The Ladder of Rain
The striker throws it. The drummer pays for it.
- ~105 min
- 18444 words
- 45 scenes
- 6 branch points
- 5 endings
- Second-world monsoon delta city
2 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
Cover art · generated placeholder backgrounds and character art in-game · licensed music, credited in the build · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
In Ninebridge it rains forty days a year and the Ladder runs for all of them: nine rungs, one bout each, on a floating platform in the Ash Channel with the city watching from the bridges. Fighting is done in pairs. A striker can do nothing a body cannot do until a drummer is playing for her; then she can do a great deal more, and the difference is deducted from the drummer — hearing first, heart after. Nobody with forty bouts behind them sees fifty. Rukhaya Dane has eleven street bouts and no patron. Ilm Sarratt has been her drummer since she was seventeen and in her bed for four years, has thirty-one bouts on the frame, and has not mentioned the ringing, the stairs, or the letter from the Ladder's physician. The ninth-rung champion comes out alone and still fights like a woman with a drummer, and the city calls that genius. A tournament story built as a hub: nine bouts, and between them a night in the city where you choose who gets your hours — your drummer, your rival, your patron, or the physician who will tell you the truth if you ask a direct question. The choreography is concrete and rhythmic, the power system has a stated price paid by someone you love, and the pension clause everyone quotes is only payable if the drummer dies on the platform. Desire is frank and closes the door. Five endings; the ninth rung is reachable in two of them, and one of those is worse.
Content notice
- graphic fighting violence and lasting injury
- progressive disability and cardiac decline
- assisted death
- exploitation by contract
- sexual content implied, cuts away
- grief
- gambling
Cast
- R Rukhaya Dane protagonist; striker, no patron no portrait yet
- I Ilm Sarratt drummer; thirty-one bouts no portrait yet
- C Coele Vane ninth-rung champion; fights alone no portrait yet
- Y Yeshe Ostrand patron; owns four strikers and a stretch of the betting book no portrait yet
- P Physician Anouk Sarre the Ladder's physician; signs drummers fit no portrait yet
- T Toben Vane Coele's younger brother; drummer, retired at twenty-four no portrait yet