End of the Dark Road

The placeCopy Anchor Link

Beyond the Threshold frame hangs the Loom — a colossal weaving frame the dark roads were woven on. The threads of its warp run hundreds of blocks into the dark, posts at the corners of the hull sink into the void, and torn threads hang from its keel. Through the frame you can see the fold the warp runs into.

Waking itCopy Anchor Link

Instead of the old plaque, the Threshold holds the loom’s heddle — Loom Heddle. Use it with an empty hand and a window shows what is already done and what is still missing:

Condition	What it is
The Knot traced	a ship’s scanner has taken three imprints of the Knot’s seam
Tablets read	the niches in the First’s Nest and in Enderhome
The loom’s fee	Void Shard — 128, Condensed Void — 16, Firstshell — 8; offered from your hand

When everything is ready, the loom starts: threads flash in a ring, a pillar strikes the sky, and the darning that closed the frame and the shaft behind it unravels from the top down. The place stays awake for good — for everyone nearby.

Floors and puzzlesCopy Anchor Link

Four floors — one for the thread of each world beyond the rifts: the Facet, the Hive, the Breath and the Eye. Each holds two or three dozen different rooms; a floor’s landmark is its pattern hall, where its world’s thread runs through the cloth from the vault to the floor.

• Seams (Seam of the Warp) are traced with your aim, like the riftscope: hold “use”, aim at an end of the zigzag and lead your gaze from vertex to vertex. A seam is torn (the cloth parts), and a tear leaking void is sewn shut. Slip off and the last segment closes again.
• Knots (Knot of Threads) are tied in the order of a figure: the figure is laid in glowing thread on the floor and the first knot is marked with a lamp. A wrong knot snaps every tied one. For some knots the order is written in signs seen only through Ringwright Lens.
• A void leak burns and pushes back: until the tear is sewn, there is no way past it.
• Shades of Hunger and void moths guard the floors, and watch rings stand by the niches. Moths and the creatures of each floor's world keep the halls; Shades wait in the Hall of Shades and in the ambushes. A Shade drinks your air — every touch takes twenty seconds of supply, so refill the tank at the column below each staircase. A Shade burns beside a real lamp but not in the half-dark of a hall: fight under the light.

An ambush bars the room and brings waves up out of the floor. A crawler that climbs the wall up under the vault, or a moth hanging above your reach, will not keep you locked in: whoever stays out of the fight for a quarter of a minute where you cannot reach it sinks into the floor and comes up again beside you. The lowest ambush is shorter than the upper ones — two waves: save your supplies for the mistress.

Floor gates: 1 — an opening closed with cloth and a seam; 2 — knots; 3 — a tear with a leak; 4 — a socket for the warp spool (Warp Spool), which lies in the spool room behind loose bricks.

The mistressCopy Anchor Link

The Spinner — a moth as big as a house with a spider beneath it; her eyes are rifts. She wove the dark roads together with those who set the rings. She is called with an offering on the altar of the nest on the lowest floor: Condensed Void — 6. Three phases:

The nest is lit by the threads themselves: the warp curtain along the walls and the seam rings on the floor. A staircase along the wall leads down from the entry balcony; the four warp posts are cover from the darkness of her eyes.

RewardsCopy Anchor Link

• The Spindle — the Spinner’s heart. It goes into the spindle keel of a void ship (Spindle Keel I): the keel takes a hull through the fold of the Loom. Beyond the fold lies the Underweave.
• From the second victory — Warp Thread: its thread binds enemies, pulls them into one knot and snaps, striking each of them.
• The vault holds the niche of the Tablet of the Warp. Everyone gets a vault share of their own. Calling her again costs a new offering.
• There is no need to walk back up: in the floor by the east wall of the vault lies the Backstitch — a shuttle whose thread runs up through the ceiling. While the Spinner holds the warp, the thread hangs slack; after the victory, use the shuttle — the thread draws you up the shaft and sets you down on the platform by the Threshold of the Loom, next to the mouth. One way only.