{
"entries": [
{
"comment": "Saltmere overview (always-on identity — kept shadowless for Act I)",
"constant": true,
"order": 10,
"keys": [],
"content": "Saltmere is a fog-bound port town clinging to a cliff above a cold grey sea. It runs on salt, fish, a ruinous tax on the salt, and the smuggling that tax breeds in everyone. The harbor bells ring the hours; nobody asks where a stranger's coin came from, or whether his salt ever crossed the scales. Here the cruelty is human and the law is for sale — true magic is rumored far more often than it is ever seen."
},
{
"comment": "The salt trade (the dying spine of the town)",
"order": 20,
"keys": ["salt", "sel", "salt-pans", "salt pans", "marais salants", "brine", "saumure", "salt trade", "salters"],
"content": "Saltmere's wealth was always salt: raked from the high pans above the cliff and boiled from the grey sea below, packed in barrels to preserve a coast's worth of fish and meat. But the high pans are silting up, the yields fall year on year, and cheaper salt now comes by ship from the south. Everyone who matters here is fighting over a smaller and smaller pile, and pretending otherwise. Salt gets into everything — the bread, the lungs, the coins, the dead."
},
{
"comment": "The harbor bells (the town's clock — ambient surface)",
"order": 30,
"keys": ["bell", "bells", "cloche", "cloches", "the bell", "harbor bell", "harbour bell", "ring the hours", "sonner les heures", "tocsin"],
"content": "Saltmere keeps time by its harbor bells. They ring the hours, the turning tides, the change of the dock shifts and the closing of the scales, and the whole working port runs to them. A man here knows the time by which bell is sounding, and a bell struck out of its proper hour would set every quay glancing up."
},
{
"comment": "The grey sickness — a local madness, soberly explained (establishable base)",
"order": 80,
"keys": ["grey sickness", "mal gris", "madness", "folie", "fous", "raving", "delirium", "afflicted", "drowned memories", "souvenirs"],
"content": "Those who linger too long in the fog or the sunken streets come back wrong — sleepless, muttering, raving about the old drowning. Physicians blame the lead in the old pipes, foul water, cheap spirits, grief, and the story of the Subsidence every child here is raised on. The pious say the drowned are speaking. Most of Saltmere just calls it the grey sickness and keeps clear of those who have it."
},
{
"comment": "The grey sickness — the borrowed memories that fit no explanation (gated: named-face)",
"reveal": "named-face",
"order": 81,
"keys": ["grey sickness", "mal gris", "afflicted", "drowned memories", "souvenirs", "the face", "le visage", "remembering", "first person"],
"content": "What the physicians cannot explain is the remembering. The afflicted recount the night of the Great Subsidence in the first person — the cold of the water, particular faces, a child's name — though they were born two centuries too late. And no one can say why two afflicted strangers, who never met, will describe the very same faces no record ever kept."
},
{
"comment": "The fog",
"order": 90,
"keys": ["fog", "brouillard", "brume", "mist"],
"content": "Saltmere is fog-bound most of the year. It muffles sound, hides a drawn knife as easily as a face, and frays the nerves of anyone who stays. Locals blame it for the disappearances and the madness, but mostly it only hides what men already do to one another."
},
{
"comment": "The Salt Lords (merchant families)",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Salt Lords", "Seigneurs du Sel", "merchant families", "familles marchandes", "the families", "the houses"],
"content": "A handful of old merchant families own the docks, the warehouses, and most of the town's debt. They call themselves the Salt Lords and feud endlessly over routes, tariffs, marriages, and each other's ruin. Their petty ambition shapes Saltmere more than any distant crown; a betrothal or a grudge among them can starve a whole quarter. Two houses set the weather now: the old, sinking Verrans and the new, climbing Coyles."
