This episode contains content warnings for teeth, implied harm to animals, and alcohol.

With a loud cry, the truth began to spread through Blackwick County. The mysterious egg sac once nestled into the recovered nest structure had been stolen and its guards coldcocked. Now, the Blackwick Group must trace it down, confront whoever's taken it, and bring it back… before a curse falls on Blackwick yet again.

This week on Sangfielle: The Candle Factory Pt. 1

The Almanac of the Heartland Rider

Peoples

Caprak (cap-ROK): The goat folks of the northlands, where they put up with dust, ash, snow, and the unilateral "justice" of the Pale Magistratum.

Carpana (car - pahn - a): They're little folks, three to four feet tall or so. A little like capybara, I suppose.

Devils: Once, they were contained by (and made to administer) some vast network of hells. But they fought their way out, took over Aldomina, and nurtured a fledgling empire into an expansive one.

Drakkan (drah-KAHN): I've always thought we look like seahorses. Skin pulled across spiny, exo-skeletal armor. Bright colors. Good looking.

Heritrixes (hare-uh-trixes): Heritrixes are immaterial beings, sometimes confused for ghosts, demons, or other sorts of supernatural spirits, who enter into contracts with physical hosts.

Human: A smooth-skinned, hornless type of person, mostly found in the Heartland and in the Unschola Republica these days. Unremarkable. "Except in variety," you'll often hear a human say, revealing only that they're more prideful than wise.

Ojantani: The Ojantani, who share traits with buffalo and water oxen, are as often melancholic or timorous as they are the loud, stereotypical minotaur sort.

Places

Yellowfield: Before the Panic this little valley of yellow flowers was the territory of a petty wizard and the subjects he frightened or beguiled. He called it his Xanthic Demesne, but these days we just call it Yellowfield. In the center of the valley, there's a candle factory, and it is here that the old axiom refers: "All the candle light in Sangfielle was made with just twenty odd hands."

Facts and Figures

Rana (she/her): An lonely devotee of Kaitankro who now lives out her days attending to one of her chosen god's many kite-shrines.

Agdeline (she/her), Ettel (he/him), and Larch (he/him): This devil, drakkan, and human trio once spent time mining in the hills of Blackwick. In recent times, they've found that poorly armed travelers make for better prospecting. Sometimes called "the Toll Collectors."

Bucho (he/him) (mentioned): Whether you first hear of him as "Big Bucho" or "Two Step Bucho," once you meet him, you'll understand that no name does the gallant Shape Knight justice.

Organizations

The Covenant of Kaitankro: You've seen them, haven't you? The unsettlingly gregarious priests with the strange, chitinous crow masks? Of course you have, with their stilt-legs and their stilt-houses and their collection of stakes and strings and, of course, the kites. I asked one once if it was a pun: Kite and Crow, chitin crow. Something like that. The priestess told me that Kaitankro was a very real god, if a funny one, and that one day, he visited her. Like every morning, she raised each of the town's kites up to the winds in daily worship, and Kaitankro landed on the smallest one—a sight to see, she said, since her god is so large a being. And like a carnivalist, Kaitankro walked down the wire, tips of her talons, until he met the priest at the bottom. There, I was told, they whispered in the priest's ear a single phrase: "Better to live as birds on wires than die as men in the wind." Chaos, it seems, breeds community, too.

The Shape Knights: It took people with clear minds, great ingenuity, and implacable spirit to face down and defeat one of the living trains of Sangfielle. In the time since, they've crafted armor from their slain foe, and with that have come to be experts of all things train. They herd, they breach, they redirect. But they haven't yet killed a second.

Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker)

Featuring Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Sylvi Clare (@sylvibullet), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000)

Produced by Ali Acampora and Austin Walker

Music by Jack de Quidt (available on bandcamp)

Text by Austin Walker

Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot)

A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!