Collowen, Autumn 1312: A Rain-Soaked Valley at the Edge of the Kingdom
Emberwake: A Borrowed Flame drops you into a small, wet, deeply lived-in corner of a medieval world that feels less like a video-game kingdom and more like a place with a rent day and a winter coming. Collowen is a river-valley folded between slate hills and the broken tooth of the Warden's Crag, on the kingdom's western march — a country of thatch and slate, sheep on the high pastures, barges on the river, and a single hill-town, Emberwake, that owns the valley's only market, its only temple, and its only brothel. Magic is thin here, and feared: hedge-witches at the edges of villages, one or two temple acolytes, merchants who price a charm like a sin. People notice strangers, count their coin, and remember their faces.
You arrive on the last night of a three-day storm, carrying the key to a cottage you have never seen. Your grandfather is dead; the house is yours; nothing else about your life was worth staying for. Harn Cottage sits at the valley's edge on the river bank, cold and dark — except for a strange pendant left on the table by the door.
That pendant is the Ember Locket, and it changes everything. It is a siphon: it can drain a living creature's magic, store it, and pour it into someone else. When you touch it, it floods you with power that was never yours and knocks you senseless. You wake a mage — holding more borrowed magic than any hedge-witch in the vale has ever held — and standing over you is Cerys Varn, the runaway daughter of the valley's ruler, who stole the Locket and fled rather than let her mother use it on her.
House Varn is not going to let that stand. Lady Verane Varn, Marchioness of Collowen, wants the Locket and her daughter back, and her Houndmaster already rides the roads with a kennel of trackers and a ledger of names. Harboring a fugitive is death; keeping the Locket is worse; and the valley's silence can be bought, though the price climbs every day. Meanwhile, something is waking inside you that the Locket only borrowed — and it has opinions of its own.
The Opening Hook: A Stranger, a Storm, and a Stolen Locket
Your story begins on September 27, 1312, at 19:10 — nightfall on the third day of the storm. The engine draws one of five separate opening hooks at random each time you begin, so no two arrivals play the same: a slow, charged seduction by the woman who left the Locket behind; a coercive night-raid by House Varn's Houndmaster that you do not get to refuse; a blackmail summons to Varnhold that the Marchioness frames as hospitality; a rope-and-penance confession from the valley's last acolyte; or a brothel arrangement that trades your body for your rent. Some open with desire, some with a price, and one opens with outright non-consent.
Whichever hook you draw, the shape is the same: you have a house, a secret, and no money. Everything else is yours to build.
House Varn's Justice Is a Rope
The Marchioness rules Collowen and her word is law. Harboring Cerys is a hanging offence, and keeping the Locket is worse. Silence can be bought, favours can be called in, and the Houndmaster's ledger never forgets a debt.
Borrowed Magic & the Undermarch
The Locket poured centuries of stolen power into you — and it must be uncovered gradually, never explained up front. Learn to wield it, and descend the roguelike Undermarch beneath the Barrow of Gormund, where monster girls and old magic sleep in the dark.
A Whole Valley of Women
Nine women are written to pursue you: the fugitive sorceress, the scarred ranger, the dryad madam, the dancer with a debt, the repressed acolyte, the starving demoness, the vain dragon, the valley's provisioner, and the Marchioness herself. Standing with each is earned, not assumed.
Protagonist Freedom & Attribute Guide
The default character is a twenty-two-year-old male traveler named Edric Marle — but the scenario is written with complete protagonist ambiguity. Nothing in the world lore, the opening hooks, the items, or the cast assumes your name, gender, or exact age. A female protagonist reads perfectly: the same women pursue you, and the same Locket makes the same claims on your blood. Change the name, gender, age, appearance, background, or attributes freely — Collowen bends around whoever you decide to be, and same-sex encounters are embraced whenever you initiate them.
The four suggested attributes are the ones this scenario rewards most: agility to survive the delve and the back roads, intelligence to read a valley full of schemes, charm to win women who have every reason to be careful, and endurance to keep standing when the winter and the debts close in.
Collowen is a valley of knives, snares, and stairwells, and the Undermarch punishes anyone who cannot move fast. Agility decides whether you outrun a tracker, slip a lock, take the high road across the crag, or walk away from a barrow-floor fight still breathing.
The Locket is a puzzle wrapped in a family's crimes. Intelligence is how you piece together what was drained into the gem, read the Thread's ledgers, brew what the Apothecary won't sell, and keep a step ahead of a marchioness who has been playing this game for forty years.
Every woman in this valley is protecting something — a secret, a sister, a contract, a wound. Charm is how you get past the fence and into the place where they actually want you. It is not a magic key; it only amplifies what you have already earned.
A vale winter, a brothel shift, a night in the Houndmaster's custody, and the slow arithmetic of a body that has to carry stolen power home — endurance decides who is still standing when spring comes to Collowen.
The Cast: Nine Lives Entangled With Yours
The starting cast is pre-seeded with full appearances, temperaments, and agendas — and every one of them is written to pursue a protagonist of any gender:
The black-haired, red-eyed heiress who left the Ember Locket on your table and has nowhere else to go. Guarded, brilliant, and starving for an ordinary life — and the first woman in the valley to want you for yourself rather than for what you carry.
