End of the Fire Road

The placeCopy Anchor Link

Beneath the threshold, in the void of the Depths, hangs the Crucible — a forge shaped like a melting pot, where the gate rings were once cast: molds with half-poured rings, rivers of living gold, anvils the size of hills, bellows in the halls. Streams of living gold hang from the rim of the pot into the abyss.

Waking itCopy Anchor Link

On the threshold slab stands the Threshold Anvil. Use it — the window shows what is already done and what is still missing:

Condition	What it is
The Heartbeat traced	a magmascope anomaly in the Depths: three seismograms
The Tablet of the Hearth read	a niche in the Hearth of the Nether Sun
The forge’s due	128 Deep Ember, 16 Suncoal, 8 Fire Rose — offered from your hand

When everything is ready, the anvil rings three times, a column of melt rises from the well into the vault of the Depths, and the seals of the mouth crumble. The place wakes for good — for everyone nearby.

HeatCopy Anchor Link

Inside it is six times hotter than in the Depths. Room walls shelter you a little, but without a cooled suit the heat starts to hurt within a minute or so, and by the windows and on the molten roof — within seconds. Channels of melt and streams of living gold burn.

Floors and puzzlesCopy Anchor Link

Four floors, each with two or three dozen different rooms. Every floor is locked by its own gate:

• The casting yard — Chute Gate: melt flows from a sprue in the wall along channels into the molds. Channel shutters open and close; while any path leads the melt to a drain, the molds will not fill.
• The hammer halls — Ringing Anvil: every anvil rings in its own beat. Three blows on the beat and it burns; when all burn, the seals fall. A blow off the beat answers with heat and a shove.
• The bellows — rune gates and steam vents.
• The quenching hall — the quenching hearth gives empty hands a White-Hot Billet. It cools in half a minute: carry it to the Quenching Trough and it becomes a Tempered Ring — the key to the last gate.

The halls are not empty: obsidian mites keep to the stores, rows and cells — in pairs, weak but persistent — and slag beetles wander by the furnaces and hammers (they never strike first). Gilded knights stand in the pouring rows of the first floor and at the post on the second, and they come in the ambushes.

The halls of hammers and the bellows are lit from below, the way a forge is: gutters of melt run under grates in the floor (Melt Gutter). In the halls of hammers a gutter frames the anvil or the table in the middle of the hall and runs along the walls from the doorsills; in the bellows two gutters run from every doorsill on both sides of the walkway to whatever stands in the middle of the hall — a cross of fiery threads. In the two great halls — at the great anvil and at the great bellows — a gutter frames the whole forge, and a fiery thread runs from every doorway to the frame: the anvil and the hearth can be seen from the doorsill. The grates are safe to walk on.

A floor ambush remembers the waves you have beaten: leave in the middle of a fight, and when you come back you meet the wave you left at, not the whole ambush again.

The Ringwright Lens (Ringwright Lens) shows a step in the Crucible, not the answer: a sign above the shutters to the drains in the casting yard, a sign where you stand to strike at the anvils, and a cold crossing over the glowing channel in the quenching hall.

The masterCopy Anchor Link

A giant of slag and fire, larger than any other master. He is not angry: he watches whether the newcomer can hold the heat. He is called by an offering on the altar of the arena on the lowest floor. Four phases:

Defeated, he lies down, as the other giants did.

RewardsCopy Anchor Link

• Last Ember — the Giant’s heart. It makes the Crucible Jacket I: with it a depth ship withstands the heat of the Crucible well. Below the well lies the Underdeep.
• From the second victory — the Giant's Hammer: a blow on the ground in the Giant’s rhythm sends ridges of heat along the ground.
• The vault gives each fighter their own share. Calling him again costs a new offering.
• There is no need to walk back up: by the east wall of the vault stands the Crucible Flue. While the hearth is at work there is no draft; after the victory, use the grate — the draft lifts you up the flue and carries you to the Threshold. It is a one-way trip.