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The Last Dark
The seventh and last of the bands below, from 655,360 rows below the old floor of the world to the bottom of everything. This is what there was before anything was drawn: nightglass, black glass that gives back no light, and the dark. Here and there a point of first light hangs on a wall, cold and very old. Your own light carries three tiles, and no further.
The Grown here have a Might of ×12.1 at the band's top and ×15.6 at the bottom of the world (see Might and temper).
Getting in
The band begins with a seal of nightglass, 8 rows across the whole world. Nightglass gives only to an embersteel pickaxe and a pick temper of VI (won with the Wane's Root's greyheart).
The strata
| Stratum | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| The Hush | vast black caverns, so wide your light never finds their walls; points of first light on the far stone like stars. |
| The Night Wells | narrow shafts going down into black water, and in the water, stars. |
| The Unlit Ways | long narrow ways through the dark, with hardly a light in them. |
The dark
In the Last Dark light does not carry: a light in your hand lights three tiles round you, and beyond that you see nothing. Holding none, you are only your own outline: nothing round you is lit. The Grown of the dark do not need to see.
- When no light reaches you, a warning comes up and your buff row says Unlit.
- A Grown of the Last Dark that strikes from a tile no light reaches hits more than half again as hard, and you are told when it happens.
- It never reaches you in a town's ground or on the land of your own lit Home.
What is lit is what your screen shows lit; light goes a tile at a time, round corners, and rock stops it:
- anything three tiles from a light in someone's hand (a torch, a lantern, a crystal lamp; a hand lantern throws it two tiles further);
- the tile of a point of first light, and the tiles beside it;
- anything within 7 tiles of a keeping lamp (made at a sun-forge from 2 greyheart, 2 sunglass and a loose line: see The Wane's Root);
- anything in the light of a nightflare: throw it up to twelve tiles and it lights the dark nine tiles round for half a minute (three of them from 3 motes of first light and a sun-ember, at a sun-forge).
What you wear or keep that gives light (a lamp-helm, Bram's lamp, a Glimmer fairy, a voidglass lens, a charm...) adds to your own light, and to nobody else's: with nothing in your hand any of it lights the tiles beside you, and the brightest (a lamp-helm, a Glimmer fairy) as far as a torch; with a torch it adds nothing more. A starlight draught (a vial, 2 motes and a shadow silk, at a cauldron) gives your own light more room: for 5 minutes it carries twice as far.
Places
| Place | Where | |
|---|---|---|
| A night well | the Night Wells | a rim of nightglass brick round a shaft of black water with stars in it. Kept as it was. |
| A lightless shrine | the Hush and the Unlit Ways | a hollow where the dark is thin, an altar that drinks the light, two worn kneeling stones. Its stone can be taken. |
| The starfield | the Hush, rarely | a cavern whose every wall is first light, motes hanging in it like a sky. Kept as it was. |
Each has a chest (nightsilver, motes, nightflares, shadow silk, starlight draughts) and a page to find.
The Unlit
The Grown of the Last Dark are shadows with eyes, and in the dark the eyes are all you see of them: Hush Stalkers, Lampless Walkers, Well Eels, Lamp-eaters, Night Widows and the Watchers in the Hush. Their swarm is the Night-moths, eight to twelve at a time.
Every lair holds a great one of them: the Hushmother. Every so often she breathes out the dark: you have two and a half seconds to be in the light, and whoever is not, she hurts badly. Carry a light, set a keeping lamp or throw a nightflare before she breathes. She also strikes from behind you (a box on the ground, a little over a second), she is quick, she slips behind you, and she calls her children out of the dark. Killed, she leaves nightsilver, shadow silk and a page, and sometimes her veil.
Nightsilver and what to make
Nightsilver, which grew in the dark without ever being seen and is hidden in the nightglass until you open a face of it, is the band's ore: 32 of it and 2,098,000 gold raise a temper to VII, the last, for each place (weapon, armour or pick; 96 and 6,294,000 gold for all three: see Might and temper).
- Nightglass brick (four nightglass in the grid) to build with: a wall of it swallows lamplight.
- Motes of first light come off the points of light on the walls; shadow silk from the Hushmother, raids and chests.
A Home here is raided by the Unlit, and pays nightsilver and shadow silk to those who hold it.
Weapons
Weapons of this band. At a Deep anvil, 36 Nightsilver, 8 Mote of first light and 900k gold make the Nightsilver twins, a pair of twin blades of 175 damage. The great one here leaves the Hushmother’s Veils (twin blades, 193, Hungering Leap Slam) one kill in five. To forge it you must first read its forging notes, Forging notes: Nightsilver twins: the Hushmother 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 last lantern (staff, 193) to anyone who has been this deep. See Weapons of the Deep.
The Floor of the World
A million rows down the stone stops. Under the Last Dark's last stratum there is nothing to dig: this is the Floor of the World, and it is marked on every minimap that comes near it. The first to stand on it is told to the world.
Something is waiting down there. What it is, this wiki will not tell you. Go down with friends, and bring light.
Above the Last Dark: The Wane's Root.