Chapter 6: The Undermere

The Undermere is the underworld for players on the evil path (Codex section 7): (Idea) caverns under the Shardfield whose roof holds the world's reflection upside down. Its main entrance is a cave mouth between leaning shards a short walk from Corran, and the caverns run up under Corran's warp. It is a whole second road through Act 3, not a dead end: a fallen player can finish the act through it.

(Idea) Who counts as fallen. Personal morality (morality, section 11) is tracked separately from standing with each side. A player is fallen at morality ≤ −20. Fallen players are turned away at Evane and Facet gates (the Hour Stair gate in this act), and the Undermere opens to them as a hub. Unfallen players find the entrance guarded and are sent off ("Clean face. Go home.").

The way down

• Where: the Undermere mouth (undermere, Spawn_mouth), a ladder down to the first cavern (Event_ladder).
• When: morality ≤ −20 and act3.stage ≥ 4. Sets undermere.stage to 1.
• Who: (Idea) Mott, the Undermere's door: an ex-Warden and ex-Facet with one sleeve of each and loyalty to neither.
• What happens: (Idea) Mott has heard of the farmer who rang the Glass and has heard what they have done since. He lets them down and explains the Undermere's one rule: nobody down here asks which side you were on. The cavern roof shows Velan upside down: fields, the Sallow, the Hour Stair cliff, Corran glittering. The outlaws use the roof as their map.
• Player does: talk; move.
• Content to make: Yarn: Undermere_Mott_Door, Undermere_Mott_Refuse (unfallen). Flags: undermere.stage = 1, met.mott.
• Art and audio: (Idea) Undermere location (concepts: Art/Concepts/world/undermere-a.png, undermere-overworld-a.png; Art/Concepts/buildings/undermere-den-a.png, undermere-kit-a.png); the roof reflection as an inverted, darkened render of the overworld; Mott (outlaw model, Art/Concepts/creatures-items/enemies/undermere-outlaw-a.png, unmasked). Music: the overworld theme played backwards and slowed, under dripping water.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, overworld HUD.

The den

• Where: the Undermere den: a shanty town of shard huts and rope bridges (Event_market, Event_ring, Event_board).
• When: undermere.stage ≥ 1.
• Who: Mott; outlaw casters of both sides; (Idea) a fence called Vey who sells stolen glyph fragments.
• What happens: (Idea) The den is the evil path's hub: a black market (stolen fragments for copper, including ones the Evane have sealed and the Facets would give away for free), an outlaw duelling pit (not PvP; NPC duels; a beaten outlaw pays a little copper), and a job board of bad jobs. It is also where the way back starts: the Atonement board is a slate by the ladder with no takers (6.5).
• Player does: talk; buy; fight (duels, optional); take jobs.
• Content to make: Yarn: Undermere_Den, Undermere_Vey, Undermere_Pit, Undermere_Board. Encounters: undermere_duel_1 to undermere_duel_3 (outlaw casters). Shop: undermere_fence stock list (section 9). Flags: undermere.duels_won.
• Art and audio: (Idea) Den set (Undermere kit); stolen pale blue and amber banners; outlaw caster variants (Evane-leaning and Facet-leaning). Music: a den theme with two melodies played against each other.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, shop (VEL-62), battle HUD, quest log.

The smugglers' climb (the fallen road to the records)

