The world bible for Halvesper. 00-canon.md is binding and this
document builds on it. 02-atlas.md covers the places in
level order. 03-systems.md
owns mechanics. Where this document mentions a mechanic, it gives the
lore and leaves the numbers to systems. 09-glossary.md lists every name
and who owns it.
The story runs as server-wide Acts. Acts I–II ship at launch and
III–V as later updates, each opening on a published date (00-canon.md, Story state). Where
this document says something changes “on the server”, it changes once,
when that Act’s event resolves, and stays.
Spoilers. Section 1 is the whole truth, written for the team. Players learn it over 120 levels. The whole document is written for the team, but no player-facing text may state a secret before the level where section 1.7 and section 8 reveal it.
The world turns because the titans walk. A titan burns heartfire to take a step, and the burned fire does not vanish: it becomes the turning of the world. Every lantern lit from a titan is a step that titan never takes. Eight centuries of drawing fire, first by force and then by kindness, slowed the world until the sun stalled on the western horizon. That is the Long Dusk.
When fire is drawn out of a titan, it leaves a hole. The hole falls out of the titan into the dark and goes looking for something to fill it. That is a Lampghost. Every Lampghosts is a piece of a titan’s missing fire, in the shape of the last thing it ate. When a Lanternbearer puts one out, its light comes free as motes that want to go home to a titan. In the dark they are too faint to find the way, so they cling to the nearest lantern and ride it home; near a docked titan they fly home on their own. The holds say the light “goes home to the sun.” It goes home to the titans, and every mote carried home gives back a little of a step.
Fire put back into its own absence makes a titan. That is how the world can be saved, and it is what the finale (Act V) does.
The sun. The holds call it the Old Lamp. It sits on the western horizon, a red-gold disc about four times the size it appeared in Concord paintings, 2.1 degrees above the line of the land by the Almanac’s measure. For two centuries it sank so slowly that only the Long Clock could see it. Then Wend died, and the holds kept lighting more lanterns: it dropped 0.1 degrees in the forty years before Wend’s Fall and 0.4 in the forty-one since, and the rate is still climbing. At zero degrees the Almanac’s tables end in a line labelled Last Bell: the sun goes under for good and this half of the world begins a night as long as the dusk has been. Extend the curve and the Last Bell is sixty-one years away. Nobody outside the Almanac’s inner reading room has seen that figure.
The Turning. The world once turned in a day. Titans fed on sunlight, basking the way lizards do, and spent the fire walking. Their stride turned the world, the turning brought the sun round again, and the sun fed them. It was a closed wheel. Nobody knew it was a wheel, because nothing had ever stopped it.
Heartfire. The fire in a titan’s chest, fed by sunlight, spent as stride. It is warm amber, it is alive in the sense that it remembers which titan it came from, and the Lampghosts cannot bear it the way a hole cannot bear being filled from outside by the wrong shape: heartfire from a titan’s own lantern “unmakes” a Lampghost, and the Lampghost’s light flies free. The hold measure of heartfire is the step: the amount one lantern holds when lit. The saying “light a lamp, lose a step” is older than anyone’s memory and the holds treat it as superstition. It is an exact unit.
What heartfire costs a titan. Strides, and therefore life. A titan has no other use for fire. A titan that gives a step does not walk that step, and a titan that stops walking stops basking, eating, healing and finally living. Mossback walks the slowest and safest route of the four because Lantern Town lights more lanterns than any other hold: every new Lanternbearer in the world is lit there. He is not gentle by nature. He is tired.
The Lampghosts. Things made of absence that put out
light. Writers should use both meanings of “put out”: a Lampghost gives
off cold light, and a Lampghost is the reason a light went out. Facts
the team needs: - A Lampghost is born at the moment fire is drawn from a
titan. It falls out of the titan’s body as a faint, shapeless shimmer
and drifts down into the dark below the titan’s route. Most are
lantern-sized. A forge-tap makes big ones. A titan’s death makes one the
size of the titan. - It glows with a cold, pale blue-white light: the
shape of the fire that is missing, lit by its own lack. The holds call
this coldlight. - It is hungry for warmth. It eats
anything that has been warmed by living use: animals, people, tools, a
teacup someone held every morning, a song sung often, a storm. It wears
the shape of the last thing it ate, imperfectly. It is trying, without
knowing it, to become a titan again, and nothing it eats is the right
shape. - The stolen ember (proposed). Every Lampghost
carries a small warm spark of the fire it stole, visible inside its
coloured coldlight body (in the belly, throat or tail tip, never as a
hole or a chest emblem). This is the art’s tell that a creature is a
Lampghost (see 05-art-audio.md). The ember’s
size and brightness tell you how much fire it holds, and it dims as you
knock fire out of it. Not every monster has one: shell-mites, crows and
Concord automata are not Lampghosts, and the game should teach players
that early. - It cannot bear heartfire. Struck by a titan’s fire, it
unmakes and its light comes free as motes. Motes want
the nearest living titan; in the dark they cling to the nearest lantern
and run home along the thread every lantern keeps to the titan it was
lit from. Below the surface the dark is too thick for the thread: there
they ride in the lantern until it is carried home, and if that lantern
goes out they scatter. Near a docked titan they rise and fly to it
unaided. Players see this from their first kill. - The one
exception: an absence can rejoin its own fire. The Moth Queen
took her own Lampghosts back into her body and lives (section 1.5);
Morrow is Wend’s fire put into Wend’s Absence (section 1.6). Heartfire
from any other titan still unmakes a Lampghost. - It does not hate. It
does not plan. It is drawn to lanterns because lanterns hold the thing
it is missing. The Lampghosts are tragic, never evil. Bosses that seem
to scheme are wearing the shape of something that schemed.
Why the titans grow fewer. Two loops feed each other. Drawn fire slows the world, the sun sinks, titans bask less, they have less fire to walk and to give, so the world slows more. And the darker it gets, the more lanterns the holds need, so they draw more fire. The Roll of Titans in the Almanac lists 31 titans at the Concord’s height, 10 at the Climb, and 4 now.
