Chapter 3: The Hour Stair

The climb

• Where: the Hour Stair (hour_stair): the foot of the cliff (Spawn_foot), the gate landing (Event_gate), then twelve bell landings (Bell_1 to Bell_12). The archive is behind the twelfth.
• When: act3.stage = 6. Sets act3.stage to 7 at the gate.
• Who: Aske; a Keeper gate-warden; Keeper scribes on the landings; Tamsin Vale (at the sixth landing).
• What happens: (Idea) A spiral stair cut into a cliff above a misty gorge, a bronze bell at every turn. The gate-warden lets in anyone with clean hands and a reason. A fallen player (section 11) is turned away here and has to take the smugglers' climb from the Undermere instead (6.3). Halfway up, Tamsin is waiting on a landing. The Wardens sent her for the Keepers' record of the Corran seal, because Ondine wants to seal Corran again and needs to know how the first seal was made. Tamsin is glad to see the player and stiff with Aske, whom every Warden child has been taught to despise as the captain who walked out.
• Player does: move; talk. If the player's standing with the Evane is high (rep.evane ≥ 20), Tamsin offers her Warden writ to open the archive, which skips Hale's trial (3.2) but not the records (3.3).
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Act3_Stair_Gate, Act3_Stair_Gate_Refused, Act3_Stair_Tamsin, Act3_Stair_Scribes (ambient lines per landing).
  • Flags: act3.stage = 7, companion.tamsin = 1, act3.writ_used if the writ is used.
  • Fragment: Linger, a whole glyph cut into the seventh bell's frame (Event_linger_glyph). Learning it is optional but the trial is much easier with it.
• Art and audio: (Idea) Hour Stair location (concepts: Art/Concepts/world/hour-stair-a.png, Art/Concepts/buildings/hour-stair-kit-a.png); Keeper scribe model (Art/Concepts/characters/keeper-scribe-ref-a.png); Tamsin model. Audio: one bell struck on the hour of the in-game clock; wind; a faint choir hum from the gorge (the Drowned Choir legend, Story Bible section 1). Music: the Keepers' theme, a slow ostinato that never speeds up.
• Screens used: overworld HUD, dialogue panel, trace screen.

Keeping the hour: Hale's trial

• Where: the twelfth landing (Event_hale), then the bell court (battle arena).
• When: act3.stage = 7. Sets act3.stage to 8.
• Who: Keeper Hale; Aske, Tamsin; the hour sentinel.
• What happens: (Idea) Hale has kept the sealed records for forty years and does not open them for the Wardens, the Facets or the curious. He opens them for anyone who will keep an hour: stand in the bell court through one full turn of the great bell while the hour sentinel, the Keepers' guardian, tries to make them leave. He teaches Hasten first, hand over hand, because "nobody should face the hour with a short breath." The fight is long, slow and fair. When it ends, Hale notes the time and opens the door.
• Player does: talk; learn Hasten (taught: Hale traces it with the player); fight the hour sentinel. If Tamsin's writ was used, Hale still teaches Hasten but skips the fight.
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Act3_Hale_Meet, Act3_Hale_Teach, Act3_Hale_Trial, Act3_Hale_After.
  • Encounter: hour_trial (hour sentinel).
  • Spells: hasten (taught).
  • Flags: act3.stage = 8, spell.learned.hasten, hale.trust +1 for keeping the hour (not on the writ route).
• Art and audio: (Idea) Hale model (Art/Concepts/characters/hale-ref-a.png); bell-court battle arena (round, a great bell overhead, brass-gold spiral glyphs in the floor); hour sentinel model (Art/Concepts/creatures-items/enemies/hour-sentinel-ref-a.png); Hasten VFX in Keeper brass-gold. Music: battle theme built on the Keepers' ostinato.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, trace screen, battle HUD, glyph prompt.

