Lamplighter Who Braved Lakehurst Inferno Returns to the Skies
NEW YORK — April 23 — Eleven months have passed since the dreadful calamity at Lakehurst, New Jersey, some forty miles south of New York, where the great German dirigible Hindenburg, pride of its nation and the largest hydrogen airship ever constructed, met its fiery end in a catastrophe that shocked the civilized world.
In that brief and terrible span, the massive vessel—stretching 803 feet—was consumed in a roaring inferno, claiming the lives of 34 prominent passengers and crew, many perishing almost instantly within the blazing frame. The disaster stands as the gravest in the history of airship travel, its memory yet lingering in the public mind.
Yet amidst the smoke and ruin, there emerged acts of uncommon valor. Chief among them were the efforts of the Lamplighters, those winged sentinels tasked with guiding vessels through the treacherous East American Smog that blotch our skies. Their courage on that ill-fated evening spared many from certain death.
Foremost in these accounts is a figure known to the public only as Angel-O-One, a first responder whose deeds have since passed into near-legend. Witnesses recount how he plunged repeatedly into the burning hull, rescuing nearly a dozen souls from the doomed craft.
His final act of heroism came at great cost. While bearing a child to safety from the stricken dining cabin, his right wing was overtaken by flame. Undeterred, he carried the young passenger clear before plummeting some forty yards to the earth below, breaking the fall with his own body and preserving the life in his care.
Such is the peril borne by those who serve as Lamplighters—guardians not only of passage, but of life itself.
For his gallantry, Angel-O-One received the princely sum of fifty cents, along with the attention of the nation's foremost prostheticians and mechanical artisans, who endeavored to restore what was lost in service.
Now dubbed the Angel of Hindenburg, the world can now take a sigh of relief as reports from now confirm that Angel-O-One has once again been sighted at Floyd Bennet Field, dutifully guiding incoming airships through the haze with the aid of a newly fashioned mechanical wing and the iconic white phosphorus torch of a Lamplighter.
It's been a while since I drew my sona, most of the time, I've been focusing on my subjects as well as art trades, but a new game popped up and I wanted to try drawing Kit once more. The reason why Kit, well in the future, would be the least drawn amongst my characters is mostly due to his wings. I could try cropping out his wings in the future, but it would feel incomplete if I don't actually draw his wings.
Anyways, April 24 is Kit's birthday and that was also another reason for drawing him now. Originally I was just going to draw him as a simple newspaper boy, but it felt too generic so I opted for a fictional job called the Lamplighters, a volunteer winged workers who basically act as living torches over the skies of Eastern America as the industrial revolution is taken to the most extreme ends, resulting in a thick smog to cover half the Atlantic and eastern America. It is the complete opposite of who Kithing is.
Also also yes there's a typo on the newspaper date saying April 25, I was a bit in a rush when I wrote it down...
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