| C1E1 - Lantern Thirty-Seven |
On 3 Emberfall 1047 AK, four strangers crossed paths in Brindle Cross: Tamsin won Wil Fenn's coppers at cards, Ilsevel found two odd entries for Lantern 37 in the inn's ledger, and Brannoc met Oriel at the shrine as Father Tobin gave her his holy symbol. Then Lantern 37 went dark and goblins raided the square. The four fought them off together; Ilsevel fell and was brought back by Oriel, and one goblin was taken alive. |
| C1E2 - The Goblin Who Talked |
On the morning of 4 Emberfall, Oriel fed the captured goblin while Brannoc stood silently behind her, and the goblin, Rusk, talked: goblins carry the 'shiny stones' from the lanterns up into the hills to their boss and are paid in sacks of meal. Ilsevel judged that he was telling the truth and was afraid of going back. By the well, Ilsevel did not believe Tamsin's story about the velvet thread on her wrist. At noon Maddy Fenn offered free board to whoever brings the light back to Lantern 37, and all four agreed. |
| C1E3 - The Empty Housing |
On the afternoon of 4 Emberfall the four walked the mile south to Lantern 37, where the grass had gone grey and the glass was frosted in daylight. Tamsin opened the frozen housing catch with a hairpin and noticed fresh scratches: someone had opened it recently without a key. Ilsevel found the core had been lifted out whole, not broken, but could tell nothing about who took it. At dusk Brannoc could not read how many goblins had used the trail east, and the party followed it into Thornpike Woods anyway. |
| C1E4 - Wolves at the Birches |
On the night of 4 Emberfall the goblin trail forked at a great stump in Thornpike Woods. Ilsevel performed an hour-long ritual and called her familiar for the first time: a small brown owl she named Pell. In the birch clearing to the north, seeing through Pell's eyes proved dizzying and three wolves were on the party before anyone saw them; Tamsin went down to a wolf's bite until Oriel's prayer brought her back, and the party killed all three. Ilsevel found the wolves starved and grey at the fur tips, like the grass at Lantern 37, and the party set off east. |
| C1E5 - The Scout Camp |
Later on the night of 4 Emberfall the party found a goblin scout camp east along the trail. With Ilsevel hurt and no spells or prayers left but cantrips, Tamsin walked into the firelight alone and claimed the boss had sent her to collect the stones early; the goblins believed her long enough to let slip that the cart leaves at dawn and the boss counts every stone. When a goblin spotted Brannoc, the party took the camp in two rounds. The cart held three lantern-cores, all dead and cold, and the party took them to look for a safer place to sleep. |
| C1E6 - First Watch |
In the small hours of 5 Emberfall the party made its first camp together in a hollow south of the goblin trail, beside an old stone Ilsevel identified as a Lamplighter way-marker from the road that ran there before the Lantern Road. Oriel suggested trying to rekindle the dead cores at Father Tobin's altar. When Tamsin sat against the way-marker, the iron key at her throat hummed and she moved away without a word. Tamsin read Ilsevel's notebook while the elf was in trance and put it back with a sprig of heather. On first watch Oriel saw an anvil under the grey paint of Brannoc's shield, and Brannoc, seeing that she fears the dark, gave her his lantern. |
| C1E7 - The Saint of the Open Hand |
On 5 Emberfall the party came back to Brindle Cross with three dead lantern-cores. That evening at the Crooked Kettle, Father Tobin told the story of Saint Wenna of the Open Hand and of the frost night in 1022 when he found a baby at the foot of Lantern No. 1, wrapped in a grey coat with a brass button: Oriel. Ilsevel could recall only the Hall primer's single line on Wenna, and Oriel, praying over a dead core, felt nothing at all. Then Wil brought news that Lantern 41 had gone dark, and a letter from Captain Rook asking 'Bran Vow' to look in on Wending Mill, where goblins have been seen. |
| C1E8 - Wending Mill |
On 6 Emberfall the party walked south to answer Captain Rook's letter. Pell spotted goblins battering the door of the watermill at Wending Mill, and the four ran the last stretch and fought four goblins in the mill yard; Brannoc and Tamsin were both badly cut before Tamsin's blade and Ilsevel's spells ended it. The miller, Ned Hollis, said the goblins wanted the grain because 'the boss wants meal'. Then they saw smoke: the barn was burning, barred from outside, with Ned's wife Bet and a hired lad inside, and something behind the smoke had stopped shouting. |
| C1E9 - Smoke Over the Millpond |
At Wending Mill on 6 Emberfall, Brannoc heaved the bar off the burning barn's doors and Bet Hollis and a hired lad came out; the lad had breathed too much smoke, and Oriel was still tending him when a goblin boss with lantern-glass riveted to his helmet walked out of the smoke with two of his crew. With no spells left but cantrips, the party fought: the boss cut Oriel down, Brannoc killed the goblin and then held the boss alone while Oriel fought her way back to stable, and Ilsevel's fire bolt finally dropped the boss. Brannoc tended Oriel himself. The barn burned, but the mill was saved. |
| C1E10 - Fort Harrow |
On 8 Emberfall the party reached Fort Harrow, at the far end of the Lantern Road. At the gate, Corporal Dunn greeted Brannoc as 'Bran Vow' and young Ferrick repeated the sergeant's gossip that he is really an Ironvow, an exile out of Aldhammer; Tamsin changed the subject. Captain Edda Rook heard Brannoc's short report and hired all four at ten crowns a week each to ride the road and find who is buying the cores; Tamsin's haggling got nowhere. That evening Sergeant Holt's patrol brought in a goblin killed trying to open Lantern 52, wearing a black-glass pendant that dims the light around it and is cold like the dead cores. |