Stoker
Ilya Ember
SignatureBanked Coals
Already at the furnace. While Ilya tends town, the furnace burns 20% less fuel.
01 — Story
The brief
Frost Haven is a winter survival town builder. The furnace is the heart of the ring. Burn wood and coal or the cold takes the shift. Cabins raise how many neighbors the valley can hold. Kitchens turn meat into meals. A care house mends people. A field study writes what the cold teaches, and those notes buy the tech tree.
Thirty town levels sit over six chapters of work: hearths, stores, trails, and the long book of studies. Ten heroes join as you qualify. Ilya Ember is already at the furnace and burns less fuel while tending town. Torin Vale is already at the gate and makes an expedition walk faster. Bram, Nessa, Sable, Hester, Oren, Lumen, Yara, and Soren arrive on wood, buildings, or level gates.
Storms are the exam. Whiteouts and blizzard week make the furnace drink. Stack coal before the wind, and keep a lamplighter in town if you have one. Aurora festivals do the opposite kind of work: extra bowls, extra research, a green curtain over the ring. The achievement list remembers a whiteout, three whiteouts, a full blizzard week, and one aurora.
The wild is chunks of snow, groves, coal seams, iron, and ruins. Three great beasts have names and places: the March Warden, the Shelf Guardian, and the Sky Stag. You meet them with a meal offering. The game’s own line on the hunt lodge is the rule of the valley: it does not harm its animals. Shy beasts leave a fuller cache when Yara Moss is on the trail.
A first week that works
Feed the furnace before you admire the view. Raise a sawmill so wood is not a walk every time. Cook before you send anyone out. Expeditions spend meals as rations and come home with wood, coal, meat, iron, or notes. If the wind is rising, cancel the romance of a long trail and fill the coal drift.
What the studies buy
Branches start at the field study. Later notes need the one before them and a higher town level. Quilted walls, wider furnace heat, deeper coal shafts, faster mending, marked trails, and aurora bonuses all live on that tree. Finishing studies is its own achievement path, from Field Notes to Deep Book.
