Book Three · The Walkthrough · 8

The Open World

The Wastes, the Anchorites, the kindred and the travelling fair

Hic qui infra est ei loquitur.

NewcomerStreamerLore chaserSpoiler-light; deeper secrets sealedskeleton · the five regions are built in graybox and dressed in part

The Salt CathedralIn-game, clean pixels, under the book's CRT

At a glance

Where: the Gallows Downs, the Spoil, the Tithe Fields, the Salt, the Wash
Opens: after the King, with the long roads
Required: nothing. Every place out here is optional
The masters: five Anchorites, each beaten honestly or by a trick
Checkpoints: a crypt at each waystation, and the roosts
Currency of the Wastes: years

The houses’ grip does not stop at the walls. The tithe carts, the levy, the coach, the gibbets and the tolls run all the way out, and the Wastes are what they leave behind. In the city the horror is ordinary people doing what they are told. Out here it is the grip made into landscape, and nothing is explained.

THE ONE BELOW

No one out here knows your name. They know what you are.

god_road_2

Crossing

On foot is the only way with danger, people and things to do: one point of interest per screen, never none.
As the flock, the region is drawn from above: only landmarks, roosts, roads and rivers. Land at a roost you have already walked to.
Each waystation has a crypt door (a barrow, a charnel, a hold) that becomes a checkpoint once opened.
Running water is still a wall; the Wash’s tide has its own slack.

The five regions

	Region	Its image	Its master	Its town
R1	The Gallows Downs	chalk downs of gibbets and barrows; a hanged giant cut into the chalk	Sooth, the prophet nobody believes	the Barrow Inn
R2	The Spoil	the quarry’s grey waste; roads paved with melted heraldry; a mill that grinds dead houses to mortar	Quern, the miller	Mortarby, built of arms
R3	The Tithe Fields	the villages across the river; an orchard grown from hanged debtors, fruit with faces	Graft, the husbandman	Tallybridge, where passage is paid in years
R4	The Salt	a dead arm of the mere dried to a white pan; a cathedral gone to salt	the Salt Confessor	the Lantern-house, the one safe camp
R5	The Wash	the river’s mouth; tidal flats; a drowned fair that rises when a house falls	Evens, the wagerer in many bodies	the Hulk, a beached ship

SCREEN 8-1The city on the hillThe world map: six houses on the hill and where to go next.Press shot, live capture of the v83 build, CRT off, the play field only

SCREEN 8-2The inn on the DownsOne lit door in the dark. Go in, or follow the white road past it.Press shot, live capture of the v83 build, CRT off, the play field only

SHOT W8-01phase B: to capture

The Spoil’s road paved with melted heraldry, Mortarby’s walls of broken arms behind. Map: the Spoil.

SHOT W8-02phase B: to capture

Tallybridge’s toll bar, the bailiffs’ window, a debtor paying in years. Map: the Tithe Fields.

SHOT W8-03phase B: to capture

The Salt Cathedral’s nave white with salt, the pilgrims’ lines crystallised on the wall. Map: the Salt.

SHOT W8-04phase B: to capture

The Drowned Fair risen on the Wash’s flats, its stalls dripping. Map: the Wash.

The Anchorites

Each was a master of something in life and asked the god for that mastery forever. He gave it, and walled them into it. An honest win frees them: they die and go somewhere he cannot follow. A trick wins faster, gives them to him, and tints your ending.

Master	The honest way	The trick
Sooth	“You dodge every doom he calls and strike him while he gets his breath.”	stage his own foretold death
Quern	“You drop his sacks so he has nothing to eat, then fight him in the dust.”	give him your own arms: the bought escutcheon of Marchmont
Graft	“You fell his trees so he has nothing to graft, then cut him down among the stumps.”	hang yourself on the Old Tree: a hanged vampire does not die
The Salt Confessor	break his salt with no blood and no wings, and hit him from behind while he listens	read him the ledger
Evens	“You beat him at every table he sits at until the only body left to play is his own.”	sit him down across from himself

THE ONE BELOW

Mine now.

Whenever a trick wins.god_mine_now

TIPHonest or trick?

The trick is quicker and the god is glad of it. The honest win is longer and the god resents it. Nothing is locked either way, but every trick leaves a mark on the last scene of whichever ending you choose. The boss tells are in The Bosses.

CLIP W8-05phase B: to capture

Quern’s grinding: the gold ring shaking round him as he tips a sack into the hopper, Wick outside the ring, the pick buried in the boards and struck. About 10 s.

The kindred

On the roads are people whose stories rhyme with Wick’s. Everyone out here who tells the truth tells it in words a proud man can dismiss.

The Salt Widow, at the Salt.
The Horseless Knight, who knows what Andrevel did at the salt church.
The Tinker of Bones.
Lady Ismay Carrow, the other offering, if she has left the gutter.
Taper, the gentleman of the road.
The Scraper.
Kennet, the kennel girl.
Garland and the mummers.
The Gravedigger, who dug Wick’s grave and was paid in advance.
Pledge, the barker’s daughter.
Snuff, on the road, if he lives.
The Sin-Eater.

Don’t let them die of you.

gb-salt.js

The fair that travels

From the opening on, the Grand Turn travels: its playbills name a new pitch on the long roads wherever the last house fell. Each pitch is the same five maps dressed for its ground: the Downs’ chalk, grey spoil, the marsh’s reeds, the orchard at Tallybridge. A return visit takes five to ten minutes. If the Dream-reader was killed, the show plays without its star.

The god on the road

Sealed · The endingThe confessionBreak the seal to read

Out here, and only here, the god’s own story is earned by failure: by deaths and retreats on the roads. Eight fragments, one at a time, to Wick. They are set out in The One Below, under its gold seal. A player who earns none of them still hears the truth at the end.

THE ONE BELOW

You turned your back on it. That is counted too.

god_retreat

The Ring

The Ring of the Kneelers stands on the hill’s west shoulder, up the old avenue from the Downs’ crossroads. Before the end it is scenery: six stones kneeling inward, each with a cresset that burns while its house stands, and an uncut stone upright in the seventh place.

WICK

Stones, on their knees. All but one. That one I like.

mark_ring_early

SHOT W8-06phase B: to capture

The Ring of the Kneelers before the end: the six kneeling stones with their cressets, two still burning, and the seventh standing blank. Map ring, early.

Secrets

Sealed · Mid-gameOn the roadsBreak the seal to read

The cottage in the Wastes is a rest with no price, the one place where nothing happens. Leave it alone.
Tallybridge’s toll bar is bars: the bat can pass it, but the bailiffs see you from their window and bar the town.
The Chalk Hanged Man is whole only from the air.
The Salt Cathedral’s wall holds the pilgrims’ lines, and one that is a refusal.