Five thousand years ago, the god of death fell into the Candlelight Sea.
The islands were littered with his bones and the waters became a haunted wasteland - the final resting place of a swarm of hungry ghosts. Those few who survived the cataclysm now cower behind the glow of sacred lighthouses, fearing the deadly oceans beyond.
When the spirit of an ill-fated princess arrives on the other side of the horizon line, she risks her soul for a chance to live again. Her opponent: the vile remains of the fallen death god himself - a formless, parasitic, devilish blight known as the Red Tide King.
Read it here.
General Tropes:
- Action Mom: Vanna, staying active within the Lodestar Guild after Pavel was born and even after Pavel was bitten and her husband vanished.
- Ambiguously Human: Halea, who has undergone a drastic change recently.
- Armor-Piercing Response: After her daughter's funeral, Daphne is asked whether there's a prayer she'd like her to say. Unbeknownst to Daphne, her answer saves her life— the one who asked was too stunned and touched to push her down the stairs.Daphne: I pray that you wake up from your own bad dream. And that when it's over, you're far happier than I am.
- Big Bad: Zigzagged with Cheth and Halea who is actually Cheline possessing Halea's corpse. Also see Big Good below.
- Cheth is the Satanic Archetype of the setting: children are told that, should they misbehave, he'll come to steal their souls and wear them as clothing. He's a Jerkass God to Phaedra, and he is also blamed for the existence of the Fata Morgana, a dangerous army of assassins...
- Halea is sinister from her first appearance, quickly becoming a threat to Pavel and his mother when she learns that he has survived his seabite longer than normally possible. She is also behind Phaedra's assassination, as well as her father's, and has led a millennia-long campaign of misinformation and suppression via her church.
- Big Good: Zigzagged with Cheth, Shoshana and Cheline. Also see Big Bad above.
- Cheline is revered as the Mother Goddess of Life, whose daughter Shoshana saved the world from the evil god Cheth. She is the mainstream deity of the Candlelight Sea and Shoshana is a Messianic Archetype, the Prophetess who is predicted to one day come back to fix the sea.
- While Cheth is the creepy God of the Dead, in truth he used to be the psychopomp of souls towards reincarnation. He is the main benefactor of the protagonist and his main goal is to restore the natural order and finally let the countless billions of souls stuck in the sea move on. He also used to be worshiped by his own church, just like Cheline.
- Canine Companion: Katja. She technically belongs to Phaedra's mother, but is deeply loyal to her "big sister", to the point that she snuck onto the boat for her fateful voyage.
- Cataclysm Backstory: The ocean was cursed — and many islands were flooded and destroyed — in an event called the Fracture, in which Cheth's body was cast down and broken apart.
- Chess with Death: Lampshaded. Cheth offers a chess game as a potential challenge. Phaedra turns it down, commenting "You must've played millions of chess games."
- Cold Sniper: Subverted with Irving. He is a sniper and tries to appear cold and aloof, but he's actually quite soft.
- Color-Coded Elements: Subverted. Cheth, god of water, has a red motif (hence his nickname as the Red Tide King). His sister Cheline, goddess of fire, has a blue motif (hence the blue fire in her temples).
- Cool Boat: The Mantaluna.
- Crapsack World: Most of humanity is dispersed on a hellish water world. While life on the islands is generally okay, the entire ocean is plagued by ghosts who will attempt to devour any living creature they come across. Anyone injured by these ghosts becomes incurably cursed and is shunned by society, and will inevitably die and be consumed by the curse, becoming undead thralls. The only reason the sea can be navigated at all is because of a line of Lighthouses that emit a magical light that repels the ghosts, but the undead thralls are resistant to it and can even disable it during attacks. As if that wasn't bad enough, all of those miserable ghosts? That's the fate of everyone. There is no other afterlife or reincarnation system; once you die you're stuck forever in the sea as a decaying monster who serves as a toy for the God of the Dead.
- Creepy Twins: Subverted. Cheth often appears as a pair of tall, dark-haired "twins", one male and one female, who follow this trope's archetype. Because he puppeteers them both at the same time, they finish each others' sentences, wear the same facial expressions, and, in the event of injury, experience the other's pain— but he has strongly hinted that they aren't actually twins.
- Culture Chop Suey: Elements of many different real-world cultures appear to be mixed. Pavel wears a festival costume based on Cham Dance masks and Pacific Northwest button cloaks. He and his mother eat ramen. Cheline's shrine looks Egyptian or Babylonian. Phaedra's father dresses like an 18th-century British admiral.
- Cute Ghost Girl:
- Phaedra, once she gets some food in her that is. This is lampshaded by Cheth himself in the first chapter.
- Lani is this as well.
- Cypher Language: The symbols for the God's Tongue are a phonetic substitution cipher.
