First Light: The Three Fires

The last hour of night on a Parthian ridge, somewhere around 100 BC. You are the Magus, keeper of an Arsacid fire temple, and three great fires stand on the plateau: Adur Gushnasp for the warriors, Adur Farnbag for the priests, Adur Burzen-Mihr for the farmers. They have to be burning when the sun clears the ridge.

They are all cooling. The only heat on the mountain is in the Eternal Well at the centre, and the only way to move it is in the bronze censer on your arm — which scorches you the fuller it gets. Meanwhile the daevas of the dark come up over the rim and settle on whichever altar is warmest, and they put fires out.

One night. Three minutes. Three fires.

How to play

	Mouse + keyboard	Touch	Controller
Move	WASD / arrows	left stick	left stick
Tend — draw at the well, feed an altar (hold)	E / left mouse	Tend	X
Flare — throw ember, banish a daeva	Space / right mouse	Flare	A
Pause	Esc / P	Pause	Start
Menus	mouse, or arrows + Enter	tap a row	stick + A, B to go back

Stand in the Eternal Well and hold Tend to draw heat. Walk it to an altar and hold Tend again to pour it in. Flare throws ember out of the censer and drives a daeva back over the rim — and a flare thrown while you are running away from one reaches further. That is the Parthian shot, and it is the only thing here that rewards retreating.

Two things will catch you out if you ignore them. A censer carried above the scorch line burns its bearer, and a keeper who runs out of vitality staggers and spills what he was carrying. And a censer run empty cannot relight a dead altar — cold ash needs a full pour before it catches, which is a long walk you cannot afford twice in one night.

What happens at first light

The three fires are judged as one.

• Three burning — the Triunity. The true dawn.
• One or two — a grey dawn. The temple keeps its office; the estate whose fire went out keeps the shame of it.
• None — the night keeps the temple. That one ends the moment the last ember dies.

Worth seeing

The sky runs on the same clock you do. Stars for most of it, then the first blush along the ridge, then the sun — and the light on the sandstone moves with it, so the last thirty seconds look nothing like the first thirty. Each of the three fires burns its own colour, and an altar's flame, its glow and the light it throws all shrink as it cools, so you can read the state of the whole temple off the plateau without looking at the HUD once.

The Old Keeper — your dead teacher, speaking out of the fire — carries the opening, the first death, the first relight and the dawn. He is voiced, and every line is on screen as well.

It plays in a browser, at any window shape, with a mouse, a finger or a controller.