The World of Epic Words

Epic Words is a word-ladder adventure that runs the length of fifty kingdoms — a slow road east through a fantasy world where words themselves are wearing thin. You climb from one word to the next a letter at a time, and along the way you meet the people who live on that road: an overwhelmed junior courier, a wandering healer who owes you one, a bandit chief with unexpectedly strict principles, a lake fairy who deals in half-answered promises.

This Codex is their record — a growing set of profiles for the recurring cast of Epic Words, drawn straight from the game’s own story files. Each entry is a character in full: where they live, who they answer to, what they’re good and hopelessly bad at, and exactly where on the road you’ll first cross paths with them.

The Founder’s Deck

Every kingdom has one signature face — a single character rendered as a collectible card in the Founder’s Deck, complete with a playing-card rank and suit. Pell, the Courier, is the Five of Hearts and the very first face you meet, standing at a crossroads in Kingdom I with a scroll he cannot deliver and a signpost he cannot read.

Who’s in the Codex so far

New profiles are added a few at a time. Here’s who has a full entry today.

Oil painting of a stone-and-timber watermill beside a rushing millstream, its wooden waterwheel turning under a small cascading waterfall.Aldren's MillThe Duke's great wheel, where the water grinds grain, gossip, and the occasional missing word.Oil painting of Aldren's Rest, a weathered coaching-inn-turned-stable at a rural crossroads on the Greenway RoadAldren's RestA coaching inn that quietly stopped being one — and can't hold onto its own last letter.Oil painting of Aldric, a road-worn traveler with a walking staff and satchel, pausing on the limestone path above Whisper Hollow with the dark treeline of Inkhollow behind him.Aldric of No-NameA debt-haunted traveler whose surname was taken as surety — perpetually mid-sentence.Oil painting of Aldwyn, a broad, grey-bearded blacksmith in a soot-stained leather apron over a rolled-sleeve linen shirt, standing at his anvil in a stone forge; he grips a glowing iron on the anvil with tongs in one hand and holds a hammer in the other. A long-handled, ash-pale axe hangs mounted on the stone wall above him beside a horseshoe and hanging tongs, with a glowing furnace, wooden quench buckets, and scattered smith's tools around him.Aldwyn the BlacksmithA broad, deliberate man who spends words like iron — and hands you his full attention only once you've earned it.Oil painting of a bustling mountain supply village built into the switchbacks of a high, misty peak, porters carrying rope-bound crates up the winding trail.Basecamp HollowA supply-village baffled, top to bottom, by its own research.Oil painting of Before-Gate, a mossy stone archway with a lantern-lit tollbooth and a circling flock of birds at the edge of the name-effaced country.Before-GateThe crossing keeps the forgotten, and the toll is not coin.Oil painting of a quiet grassy hillside hollow in a green vale under a soft overcast sky.Bellows HollowThe hillside that breathes, and has never once exhaled a word.Oil painting of a weathered old ferrywoman at the stern of her flat wooden ferry on a broad calm river.Bett, the River's Old HandA ferrywoman who takes her toll in true stories, and has never once run short.Oil painting of Blotter's Reach, a broad ink-stained stone shelf above a dark spring, with a jackdaw's shiny-trinket nest hanging in the hazel above.Blotter's ReachA flat shelf of stone above the ink-dark spring, where copyists work and jackdaws steal.Oil painting of a stout, ruddy-cheeked miller standing arms-crossed before a timber waterwheel mill on a fast river, wearing a flour-dusted brown leather apron over rolled sleeves and tall muddy boots, his forearms pale with milling dust, sacks of grain and a wooden hopper heaped beside him, green hills and a winding stream behind under a warm evening sky.Brann, the MillerA man who has lost the same mill to the same river four times, and is quietly certain the fifth spring will be the dry one.Oil painting of a cheerful young woman with brown hair in a loose ponytail, standing behind a deep stone counter in a herbalist's dispensary, wearing a linen blouse with rolled sleeves under a lace-front apron stained green with