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The bands below
The Deep's first 10,240 rows are the Upper Deep: the Twenty, twenty bands of 512 rows, each a world of its own. Below them the Deep changes again. Seven bands come one under the other, each twice as long as the one above, and each a world of its own. Every one of them is a world the Wane unmade long before Nyrath and buried under the next, so the deeper you dig, the older it gets.
The seven bands
| Band | Rows below the old floor | Its strata | What it was |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bone Gardens | 10,240 to 20,479 | The Ossuary Fields, The Marrow Caves, The Rib Vaults | forests of bone, from the beasts of an older world |
| The Drowned Halls | 20,480 to 40,959 | The Tide Halls, The Pearl Deeps, The Sunken Courts | a kingdom before Nyrath, drowned: water instead of lava |
| The Clockwork Under-city | 40,960 to 81,919 | The Gearworks, The Steam Galleries, The Brass Vaults | the makers' city of brass and steam |
| The Crystal Cathedrals | 81,920 to 163,839 | The Prism Naves, The Geode Choirs, The Shard Spires | a faith that sang the grey away, in giant geodes |
| The Hollow Sun | 163,840 to 327,679 | The Corona, The Cinder Plains, The Dawnforge Deeps | the world's first sun, buried and still burning |
| The Wane's Root | 327,680 to 655,359 | The Unmade, The Root Tangles, The Sketchlands | where the Wane grows up from |
| The Last Dark | 655,360 to the bottom | The Hush, The Night Wells, The Unlit Ways | before anything was drawn |
Each band has a page of its own: its strata, its hazard and what keeps it off, its places, its Grown and their great one, and its ore. (A band's great one has a fight written for it; the wake banner, the warning sounds and the share of the spoils are the same as every great one's: see Great ones and how they fight.)
- The Bone Gardens: the rattle of the bone heaps, old ivory for your first temper, the Great Ribcage, and the Ossuary Gardener among its pillars.
- The Drowned Halls: breath and the air bells, tide-iron, the Sunken Court of Hallowmere, and the Drowned King who calls the tide.
- The Clockwork Under-city: the makers' city of brass and steam, its vaults and their puzzles, its vents and crushers, the steam lifts, the Wound and the Clockwork Warden.
- The Crystal Cathedrals: the singers' cathedrals in the geodes, resonance and the singing crystals, the bell spires, the Faceted and the Last Cantor.
- The Hollow Sun: heat and sunflares; its dawngold tempers to V.
- The Wane's Root: the fade; its greyheart tempers to VI.
- The Last Dark: the dark; its nightsilver tempers to VII. Under it, the Floor of the World.
A band is made of strata of 512 rows, its three kinds taking turns. They have no numbers: the HUD tells you where you are, the stratum and how far down (The Ossuary Fields · 12,340 down), and the zone line above it names the band.
The seal
Every band begins with a seal: 8 rows of the band's own rock across the whole world, with no cave, no lava and no water in it. To get into a band you dig through its seal.
- The first seal, at the top of the Bone Gardens, gives way to an embersteel pickaxe.
- Each seal below it wants an embersteel pickaxe and a pick temper won in the band above: see Might and temper.
- A hole is a hole: a shaft someone else dug through a seal lets anyone fall in.
Deeper means stronger
The Grown's level stops at 300, but below the Upper Deep they keep growing in Might with depth: more life, harder hits, and more for killing them. Your tempers (one for your weapon, one for your body armour, one for your pickaxe: they are yours, and work on whatever you hold and wear) are raised with each band's own material to keep up. See Might and temper.
The bands are made for a delver of level 150 who has been rekindled twice, in the best gear of level 150, with about half of the skill points spent on damage and life, and with the temper each band asks for: the tier of the band above at its top, its own by its bottom. Then a common Grown falls to two or three blows and costs a few percent of your life, all the way down. A delver who spends no skill points finds the bands about a third harder.
Landmarks
Each band has places of its own, older than the Flame: you will know one when you walk into it. Your minimap marks a landmark once you have seen it, and pointing at it tells you its name.
- Some are kept as they were. Nothing in them can be dug, built, burnt, rammed or poured into, and no Home Stone can be set down near one.
- No Home Stone can be set down inside any landmark.
- Their chests hold what their own band has to give, more the deeper they are.
- Many have a page to find: walk in and it is yours. Read it from your bag.
The lost camps
A hundred years ago the Warden House sent six of its people down to find out how deep the stone goes, so that the number could be written down. They never came back to file it. Their camps are still there, in the Upper Deep, in about one stratum in three of every region: a cold hollow with crates, bedrolls, a spent lantern, a cairn of stones, and their chest.
- Walk into a lost camp and you find a page of the Surveyor's journal under a bedroll. There is one page for each kind of stratum, five in all. Read them in order, from the Ember Sea to the Grey Fold, and they tell you where the Survey went.
- The chest holds what the Survey left: torches, ladders, iron and embersteel, a little gold.
- A camp's bedrolls, spent lanterns and cairn stones can be taken and set down again in a home of your own.
- Three deepstone make a cairn stone (any crafting grid). Delvers stack them where they camp, so the next ones know someone came this far.
Hazards
Every band does something to you just for being there. A warning on the screen tells you when one is on you, and a mark in your buff row how it stands. A band's hazard never touches you in a town's ground, and not on the land of a lit Home of your own, unless that band's page says it does.