Why the titans allow it. They know. Titans are not clever in a human way, but they are old and they feel their own fire leave. They let the survivors climb on at the end of the Concord, and they still kneel for the Pilgrim’s Stair, because they chose to carry people rather than let them die in the dark. Each made the choice in its own manner (section 4). None of them can tell the holds in words. Each hold has a Listener who reads the titan’s moods, and every Listener has felt something they could not name.
Wend was a long, low, many-legged titan, built like a heron crossed with a millipede, who walked the eastern marshes and carried the hold of Wendhome (2,600 people). In 262 YD a Lampghost tide (the largest in living memory, drawn by the Long Song of that year) besieged Wendhome for nine Bells. Wendhome’s Lamplighters lit every lantern they could to hold the walls: fourteen thousand lanterns in one night, by the Guild’s records. Wend walked as far as the Fall, lay down on the ninth Bell and did not get up. The siege broke at dawn-bell because the Lampghosts drifted away from a hold whose fire had just gone out.
The holds were told, and believe, that the Lampghosts killed Wend. Wend’s Listener, Hob Sallow, said otherwise and was laughed out of three holds. He was right: Wendhome spent its titan in one night to survive it. This is the first big revelation of the main story (level 58–60).
When Wend died its heartfire burst into embers. Most cooled into the veins of its body. The largest ember did not cool.
The Cinder Eye is the largest surviving ember of Wend’s heart. It is not a Lampghost (it holds no stolen ember; it is all fire); it is fire that lost its titan. It hunts lanterns because lanterns are full of heartfire, and it is trying, with the instinct of a homing pigeon, to gather enough fire to be a heart again. It eats a lantern’s flame and leaves the glass. That is what the Glasslands are made of.
Players kill it at level 20 and see it break into embers that fly west. They meet its re-formed self at level 106, and its last form is the false sun of the finale. It is the most sympathetic monster in the game and the writing should let players feel that in hindsight: it was homesick.
In 211 YD the Moth Queen was dying, her fire nearly spent by the hold she carried then. She disappeared into the Combs for nine years. When she came back she glowed: her wings shine with coldlight, not heartfire. She let her own Lampghosts back into her body and lived. She is the only titan who is part absence, and the one exception to the rule that a Lampghost cannot bear heartfire. It is why she flies only in the Under, why her light is cold, and why Shades can borrow the dark: they learned from her hold. Lampblack has kept the secret for ninety years, because the other holds would call her a Lampghost and want her put out. Every Glow, while she roosts, Lampblack’s dusters brush warm wing-scale powder over her wings so that from a distance their light reads cream. Seen undusted, it is plainly cold. Players see her undusted for the first time at level 68.
She is proof that fire and absence can be joined. The players learn this at level 68 and use it at 120.
Fire returned to its own absence remakes a titan. The Cinder Eye is Wend’s fire; Wend’s Absence, a titan-shaped Lampghost born when Wend died, has wandered the dark for forty-one years wearing whatever it last ate. In the finale the Gilded Hour try to lift the Cinder Eye into the sky as a second sun. The players take that fire and, with the four living titans gathered at the Sunfoot for the first time in three hundred years, put it back into Wend’s Absence. It becomes a newborn titan, Morrow. The world turns by a hair. The sun rises one tenth of a degree, the first time it has risen in 303 years. It happens once per world, as the server event that closes Act V.
This is not a cure. It is a proof. Expansions are the work of turning the world back.
| Level | What players believe | What they learn |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The titans are kind giants; the Lampghosts are monsters of the dark; the sun is just dying. | Mossback stumbles when your lantern is lit. Puddlings release motes that cling to your lantern and run up its thread; at the Stair you see them stream up into him, and he steadies. Nobody comments. |
| 20 | The Cinder Eye is a monster that eats lanterns. | It weeps embers that fly west when it breaks. A Lamplighter shrugs. |
| 30 | The Concord fell to the Lampghosts. | Concord ledgers in the Gutterworks list “taps” by titan name, with a yield. |
| 42 | Greyhorn charges Lampghost herds because he hates them. | His charges end with him calm. The Bellwether’s motes all fly to him. |
| 55 | The sun’s descent is natural. | Reckoner Quarle’s chart: the sun dropped faster each time a titan died. |
| 60 | The Lampghosts killed Wend. | Inside Greyhorn, a Lampghost is born at the forge-tap. Hob Sallow: “Wendhome spent him.” First revelation. |
| 68 | Titans and Lampghosts are opposites. | The Moth Queen is part Lampghost, and alive. |
| 80 | The Stay are savages who live with Lampghosts. | The Stay remember the Tapping. The Concord did this. |
| 92 | The Gilded Hour are generous patrons. | They are feeding the Cinder Eye to build a sun. The world turns because titans walk. Second revelation. |
| 106 | Wend is dead and gone. | Wend’s fire and Wend’s Absence both survive. |
| 120 | A new sun would save everyone. | Fire into absence makes a titan. Morrow. |
| Early thing | What it was |
|---|---|
| The Lighting ceremony at level 1, when Mossback “stumbles for you” and the town cheers | He gave you a step. Literally. |
| Popping Puddlings in Mossy Field | They are the absences of the lanterns lit in Lantern Town above, falling where he kneels. You were putting his steps back. |
| The motes that go home from every kill | Fire going home; each gives back part of a step. The Guild’s “it goes to the sun” is half right. |
| Mossback’s “safe, gentle route” | He is the weakest titan. Reckoner Quarle gives him under thirty years at current lighting. |
| The Cinder Eye “hungers for lanterns” | Wend’s heart trying to gather itself. |
| Afternooners (skeletons) sweeping streets | Lampghosts that ate the Concord dead and still wear their last ordinary afternoon. |
| Greyhorn’s charges | He is taking his own pieces back. |
| “Light a lamp, lose a step” | An exact unit of measure. |
