Chapter 5: Undoing the stilling

Two halves

• Where: Corran square, the well (Event_well).
• When: act3.stage = 11. Sets act3.stage to 12 when Pavilion Wake is learned.
• Who: Aske; Tamsin; the stilled girl.
• What happens: The warp is quiet for the first time in twenty years. (Idea) Aske turns her glyph bands right way out, the Warden marks facing the world again, for the first time since Corran. She stands at the player's back with her hands over theirs, the way the Act 1 Brace lesson was taught, and the player traces both halves at once: the hourglass under the left thumb, the wave under the right. The glyph is split and taught at the same time: the halves are fragments, but Aske's hands steady the trace. It takes. Aske says nothing about her thumbs, and the player can ask. Then she asks for her shard back: "It's hers."
• Player does: learn (trace Pavilion Wake: hourglass on the left, wave on the right; see section 9); hand the hourglass shard back to Aske.
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Act3_Halves_Bands, Act3_Halves_Trace, Act3_Halves_After.
  • Spells: pavilion_wake (new data file).
  • Flags: spell.learned.pavilion_wake, act3.stage = 12, aske.bands_out = 1, item.corran_half_hourglass = 0 (back with Aske).
• Art and audio: (Idea) Aske's glyph bands turned out (a material swap: pale blue Warden marks glowing); trace screen with two fragment images (one per half) instead of one; Pavilion Wake VFX in amber with a thin pale blue edge where it meets Aske's hands.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, trace screen (learning).

The Unstilling

• Where: Corran square, the well; the warp behind.
• When: act3.stage = 12. Sets act3.stage to 13.
• Who: Aske, Tamsin; the stilled girl and all the Stilled.
• What happens: Aske casts again, once. (Idea) She draws Brace, the Warden glyph she taught the player in Act 1 and has not cast since Corran, across the warp to hold its edge shut while the glass lets go. Otherwise the warp would take the town the moment it is released. At the same moment the player threads the door-mark into the Corran glyph: Thaw, Repel into Pavilion Wake, both thumbs down from the mirrored Ls into the hourglass and the wave, in one stroke. An Evane spell runs into a Facet spell, which is the thing a mirrored seal cannot reflect. The glass thaws from the well outward. The girl wakes first.
• Player does: cast: the glyph prompt shows the whole thread. A fizzle costs nothing but time ("Again." "I'm sixty, not a hundred. Again."); there is no fail state. The cast's quality decides how the glass goes: from about 85% up it all thaws in one wave; below that it thaws street by street.
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Act3_Unstill_Aske_Casts, Act3_Unstill_Prompt, Act3_Unstill_Wake. Uses <<prompt_cast thaw>>, which needs the prompt command to accept a composite id (see section 17).
  • Composite: thaw (Repel into Pavilion Wake; new data file). The thread is Thaw; the event is the Unstilling.
  • Flags: act3.stage = 13, corran.unstilled = 1, aske.cast_again = 1.
• Art and audio: (Idea) Key art: Art/Concepts/creatures-items/spells/corran-unstilling-a.png. The glass shader animating off the town in a wave from the well; Aske's Brace across the warp (pale blue, mirrored, the only Warden light in the scene); the Thaw VFX (two pale blue Ls running into an amber hourglass and wave). Audio: every ambient sound that was cut at the town line comes back at once (birds, goat, the falling eggs), then the girl's motif in full.
• Screens used: glyph prompt, dialogue panel, cutscene.

Corran wakes

• Where: Corran square, then the town.
• When: act3.stage = 13. Sets act3.stage to 14.
• Who: the girl, (Idea) named Brin; her mother Hollis; the woken townsfolk; Aske, Tamsin; Rook (arriving); Ondine (at the town line).
• What happens: (Idea) Brin finishes the movement she started twenty years ago: she presses the hourglass shard into Aske's hand, where Aske is holding it out to her, and closes Aske's fingers over it. It is the same hand, twenty years older. "Give it to Mam. She'll know." The townsfolk wake into a day that is twenty years late. Some are glad, many are frightened, and a few are angry at once. A woman runs to the gate to find her sister and finds an old woman, or no one. Hollis comes out of the Girdle house still holding chalk. Rook arrives from Lanternfall, which felt the Glass ring a second time, and is quiet for once. The glyph-hunters at the Sallow warp were his suppliers, and the player can say so. If the player copied the records for the Facets (act3.records = 3), they give him the copy here. Ondine stands at the town line, where Aske stood on arrival, and does not cross it. She doesn't apologise. She says the warps are now Aske's to close, all of them, and leaves to call the five factions together. That sets up the second Great Mending at the Heart Pane (Act 4). Corran's warp shrinks to a hairline and stays that way: the first warp anyone has seen narrowed by both sides' magic at once, without a seal.
• Player does: talk (to Brin, Hollis, Rook, Tamsin, Ondine, and any woken townsfolk the player looked at in 2.2).
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Act3_Wake_Brin, Act3_Wake_Hollis, Act3_Wake_Rook, Act3_Wake_Ondine, Act3_Wake_Tamsin, and Act3_Woken_<Name> for each of the twelve figures from 2.2.
  • Flags: act3.stage = 14, met.brin, met.hollis; Rook's reaction depends on act3.hunters.
• Art and audio: (Idea) Corran un-glassed: the same models with the glass shader off; Brin, Hollis and townsfolk as rigged Facet villagers; Rook and Ondine models. Music: Corran's own theme heard for the first time (Facet: off-beat, two lines that don't mirror).
• Screens used: dialogue panel, overworld HUD.

Aske stays the night

• Where: Corran south gate (Event_town_line).
• When: act3.stage = 14. Sets act3.done = 1.
• Who: Aske; Tamsin.
• What happens: (Idea) Aske joins neither side. She gives the hourglass shard to Hollis, turns her bands back inside out, thinks about it, and turns them right way out again. She walks the player to the town line and stops there again, this time on the inside. She is staying the night in Corran. She tells the player where the warps go next (the Heart Pane, where Ondine is going). She won't stand with either side at the Pane. She'll go to its rim and keep a fire there, where both camps can sit. After that, home to the ferry: Tobin will have lost the rope by now. Her wave at the bend in the road comes in Act 4 (4.3), when she sets off with the handcart, not here. Tamsin stays with the player into Act 4 if act3.records is 2 or 4; otherwise she goes back to Twinhold to ask questions, and comes back to Corran with Ondine's letter (Act 4, 4.2). Rook leaves for Lanternfall that night and comes back with Iver's.
• Player does: talk; move on.
• Content to make: Yarn: Act3_Aske_Farewell, Act3_Tamsin_Choice. Flags: act3.done = 1, companion.aske = 0, companion.tamsin (kept or cleared).
• Art and audio: (Idea) Aske standing at the town line inside Corran as the player leaves; her theme, resolved for the first time.
• Screens used: dialogue panel.

From Walkthrough: Act 3 › Chapter 5: Undoing the stilling