Cinderwake
Every old road once began here. You are the Waykeeper, keeper of its wayhouse. Tonight its bell rings, though Cinderwake has no bell tower.
THE REALMS FIELD GUIDE
A light kept.
A road remembered.
Meet the people and places beyond Cinderwake, where a promise to remember someone can become a light.
Start with the world and its travelers. Chapter endings stay tucked inside clearly marked spoiler sections until you choose to open them.
Explore individual articles for illustrated profiles, training and related entries. Story revelations remain closed until you choose to read them.
BEGIN AT THE WAYHOUSE
A world asking for help
A promise becomes a light
In the Lantern Marches, promising to remember someone creates a light. If the light goes out, nobody will remember that person. The flame carries a promise; no person lives inside the lamp.
The Lantern Marches
Rootbound stairs and white bridges lead to a canal city. Lamps remember small acts of kindness along the road. In spring, the city carries its lights together in the Lamp Walk.
PEOPLE OF THE ROAD
A request, a witness, a moth
Mira Vell
Mira arrives asking the Waykeeper to keep a light burning. Someone wants the world to forget her friend Linnet. Her promise draws the company onto a road that should not exist.
Linnet
Linnet is the witness Mira wants to protect. She wrote down something the Still Court wants forgotten. Her name on the lantern gives the company someone to look for beyond the crossing.
Wick
A lamp-moth found on Linnet’s lantern follows the company. Wick is drawn to bright lights, including the wrong ones. Sometimes being very small proves unexpectedly useful.
REMEMBERED KINDNESSES
Companions along the old road
These introductions reveal the small memories found along Chapter I’s roads, without its ending.
Lyra Dawnarrow
From a tower, Lyra sent burning arrows to mark the road home. Lyra promised to keep shooting until everyone had found their way in.
Ilya Hearthsong
Ilya sang until the last lamp returned from the Lamp Walk. Knowing the words mattered less than joining in. Mira hums it all the way across the bridge.
Warmth worth remembering
Maelin Emberweaver
Maelin left an academy that treated fire as something only paying people deserved. Cinderwake remembers the mage who kept every oven lit through winter.
An open gate
Briar Oathkeeper
Briar let travelers through without payment, then warned them about the wobbling third step. A child left a promise to remember that kindness.
A light returned
Morrow Ashstep
Morrow only robbed travelers who could afford it. Nobody on this road could. One lamp remembers the thief who gave a lantern back.
Following the water
Nerys of the Rain
A lamp remembers Nerys walking a dry riverbed all the way to the wells of those who lit it. Nerys’s remembered words: the streams went where the road went.
A hand across
Kael Rainshield
Kael carried strangers over a broken causeway. Payment meant helping the next person who fell. The lamp remembers someone who never looked back for thanks.
YOUR COMPANY
Seven founding classes
Warden Druid, Runesage, Ironbound, Beastman, Rogue, Ranger and Dwarf form the founding company. A class describes a warrior’s training and abilities. A warrior can still have a name and identity of their own.
Further training can be earned through the story. The Chapter II section below introduces its earned class.
FIELD NOTES
Along the old roads
Every opponent on the road is a creature or a construct, never a person.
Briarling
Living growth crowds the lamps and gates of the old road. Clear it away so travelers can follow the waymarks again.
Mirefang
Mirefangs make dens among the rootbound steps. The company must clear a path before following the water toward the canal city.
Hollow Adept
A creature drawn to echoes at old crossings. When the creatures are quieted, the voices of the city can be heard again.
Elderwood Guardian
A great woodland guardian encountered along the company’s early road.
READ WHEN YOU ARE READY
The missing procession
This section reveals the Chapter I ending, Chapter II’s companions and its finale. It is optional reading. Searching this page can open it.
Chapter I and II spoilers
The archive and its witness
Linnet worked as an archive clerk for nine years. The Still Court has taken lamps that nobody offered and scraped their names at the Archive Forge. The people are asleep, fading as their names are lost; they are never inside the lamps. Linnet asks the Waykeeper to keep her light until the others are home.
The names that remain
An apothecary’s promise
Sable Thornwhisper
Sable lit a lamp for Doran, the teacher who explained which leaves heal and which ones bite. The Court took the lamp, but Doran’s name remained.
Names on the current
Tamsin Stormtrail
Tamsin sent a paper boat downstream carrying a dozen names and a tiny lamp. The Court said the crew never sailed; Tamsin remembered otherwise.
A smith keeps a light
Orin Breakwater
Orin hung a lamp for Pell, who kept the harbor lamps burning. The Court took Pell’s name, but missed the promise beside the floodgate.
The careful pencil
Seren Mossglass
Seren listened when the archive shelves rustled at night. A notebook preserves four hundred names in small, careful writing.
Every name, every night
Veska Moonhowl
Veska speaks the pack’s names each evening. In the vault, each lamp bears a name and a pawprint. Every light is still burning.
Creatures of the canal city
- Canal Skipper
- A round water creature with reeds and a ceramic float.
- Sealwork Crab
- An unmanned brass archive construct carrying a blank seal.
- Reedcall Heron
- A driftwood bird with a crest of reed pipes.
- Ashcoil
- A root creature curled around a ceramic spool, found rolling in the archive’s name-ash.
The Procession Engine
A bound guardian carries the walking memorial and its lamps. Its careful steps suggest a creature burdened by the Court’s work. Breaking the binding frees it. The sleepers wake with their names restored and choose to cross to Cinderwake.
EARNED THROUGH THE STORY
The Lamplighter
Linnet finds the lamp-tending practice in the archive and teaches it at Cinderwake after the sleepers wake. The Lamplighter is trained to break a ward and mark a target for the company.
Complete Chapter II to earn this class. It is never summoned, recruited or sold, in any realm.
The question of a road
Behind a blank memorial in the archive district, an old Waykeeper’s warning says the first roads were severed to stop the Concordance from forcing every world to obey the same laws. Under the ash, a chisel mark reads: ask before you open a road.
Chapter articles
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