Operator
BLACKFLAME
The network's operator: the legend who lit the first unlisted relay during the Switch-Off and keeps the Bromigos network's relays, racks, and worlds lit. Real name CLASSIFIED; codec frequency 142.59 MHz, above the hand-assigned 140 band and never assigned; clearance printed as [REDACTED]; specialty machines that think (AI, intrusion, espionage, signals, systems). Cause: nobody in the Drift should go silent because their channel stopped being profitable. No agreed face — footage always shows the burn-in where it should be. Whether BLACKFLAME is one person, a crew, or a haunting in the relays is never settled.
Lanes
Connected entries
- keeps litBromigosPart operator collective, part broadcast culture, part family business. Its promise is 'One network, every world.'
- lit and keepsUnlisted relaysHand-rebuilt repeaters on dead masts, carried on no sector's tariff schedule and carrying anyone's traffic for nothing. Lit but dark on every ledger — a black flame.
- answeredThe Switch-OffThe years after the Ledger Wars' bankruptcy when receivers auctioned the cartels' communications relays line item by line item.
emblemThe burn-inBLACKFLAME's emblem, named for phosphor-screen burn-in: a solid black flame with a relay mast cut through it in negative space and a dark halo that drinks the glow, inside a phosphor-green…
denThe WickBLACKFLAME's den: a decommissioned relay station in no sector's survey. Those who claim to have been there describe only a mast with the flame burned into its housing, a hot humming rack…- holds no rung onClearance ladderBromigos' trust and access tiers: Operative, Specialist, Phantom, and [Redacted]. The ladder functions as both rank and paid access.
- working version ofOpen Band AccordsA post-war multilateral treaty intended to keep communication bands free of state, cartel, and carrier monopolies. Its signing crisis drives the Carapace incident.
trusted byColonel Rourke
honored bySIGIL
hosts the work ofNixie
catalogued byLin Yao
confused withDeepwire
possibly carriedSage
puzzlesMaster Flint
kindred off-ledger tradeSTEEL COBRA
invoiced byGovernor Voss
spared byKOSCHEI
thanked byPresident Johnson
respected byDYNAMO
unnumbered byVECTOR
links hereHollis CraneMire's keeper and the oldest Lamplighter: an old fisherman on the stilt shack's porch, once a Relay Corps signals man posted to the front, who stayed when the war moved on.- links hereThe LamplightersThe keepers of the unlisted relays' posts, one to a world. Their creed: a black flame gives no light, but someone keeps it burning.
- links hereThe empty chairOperator folklore from intercept footage of the Wick: when BLACKFLAME is away, the chair stands empty and turned, with headphones and shades left by the keyboard.
On the timeline
When it happened
- War's end
The Switch-Off: receivers auction the cartels' relays line by line and unbought colonies go quiet. Unlisted relays begin coming back on, each marked with the burn-in, and the legend of BLACKFLAME begins.
- Present
From the Wick, BLACKFLAME keeps the unlisted relays lit while the Meridian Reach tears relays down and they come back within the week.
- War's end