- Health
- 900 in its pit; the Chorus, Whole: 1024
- Held up by
- Four nerve nodes on stalks round its pit
- Added in
- 1.50.0 (the pit), 1.53.0 (its hands), 1.54.0 (the Deep and the Chorus, Whole)
- Music
- The Chorus; then All of Them
- Leaves
- In its pit, it doesn't die: it runs, and leaves a Chorus Fragment for each of you there. Whole, it dies and leaves the Last Voice.
Description
When the Carrier died the parasite lost its voice: the static it heard itself in. So it grew itself a mind instead, out of everything it took. In a pit in the middle of the Hive it comes up out of the floor: a mound of fused bodies with a great head on it, a maw split down the middle of it in four, and all over it the faces of the ones it took, their eyes shut, their mouths moving, all of them speaking at once with one voice. Two arms as long and heavy as tree trunks, ending in hooks, and tendrils up off its back.
It knows you.
it lost its voice when the carrier died. so it's growing itself a mind instead.
out of everything it took. every body. every face. everything any of them ever knew.
when it's finished it won't need the static to talk to them. it'll just be all of them.
It Speaks
The first night after the Hive has grown, out under the open sky, the ground heaves round you and five of the pure forms stand up out of it, turn to you together, and it speaks through them, all of them at once, its voices out of step:
we were many. we were scattered. we heard each other in the noise.
you cut the throat that carried us. now there is only quiet.
so we are growing another way to be one. out of all of them. out of everything they knew.
come and see what we are becoming. come and be heard.
Then they fall, and the Watcher is beside you. He gives you his needle to it. Hearing it earns It Speaks.
The Mind
Go to the edge of its pit and it comes up out of it:
you. we know you. you were in the static with us. you were loud.
we do not need a throat now. we have a thousand mouths, and all of them are listening.
the ones you lost are here with us. they are singing. would you like to hear them?
come down. be heard. be one more voice.
How it fights
It never leaves its pit.
- Tendrils: the ground churns, a ring of it lifting and cracking with violet light coming up through it, and a second later a barbed tendril as tall as a house bursts up, flinging whoever was standing there into the air. It lashes at whoever's nearest, then sinks back. Move when the ground churns. Hitting a tendril hurts the Chorus a little.
- Spores: clouds of them.
- Birth: pure forms out of its maw.
- Slam: an arm brought down.
- Song: three swells, each one worse. It goes through you: you're slow, weak and in the dark a moment.
- Scream.
- Draw: it draws through the cords to its nodes to heal.
The nerve nodes
Round the pit stand four stalks, each with a Nerve Node on top, glowing, a cord running from it to the Chorus with its light running along it. Climb the steps of chitin wound up each stalk and tear the node open. While its nodes live it's thinking clearly, and it shrugs off part of every blow: with all four alive, it takes half. Each node you break, it screams ("It screams. 3 of its nodes left."), its maw wide (a free hit), and it gets easier to hurt. Break all four and everything gets through ("It screams - and it can't think straight any more. Everything gets through now."). That earns Senseless.
Fire hurts it half as much again. Leave it alone and it heals: once nobody's near and it hasn't been hurt for half a minute, it mends.
The Hive Hands
The black spires of chitin round the pit are alive: seven Hive Hands (140 health at their usual size; each is its own size). Up out of a mound of the hive's flesh, an arm as tall as a tree: three strands of chitin braided round a core of flesh, knots of flesh swollen on it, violet light in its seams, and at the top a palm with eyes and a mouth in it and three long jointed fingers, each ending in a hook. They never stop moving, writhing like something in water and turning to follow you. Come within reach and one will:
- Slam: it rears back, the ground where it's coming down lights up violet (move), and it brings its claw down on you. Bent right over like a scorpion's tail if you're close, a long reach out over the ground if you're not.
- Sweep: get in close to its foot and it bends low and swings right across, throwing you aside.
- Grab: it closes on you, lifts you high over the hive, squeezes, and throws you. Hurt it enough while it has you and it lets go.