| Dying and being “relit” at your hold | Another step, every time. |
| The Snuffers’ graffiti “EVERY WICK A WOUND” in Tallowmere | True. |
Years are counted from the Setting: BS before it, YD (Year of Dusk) after. The game opens in 303 YD.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Before 600 BS | The First Days. The world turns once a day. Thirty-odd titans walk. The Concord of Noon is a league of river cities under the Sun-Prince of Highnoon. |
| 520 BS | Hieronyma Aumbry, Provost of Lamps, drives a bronze needle into Aun, an old titan dying in the Tapyards, and draws the first heartfire. Aun dies within the year. A small cold light is seen leaving the body. Concord nobles start keeping “lamp-ghosts” in jars. |
| 500–1 BS | The Tapping. Titans are caught sleeping and tapped. Highnoon is lit brighter than day. Days lengthen from one day to several; the Concord calls it the Golden Lengthening and holds festivals for each added hour. Nineteen titans die, leaving twelve. |
| 0 | The Setting. The sun reaches the western horizon and stops climbing back. |
| 1–11 YD | The Guttering. Tapped titans starve (two more die, leaving ten); the taps run dry; the Concord’s lamps fail city by city. Lampghosts, by now uncountable, come into the dark streets. Highnoon’s clocks stop at a quarter past three. |
| 4–12 YD | The Climb. Ten titans kneel and let survivors climb. Those who don’t climb, or aren’t allowed, become the Stay. |
| 40 YD | Oda Wickham founds the Lamplighters’ Guild on Mossback and writes the Snuffing Rites: a hold may light only as many lanterns as its titan “can spare,” judged by the Listener. Nobody writes down why. |
| 12–200 YD | The Hold Years. Five titans die and their holds scatter: Harrow (52), Pell (97), Asterreed (131), Grum (168), Sallowgate (190). |
| 211–220 YD | The Moth Queen vanishes into the Combs, dying. She returns glowing. Lampblack keeps the secret. |
| 255 YD | The Brightening. Under pressure from growing holds, the Guild loosens the Snuffing Rites. Lantern counts double in a generation. |
| 262 YD | Wend’s Fall. The Last Lighting at Wendhome; Wend dies. The Cinder Eye and Wend’s Absence are born. Hob Sallow is ignored. |
| 283 YD | Brazenbrow bores its forge-tap deeper into Greyhorn (“the Deepening”). Greyhorn’s charges grow more frequent. |
| 290 YD | The Gilded Hour, a Concord heirloom society, reappears as patrons of the Almanac’s telescopes and the Guild’s expeditions. |
| 297 YD | Hob Sallow founds the Snuffers. |
| 303 YD | The Cinder Eye is first seen hunting lanterns in the Glasslands. The game begins. |
Facts every hold child knows. Writers may use these freely.
The titan. A tortoise 1.2 km long, shell domed like a wooded hill, moss hanging off the rim in curtains forty meters long. He is patient, forgetful and fond of small things: children have found seed-pods placed carefully on the Brow overnight. He hums, a sound below hearing that makes teacups ring at the turn of every Bell. He speaks through his moss: it blooms in patches whose colors his Listener reads. White is content, yellow is wary, rust is pain. There has been more rust lately.
The hold. Lantern Town, population about 4,200, the starting hold and the largest. Built on the shell’s upper dome in rings of terraces like a hillside tea farm. Roofs are shed scutes, curved plates of shell he drops every few Turnings, so every roof in town has the same gentle curve and the same growth rings. Paper lanterns on poles line every lane; the town is the warmest light in the world. Districts: - The Vent: a long warm crack at the crown of the shell where heartfire seeps up. The Lamplighters’ founding hall, the Wick, is built over it. Every lantern in the world is lit here first. - The Brow: the lookout over his head, where the Pathfinders post their route maps. - Shellstep: the terraces. Moss-tea, shellfruit vines, shell-goats. - Tailend: the market, on the slope over his tail, which sways. Stalls are lashed down out of habit. - The Rim: the lowest ring, where the Pilgrim’s Stair comes up. New arrivals, the Lodges for the four classes, the storage hall.
Culture. Newcomers’ town. Nearly everyone’s grandparents arrived on the Stair from somewhere else, so Lantern Town prides itself on taking people in. Tea before business, always. Doors are left open during the Glow. Children are given a paper lantern on their first birthday and a real one on their Lighting. People here are cheerful, chatty and a little nosy, and they are the last to learn anything bad.
Economy. Moss-wool, moss-tea, shellfruit, scute timber, and newcomers: Lantern Town is where Lanternbearers are made, and Lanternbearers bring things up. Imports metal from Brazenbrow and paper from the Almanac.
Leaders and key NPCs | Name | Role | One line | |—|—|—| | Reeve Marigold Tamsey | Elected head of the town | Pours tea while she bargains, and keeps a private ledger of every lantern lit, without quite knowing why. | | Old Ponder | Mossback’s Listener | Ninety-one, half deaf, reads moss colors through a jeweler’s loupe and is always right a day late. | | Wickmother Hessa Lume | Head of the Lamplighters in Lantern Town | Performs every Lighting herself and cries at each one, privately, afterward. | | Fen Cobble | Junior Lamplighter, tutorial guide | It’s his first day too, and he has rehearsed the speech so many times he’s lost the end of it. | | Captain Corra Thistlewaite | Pathfinder captain, Ranger Lodge | Talks about routes the way other people talk about family. | | Sergeant Pim Ashdown | Warden Lodge | A retired Warden from Brazenbrow who moved here “for the quiet” and is furious there isn’t any. | | Ottoline Vey | Kindling Room (Kindler Lodge) | A junior Almanacker on loan, homesick for the sky, measures everything. | | “Nobody in Particular” | Shade Lodge | Lampblack sends a different person each Turning and they all give the same false name. | | Bramble and Burr | Twin grocers in Tailend | Sell the same goods from facing stalls and undercut each other by one brass a day. | | Tock | Clockmender | Sells clocks that all disagree, on the theory that the truth is somewhere in the middle. | | Aunt Pocket | Storage hall | Remembers what everyone has in storage, and comments on it. |
What the hold is for in play. The Lighting (in the instanced prologue); Lodge induction at 10 for all four classes; starter shops; storage; the Lamplighters’ contract board; the Kneeling festival (section 5.4). Default Return Lantern bind.
