The Raids

Twenty-eight persistent, shared, level-gated raids at fixed places in three realms, each worth the trip for a concentration of materials found nowhere else and a boon unique to it. Every raid is threaded along a spine of stations, no two the same mechanic, and its boss is phased and plants totems mid-fight.

The tens, levels 10 to 16

• The Drowned Mill (overworld, short): A mill and its village went under when the river was dammed for a kingdom that no longer exists. The wheel still turns. Boon: Repairs at any bench cost a third less..
• The Cinder Warrens (underworld, short): Goblins took a worked-out copper mine and did not stop digging. Nobody is sure what they are digging toward. Boon: You cannot be ambushed underground while grouped..
• The Whalebone Strand (ice, medium): A whale fall the size of a hall, and three generations of scavengers who have organised around it. Boon: Skinning yields one extra material on a success..
• The First Ash (overworld, medium): The first ground the scourge ever touched: a fishing coast on the Vashen shore where the ash still falls, thinly, from a sky that cleared three centuries ago. Boon: You see through ash, smoke and fog as if through clear air..

The twenty-fives, levels 22 to 30

• The Hollow Assize (overworld, short): A circuit court that kept sitting after the judges died. Sentences are still being carried out. Boon: Toll-keepers and gate guards let you through free..
• The Spore Deeps (underworld, medium): A fungal cavern that has been growing unchecked long enough to have weather of its own. Boon: Immune to airborne poison and choking gas..
• The Rimewatch (ice, short): A signal fort on the ice road, still lit, still manned, and nobody has relieved the garrison in a century. Boon: Blizzard and cold exposure do not slow you..
• The Ashen Orchard (overworld, medium): Vashen's first orchard, burnt to the root and still bearing something once a year. The pickers are not farmers. Boon: Garden plots at home yield a second harvest..
• The Sunless Market (underworld, short): A trading floor under the world that never closed. The stalls are tended. The traders should not be. Boon: Appraisal is exact, and haggling never fails outright..
• The Calving Shelf (ice, long): Where the glacier gives birth to icebergs, and something enormous is using the noise as cover. Boon: You never slip, and ice is never treacherous ground..

The thirty-fives, levels 32 to 40

• The Sundered Span (overworld, long): The bridge that once crossed the Sundering, broken at the middle, both halves held by things that will not concede the other exists. Boon: Falls of any height are survivable once per hour..
• The Glass Reach (underworld, medium): Crystal grown across a gallery a mile long, and it has begun to grow in shapes that were not there yesterday. Boon: Hidden doors and concealed caches reveal themselves..
• The Drowned Choir (ice, short): Under the shelf ice, a flooded hall where the singing has not stopped and the singers have not surfaced. Boon: Breathe underwater indefinitely..
• The Bone Cathedral (overworld, medium): Built out of one animal. The congregation is still arriving and the building is still being extended. Boon: Bone and hide crafting cannot produce a flawed result..
• The Emberdeep (underworld, long): A magma gallery worked as a forge by something that does not need tools, and resents visitors who bring them. Boon: Fire damage taken is halved; your metal never warps..
• The Frozen Court (ice, short): A hall of the ice interior where a court sat down to a feast and has not risen. Places are still being laid. Boon: Undead do not attack you until you attack first..

The endgame, levels 45 to 55

• The Scoured Capital (overworld, long): The dragonkin came here first. What they left has had three centuries to decide what it is now. Boon: Dragonkin recognise you and strike at a penalty..
• The Last Vault (underworld, medium): The deepest room the old kingdom built, sealed from the inside, and the seal has recently been worked at from within. Boon: Locks, wards and sealed containers open to you..
• The Heart of Winter (ice, short): The centre of the ice, where it is not weather but intent. Nothing that walks here was born here. Boon: Cold cannot harm you, and your strikes carry its bite..
• The Maw of the First Scourge (underworld, long): The burrow where the dragonkin onslaught began. The walls remember heat, and remember it in the wrong direction: inward. Boon: Dragonfire and breath weapons deal you half damage, always..
• The Old King's Hall (underworld, medium): The sealed court below the Deep Crypt of Ashfall, where the Old King still holds the only session that matters: the one that never rose. Boon: Your word carries: NPC disposition toward you starts one step higher, everywhere..
• The Sealkeep (overworld, medium): The fortress the crowns' highest orders are named for and none of them remember. The Seal is here. It has always been here. Boon: Once an hour, an attack that would drop you leaves you at one instead..
• The Primordial Choir (ice, medium): Ring-chambers under the ice where the voices of the Pantheons speak through the primordials, and the primordials have begun to answer back. Boon: Your prayers carry: divine favor gains rise by a fifth..
• The Tide-Throne (underworld, long): The drowned hosts' sunken seat, where the Massing takes its orders. The throne is occupied. The occupant is listening to something deeper. Boon: Water is never against you: you swim at full speed and fight unimpeded in it..
• The Unwritten Library (underworld, medium): The records Thornhold's founders burned, kept by what burned them. Every shelf is full. None of the books have been written yet. Boon: Once a day, reroll any one failed roll and keep the better..
• The Godsford (overworld, short): A river crossing sacred to all eight gods at once, and none of them will yield the ford. Short, savage, and watched from every bank. Boon: All eight gods know your name: shrine rites cost nothing, anywhere..
• The Remembered Door (overworld, medium): A raid at the threshold of the old world, where the Remembered has begun to stir on its own side of the rite. What walks its streets knows things the new world forgot. Boon: The Remembered admits you: its grounds treat you as a guest, never prey, until you strike..
• The Worldsedge Gate (ice, short): A gate at the top of the world that opens onto nowhere, garrisoned by things posted there by no crown anyone can name. Their watch faces the far side. Boon: Teleports, recalls and gates never misfire for you, and cost a fifth less..