The Lamplighters
Type – Secret Society
The Lamplighters are a rumored spy network, whispered about whenever a dissident vanishes or a scandal quietly disappears. The name comes from an old belief: that those who service Craven’s streetlamps are not merely keeping the city lit — they’re listening. Since the earliest days of gas and arc-lamps, citizens have feared being watched from the glow above. Most streetlamp technicians laugh off the idea, but a few admit the odd colleague who reports to no supervisor and speaks to no one. In taverns and drawing rooms alike, people trade stories about flickering lamps, so-called secret signals, and streets that go quiet when certain names are spoken aloud. In a city where rumors travel faster than railcars, the Lamplighters remain one of Craven’s favorite phobias — invisible, yet never far from mind.
Some claim the Lamplighters serve the Spymaster. Others suspect the High Inquisitor. Accusations are retracted and reasserted with every change in position, yet rumors of their involvement persist: that they pass messages through coded flickers, use lampposts as dead drops, or monitor whole neighborhoods without ever showing their faces. None of this has been confirmed, but that hasn’t stopped the rumors. Most proponents for this “conspiracy theory” are laughed off or labeled paranoid, but not all are baseless. From time to time, meetings are canceled, protests dissolve, and investigations inexplicably go cold. No follow-ups, no arrests. Just a streetlamp that buzzes a little too loud, or a street that’s suddenly empty. Whether they’re real or not hardly matters anymore. People behave as if they are.
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