Lanternline
A city of endless night. Twelve Wicks. One flame.
In Umbrage, the lights went out and never came back. Light is a utility now, metered and billed by the Hush Office, and whole districts go dark when they can't pay. The Lanternline Company takes the contracts nobody else will: walk into a dead district, find its Great Lamp and light it again.
You are the Warden: a living flame in a lantern aboard the barge The Taper. You can't speak, only flicker. Twelve Wicks are bound to your flame by contract. If you go out, so do they.
Lanternline is a turn-based clash RPG: coins, clashes, Tinctures, E.G.O and a story told one Stanza at a time.
The Wicks
Ansel Brigg
Disgraced lamplighter. Dry, tired, keeps lighting lamps nobody pays for.
Mirela Vost
Ex-insurance adjuster. Precise, cutting, counts everything, forgives nothing - least of all herself.
Hob Tallow
Huge, gentle candlemaker from the Tallow Market. Eats like a bear, talks like a grandmother.
Sister Ivo
Defrocked choir nun. Hums hymns under fire. Serene on top, cracked underneath.
Cassius Fenn
Dandy debt collector. Charming, vain, theatrical, terrified of being poor again.
Nell Ashgrove
Chimney sweep. Sleepy, small, unbothered; moves faster than anyone when she cares.
Dr. Pell
Back-alley surgeon. Polite, morbid, curious; treats pain like weather.
Rook Marchetti
Courier. Loud, fast, cocky, never late, never lost - except once.
Edda Quill
Archivist. Quiet, exact, remembers everything, wishes she could forget one thing.
Lucan Strand
Ex-syndicate gunman. Cold, patient, funny once a year.
Wren Halloway
Fortune-teller. Playful liar who sees more than she says; always shuffling.
"Brass" Coyle
Old boxer. Punch-drunk, cheerful, mixes up names, never misses a hit.
The Stanzas
- Stanza I · Wickfall — The Tallow Market has been dark for forty-one days. Hob Tallow was born there. He never wrote home.
- Stanza II · Ledger of Ash — Every debt is collected. Even the ones you buried.
- Stanza III · Bellmouth — The bells of Bellmouth rang every night for three hundred years. Then they stopped.
- Stanza IV · The Last Commute — Never late. Never lost. Except once.
- Stanza V · Round Two — Every bout in the Encore Hall is fought again. And again. And again.