Who you are · Road to Redemption

Through the cracks of a salvaged breastplate, an ember glows like a coal under ash.

You play a fallen angel. You wake at the bottom of the world with no memory of who you were, and you climb back up, act by act, learning who you are, toward the seat in heaven that was yours. The fall burned heaven's white off you: the fallen are the only clean angels, and the climb back slowly brings the corruption back. Redemption, and its price. At the top you choose a faction, for good, and fall once more, keeping your memories, to climb it again a hundred years later.

All of that was decided by Alex on 25 October 2026, with the rules below that don't sit in a proposal block. Why you fell, and the war you climb into, are on the overview. Why each system of the game works the way it does is on the story in play.

Where you wake: a floor of grey feathers, and the embers of those who fell before

What you are called

The Fallen. Decided by Alex on 26 October 2026: it says what you are in one word, and it sits beside Road to Redemption. Only heaven, and the faith that keeps your fires, know the word. Down below, anyone who comes up out of the deep with a coal in their chest is taken for a miner the fire took in; nobody below believes a word of the faithful but the burned.

They took her for a miner in every town, and she let them.

The ember

Proposal

The ember is what is left of you. An angel's grace burns down to a coal on the way down. It is the light you carry in the deep, the warmth you share with the others who fell with you, and the one warm colour in a cold world. The higher you climb, the more of it comes back, and with it heaven's corruption.

It shows. It glows through the ribs of armour and the cracks in a breastplate. In the deep it is the only light there is; in the daylight of the Vale it is a small warm mark on the chest, easy to miss; in heaven it is the one thing with colour. The fallen wear what they can salvage, hoods and sailcloth and riveted plate. The glow at the chest is the one thing they all share.

Decided: every kill leaves a little white on your hands, and the ember's light turns a little colder with every level. The second fall burns it warm again. At its heart the coal still shows red, however cold its light has grown.

In game. The current build is all underground, so the ember is your light. The warm spotlight that follows your character and the warm fill around you are your ember. Past it the world fades into fog and then to black, a few dozen paces out. Whatever you can see, your ember is showing you. The daylit world above, and the light that cools as you level, are concept.

The fires

She fed the fire every night for forty years, and nobody came up the road.

Drafted by a team of Claude agents to plug the lore's holes, and kept by Alex on 25 October 2026.

A fallen lights its own fires. It lights one wherever it rests, steps from any of its fires to another, and relights at the last it touched. A century puts them all out.
Kin are fallen who share a fire. A party is kin from the moment it sets out together, whatever banners its fallen chose. Kin relight at the party's fire, grow from each other's kills, and can't be made to burn one another. Strangers can.

She chose the Heirs, and she still sleeps with her back to yours.
The faithful keep the hubs. The forbidden faith keeps fires for whoever climbs. It teaches a board, a climb, and rest for the dead, and nobody below believes it but the burned. Where the faithful gather, the climbs have towns, traders and an Apostate cell. A fallen's things are one hoard: the faithful keep it as relics below, safe a hundred years if need be, and it is in your seat once you have one. In heaven, the go-betweens of the trade come to your seat to deal.
The cold embers on the floor where the fallen wake are coals that guttered before they had touched any fire. Each is an angel heaven never gets back, and that is why heaven is narrower now.
Some fallen swear that no fire will relight them. When one gutters, nothing relights it, not even a friend's warmth, and a sworn fallen's piece takes its coal with it.

Who keeps the fires

She lit the first fire before you opened your eyes.

Marked for Alex by a Claude stand-in, at his request, and applied as decided on 25 October 2026.

She lights your first fire. The Apostate who waits where you wake lights a fire beside you before anything can reach you. The cold embers are the fallen nobody found.
The faithful keep what fallen leave with them, and give it to whoever it was left for. Each war keeps its own hoard; when a war moves on, its hoard goes back to the long war with its fallen.
The faithful hide in plain sight. Their towns look like any other; the fire is behind a wall, under a floor, in a hull. Each age the faiths burn them, and each age the faith is found again among the new pieces the board makes of the dead.
A seat's door is in heaven, so kin come through it only while they stand in heaven themselves. A fallen whose climbs are behind it goes down to a friend's climb as its piece, as to any map, and sets it down again at the party's fire.

