Fire, tide and white
Fire remembers, the tide forgets, and heaven's white remembers heaven. Three forces, none of them good, and what each does in play.
Art in progressA coal hisses where the seawater touches it, and both of them grow smaller.
Three forces shape everything in Road to Redemption. Two belong to the world, and the Hearthfolk have names for them, sayings about them and songs that get them wrong: the fire and the sea. The third belongs to heaven, and the world has no name for it but the white. None of them is good. Each gives something and takes something you cannot spare.
Decided by Alex, and the ground this page stands on: heaven is white and has no colour, because in this game white is the colour of evil; the world below is dark, with some colour. Every kill leaves a little white on your hands, and the ember's light turns a little colder with every level. The rest is concept.
The Ember
Proposal
The Ember is what is left of an angel's grace. It burns down to a coal on the way down, and that coal 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 fire Velmarch mined beneath the world is the same thing: the grace of angels cut loose before you, heaped at the bottom of the world in the Heartfire.
To the Hearthfolk the Ember is a living fire under the world. It gives warmth, growth, memory and ambition. Crops grew under its light in midwinter. Its coals burned without fuel, and Velmarch minted its coins from its shards.
It is never full. What it warms, it eventually consumes. The Hearthfolk say the fires of the Hunger did not start in any hearth. They started in walls, in beams, in people. Whole districts burned from the inside out.
Its colours are ember orange and gold. In the deep, warm light means life. It marks the fallen, their kin, their loot, their craft, and the creatures the fire made.
The Tide
Proposal
The Tide comes from above. The cold that drowned Velmarch came down from heaven, in answer to a king who asked for the fire to be put out. A falling angel passes through the Tide on the way down, and that is where its memory goes; now it is taking the world's. The higher you climb, the closer you come to where it rises.
To the Hearthfolk the Tide is the grey sea that drowned Velmarch. It gives rest, peace and an end to grief. It forgets. What it touches loses its shape, then its name, then itself. The Hearthfolk say the drowned of Saltreach still walk because the sea took their names and left their bodies.
Its colours are tide teal, rime blue and drowned slate. In the Vale the sun is warm and the grey-teal fog is the intruder at the edge of the fields. Cold belongs to death, to the drowned, and to whatever is coming for you.
The White
Heaven's colour, and the only one it has. Decided: only pieces in play carry white, what a faction has bound, raised, or converted and armed, and when a piece in play dies its white goes into the coals of every fallen near enough. That is how a fallen grows stronger, and it is the corruption coming back. The white remembers heaven before you do, so the passive tree is drawn as heaven from the first level. In the world, angels' true forms are white too, a worse white than heaven's glamour: bleached, cracked, bone and porcelain and a radiance that blinds. More on who you are and the factions.
Proposal
The white is not cold the way the Tide is. The Tide takes; the white fills. A fallen at the end of a climb is stronger than it has ever been, and its light is the colour of a heaven that has none.
| The Ember | The Tide | The White | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is | What is left of an angel's grace (proposal); to the world, a living fire under it | A cold that came down from above (proposal); to the world, the grey sea | Heaven's mark, and its corruption |
| Gives | Warmth, light, the coal that relights you | Rest, peace, an end to grief | Strength: every level is white settling |
| Takes | Everything it warms, in the end. It is never full | Shape, name, self, memory | Your warmth: the ember's light cools with every level |
| Remembers | Everything | Nothing | Heaven, before you do |
| Colour | Ember orange, gold | Tide teal, rime blue, drowned slate | White, with no colour at all |
| In play | Every crafting currency but one: fire adds | Quenching Water: the tide erases | Levelling and the passive tree; the mark on every monster in play |
Caught between
A fallen stands where all three meet. It carries fire to live in the dark, it climbs toward the memories the Tide took, and every kill on the way fills it with the white of the heaven it is climbing to. The climb gives back your strength, your memories and your seat, and with them the corruption the fall burned off. The second fall burns it warm again.
Most people in Velmarch have chosen between the first two. The Coalwrights believe the fire can be tamed this time. The Stilled believe the Tide is mercy and drink seawater to prove it. King Orrin chose the sea once, for everyone. Nobody below has chosen the white; it chooses them. Each of them is a little bit wrong. The world never says which.
In play
The theme runs through the game's systems as well as its stories. Each system's reason in the world is on the story in play.
- Crafting (in game). Every crafting currency but one is a form of the Ember, and fire adds. A Shard of Kindling wakes a plain item into a magic one. An Ember of Growth spreads a new modifier onto it. A Sovereign Spark adds one to a rare item. The one exception is Quenching Water, seawater from the Tidewall, which strips an item bare. The tide erases. How the Tide fits the new story is still open.
- Skills (in game). The fallen draw on their coal for fire and on what they have taken from the world for everything else. Frost Nova is the Tide turned against itself. The Stilled find it obscene.
- Monsters (in game). The bestiary divides along the old line. Hollow Ghouls and Rime Wraiths belong to the Tide. Cavern Brutes and Cinder Imps are Cinderborn, made by the fire. Gloom Spiders grew in the dark between and belong to neither. Every one of them in play carries a faction's white (concept: the build has no factions yet).
- Light. The climb runs from dark to white. In the deep, where you wake, the world is cold and dark by default and your ember is the only light, so warm colour is earned: a gold drop, an ally's glow or a burning imp reads at once across a cold screen. Velmarch has daylight. Heaven has light everywhere and no colour at all. The build today is the deep.
Hearthold sayings
The Hearthfolk keep a saying for each side, and they use both.
"Keep your coal covered." Said to children, to the fallen who come up the road, and to anyone who talks too long about the old kingdom.
"The sea is patient." Said at funerals. The Stilled say it at all other times.
Proposal
"Bar the door to the white." Said when something comes up the road wearing it.