The titan. A horned beast like a bison built of mountain, 900 m at the shoulder, two horns sweeping forward 400 m each. Grey hide grows slate and quartz along the spine; he sheds stone the way other beasts shed fur. Irritable, territorial and brave: the only titan who attacks Lampghosts. He picks the dangerous route on purpose and charges Lampghost herds head down. He speaks in snorts, ear-flicks and the angle of his head; his Listener sits in a cage hung from his left ear.
The hold. Brazenbrow, population about 3,100, built in the saddle between and along the horns. Everything is bolted, chained or slung. Houses hang on gimbals so they swing level when he lowers his head to charge; a visitor’s first charge is a rite of passage. The charge bell rings three times before every charge and everyone grabs a rail. Smoke from a hundred forges streams back over his shoulders like a mane. - The Burn: a natural seam of heartfire at the base of the right horn, now bored out into the forge-tap. Pipes run from it to every forge. - The Saddle: the main street between the horns. Smithies, the Warden Hall. - Hornfast: the miners’ quarter, slung under the left horn. The Horncutters’ Compact meets here. - The Gimbal Inn: the most famous bar in the world, built on a triple gimbal so your drink never spills.
Culture. Proud, loud, practical, generous to anyone who works. They swear by his horns and toast “to the next charge.” Children learn to climb before they walk. They think Lantern Town is soft and the Almanac is useless, and they are the first to send help when either needs it.
Economy. Hornstone (shed horn and spine-stone, the world’s best ore), steel, forging, gear enhancement. The forge-tap makes them the second-largest drinkers of heartfire after Lantern Town, a fact nobody there has considered. Imports food from Mossback.
Leaders and key NPCs | Name | Role | One line | |—|—|—| | Forgemother Ilka Stane | Head of the hold, master of the Burn | Ordered the Deepening and will defend it to the last forge, until she climbs into Greyhorn and sees what it made. | | Hornspeaker Tomas Gell | Greyhorn’s Listener | Lives in the ear-cage, loves the beast more than people, and has started sleeping badly. | | Captain Odo Barrowman | Warden-General, Warden Hall | Dry as dust, has never once raised his voice, and is obeyed instantly. | | Mags Cutter | Boss of the Horncutters’ Compact | Wants deeper cuts and better pay, and is the first to say Greyhorn is hurting. | | Little Anvil | Master smith | Seven feet tall, named as a joke she has outgrown, makes the best halberds in the world. | | Dobbin Rook | Gimbal Inn landlord | Knows every rumor and charges for none of them. |
What the hold is for in play. Warden branch trials at 30, 60, 100; crafting, smithing and gear enhancement; hornstone market; the Great Charge (5.4); Hornheart dungeon entrance.
The titan. A sky-whale 3 km nose to fluke, pale as cloud on the belly and storm-blue on the back, who swims above the cloud sea. The oldest living titan, and the healthiest, because she alone still basks in direct sun. Curious, melancholy and musical. Her song carries hundreds of kilometers; the other titans time their routes by it. She knows the most and has said the most, in a language nobody can read. She docks by lowering a fluke onto a mountain and resting it there for days.
The hold. The Almanac, population about 1,400, a library built along her spine under long glass domes. Reading rooms are terraced so the light runs down them like water. Messages and parcels go by kitepost: hundreds of paper kites on lines between domes. Ink is ground from storm-cloud soot. The hold hums when Ystra sings, every pane at once. - The Long Clock: a telescope-clock at the head, aimed at the sun, that has measured its height every Bell for 290 years. - The Stacks: the archive. The Sealed Stacks open only during the Long Song. - The Kindling Hall: where Kindlers train, under a dome that is never dark. - Fluke Landing: where Ystra’s tail meets the ground when she docks, and where the skiffs dock otherwise.
Culture. Quiet, exact, a little superior. Almanackers wear cloud-grey and count things. Every child is given a ledger at birth. They argue in footnotes and settle feuds by publishing. They are the only hold that still sees the sun clearly, and so the only hold that feels the dusk as a number, not a mood. Kindler training is rationed here, officially for safety; the real reason was lost and is the heartfire cost.
Economy. Paper, ink, maps, almanacs (the Turning calendars every hold buys), skill books, glyph-scribing (enchanting gear), cloudsilk.
Leaders and key NPCs | Name | Role | One line | |—|—|—| | Chief Reckoner Ishbel Quarle | Keeper of the Long Clock | Has known the Last Bell figure for eleven years and has told exactly one person, her cat. | | Cantor Fennimore Spry | Ystra’s Listener | Translates her song into music notation and is sure the notation is wrong. | | Dean Sorrel Ashby | Head of the Kindling Hall | Brilliant, kind, terrified of fire, and the best Kindler alive. | | Mote | Archivist | Child-sized, refuses to give her age, remembers the Brightening as “recent.” | | Provost Calla Aumbry | Patron, the Gilded Hour | Paid for the new telescope wing; gracious, quick to praise, never forgets a name. | | Hal Pennywhistle | Kitepost master | Reads everyone’s mail and keeps every secret. |
What the hold is for in play. Kindler branch trials at 30, 60, 100; skill books; glyph-scribing; the Archive (a lore collection system: Concord ledgers, Roll of Titans, Stay stories, and the record of every Act the server has lived, for players who joined late); the Long Clock (shows the Sunline and, after Morrow, the sun’s height); the Long Song event.
The titan. A moth with a 2 km wingspan, body furred like a winter animal, wings patterned with soft eyes that glow. Silent, vain, curious, a hoarder of bright things; she has been seen carrying a lighthouse lamp in her forelegs for a whole Turning. She roosts flat against the canyon walls of the Combs during the Glow, wings folded, and flies only in the Under. Her wings speak in light; her Listener reads them by their warmth on bare skin, since her light is cold and eyes misjudge it.