Guttering and relighting

On the climbs a fallen is there in person, not as a piece, and the board can't take back what it never made. When a fallen dies it gutters out, and its coal relights at the last fire it touched; a friend's warmth relights it on the spot. In the endgame you are your faction's champion, worked from your seat, and losing it costs the piece, not you. There is no third fall: nobody knows what a third cut does.

In game. Death is guttering, and resurrecting is relighting. When your life reaches zero you fall dark. Press Space to relight. You rise at the start of the depth. If anyone in your party is still lit, they fight on where they are. If no one is, the depth is made anew. A companion kneeling to relight you by hand is concept. Each time you relight, you lose some of the experience toward your next level, though never a level; the wiki has the rules as the build runs them.

Proposal

A relit coal spills the white it had not yet settled. That is what guttering costs: never what you have become, only some of what you were becoming.

Shared warmth

Kin grow from each other's kills: the white of a kill goes into the coals of every kin near enough. The Hearthfolk have a saying for it, from the days when they took the fallen for miners: "One coal dies. A heap of them burns till morning."

In game. Experience from a kill goes to every living player within 30 tiles of it, so a party that fights together levels together. When any living member of the party steps into a portal, the whole party goes with them. Loot follows the same rule. Each player near a kill rolls their own drops, which only they can see and pick up, so nobody fights over a coal. See Co-op.

The white comes off the dead

Every kill leaves a little white on your hands.

Drafted by a team of Claude agents, and kept by Alex on 25 October 2026.

Only pieces in play carry white: what a faction has bound, raised, or converted and armed. Farmers, priests, traders and children are pieces nobody plays. They watch the war, and that is why towns stand.
When a piece in play dies, the board takes back what it made, and its white goes into the coals of every kin near enough. That is how a fallen grows stronger, and it is the corruption coming back: the ember's light turns a little colder with every level, and the second fall burns it warm again.
The more white, the more played. A magic piece carries more than a plain one. A rare is moved by an angel's own hand, and has a name because the angel gave it one.

Somewhere above, an angel calls it by name.
Your faction's white shows in your shadow, your wings and the light off you; your gear stays yours. An Apostate's white shows only in its shadow, its teeth and the edge of its hammer.
The passive tree is where the white settles, and it is drawn as the heaven you remember. It is called the Rose.

What the white makes

The dead it raised turned their heads when it did.

Marked for Alex by a Claude stand-in, at his request, and applied as decided on 25 October 2026.

What a fallen raises wears the shapes of the dead, but it is the fallen's own white. It needs no grave, knows its fallen, is kin to its kin, and brings its kills' white home. It goes where its fallen goes, into heaven too, and fights there as part of it. The coal's red shows in its eyes. This holds for what a faction's skills call up as well.
A fallen's true form is what comes back of it: its shadow, its wings and its light, never its body or gear. On both climbs its body is clean to look at and only its light cools; its faction shows from its seat on. At its heart the coal still shows red, however cold its light has grown.
The white remembers heaven before you do, so the passive tree is drawn as heaven from the first level.
What runs loose on broken ground is still in play: it still wears the white of the chains it slipped. It goes for a coal first, then for whatever lives, and never for what runs loose with it.

Memories

The higher you stand, the more of you comes back.

Each act of a climb ends with a boss, and each act boss gives back a memory: a short scene of who you were, and a strength the character keeps for good. Six in all, three on each climb. The first climb's show heaven as you knew it; the second's are older, from before your first fall. None of them reaches the blow that felled you, and your faction changes what you notice in them, never what happened. More on the second climb.

What you can do

Every way of killing below is open to any fallen. Your skills are fire, frost, storm and stone, and the trade your hands remember, one of the archetypes, is only where you start. The faction you choose at the top adds its own few skills on top of any build and takes nothing away. As you grow, the white settles in your passive tree, and the places it lights map who you are becoming.