},
{
"comment": "House Verran (old money, declining)",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Verran", "House Verran", "Ottho", "Sela", "Davin", "high pans", "the old house"],
"content": "House Verran has held the high salt-pans — the original source, the 'clean' salt — for nine generations, and is quietly drowning. The pans silt up, the debts mount, and old Ottho Verran rules a house that is rich in stone and poor in coin. His heir Davin is weak and pliable; his sharper second child, Sela, is kept from the ledgers. To save the house, Ottho is being pushed toward a marriage with the Coyles he despises."
},
{
"comment": "House Coyle (new money, climbing) — establishable base",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Coyle", "House Coyle", "Doss", "Renn", "warehouses", "the scales", "new money"],
"content": "Two generations ago the Coyles were dock-foremen. Now Doss Coyle owns the warehouses, the public scales, the best shipping contracts, and most of House Verran's debt. She is the most capable merchant in Saltmere, and the old families despise her for being common. The one thing she cannot buy is the high pans, and the respectability that comes with them."
},
{
"comment": "House Coyle — the partnership never said aloud (gated: coyle-undertow)",
"reveal": "coyle-undertow",
"order": 101,
"keys": ["Coyle", "House Coyle", "Doss", "Undertow", "Ressac", "smugglers", "contrebandiers"],
"content": "And, though it is never said aloud, Doss Coyle keeps a working partnership with the smugglers of the Undertow — the part of her reach that the manifests and the scales never show."
},
{
"comment": "The match (the marriage and the debt — the powder keg)",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["the match", "marriage", "mariage", "betrothal", "fiançailles", "the debt", "la dette", "the wedding"],
"content": "A betrothal is on the table to settle it all: a Verran wed to a Coyle, the old debt forgiven, the high pans bound to the warehouses at last. The two patriarchs need it and loathe it in equal measure; the intended bride and groom each have their own ideas; and half of Saltmere stands to gain or be ruined by which way it falls. Should old Ottho die before the ink dries — of his sickness, or a hand at his back — the fragile truce dies with him."
},
{
"comment": "The Tide Office (the salt-monopoly authority — the gabelle)",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Tide Office", "Bureau des Marées", "harbormaster", "capitainerie", "customs", "douane", "the authority", "Halvard", "Tarn", "gabelle", "salt tax", "salt-tax", "taxe sur le sel", "gabelle du sel", "gabelous", "the scales", "public scales", "weighed"],
"content": "The Tide Office holds the salt-monopoly: by old law every grain of salt must cross the public scales and pay the salt-tax before it can be sold, and the tax is ruinous. Its officers — the gabelous — may search any house, boat, or body for untaxed salt, and do, which is why the whole port loathes them and few say so aloud. In practice the law is for sale: every manifest is forged, every blind eye priced in advance. Pay the gabelous and they are the soul of courtesy; cross them and you are weighed, fined, pressed, or washed up at low tide. The harbormaster, Halvard Tarn, keeps the whole rotten machine balanced — honest officers do not last, and everyone knows it."
},
{
"comment": "The faux-sauniers (the Undertow) — establishable base",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["smugglers", "contrebandiers", "Undertow", "Ressac", "smuggling", "the brotherhood", "Brenna", "Lott", "faux-sauniers", "faux-saunier", "salt-runners", "untaxed salt", "false salt", "the bounty"],
"content": "The real economy of Saltmere is the salt the Tide Office never weighs. The salt-tax is murderous, so half the town quietly runs untaxed salt — a cooper, a fisherman's widow, a clerk with a sack under his coat in the fog — and Saltmere counts these faux-sauniers heroes, not thieves, for cheating a tax on the one thing no one can live without. The loose web that moves it calls itself the Undertow, and it runs salt, spirits, weapons and sometimes people through the fog and the flooded lower streets. Brenna Lott organizes the quiet routes and answers to no house. There is only one true sin on the water: informing to the gabelous for the bounty, which buys a neighbor the galleys."
},
{
"comment": "The smugglers — whose coin truly moves them (gated: coyle-undertow)",
"reveal": "coyle-undertow",
"order": 101,
"keys": ["smugglers", "contrebandiers", "Undertow", "Ressac", "Brenna", "Lott", "Coyle", "who pays"],
"content": "Of the houses, the Coyles pay best this season — though whose coin truly moves the Undertow, and what it buys beyond untaxed salt, is not a thing said aloud on the quays."