The hold. Lampblack, population “about nine hundred, depending who’s asking.” It is woven into the fur of her thorax: houses of silk and shed wing-scale that glow like paper lanterns in her light, stairs of silk rope, no hard edges anywhere. You climb down into it from the canyon rim while she roosts. Everyone whispers; she dislikes noise, and so do the people who sell things here. When she flies, shutters close and the whole hold rocks like a hammock. - The Velvet Market: the black market, open only in the Under, when she is airborne and nobody can follow. - The Scale Stair: the descent from the rim. - The Hush: the Shade school, a set of rooms where lamps are never lit.
Culture. Smugglers, fences, refugees from dead titans’ holds (many of Wendhome’s survivors ended here), and people the other holds threw out. Debts are sacred, names are optional. They are fiercely protective of the Queen and of each other, and they keep her secret the way a family keeps one: everyone knows, nobody says.
Economy. Contraband, fencing, moth-silk, wing-scale dust (a pigment and an alchemical reagent), coldlight goods bought from the Stay, information.
Leaders and key NPCs | Name | Role | One line | |—|—|—| | Nan Corvina | “Hostess” of the Moth Court | A grandmother who fences stolen lanterns and knits while she does it. | | Lisle | The Queen’s Eye (Listener) | Blind, reads the Queen’s wings by warmth on her arms, and is never surprised. | | Quill | Master of the Hush (Shade instructor) | Never entirely visible, even standing in front of you. | | Ferrant Gale | Moth-skiff captain | Runs contraband during the Under and swears the skiff is legally a hat. | | Dorrit Sallow | Seamstress | Hob Sallow’s sister, a Wendhome survivor, who won’t say his name. |
What the hold is for in play. Shade branch trials at 30, 60, 100; the black market and fencing (trade of untradeable or rare goods, by systems’ rules); moth-silk crafting; the Velvet Market events in the Under; the Lantern Fair (5.4).
The titan. Long and low, a heron’s neck and head on a body of many jointed legs. It lies on its side across a valley now called Wend’s Fall, cooling. Ember veins still pulse under the skin, a little dimmer each Turning. Its eye is open.
The hold. Wendhome, empty for forty-one years. Narrow stilted houses along the spine. Every lantern in Wendhome is still lit: fourteen thousand of them, burning the last of Wend’s fire, which never went out because heartfire burns until it is used. Lampghosts wearing the hold’s people tend them. It is the saddest map in the game and should look like the most beautiful.
What it is for in play. Late-game region (92–106), the Heartchamber dungeon, Act IV.
Each titan walks a fixed loop through the known lands, the
Turning Roads. The Almanac publishes the whole
Migration as a calendar that repeats every Turning (seven real days),
and every hold sells copies. A titan walks its loop several times per
Turning; 03-systems.md owns
the hours, and loop lengths divide the Turning so the calendar repeats
exactly. The holds believe the titans follow the last sunlight, or the
Lampghosts, or habit. The truth (section 1) is that walking is what they
are for.
How strongly the titans walk depends on how much fire the world draws
and returns. The server shares one measure of it, the Sunline (08-scale.md §1): a vigorous
Turning means longer strides and longer docks; a drained one means more
Kneelings and shorter routes. In lore, Listeners feel it and the Long
Clock records it.
Where a titan is decides what is nearby. A hold is always a map of its own and can be reached by Return Lantern or the Tetherline from anywhere (systems sets costs), but only a docked hold connects by foot to a region. Every region is always reachable some way; a dock makes it close, cheap and rich, never possible-only-now.
A titan docks when its route brings it alongside a region and it stops: Mossback kneels, Greyhorn plants his feet, Ystra rests a fluke on a peak, the Moth Queen roosts. While docked: - The dock map in that region gets a physical way up: the Pilgrim’s Stair, Greyhorn’s chain lifts, Ystra’s fluke stair, Lampblack’s silk descent. - Heartwarm. The region is warmer and brighter. Lanterns burn steadier in the dark below it, Lampghosts there are a little weaker, and motes fly home to the titan on their own even underground: kills near a docked titan feel richer (systems: an XP and drop bonus). - Drawn Lampghosts. Bigger, rarer Lampghosts come out of the dark toward the titan’s fire. These are the region’s elite spawns. - Dockmarket. The hold’s vendors set up at the foot of the dock with goods you can’t buy at home. - Titan quests. Each titan has quests only available while docked, given by its Listener.
Docks in loop order. Systems sets the hours and may compress; the order and the docks are canon for writers.
| Titan | Loop (docks in order) | Weekly moments | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mossback | The Mossway (kneels) → Glasslands north rim → Tallowmere (Wickshore) → back to the Mossway | — | Kneels at the Mossway about half of every loop. Walks the inner loop only. |
| Greyhorn | The Furrows (Hornrest) → Glasslands south → Highnoon, east gate → the Combs, south mouth → the Furrows | The Charge (day 5), Glassbreak (day 7) | The only titan who docks in a hostile region on purpose. |
| Ystra | The Cloudshelf (Mooring Spire), most of every loop → over Tallowmere (songwater rain) → high over Highnoon → the Cloudshelf | — | Never touches below the cloud except during the Long Song. |
| Moth Queen | Roosts in the Combs every Glow; each Under flies one leg: Combs → Lowlight → Wend’s Fall → Combs | Every Under | A different leg each Under, so each leg comes every third Under. |
| Wend | Dead, at Wend’s Fall | — | The Moth Queen lands on Wend’s skull on the Wend’s Fall leg, every third Under. |
Lowlight is never docked: no titan will kneel where the Stay keep their cages. That is on purpose and is the region’s character.
