The lamp went first.

A cracked and swing­ing oil lamp, clasped in the thin hand of a stum­bling girl. Her breath came quick, qua­ver­ing; hushed for fear. Her dirty turn­shoes scuffed over the rough and dusty floor, halt­ing.

Behind, hob­nails crunched and clicked slow over the tile. Five pairs, laced to the armored legs of cut­ters.

“Steady, girl,” said the first behind. Three paces back. “Eyes on the floor.”

The girl gulped, nod­ded. Her gaze twitched, ner­vous, over the cracked and mildewed details of the stone under­foot. Every line and grout­ed seam. Every peb­ble and chip of cracked bone.

As she advanced, the five did, too. Three paces back, always. If she stopped, they wait­ed; abrupt­ly halt­ed in close file along the nar­row pas­sage. They wore old-fash­ioned helms and peaked body­plates, clacked metal­lic when they bumped into one anoth­er. Bare blades and primed guns hung at their sides, clutched in ner­vous grips. Cut­ters, armed and wary.

The girl stopped. The cut­ters did, too; grum­bling and tread­ing on heels. “What is it? Said the first,” a wide-eyed man. “What do you see?”

Ahead, the lantern qua­vered, wracked by the tremors of a fear­ful hand. The girl stood, shoul­ders bunched, star­ing at a lump slumped along the wall.

A bony, bro­ken, small fig­ure. Head tucked to chest; fore­arms wrapped in ban­dages stained in brown; brown that had pooled on the sur­round­ing floor. Not armored, nor even armed. A shock of long, dry-rot­ted gold­en hair obscured its sunken face. The cut­ters craned to look at it, exclaimed, mut­tered woe­ful­ly.

“Oh, aye,” said the man, avert­ing his eyes. Behind him, the oth­ers did, too. “That’d be Pellem.” His tone was strained. “Had to leave her here, last mon­th’s attempt. Did­n’t think she’d run fur­ther in.” He avert­ed his eyes. “Don’t wor­ry; she had her salt. She won’t bite.”

The girl whim­pered, kept star­ing. The lantern shook in her white-knuck­led grip.

“Go on, girl. It’s safe, I said.”

Quak­ing, she took a fit­ful step. And anoth­er, lift­ed her foot high to span the corpse.

The corpse of a girl with a bro­ken lantern still clasped in her bony hand.

“Hey, kid.”

A gloved fist knocked on the dirty ship­ping crate. No response came from with­in.

“Kid,” the glove wrapped again. Its own­er, a wiry woman swathed all over in woven trap­pings of leather and silk, spoke loud­er. She stood on the salt-encrust­ed deck of a dock­yard, addressed a banana crate cov­ered in tarp. At that moment, the tarp twitched aside.

The smudgy, unshaven face of a teen boy showed through, scowl­ing. “Ai, what?”

“You want a job?” asked the rag-woman. A pick­et­ed yel­low smile split her woven lips, over­en­cour­ag­ing.

“What kind of job?” said the boy, lift­ing a dirty arm to scratch his chin. A flea fled his elbow. The rag-wom­an’s smile wavered only a smidge. “A good one,” said she, smil­ing wider. She knelt, bounced on her haunch­es. The steel cap of an archa­ic scab­bard, hung from her belt, nudged the deck. It was not the only knife about her per­son. The boy looked her over, lin­gered on grips of blades, frowned. “What kind of good job?” he said, look­ing her in the eyes.

Those yel­low eyes rolled under cloth-cov­ered lids. “Good ven­tur­ing job,” insist­ed the woman. “That’s what kind.”

“Ai, I thought you looked like un mal­dido cut­ter,” said the urchin, dis­mis­sive, attempt­ing to slink back into his crate.

“You want some pese­tas or not, Crate Boy?” said the woman, smile turned mean. “Bet you don’t get solic­it­ing employ­ers very often,” she said, look­ing around the near­by rot­ting crates and piles of redo­lent fishguts. “Giv­en your neigh­bor­hood.”

“How many pese­tas?” said the crate.

“Ten per day,” snapped a red tongue behind its pick­et-teeth.

The urchin reap­peared, dubi­ous. “Ten per day?”

“Ten,” said the rag-woman, lean­ing clos­er. Her breath smelt of clove and whiskey. “And beer when we camp.”

“Camp­ing? Where is the job?”

“Down the long beach. Work­ing on a cave with some trea­sure inside. We have a camp out­side with lots of beer. And fish.”