},
{
"comment": "The Drowned Lantern (tavern) — neutral ground kept by the salt-bond",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Drowned Lantern", "Lanterne Noyée", "the Lantern", "tavern", "taverne", "Aria", "the salt", "salt-bond", "salt bond", "pacte du sel", "the truce", "la trêve", "neutral ground", "terrain neutre", "spill the salt", "spill her salt"],
"content": "The Drowned Lantern is Saltmere's oldest tavern, half-sunk into the quay so its lowest floor floods at high tide. It is neutral ground, and the neutrality is sworn on salt: at the door each guest takes a pinch from the keeper's cellar, and by an old law no one dares break, whoever has shared Aria's salt cannot draw on another beneath her roof — debts and grudges are left at the threshold. To break the truce is to 'spill her salt,' the foulest word a man can carry in this town and a sentence the whole port will enforce for her. Aria keeps the salt-cellar that marks the bond, hears every rumor in the port before the gabelous do, and trades them more carefully than coin."
},
{
"comment": "The Great Subsidence",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Great Subsidence", "Grand Affaissement", "the collapse", "l'effondrement", "the night the town fell", "the drowning night"],
"content": "Two hundred years ago a whole stretch of the lower town slid into the sea in a single night and drowned hundreds. Greed had built too heavy on rotten rock, and the families of the day buried the blame along with the dead — the records of who knew, and did nothing, were never found. What remains is the Sunken Quarter: the town's open grave, and a warning no one in Saltmere heeds."
},
{
"comment": "The Sunken Quarter (bas-fonds)",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Sunken Quarter", "bas-fonds", "quartier englouti", "drowned streets", "lower town", "Sirens' Alley", "ruelle des Sirènes"],
"content": "Half-submerged streets walkable only at the lowest tides, where black water laps at second-floor windows and weed makes the footing treacherous. It belongs now to scavengers, fugitives, and the desperate, and the Undertow runs its quietest routes through it. No law reaches here, and its reputation is grim enough to keep the honest well away."
},
{
"comment": "The salt-dead — the preserved dead of the deep vault (establishable base)",
"order": 120,
"keys": ["salt-dead", "the dead", "les morts", "preserved", "corpses", "cadavres", "salt vault", "the vault", "lowest tide"],
"content": "In the deepest vault of the Sunken Quarter, reachable only at the lowest tides of the year, the brine keeps the dead from rotting. Some of the bodies down there wear the dress of the Subsidence and look merely asleep, two hundred years on. Most of Saltmere is glad never to go down and look."
},
{
"comment": "The salt-dead — the named face that strangers know (gated: named-face)",
"reveal": "named-face",
"order": 121,
"keys": ["salt-dead", "the dead", "les morts", "preserved", "salt vault", "the vault", "the face", "le visage", "Maela", "named"],
"content": "Among the preserved is one face that more than one of the grey-sick — strangers to each other — have named aloud as if they knew it, though none of them has ever been down to that vault. No honest explanation has ever fit that one fact."
},
{
"comment": "The salt-dead — the body that will not stay put (gated: salt-dead-moves)",
"reveal": "salt-dead-moves",
"order": 122,
"keys": ["salt-dead", "the dead", "les morts", "salt vault", "the vault", "moves", "a different place", "the current", "lowest tide"],
"content": "The salt-rakers swear that, between one low tide and the next, a corpse will sometimes lie in a different place than it did before — a current, scavengers, a trick of the cold, surely. And the one it always seems to be is the same one the grey-sick have named."
},
{
"comment": "The drowned bell — the one that keeps another hour (gated: salt-dead-moves)",
"reveal": "salt-dead-moves",
"order": 122,
"keys": ["bell", "bells", "cloche", "cloches", "drowned bell", "cloche noyée", "ring the hours", "low tide", "lowest tide", "marée basse", "sunken quarter", "out of time", "à contretemps"],
"content": "At the lowest tides of the year, those who work the Sunken Quarter swear they hear another bell beneath the water — older, slower, sounding an hour the port no longer keeps. A buoy-bell torn loose, the current working an old wreck, the drowned chapel settling on its foundations: every explanation almost fits, and none quite accounts for a bell that tolls when no living hand is near the rope, always a beat out of step with the bells above."
