Hearthold · Road to Redemption

A ship lies upside down on top of a green hill, and smoke rises from a chimney cut through its keel.

The first town a fallen reaches, at the start of the third act, and the hub of the climb from there to the gate. Hearthold is the last town of Velmarch, on a hill in the middle of the Vale. On its summit lies the Crowned Gull, the royal flagship, keel-up, forty miles from the sea that carried it there. The town is built in it and around it. Under the hull burns the Last Hearth. Which regions sit in which act is a proposal, from the overview.

What it looks like

From the Vale, a green hill with a dark ship on top, like a barrow with a keel. Galleries, dormers and window boxes have been built into its planking, a market spreads around its foot, and through a great doorway cut in its side the Hearth's glow shows at any hour. Half-timbered houses climb the slopes in rings, some built from the timbers of the royal fleet, with portholes for windows.

Inside the hull it is another light. The ribs of the Crowned Gull arch overhead into shadow, lamps hang from them on chains, and the ship's carved gull figurehead hangs upside down over the Bilge Market. The light is warm and low and comes from below, so faces are lit from the chin up. Everything is patched and riveted.

The Last Hearth sits at the centre of the hull in an iron cradle, and it is the size of a house. The Hearthfolk say the coal the survivors carried up from Saltreach fitted in an iron pot. It grew for a generation after the drowning, and has burned lower every year since.

What a fallen finds there

A town that doesn't know what you are. Nothing shows on a fallen on the climb, so the Hearthfolk see a stranger who came up the low road, and are generous anyway.
The faithful's fire. The forbidden faith keeps a fire for whoever climbs, and in Hearthold it is in the hull itself: down in the forward ribs, where the old planks weep salt, under the house of the Stilled. Whether every Stilled is one of the faithful, Ilse will not say. Your hoard is kept there as relics, and an Apostate cell meets beside it.
The Coalwrights' benches. The Coalwrights work Ember shards into gear, and every craft a fallen learns, from a Shard of Kindling to a Sovereign Spark, starts at one of their benches. They do not know what they are working, and they are proud of it.
Maudra, the Hearthwarden. She keeps the Hearth. She looks at a fallen a little too long, and says nothing.

Who lives there

The Hearthfolk. Farmers, millers and traders of the Vale come up the hill to buy, sell, marry and bury. Practical, superstitious and generous.
The Coalwrights, whose forges ring the Hearth, close to the heat.
The Stilled. The quiet sect who want the Hearth to go out, and who feed you while they say so, led by Ilse.

No monster has come up the hill. The Hearthfolk say the drowned cannot bear the warmth. The fallen know better: nobody plays the people of Hearthold, so nothing sent to fight comes for them.

How it plays

The hub of the climb's second half. Traders, the stash, the crafting benches, and the fire you return to from the Vale, Harrowwood and the moors.
Memories play again here. A memory's scene plays at the next fire after its boss, and again at any hub.

On the second climb

A century on, Maudra's notches have gone round the cradle and started again, and the Hearth is smaller. The fog is at the foot of the hill. The faithful kept your things, and give them back. See the second climb.

Its place in history

On the Night of the Tide the flood carried the Crowned Gull forty miles inland and left it keel-up on the hilltop. The survivors of the coast came up the Vale behind the water and found it there. They carried one coal from the drowned city. The coal became the Last Hearth, and the ship became the town. Each year Maudra cuts a notch in the cradle. See History.

In the game

Hearthold is the planned hub town. It is not in the current build, where every run begins in the caves.

Rumours

The Crowned Gull's bell still hangs in the hull. It has not rung since the drowning, and it is cracked, so it never can.
Maudra does not sleep. Children who wake in the night see her by the Hearth, talking to the coal in a voice too low to hear.