The lamp

The first minute of the game has not one line of text to explain it: you wake in the dark, your own lamp is out, and the only visible thing is a flame set down three metres ahead. Three metres and not twenty, because the lamp is not an objective to hunt for; the hunting starts afterwards, once you have it and have to decide how much oil to spend.

It starts with seven minutes of flame in a tank that holds ten, and the reserve in the satchel, which starts empty, tops out at eight. It is not a street lamp: it lights a little and close, enough to read a note and to see where you are putting your feet, and the lower the oil the tighter the light draws in before it dies. Putting it away snuffs it, because a lit lamp inside a bag is a bag on fire, and it would go on burning oil while lighting nothing.

It lives in the left hand, and that is the rule everything else stands on: the left holds tools, the right stays free for whatever you strike with. The moment a weapon comes into your hand the lamp is hung at your hip and keeps burning from there; making it vanish and leaving it in your hand were both lies, one because the dark would arrive for no reason, the other because it would mean three arms. The oil is tallow, so carrying it has a price of its own: it can be smelt from a distance.