The sealed records: the Breaking

• Where: the Hour Stair archive, a round room with a still pool at its centre (Event_pool).
• When: act3.stage = 8. Sets act3.stage to 9.
• Who: Hale, Aske, Tamsin.
• What happens: The records give the truth of the Breaking. Asymmetric glyphs were already straining the Mere; the Evane's first Great Mending, meant to stop them, broke it in a single night. Both sides caused it; each tells only the half that blames the other. (Idea) How the records show it:
  • The "records" are the Hundred-Year Hour. The Keepers held the hour of the Breaking open in this pool for a century, to study it and to undo it, and failed. Hale lets it play for the player: the five factions in a mirrored chorus round the whole Mere, singing and drawing it still; lake-folk on the shore drawing unlike shapes, the first asymmetric glyphs, and the Glass already pulling apart under them; the chorus pulling the Glass taut over the strain; and the crack running from shore to shore.
  • The legends were both true. The choir that sang the Mere still and sank with it is the Drowned Choir, the Still Choir's own forebears, which is why the Still Choir quietly writes to the Facets. The girl with the circle and the square drew Facet Seal over her village that night: it saved her village, and drawing it added to the strain.
  • Hale sealed the records because both courts would use half of them. Each Speaker of the five factions is shown them once, on taking office; none has ever repeated them.
• Player does: watch; talk. Each companion reacts: Tamsin badly (this is her turning point, Story Bible section 5); Aske hardly at all ("Sounds about right").
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Act3_Records_Open, Act3_Records_Breaking, Act3_Records_Tamsin, Act3_Records_Aske.
  • Cutscene: hundred_year_hour (about 60 seconds; reuses the reflection-playback look from 2.3 at a larger scale).
  • Flags: act3.stage = 9 (set after 3.4), lore.breaking = 1.
• Art and audio: (Idea) The archive pool room; the Still Age Mere and the Breaking in the pool (concept: Art/Concepts/world/still-age-mere-a.png); a crowd of mirrored Evane chorus figures and asymmetric lake-folk, both as simple silhouettes. Music: a choir, unaccompanied, that cracks into silence when the Mere does.
• Screens used: cutscene, dialogue panel.

The Sallow warp, the same pattern small

• Where: the archive, the warp ledger lectern (Event_ledger).

• When: right after 3.3.

• Who: Hale, Aske, Tamsin.

• What happens: (Idea) The Keepers record the first hour of every warp. Hale opens the ledger at the Sallow warp, and it is the Breaking at the size of one river bend: a crack that a cut of glyph-hunters widened over a year, digging warp-born glyphs to sell; then the first Warden mending, five menders and no guard, the night before the glints came to the farm door, which tore it open. That mending is why the glints reached Sallowbank, and why the player's first cast happened at all. Below it, in a newer hand, is the second mending: Ondine's, the one she asked the player to guard in Act 2. Aske already guessed it at the warp. Tamsin did not; one of the five menders named for the first mending is her own teacher. The same ledger has the Corran seal: a five-person mirrored seal ties whatever it holds to the warp it holds. Undoing it needs the warp quiet and something the seal can't reflect. Hale: "A mirror can only be undone by what it doesn't show." In other words, a Facet glyph.

• Player does: talk; choose what happens to the truth (section 10):

  1. Leave the records sealed, as Hale wants (act3.records = 1).
  2. Copy them for Tamsin, so the Evane hear it from an Evane (act3.records = 2).
  3. Copy them for the Facets, so Lanternfall hears it: the player carries the copy and gives it to Rook when he arrives at Corran (5.3) (act3.records = 3).
  4. Ask Hale to open them to both courts at once. Hale agrees only if he trusts the player (hale.trust ≥ 1: they kept the hour, or brought him the hunters' shards) and the player stands well with both sides (rep.evane ≥ 10 and rep.facets ≥ 10) (act3.records = 4).

  If the glyph-hunters' shards were taken in 1.3 (act3.hunters = 2), the player can hand them to Hale for the archive (hale.trust +1). The Keepers' confiscated-glyph shelf in the same room holds the triangle half of Prism Snare. Hale gives it to anyone who brought him the shards; anyone else has to steal it.

• Content to make:

  • Yarn: Act3_Ledger_Sallow, Act3_Ledger_Corran, Act3_Records_Choice, Act3_Archive_Shelf.
  • Items: prism_snare_half_triangle.
  • Flags: act3.records 1–4, act3.stage = 9, lore.sallow_warp = 1, hale.trust +1 for the shards, item.prism_snare_half_triangle; stealing it: morality −5 and act3.stole_half = 1 (the Side Quests tab's "Back on the Shelf" reads it).
  • Spells: prism_snare once both halves are held (split glyph; trace both at once).

• Art and audio: (Idea) Ledger lectern prop; a confiscated-glyph shelf of labelled shards.

• Screens used: dialogue panel, items, trace screen.

The bell-ringer (optional)

• Where: the Hour Stair, the third bell landing (Event_ringer).
• When: act3.stage ≥ 7.
• Who: (Idea) Old Pim, a Keeper bell-ringer who has rung the third bell for sixty years.
• What happens: (Idea) Pim's knees have gone and the third bell must be rung on the hour, every hour, or the Keepers will notice. The player rings it three times at the right in-game hours (a timing errand). Pim teaches Toll in return: "One loop, one rope. The bell does the rest, later."
• Player does: talk; wait; ring; learn Toll (taught).
• Content to make: Yarn: Act3_Ringer_Ask, Act3_Ringer_Ring, Act3_Ringer_Teach. Quest: side_bell_ringer. Flags: side.ringer.asked = 1 when Pim asks (starts the quest), side.ringer.rings (0–3), spell.learned.toll.
• Art and audio: (Idea) Pim (a keeper-scribe variant, older); bell-rope interaction; Toll VFX.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, quest log, trace screen.

From Walkthrough: Act 3 › Chapter 3: The Hour Stair