herbs, grinding a pestle in a dark stone mortar. Shelves of stoppered glass bottles and jars climb the walls behind her, drying herbs hang in the small-paned window, and a rolled formula-strip and brass balance-scale sit on the counter beside a scatter of green cuttings.Brindle, the Apothecary's ApprenticeMinds the dispensary with more confidence than she's earned and more competence than she'll admit.Oil painting of Calder the scholar crouching in the misty Glossary Mire, carefully lifting a weathered stone disc from the silt bank.CalderA warm, well-read scholar who knows your name before you've given it and is wrong in ways that are always just slightly convenient.Oil painting of Calligrapher's Green, a village lane lined with hedges pruned into flowing calligraphic swirlsCalligrapher's GreenA village that writes on everything — hedges, menus, streambeds — and trusts none of it to stay put.Oil painting of a weather-lined woman with short tousled brown hair on the deck of a dark-painted river barge at sunset, wearing a worn teal-green long coat over brown leathers, a single dark pearl on a cord at her throat, a leather-bound book tucked at her hip, a many-arched stone bridge and riverside village behind her.Captain VeyA privateer with a logbook full of debts owed to people who no longer exist.Oil painting of Charcoal Barrow, a charred mound in the woods with smoking charcoal kilns and old stone boundary markers.Charcoal BarrowA charred mound that keeps the oldest marks in the wood — and its first and last word is ashes.Oil painting of Clasp Gate, a glowing crystal gate at the end of the road through the Binding ThreadClasp GateThe gate that takes no coin — only one true thing about yourself.Oil painting of a grinning young centaur on a sunlit dirt road — chestnut horse lower body, bare-armed human torso in a frayed olive tunic, brown hair and short beard — an overstuffed leather satchel of rolled scrolls slung across one shoulder, a weathered wooden signpost and green rolling hills behind him.Cody, the Centaur CourierA courier of boundless goodwill and moderate route-planning, who reaches places a cart cannot and arrives cheerfully late.Oil painting of Coll the Aldren Adjudicator standing at the edge of a medieval marketplace, straightening his cuffColl, Duke Aldren's Roving AdjudicatorA clerk sent to sit between two rooms of people who are all, technically, correct.Oil painting of the grand charter-hall interior of Concordance Keep with its central stone shelfConcordance KeepThe realm's registry, kept so carefully that even a two-hundred-year absence shows up in it precisely, as an absence.Oil painting of a weathered wooden watchtower perched atop a tall limestone rock needle where a river splits into two channels below, red-clay cliffs on either side.Confluence WatchA cold beacon on a limestone needle, watching a river that long ago stopped asking permission to split in two.Oil painting of a scarred, road-hardened man on a rocky mountain pass, brown hair and stubble, weathered brown leather armor under a faded olive-green hooded cloak fastened with a round metal clasp, a travel pouch and a sheathed sword at his belt, his hand resting on the hilt, grey crags and dark pines rising behind him.Corvin, the Bandit ChiefThe boy you judged once, grown up to hold the road you need.Oil painting of Couplet Landing, a bustling sorting-town of timber buildings beneath the towering amber stair at the foot of the Rhyming Stair.Couplet LandingA town that publishes everything and agrees on nothing.Oil painting of Darro, a river-runner, standing on a wooden landing with a coil of rope over his shoulder and his boat moored behind him.DarroA river-runner who has moved discreet cargo for eight years and only just started wondering why.Oil painting of Duke Aldren, a distinguished middle-aged nobleman with a trimmed grey beard, in dark robes with a deep-maroon-and-gold mantle and a heavy gold chain-of-office, a gold signet ring on his hand, standing in a stone hall beside a fire, a rolled map on a table before him and a carved high-backed chair behind.Duke AldrenHe won't stamp what he can't read — and he remembers, regardless, who asked him to guess.Oil painting of Elowen, an Order of the Blank archivist, standing in a crowded stone charter-hall with a leather folio of papersElowenAn archivist so thorough she can prove a