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The Twenty

Under the old floor of the world the Deep goes down ten thousand rows before the bands of the Descent begin. That is the Twenty: twenty bands of 512 rows each, every one a world of its own, with its own Grown, its own material, its own great one asleep in its lair, and its own chronicle in the Delvers' Lodge in Aldhearth.

The Ember Sea, the first band: Old Bellows awake over his Cinderkin, and a torch-lit hall dug into the basalt

The twenty bands

Each band begins 512 rows under the last. The HUD names the band you are in, and how far down you are. The first five keep the names the delvers always gave them; the fifteen under them are new to the maps.

	Band	Rows below the old floor	Its Grown	Great one	Material	Made from it	Pet / mount
1	The Ember Sea	0–511	Cinderkin: Slag tortoise, Ember lurcher, Clinker bat, Ash-tongue ★, Bellows toad, Cinder mite (in swarms)	Old Bellows	Cinder glass	Cinder charm	Cinder sprite
2	The Hollow Roots	512–1,023	Burrowkin: Burrow badger, Root lasher, Tuber hulk, Mole matron, Pith spitter ★, Rootgrub (in swarms)	Mother Tuber	Rootheart resin	Resin salve	–
3	The Choir Caverns	1,024–1,535	Chimelings: Bell crab, Hum moth, Resonant, Tuning wyrm, Choir hound, Chime mote (in swarms)	The First Note	Hum shard	Tuning charm	Hummingbell
4	The Still Dark	1,536–2,047	Hushwings: Velvet stalker, Hush owl, Mute crawler, Quiet one, Lampless ★, Hush moth (in swarms)	The Snuffer	Hush silk	Silk lantern	Hushwing glider
5	The Grey Fold	2,048–2,559	The Unfinished: Half-hound, Sketch serpent, Outline, Eraser, Draftling, Smudge (in swarms)	The Sketch	Grey graphite	Graphite ward	Smudge imp
6	The Slag Galleries	2,560–3,071	Slagborn: Ore golem, Furnace crab, Pick-hand, Molten eel, Soot bat, Slag spark (in swarms)	Foreman Ash	Slag pearl	Smelter’s band	–
7	The Fungal Vaults	3,072–3,583	Sporekin: Cap stalker, Mycel sow, Puffhead, Gill crawler, Lantern cap ★, Spore puff (in swarms)	Grandmother Mould	Spore amber	Amber tonic	Puffling
8	The Echo Wells	3,584–4,095	The Echoes: Mimic, Well wyrm, Answer hound, Ringstone, Echo bat, Echo mote (in swarms)	The Answerer	Echo stone	Echo charm	Wellrunner
9	The Blackwater Steps	4,096–4,607	Mire-ink: Blackwater eel, Lake toad, Wader, Ink heron, Shell lurker, Ink tadpole (in swarms)	Old Gulp	Inkstone	Blackwater broth	Ink newt
10	The Faded Court	4,608–5,119	The Courtiers: Grey page, Faded hound, Chandelier ★, Throne golem, Gilt serpent, Dust mote (in swarms)	The Grey Chancellor	Faded gilt	Courtier’s ring	–
11	The Magma Gardens	5,120–5,631	Lavablooms: Bloom stalker, Magma snail, Flame orchid ★, Lava hog, Fire root, Seed ember (in swarms)	The Burning Rose	Magma seed	Fireseed roast	Ember bud
12	The Wormways	5,632–6,143	The Gnawers: Tunnel worm, Gnawer, Shell grub, Rock louse, Bore golem, Grit mite (in swarms)	The Long Hunger	Gnawer tooth	Toothed charm	Burrow beetle
13	The Glass Canyon	6,144–6,655	Glasswings: Prism moth, Shard hound, Glass crab, Refractor ★, Pane golem, Glass mote (in swarms)	The Prism Hawk	Canyon glass	Prism lens	Glass wren
14	The Frozen Dark	6,656–7,167	The Rime: Rimecrawler, Frost hound, Ice moth, Glacier golem, Cold eel, Rime flake (in swarms)	The Winter Below	Deep rime	Rime draught	–
15	The Hollow Library	7,168–7,679	The Inkbound: Inkhound, Bookworm, Quill bird ★, Shelf golem, Margin walker, Paper moth (in swarms)	The Last Librarian	Lost ink	Scholar’s lens	Quillet
16	The Burning Stair	7,680–8,191	Ashwalkers: Ashwalker, Kiln hound, Coal serpent, Smoke wraith, Kiln golem, Ash flake (in swarms)	The Kindler	Ever-ember	Ever-ember charm	Ashback lizard
17	The Bloodroot Tangle	8,192–8,703	Thornmaws: Thornmaw, Briar snake, Blood tick, Root hag, Vine lurker, Thorn seed (in swarms)	The Briar Mother	Bloodroot	Bloodroot tonic	Thornling
18	The Starless Organ	8,704–9,215	The Pipers: Piper ★, Bellows beast, Pipe wyrm, Stop hound, Chord golem, Reed mote (in swarms)	The Organist	Organ reed	Reed charm	–
19	The Silent Sea	9,216–9,727	The Silent: Blind angler, Drift ray, Deep crab, Mute eel, Silent shepherd, Silent fry (in swarms)	The Leviathan of Silence	Silent salt	Salt-cured feast	Silent minnow
20	The Threshold	9,728–10,239	Threshold wardens: Gatewarden, Key hound, Lock spider, Herald ★, Threshold wyrm, Seal mote (in swarms)	The Keeper of the Seal	Seal dust	Warden’s charm	Threshold ram

