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The Bone Gardens
The first band under the Upper Deep, from 10,240 to 20,479 rows below the old floor of the world. It is what is left of an older world's beasts: forests of bone, rock the colour of marrow, and fruit that grows on trees of bone. Nothing here is dead enough. Fight near the bone heaps and they get up. See The bands below for how the bands work.
Getting in
- The band begins with its seal, 8 rows of marrowstone across the whole world. An embersteel pickaxe digs it, no temper needed, and every rock of the band after it.
- The Grown down here are born with a Might of ×1.0 at the top of the band, rising to ×1.5 at its bottom: see Might and temper.
- What you dig here tempers your gear to I, and a pick temper of I is what the rock of the next band, the Drowned Halls, wants.
The three strata
The band's strata take turns, 512 rows each. You know which one you are in by the HUD, and by looking.
- The Ossuary Fields: wide, low caves of pale marrowstone. Columns of elder bone stand from floor to roof, bone heaps and loose bones lie on the floors, and marrow fruit hangs from the roof here and there. The quietest of the three, until you fight.
- The Marrow Caves: round caves of red marrowstone, the colour of meat. Marrow fruit glows from every roof and pools of fire lie in the hollows. No water.
- The Rib Vaults: grey vaults under great arches of elder bone, bent like the ribs of something the size of a hill, with cobwebs in the corners.
What the rock gives
| Block | Gives | What for |
|---|---|---|
| Marrowstone | Marrowstone | The band's rock and its seal. Four make four marrowstone bricks at a workbench. |
| Elder bone | Elder bone | The columns and the ribs. Two make a block of carved bone at a workbench. |
| Old ivory | Old ivory | The band's ore, and its temper material. Buried, it looks like the rock it lies in; you see it once a face of it is open. |
| Bone heap | Old bone | Lies on the floors. Falls when you dig under it, and gets up when you fight near it (below). |
| Marrow fruit | Marrow fruit | Grows on the roofs and on the bone trees, and glows red. |
Marrow fruit is a food: eaten, it mends a quarter of your life, whatever your life is. One every 12 seconds.
Old ivory tempers: 8 of it and 550,000 gold raise one of your tempers (weapon, armour or pick) to I, with Hild at the Master Forge or at a Deep anvil. Each place is tempered and paid for on its own: all three to I take 24 old ivory and 1,650,000 gold. See Might and temper.
The rattle
The bone heaps of the Gardens listen. Fight near them, a blow struck at a Grown or taken from one, and they wake.
- While you fight with heaps within 9 tiles of you, a line on the screen says The bones are listening, and a mark in your buff row says how many have risen for you: Rattle 2/4.
- Every two seconds or so a heap may rise: the heap is gone, and a Bonewalker stands up where it lay to hunt you (now and then a clatter of three chatterskulls instead). Risen bones are brittle, with less life and a lighter blow than a Bonewalker born down here, but they come on top of whatever you were fighting.
- No more than four risen hunt one player at a time. Kill them and others may rise.
- A heap needs room above it to stand up, and no heap rises in a place kept as it was.
What keeps them asleep:
- Light. A heap with a torch, a lantern or anything bright within 3 tiles of it never rises. Light your way and the rattle has nothing to wake.
- Grave-salt. Three old bone and a marrow fruit make two at a cauldron. Scatter it (use it) and for three minutes no heap near you rises, however you fight.
- Your own Home. On the land of a lit Home of yours the bones sleep.
Falling heaps
A bone heap rests only on what is under it. Dig under one and it falls, through air and water, to the first thing that holds it, and lies there whole. Landing on someone it breaks on them: 6% of their life, and some old bone. Dig a heap out from below with a care.
Landmarks
| Landmark | How rare | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| The Great Ribcage | rare, in the Ossuary Fields and the Rib Vaults | The bones of a beast of the world before, 76 tiles long, lying where it fell: the skull at the front, its mouth the door and a chest in its braincase, the neck, the spine high over a hollow, and the ribs. Kept as it was. |
| An ossuary well | common | A shaft lined with marrowstone bricks going down 22 rows, bones heaped at the bottom round a chest. Something is cut into its lip. |
| A bone orchard | common | Trees of elder bone in rows, marrow fruit hanging from them, and a post with a marker between the trees. |
| A cold camp of the Survey | in both bands | The Survey came this far. Their camp has a chest and a page of the journal. |
Walk into one that has a page and it is yours: read it in your codex. The Survey's journal goes on down here, one page for each kind of stratum, and someone else has left words in the Gardens too.
The Ossified
The band's family of Grown. They look like nothing above.
| Kind | What it is |
|---|---|
| Chatterskull | The swarm: little skulls that float and chatter, six to twelve at a time. Weak one by one. |
| Bonewalker | A skeleton that walks, with a red heart of marrow in its ribs. What the heaps rise as. |
| Rib Spider | A spider made of ribs. It spits shards of bone from a distance. |
| Marrow Hound | A hound of bone, long and quick. It bites. |
| Bone Colossus | Bones heaped into a giant, skulls set in its chest. Slow, hard to break. |
| Spinewyrm | A serpent of vertebrae with a skull for a head. It bites. |
| Grave Kite | A bird of bone on bat wings. It throws from the air. |
The Ossuary Gardener
Every lair in the Bone Gardens holds the same great one: the Ossuary Gardener, a tall thing in a robe of bark, a skull with antlers for a head, shears in its hand and marrow fruit hanging from its belt. Something keeps those gardens.
- Its pillars. It wakes among four marrow pillars, and red beams run from each pillar to it. While any of them stands it is armoured: only about an eighth of each blow gets through. Break the pillars first (they are not hard to break, and they pay nothing).
- It raises the bones. Every eleven seconds three spots on the floor near you glow; a moment later a brittle Bonewalker stands up on each. Step off them, or be ready.
- It plants again. Brought below 45% of its life, it plants two new pillars, and it is armoured again until they are broken.
- At 60% and 30% of its life it calls its garden up out of the floor.
- It bursts with force now and then (its Nova), and it can step behind you in a blink.
Killed, it leaves old ivory, elder bone, marrow fruit and often grave-salt; one time in five the Gardener's billhook, a weapon; and half the time its trophy, The Gardener's shears. The world hears who brought one down first.
Things to make
| Make | From | At |
|---|---|---|
| Marrowstone bricks ×4 | 4 marrowstone | workbench |
| Carved bone | 2 elder bone | workbench |
| Grave-salt ×2 | 3 old bone, 1 marrow fruit | cauldron |
A Home's raid chest in the Bone Gardens holds old ivory and elder bone, and sometimes the band's trophy. See Home raids and defence.
Weapons
Weapons of this band. At a Deep anvil, 6 Elder bone, 12 Old ivory and 300k gold make the Ivory greatsword, a sword of 157 damage. Its great one's own weapon, the Gardener’s billhook, is 173 now. To forge it you must first read its forging notes, Forging notes: Ivory greatsword: the Ossuary Gardener always leaves them the first time you kill it, and one kill in four after that; the band's Grown drop them now and then (an elite more often), and the chests of its landmarks may hold them. See Weapons of the Deep.
Tips
- Carry torches and set one by the heaps where you mean to fight.
- A stack of marrow fruit is a quarter of your life every twelve seconds, as long as it lasts.
- Eight old ivory is your first temper. Dig the walls of the Marrow Caves and the Rib Vaults: wherever two kinds of rock meet, look for the pale glint of a face of it.
- Bram, who has been down there: "Don't fight near the bone heaps. They listen. Put a torch by them and they sleep."