They can be hurt (fire worse) and killed: it withers, falls forward, curls up and goes down into its mound, and drops Hive Chitin and Hive Flesh. While the Chorus is still in its pit, the hive grows a dead hand back after five minutes.
It Runs
Bring it down to a quarter and it won't die. It runs, tearing itself down into the ground, deep:
no. no - not yet. we are not finished.
it ran. it can do that now. it's got enough of a mind to be afraid.
it's gone down. deep. where everything went before the static was ever a noise.
that's a piece of it. it still talks. keep it - listen to it. it'll tell you where it went.
it'll come back up. bigger. and next time it won't be half finished.
It leaves a Chorus Fragment for each of you near. They still talk: hold one to your ear. Driving it down earns It Ran. The fragment leads you to the Sinkhole and down into the Deep.
It comes back up
Until it's dead, the world up top feels it: tremors under you every so often, the ground giving way near you into pits lined with its flesh with its things climbing out, and flesh blisters swelling up out of the ground (break one before it bursts, or its forms come out).
The Reach
Every few nights, where you live (at your bed if you're near it), three tremors come, closer and closer, and the screen reads IT COMES UP. The ground splits in a ragged line and one of the Chorus's hands tears up out of it, half again as big as the hive's, with waves of its things climbing out of the split after it. It has its own bar and its own music. Kill it and it's done ("It goes back down without its hand."), which earns It Came Up. Leave it and after four minutes it sinks back down.
The Chorus, Whole
Where it went to ground is the Warm Heart: a great round chamber, its floor the hive's flesh running down on every side to a lake of blood, a vault of chitin ribs over it, its four nerve nodes on their stalks round the lake. Come down into it and it rises up out of the blood ("Up out of the blood it comes - whole again, and every voice in it singing."): made again out of everything it took, a second pair of arms out of its sides, the Bloom's roots run all through it, its hands up round the shore with it. It has 1024 health, the most anything can have. It isn't running any more; there's nowhere further down to go.
It fights as it did in its pit, harder, in three parts:
- Its nodes and its hands. The same nodes to tear open, the same hands round the shore.
- The older ones break in (two thirds down). "The walls crack open. Something's coming through them: the older ones. They've heard it." Listeners come through for it, for its things, and for you. Its song gets worse; carry the Deaf King's ear-stones and its song can't get into you at all.
- It tears itself up (a third left) out of its lake, tearing out its cords as it goes ("It tears itself up out of its lake - and its cords tear with it."). No nodes any more, nothing to draw on: everything it has, as fast as it can.
And then it dies. Really, this time: every voice in it going quiet one after another, and it goes down into the blood. Everything of its in the chamber falls apart (nothing bursts out of them now), and the world above stops feeling it ("Far below, the singing stops. It doesn't start again."). Out of it comes the Last Voice, the one voice it couldn't swallow, thrown up onto the shore. Killing it earns The Last Voice.
it's quiet down there now. i can hear you breathing.
you've got something of it. one voice it couldn't swallow. keep it.
there's a door at the end of the world with a seal on it. i made that seal. i can't open it.
that voice can. when you're ready, take it to the end.
That's the way into Chapter Six.
Its hidden voice
Since 1.60.3, now and then, out of all its faces muttering as one, a single voice in the Chorus speaks on its own, fourteen seconds of it, and the rest of them hush while it does (its subtitle: "The Chorus: one voice out of all of them"). It comes round again every minute or two while you're near.
How to survive it
- Go for the nodes first. With all four up it takes half of everything.
- Watch the ground. Churning means a tendril; violet light means a hand's claw is coming down.
- Hit it hardest while its maw is open: while it screams, sings, breathes out spores or gives birth, it takes everything.
- Bring fire. It, its hands and its pure forms all take more from it.
- For the Chorus, Whole, kill the Deaf King first and carry his ear-stones.
Testing it
With cheats on: /statichollow ending hivehere (the hive 52 blocks ahead of you), hivespeak, hivemind, hivefight, hivenode, hivedown, hivehands, hiveskip, hivereset; for the Deep, reach and heart.