two-hundred-year-old absence down to the missing letter — and so certain she has never once thought to ask what made it.Oil painting of a young amber-and-copper scaled dragon coiled among the tumbled stones of a ruined tower, a thin wisp of smoke curling from one nostril, warm evening light through two arched windows, green rolling hills beyond, a carved rune-stone and a few scattered gold coins at her feet.Ember, the Young DragonThe realm's oldest rumour — glimpsed over ridgelines for a generation, never landing, and the only one who ever went below and came back.Oil painting of Erasure Overlook, a bald soot-streaked limestone ridge rising above the misty Drowned River valley.Erasure OverlookWhere every word was burned, and one refused.Oil painting of Four-Arch Ford, a ferrywoman poling her flatboat beneath the stone river crossingFour-Arch FordOne woman, one flatboat, and four stone arches tuned to four different keys.Oil painting of Gale Landing, a storm-battered valley town with lashed thatched roofs beneath a dark windswept sky.Gale LandingA town on its fourth welcome sign, and still losing the argument with the weather.Oil painting of Garrick the Aldren Guard sitting at his stone waymark post with ledger and satchelGarrick, the Aldren GuardA road-warden who trusts nothing he can't check against the roll — except one face he's never once managed to place.Oil painting of a broad-shouldered woman with a long grey braid and ink-stained hands, standing at a worn wooden desk in a stone-and-timber room lit by a hanging lantern. She holds a quill over an open ledger, her other hand resting flat on a small pale-grey stone disc; jars of ink, rolled scrolls, and stacks of bound glossaries crowd the desk around her.Geva, Keeper of the Worn IndexA lexicographer who has spent fifteen years arguing, by post, that words are never destroyed — only misplaced.Oil painting of the low green mound and standing stone of Half-Said Barrow at duskHalf-Said BarrowA low green mound whose oldest verse is missing its last word — smoothed away on purpose, waiting for someone to say it aloud.Oil painting of a lean, grey-haired man in a high-collared black robe standing at a wooden roll-top desk, holding a document in one hand and a brass magnifying glass to his eye in the other, surrounded by pigeonhole shelves crammed with rolled scrolls, leather-bound ledgers, a white quill in an inkwell, and a lit brass oil lamp.Hallowell, the Town ArchivistA man who charges by the ledger, extra for urgency, and is never, ever wrong.Oil painting of a smiling grey-haired minstrel standing on a dirt path through rolling green hills at golden hour, cradling an ornately carved wooden lute, dressed in a patched travelling cloak over a richly embroidered red-and-blue-and-gold tunic, a small leather pouch and a rolled white scroll tucked at his belt, sturdy dark boots on his feet.Hawthorn, the BardA grey-haired minstrel who has outlived several wars, two sets of patrons, and his own best verse — and is still, against all odds, in a fine mood about it.Oil painting of a burly, bearded taverner in a leather apron standing behind the bar of his tavern, an open ledger before him and shelves of pawned oddities behind, warm firelight.Holt, Keeper of the Standing InkA taverner who keeps other people's grief on a shelf, catalogued, and won't sell you a bit of it.Oil painting of a quiet stone and timber watermill beside a slow green river, its wooden waterwheel turning gently under an overcast sky.Hush MillA working mill whose gate gives one instruction, and has never once had to give it twice.Oil painting of Iliana, a dark-haired woman with a severe, faintly skeptical expression, in a deep midnight-blue velvet robe embroidered with gold constellations and crescent moons, standing in a candlelit study; she holds a brass scroll-case in one hand and rests the other on an unrolled star chart on a wooden table, surrounded by a gilded armillary sphere, a branched iron candelabra, and stacks of leather-bound books, two round star-glazed windows in the wall behind her.Iliana, the Court MageKeeper of the kingdom's prophecies, and skeptical of every one of them.Oil painting of Inkhollow, a misty village of stained timber cottages along a dark spring at the treeline of the Witch's Wood.InkhollowThe village where every label runs and no word ever quite dries.Oil