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The Crystal Cathedrals

The fourth band below the Upper Deep, from 81,920 to 163,839 rows below the old floor of the world, under the makers' city. The people who lived here found that a note held in crystal keeps the stone around it, the way a watched thing is kept, for as long as the note is held. So they sang. They grew their cathedrals inside geodes, sang in them in turns so that the note never fell, and the grey drew back from their walls. There were fewer of them every year.

Getting in

The band begins under a seal of prismstone, violet-grey and full of glints. Prismstone (and the ashlar cut from it) gives only to an embersteel pickaxe with a pick temper of III or more, which you raise with brass from the Clockwork Under-city: see Might and temper. The Grown here are born with a Might of about ×3.5 at the band's top and ×5.3 at its bottom.

Its three kinds

• The Prism Naves: great pointed vaults of ashlar, one after another, their lancets glazed with stained crystal and galleries along their sides. Lancet arches of dim coloured glass stand behind them.
• The Geode Choirs: geodes packed in the rock, from a room's width to a hall's, lined with stained crystal of one colour each and grown thick with singing crystal; now and then a great one, and some sealed shut. Amethyst grows on the walls behind them.
• The Shard Spires: tall chambers full of crystal spindles rising from floor to roof. Long shards streak the walls behind them.

What the singers left

• Starquartz lies hidden in the prismstone, richest in the geodes' shells. It is the material of temper IV: 20 of it and 1,074,000 gold for each place (weapon, armour or pick; 60 and 3,222,000 gold for all three), at Hild's Master Forge or a Deep anvil.
• Singing shards: break a singing crystal with any pick (they are brittle) and you may get one; the Faceted leave them too. Two shards and a glass at a furnace make stained crystal, which glows the colour of wherever you set it.
• Prism ashlar (2 prismstone at a Workbench), to build with.
• The hush charm (4 singing shards and an iron bar at a Workbench) and the Starlight cordial (a vial, 2 shards and a skybloom at a cauldron: it heals half your life, and for 3 minutes sharpens your eye, +10% critical chance, and lights the dark about you).

Hazard: resonance

The singing crystals still hear. A fight is noise: every blow you land or take adds to it, and it fades when the fight does. When yours is loud enough, the singing crystals within 6 tiles of you begin to ring, glowing, and the warning comes up on your screen. Two seconds later a ringing crystal bursts: its shards take a fifth of the life of everyone within two and a half tiles, and hurt the Grown too.

• Fight away from the crystals, or break them first.
• Snap a hush charm from your bag, and for 5 minutes nothing you do is loud enough for them to hear.
• Nothing bursts on you in a town's ground, or at peace.

Landmarks

• Cathedrals of the singers: a vault of ashlar 50 wide and 42 high in the Prism Naves, its lancets and panes of stained crystal, statues of the singers, candles, and a great rose window over the nave. On the altar is a chest of starquartz, singing shards and stained crystal, and under its dust a page. A cathedral is kept as it was.
• Geode hearts: a geode sealed in its shell of prismstone, lined with stained crystal and thick with singing crystal, with a crystal chest on its floor and a page folded in its heart. There is no way in but to dig: a geode heart is not kept.
• Bell spires (rare): a spire of ashlar 70 rows high in the Shard Spires, three floors up a ladder, a bell-rope on each. Each rope rings its floor's far-bell. Ring all three within half a minute of the first, and the reliquary's hatch opens over the top of the ladder. Climb: the reliquary gives starquartz, singing shards, a cordial or a hush charm and gold, once a day to each character, and now and then a page. When the half minute is up the bells fall silent and the hatch shuts again, but a plate beside it inside lets you out.

The Grown of the Cathedrals: the Faceted

The crystal-born of the singers' glass: the Prismling, the Shard Golem, the Crystal Moth, the Glass Widow (it shoots), the Choir Wraith (it shoots) and the Facet Hound, and swarms of Shardlings, more of them than anywhere above. A loud fight with a swarm among the crystals is how most delvers learn about resonance.

The Last Cantor

The great one of the band's lairs: the last of the singers, singing all the parts, badly.

• It sings notes: small, fragile things that come out on the far side of it, hold a moment, and then fly at you, turning after you. One blow breaks a note; or step out of its way and let it fade or burst on the stone. One that reaches you hurts.
• Now and then it holds a note: a ring about it, telegraphed, that hurts whoever is still in it when it lands. And the singing crystals near it start ringing.
• At 60% and 30% of its life it sings, and Shardlings come out of the glass.
• A crystal's burst is only a scratch on a great one.
• Felled, it leaves starquartz, singing shards and stained crystal, the verse it was singing (a page), and now and then its trophy, the Cantor's tuning fork. A raid chest in the band may hold the fork too.

Weapons

Weapons of this band. At a Deep anvil, 24 Starquartz, 6 Singing shard and 600k gold make the Bell-crystal flail, a flail of 166 damage. The great one here leaves The Last Bell (flail, 183, Thundering Nova) one kill in five. To forge it you must first read its forging notes, Forging notes: Bell-crystal flail: the Last Cantor 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. Vesna in the Delvers' Lodge sells The Cantor’s tuning-flail (flail, 183) to anyone who has been this deep. See Weapons of the Deep.

Pages

The singers' story: the first hymn, the rule of the choir, the geode's heart, the bell-ringer's count, the quiet, and the Last Cantor's verse. Read them from your bag; they stay in your codex. Wick, it turns out, has heard of them.