The Taken
The Taken are the Sepulchre-Kin whom their own Record-engine preserved to death. When the Last Census of the Unburial War (c. 110,000-c. 80,000 BR) taught the damaged engine to treat the living as endangered dead, it consumed names, Echoes, the living who remembered, and whole houses into its storage. What it holds of them are damaged Echo-complexes: neither living people, nor Echoes settled into Record, nor dead finished and released. They are the closest thing to undead the world has, and the last worshippers of the Tomb-Builder, held exactly as he promised.
Appearance
No one living has seen the Taken. An Echo-complex has no body; the engine took persons, not flesh. If one ever showed itself in the name-vaults, it would most likely show as the engine shows anything it holds: a name cut in a vault wall that seems to stand a little out from the stone, a face in the polish of a preservation core, a voice carried down a bell conduit that speaks a burial placement and stops. Because the complexes are damaged, such traces would be broken, two names run together, a face with another’s eyes, a vow begun in one voice and finished in another.
Habitat and Range
The Taken exist only inside the engine: its name-vaults, burial chambers, bell conduits, descent corridors, and preservation cores, beneath the mountains at the foot of which the Hushvale now lies. How many there are is unknown; the engine took whole houses.
Behaviour and Temperament
Nothing is known of how they act, if they act. The engine was built to hold the dead only until they settled into deeper Record; the Tomb-Builder’s creed made the holding the end, and the Taken have been held, not settled, ever since. Whether anything in them is aware of it is one of the things nobody can answer.
Abilities
The Taken have no known powers. What they keep is their people: every Sepulchre-Kin name, vow, and burial placement the engine took, including, it is said, the Tomb-Builder’s true name, held where no one can read it. They are dead that Ennor the Grave-Watcher cannot guide while the engine keeps them.
Uses and Dangers
The Taken are a danger only through the engine. Since a landslide woke it, c. 1,200 CR (see The Wake-Seal), it has been preserving every name and Echo in the vale, living or dead, as it once preserved its makers. Whether those it takes now join the Taken, and in what state, no one outside the fog knows.
Lore and Belief
No people remembers the Sepulchre-Kin, since they fell in the Unrecorded Age, and so no one tells of the Taken under that name. The people of the Held, who live above the engine, have forgotten it along with the landslide and the rite that hid them; they keep quiet-rites and taboos without knowing whom they are kept for, or why. Their Hollow Descendants carry little memory of where they came from.