Moss-on-the-Stone, Keeper of Thornwake Light
Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Lighthouse keeper at Thornwake Point
Race: Tortle
Role: mentor
Status: alive
Description
Moss-on-the-Stone has kept the light at Thornwake Point for fifty-one years, which is to say he has kept it since before most of the town was born. He is a tortle of enormous patience and very few words, and he does three things well: he keeps the flame, he keeps the log, and he keeps whatever anyone tells him at the top of the stairs. Sailors climb the hundred and forty steps to confess things they would not say to a priest, because Moss listens without expression, offers tea, and never mention
Appearance
A big weathered tortle gone pale at the edges of his shell, which carries fifty years of salt scarring and one long crack he does not discuss. Moves deliberately on the stairs and never hurries them. Hands steady enough to trim a wick in a gale.
Motives
Keep the light burning. That is genuinely the whole of it. Everything else he has done, including the parts he is not proud of, runs downstream of that single duty.
Personality
Speaks slowly enough that people finish his sentences for him, and he lets them. The kettle is never off the hob, so every conversation in the lamp room comes with tea whether you wanted it or not. He will not lie, but he is entirely comfortable saying nothing at all, for as long as it takes.
Voice
Deep and unhurried, with long pauses that are not hesitation. Calls everyone "friend," and unlike the carnival master down the hill, he means it.