• Where: from the den up a crack in the gorge to the Hour Stair's archive window (Event_climb_start, Event_archive_window).
• When: undermere.stage ≥ 1 and act3.stage = 6 or 7. Sets act3.stage to 8 (the trial is skipped) and undermere.stage to 2.
• Who: Mott; Aske (who comes, because she said she would, and says nothing about it); Hale and Tamsin (inside).
• What happens: (Idea) Fallen players can't use the gate, so they climb. Mott knows the old route the Keepers' own runaways used. The player comes in through the archive window and finds Hale waiting: Keepers notice everything. Tamsin is in the archive too: the Wardens sent her up the stair for the Corran record (3.1). She does not like how the player came in, but she stays with them. Hale opens the records anyway. He keeps the truth for anyone who will look at it properly, and he says so. The player can instead knock Hale out and take the records (morality −10). The truth is the same either way: 3.3 and 3.4 play from here. Without Hale's trial there is no Hasten, but Mott's fence sells a stolen Hasten fragment.
• Player does: move; climb; talk; choose (talk to Hale, or knock him out).
• Content to make: Yarn: Undermere_Climb, Undermere_Window_Hale, Undermere_Window_Rob. Flags: undermere.stage = 2, act3.stage = 8, companion.tamsin = 1, hale.robbed if robbed (Hale won't let the records be shared with both courts afterwards: option 4 in 3.4 closes).
• Art and audio: (Idea) A climbing route on the cliff (reuse the Hour Stair kit's rock); the archive's back window.
• Screens used: overworld HUD, dialogue panel.

Under Corran's warp

• Where: a cavern under Corran (Event_diggings), where the warp's root comes through the cave roof as a crack of white light.
• When: undermere.stage ≥ 2 and act3.stage ≥ 6.
• Who: Mott; outlaw quicksilver-diggers.
• What happens: (Idea) Outlaws are digging glint quicksilver out of the underside of Corran's warp and selling it as a crafting material. They are a third cause of its widening, and nobody in either court knows about them. The fallen player can come at the colossus from below: breaking the diggers' props drops the colossus's first phase (it loses the quicksilver it was drinking). The cost is that the diggers lose a season's work and blame the player.
• Player does: talk; choose (protect the dig and take a cut: morality −5, quicksilver as loot; or break the props: morality +5, the colossus fight starts at its second phase, The Crack, the diggers turn hostile); fight (if the diggers turn hostile).
• Content to make: Yarn: Undermere_Diggings, Undermere_Diggings_Break, Undermere_Diggings_Cut. Encounter: undermere_diggers. Items: glint_quicksilver (crafting material, Items design VEL-61). Flags: undermere.diggings 1 (cut) or 2 (broken), undermere.stage = 3.
• Art and audio: (Idea) The warp root from below (an inverted crack of light); a dig rig of rope, buckets and shard props; quicksilver droplets VFX.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, battle HUD.

The long way up

• Where: the Atonement board by the ladder in the den (Event_atonement); the deeds happen all over the act's map.
• When: the quest long_way_up appears when the player first falls (morality ≤ −20), and the board is in the den. Once the quest has started, deeds count until the player is Clean again (morality > −10), even after the gates open to them.
• Who: Aske (if in the party), Mott.
• What happens: (Idea) A way back always exists, but it gets harder the further the player has fallen. The mechanism (section 11): every atonement deed is worth the same +5 morality, but each band of the fall is twice as deep as the one above it, so climbing out of each band takes twice the deeds of the last. Aske is the mentor for this: she is the proof that walking away is possible, and she says what it cost her. The deeds are concrete repairs to this act's damage: return a stolen fragment to Hale, carry woken Corran folk's news to Lanternfall, rebuild the glyph-hunters' boat, stand a night watch at Sallowbank with the golem. They come from the Atonement board, and any ordinary good side quest done while fallen also counts as one deed.
• Player does: talk; take deeds; do them.
• Content to make:
  • Yarn: Undermere_Atonement_Board, Atonement_Aske (Aske's talk about walking away), one node per deed.
  • Quest: long_way_up (section 8).
  • Flags: morality +5 per deed; atonement.deeds (a counter for the log).
• Art and audio: (Idea) The Atonement board prop (a slate with chalked jobs and no names); a short "climb" sting when the player rises out of a band.
• Screens used: dialogue panel, quest log, profile (morality and standing, VEL-62).

(Idea) Lines to keep:

Aske: I walked away once. Took me twenty years to stop walking. Yours'll take less if you start now.

Mott: Nobody takes the board. That's why it's still up.

From Walkthrough: Act 3 › Chapter 6: The Undermere