★ is the rare kind of each family: few of them, and worth finding. The last of each list comes in swarms of small ones.

What the Lodge's maps say of each:

The Ember Sea: The first warmth below the old floor: magma caves, black basalt and pools of fire older than the Burning.
The Hollow Roots: The roots of trees that grew before the Binding, still drinking from a sky that is gone.
The Choir Caverns: Halls of crystal that sing when you breathe on them, and keep singing after you have gone.
The Still Dark: A silence so deep that light goes quiet in it. Lanterns burn small here, as if they were listening.
The Grey Fold: The first place the Wane’s unfinishing shows: rock drawn in outline, and things only half sketched.
The Slag Galleries: The First Kingdom’s oldest mines, still smoking where the seams were left burning.
The Fungal Vaults: Caps as tall as houses, lit by their own light, and air that tastes of bread and rot.
The Echo Wells: Wells where your voice comes back changed, and sometimes comes back first.
The Blackwater Steps: Black lakes on stone stairs. The water never ripples, even when something swims in it.
The Faded Court: A palace of the First Kingdom that sank and went grey, its court still waiting for a king.
The Magma Gardens: Flowers that root in lava and bloom in it. Someone planted them in rows.
The Wormways: Tunnels bored by a worm that has never been seen end to end.
The Glass Canyon: Cliffs of glass that ring in the draughts, and break your light into colours.
The Frozen Dark: Frost with no sky to come from. Breath freezes and falls like sand.
The Hollow Library: Shelves of books the Wane is unwriting, one letter at a time.
The Burning Stair: A stair of fire that goes down for longer than anyone has counted.
The Bloodroot Tangle: Red roots that drink, and tighten when they have drunk.
The Starless Organ: Pipe caverns as big as cathedrals, where the draughts play a music older than towns.
The Silent Sea: A sea under the world with no light on it. Nothing down here makes a sound, and that is the danger.
The Threshold: The edge before the Bone Gardens, kept by wardens who ask everyone the same question.

The Echo Wells, the eighth band: the Echoes about a delver, under the Lodge's torches

The Grown of the Twenty

Every band has a family of Grown of its own, born among the land's own Grown of the Deep. They are of the band's elements and colours, from the Cinderkin of the Ember Sea to the wardens of the Threshold.
They get stronger band by band: about 16 levels a band over the land above. Under Aldhearth the Ember Sea's Grown are about level 30, the Grey Fold's about 95 and the Faded Court's about 175, and from the Hollow Library down they are at the Deep's top, level 300; under the far lands they get there sooner. As everywhere in the Deep, a Grown's level past 150 is its pay, not its strength (see The Deep).
Any of them may leave a deep rune (one in about seventy, an elite one in seventeen, a great one always): tier I in the first four bands, II in the next four, and so on to tier V in the last four. See Deep runes.
Each band's lava stays in its band: at a band's last row it cools to basalt instead of pouring down into the next.
Each of them may carry the band's material when it falls: about one in eight, two in five from an elite, rarely from one of a swarm. The Cartographer's Eye in the skill tree makes it half as likely again.