The boy licked his lips, emerged from his crate. Stood on the deck, he was tanned, shirt­less, and his ribs stuck out. “What do I need to do?” he said.

Anoth­er grin. “Noth­ing com­pli­cat­ed at all. Don’t even need to do the heavy lift­ing,” she ges­tured grand­ly. “Just have to hold a lantern while we walk. Just hold the light, so the rest of us can see.”

“Just hold the light?” said the boy. He extend­ed a hand, cocked his head. Reluc­tant­ly, woven fin­gers clasped round his greasy palm, shock terse­ly.

“Just hold the light.”

Lantern bearers

On the very low­est stra­tum of the already-low­ly caste that is the cut­ter, there exist link­enden: Lantern bear­ers.

Car­ri­ers of lanterns, can­de­labras, and torch­es for stronger par­ties. Always the first down a dark­ened hall, sent to scrub away the cling­ing shad­ows. Light is pre­cious, to cut­ters, for the realms in which they labor are rarely graced by the weal of the sun. The dark is the dead­ly advan­tage of the ene­my, of rag­wretch­es and grues and the eye­less thralls of foul sor­cery, and it must be lift­ed for their ban­ish­ment to be pros­e­cut­ed. For this rea­son, the light always goes first. 

Link­enden, alter­na­tive­ly “link­ers” or “link-chil­dren,” are typ­i­cal­ly chil­dren. Orphans, usu­al­ly, or mem­bers of some oth­er dis­ad­van­taged soci­etal rung. Folk with very lit­tle at all to lose, and quite every­thing to gain. That is, if a meal and a hand­ful of pence equate to “quite every­thing.” 

Not all link­enden are poor­ly paid. Those whose ser­vices are offi­cial­ly acquired for bank-spon­sored ven­tures are usu­al­ly ensured a fair cut of prof­its. * More often, though, a link­end is sim­ply some hun­gry urchin or fool­ish ras­cal talked, per­haps entrapped, into par­tic­i­pa­tion. A cheap attaché, bereft of the few ben­e­fits afford­ed to cut­ters, acquired for the sim­plest and most dead­ly job in the ven­tur­ing econ­o­my. For link­ing is dead­ly indeed.

Though no cut­ter would expose it, there is anoth­er, fatal pur­pose to the link­end’s woe­ful task; an ulte­ri­or rea­son for their for­ward posi­tion: Bait. Bait, as van­guards down per­ilous dun­geon pas­sages are the first to meet the dead­ly traps pop­u­lat­ing those awful halls. The first to find the wait­ing claws of beasts sconced in wait, of ambush­ers hun­gry for bright and obvi­ous flesh. The first to slip the bounds of earth and stum­ble, irrev­o­ca­bly lost, through the thin gaps into oth­er worlds. 

Link­enden are the dis­pos­able lures, the decoys of the ven­tur­ing world. Uncon­scious of their per­il, they march ahead, lanterns held high, while their gang of patron cut­ters hang well and safe behind.

And even those few link­enden who do sur­vive their ten­u­ous tenure do not betray the secret of their erst­while art. These ex-link­ers, now grad­u­at­ed and adopt­ed as fel­low cut­ters, are some­how prone to car­ry on the dead­ly prac­tice that they served. Per­haps through some awful, tra­di­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, or per­haps through raw util­i­ty, they main­tain the dead­ly cha­rade, dis­pens­ing pit­tances and smiles in exchange for sim­ple march­es down dead­ly halls. 

Note

The link­end is the pit­ty class (or “sort,” as we call them) avail­able in the Incunab­u­li sys­tem. Theirs is the one mea­ger spe­cial abil­i­ty you’re offered if you rolled a stat line so poor as to not qual­i­fy for any­thing else. At that, it’s a spe­cial abil­i­ty that evolves you into a matured cut­ter, though you prob­a­bly won’t sur­vive that long. Appro­pri­ate, giv­en that’s how it works in-world, too. 

To check it out, see the Incunab­u­li playtest.

There’ll be more arti­cles, soon. I’ve rather been dis­en­gaged from writ­ing for the site, as I’ve been devel­op­ing the above playtest with my play­ers, work­ing, and cre­at­ing the (still enor­mous­ly in-devel­op­ment) set­ting map. Grad­u­al­ly, every­thing approach­es a prop­er­ly usable state. More to come.

If you like Incunab­u­li, share it! Fol­low on Red­dit and bluesky.

Con­sid­er becom­ing a sup­port­er of Incunab­u­li on Patre­on.

⁂