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The White Flame (the raid)

The cold white lights people have seen in the far regions are White Flames: cold copies of Ysolde's First Flame, lit on purpose by the Second Crown. A White Flame wakes the fallen too, but as its own: the Hollow-sworn. The first of them burns at the heart of the Unlit Reach, and the Pale Queen keeps it.

Twice a week the Warden House sends whoever will go: Wednesdays and Saturdays at 18:00 (Aldhearth time, the same clock as every event; the Events window shows it by your own clock). The Watch keeps the hour round it clear of the drawn events.

Going

1. Level 40 and up. A reborn may go at any level, and meets the Queen of a level 40 hall at the least. There is no ticket.
2. In the ten minutes before, open the Events window (H), and press Join on the raid's row of the Today tab, or Sign up on its own tab, The White Flame. The window looks again every half minute while it is open, so the button comes up by itself when the ten minutes begin. Chat warns at 10, 5 and 1 minute. Your name stays on the list if the server restarts in those minutes.
3. At 18:00 you are taken from wherever you are (not from a dungeon, a rift, another floor, a journey or a duel: you are told why). The raid goes first: if you also signed up for the Beacon Run that begins at 18:00, you are taken to the White Flame and your Beacon pass is kept. Everyone who signed up is put on a frozen hall of their level bracket (40-59, 60-89, 90-119 ... and the reborns'), at most twenty to a hall; more than twenty and the bracket gets another hall, the company shared out evenly. One of you is enough: the Queen grows with how many came.
4. The way you came in is sealed until it is over. Fall and you are out: back where you joined from, on half your life, no death and no gold lost, as in any event.

The hall and the Queen

A frozen hall with the White Flame burning cold in an alcove at its far end, the Queen before it, ice pillars to fight around, and three braziers in a triangle round the middle. Ten minutes, or she keeps her Flame.

• From the start: she cuts cold cones toward whoever is nearest (step out of the red ground), puts rings at your feet (step out of those too) and now and then raises a frost ring round herself: jump it, or get away. She stands her ground: a blow, poison or a power hurts her, but nothing pushes her about or breaks her swing.
• At two thirds of her life: her Hollow-sworn come out of the walls, a few at a time, and the cold sets in. Away from a lit brazier everyone slowly freezes: a cold meter fills on your HUD (about twenty-five seconds from warm to frozen through), frost creeps in at the edges of the screen, it hurts more the colder you are (a twentieth of your life a second, frozen through) and it slows you. A cold cone that catches you chills you by a quarter more. Stand near a lit brazier to thaw. The three braziers gutter together, about forty seconds from full to dark, and then go out. Hit a brazier (any blow: a swing, an arrow, a power), lit or dark, and it burns full again. Keep them fed, and keep moving between them.
• At one third: she is furious: harder and faster, rings at your feet for half of her blows, the cold takes hold faster (about seventeen seconds) and the braziers gutter almost twice as fast (about twenty-two seconds).

The box on the HUD shows her life, the braziers lit, your cold and the clock.

The hoard

When she falls, the cold lets go at once, and everyone still in the hall gets experience, 150 event points and an Event Chest, and, once a week for each character (the week turns on Monday at 00:00 UTC, like the Rift Ladder's), the Queen's hoard:

• gold (300, and 10 for every level you have, 200 more for each of your first ten rebirths);
• 3 Pale shards, the raid's own coin (Vesna in the Delvers' Lodge takes spare ones too, for Lodge marks: see Weapons of the Deep);
• a chance (about one in seven) at one of her four uniques;
• a rare chance (one in fifty) at the Pale mare, a mount.

Those who fell before the kill get 40 points. If ten minutes pass first, she keeps her Flame: 20 points for trying. As in every event, the first run of it in your day (a raid day has one) adds half as many points again and brings the Event Chest, won or lost: never a second chest. The first kill gives the title Queensbane.

Captain Brand, Quartermaster of the Watch

He stands on the path along the Keep ward in Aldhearth. Talk to him and choose The White Flame (the raid): the raid's tab opens with his wares, and from him they can be bought for Pale shards: the Blade, the Crown and the Ember for 10 each, the Mantle for 12. Three shards a week means a unique every month or so, drops aside. Pale shards are earned, not bought: they stay with whoever carried them out, and cannot be sold, traded, mailed, dropped, banked or put on the Market.