Old Tom's Well

"Careful, Captain," a signaller whispers. "Lest the well-winds take us."

Below, beneath the scudding clouds, a speckle of structures cling to a shelf of ice. The well-winds drag at your engine like the frantic clutch of a drowning man. The well gapes.

Old Tom's Well is an anomaly in the Reach. A black hole surrounded by ledge of black ice, it is one of the many well of the High Wilderness. The well is named after Old Tom, a prospector who discover Lustrum after making a wish to the well.

In a cliff of black ice near the well, several beehive huts have been built. It is occupied by two kind of people: prospector desperate to imitate Old Tom's luck and the Psalmist who curses at those who wrong them.

What's inside the well? [Spoilers for Ambition: The Truth]

They rage against the sun's death at the hands of a half-sun, a midnight murderer. The killer sent false messengers bearing a well-seed. They planted the seed in the sun's heart, and it bloomed! Bloomed and ravened. A lawless killing! A shameful death, enacted without due ceremony! Deep inside the well is the corpse of the missing Garden-King, regent of the Reach. The Halved sent a false-messenger bearing a Correspondence sigil of peace and truce. Unknown to the green regent, the sigils are fake and the false-messenger secretly carry a "well-seed". The seed bloom inside the sun's heart, killing him instantly. The false-messenger, not knowing its master's scheme, feels guilty. This cause cancerous polyps riddled with sigils of guilt to grow in its heart, killing it on the way to Eleutheria.

Psalmist

"The ignorant call us the Cursing Church. But we are the Compassed, who dwell on the brinks. We are the lambs who were torn by the wolf. We are the undone. And the angel of the pit hears us, where it would not hear others."

The Psalmist is a brand new religion of the heaven. Led by the Lank Minister, they follow their only sacred text: Psalm 109. Those who confess their grievances and who to blame are accepted to their church.