The scarred ranger who tracked Cerys to your door and then pitched a tent in your yard to guard her against the men she used to ride with. Blunt, proud, and starving for softness she will never ask for — she tests you relentlessly and never forgets a kindness.
The green-skinned dryad who runs the vale's only brothel, keeps the valley's second-best ledger, and will sell you a share of the House and take you to bed on the same afternoon's paperwork. Kind to her women, mercenary about coin, and bored by everything else.
The ash-grey dark elf who dances on the Lamplight stage and plays a battered lute for nobody but herself. Bound by a contract she cannot buy out and shadowed by her brother Gorren, she is prickly, gifted, and the most loyal friend you will ever earn the hard way.
The last acolyte of a dying temple, who trims a lamp for a congregation that stopped coming. Pious, conscientious, and clenched tight around a hunger for rope, penance, and being told what to do — which she confides only in the dark.
The crimson-skinned demoness Gormund the Stonebound sealed beneath the barrow, who is starved for food, worship, and any sensation at all. She knows the older truth about the Locket's seam, and she can repair the Sage's Crook — for a price she would much rather collect in person.
The vain, heavy-bellied glimmer-dragon who suns herself at the Weir and trades "divine guidance" for coins and blessings for full gems. A larger rival wants her roost back, and the breeding instinct she keeps tamped down is closer to the surface than she admits.
The valley's storekeeper, best cook, and quiet go-between for the black-market Thread. Cheerful, ruthless about a deal, and warmer than she lets on — she feeds the valley while charging it fair market, and owes dangerous men a debt she cannot finish alone.
Cerys's mother and the reason the vale is no longer safe. Gracious, absolute, and used to being obeyed; she wants the Locket, her daughter, and quite possibly you. Court her, defy her, or buy her silence — but never mistake her hospitality for safety.
Starting Possessions & the Economy of a Valley
You begin with 60 Money, the clothes on your back, and the tools of a traveler who has slept rough before. It is not much: in Emberwake a warm bed and a hot meal will eat through it in a few days, and the Undermarch demands torches, rope, and time you cannot bill to anyone.
- Tarnished Hatchet — your first honest tool, and a weapon if it comes to that.
- Brass Hand-Lantern — the roads go dark early, and the barrow goes darker.
- Waxed Flint & Steel — one spark is the difference between a fire and a night that kills you.
- Worn Wool Cloak — patched, rain-heavy, and the reason you have survived worse weather than this.
- Harn Cottage Key — brass, on a waxed cord. It opens a door and a mystery.
- Frayed Traveler's Satchel, Half Loaf of Rye, Skin of Water, and two Dried River Fish — enough to get you to the first morning.
Money comes from work, and work is real: tavern shifts at the Broken Wheel, river-fishing and woodcutting, herb-gathering and alchemy, orchard and garden work, archery practice at the butts, cards with the Thread merchant, and the loot you carry out of the delve. The Lamplight House pays in coin and in flesh; buying into it turns the valley's oldest trade into a nightly income. Wages buy food, lodging, gear, and silence — and a body that goes hungry or thirsty fails its rolls, so the ledger of the belly matters as much as the ledger of the purse.
Five Random Openings: How Every First Night Begins
Because the engine draws one of five hooks at random, the tone of your arrival is different every playthrough — but each one names its acts plainly rather than fading to black:
- The Stranger in the Bath — Cerys rises from the copper tub, does not cover herself, and works you to hardness by the hearth. A charged, consensual seduction that sets the tone of the household.
- The Houndmaster's Price — House Varn's enforcer corners you at the door and forces your mouth as the price of silence. Outright non-consensual; he is not asking twice.
- The Marchioness's Summons — Lady Verane receives you alone at Varnhold, tells you what the Locket is, and makes you use your mouth between her thighs until she comes in exchange for your life.
- The Acolyte's Confession — Meriel presses a coil of cord into your hands and bends over the altar rail, begging to be bound, spanked, and fucked from behind.
- The House's Arrangement — broke and rent-due, you take Sylva's offer behind the beaded curtain, a paid tryst with the dryad madam and the dancer Yara.
Adult Themes, Romance & the Weight of the Locket
Eros Fable is uncensored, and Emberwake is written to match: desire is a currency as ordinary as coin in a valley this small. The Lamplight House sells it openly, tavern nights end in it, temple penance bends toward it, and a stranger with borrowed magic in his blood is exactly the kind of novelty the valley's women want to get their hands on. Sex is named plainly — fucking, blowjobs, cunnilingus, handjobs, fingering, groping, anal, threesomes, orgasms, cum — with no fade to black and no euphemism.
What you get, and with whom, is earned. Every woman tracks her own standing with you; a kiss, a night, or a place in her bed all follow from the trust you have actually built, not from a checklist. The core cast is a web of friendships, rivalries, and jealousies — the madam and the dancer, the ranger and the heiress, the acolyte and the Marchioness — and how you move between them shapes the whole campaign. Same-sex encounters are embraced whenever you initiate them.
The darker half of the vale does not respect consent. The Houndmaster and the Marchioness's men corner, coerce, strip, and use people as the price of silence; the thing behind Gormund's seals wants what it wants; and more than one of the women you court has learned to survive by trading her body. When a scene is non-consensual, the resistance and the act are written with explicit, unflinching detail — and the player is always free to accept, refuse, or redirect what happens next.
