in death. Sometimes in maiming. Sometimes in the kind of shared blood that makes rivals sharper instead of fewer.
No member of the Vanguard is ever truly stable.
No member is ever truly safe.
And that is the point.
A Weapon Without Morality
The Revenant Vanguard does not believe in good or evil. It does not care for justice, cruelty, or cause. It serves blood, command, and the will of whoever claims ownership over it. The Vanguard is a blade honed on fear, wielded in silence, and kept close to the throats of a dying world. And when its operatives appear, it is never by accident.
Well, these guys are rather terrifying. It's the unquestioning following of orders that gets me the most, honestly. Great job for your first military formation!
Explore Etrea | WorldEmber 2025
Thank you!! Unquestioning followers is what the vampires need, and as it seems, they seem to have the ways to get them