Lars-Erik Emer's Chartered Worlds

Two Days, One Carriage. Track four on Charterbound: The Reach, the album's comedic breather, told through the excerpt itself.

Idris, the senior scholar who runs Stormcape and hands out assignments like this one, sends his apprentice Bashir along on an errand: two days out past Stormcape to retrieve a family heirloom from an old Vlachian widow, with instructions to scribe down whatever gets said. Tahmaska drives, saying little; she has held her post at Stormcape longer than any of the other Wardens and reads land and weather far better than she talks. Mircea complains the entire way; he is a transplant himself, years into a frontier posting he still has not fully made peace with. Bashir sits in the back with his satchel, saying nothing for a hundred miles, because recording this is the entire reason Idris sent him.

Tahmaska drove. Mircea complained. The carriage lamp was Vlachian wrought-iron and it swung between them like a small argument.

Two days, one carriage. Tahmaska drives. Mircea complains. The lamp burns small — and that is enough.

Refectory, Part Two. The night deepens, then warms, then the song closes on the record being written down after the fact.

Tahmaska breaks the hush. Idris keeps the ritual going exactly as written. Devon crashes in three centuries out of place and cracks the whole table into one shared laugh, Mircea included. It ends on Bashir quietly doing the job he'll do for the rest of the book: writing the night down so it isn't lost.

Tahmaska said, brief — the land remembers. That was the whole of what she said.

Idris lifted the kettle and told us — pour the second cup. As is written. The night holds; let the meal be long.

And then a step in the corridor — quick — and Devon at the door. He said it like a song, the way he says things when he's overwhelmed —

y'all do this every — every night? Respectfully — the vibe is undefeated. Pass the pot. Pass the pot. Let me catch up to the long table. The vibe is — the vibe is — undefeated.

Mircea, without looking up, told him — as you wish.

The cast laughed once — together — and the lamp leaned warmer for it.

Wave, and salt, and rope. The lamp burns small — and that is enough.

I wrote this down later, by my own lamp, the way I was taught — the meal as I saw it. As is written.

The lamp burns small. And that is enough.

Refectory, Part One. The first track on Charterbound: The Reach, told through the song itself this time.

Bashir's first night at the table, seated where Idris tells him to sit and taught how this family works one cup at a time. The full cast gets introduced here: Mircea and Yara's running argument over dinner, Hester's laugh, Bracken and Hayami's quiet corner, and Devon still stuck in the corridor, not yet part of the table he's about to belong to.

The first night I came to the Reach I sat where I was told — foot of the long table, foot of the lamp, foot of the kitchen door.

Idris signed the meal in; he poured the second cup the way a senior should. Bashir, he told me, you sit here. You watch how a table holds. The lamp burned small at the table's center. The night held — and that was enough.

Sahirati teaglass. Vlachian copper. Mawakwa wood. Akitsu lacquer. Songaran clay. Albian pewter. Salt-Isles painted tin. One table. Seven hands. A place laid for the cape itself.

Wave, and salt, and rope. Wave, and salt, and rope. The lamp burns small — and that is enough. Wave, and salt, and rope.

Mircea said, with respect, no. Yara told him, chéri, taste it first. Mircea began, in Vlachia we would — and Yara cut him fond — hush, douce. The gravy is going.

Down the table, the witch laughed once into her cup. Hester said, ye'll see how it lands; the wheel turns slow at this table. Bracken stayed still — he had eaten and was bored. The shadow-girl beside her set her bowl down quiet. Hayami said only wa, small bow to the bowl, and the candle steady on her sleeve where a dragonfly was hiding.

The salt came round. The bread broke open. Devon was not sat yet — he was still in the corridor making a face at the moonlight on the stone.

Wave, and salt, and rope. Wave, and salt, and rope. Wave, and salt, and rope. The lamp burns small — and that is enough. Wave, and salt, and rope.

Refectory, Part Two. The night deepens, then warms, then the poem reveals itself as something written down after the fact.

Tahmaska spoke but once, and brief, and gave the night its only word; she said the thing and said no more, and this was all the table heard:

"The land remembers."

Then Idris raised the kettle up, and what he said, he'd said before; the words were old, the words were kept, the words the keep was founded for:

"Pour the second cup. As is written." "The night holds; let the meal be long."

A quick step on the corridor stone, then Devon in the door, and lit, the century a size too large, singing, the way he weathers it:

"Y'all do this every, every night?" "Respectfully: the vibe is undefeated." "Pass the pot. Pass the pot." "Let me catch up to the long table."

And Mircea, never lifting head, said only, "As you wish," and so, at last, the whole cast laughed as one, and made the lamplight warmer grow.

I wrote it later, by my lamp, the way that I was taught to write: not as they ate it, as I saw, as it is written. And that night,

the lamp burned small. And that was enough.

Charterbound has four small poetry books so far. Forty eight songs reworked into poems, about a chartered stretch of coastline in 1683 and the people who keep watch over it.

Up to now all of that has lived on the page only. Starting now, some of it gets read out loud instead.

Short pieces first, the ones from the very front of the first book, before a single character even has a name. The longer ones come later, in parts, once a poem runs past what a few minutes can hold.

This is where it starts.

The Hum.