| Event | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Glassbreak | Every Turning, day 7 | Greyhorn crosses the south Glasslands; the glass plates shatter; shortcut paths and buried lanterns open for one Glow. |
| The Charge | Every Turning, day 5 | Greyhorn charges through the Furrows. Ride on the horns or hide in the trench walls; a rain of motes follows. |
| Night Market | Every Under | The Moth Queen flies; Lampblack’s Velvet Market opens; moth-skiffs drop to whichever region she passes over. |
| The Kneeling | Spring (real-world season) | Mossback lies fully down for a week. Moss blooms white across the Mossway, mass Lightings, a town festival, the year’s new-player rush. |
| The Long Song | Summer | Ystra comes below the cloud over Highnoon. The Sealed Stacks open; a rhythm event across the Cloudshelf; Lampghosts freeze while she sings. |
| The Great Charge | Autumn | Greyhorn’s annual stampede across every Furrows map and the Glasslands. Horn Fair in Brazenbrow. |
| The Deep Under | Winter | The longest Under of the year: a full real day. The Moth Queen flies all of it and holds the Lantern Fair, trading cosmetics for spent lanterns. |
| Wend’s Wake | Each anniversary of the Fall (fixed date) | Holds dim their lanterns for one Bell. Players who douse theirs in Wendhome see the Lampghosts there stop and look up. |
| Convergence | Once per world, the Act V finale | All four titans leave their routes and walk to the Sunfoot over one Turning. New players’ prologue is an instance, so Lantern Town’s walk does not strand them. See section 8. |
Travel that is not a dock is always possible and always slower or dearer than a dock, so where the titans are still matters. There is no instant ferry to anywhere. - The Tetherline: the Lamplighters’ rope-and-pulley ferry network between dock maps and holds. Slow, cheap, scenic. - Kite-skiffs: the Almanac’s sky ferries between Ystra and other docks. - Moth-skiffs: Lampblack’s smugglers, only in the Under, to wherever she is. - Return Lantern: a Lanternbearer can always walk home along their own lantern’s light, to the hold of the titan they are bound to (Lantern Town until they rebind at another hold’s Vent-keeper). Lore: your fire remembers which titan it came from.
Six. Two are antagonists; neither is simply wrong.
Goal: keep the holds lit and the Lanternbearers working. Seat: the Wick, Lantern Town. Leader: Lampwarden-General Osgood Fairweather, a decent man who has never asked a hard question. Licenses every Lanternbearer, runs the Lighting, the Tetherline and the contract boards. Keeps the Snuffing Rites as ceremony without knowing they were a rationing rule. Its inner council, the Wick, holds Oda Wickham’s sealed letter explaining the Rites, unopened for 263 years by tradition. Conflicts: Snuffers (sabotage), the Stay (who call them butchers), the Gilded Hour (who fund them). Players: default employer. Ranks Spark, Wick, Flame, Beacon, Lamp. Daily contracts, Lighting duty, Tetherline escort. In Act IV the players open Wickham’s letter.
Goal: a fair share of hornstone and safe work. Seat: Hornfast, Brazenbrow. Leader: Mags Cutter. “We cut what he sheds” is the founding oath; the Compact is split now between cutters who want to take live stone and cutters who have seen him bleed quartz. Fights the Forgemother over pay and the Deepening. Players: gathering and crafting materials, union jobs in the Furrows, a strike event in Act II that shuts the forges until resolved.
Goal: keep the Queen safe and the money moving. Seat: Lampblack. Leader: Nan Corvina. Not a guild, a family of debts. Runs smuggling, fencing, the Velvet Market and the Hush. Will kill to protect the Queen’s secret and will forgive almost anything else. Conflicts: the Guild (which licenses Shades with ill grace), the Gilded Hour (who want her wing-light). Players: fence and black market, contraband runs in the Under, Shade class line, the secret at 68.
Goal: survive in the dark as they always have, and be left alone by “riders.” Seat: Underhay, a stilt town in Lowlight. Leader: Ruth Underhay, called Ruthless Ruth by riders and just Ruth by everyone else. Descended from Concord tapline workers who were not let onto the titans. They live by coldlight: they keep Lampghosts in wicker cages, gently, and the light the Lampghosts put out is enough to grow blue crops by. They hate heartfire (it draws Lampghosts and is “stolen”), and they remember the Tapping in songs the Almanac has never heard. Conflicts: the Guild and the holds generally; the Snuffers recruit their young. Players: reputation earned slowly by dimming your lantern in their lands; coldlight gear; the oral history that unlocks Act III’s truth.
Goal: a new sun. Seat: officially nowhere; a chapterhouse in Highnoon’s Gilt Row and a camp at the Sunfoot. Leader: Provost Calla Aumbry. A Concord heirloom society, the descendants of the Provosts of Lamps, who kept the tap designs and the family guilt for three hundred years. They wear gold leaf on the backs of their hands. Their math is good: the titans will not last, and the Last Bell is coming. Their answer is to gather heartfire (from Wend’s corpse, from stolen lanterns, from the Cinder Eye itself) and lift it into the sky as the Second Noon, a sun that lights everyone, not only the people four tired animals can carry. It would work, for a while, and it would stop the world for good. Players: in Acts I–II they are generous patrons whose contracts pay well. In Act III they are the enemy.
Goal: put out every lantern so the titans can walk. Seat: wherever Hob Sallow is preaching. Leader: Hob Sallow. They douse lanterns with black fen-water, cut Tetherlines and paint EVERY WICK A WOUND on Guild walls. They are right about the cost and willing to let the holds die in the dark to stop it. Many are Wendhome survivors and Stay youth. Players: enemies in raids on Tetherlines and hold events; Hob’s redemption in Act IV; he is Wend’s Absence’s Listener in the finale.
| Guild | Compact | Moth Court | Stay | Gilded Hour | Snuffers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guild | Employer | Uneasy | Hostile | Funded by | War | |
| Compact | Customer | Trade | Unknown | Customer | Hostile | |
| Moth Court | Uneasy | Trade | Trade (coldlight) | Hostile | Shelters some | |
| Stay | Hostile | Unknown | Trade | Hostile | Lose youth to | |
| Gilded Hour | Patron | Patron | Target | Contempt | War | |
| Snuffers | War | Hostile | Owe | Recruit from | War |
Every player is a Lanternbearer: someone licensed by the Guild to go down from the holds with a lantern lit from a titan’s heartfire. Every player arrives already trained in one of the four base classes (chosen at character creation) and is lit at Mossback’s Vent at level 1. At level 10 each is inducted at their class’s Lodge in Lantern Town’s Rim. At 30 they choose a branch at the class’s true home hold, where the later trials also happen.
