The Bloom is dead and the Flesh dies back with it. But the parasites came into this realm from another one, and they're still out there. When they talk to each other, it sounds like static.
Chapter Five arrived in six parts, from 1.44.0 to 1.54.0: The Static, The Relay, The Null, The Null Static Zone (1.47.1 added the late show), The Hive and The Deep. It starts once the Bloom is dead and ends when the Chorus, whole, dies in the Warm Heart.
Between the parts, 1.48.0 to 1.52.0 turned the parasite into an outbreak: from Chapter Five on, anything at all can carry one.
Part one: the static
Static Hounds
What the parasites made of the wolves: starved to a frame, mangy, black chitin up through the spine, two violet pinpricks for eyes, and a muzzle that splits open into petals round a throat of teeth. At night, now and then, a pack of three to five comes out of the dark behind a Pack Leader with a brood sac on its back.
The leader comes at you head on while the rest go wide and come in from your sides and behind. Seeing you, the leader howls, a wolf's howl breaking up into radio static, and the pack runs faster and bites harder for a while (and you're weak for a few seconds). Any of them lunges the last few blocks, and their bites make you bleed. Kill the leader and its sac tears open, one of them comes out, and the pack breaks and scatters, yelping.
One of them in you
A Parasite that holds on at the back of your neck for the whole four seconds gets in. Crouch, or get hit, to tear it off before then. If it gets in, its brood grows in you over about three days of play, and a meter beside your hotbar fills:
| How far grown | What happens |
|---|---|
| From the start | You get hungrier. |
| A quarter | You can feel the others. Parasites, hounds, the Hollowed and anything with a brood in it show through walls to you, violet, and static comes off you. |
| Two fifths | You're stronger and faster. And starving. |
| Half | The sac shows on your back, and it has fits: you can hardly move for a second or two. |
| Three quarters | It's too big to burn out. |
| Full | It bursts out of your back: 7 hearts, bleeding, and two of them come out. |
Get it out first. A Surgical Kit cuts it out of you (or out of someone else, or an animal). Or burn it out: stand in fire long enough to be hurt, before it's three quarters grown. A Hush kills one outright.
The Hollowed
In every village, one villager isn't one any more. Its eyes are two violet pinpricks; it mutters, and what comes out is static; it watches you. Wear the Dead Channel Helm, or have a brood in you a quarter grown, and you can see the static coming off it.
At night, alone with it, no other villager near, it turns: it shakes, straightens up taller than it was, its folded arms come apart and hang to its knees, and its head splits open into four, like the parasite's mouth. Hurt it and it turns there and then. Turned, it comes for you and the rest of its village: it shrieks (the noise roots you to the spot), rakes and grabs, and sometimes puts one in you. Killed, a parasite crawls out of its throat, unless it burnt.
The outbreak
Since 1.48.0 the parasite doesn't just brood in what it gets into and burst out. It takes it over, slowly, and then the creature is theirs. Any creature can carry it: the game's own animals, villagers and monsters, the golems, the warden, the Hollow's own things (but not the parasite's own, not the Flesh's, and not you; for you there's the brood above). It takes two days of the world's clock for an ordinary creature and three for the hard ones.
You can watch it happen: a twitch now and then, violet veins under the skin, the first blisters, shaking fits, growths and chitin forcing out through its back, its head hanging to one side. Nearly gone, it stands and stares at you, and goes for you if you're close in the dark. Then the turn: five seconds of it seizing up and screaming, and it tears open into one of theirs. Turned, it hunts everything that isn't one of them, and what it hits it might put a parasite into. Killed, it bursts and its parasites come out, unless it burnt. A Surgical Kit cuts one out of anything before it turns.
The parasite comes in kinds now too, each born of where it was (in the water, deep underground, out of anything with wings, in the Nether, in the End), and it leaves heaps of biomass that get up again as its pure forms. The Hollow's own creatures, bosses included, each turn into something new. All of it is on the turned and the Parasite.
Part two: the relay
do you hear it. under the static. it isn't noise.
they're talking to each other. something's carrying it. this points to where.
What one of them hears, all of them hear, and something is carrying it: Relay 6 on Hollow Ridge, the county's emergency-broadcast relay, 300 to 1000 blocks out. While it's on the air, static pours off the top of its forty-block mast and hound packs come twice as often within 700 blocks of it.
At the mast's foot is the Amalgam: everyone who came to the relay, the operator, his dog and the people from the valley, grown together into one heap. Lashed to the mast on each rest platform is a tether, a knot of sinew with a cable running down to it. Climb the ladder and cut all three, then kill it. The relay goes off the air, the hounds near it lose the signal and run, and from then on packs come less often everywhere.
It leaves the Relay Core. Hold it to your ear and you're Tuned In for thirty seconds. Keep it: it'll be wanted.
Part three: the Null
the relay's quiet. the static isn't gone. it's going somewhere.
there's a place it all runs down into. like water. this points to it.
