Colophon
The text of this gamebook is a DRAFT drafted with Artisanal Intelligence, the studio's name for help from Claude agents, and is reviewed and edited by Bryce before any release. Nothing here is final. The story is original; the facts about the wrecks and lights are from the Lighthouse app's history, checked against the sources named there.
The plates are public domain or CC BY photographs and engravings, converted to sixteen grays with a tone curve and local contrast. Nothing was generated or repainted. Each is credited below.
Display lettering: Cinzel Decorative by Natanael Gama, SIL Open Font License 1.1 (copy inside this book).
Tone references, for the editor: see NARRATIVE_BIBLE.md in the studio repository.
Plates
DonovanEpitomePlate11: Edward Donovan, Public domain. Source.
Illustrations of Exotic Entomology Cicada Maculata: Plates: Dru Drury (1725–1803). Text: John Obadiah Westwood (, Public domain. Source.
Illustrations of Exotic Entomology II 47 ('LIBELLULA AXILENA'): Plates: Dru Drury (1725–1803). Text: John Obadiah Westwood (, Public domain. Source.
Pseudocreobotra ocellata Illustrations of Exotic Entomology III 43 (cr: Plates: Dru Drury (1725–1803). Text: John Obadiah Westwood (, Public domain. Source.
Italian: Lampyris italica Insetti Organi fosforescenti Wall chart Lam: UnknownUnknown, Public domain. Source.
Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium: Maria Sibylla Merian, Public domain. Source.
Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium: Maria Sibylla Merian, Public domain. Source.
Boat-tailed grackles on a live oak, the great-tailed's eastern cousin. John James Audubon, The Birds of America, plate 187, engraved by Robert Havell.: John James Audubon; Robert Havell Jr., Public domain. Source.
Frost. Wilson A. Bentley, photograph. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.: Wilson A. Bentley, Public domain. Source.
Live oak. François André Michaux, The North American Sylva, drawn by Henri-Joseph Redouté.: François André Michaux; Henri-Joseph Redouté, Public domain. Source.
The grey-breasted parakeet, now the monk parakeet. William Swainson, Zoological Illustrations, plate 89.: William Swainson, Public domain. Source.
Fig. Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz.: Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Public domain. Source.
Maize. Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz.: Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Public domain. Source.
Tall green curled kale. Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie, Les plantes potagères, Paris.: Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie, Public domain. Source.
Large early red tomato. Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie, Les plantes potagères, Paris.: Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie, Public domain. Source.
SS Andrea Doria: U.S. Coast Guard, Public domain. Source.
Boston Light: darlingtrk, CC BY 2.0. Source.
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Minots Ledge Light: Digitized by CARLI, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. Source.
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SS Pendleton: U.S. Coast Guard (Richard C. Kelsey), Public domain. Source.
Portland Head Light: Gordon Leggett, CC BY 4.0. Source.
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Portland: Samuel Ward Stanton, from American Steam Vessels (1895), Public domain. Source.
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RMS Republic: White Star Line, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. Source.
Seguin Island Light: U.S. Coast Guard, Public domain. Source.
USS Squalus: U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command, Public domain. Source.
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Type and influences
Faces
The story is set in Literata, drawn by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione at TypeTogether in 2015 for reading books on a screen, and released under the SIL Open Font License. We chose it because it was made for this: a long evening, a small light, a page that must not tire the eye. It stands tall for its size, so it stays clear at the size of a phone.
The running heads and the first button are Cinzel Decorative, drawn by Natanael Gama after the capitals cut in Roman stone, the same capitals the Lighthouse app uses for its brass lettering. It stays small, the way a plate mark does. It is open too, under the same license (version 1.1), and copies of both licenses travel with the fonts.
The labels on found words are Literata's own small capitals. The change of scene is the printer's old asterism.
How it is set
Eighteen pixels on a phone and twenty on a desk, about sixty-five characters to a line on a desk, a line and a half between lines and half a line between paragraphs. These paragraphs are single beats, and an indent on "You are whoever." would read as a typo. Nothing is hyphenated and nothing is justified. By night the words are warm cream on the void and by day near-black on paper, chosen so that the story never falls under seven to one against its page. On an e-ink reader the type follows your own settings. We tried three directions side by side, on a phone and on a desk, in light and in dark, before we set the book.
Influences
David Lynch gave us the ordinary turned one degree: a diner, a lamp, a hum in the walls. Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son gave us the flat grace that sets the color of a car's upholstery beside a man bleeding, in the same breath. Parquet Courts gave us the list and the line that breaks it. Emily St. John Mandel's Exit Party (2026) showed how one book can leave a door open into another. Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) gave us W.A.S.T.E., the postal system that runs beside the official one; the found notes in this book travel by it.
Every one of these is a book or a record we would hand you across a table. Read them next, and tell us what we missed.
The plates
The cover is Portland Head Light, photographed by Gordon Leggett (CC BY 4.0). The insects are engraved by Maria Sibylla Merian, Dru Drury and Edward Donovan, and the wrecks and lights come from the U.S. Coast Guard and others, each credited above. We changed only their tones, to sixteen grays, so they print on e-ink as well as they glow on a phone.
Spot a word that sounds off, or a fact that is wrong? Write to studio@releaf.site and we will fix it, and thank you by name if you like.