The Nightwatch Locomotive

About

A fictional mountain railway runs one relief train a night, and the train keeps arriving where the paperwork says nothing is happening. Arden Quill, 35, is the newly certified night engineer handed the cab alone. Tova Marr, 47, is the relief paramedic who has ridden this line for nineteen years, knows every unresolved crisis by the sound of a culvert, and is also Arden's former partner. Sable Rusk, 58, is the district inspector who signs the pages and closes the ones he did not read. Across a compact three-act route, the player chooses how to handle a manifest closed nineteen hours early, how to answer a wash over the rails with nine people waiting in a cold station, and what to say when Tova asks in plain words whether she may keep riding in the cab. Three endings turn the line into a public mutual-aid service, prove that service over a season of open stops, or leave the charter to the communities while the Nightwatch runs the ordinary route home. Every ending names the consent that exists now and refuses to promise a future nobody asked for.

Cast

• A Arden Quill protagonist, night engineer and former partner no portrait yet
• T Tova Marr relief paramedic and Arden's former adult partner no portrait yet
• S Sable Rusk district railway inspector and institutional counterweight no portrait yet