- Dead Guy Puppet: Turns out the Fata Morgana are an example of this trope. Their eyes have even been replaced by glass, and there's a good reason they wear bandages. Also see Of Corpse He's Alive below.
- Deal with the Devil: Multiple.
- If Phaedra can ask a question Cheth can't answer and if he asks a question she knows the answer to, then she and her crew get their lives back. What Cheth didn't tell her was that she only saved her own life, and so her life force was divided between herself and her crew. One fifth of a soul isn't enough to live off of, condemning them to live as conscious seaghosts instead.
- Amos is obeying Cheline on the belief that she will bestow her gift upon mankind, despite her orders resulting in the death of his son and the protest that she could have at least given him a funeral... she shoots him down, claiming that feeding the seagulls was honor enough.
- Death and the Maiden: Played with. Cheth represents Death, but this is done in two different ways.
- Although he is her puppeteer and thus both Death and the Maiden, Cheth is very tender with the soul he calls his favorite lady. They seem to have been close when she was alive, so this trope might actually be played straight.
- Cheth and Phaedra. He has No Sense of Personal Space, calls her cute in their first meeting, and after finding out she is crushing on his female half, starts to tease her even more.Cheth: No... I know what's going on here.One of the skeletal arms reaches a single finger upward, pushing Phaedra's chin back. She looks down, startled.Cheth: I think a CERTAIN QUESTION has ruined your judgment.The skeletal arm bends Phaedra as far backward as she can lean - only to meet the red-eyed, sharp-toothed face of Cheth's female half, smiling broadly down at her. The woman's voice echoes as she speaks.Cheth: Well, Phaedra? AM I A PRETTY LADY?
- Deceased Parents Are the Best:
- Phaedra clearly misses her father, who she deeply admired, but only calls her living mother "panicky".
- Subverted with Vanna, who fits this trope but is not actually killed. She is shown as a kind maternal figure and even in deep pain she makes sure that her son has a store of medicine and a way to find help, and Pavel misses her a lot.
- Lani speaks fondly of her mother, but doesn't know she's already dead.
- Desecrating the Dead: Both Cheth and Cheline do this in different ways. He wears their souls to mess with their loved ones, she destroys, puppeteers and operates on corpses.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Vanna tells Pavel that she was glad that, if she could only save one person, it was him.
- The Dividual: Cheth. He is particularly fond of taking the form of a pair of Creepy Twins... or a dinosaur.
- Disease Bleach: Anyone who is seabitten slowly turns white, and eventually turns into the Fata Morgana. Pavel and Eddy are two examples, while Vanna is an example of someone who has completely turned.
- Eyes Always Shut: Cal's eyes appear closed unless he's surprised.
- Fantastic Slurs: Seabite victims are called Crossers, referring to their eventual fate of 'crossing the Horizon Line' and becoming Fata Morgana.
- Fate Worse than Death: Anyone who is bitten by a seaghost slowly turns white and brittle until they become the Fata Morgana. That being said, true death is not much better due to the fact that souls are forever stuck in the sea in an unending restless state as they suffer and fall apart. This is not natural, and Cheth's defeat 5000 years ago caused this. He is supposed to be their psychopomp, but due to his injured status he is unable to continue his work, something that torments him.
- Faux Affably Evil: Cheth initially acts the part of an Affably Evil god, but he's fairly quick to anger and Kick the Dog.
- Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Lady Halea's giant feather boa.
- Food as Bribe: After the trauma of being dead, the Mantaluna Crew conspire to get Phaedra back in sorts by cooking up a feast.
- Friend to All Living Things: Cal is always surrounded by ghost animals.
- Genki Girl: Lani. Even her undead state hasn't dampened her spirits that much.
- Glass Eye: Lady Halea has two; the pupils/irises are fashioned after peacock feathers.
- God and Satan Are Both Jerks: Cheline and Cheth are respectively their setting's God and Satanic Archetype. Both have been shown to taunt people with their dead family members.Euphemia: I'll see you burn yet.Cheline: Your granddaughter burns first ♥
- Hazardous Water: The people are cautioned not to go into the sea for the fear of getting bitten by seaghosts.
- Healing Potion: Though it can't heal him, Vanna's mysterious medicine has succeeded in halting Pavel's seabite from spreading. He's five years past his life expectancy as a seabite victim.
- Healing Spring: Bathing in the sacred waters of an Aquifer is believed to slow the spread of seabite.
- Hive Mind: Cheth communicates with the souls of the ghosts he possesses. There is only one mind for thousands and thousands of ghosts, which are colloquially known as the "Redtiders".
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: All seaghosts to some degree, withering into ghostly husks or changing due to strong emotion. Even Cheth isn't immune.
- Jerkass Gods: See God and Satan Are Both Jerks above.
- Light Is Good: The lighthouses keep the seaghosts at bay and away from the living.