With the relay quiet, the last of their static runs down into the Starlite Drive-In, 300 to 1000 blocks out. Its screen is dark until somebody steps inside the fence. Then the late show plays: a relay slams home somewhere, the lamp strikes, the screen floods with static that pours off its face into a tear in the ground, and five figures peel off the picture and come up the lot for you.
they came out of the picture. they always do, when somebody's watching.
you can't hurt them yet. they're not all the way here.
the core. hold it to your ear - tuned in, they're as real as you are.
or let one reach for you. when it does, it's all the way here. hit it then.
kill one and it leaves a frame of the picture behind. four frames. the projector's up in the booth.
run the reel. see what's under all of it.
Within forty blocks of the tear you're Nulled: the colour goes out of everything, static creeps in at the edges of your sight, the fog closes in grey, and you go hungry faster. The figures are Afterimages, what's left of the people who stayed in their cars after the reel. Each one you kill leaves a Frame of the Last Reel.
The last reel: load four frames into the projector in the booth, with the Relay Core on you to tune it. It runs seventy seconds in five parts. Afterimages come out of the picture for the booth (more of them with more of you there), and while the reel runs anyone can hurt them. One that reaches the projector jumps the film back ten seconds; leave the booth and the reel runs out. Hold them off to the end and the last frame burns on the screen, what's under all of it, and the reel is yours.
you saw it. that's what's under all of it. that's where they come from.
it was carrying them. the way the relay was. only it's alive. keep the reel.
Part four: the Null Static Zone
Hold the Last Reel up over the tear at the drive-in. The static runs backwards off it into the tear, and its bottom goes to a pool of static: a rift. Step in.
The Null Static Zone is where everything that ever went into the static ran down to: a grey plain under no sky, grey fog, ash and static on the wind, voices a long way off. You come out on a landing among the things it took, cars, television sets, a radio mast bent double, and the rift there takes you home whenever you like. You're Nulled the whole time, and you can't sleep there.
Out on the plain are the Ancient Null Ruins: the Listening Stones, the Sunken Choir and the Hush, built by the people who were here the last time the static came.
the null static zone. everything that went into the static came here.
it's in the middle. its threads go up to every mast you ever saw. cut them.
The Carrier
In the crater in the middle of the Zone is what carried them all: the Carrier, a head the size of a house with one eye in it, on a neck up out of a coil of its own pale body. Its threads go up off the coil into the dark, and four of them run to the four black spires round the crater's rim, tied off in a knot on top of each. While a thread holds, it shrugs off most of what you do to it. Climb the spires, break the knots, and it's cut loose: furious, and far easier to hurt.
Signing off
Kill it and it goes down across its coil, its threads coming down out of the dark one by one. Then the Watcher comes for its eye, tears a rift of its own and sends everyone home. Six seconds after you're back, the title card: CHAPTER FIVE, with SIGNING OFF under it.
it's dead. good.
it wasn't theirs, you know. it was a carrier. it carried whatever was put on it.
the static was a door. and this was holding it open.
this, i'll keep.
for the future.
go home. there's nothing on the air now.
At the drive-in the screen goes black for the first time, and then shows one line: SIGNING OFF. The Null goes out of the lot, and the static is gone: no more hound packs at night, and the Hollowed in the villages are only villagers again. The Carrier leaves 6 to 10 Carrier Threads, some of its flesh, and a record, Signing Off.
After signing off
The title card reads CHAPTER FIVE over SIGNING OFF. Half a minute after you're home from the Null Static Zone, the Watcher comes to wherever you're standing, and he isn't pleased.
...this was unexpected.
but we can work with it. we'll make do.
it seems the carrier did what it was supposed to do. it carried them - all the way out.
the parasites are increasing. every one of them hostile. the numbers are going off the charts. in your world.
it's dangerous out there. more than ever, now.
there's nothing we can do about it for now. just try not to die. for me. in the meantime.
and i suggest you don't go to the end.
...actually. i'll make sure you can't go there. it's dangerous for you, player.
you know i can see you right now, right, [your name]?
remember who you work for.
From then on the outbreak is worse: the parasite gets into things half again as often, and more of its kinds turn up round you, more of them at once. And the End is shut. Anyone who goes through an End portal in Survival is sent straight back out of it to their bed or the world's spawn ("The way's shut. He shut it."), and he has a word for you: "no. i said not there." the first time, and "not there. i told you." after that.
Part five: the Hive
The static is gone, and the parasite, which used to hear itself in the static, all of it at once, has gone deaf. So it's growing itself a mind. Somewhere 300 to 1000 blocks from the gardens, it takes a hamlet whole and grows the Hive out of it: a crater of violet flesh, the cottages and their bell tower grown over, ribs arching over everything, and a pit in the middle with four stalks round it, a nerve node on top of each.
