Revenant

  ~ Emperor Malserion Victorius II, ruler of the Geshal empire, personally orchestrating the final rite of Revenance unto a corrupted king. Circa 26 PV
 

Summary

A revenant is a magical creature and a class of Construct, a soul that has been bound willingly or unwillingly to an inanimate object. A revenant will always take the form of an otherwise lifeless object such as a statue, suit of armour or preserved remains. Revenants are however, not inanimate, they are magically controlled by the soul implanted into them and are given life. In almost all circumstances this is achieved by a core which is frequently contained within the revenant though the core may be be in any location attached to it. This core will contain the soul of a singular being and acts as the vitality of the revenant. If the core were to be destroyed, the body of the revenant would become a mere husk and cease to be.   A revenant is often the result of a series of complex rites involving the creation of a core, the transposition of a beings soul into said core, the implementation of a core into an inanimate object and the subsequent binding between the core and the object. This is not exclusively how revenants may occur however. The individual will and strength of each soul in each living creature has heavy influence on the process of creating a revenant. In some extreme circumstances a dead being strong enough may spontaneously inhabit an object that has strong ties with who they were in life. This revenant is atypical to others as, if the object possessed no core to inhabit or the soul and/or core reject one another the entire object will become act as the core. Revenants with no core such as these are immensely unstable and until 3054PV there had been no recorded cases of one surviving for more than a single day. Seen as an impossible phenomena; the first stable occurrence was the Diabolith. There have been no such stable occurrences since him but a revenant without a core is often called a Diabolith out of fear of his potential return.  

Creation

The creation of a revenant is much unlike the creation of other constructs. Whereas other constructs require a multitude of skills a revenant only requires the proper knowledge and magical aptitude, this however makes revenant's the least predictable construct. Containing the soul of a once living being makes revenants more often than not free thinking creatures. Unlike other constructs, which can be bent to the will of a master one way or another, a revenant will retain the free will they once had in life over their new body. Depending on the circumstance of creation if a revenant were to enter a particularly immobile or poor body that possesses no substantial action the revenant is essentially imprisoned inside it indefinitely.
  Creating a revenant is a multiple step process aside from reagents the rite of Revenance, requires an inanimate object, a core and a soul. Each of the eight types of magic can be used to create a revenant and all use the same incantation during the rite. However, the core used in the rite must have been made with the same magic that the arcanist completing the rite is using else unstable phenomena will occur. While the type of magic used to create a revenant may impart power unto it, it does not necessarily taint the revenant. If an evil man is stored in a core of order in his Revenance he will remain evil still, likewise a heroic man sealed inside a core of death will remain heroic still.
  Under any circumstance creating a revenant is an advanced form of magic. Those who posses the knowledge to do so are scarce in modern times, the series of rites are also demanding. Depending on the type of magic used the creation of a revenant may require a large supporting cast of proficient arcanists, living sacrifice or impossibly expensive items. Not to mention the process is seen in almost all cultures as a horrific and dangerous act capable of creating a monster. That being said the rite to transpose a soul into a core is, albeit still advanced magic, better well known. This is because there are a myriad of other uses to contain a soul aside from Revenance. It is merely the rites of activating said core into an object to become a revenant that is kept an ominous secret.
  Revenants are the oldest known form of construct, having been able to occur naturally. Scriptures, tapestries and even engravings of walking statues or toys being depicted have been found well before Verdance over five thousand years ago. The knowledge required to make a revenant manually has been known for all of recorded history however it has been kept under lock and key by almost every society since the Diabolith. The true origins and nature of a revenant are entirely unknown and are seen as either a bizarre force of nature, a form of torment or a reminder that powerful forces exist and cannot be controlled.  

