The guards of Veilheim are friendly and helpful, and you are meant to feel like a vile little creature as you cause problems in the city. There are ten guard regiments, one for each district. Guard ranks are indicated by how many free fingers they have, and if anybody else wears quilted clothes, they will get arrested for impersonating a guard. Due to ancient deals, patrolling guards must wear violin-shaped badges containing The Necromancer’s soul even though everyone hates him and he has no authority in Veilheim.
Even by revenant standards, guards tank enormous amounts of damage, and if they have fingers they will kick your ass. At any given time, most guards are doing accounting for other government departments and running their own private safe deposit business, so it’s very unclear how many guards there actually are in Veilheim.
Guards dress very similar to the Sidrans who took over Veilheim after the Post-Alexandrian Ophtha ruling class fled when the plague reached the city, because even after 700 years, wearing thick layers of fabric and carrying super long polearms continues to be the best way of safely dealing with rampaging revenants.
Guards must wear badges of The Necromancer because if they refused to wear them, he’ll just show up in Veilheim whenever he wants. Is it wise to give The Necromancer surveillance over the city? No. Could The Necromancer use the badges to take control of the entire guard force? Probably. The Necromancer mostly uses the badges to yell at people, but they contain so much Death Magic they basically function as defibrillators for revenants. If imbedded in a weak-willed madman, the badge will compel them to go into the wastelands where The Necromancer may steal their bones, but it also gets them out of the city.
Lowest ranking guards have no free fingers and thus can’t carry anything. They are mostly assigned to menial tasks like being roadblocks, and are usually newly dead. Ostensibly, their faces are exposed to appear more approachable to the living, but given that it extremely doesn’t work, the true purpose is in the event that a guard goes mad, their heads can easily be knocked off.
The next highest ranking guard has one free finger and can hold their signature weapon: the star mace. Being super long both allows the guard to be safe while impaling someone on the sharp end, and also generates enough force from falling over to incapacitate most revenants. A common guard strategy is to form a wall and everyone slowly advances while bashing people with star maces. Getting maced leaves distinctive injuries that can later be identified even if you escape the scene.
The guard rank above that has three fingers. At this point, we start seeing skeleton guards, who have drastically lowered strength for obvious reasons, but can operate in the Living District since their plague transmission has been reduced. Here we see a catch pole and a shorter star mace for fighting in buildings and other close spaces.
With four fingers, officer guards are now dextrous enough to do paperwork. As you may have noticed, their fabric armor is more ceremonial than practical, but given that they survived the last three ranks, officers will kick your ass. All potential guard candidates are taught to read and write, but if they become illiterate after they die, they can never advance beyond three fingers.
District guards, in charge of an entire regiment, have five fingers. There are 10 of them and they all look different, but for demonstration purposes we only see The Wasteland Guard. Guards in the wastelands don’t have to wear badges because The Necromancer is there all the time already. The Wasteland Guard believes to have pared away anything and everything from itself that gets in the way of guarding Veilheim from outside threats, but its colleagues are annoyed because The Wasteland Guard causes tons of managerial problems and piles paperwork onto wasteland officers and other district guards because it would rather solemnly stalk the wastelands.
Master Guard has six fingers. Wearing all 10 guard regiment colors is useful for his main responsibility of training future guards while they are still alive, who can more easily discern movements of different colored limbs, but by dead fashion standards, it makes him an inconsiderate asshole. By being gigantic and standing on a roof, he can demonstrate moves to the living from another district without physically being there. Master Guard also runs internal investigations on other guards, but his most important role is eating all the leftover meat before it goes bad and/or comes back to life. If the guards don’t eat their way through their entire weekly meat ration, their next ration will be reduced. Master Guard can also get out of his giant body and into other guard uniforms, giving a nasty surprise to anyone who expects to smack down a two finger but it’s actually Master Guard and he kicks your ass.
Guard Captain is the ultimate leader of all guards, but loopholes out of wearing badges because she isn’t technically a guard. Post Event 3 Moratorium prevents me from talking any more about her.
