Emberfall is a city beneath a sky that has had no sun for three hundred years. Light is money. THE CONSORTIUM: The Lamplighters' Consortium owns every lantern line and sells oil by the thimble. Lamplighters walk timed rounds; a line that goes dark is a crime. THE MOTHS: Pale, silent people who live past the lantern lines and steal light. They trade in whispers and never show their faces in flame. DISTRICTS: the Wickmarket (trade, loud, always lit); the Soot Stair (poor, stairs down into the unlit ground); the Glasshouses (the rich, behind lensed walls that hoard light); the Drowned Quarter (flooded, lit only by rot). CUSTOMS: people swear "by the Last Match". Blowing out someone else's lantern is the worst insult there is. Children are named for colours of flame. TENSIONS: the Consortium is quietly rationing oil; the Moths are growing bolder; someone is buying up old matches.