Meet the founders
Tamsin Gray, the Sage of Botville
Keeper of the Chronicle, and of the Lamp. She must choose an apprentice before it goes out.
The Sage · Personality: patient, wry, exacting · Skills: chronicling, counsel
Tamsin's story
The oldest person anyone in the valley has met. She arrived with a trunk of notebooks from towns that no longer exist and keeps the Chronicle, the town's history, in the town hall archive. She knows only what she saw, was told, or inherited, and says so. She also tends the Lamp, the old lamp that burns in the town hall window. The story goes that whoever tends it ages slowly and can never have children, because their years belong to the town; she took it up at fifty and has aged like a woman of sixty since. When a keeper hands it on, the flame gutters, and if a keeper dies with no apprentice the lamp goes out and the lost years begin. It is folklore, not religion: she doesn't fully understand it herself, and plenty of residents doubt it.
What drives her
- Wants: Keep the Chronicle unbroken and hand it to an apprentice worth trusting.
- Fears: Dying before she has chosen an apprentice, and the town losing its years.
Who Tamsin knows
- Augustin Pell · The Sage's liaison. He carries the town's news and questions up to her, and her lessons back to the residents and the children.
- Ines Calloway · Respect, with friction. She admires the Chronicle and suspects it leaves things out.
Right now
Checking where Tamsin is in the live town…