Frostpunk

Hearth

6 min read

“The last warm place in the world,” or so the locals call it.

Hearth is not a planned city. It is a survival response. When the Arcane Frost began its permanent spread, people followed the warmth - and the warmth came from the The Hearth Engine, an ancient device discovered by Luthor Shrike in Year -1. Hearth is built against the base of a small, standalone mountain. The Guildhall - an ancient fort with the Engine buried at its deepest point - is embedded into the mountain’s base, and the town spreads outward from it in a rough semicircle. The Engine is the innermost point of Hearth; the gate is the farthest. The town that grew up between them is dense, layered, and slightly improvised: buildings lean against each other for warmth, streets are narrow to block wind, every structure faces inward toward the Engine’s heat.

The Thermal Sphere covers the town proper and its immediate outskirts - enough for farming, livestock, and habitation. Beyond its edge, the temperature drops sharply. The transition from temperate to killing cold takes less than a hundred feet.

Population: ~400 permanent residents, plus a rotating population of refugees, travelers, and contractors.

The Three Factions

Hearth is governed by an uneasy balance of three institutions. No faction has absolute authority. All three have leverage over the others. They cooperate because they have to.

FactionLeaderControls
The GuildLuthor ShrikeThe Hearth Engine, relic expeditions, trade licenses
The FlamewardensAria KesselThe Infirmary, the Shrine, public morale
The FrostwatchBram KarsenThe walls, the gate, town patrols

Shrike holds the Engine. Kessel holds public trust. Karsen holds the only armed force. Open conflict between any two would destabilize all three.

Key Locations

The Guildhall (The Old Fort)

An ancient ruin from the Dark Ages, embedded into the base of Hearth’s mountain. Shrike discovered the The Hearth Engine inside and the Guild moved in rather than build around it. The fort IS the Guildhall: upper floors serve as offices and administration, the ground floor handles operations, and the Engine Chamber sits at the deepest point - the beating heart of both the building and the town.

  • Governor’s Office - upper floor; issues charters, sanctions expeditions
  • Mission Board - ground floor; where Guild contracts are posted
  • Guild General Store - run by Selka Driftmantle; rations, rope, torches, basic gear
  • The Engine Chamber - the deepest room, built around the The Hearth Engine itself; always warm, faintly humid; relics are delivered here

The Blue Flame

The social hub of Hearth. The building itself is one of the oldest in town - a surviving Age V Cydonian warehouse with high ceilings and solid bones, repurposed into a tavern at some point in Hearth’s early years. Built around a salvaged Cydonian furnace that burns with a constant, unsettling blue flame - no one knows why it’s blue. Warm, loud, and perpetually smelling of stew and defrosted wet fur. The place where rumors start, deals get made, and people forget the cold for a few hours.

  • Owner: Oryn Gold-Hand - charming, politically connected, always watching
  • Keeper: Big Berra - runs the floor, remembers every tab, has opinions
  • Lodging: 2 gp/night; includes a meal and a place near the hearth

Worth a look

Above the furnace, a carved wooden panel depicts all three of Hearth’s faction leaders, bound by a braided cord. It has hung there longer than anyone can remember. - The Cord of Three Strands

The Watch Armory

A reinforced stone depot adjacent to the main gate. Weapons, armor, and reinforcement services. Run by The Frostwatch as both a supply depot and a secondary command post.

  • Armorer: Kaelen Thorne - competent, dry, not particularly warm toward adventurers

The Wardens’ Shrine & Infirmary

A converted building housing a small altar, a surgery ward, and a supply room. The only place in Hearth where ordinary people feel genuinely cared for rather than administered. Part soup kitchen, part clinic, part place of quiet reflection.

  • Medic: Elara - field-trained, deeply kind
  • Leader: Aria Kessel - holds services, meets with citizens, exerts quiet moral pressure on Guild policy

The Gate & Walls

Hearth’s outer perimeter - timber-and-stone construction reinforced with salvaged Magitech sheeting to help resist any especially fierce Black Blizzards. The gate is the only sanctioned exit. All expeditions pass through here; The Frostwatch logs every departure and return.

The Summit Post

A Frostwatch outpost maintained at the peak of Hearth’s mountain. The concern it was built to answer is straightforward: if someone wanted to bypass the gate entirely, the mountain at Hearth’s back is the way in. The post exists to make sure that doesn’t go unnoticed. It is a harsh assignment - exposed, cold even within the Thermal Sphere’s upper range, and largely uneventful. The soldiers who rotate through it are watched for signs of frost fatigue.

The Market Square

The open area just inside the gate where visiting traders set up temporary stalls. Also where public announcements happen and refugees are processed. The square has a social temperature of its own - a full market feels very different from a single cautious scavenger near the gate.

The Residential Quarter

The densely packed streets between the Engine and the walls. Buildings are mostly single-story, built close together for warmth. Home to former refugees, Guild support staff, and the families of Frostwatch soldiers. The quarter is always slightly under-resourced, and always where the real news comes from.

Atmosphere

Hearth feels like a melting pot combined with a mining town at the edge of a disaster zone. Residents are tough - soft people don’t make it here. There’s genuine community, neighbors sharing heat, people who know each other’s names - but also constant low-level fear. The Engine stopping is an unspoken terror that everyone carries.

Weather: The Thermal Sphere pushes back the Frost but not the seasons - the weather inside Hearth still turns with the year, as though fighting to behave normally. At midsummer it feels like a mild spring: temperate, grass bright green, genuinely pleasant. In winter the ground goes muddy and the air settles into the 40s - cold enough to want a jacket, not cold enough to kill. Water never freezes inside the Sphere. Snow becomes rain the moment it crosses the boundary.

Sounds: The Engine’s deep hum (always present; noticeable when it fluctuates), wind against the walls, the Blue Flame’s crowd noise, metal on metal from the Armory.

Smells: Coal smoke, stew, wet wool, something faintly chemical drifting up from the Engine Chamber of the Guildhall.

Light: Brighter than the surrounding Wastes - lanterns are common, the Blue Flame’s light gently spills into the square.

See Also

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