Name: Othin Kerse
Race: Human
Role: : Lamplighter foreman, oil-chandler, night-route warden
Appearance: A spare, late-forties man with a weather-cracked face and a steady, ledger-clerk gaze. Othin keeps his iron-gray hair under a smoke-black cap. He wears a waxed canvas coat with reinforced shoulders, a brass-and-oak lamplighter’s pole (hook, snuffer, and wick-knife) slung like a staff, and a cross-body satchel of oil flasks, chalk, and keys. Burn scars freckle his forearms; his boots shine with lampblack. He smells of hemp wicks, whale-oil blends, and rain.
Backstory
Othin apprenticed to the Gloomshade Chandlers’ Guild at thirteen, learning blends—sootless for courts, storm-heavy for docks, and blue-cut for fog. When he uncovered an insurance scam (lamps “accidentally” dimmed so claims would rise), he started keeping two ledgers: the public route log, and the quiet ledger that records kickbacks, swapped routes, and who “forgets” to trim the light on riot nights. He’ll never blow a whistle that gets good people hurt, but he’ll steer the right crew to the right door at the right hour. On long nights, he mutters, “I don’t step into shadow I didn’t make.”