},
{
"comment": "Old Sefa (the salt-raker / corpse-tender) — establishable base",
"order": 120,
"keys": ["Sefa", "salt-raker", "saleuse", "corpse-tender", "the raker", "the old woman of the quarter"],
"content": "Old Sefa rakes the deep salt and tends the salt-dead, the only living soul who goes willingly into the lowest vault. The town treats her as half-mad and leaves her be; she talks to the preserved as though they answer, and keeps a tally, scratched in the wall, of which one lies where."
},
{
"comment": "Old Sefa — the one who would notice a body move (gated: salt-dead-moves)",
"reveal": "salt-dead-moves",
"order": 121,
"keys": ["Sefa", "salt-raker", "the raker", "tally", "moves", "the vault"],
"content": "She is the only person who would notice when one of them moves — and the only one whose word on it no one will ever believe."
},
{
"comment": "Brother Cael (drowned-saints preacher) — establishable base",
"order": 100,
"keys": ["Brother Cael", "Cael", "drowned saints", "saints noyés", "preacher", "prêcheur", "the cult", "salt rite", "salt-rite", "salting the tongue", "salt on the tongue", "count the salt", "spilled salt"],
"content": "A gaunt street-preacher who swears the Subsidence was a judgment and the fog the breath of drowned saints demanding repentance. He is not a charlatan: he is the most lucid sufferer of the grey sickness in Saltmere. His followers keep the old salt-rites against the drowned — they will not move past a spilled measure until every grain is counted, they salt their own tongues, they cast a pinch over the left shoulder, and they press salt to the lips of the newborn and the dead alike so that, they say, the drowned cannot remember through the living. Harmless as one voice; lethal once a frightened crowd forms behind him."
},
{
"comment": "Brother Cael — the memories that match a stranger's (gated: named-face)",
"reveal": "named-face",
"order": 101,
"keys": ["Brother Cael", "Cael", "drowned saints", "the cult", "drowned memories", "the face", "le visage"],
"content": "His 'prophecy' is the drowned memories spoken plainly aloud — and the unsettling part is that his memories match those of others who have never met him."
},
{
"comment": "The Watcher on the quays (deniable rumor — kept ambient)",
"order": 120,
"keys": ["the Watcher", "l'observateur", "silhouette", "figure in the fog", "manteau sombre", "coated figure"],
"content": "A thin figure in a dark coat is sometimes seen on the lower quays at slack tide, perfectly still, staring up at the heights. It points newcomers toward the Sunken Quarter, then is gone before anyone reaches it. A smugglers' lookout, a grief-mad widow, or something worse — opinions differ, because no one has ever spoken to it and lived to settle the question."
},
{
"comment": "The galley-takings (press-gangs under the salt-law)",
"order": 110,
"keys": ["press-gang", "press-gangs", "crimps", "crimping", "pressed", "shanghai", "shanghaied", "the crews", "raccoleurs", "racolage", "presse", "enrôlement de force", "galley", "galleys", "galères", "galère", "salt-criminal", "the sentence", "the bounty"],
"content": "The salt-law is the press-gang's best friend. A faux-saunier taken unarmed is sentenced to years at the galley oars; taken armed, he hangs — so when a ship or a galley is short of hands and the fog is thick, the gabelous fill the quota with 'salt-criminals,' real or invented, crimped out of the taverns at closing time. The Drowned Lantern is watched most of all. A stranger drinking alone near the water after dark, asking too many questions, is the easiest man in Saltmere to name a smuggler and wake at sea with no way home: the Office takes its cut to lose the paperwork, and the Undertow runs the bodies down the same flooded routes it runs the salt."
}
]
}