painting of Iolanthe, the Splitrock schoolteacher known as Miss Wren, standing in her stone schoolroom with chalk and a worn primer in hand.IolantheThe village schoolteacher who answers to Wren, and to letters from three kingdoms east.Oil painting of a high stony ridge overlooking a green river valley under a wide open sky.Lexicon RidgeA region named for the working of raw language into shape — and missing one letter of its own name, polished out on purpose.Oil painting of a shallow river ford with weathered stepping stones crossing a clear stream through a green rolling-hill vale.Lip FordThe crossing where the water makes a mouth, caught mid-word.Oil painting of the town of Longname sprawled at the foot of The Polysyllabic Peak, a road winding uphill past a weathered stone waymarkerLongnameA town too formal to ever say its own name short.Oil painting of Maelin, a weathered white man in a hooded lichen-green cloak and worn leathers, standing on a windswept mountain ridge with sheep-tracks winding behind.Maelin, the Ridge GamekeeperA gamekeeper who trusts the sheep-tracks over any road a mapmaker ever drew.Oil painting of Mara, an older road-worn herbwoman with a long grey braid, wearing a hooded brown travelling cloak over a faded green dress, a worn leather satchel of glass tincture bottles and herb sprigs slung across her, holding out a small paper-wrapped packet in one open hand, on a sunlit dirt road through green rolling hills.Mara, the Wandering HealerA cure for what ails you — paid for in kindness, never coin.Oil painting of Marginalia Keep, a squat crenellated stone watchtower whose every block is carved with cheerful doodles — grinning faces, beasts, spirals, suns — a tattered banner flying from its flagpole and wildflowers crowding its base among green hills.Marginalia KeepFour generations of sentries guarded nothing, drew everything, and left the truest record in the Scriptorium.Oil painting of Morpheme Market, a bustling stone-paved market town with awninged stalls and a crowd gathered in a standoff.Morpheme MarketA market that prices everything by the syllable, and argues about everything else.Oil painting of Mudflat Market, a tidal market on the river-flats of the Bandit's Pass at low tideMudflat MarketSix inches of silt, and discretion for sale under all of it.Oil painting of a quiet, mist-softened village lane lined with weathered stone-and-thatch cottages under an overcast sky.MurklinA hamlet that says most of what it means without opening its mouth.Oil painting of Nessa the waystation keeper standing behind the counter of The Rearranged, an ale cask at her side and hearth-fire glowing behind her.Nessa, Keeper of The RearrangedA waystation keeper who moves every room every third night, and has kept one thing in the same pocket for a lifetime.Oil painting of the taverner's village of Nib's Point gathered around its well-post at duskNib's PointThe town where ink outlasts the stone it's cut into — and one name, against all local custom, has gone missing anyway.Oil painting of Orin the tollkeeper, an older man bent over a thick ledger at his weathered wooden tollbooth.Orin, the TollkeeperThe keeper of a crossing whose toll is paid in patience, and a ledger of the dead nobody else came back for.Oil painting of Pell, a young courier in a frayed cloak and dusty blue tunic, an overstuffed leather satchel of scrolls at his hip, standing on a dirt road beside a weathered wooden signpost in green rolling hills.Pell, the CourierA courier at the crossroads — technically speaking.Oil painting of a small half-built cluster of timber and stone cottages at the edge of a wild green vale.Pre-SettlementA village that has been here a hundred and forty years and still isn't sure it's staying.Oil painting of Refrain Market's crowded stalls climbing the stone steps of the Rhyming Stair at duskRefrain MarketWhere every sales pitch eventually turns into a ballad, whether the trader means it to or not.Oil painting of Rhyme Wall, a long ancient stone wall covered in centuries of carved scratches at the edge of a road.Rhyme WallThree hundred years of scratched couplets, and it keeps the worst ones longest.Oil painting of a warm, smiling middle-aged woman with two long brown braids framing her face, wearing a laced brown bodice over a cream blouse with an apron, holding out two foaming wooden tankards. Behind her a