What the materials make

At an anvil, a weapon: 10 of the band's material, 3 Embersteel bars and gold make the band's own weapon, from the Cinder-glass cleaver of the Ember Sea to the Seal-breaker of the Threshold, each stronger than the band above's. First you must read its forging notes: Orla's chronicle of the band always ends with them, and its great one, its Grown and the chests of its lost camps give them now and then. Some are spears, greathammers, flails or twin blades, which fight in new ways: see Weapons of the Deep.
At an anvil: a charm, a ring or a lens of each band, worn in the amulet or ring slot: 8 of the band's material and 2 embersteel bars. Each gives what its band is: the Cinder charm warmth against fire, the Silk lantern a larger light, the Smelter's band and the Courtier's ring a ring's worth, the Warden's charm the Threshold's guard.
At a cauldron: the Amber tonic, the Rime draught and the Bloodroot tonic (4 of the material and a glass vial), each a buff for the deeper bands; the Resin salve, the Blackwater broth, the Fireseed roast and the Salt-cured feast (4 of the material and a fish) are meals that keep you well fed.
A Healing potion (at a cauldron: a glass vial, 2 Sunpetals and a Rootheart resin) heals a third of your life: the Trade Post's Minor healing potion heals less than it did (18%), so the brewed ones and the ones the Grown drop are worth having. See Potions and buffs.

The great ones of the Twenty

Every band has a lair with its great one asleep in it. Go near and it wakes, its name across the screen. It is the rare kind of its band's family grown huge (or, in some bands, another of its kinds), and it strikes the ground every 9 seconds with a blow you see coming: get out from under it. Take friends.

When it falls it leaves gold, a handful of its band's material, a Jewel of Ascent, and sometimes more: its trophy (one time in four), the band's pet (one time in twenty-five, in the bands that have one) and the band's mount (one time in fifty: the Hushwing glider of the Still Dark, the Wellrunner of the Echo Wells, the Burrow beetle of the Wormways, the Ashback lizard of the Burning Stair and the Threshold ram). Captain Rusk's hunts pay the trophy and the mount for certain.

The Threshold, the last band of the Twenty: the Keeper of the Seal awake among its wardens

The Delvers' Lodge

In Aldhearth, by Bram's corner west of the Keep, the Delvers' Lodge sends people down. Three of its people have work:

Orla Underhill, Keeper of the Lodge's maps, has a chronicle for every band: why the Lodge wants it charted, and what that takes. Each comes after the band above it, so the chronicles go down the Twenty in order. Each ends with a page for your codex, and in the bands that have one, the band's pet.
Captain Rusk keeps the hunts: one for each band's great one, offered once you have its chronicle done. Better with friends. The hunt pays the great one's trophy, and the band's mount where it has one.
Edda, Clerk of the Lodge board, keeps the expeditions: fifteen across the bands, better with friends. The last, the Lodge's Banner, comes after five others.
Vesna, the Lodge's curio-keeper, takes trophies, read pages and the deep's ores for Lodge marks, and sells twelve relic weapons for them, each to whoever has been as deep as its band.

The long lines end with a weapon of their own, once: Orla's chronicles at the fifth, tenth, fifteenth and twentieth band, Captain Rusk's hunts when all twenty are done, and Edda's Banner. See Weapons of the Deep.

Band	Orla’s chronicle	From level
The Ember Sea	A Light Carried Down	15
The Hollow Roots	The Gardener’s Mark	29
The Choir Caverns	Sing Back	43
The Still Dark	Three Lanterns	57
The Grey Fold	The Wrong Drawing	71
The Slag Galleries	The Miners’ Tally	85
The Fungal Vaults	Spore Season	99
The Echo Wells	Your Own Voice	113
The Blackwater Steps	The Drowned Survey	127
The Faded Court	The Chancellor’s Question	141
The Magma Gardens	A Garden Under the Fire	150
The Wormways	Follow the Worm	150
The Glass Canyon	Seven Colours	150
The Frozen Dark	Frost Without a Sky	150
The Hollow Library	The Book Still Being Written	150
The Burning Stair	Enough	150
The Bloodroot Tangle	The Cutting	150
The Starless Organ	Three Stops	150
The Silent Sea	A Minute Without a Word	150
The Threshold	The Keeper’s Question	150

