Torchlight Candles: Scents of Adventure

Light a Torchlight Candle and your table becomes a tavern, a forest, a dungeon... With a delightful scent brought straight out of six classic fantasy locations, a soft warming ambience, and a gentle crackle, it’s like having a tiny fireplace for your table.

We’re launching with the Scents of Adventure collection: six fantasy worlds in candle form, each hand-poured in small batches from soy wax, with wooden wicks for our signature crackle.

Choose your size.

Travel Tin: A lidded black metal tin, approx. 8oz/225g of soy wax, single wooden wick. Made to travel to game night.

Hearth Jar: A frosted black glass jar, with a wooden lid, approx. 16oz/450g of soy wax, two wooden wicks. The centrepiece of your home table.

Our Travel Tin was designed to go with you on your adventures, and will even fit in an (admittedly large) pocket!

Every candle is a place. Each scent is built from three notes chosen to bring a location to life, and every one is designed to smell wonderful in its own right too.

These aren’t places from any one world. They’re the places every adventure passes through, so they belong to whichever world you’re playing in.

Inspired by other worlds and unforgettable adventures. The magic and the wonder that can be found in the ordinary. Find your extra-ordinary.

Six places, one road. Walk it in order, from the warmth of a tavern to the open sea, or light them in whatever order your story takes you.

The six locations have been designed to form a journey — one you can bring to your TTRPG campaign, build into a one-shot, or simply experience from the comfort of your own home.

Tavern Hearth

Whiskey · Cinders · Vanilla

The fire is warm, the tables are full, and somewhere between the music and the murmured conversations, a new adventure begins.

A tower of smoke billows from the cobbled-stone chimney, and the roaring fire within calls to locals and travellers alike. A hearty stew bubbles in the corner, served with a crusty loaf for a mere few coppers. Glasses, polished to a mirror sheen by a studious barkeep, line the shelves, though the smell of oft-spilt whiskey still hangs in the air. Beneath it all there is a sweetness, warm and faintly spiced, and you realise it would be no hardship to linger a little longer. To draw closer to the hearth. To listen to the tales told around its tables.

Who knows what adventures those stories might hold?

Wyldwood Forest

Bramble · Oakmoss · Balsam

Leaving the safety of the tavern behind, the road carries you beneath ancient trees and into the murky depths of the forest.

They say the canopy grows so dense that even the sun cannot reach the carpeted moss below. This enchanted woodland is as ancient as the world itself, a place of older, deeper magic. Life thrives here. You wander the brambled underbrush, picking juicy blackberries, while the resinous sweetness of balsam drifts between the trunks. Light birdsong and the chirruping of distant creatures keep you company. Yet you cannot shake the feeling that you are being watched.

What secrets might you uncover beneath these timeless trees?

Dungeon Delve

Clove · Amber · Musk

But not all paths through the forest are safe. Beneath the roots, an ancient entrance leads down into darkness, and whatever lies waiting below.

Deep in the lost and forgotten places of the world lie the delves. Their great tunnels are hewn from slate that may hide unfathomable secrets. Lichen cloaks the ancestral stones, and the deeper you press, the staler the air becomes. The musk is foreboding, and the sharp bite of clove clings to the stains left by long-spent torches. Yet now and then a draught carries the soft scent of amber, urging you on.

Do you dare venture further to discover treasure or misfortune?

Mountain Pass

Himalayan Cedar · Eucalyptus · Jasmine

Emerging from the depths, the road climbs higher. The trees thin and the air grows colder.

Jagged peaks reach up, splitting the very sky. Snow blankets the heights, and the first dustings have begun to settle on the aspens and towering pines below. Summer’s warmth is fading, and the brisk air carries the clean, cool breath of cedar and eucalyptus. You are thankful for your thick garb. Underfoot, a few wildflowers cling on, and jasmine juts out, daring to resist the frost. You stand at the last refuge before the narrow pass above, the route treacherous and the lands beyond unknown.

Will you dare to push on to the other side?

Desert Crossing

Sandalwood · Citrus · Saffron

Beyond the mountains, the landscape changes. The road stretches into an endless desert, where heat shimmers on the horizon and every drop of water matters.

This land of blazing sun and bitter nights is vast and unforgiving, and the heat presses on your shoulders with every step. Yet there is beauty in its harsh landscapes. Its starlit skies are unrivalled, and there is a quiet defiance to everything that grows, from great citrus trees to sweet sandalwood. The people who call this place home are among the most hospitable you’ll ever meet. They have carved out a trade network that spans the desert, bringing soft silks, patterned steel and exotic spices like saffron from far and wide.

Will you brave these endless sands?

Seaward Bound

Sea Salt · Juniper · Driftwood 

At last, the sands give way to the coast, and a ship waits at the water’s edge.

Nothing ahead but leagues of open sea. The old ship’s timbers groan as it rears up in defiance of the roaring waves. The swell drives a fine spray across the deck, leaving the taste of salt on your lips, and gulls cry and circle overhead for any morsel in the churning wake. Great grey clouds billow above the horizon as you pass stalwart shipwrecks and wandering driftwood on adventures of their own. There is much wonder out here on the waves, and your heart lifts at the thought of what may await across the ocean.

What adventures lie beyond that horizon?

We’re a small family business, that was born from our love of tabletop gaming. Between the two of us, whether it was rolling with the party for a TTRPG, painting miniatures or gathering together and getting a board game to the table, we love the hobbies that bring us together with the people that we love most.

When we host game nights, we love to put on a spread of themed food or snacks, have a matching playlist and enjoy the vibe, immersing us further in the setting for that evening. Now we want to take that even further with our themed candles. Each one will help bring you into a location - all of our scents are designed to be a delightful smell too. It will bring your friends further into a world, and also bring the light and cosy warmth that only a candle can.

Every adventure has a beginning.

For us, this is ours.

Vagabond's Refuge began with a love of games, stories, and those little moments around a table when you forget about the world outside for a while.

Torchlight is our first step.

Six locations. Six stories. Six candles, hand-poured with the hope that they can bring a little piece of adventure into your home. We have plenty of ideas for where we could go from here — but for now, we're starting with one journey, six candles, and the people who choose to come along for the ride.

Whether you've discovered us through Kickstarter, you're a fellow adventurer, or you're simply here because one of these candles caught your eye...

Thank you for being here at the beginning.

The road ahead is unknown. Let's find where it leads, together...

Welcome to Vagabond's Refuge.