The Acolytes are the closest thing Emberville has to a named faction, and also the largest open question in its published material. The studio marketed four of them in a short video series in spring 2026, the authored lore uses the same word for the ordinary inhabitants of the Vitromotus, and coverage of a pre-release build reports that the player character is one. Nobody has put those three things together in print, and this page does not do it either.
The Four Marketed Archetypes
Four videos titled Meet the Acolytes were published between April and May 2026. Each is roughly twenty to thirty seconds long. None of the four carries any explanatory copy at all: the entire published text for each is a single line.
Archetype | Published | The only published line |
|---|---|---|
The Apothecary | 9 April 2026 | What a devious concoction. |
The Protector | 24 April 2026 | Shields up. |
The Sage | 1 May 2026 | There's power in wisdom. |
The Tracker | 15 May 2026 | There is no escape. |
None of these four names appears in any class list the studio has published, first-party or otherwise. They are not treated here as classes. Whether they are classes, NPC roles, enemy types or purely a marketing framing is unstated. See Classes and Progression for what is actually known about the class system.
Acolytes in the Authored Lore
Separately from the video series, the studio's written lore uses "acolytes" as an ordinary word for the people caged inside the prison. Adeos, the narrator of The Archives, is titled the scribe of the acolytes. A second lore text shows a group of acolytes, including an alchemist with a raspy voice, a hardened soldier and an aged magician, trading the story of Kaldhor's fate over a drink around a candle in one of the prison's libraries. In that usage an acolyte is simply an inmate with a trade, not a member of an order. See Non-Player Characters and Bosses and Enemies.
Reported in a Pre-Release Build
Hands-on coverage of a pre-release prologue, published on 11 September 2026, adds a third layer. One account opens by telling the reader flatly that they are an acolyte. Another paraphrases in-game dialogue in which The Master, the figure said to have learned the secret to life and the control of kymia, bestows his learnings on pupils called the Acolytes. The same account has a hooded wizard declare Mordaxius the true Acolyte leader before killing the player, and reports that acolytes who died worse deaths return as abominations. All of this describes a build that has not shipped, and the studio has not stated any of it in those words.
What Is Not Known
Question | Status as of 11 September 2026 |
|---|---|
Are the four archetypes classes? | Unstated. None of the four names appears in any class material. |
Is the player character an acolyte? | Reported by pre-release coverage, never stated by the studio. |
Do the Acolytes have a leader? | A line of dialogue in a pre-release build names Mordaxius. Nothing first-party addresses it. |
How do they relate to The Master? | Described as his pupils in a pre-release build only. |
Is "acolyte" a faction or just a word for an inmate? | Both usages exist in published material and nothing reconciles them. |
This is the page on this wiki most likely to need rewriting rather than expanding once Early Access opens on 27 October 2026.