Expedition	From level	What the Lodge wants
A Census of the Upper Twenty	71	The Lodge’s census of the Grown is forty years old. Edda wants one of each family of the upper five bands counted again, by somebody who was there.
Lamps for the Still Dark	62	The Lodge’s three waymarks in the Still Dark have gone out. Edda wants a silk lantern carried down to light them again, top, middle and bottom.
The Choir Concert	150	Every hundred years the Lodge sings to the Choir Caverns, the Echo Wells and the Glass Canyon, and the Deep sings back. It has been a hundred years.
What the Worm Ate	150	The Gnawers of the Wormways swallow what the delvers drop. Edda wants to know what they have been dropping.
Glass and Salt	150	The Lodge’s lens-grinders want canyon glass and silent salt, and Edda wants them fetched by somebody who has seen where they come from.
Ten Thousand Down	150	The Lodge keeps a list of those who have dug their mark into the bottom of the Threshold, ten thousand rows under the land. It is a short list.
The Grey Hunt	150	The four grey bands of the Twenty are where the land is unfinished: the Grey Fold, the Faded Court, the Hollow Library and the Threshold. The Grown there are getting finished, and the Lodge would rather they were not.
The Fire Below	150	Four of the Twenty’s bands burn: the Ember Sea, the Slag Galleries, the Magma Gardens and the Burning Stair. Each has its great one. The Lodge’s own fire was lit, they say, from all four.
Roots of the World	150	Four roots hold up the Twenty, the Lodge’s healer says: the Hollow Roots, the Fungal Vaults, the Wormways and the Bloodroot Tangle. She wants something of each, and a tonic made from the last.
The Still Places	150	Four bands of the Twenty are still: the Still Dark, the Blackwater Steps, the Frozen Dark and the Silent Sea. The Lodge says they are stillest by night, up here, and that a delver should stand in each once.
Supply Run	29	Captain Rusk’s hunting parties go down with the Trade Post’s potions, and come back with fewer delvers than they should. Edda wants five proper Healing potions made for them.
A Lair Too Far	85	The Lodge’s maps mark lairs that nobody has been back to. Edda wants three great ones put down, any three, and she wants them to be different ones.
The Cartographer’s Error	141	Orla’s first map shows a band between the Faded Court and the Magma Gardens that nobody else has ever found. Edda wants somebody to look, and then to decide what to tell Orla.
Echoes of the Lost Delver	113	Old Bram went down into the Echo Wells forty years ago with his partner Hollis, and came back alone. The Wells keep voices. Edda thinks they may have kept Hollis’s.
The Lodge’s Banner	141	Five expeditions off the board, and the Lodge offers its banner. It is sewn from something of ten bands, and the one it is for brings them. (after 5 expeditions)

The Journal lists only the tales you can begin now or soon (up to ten levels above you), never all of them at once. Thirty more tales wait in the small towns and ports, some of them down in the Twenty: see Tales and treasure.

The Glass Canyon, the thirteenth band: Glasswings and the Prism Hawk's kin, every pane ringing

The Deep Weave

The skill tree (P) reaches past its old rim now: 102 more nodes, seventeen in each sector, with a notable on each of two new paths, a deep mastery, and six new keystones:

Unbound (Might): +35% damage in the Deep, but 15% less armour.
The Deep Holds (Bulwark): 30% less damage from Grown of Might, but 10% slower.
Rootbound (Vigor): your regeneration doubled below the old floor, halved above it.
The Long Count (Arcana): +15% experience, but 10% less damage.
Glasswalker (Finesse): an extra double jump and +8% speed, but 30% less flight time.
Lampless (Shadow): +45% damage in the Deep, but a smaller light.

The notables include Alchemist's Blood (potions heal 30% more) and Cartographer's Eye (the Twenty's material more often). Three keystones at once is the limit, and one more for each part of Chapter VIII done (ranks 15, 30 and 60). See The skill tree.

For guilds

Fifteen new weekly contracts come up in the guilds' draw: digging, charting and hunting in the Twenty, its elites and great ones, Wanted hunts, lairs anywhere, the Threshold reached, the Twenty's dishes cooked, tales, chronicles and the Lodge's expeditions finished. See Guilds and groups.