The Lees

The Lees is the world at the bottom of the murk: niello, a pure store of Murk, Lees Shells with pearls and the life of the bottom are there. The way in is a Whirlpool from a Sounding Lead in murky water. Stagnant flux does not vanish: it settles — through the flux, like silt through water, all the way down: layer upon layer, all the murk the fluxionists have spilled since the Great Stilling lies there, and the living mire on it is ground, not blight.

The door to the Lees is murky water itself. Throw a Sounding Lead into water at least three blocks deep, with a surface of at least 3 × 3, where the murk of the chunk is at least half the riverbed: the lead sinks, the cord runs down knot by knot, and the water turns into a Whirlpool. Step into it — it spins you and pulls you down. The Whirlpool drinks the murk of its chunk; cleanse the chunk, and it fades and the lead floats up. By a Mire Shrine the water need not be murky: a Whirlpool rises in clean water too and never fades.

On the bottom a Rising Column will meet you — a column of pale bubbles. Stand in it, and it carries you up to the surface of your Whirlpool, even if it has faded. Down there you cannot sleep or set a spawn point. The depth holds you softly: you jump higher and fall slower. Above the Ooze Basins the air thins, as under water.

Flux on the bottom is only what you make: the riverbed there is the smallest in the world, and the murk flows from chunk to chunk the way flux does above. Bring a Purifier with grates, a lumenash sapling, fire — mire creatures fear it twice as much — and Clearwort seeds. The skeins of the Lees are murky; in the Bright Shallows they are bright.