stone hearth glows with fire, oak ale-barrels stand to one side, and pewter mugs and a lantern hang from the timber beams of a cozy tavern.Rowan, the Pressed Petal BarmaidShe hears everything, notices nothing, and remembers you long after you've forgotten you told her anything.Oil painting of Serafine, Keeper of the Storm's Ledger, holding an iron-banded box in the ruined doorway of Squall BarrowSerafine, Keeper of the Storm's LedgerAn archivist of everything the storms took and never gave back — including one box she won't open and one sentence she won't finish.Oil painting of Sounding Hill — three tall cracked standing stones crowning a green hill thick with wildflowers, a winding dirt path climbing to them, and pale rings of echo rippling outward across a golden evening sky.Sounding HillThe hill gives everything back exactly three times — three more than the vale's signboards manage.Oil painting of a village built into the two fractured halves of an enormous boulder, timber cottages tucked into the ledges and a footbridge crossing the divide.SplitrockOne boulder, two halves, and a village that never once settled the argument.Oil painting of Squall Barrow, a lightning-blackened stone ruin standing alone on a windswept moor under a churning storm sky.Squall BarrowA ruin struck too often to rebuild, kept as an archive of what the storms took.Oil painting of Stem-and-Affix, a quiet forest crossroads where a dirt road splits into three diverging paths.Stem-and-AffixThe crossing that made grammar a matter of geography.Oil painting of Tamsin sitting apart from the supply-village bustle at the foot of the mountainTamsinThe Order's most promising student, spending the long walk out deciding whether leaving was brave or merely overdue.Oil painting of Tense Keep's three stone towers rising over the looping River Ring, with a loading landing belowTense KeepThree towers for three tenses, and the present is the one nobody trusts to hold.Oil painting of a road-worn woman etymologist in traveling clothes, a heavy pack of books strapped to her back, holding a blank parchment page in a candlelit stone archive.TessalyAn etymologist paid by two feuding houses to tell them a true thing neither of them wants to hear.Oil painting of the ruined Babel Steps staircase rising out of the river silt toward an empty skyThe Babel StepsThe tower fell; the staircase stayed. It has been climbing to nothing ever since.Oil painting of a mountain pass at sunset — a cloaked traveler leaning on a walking staff faces a mounted, fur-cloaked road-captain in horned helm and worn leather, a wolf-blazon shield on his arm, armed men half-hidden among the dark pines behind him, a pale stony track winding down between grey crags toward a glowing valley.The Bandit's PassA contested road where three sign-systems point three different ways, and one man decides which is true.Oil painting of the Binding Posts, six weathered stone pillars in a ring wrapped in fraying tied ribbons and cloth tokens.The Binding PostsSix pillars of tied promises, and not one of them ever formally cleared.Oil painting of The Blotted Page at night — a lamplit country inn splattered with great black ink-blots across its pale wall, a huge barrel sign dripping black liquid over the door, and patrons laughing by candlelight on the warm porch.The Blotted PageTerrible wine, extraordinary company, and walls that remember everything nobody wrote down.Oil painting of the Bowed Reed, a poolside alehouse on the Duke's water-roads at duskThe Bowed ReedThe poolside alehouse where every traveler signs — and the cider's half-price after dusk.Oil painting of the Bridge Keeper, an old woman with a lantern and broom standing watch on her immaculately kept stone bridge above the river fords at dusk.The Bridge KeeperAn old woman who has let no one cross her bridge in three seasons — and will not say why.Oil painting of the lone ruined stone doorway called the Coded Door with the scholar-camp beside itThe Coded DoorA ruin that turns every plain word to cipher, and a scholar-camp too stubborn to walk away.Oil painting of a ruined stone casting-works on a quiet hillside, cold dead furnaces and an ancient silver-leaved ash tree standing at the ruin's edge.The Cold LetterA ruined casting-works where the moulds still remember shapes no one dares to pour.Oil painting of the Copyist's Quarter, misty