Warden. Founded on Brazenbrow during the Climb, when the first Wardens held lanterns at the edges of the holds while the rest climbed. Heavy armor, a shield and the lantern-halberd: a halberd whose head is a lantern cage, so the light is always at the front. The oath is three words: “Light behind me.” Home: the Warden Hall, Brazenbrow.
Kindler. Scholars of the Almanac who learned to pour heartfire out of a lantern and shape it. They use more fire than any other class, which is why the Almanac rations their training and nobody remembers why. They carry a kindling-rod and a book of glyphs; their spells look like handwriting made of flame. Home: the Kindling Hall, the Almanac.
Ranger. Mossback’s Pathfinders: they walk days ahead of him in the dark, mark the safe route with lanterns, and shoot what’s on it. Bow and traps, dim-fletched arrows that don’t give away the archer. They know the dark better than any rider and respect it. Home: the Pathfinders’ Lodge, Lantern Town (the only class that advances on Mossback).
Shade. Lampblack’s thieves. A Shade “cracks the glass”: lets a sliver of coldlight into their lantern, and with it a little of the Lampghosts’ absence, so they can be absent too: unseen, unfelt, not where the light says. The Guild licenses them under protest. Morally grey by trade. In the truth, they are the living proof that fire and absence can share a vessel. Home: the Hush, Lampblack.
Twelve branches, all canon. Branch chosen at 30; 60 and 100 are the
same branch’s later names. 03-systems.md defines mechanics
and roles and decides which branches ship at launch; both healers
(Tender and Pocketsmith) ship at launch. Stridewright is the Kindler’s
controller.
| Base (creation; Lodge at 10) | Branch (30) | 60 | 100 | Fantasy | Identity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warden | Lampguard | Beaconkeep | Lighthouse | Lantern-halberd and ward; the lantern becomes a ward the party stands inside. | The light everyone stands behind. |
| Warden | Ironbrow | Hornbreaker | Mountainborn | Greyhorn-trained charger; halberd and momentum. | Hits like the titan that taught them. |
| Warden | Emberheart | Pyrewarden | Lastlight | Burns their own lantern for power; brightest when nearly out. | Spends their own light to win. |
| Kindler | Cinderwright | Kilnmaster | Sunsmith | Raw heartfire as fire, heat and burning ground. | Makes fire do what it wants to. |
| Kindler | Tender | Hearthsinger | Dawnkeeper | Warmth that mends, shields and keeps lanterns lit. | Keeps everyone warm and standing. |
| Kindler | Stridewright | Waywright | Worldturner | Heartfire as motion: haste, slow, push, blink. | Spends fire the way titans do. |
| Ranger | Pathfinder | Wayfarer | Lodestar | Longbow, range, marking targets for the party. | Sees farthest, shoots farthest. |
| Ranger | Lurewright | Falselight | Marshlight | Lantern-baited traps and decoy lights. | Makes the dark come to the trap. |
| Ranger | Linerunner | Skyhook | Stormkite | Grapples and tether-arrows; fights from the ropes. | Never touches the ground. |
| Shade | Gapwalker | Nightseam | Nobody | Steps through gaps in the light; daggers from nowhere. | Never where the light says. |
| Shade | Ghostsworn | Facewright | Thousandface | Wears the shapes of Lampghosts it has put out. | Wears what the dark wore. |
| Shade | Pocketsmith | Fence | Moth’s Hand | Steals light from the Lampghosts and the dark and passes it to allies as healing. | Takes the light out of the dark’s hand and gives it to yours. |
Advancement trials (lore). At 30 the trial is at the class’s home hold. At 60 it is in the dark: a Warden holds a dock alone through an Under; a Kindler lights the Long Clock’s lamp from their own fire; a Ranger walks a stretch of the Turning Roads ahead of a titan; a Shade spends a Glow inside Lampblack without being seen by Lisle. At 100 every class’s trial ends in front of a titan’s Listener, who tells the player one true thing.
Five acts and a prologue, mapped to the regions in 02-atlas.md. Act titles are what
the quest log shows. The Prologue and Acts I–II ship at launch and Acts
III–V as later updates (D1); each opens server-wide on a published date
(D2), and each closing world event (the Pale Tenant, the Convergence)
resolves once per world.
| Act | Levels | Regions | Question the act asks | Ends with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prologue: The Lighting | 1–10 | Lantern Town, the Mossway | Who are you? | Your Lodge. |
| I: The Lantern Road | 10–30 | Glasslands, Tallowmere | What is eating the lanterns? | The Cinder Eye breaks; Concord ledgers mention taps. |
| II: Hornfall | 30–60 | Furrows, Cloudshelf, Hornheart | Why is Greyhorn sick? | A Lampghost born inside Greyhorn; Wend’s truth. |
| III: What Turns the World | 60–92 | Combs, Lowlight, Highnoon | What did the Concord do? | The world turns because titans walk; the Gilded Hour steal the Noon Lens. |
| IV: Wend’s Wake | 92–106 | Wend’s Fall | Can anything come back? | The Cinder Eye re-forms and is taken west. |
| V: The Second Noon | 106–120 | The Sunfoot | Which light? | Convergence; Morrow. |
The prologue’s first part (the Stair to the first trip down to Mossy
Field) is an instance, so the live world clock never has to cooperate
with onboarding. It always plays during a Kneeling, and it ends with a
titan crossing staged inside the instance, watched from the Rim’s rail.
Then the player steps out into the live Lantern Town. 03-systems.md owns the systems
in it and 11-prologue.md the
beat sheet. - You come up the Pilgrim’s Stair during a
Kneeling with a crowd of newcomers. Fen Cobble greets you, loses his
speech, and walks you to the Wick. - The Lighting.
