THE LOREBOOK · WORKING WORLD BIBLE 0.2
Stories, places and the people who keep them real. This is our opening lore foundation; details will grow as the world takes shape.
THE WELL & THE LANTERN · NEW STORY FOUNDATION
The Well kept the memories of the world. The lanterns made warmth from them. For a long time, people believed this was a blessing.
A winter survived. A child brought home. A room where someone was waiting. The brightest memories fed the light, and the light kept people alive. But what was taken from the Well was never the whole of a life.
Joy was spent. Love was spent. What remained was the grief, cruelty, fear and loss those memories had once held together. The Well became corrupted by an inheritance no one wanted to face.
The tragedy is not that people wanted light.
It is what they learned to leave behind.
This is our new story foundation. The following details are proposals we are developing from it. The exact rules of memory, the nature of the presence in the Well and Sera’s response are still open.
Our proposed antagonist grows from what has been abandoned. It remembers the pain of being left, but not always the face of the person who was loved. It knows that something precious was taken. It may no longer know what.
Grief is not evil. The corruption comes from accumulated harm and memories torn from their context. Water is not the villain, and flame is not innocence. Both can sustain life; either can become destructive when the world demands only one.
“The Hush” remains a working name. One possible promise gives it a dangerous tenderness: “Nothing you love will ever be taken again.” It could keep that promise by holding every life perfectly still. Whether this presence formed in the Well or found a way into it remains undecided.
We propose that Sera becomes the first Keeper of a new covenant, in a world that already knew memory-fed light. That lets the Well’s corruption have a history before her journey, and gives her something more difficult to do than simply make a brighter flame.
Can she bring warmth home without leaving another wound in the water? Can people learn to carry an entire memory — tenderness, grief and all — instead of taking only the part that burns?
How her covenant answers this is not settled. We want the answer to emerge through people and choices: who she helps, what she learns, and what she refuses to sacrifice on someone else’s behalf.
The First Light is an earlier telling of Sera’s covenant: an ordinary lamplighter leaves a failing village, offers one beloved memory to a small living light, and brings a shareable flame home. It has a beginning and an ending, with no levels or loot.
The new Well & Lantern premise changes the larger timeline. We are developing that revision openly; the playable dialogue has not yet been rewritten to match it. Sera remains a historical character. Future players will make their own Keepers.
I / THE FORGETTING
A road disappeared before anyone noticed it was missing. The milestones remained. So did the people who had walked it. But none of them could say where it led.
Then came the small absences: a doorway with no house behind it, a song everyone knew until the final line, a chair at the supper table that nobody would move.
The people of Last Wick call it the Forgetting. It does not arrive as an army. It loosens the ties between a thing and everything that remembers it. A place can remain standing long after its meaning has gone.
Lanternlight slows that loss. In its warmth, names settle. Paths hold. A familiar voice can find its way home. Every Wickkeeper learns the same lesson: a flame is strongest when someone tends it.
“Leave a light in the window. Even if you cannot remember who it is for.”— A saying in Last Wick
II / THREE PLACES, ONE FIRST JOURNEY
The village gathers around the Great Lantern. Its light reaches across the plaza, through workshop windows and into the spaces between old stones. Residents tend the flame, repair what they can and leave a place for whoever returns next.
Miri helps newcomers find their feet. Pip sells curious little things, including a plush zebra whose importance is fiercely disputed.
Beyond the gate, roots split the paths and lantern shrines mark routes people are trying to keep. Some stones carry names. Others hold only the space where a name should be.
The jungle is a place to listen carefully. Echoes do not always know they are echoes.
Under the oldest roots, the Bellroot rings. Its sound carries fragments of voices through the stone. Whether it guards those memories or keeps them captive is a question the village has yet to answer.
In the larger game, your journey will lead from the safety of the plaza to that unanswered sound.
III / THE RULES OF LIVING LIGHT
A tended lantern helps a place hold its identity. A chain of lights can preserve a route through the uncertain wilds.
A flame can shelter a trace. It cannot simply return every person or place the world has lost.
The Great Lantern is a promise renewed by those who return. Our planned hub systems grow from that idea.
IV / BONDS
A Bond is the way someone holds on when the world lets go. These are the foundations of our original character identities.
Living light. Set lanterns, connect their glow and draw the flame home. The First Light tells the story of Sera, whose covenant makes the Keepers possible.
Meet the first light-bearer →Weight and echoes. Some sounds refuse to be forgotten. The Bellbound carries that insistence into the world.
Threads and motion. A broken connection leaves an end to follow. The Threadwalker finds a way between what remains.
Shelter and transformation. An empty space can become a refuge. What the Hollowhost carries is part of the mystery.
V / THE LARGER GAME
The First Light is a short story with no levels or loot. The larger 3D game has a different purpose: becoming a Keeper, finding your first gear and discovering what a lantern can do.
In that future ARPG, the first talent point is planned for level 10. A Wickkeeper will choose between Hearthkeeper, who makes a place worth staying, and Trailweaver, who leaves a light and finds a way.
Live the first chapter ↗A PAGE STILL BEING WRITTEN
We’re developing the village’s rituals, named residents, lost places and the wider history of the Forgetting. Writers and worldbuilders are welcome to share thoughtful ideas.
See what we’re looking for →