Now put your ear against the day, the harbor, the hearth-stone, the loam; something is humming, far away and close as breath. You're not alone.

Each people cut a single key; not one was cut to fit the whole. Each opened true, and partially, the one deep under every soul.

The old ones leaned the closest in; they reached to hold the hum entire, and thinned to less than they had been: a wind, a warning, a spent fire.

So we keep small. We tend, not seize; we hold what hums, and let it lie. We do not break the world for peace, nor reach beyond. And that is why,

the lamp burns small. And that is enough.

The Cape.

Out where the weather lands the first, two miles of stone hold back the grey; a lamp is kept against the worst for whoever loses their way.

Here the dangerous things are brought not to be broken, but contained; and there they sleep, as they were taught, and nothing, ever, is unmade.

Walk up. The door is worn but true; inside, a table, set and warm, a place still laid for one, for you. Wave, and salt, and rope. Come in from the storm.

The lamp burns small. And that is enough.

TSUBAKI HAYAMI. Stormcape.

Three years. Nobody asked.

Twenty-nine. Akitsu-born, trained in a covert lamp-bearer tradition. Stormcape's stealth and extraction specialist since 1680.

The Lantern-Stone: a river-stone in a brass mount, small enough to close a fist around. It glows soft amber in true darkness. Just enough light to read by.

The quiet lift: six minutes inside a sleeping villa. She leaves with what she came for. The house wakes to a normally lit room and never knows she was there.

Her teacher used to say it about her. The lamp burns small. And that is enough.

Charterbound is books and music both, growing as the map fills in. Everything's linked below.

Nobody prepared him for any of this.

Twenty-six. A library-sciences grad student, pulled out of 2021 by a misfiring artifact. Now the Charterhouse's newest Junior Warden.

The watch that doesn't tick: his mother's wristwatch stopped the day it pulled him through. It only ticks when something in this world reaches back. He isn't the first in his line to hear that hum.

Same water his ancestors crossed, the other direction, three hundred years before him.

The lamp burns small. And that is enough.

Charterbound is books and music both, growing as the map fills in. Everything's linked below.

Amazon Books Amazon Music Spotify Apple Music YouTube

IDRIS IBN SA'IR. Stormcape.

He pours the second cup, every meal. No one at that table has ever asked him why.

Senior Warden of Stormcape since 1670. The slowest body in the room. The quickest mind.

The Cylinder of Murmurs: a small brass cylinder on a cord. Held to the ear, it murmurs answers to questions only he's asked. Some weeks it goes quiet. He's never explained why.

As is written. The rule is old. The warmth isn't ceremony. "The night holds," he tells them. "Let the meal be long."

Charterbound is books and music both, growing as the map fills in. Everything's linked below.

HESTER MOSSPINE. Stormcape.

You'll want to know how the girl got out alive.

Dried herbs, a river-stone charm, no patience for foolishness. Call her a witch. She won't argue.

Field Warden, Stormcape Charterhouse. A frontier coast, a long way from the one she ran from.

Two marks: a chipped tooth. A burn at the wrist, where a man's iron caught the wool first. He never got a name.

(Bracken says hello.)

Charterbound is books and music both, growing as the map fills in. Everything's linked below.

The Reach is out now, the whole album this time.

Twelve folk songs from the Stormcape's Wardens, the people this world put in charge of remembering things. Bracken's Cut was the first taste back in June. This is the rest of the record.

Streaming now on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

Search Charterbound and you'll land on all of it, the album, the poems, the whole catalog. It's the one project I've got going right now, so that one search does the job.

BRACKEN. Stormcape. 1683.

If you're new here, you should know his name.

He is a ferret. Specifically: Hester Mosspine's familiar. Source-touched. A brass collar with a folk-charm, charged by accident.

He ran the Vault corridor alone. He went in first.

He bites Mircea on principle. Every time.

He got the first song. Bracken's Cut is out now. Search Bracken's Cut to find it.

For now you can find Bracken's Cut on your fave streaming services.

i made a post once about never finishing anything. consider this the redemption arc. there's a song out, the first album of the Chartered World lands july 3rd, and i'm not stopping this time.

For now you can find Bracken's Cut on your fave streaming services.

okay so the premise: a heist song where the narrator is the ferret.

his name is Bracken, he belongs to a witch, and he is very clear that he did the actual work and should therefore be paid in eggs. the count out front gets all the applause. Bracken gets the bottle.

this is a little promo cut for Bracken's Cut, a single from the Charterbound world. old-master painted art, one small thief, one corked bottle nobody should open.

okay so the Charterbound world has been living in my head for a while, and today it gets to exist somewhere other than my hard drive.

Bracken's Cut is a folk song, fast, sardonic, narrated by a ferret named Bracken who is absolutely certain the heist was clean and the vial situation was not his fault. He's on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and everywhere else. He would like you to know he was the most essential member of the operation.

And Charterbound: The Reach is the first book, twelve poems from the world's record-keepers. The Stormcape. The charter halls. The ships. The people keeping track of things the living generation will someday want to find.

Same world. Two ways in, today.

(if you've ever loved a world built from the ground up, the names, the maps, the small characters who show up in the margins, this one's for you)

→ The Reach On Amazon