TEXT: EONS MAGAZINE  |  Revenants: The Face of Vengeance
  writing Russ Morrissey 
  color art Tithi Luadthong
  I
  N ANCIENT LORE, LEGENDS SPEAK OF THE DEAD 
  returning to life in order to right a terrible wrong. 
  Corpses which seek revenge upon the living, unable
  to fully rest until their grisly task is complete. While most 
  stories portray revenants as wicked monsters, in truth 
  their goals can also be noble - protection, or justice. This 
  article introduces the revenant as a new race for fantasy, 
  future, or modern campaigns.
  REVENANTS
  DEATH OR Vengeance
  
  Revenants: The Face of Vengeance   |     EONS MAGAZINE
  Racial Traits
  As a revenant, you look much as you did in life. 
  Your skin is pallid, and those who know you will 
  often think you are ill.  Any injuries sustained 
  during your death remain, although many 
  revenants go to great lengths to hide or cover fatal 
  wounds. 
   You are single-minded, and hard to injure.
     Revenants excel at hunting prey; they make 
  excellent trackers, bounty hunters, and assassins.
  Revenants
  Revenants are people who have returned from 
  beyond the grave to finish a specific task. 
  Walking corpses, revenants are pale creatures, 
  often confused with vampires, and are feared as 
  agents of terror and destruction. In truth, their 
  goals vary greatly.
  Revenge. The most common purpose of a 
  revenant is that of revenge, either for its own 
  death or for the deaths of those close to it. A 
  revenant bent on vengeance will not stop until 
  the focus of its bloodthirsty desires is destroyed.
  Protection. Some revenants return to protect a 
  loved one. Often these revenants keep their true 
  nature a secret - at least as much as possible - and 
  focus their activities on keeping a specific person 
  safe from harm.
     Love. Strong emotions, especially those of love, 
  can result in a revenant rising from its grave. 
  Unrequited love, in particular, is often a driving 
  force; revenants are also known to be created 
  when two lovers die together, returning to the 
  world to spend eternity in each others' embrace. 
  Separating such pairings can result in long, 
  endless searches for one another.
     Justice. Those wrongly accused of a crime can 
  return to unlife with the singular goal of 
  exposing the true perpetrator and clearing their 
  own name. Often these creatures cannot be 
  satisfied until the true criminal suffers the same 
  fate that the revenant did.
     Guardians. Sometimes revenants are brought 
  back against their will by necromancers or higher 
  powers. These revenants are tasked with 
  guarding holy or precious items for all eternity.
  Choosing A Goal
  When selecting a revenant's goal, the player and 
  the GM should work together to choose 
  something achievable within the campaign. The 
  goal is not intended to be a shield protecting the 
  PC from death forever, but rather a task which 
  the PC strives to accomplish.
     If the PC does not strive to accomplish this 
  goal, she goes insane.
  Size: Medium.
  Attributes: CON +2, WIL +1, INT +1    
  Skill choices: history, law, religion, disguise, hardy, 
  tracking, scent.
  Exploits
  Undead. You have the undead creature type. 
  You have the Evil virtue, and detect as such, 
  whatever your personal moral code may be.
  Everliving. Whenever you are reduced to 0 
  HEALTH, you do not form a death dice pool. 
  Instead, you rise the following day at half your 
  normal HEALTH maximum. Each time this 
  happens, your normal HEALTH score is 
  permanently reduced by 2 points.
  If you are reduced to a negative HEALTH value 
  equal to twice your normal full HEALTH score, 
  you are permanently destroyed.
      Defiled. You cannot heal or be healed other than 
  the normal overnight healing that all creatures 
  benefit from. Additionally, you are Vulnerable 
  (1d6) to holy damage.
     Ageless. You do not age. You will continue to 
  live forever unless destroyed.
     Darksight. You can see in the dark as though it 
  were normal daylight. 
     Goal. You have a specific goal, such as  revenge, 
  protection, love, justice, or guardianship. Establish 
  your goal with your GM. Once that goal has been 
  accomplished, you lose all the above revenant 
  exploits. You are finally able to die normally if 
  reduced to negative hit points.
  
  EONS MAGAZINE  |  CRevenants: The Face of Vengenace
  Revenants In Fiction
  The revenant is a popular fictional archetype - 
  the creature who returns from death to seek 
  revenge or complete a task. From Clint 
  Eastwood's High Plains Drifter to James O' Barr's 
  The Crow, revenants abound in popular culture - 
  even if they are sometimes mistaken for zombies 
  or vampires.
     The revenant came from Irish Celtic mythology, 
  and was popular in Middle Ages folk tales and 
  superstitions. Usually regarded as evil, blood-
  drinking monsters, legends claim that the only 
  way to kill a revenant is to decapitate it or to 
  remove and burn its heart. Such claims are very 
  similar to those associated with vampires and 
  zombies.
  Thereupon snatching up a spade of but 
  indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to 
  the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they 
  were thinking that they would have to dig to a 
  greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the 
  earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, 
  swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its 
  countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused 
  with blood; while the napkin in which it had been 
  wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The 
  young men, however, spurred on by wrath, 
  feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the 
  senseless carcass, out of which incontinently 
  flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have 
  been taken for a leech filled with the blood of 
  many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the 
  village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; 
  and upon one of them saying that the pestilential 
  body would not burn unless its heart were torn 
  out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows 
  of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, 
  dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn 
  piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the 
  flames...
  - William of Newburgh
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/WOIN/EONS Magazine/Eons 19 - WOIN, Races - Revenants.pdf