Hammerdeep: the West Hall & the Underways¶
As of this writing the West Postern on the Pale Steps has not yet opened to travellers. The hold is real. The door is the door. Watch the west — and when it opens, this page is your map.
Behind the sealed postern at the Pale Steps' end waits the oldest habitation in the north: Hammerdeep, the dwarven mother-hold, which shut every door it owned when the Long Winter came down and has been working, in the dark, in good order, the entire time. The hold heard the bell of Sunstead ring over the west and drew back its inner wicket arch. The count of arrivals, suspended fifteen hundred years, has resumed.
The West Hall — the eighth haven¶
Through the Gatehall and down the Long Stair lies a working dwarf-city in miniature, and the deepest safe ground in the game. The peace of the hold runs from the gate to the Winze-Head, and not one stair further.
- Warden Grimma Stonetally (the Gatehall) counts everyone in and out. Her family mustered an empty hall, in full dress, for fifteen centuries. Ask her anything; she was, in a sense, there.
- The Shift-Bell Concourse is the hold's heart, and the Shift-Bell is the region's deed shrine — RING BELL with a deed on your heart.
- Forgemistress Berrild Ironmourn (the Forge-Court) sells the best plain arms and armor money can buy anywhere — and, to purses that survive the appraisal, two vault pieces: a deepsteel waraxe (+20) and an argent war hammer (+15), the holy metal whose flare wakes against the unquiet dead. Sunstead's cleansing finally has its proper tool for sale.
- Provisioner Katla Deepshelf buys skins and pelts at 150 — the best rate in the known world. The Pale Steps hunting loop now sells at the top of the mountain it happens on.
- Tallykeeper Odo banks behind the bronze grille. Bonesetter Ulfhild mends the broken beside the Held Flame — the fire that has never gone out, the hold's greater recovery node and the region's resting place: die in the western deep and you wake on its warm stones.
- CHECK IN at the Old Dormitory, kept made-up for guests through fifteen hundred years of nobody coming.
- Loremaster Edda Longcount (the Loremasters' Gallery) posts the Underways bounties and sells the Long Count — read it before you go down.
The Underways — levels 25–30¶
Below the Winze-Head the hold's own deep roads lie lost to the dark, the fauna, and the Sundered Kin — and they are the game's new top rung, above even the Pale Steps shelf.
| The deep keeps | Lvl | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| shaft-worms | 25 | blind, granite-eating; hide 150 |
| maw-hounds | 26 | hunt in pairs; the one you hear is the polite one |
| rust-renders | 27 | eat metal; their middens hold what they couldn't finish |
| Sundered raiders | 27 | the Kin's toll-collectors; locked boxes (t4) |
| forge-thralls | 28 | the Kin's smith-caste; boxes (t4) |
| grudge-chanters | 29 | the Kin's law, sung; boxes (t5) |
| deep-road howlers | 29 | echo-hunters of the vaults; mane 210 |
| Vargr the Unforgiven | 30 | the Kin's war-leader, at his court; t5 boxes, the grudge-iron waraxe |
The Sundered Kin are not monsters — they are the hold's own three kin-lines, sealed out with the Winter coming down, who survived fifteen hundred years in the dark on discipline and grudge. The hold does not deny the debt. Read the Grudge-Book's open page in the Loremasters' Gallery, then read Edda's bounty board, and understand the hold you are working for.
- The Great Cistern crossing needs SWIM — the first water in the game that does. The drowned gallery beyond holds the rust-renders' centuries of indigestibles.
- The Long Winze is a climb (the falls are real — see the Steps). Bring chalk, lamp oil, and a pair.
- At the very bottom stands the Deep Road Gate: sealed, forty feet of seamless black stone, and not the way further — it is the reason there is a further. The survey charts end at it with one word. The word is SINGING. Behind it the word now has a country — the Veins (levels 31–36), charted, seeded, and shut until the gate's own opening day.
Getting in (someday)¶
The West Postern (Pale Steps side) opens with its key and no other way. When the day comes: through the postern, OPEN ARCH in the wicket, and down. Until then, Ozzel at the moraine camp will translate the door's runes for free with any purchase, and the frost-sworn will keep declining to enter the forecourt, which is either etiquette or advice.