Where You Wake · Road to Redemption

You wake on a floor of feathers, and the light you fell through is already too far away to reach.

Every fallen begins here, at the bottom of the world, with a coal in its chest and no name. This is the first step of the first act, the Deep, and of every climb after it. The three acts are decided; which regions sit in which act is a proposal, from "The climb" in the overview.

What you find

A cave too wide to see the walls of, floored with grey feathers drifted as deep as snow. Far overhead a crack in the roof lets down one shaft of white light, and you are lying in it. The feathers are what the fall burned off you, and off every fallen before you. They are soft, grey, and cold, and they drift where you walk.

Scattered through them are small orange lights: the cold embers. Each is a coal that guttered before it touched any fire, an angel heaven never gets back. They still glow a little. They give no warmth.

Beside you, before anything in the dark can reach you, someone has lit a fire.

What it tells you

That you fell, and you are far from the first. That a coal on its own goes out. And that someone knew where you would land.

She is an Apostate, though she does not use the word: plain, human-looking, with a hammer made by men for stone. She knows you very well, and you do not know her. She tells you where you are and which way is up, puts your first weapon in your hand, and never says who you were.

How it plays

The first minutes of the game. A small circle of firelight in a great dark, the first fire you can relight at, and one way out: toward the light of the Heartfire.
Your ember is the light. Outside her fire, only the coal in your chest lights the floor. The first monsters come to it out of the dark, the way they come to the player's light in the build today.
Kin wake together. A party that sets out together wakes on the same floor, in the same shaft of light, at her one fire.

On the second climb

You fall a second time, willingly and keeping your memories, and wake on the same floor a hundred years on. The feathers are deeper. Every fire you lit is out, but hers is burning, and this time you know her. See the second climb.

In the game

Where You Wake is concept, and so is the Apostate. The build starts every run in a generated cave lit only by the player's ember, with no fire and nobody waiting.

Rumours

The shaft of light is never quite where it was. The feathers are deepest where it has fallen most.
A cold ember held long enough in a warm hand grows warm again. Nobody has held one that long.