- Locked into Strangeness:
- Victims of the seabite have the color bleached out of them at the site of the bite, and the bite is said to "spread" the longer a victim remains untreated. Pavel's head and neck, including his hair, have been bleached. Some of the other children at the Salabay Aquifer also have bleached streaks in their hair as a result of their seabites. When Pavel's mother is seabitten, she loses all the color in her skin, eyes, and hair before fading away.
- The Fata Morgana all have white hair.
- Making a Splash: Cheth has the ability to manipulate water in all forms.
- Mark of the Beast: Seaghosts possessed by Cheth display his characteristic black band tattoos on their arms, and a long line of fishbone tattoos on their backs.
- Messianic Archetype: Shoshana. She's seen as a savior will eventually fix the sea in her Second Coming.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Phaedra sees Pavel with a clear head for the first time after eating ghost food and realizes that he has seabite, she assumes that she might have been the one who bit him in her fugue state and simply forgot about it, immediately apologizing to him for her assumed actions.
- She also reacts this way when she realizes she doomed her crew and herself to unlife.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Red Tide King and the Fata Morgana.
- Ocean Punk: The Candlelight Sea relies on ships, both sailboats and motorboats, for travel between its many islands.
- Of Corpse He's Alive: Halea has been dead for months, but is puppeteered to appear alive and further a conspiracy. Likely not the first one this has been done to, nor the last.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: While Cheth is primarily referred to as male, he rarely restricts himself to a single gender. In fact, one of his favorite forms is taking on the forms of a male and female twin simultaneously.
- Side material clarifies he defaults to male pronouns, but is otherwise genderfluid.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The seaghosts drain life away from living organisms, bleaching them. They are also kept away by the light of lighthouses, despite being unaffected by sunlight.
- Out-of-Clothes Experience: After Vanna gets bitten, she disappears, leaving her clothing behind.
- Parents in Distress: When Vanna disappears after becoming seabitten, Pavel strives to find and rescue her from the Fata Morgana.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The assassination of Phaedra and her companions triggers the events that lead to the main plot.
- Power Crystal: Phantomarine is a glowing mineral used in the beacons of the Lighthouse Road - its perpetual light creates a barrier that repels seaghosts. It has a related substance called Revenite that provides similar protection, but requires an electrical current to glow. Pavel was given a lantern with a piece inside, which should be impossible because all of the Phantomarine in the world was supposed to have been used to make the Road.
- Powers That Be: Subverted. The Red Tide King is invisible to the average living person, but it's absolutely possible to be Pals with Jesus if you're seabitten or dead.
- Cheline also subverts this, as she deliberately invokes this trope to obfuscate her very real and physical actions.
- Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Phaedra is a trained swordfighter and maritime commander, like the rest of her family line. She isn't strong enough to defeat Cheth in a legitimate duel, but her skills are still nothing to scoff at, and she injures him multiple times.
- Prongs of Poseidon: Shoshana's personal symbol and primary weapon was a trident, Bonefeather.
- Pulling Themselves Together: Cheth's plesiosaurus form after Phaedra sliced his head off at his neck.
- Fiendish Fish: Cheth, pre-Fracture. There's a reason why they call him the Bonefish!
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Cheth's sclera turn red when he is experiencing extreme emotions. Seaghosts also acquire red pupils when he's possessing them.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Katja, Phaedra's right hand Samoyed, and all her siblings.
- Rotating Protagonist: The prologue and chapter one are about Phaedra and Cheth, chapter two and three are majorly about Pavel and his mother, completely leaving out the previous cast until four and five regroup them, and then six is almost entirely focusing on Halea and a whole new set of characters again.
- Royal Rapier: Phaedra wields her father's sword, to devastating results.
- Say It with Hearts: Both Cheth and Cheline are prone to this, mostly as a taunt.
- The Heart: Pavel's role in the story. He even forces Cheth and Phaedra to have a civil conversation.
- The Phoenix: Cheline appears as a four-winged raven-like phoenix.
- Title Drop: "Phantomarine" is the name of the local Power Crystal, which generates light to repel seaghosts, not needing an electrical current like the related Revenite. Interestingly, Pavel was given a lantern with Phantomarine in it when all of the substance in the known world should be in the Lighthouse Road.
- Undeathly Pallor: Human seaghosts' skin tones range from bone white to different shades of purple or blue, depending on their skin tone in life.
- The Fata Morgana bleach white regardless of their original skintone, and seem to actually be the corpses of the seabitten, puppeteered by Cheline to do her bidding.
- Unobtanium: All the known Phantomarine in the world was supposed to be used to make the Lighthouse Road, so Pavel's mother is baffled by how some was made into a lantern and given to him.
- Written by the Winners: As time goes on, it's made clear that the conflict between Cheth and Cheline is not nearly as black and white as most people believe it is, and it seems that Shoshana was far from the Messianic Archetype the church claims her to be.
