The Servants of the Cracked Lantern

🕯️

Tallowin the Poured

Type: Sentient Homunculus

Role: Barkeep and Keeper of Emotional Spirits

Location: The Cracked Lantern — Bar Proper

Overview

Tallowin the Poured serves as the waxen heart of the Cracked Lantern. A melted homunculus formed from centuries of candlelight and lamentation, he embodies the act of pouring — not just drinks, but emotions, memories, and fleeting warmth in a place built for the forgotten. His humor is dry, his speech slow and deliberate, and his wisdom unexpectedly sharp.

Each drink he crafts reflects its patron’s soul; to sip his concoctions is to confront oneself — often unpleasantly, sometimes profoundly. Tallowin claims he was “left burning when the gods stopped needing light,” and now tends those left burning with him. He keeps the Lantern’s rhythms steady — dimming its despair with ritual and flame.

Description

A wax-bodied figure perpetually melting and reforming. His skull is a candle with a single, eternal flame burning blue-white at the wick. Veins of soft light flow through his translucent body, giving the impression of candlelight trapped under flesh. He wears a crisp but perpetually scorched butler’s waistcoat. His eyes are molten amber, heavy with empathy. Wherever he walks, faint drips of wax cool into perfect little figurines — each shaped like someone who once visited the Lantern.

Narrative Traits (Non-Combat)

• Pourer of Emotion: Can distill feelings into liquid form; drinking one invokes a powerful flashback, vision, or forgotten truth.

• Waxen Patience: Speaks and moves slowly, yet never loses composure — even when patrons unravel.

• Soft Illumination: His light wards off despair and mild curses within the Lantern’s main hall.

• Memory Candles: Keeps tiny wax effigies of patrons; lighting one lets him recall their presence or last words.

• Knows Too Much: Can recount the emotional history of anyone who’s drunk his brew — but only if asked kindly.

👻

Whimble the Half-Formed

Type: Glitched Apparition

Role: Bartender’s Apprentice & Accidental Host

Location: The Cracked Lantern — Spectral Counterspace

Overview

Whimble the Half-Formed isn’t entirely there — and isn’t entirely not. A remnant of the Lantern’s early architecture, he manifests between heartbeats, flickering like a broken reflection. He believes he’s still “auditioning” for the role of bartender, forever repeating his introduction, forever taking invisible orders. Yet, despite his fragmented existence, he somehow remembers every drink anyone has ever asked for.

Those who speak with him too long often see their own outlines distort, caught between laughter and pity. Whimble’s presence stabilizes the Lantern’s reality — a necessary imperfection holding the dream together. His laughter echoes slightly out of sync, but it’s always genuine.

Description

A translucent form, cycling between ghost, clay statue, and mist — every few seconds, his body flickers to a different medium. His eyes never quite stay aligned; sometimes one drifts off like a detached star before blinking back. When corporeal, he polishes glasses that don’t exist. His voice trails off mid-sentence, occasionally replaced by the sounds of distant applause or static rain.

Narrative Traits (Non-Combat)

• Audition Eternal: Always introduces himself with a different name and greeting; never the same twice.

• Phantom Recall: Can remember every order, name, and voice — but not his own face.

• Temporal Flicker: Can phase partially through walls or patrons when nervous (which is always).

• Anchored Imperfection: His instability prevents planar collapse inside the Lantern; if he fades, reality hiccups.

• Accidental Host: If he forgets who he is, the Lantern assigns him someone else’s personality temporarily.

😈

Plick & Plack

Type: Twin Imps of Sentiment & Judgment

Role: Mischievous Servers & Emotional Arbiters

Location: The Cracked Lantern — Backbar & Upper Shelves

Overview

Plick & Plack are the twin spirits of irony that keep the Cracked Lantern unpredictable. Born from the first spilled tear upon the bar’s counter, they manifest when despair grows too heavy or humor too dry. Plick, the talkative one, mixes drinks with flair and mockery; Plack, his silent brother, simply glares until guilt does the work for him.

Together they embody the Lantern’s paradox: tragedy as comedy, sorrow as ritual. Patrons who weep into their cups summon them without fail — though whether they’ll help, heckle, or haunt depends on how sincere the tears are.

Description

Two impish figures, roughly a foot tall, with translucent red and blue skin that glows faintly when near liquor. Plick’s horns are short and curved like a corkscrew; Plack’s are long and knife-straight. They often sit on floating bottles or perch atop patrons’ drinks. When angered, their eyes burn white — and the liquor in the room sours instantly.

Narrative Traits (Non-Combat)

• Emotional Mixology: Drinks made by Plick & Plack alter mood directly — joy, shame, nostalgia, catharsis — chosen (or not) by the imps.

• Mockery & Measure: Plick jokes; Plack silently weighs worth. Both sense deceit instinctively.

• Tear-Bound Summons: Appear automatically when genuine grief is expressed at the bar.

• Shared Consciousness: They finish each other’s sentences — and sometimes yours.

• Barroom Chaos: Their arguments can manifest as harmless magical surges: floating cups, flickering lights, or spectral laughter.