The Candleman

The robed master of the life-trade shrine deep in Laewendas's upstream cave north of Ponterford — where stolen children are sacrificed to steal a sliver of their unlived years. A gaunt, hooded figure with skin taut to the bones, raising a candle to the sky in exact mimicry of the stone statue (shield in one hand, candle in the other) that the shrine is built around. He looks almost undead but not quite — to Fenric's magic-sight a living creature leaning toward lichdom, not there yet. The party suspects he is the same figure who has been sacrificing for ages, kept alive by the shrine he serves — though whether that's immortality or a line of look-alike descendants is unknown.

(Named "the Candleman"/"Candle guy"; the party was warned of him by Victus the Mute. Tied to the life-trade shrine and the dead-gods / immortality threads.)

Session 40 (debut)

• Scouted dormant at the shrine by an invisible Fenric: eyes closed, not breathing, statue-still — raising his candle beside three magically de-named tombs and four defaced sarcophagi.
• Confirmed as the life-stealing shrine's operator the party was warned about — the ritualist who takes the majority of a victim's years for a statue/demigod while a killer keeps a sliver.
• Left undisturbed; his fate (and the shrine's — seal vs. destroy) is deferred to the coming raid.

Session 41

• Reframed as a force, not a creature. Per the Ghoul of Gythfield, the Candleman is not a "something" but the avatar of a dead god — "a force that cannot be reckoned with, just as when you jump, you fall." You cannot bargain or fight him so much as invoke a law.
• The hidden second bargain. Killing on his altar gives the killer a sliver of the victim's unlived years (the statue takes the rest) — but the act of killing also strikes a separate, concealed bargain in which "something is taken" from the killer. Even Rusty, who can sense the magic flow of each sacrifice, does not know its terms — a warning to any party member tempted to use the shrine.

Session 42 (left undisturbed)

• Passive, not hostile. Pimothy confirms he has passed the Candleman "a dozen or two times": he never leaves his shrine and never attacks unless attacked. The party deliberately does not engage "the representative of a demigod."
• The trade, deduced. Fenric's Arcana (21) works out the rule: you must kill a creature of your own type on the altar to take a sliver of its life — and the killer's soul may (at the Candleman's whim, terms unstated) be bound into a Candle of Torment. The two looted candles hold the souls of previous victims.
• The candles taken. The party carries off the two Candles of Torment rather than lighting them (lighting torments the trapped soul); whether to ever free those souls or seal/destroy the shrine remains open.

Session 43 (bypassed)

• During the dawn raid the party deliberately slips past his side-shrine — "don't fuck with the god thingamajig… he just stays in there, won't bother you." Even the camp's own watchman avoids looking down his corridor (the Candleman keeps beckoning, "yes, come on over," and no one will). Left wholly untouched as the cave is cleared around him; the seal-vs-destroy question is still open.

Session 44 (browsed, not bought)

• The terms, made plain. Fenric "peeks in" one last time; on locking eyes, the room flickers and he simply understands the deal — bring people to the inscribed platform, end their life there, and you will live longer. The party declines to use it, and again refuses to put the soul-candles (or the Candleman) into Thalia's hat.
• The candle hoard. Silithane and Fenric lever open one of the four fire-defaced sarcophagi in his nook — no body, just thousands of pencil-sized soul candles like the two the party holds; the act briefly makes the Candleman's own candle gutter. Thalia strings a "No entry" sign over it. The shrine is left standing.