The Head Gardener tended the great flower under the dome for so long that it grew into him. Now he kneels at it with a root running from its heart into his face, and the flower is only a finger of something far, far bigger.
The Botanic Gardens
The Botanic Gardens are a Victorian glasshouse under a great glass dome, locked and sealed since chapter two. Bring the Mended's Rusted Garden Key to the glass doors and it turns all the way at last: the key goes in, turns hard, the padlock springs, the chain slides off and the gate swings in screaming on its hinges. The whole glasshouse breathes out spores, petals and warm air.
Inside, the jungle has grown wild. Every flower does something when you brush it: the Whispering Lily says your name and the dark comes in, the Ghost Orchid fades you out, the Watching Fern's eyes open and everything sees you, the Lantern Pod lights up your eyes, the Weeping Bell weeps on you. Giant Venus flytraps grow in the beds and snatch you up and chew (mash E to force the jaws open). Burstpods go off in clouds of choking spores, and Clutchvines close on you and hold.
While you walk it the place plays with you: lilies say your name, specimen jars topple off their barrels and smash, rusted sprinklers cough and spray, glass cracks overhead, a Rootling darts across the path and is gone into the ground. And while the Gardener still kneels, sometimes he isn't at his flower at all, but standing among the trees watching you, and gone when you look again.
What to find first
- The Head Gardener's office: his journal on the lectern and a chest with his coat and breeches.
- The potting shed: a chest with his straw hat and boots.
- The Seed Vault: under a hatch at the back of the hall, with the under-gardener's ledger and the best chest in the place.
- A propagation house, and a pond with something at the bottom of it.
Together the four pieces are the Gardener's Weeds. You will need the full set for what comes after him. If a chest was already opened, craft the set instead from Knotted Roots, which the Rootlings drop.
The Gardener
He kneels at the great flower and doesn't notice you at first. Walk softly. Go too close to him or to the flower, or strike him, and he tears loose and stands, and the gates slam shut behind you. He is slow and huge, with hedge shears as long as a man held in both hands. Keep out of reach of the shears but not so far that he lashes you in with his root arm, and step off the ground wherever earth bubbles, because thorns come up there.
At half his health he drives his hands into the ground, the glasshouse answers him, and he can't be hurt while it does. After that, stay out of the pollen, kill the Rootlings he calls up, and keep moving across the lines of thorns. Full details are on the Gardener's page.
When he dies he drops his shears, goes down on his knees, bows and goes down into the ground, and the great flower drags him in and eats him. He leaves the Gardener's Shears (Prune) and the Heartbloom, all that was left of the flower's heart, still beating. If everyone inside leaves or dies, he goes back to his flower healed and the gates open again.
The green rift
Three days after the Gardener dies, by the world's clock (nights you sleep through count), a green tear opens over his withered flower under the dome. You need to be at the glasshouse, within about 80 blocks of the flower, for it to open. It looks like the Breach, but sick green, with carrion flies boiling out of it.
the flower isn't dead.
that thing under the glass was only a finger of it. it's opened a way down to the rest.
his clothes. wear his clothes in there, or it'll be eating you before you've taken ten steps.
The Bloom
Through the rift is the Bloom: a realm with no ground and no sky, green fog all the way down, and hanging in it, everything the flower has eaten. A street of Rosemont. The research station that studied it. Shelter No. 4, sunk in its island with roots through the roof. Each has a chest and a lectern with its story.
The air eats you. Without the full Gardener's Weeds you're infected the moment you arrive, and after twenty seconds it starts eating you, slowly and then faster. In his clothes the flies settle and lift off again.
Don't fall. Far down under the islands is the Great Bloom itself, its mouth wider than all the islands together, ring after ring of teeth turning against each other in its throat. Fall and a tentacle twenty blocks thick comes straight up after you and drags you into its mouth.
this is what it ate. a street. the laboratory that studied it. a shelter full of people. it keeps them up here like a larder.
and it's down there. look down. no - don't.
if you fall, it catches you. it doesn't let go.
The Binding
The stone on the island you arrive on is the Binding, and it holds the flower down. Read the plaque on the lectern beside it first. Touch the stone with an empty hand and the chains strain and it warns you. Touch it again and it breaks.
The Great Bloom goes mad, thrashing and shrieking, and its tentacles come up out of the green round the island and take hold. You have ten seconds, counted down on your screen, to get back through the rift before the island's edges break away and it pulls the whole island into its mouth, rift and all. Anyone left out there is taken, one by one.
the stone in the middle is what holds it down. leave it. please.
no. NO - that was holding it down-
the rift. RUN.
It comes up the root
You come out in front of the glasshouse. The ground shakes, the dome's glass starts to go, and the mound bursts. The Great Bloom rises up out of the ground as a closed bud and opens, while the whole glasshouse comes down round it, dome first, in a storm of glass and iron. It takes the gardens' place for good. Its tentacles reach for anything within about 26 blocks, players first, and its flies infect anyone near it who isn't wearing the Gardener's clothes. Since 1.38, what it swallows goes down alive into its stomach.
you broke it. it's coming up the root.
get away from the glass house. get AWAY.
that's it. that's the real one.
What comes next
Ten seconds after the Great Bloom rises through the glasshouse, the ground east of the gardens shakes and splits. Chapter four.