The Gaoler
The Gaoler is the powerful entity that oversees the whole of a Soul Anchor, the zone where the Echoes of those who die cannot disperse or pass into Record. It is the chief of the Anchor’s Turnkeys, the jailers who keep the trapped Echoes in place, and the Chain-Binders and Loop-Weavers work under it.
Appearance
A Gaoler is a tall, heavy figure, twice a man’s height, robed or armoured in something like old iron gone black, hung all over with chains whose far ends vanish into the shimmering haze of trapped Echoes. Its face is hidden under a hood or a helm, and where the face should be is the same static that hangs in the zone’s air. It moves slowly across the iron-hard ground among the broken monuments, and the drone of the Anchor deepens around it to a sound felt in the bones. It smells of stale incense and cold metal.
Habitat and Range
There is one to an Anchor, and it keeps to the heart of the zone, though it can go anywhere within it. Not every Anchor is known to have one.
Behaviour and Temperament
The Gaoler is patient, implacable, and watchful. It keeps the prison whole: it directs the Turnkeys, mends what weakens, and moves against anyone who tries to free the Echoes or break the Anchor. It does not hate the living, and lets visitors pass who do nothing to the chains. It does not speak to them, or if it does, in the Echoes' voices.
Abilities
It commands the Anchor’s keepers and senses every tether in the zone. It knows every Echo the Anchor holds and where each one fell. It grows stronger as the Anchor holds more Echoes.
Life Cycle
What a Gaoler is, and where it comes from, is not known. Scholars guess it is either the remnant of whatever powerful Echo was bound when the Anchor formed, or a thing made by the zone to keep itself. When an Anchor is broken by the right rite, its Gaoler is said to break with it.
Uses and Dangers
Necromancers and harvesters of the Anchor’s remnant energy sometimes try to bargain with a Gaoler. Those who come to free a loved one must get past it.
Lore and Belief
Folk tales make the Gaoler a death-god or a death-god’s servant, and some place offerings at gates to graveyards to keep it from taking their dead. No god keeps the Anchors; they are a zone of the Whispering Trace gone wrong. The word "soul" in the zone’s common name misleads too: what the Gaoler keeps is Echoes.
Hearth-tales tell of a daughter who went into an Anchor to free her father, fought her way past the Gaoler’s chains with a burning brand, and was held there for her trouble until her brothers came for her.