If you ask the Crown about Brightfall, you will get three answers:
It does not exist.
If it did exist, it would be classified.
And if you have heard of it, you should probably stop asking questions.
Welcome back to Field Notes Friday! Today we are stepping away from systems and mechanics and going straight into story: what Brightfall is, why England pretends it is not there, and who lived there before you.
This is the lore devlog. Grab a warm drink because it is going to get cold, wet, and a bit haunted.
A year best left off the calendar
Brightfall takes place in 1666, just after the Great Plague of London.
The city has buried too many people, said too many prayers that did not work. The pest houses are still being cleaned out when your story begins.
You, however, are not going home.
Instead, you are put in chains, marched onto a ship, and sent toward a place sailors whisper about as:
The Place of No Return
The Dark Prison
The Isle of the Outcast
Sounds like such a lovely place.
The scholars - the few who admit it exists - call it Brightfall, after a medieval manuscript that described a remote place where the light itself seemed to bend and disappear.
They are wrong, of course. The old name was Breithval - a Celtic word that can mean Hidden Valley or Bright Valley, depending on who is translating it and how nervous they are.
An island the Crown pretends not to see
From the Crown’s point of view, Brightfall is not just cursed - it is dangerous to acknowledge.
For centuries, every major plague that struck the British Isles has, in one way or another, been blamed on it.
In official reports, Brightfall is politely omitted. In private, some in power have decided this:
Nothing from there must ever come back.
The same goes for the people who ask too many questions.
Unofficially, of course, Brightfall has one very convenient use.
The Place of No Return
For a little over a hundred years, Brightfall has been used as one of the Crown’s quietest solutions to inconvenient people.
Not important enough to make a public example of.
Too troublesome to keep in regular prisons.
Too dangerous - or too expensive - to set free.
So they are put onto ships, one batch at a time. From that moment on, they are no longer a problem.
You are one of them.
Long before the chains: the Celtic island
Long before the convicts arrived, Brightfall was home to Celts. They believed it was special - sacred, in a way that felt both blessed and dangerous.
Their myths and rituals all circled one idea: a living darkness that once descended on the islands as a punishment from the gods. It passed, but their stories insisted it would return, over and over, in cycles.
At some point, the Celts vanished. Nobody on the mainland can say exactly how or why.
What remains are ruins, runic stones, broken menhirs, and the feeling that this has all happened before.
And then…
Ten days later you are washed ashore.
What do you do next?
Let us know in the comments!
Thank you for reading our second Field Notes Friday. No spoilers here... But let us know what would you like to hear next!
~Dark Point Games team
PS: If you would like more devlogs like this, consider following Brightfall on Steam so you do not miss the next one.