Wickmother Lume lights your lantern at the Vent. The town lurches:
Mossback missed a step. Everyone laughs and cheers; it happens at most
Lightings. “He stumbled for you!” is what the town says. Fen tells you
it’s lucky. - Down to Mossy Field to pop Puddlings.
Motes from each one cling to your lantern and slip away up its thread.
Fen takes you to the foot of the Stair to see where they go: streaming
up into Mossback’s shell. Fen: “Going home to the sun.” - Reeve Tamsey
asks you to help count the lanterns on the Rim for her ledger, and is
embarrassed when you ask why. - The Puddle Mayor in the
Soak. Old Ponder notices rust-colored moss for the first time this year
and says nothing to anyone but you. - Level 10: induction at your
Lodge.
02-atlas.md, the Sunfoot).| Name | Who | Wants | Why | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Cinder Eye | Wend’s largest ember | To be a heart again | Homesick fire | Becomes Morrow’s heart |
| Provost Calla Aumbry | Leader of the Gilded Hour | A sun for everyone | Her family started this; her math says the titans are doomed; she thinks titans are beasts and Lampghosts are waste | Stays in the Second Noon as it is unmade; leaves a letter that admits the math was wrong only about the Lampghosts |
| Tapwright Emmerich Holt | Gilded Hour engineer | To finish the Concord’s machine | Loves the engineering and despises sentiment | Killed in the raid by his own Sunlift |
| Gilt-Captain Lucan Sallis | Aumbry’s sworn knight | To protect her | Owes her his life | Kneels at the raid’s second phase; can be spared (cosmetic title) |
| Hob Sallow | Snuffer leader, Wend’s Listener | Every lantern out | He watched Wend die and nobody believed him | Redeemed; speaks for Wend’s Absence |
| The Afternoon Prince | The Lampghost that ate Tamsin Aurel IV, last Sun-Prince | (Wears her last decree) “Let the afternoon be lengthened.” | Lampghosts wear what they ate | Put out in Highnoon |
The finale changes the world for everyone on the server, once: Morrow
joins the Migration as a fifth route (a slow loop around the Sunfoot and
the Mossway), and the sun stands one tenth of a degree higher, so every
sky is one step brighter. From then on the Long Clock
shows the sun’s height beside the Sunline, and each later Dawnmark (08-scale.md §1) raises the sun
another step. Before Morrow the sun never moves, so nothing in the world
contradicts “the sun has not risen in 303 years” until the finale says
otherwise. The Clock posts the story’s next question the day the finale
lands: One tenth of a degree. Two point one to go.
Dayside. The world turning again means the far side, which has had three hundred years of blazing endless afternoon, begins its evening for the first time. Its people, the Glarefolk, live under shade-cloth in a cracked white country, ride titans that are overfull and burning (sun-titans who never stopped basking), and see the Turning as the end of their world. New titans, a new class line, a political story: two halves of a world that each think the other’s light is theirs. Cap 140.
Morrow’s Road. The calf titan grows over a year of real time and needs a hold. Guilds and players build it: housing, guild halls and player shops on Morrow’s back, with the route chosen by player vote each Turning. The lore question: how many lanterns can a young titan spare?
The Underneath. Where Lampghosts go when no one puts them out: they sink, over centuries, to a black sea under the known lands where every unreturned absence has pooled. The Concord’s buried tapline, the first Lampghost ever (Aun’s), and a titan graveyard of all nineteen tapped titans’ absences, larger than any region. Can thirty-one titans be put back?
The Old Lamp. Ystra has sung one line Cantor Spry translated as “the first of us walked up.” The sun may be a titan. Ystra carries the players over the cloud and up. Saved for last.
Tamsey: Name? Good. Lantern? Not yet. Sit. Tea first, then fire. That’s the order. Tamsey: Forty-one new lanterns this Turning. My mother’s ledger never went past twenty in a Turning, not once. Player: Why do you count them? Tamsey: Somebody ought to. More tea?
Barrowman: That’s three bells. Hold on to something that’s bolted down. Barrowman: No. Not me. (the map tilts forty degrees; his house swings level on its gimbal) Barrowman: Thirty years on this head and he’s never charged without a reason. Lately I can’t find the reason. Lately I’m not sure he can.
Corvina: Hush, love. She doesn’t like shouting. Neither do the people who sell me things. Corvina: You want to know what’s under the wings. Everyone does. The price is a lantern. Player: I have a lantern. Corvina: A lit one, love. Leave it with me a Bell. You’ll get it back. Mostly.
Small Steps (Old Ponder, Lantern Town, level 6)
The moss on the Brow came up rust-colored this morning, just a patch the size of a doormat. It does that sometimes. It’s done it more this year. I’d like to know if it’s the same below. Go down the Stair to the Footprint Ponds and bring me a handful of moss from the newest print, the one at the end of the line. And while you’re there, pop a few of the Puddlings. They gather where he kneels. They always have. I’ve never known why.
Objectives: Gather Footprint Moss (0/1). Put out Puddlings at Footprint Ponds (0/12). Reward: Mossback’s Shed Scute, 450 XP, 30 brass.
Mossback’s Shed Scute — shield, level 8. He drops these the way you drop crumbs. Lantern Town has built four hundred roofs from his crumbs, and never once said thank you.
Wendhome Lantern — off-hand, level 98. Still lit. It has been lit for forty-one years and will be lit for forty more. Put it out and you’ll be the first.
| Use | Not |
|---|---|
| Lanternbearer | adventurer, hero |
| put out (a Lampghost) | slay, destroy |
| hold | city, kingdom |
| the Glow, the Under, Bells, a Turning | day, night, hours, month |
| Lampward / Underward | west / east |
| heartfire, a step (of fire) | mana, magic energy |
| coldlight | dark magic, shadow energy |
| docked, kneeling | landed, arrived |
| brass (coins; struck in Brazenbrow) | gold, gil |
| Listener | priest, shaman |
“Ancient evil,” “realm,” “darkness spreads,” “the prophecy,” “chosen,” “dark lord,” “since time immemorial,” “little did they know.” Any sentence a trailer narrator could say.