Tamsin

Tamsin was a small child in a workshop built for adult bodies and enormous machines. Benches were too high, safety straps too loose, and instructions were shouted over engines that drowned out questions. Her masters were imperfect but patient. They built pedal extensions, marked safe paths in bright paint, and let her disassemble broken tools because they understood that curiosity was not disobedience. Tamsin learned that making something powerful was less important than making it notice the person standing nearest to its feet.

When the masters vanished, the workshop was left full of unfinished civic machines and official notices declaring the workers reassigned. Tamsin knew the handwriting on those notices did not belong to anyone who had worked there. She collected discarded tools, fitted them into a walking suit, and used it to hold up roofs, carry water, and reach places adults had decided were inaccessible. The suit became a protector before it became a weapon.

Then it began stopping outside homes Tamsin had never visited. A wrench inside its shoulder would turn toward one door; a measuring chain would pull toward another. Each tool seemed to remember the hands that once used it. Tamsin followed these pauses and found families who had also received no explanation. She began to suspect that the armor was not merely built from her masters’ tools. Some part of their unfinished intentions—or their trapped souls—might be moving inside it.

Tamsin enters Mournhand to learn where her masters went and whether they can come home without being confined to the machine. The table tempts her with a perfect restoration: return every maker by distributing them through the armor’s parts. That bargain would give her what she asked for while turning people into components. She refuses to treat the suit as a coffin or her teachers as spare parts. Her wish is for each missing maker to be found and given a choice, even if some choose not to return to the old workshop.

Small Things Stand makes that promise practical. Rivet CrabRivet CrabC21 · 2 energy · 2/3The smallest workers in the foundry used to leave bent nails beneath the benches.Read this folio → teaches that protection can come from something tiny. Hearth-Anvil StagHearth-Anvil StagC22 · 4 energy · 3/6When the last forge went cold, the apprentices found a stag standing among its ashes.Read this folio → keeps warmth in abandoned rooms. Coppercap PorterCoppercap PorterC23 · 1 energy · 1/1The porter was built to carry things no larger than a lunchbox.Read this folio → carries burdens no one thought to count. Last-Bolt GiantLast-Bolt GiantC24 · 5 energy · 4/6The giant once held the foundry roof above a hundred fleeing workers.Read this folio → must decide how much of itself to spend holding up a roof. Across the four encounters, Tamsin learns that being a protector does not mean making every decision for everyone smaller than her armor. She plays because adults erased the people who taught her; she stays because the city is still full of overlooked lives that deserve machines designed around them.