riverside brick copy-houses hung with blank drying parchment sheets.The Copyist's QuarterThree rival copy-houses, and not one original among them.Oil painting of a sturdy stone-and-timber inn on a mountain pass at dusk, warm light glowing in its windows.The Crossed KeysThe one house on the pass where fists are forbidden and the only coin is barter.Oil painting of a deep excavation cut into layered rock, timber scaffolding and ramps descending into shadow.The DeepwellAn active dig into language-strata — and please, don't touch the signs.Oil painting of The Dipping Well — a round fieldstone well brimming with ink-black water in a sunlit yellow meadow, a wooden bucket hanging from its chain, and worn stepping stones crossing a clear stream in the foreground.The Dipping WellFree eloquence, honestly given — and repossessed, mid-sentence, precisely when you need it most.Oil painting of a translucent, blue-white ghost of a gaunt old man — bald on top, thin pale hair at the sides, in a pale drowned man's robe — standing in a low flat-bottomed wooden boat and poling it with a long wooden pole through misty, still water. His lower body dissolves into vapor and river. Weeping willows and reed beds fade into fog on both banks.The Drowned FerrymanA ghost owed a passage he never finished — and a name struck from the record the year he drowned.Oil painting of the Foreword, a firelit roadside inn on the misty edge of the half-formed Prefix Passage.The ForewordAn inn that charges you, quite literally, for the privilege of entering it.Oil painting of The Forge Wharf's ironworks and quay glowing with furnace light at dawn on the riversideThe Forge WharfWhere a word struck in metal is meant to outlast any word written on paper.Oil painting of the Glossary Mire, a silt-flat river marsh below Lexicon RidgeThe Glossary MireWhere the river writes a word into the bank and the bank never quite agrees to keep it.Oil painting of the Grammar Vault kingdom, a river landing below three leaning stone towers with two crews arguing over a crate.The Grammar VaultEvery argument here eventually needs a noun. Nobody's said this one out loud yet.Oil painting of the Greenway Road, a winding countryside path with a stone milestone through the valeThe Greenway RoadThe first road you walk, and the first place the words start to wear thin.Oil painting of a low, broad-beamed medieval alehouse at dusk, its windows and doorway glowing with warm hearth-firelight.The HearthmarkA low alehouse at the valley's heart, where the regulars have a saying for everything and the fire has never once gone out.Oil painting of a tall stone archive tower with lamplit shelves of books glowing in its arched windows above a river town at dusk.The Index SpireWhere every book has an owner, and every owner has something they'd rather not have written down.Oil painting of the great iron ring called the Iron Vowel turning above the Forge WharfThe Iron VowelA wagon-wheel-sized iron 'O' turning in the wind, hunting for the rest of its word.Oil painting of a massive, ancient ash tree with silvery leaves standing beside a stone ruin, its trunk scarred by old axe strikes, a long-handled axe leaning nearby.The Ironwood AshThree hundred years, six broken axes, and one word it is still waiting to hear.Oil painting of The Last Silence — a ruined speaking-circle of fallen, moss-grown stones scattered through morning mist on a hillside, one capstone still balanced on two uprights and a single weathered stone left standing.The Last SilenceWhat you say here comes back to you, rephrased, when you least expect it. Best to whisper.Oil painting of the Letterwise Road, a dirt track through windswept hills with a weathered waymarker and distant travelers beneath a stormy sky.The Letterwise RoadEveryone on it is carrying somebody else's words, and none of it's theirs to read.Oil painting of the Long Shrug, a narrow switchback mountain road skirting a sheer, cloud-filled drop.The Long ShrugThe drop that answers every question the same way — with a very long way down.Oil painting of two old stone houses facing each other across a narrow shadowed ravine.The Morpheme DepthsTwo houses, one root-word, and an argument that has stopped being about people.Oil painting of a riverside tavern's permanently open front door at dusk, warm firelight spilling out onto travelers seated around a table in