The Core

The core of a revenant is the beating heart and thinking brain, the only thing keeping a revenant active is the soul contained inside the core. If the core were to be broken or otherwise opened the soul inside would quickly evaporate causing the body to cease and return back to an inanimate object. While the revenant's core can be made of a large variety of materials, it may also take the form of runes or sigils, this mostly depends on the type of magic used to create it. For example, the cores made by Arcanists of death are capable of using any type of material, but will often use the live body of whoever they wish to undergo Revenance. The process of turning a live body into a core saves time and effort but is immensely grotesque and painful as their skeleton reshapes to take the form of a container. Likewise a core created by life magic may take the form of an intricately carved orb made from amber. It is important to note that a revenant is effectively immortal until their core is destroyed. Thus it is important that if you are to use a substance that cannot withstand the passage of time as a core it will make for a short lived revenant without any means of perservance.
  The core of a revenant may be affixed to any point on the body, as long as there is a physical connection between the core and the object it inhabits the revenant has full control over it. If a portion of the revenants body is severed in any way it will lose the ability to control it after a few seconds until it returns to being inanimate. The latent magical energy inside of the severed piece allows the revenant to re-attach it if done quickly enough, though this process takes multiple hours. If the missing body part is not retrievable or obliterated the revenant can introduce new material to control, the revenant may introduce new material to control. By presenting an object to the magical aura emitted near the core they can sieze control of the new material and integrate it into their body. This can be used to replace any lost mass or to introduce new mass, while a revenant cannot use this to grow larger than their initial size they can use it to wholly replace the entirety of the subtance they were initially made from. If the core is not exposed outside of the revenant then it would require the ingestion of the new substance. A revenant may 'eat' a wholesale object and slowly shift it to an area of their body, doing this however can reduce their structural integrity. Thus pulverisation, usually via mastication, using the revenants mouth (if applicable) is used to maintain their composition.
  As a revenants core is its weakest point any body that was created with the intention for the it to last will have some mechanism of defense. Enchanting a core is difficult as etching the runes or scribing the sigils unto the core must be done beforehand and can cause fierce complications. Usually, the core is contained within the revenant itself, having its body protect it from outside threats. This is easy enough to achieve though in order to have a core inside of the revenant itself you would only need to create a cavity inside the revenants body and teleport the core inside before the rite of Revenance. An Arcanist with the knowledge to create a revenant will likely already posses the knowledge to do this, though, this is not always the case. Revenants purposefully made in poor quality may have their core laid bare on the outside of their body. Any unwilling revenant may have been given a twisted body such as this as a form of punishment to live their days in paranoia and fear of any potential danger.
  If a revenant were to have its core broken but its soul was somehow preserved it may be repaired by repeating the final rite of revenance with a new core unto the same body. The success rate of such a procedure depends entirely on the longevity of the revenant, the longer the revenant has been bound to its body the more attuned it will be to it and will increase the success rate. Another factor involved is the complexity of the soul involved, as the soul is an imprint of ones life a creature that does not or had not lived long or possesses a low amount of attributes will posses a basic soul. These lower the strength of the revenant but will make it more malleable and pliable for any repair procedures in addition to the rite of revenance itself.

It is also important to note that unlike a golem, a revenant does not receive any penalties for using a large array of materials aside from the structural integrity that would be involved in introducing a weaker material. Meaning a revenant can be made of an assortment of many different types of rock in any combination whereas a golem would become unstable from such a body. A golem however can fly whereas a revenant cannot fly under any circumstance. The rites that bind the core to the body and the soul to the core are incompatible with any form of magical flight. This makes a revenants only option for flight would be to have another creature or machine capable of flight to mechanically lift it. This could prove easy if the revenants shell was lightweight and the overall size of it were small but a particularly massive revenant made entirely out of rock would be almost impossible to lift without the aid of something truly enormous and capable of flight.
  Due to a multitude of reasons a revenant may be induced into a state of torpor where it remains dormant. This can occur due to the core being sapped of its energy or if complications occur during a rite in creation or repair. In most cases the revenant is repairable by introducing a shock of magical energy to its core. It's important to note that during this time a the revenant is susceptible entirely to erosion. Normally, while a revenants core may be susceptible to erosion its shell is absolutely not. The body of a revenant is almost entirely non-senescent and sustained by the latent energies produced by the core, a slumbering revenant may be identified in lost cities or ruins by their unusually well kept appearance amongst the dilapidated surroundings it inhabits. While it may be home to moss or vine and a layer of dust the surface of the revenant does not succumb to sands of time or rain. This rule however does not apply to creatures such as barnacles which, if persistant enough, may bore into the surface and make the revenant its home.  

Capabilities

The unique advantages a revenant has over the living are mostly due to Its nature as an unliving creature. A revenant does not need any form of rest or nutrition, they do not need to respire nor do they feel pain. The emotions in which a revenant can experience depend greatly on who they were in life and the magic used to create the core. A revenant core made with fear magic may experience perpetual terror if they are designed to do so. However, a revenant is immune to most magically induced fear as they lack the biological vulnerabilities that are often exploited by an arcanist. This allows a revenant to still be intimidated by normal means though.
  A revenant will always be able to introduce new material into its body in any form, it can exploit this to pass through solid objects though this process is immensely slow requiring several days to pass through a small wall. It does this by slowly absorbing and removing the nearby material around it, in this time the revenant is essentially stuck in a solid object however and is quite vulnerable in this regard. It however makes a revenant a hard Construct to contain and easy to conceal. A revenant will have all of the senses and memories of their life, though, if complications arose from the various factors involving the rite of Revenance they may not retain all of their memories or senses. A revenant magically projects its senses from any point in their body, effectively allowing them to communicate from any area or see through any place. The nature and strength of each sense depends entirely on the biology of their previous life, for example if a Kobold were to become a revenant it would retain its stellar night vision and smell.
  The magic used to create a revenant imparts a few main features. The nature of the core (its durability and potential lifespan) and some unique magical abilities that the revenant will have at its disposal. A revenant will be capable of casting the spells from the magic of their respective type if it matches that of a core and if they were magically capable in life. However, a revenant that was incapable of casting as an arcanist conduit with the innate capability to perform magic will be able to tap into the power of their core. This provides even the untrained revenant access to the most basic of spells albeit the energy required to cast such spells is taxing to the core, meaning it must be given time to charge else the revenant may risk a temporary shutdown. In addition, a revenant can choose to detonate their core causing catastrophic damage nearby, destroying themselves in the process. The type of catastrophic damage depends entirely on the core the revenant possesses; for example a Chaos core will burst into a massive explosion, an Order core will petrify all nearby and a Death core will sever the souls of all nearby.