animated conversation.The Open MouthAn inn whose door has not shut, by design or by rot, in living memory.Oil painting of a stern woman in grey robes standing with arms crossed in a tall candlelit vaulted hall.The Order's VoiceThe woman in grey who impounds the world's unattended things — and has never once been made to say by what right.Oil painting of the Overlong Summit, a small dog resting on a rocky mountain peak overlooking a hazy green valley.The Overlong SummitThe peak that keeps promising it's almost over, and a dog that was never worried.Oil painting of the Passive Voice, a lantern-lit riverside house on pilings with boats moored at its dock under a dusky violet sky.The Passive VoiceThe riverside inn where the ale is brought and the complaints are received — by whom, it firmly declines to say.Oil painting of Before-Gate, the misty stone archway and tollkeeper's booth marking the entrance to the nameless countryThe Prefix PassageNothing here is finished becoming what it's going to be. Not even the toll.Oil painting of the Pressed Petal, a warmly lit half-timbered village inn at the center of Calligrapher's Green at dusk.The Pressed PetalThe inn a whole village orbits, where every cup is refilled before you ask and every secret is heard before you say it.Oil painting of the Proto-Vault, an ancient stone stairway descending underground to a carved threshold door.The Proto-VaultFour centuries older than the road that forgot it, and still holding its one word.Oil painting of the Rearranged, a warm hearth-lit inn in the shifting town of TransposeThe RearrangedAn inn that moves every room every third night, so no one gets attached to a place that was never going to keep them.Oil painting of the Rhyming Stair, an amber stone staircase climbing a valley to a chapel at its summitThe Rhyming StairEvery riser here rhymes. The one at the top gave up mid-word and never finished explaining why.Oil painting of the wayside inn The Root and Branch with its stone cellar stairwayThe Root & BranchSame food upstairs and down; only the cellar argues about where its name came from.Oil painting of the ancient Rootword Barrow cut into the wild ridge-topThe Rootword BarrowA burial-mound dug inward toward something that was already there — and older at its heart than at its door.Oil painting of a slender, grey-haired figure in a hooded, moss-and-fawn robe with a carved wooden rune-pendant at the throat, standing among lichen-covered standing stones in a sunlit green wood, one hand resting on a mossy stone while a small offering bowl smokes on a rock at their feet.The Shrine KeeperThe caretaker of the old marks above the wood — who measures every traveler by one quiet thing: whether they can be trusted near something they don't understand.Oil painting of The Stained Lintel, a timber-framed wayside inn whose walls and door are covered in black handprints; a child reaches up to add his own beside the fire-lit doorway, a bowl of black pigment waits on a stool, and travelers descend the mountain path behind.The Stained LintelThe one signature in the Ink Well that never smudges is a palm pressed in soot.Oil painting of a dim low-beamed tavern interior lit by candlelight, its dark walls close and warm.The Standing InkA tavern where nothing written ever quite fades — and one thing, against every local law, has faded anyway.Oil painting of the debt-bound Stranger standing on the Bandit's Pass with his staff and pack, a mountain river valley falling away behind him.The Stranger Who Owes a DebtA man carrying one debt heavier than everything else he owns — and the trouble that always walks a pace behind it.Oil painting of a torchlit barrow-hall dug into a green mound, a long wooden table before a stone wall hung with weathered banners on wooden pegs.The WardmootFive pegs, four banners, and a hall that keeps better minutes than answers.Oil painting of the Waymark Post, a weathered stone marker beside a tired guardsman seated with his ledger on an open hillside track.The Waymark PostOne stone marker, one tired man, and a roll that doesn't lie.Oil painting of a dim tangled woodland at the edge of a vale, mist threading between dark trees.The Witch's WoodA wood at the edge of the vale, where a missing word waits and a debt is carried on toward the river.Oil painting of the Woman on the Path seated on a milestone at the river ford, extending an open handThe Woman on the PathA traveler who asks for nothing and repays everything in kind.Oil painting of the Worn Index, a low grey stone house rising seamlessly out of the rock at the foot of Lexicon Ridge.The Worn IndexA low stone house that grew from the ridge, keeping words older than recognition.Soft oil painting of a smiling blonde fairy with long wavy hair and pale iridescent dragonfly wings, in a flowing sage-green sleeveless gown, hovering barefoot a few inches above the mirror-still surface of a misty lake at dawn, reeds and low hills behind her, faint motes of light drifting around her.Thistle, the Lake FairyA fairy who reads the names the water has been given — and the one it was asked to forget.Oil painting of the towering forty-foot stone needle at the heart of Threadneedle village, thread looped through its eyeThreadneedleA forty-foot needle, thread still in the eye, and not one soul tall enough to use it.Oil painting of a young stablehand outside a weathered timber stable in warm afternoon light, standing square in a scuffed brown leather vest over a loose grey shirt with rolled sleeves, tan work trousers and tall mud-stained boots, an unhappy set to his brow. A chestnut horse with a white blaze leans out over the half-door of its stall to his right; a rolled notice hangs on the boards behind him, a pitchfork lies in the straw at his feet, and wildflowers grow along a low stone wall to the left.Tomas, the StablehandLocked out of his own stable, and far too proud about it.Oil painting of Tongue's Landing, a bustling river harbor beneath red-clay cliffs with boats and dockside crowds.Tongue's LandingA river-port where eleven dialects dock, and not one of them agrees with the others.Oil painting of Transpose, the shifting medieval town at the heart of the Anagram EngineTransposeA town whose streets rearrange themselves on a schedule nobody has ever managed to write down.Oil painting of the shallow river crossing and wooden marker post at Twice-Told FordTwice-Told FordA crossing whose toll is paid in stories — one for each bank, and no coin accepted.Oil painting of a wide, slow-moving river bend screened by osier willows, glassy dark water and faint mist at dusk.Undertone ReachThe stretch of river you feel in your boots before you ever hear it.Oil painting of Uttermost Rest — a cluster of old stone cottages with mossy, overgrown thatched roofs and smoking chimneys nestled among green rolling hills, drystone walls threading between them, a weathered plank door in the foreground whose knothole reads like a letter worn out of a word, a dirt path winding up past the houses under a bright, cloud-scudded sky.Uttermost RestThe oldest word in the vale, and half of it worn away.Oil painting of Vellum Gate, a weathered stone archway at the river's edge with a misty ferry crossing beyond.Vellum GateEvery rule here is written in chalk, and undone by rain.Oil painting of Vesla, Keeper of Clasp Gate, standing beside the iron-bound gate with her ledger open on the stone sillVesla, Keeper of Clasp GateA gatekeeper who takes the toll in truths, and keeps an archive of songs nobody remembers the reason for.Oil painting of Vesper the cartographer at her folding table, drafting a river chart surrounded by rolled maps and drawing tools.Vesper, the CartographerA map-maker who strips the names off her own charts for tax reasons, and has never once wondered why she's so good at it.Oil painting of a narrow limestone cleft where a cold road passes between pale rock walls.Whisper HollowA limestone cleft where the road runs cold and the sound travels sideways.Oil painting of Willow Writ, a shallow clear river bend shaded by ancient willows with worn letters pressed into the streambed stones.Willow WritThe clear stretch where the willows write names into stone — and the water keeps the ones it's asked to forget.Oil painting of an elderly woman with grey hair under a pale kerchief, a green fringed shawl over a rust-brown one and a dark long skirt, hands clasped in front of her, standing at the mossy-roofed doorway of a stone cottage hung with drying herbs — bundled leaves, a forked pale root, purple lavender, sprays of white flowers — at the sunlit edge of a misty forest, a green path winding off behind her.Yarrow, the Hedge WitchGracious to whoever helps her, and a very slow forgetter of whoever doesn't.