It Speaks
The first night after the Hive has grown, wherever you are out under the open sky, the camera is taken. The ground heaves round you, five of the parasite's pure forms stand up out of it in a ring, turn their heads to you all together, and it speaks through all of them at once, its voices out of step:
the Choruswe were many. we were scattered. we heard each other in the noise.
the Chorusyou cut the throat that carried us. now there is only quiet.
the Chorusso we are growing another way to be one. out of all of them. out of everything they knew.
the Choruscome and see what we are becoming. come and be heard.
Then they fold back into the ground, and the Watcher is beside 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.
this points to where it's growing. go before it wakes up all the way.
The Hive
The ground at the Hive is "warm, and soft, and it gives under you. Something under it is breathing." Somebody got there first: Fr. Aldous Mercer's journal is on a lectern by what's left of a cottage, with his chest beside it (what he brought for the fire). Seven Hive Hands stand round the pit: arms as tall as trees, a palm with eyes and a mouth at the top and three hooked fingers. Get within reach and they slam down where the ground lights up violet, sweep you aside, or grab you, lift you over the Hive and throw you. They can be killed (fire hurts them more), but while the Chorus is in its pit the Hive grows a dead hand back after five minutes.
it took them whole. the people, the houses. everything they knew is in that pit now.
it thinks with those, on the stalks round the pit. cut them and it can't think straight. there was a priest here. read him.
The Mind
Go to the edge of the pit and its floor splits. The Chorus comes up out of it: a mound of everything it took, a great head with a split maw down the middle, faces all over it, arms ending in hooks. Its faces open their eyes, and it knows you:
the Chorusyou. we know you. you were in the static with us. you were loud.
the Choruswe do not need a throat now. we have a thousand mouths, and all of them are listening.
the Chorusthe ones you lost are here with us. they are singing. would you like to hear them?
the Choruscome down. be heard. be one more voice.
The fight (900 health, its own bar and music) never leaves the pit. It sends tendrils up under you (the ground churns first: move), lets out clouds of spores, gives birth to pure forms, slams an arm down, sings in three swells, each worse than the last, and draws through the cords to its nodes to heal. It's hard to hurt unless its maw is open or you've torn its nerve nodes open. Climb the steps round the four stalks and break the glowing nodes: each one makes it scream and makes it easier to hurt ("It screams - and it can't think straight any more. Everything gets through now." once all four are gone). Fire hurts it more. If nobody's near and it hasn't been hurt for half a minute, it mends.
It Runs
Bring it down to a quarter and it won't die. It screams and tears itself down through the floor of its pit, deep, and its nodes burst.
the Chorusno. 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 pieces of itself on the floor of the pit: Chorus Fragments, one for each of you. They still talk. Hold one to your ear. Four advancements come out of this part: It Speaks, The Hive, Senseless (all four nodes) and It Ran.
Part six: the Deep
It isn't dead. It went down, and now you go after it.
The hunt
The Chorus Fragment still hears the rest of it. Hold it to your ear and turn round: facing the right way it whispers clearly, and what it says tells you how far ("down. a long way down. far from here - that way." when it's more than 600 blocks off, then "that way. under the hills. we can feel you coming.", "closer. we can hear you walking. we can hear your heart." and finally "here. right under you. come down. it's warm."). Side on, it's faint and broken ("...colder... no... turn..."). Facing away, only static.
The Sinkhole
It leads you to the Sinkhole, 300 to 1000 blocks from the gardens: a farm's low field pulled down from underneath into a crater thirty-odd yards across, steam coming off its floor, the barn tipped over the edge, the fences snapped at the rim. The county surveyor's camp is on the north rim (his notes, his kit), and his last page is halfway down. In the floor is the Burrow, a tunnel round as a pipe and lined with the Hive's flesh, going down in six turns like a corkscrew to a chamber at the bottom. In that chamber's floor is the Throat, a puckered ring of flesh. Stand on it: it stirs ("It feels you standing on it."), opens, and takes you down. That's Warmer for finding the Sinkhole and Down Where It Is Warm for going down.
this is where it went down. the ground didn't fall in. it was pulled.
someone measured it before you. he went down after it. the piece of it you've got will tell you how far down it goes.
It comes back up
Until it's dead, the world up top feels it. Tremors go under you every so often. The ground gives way near you (natural ground only, never your builds): a pit lined with its flesh with its things climbing out, which heals over after five minutes. Flesh blisters swell up out of the ground; break one before it bursts or its forms come out. And every few nights, where you live, comes the Reach: three tremors, each closer, then the ground splits 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 after it ("IT COMES UP", its own bar and music). Kill it for It Came Up. Leave it, and after four minutes it sinks back down.
Down in the Deep
You come out in the Gullet, a chamber of flesh with a Throat in its floor that takes you back up. "It's warm down here. It's always been warm down here." The Deep is a dimension of its own: huge warm caverns under everything, with seas of blood at the bottom. The Warm Dark is the Hive's flesh grown over the rock. In the Root Hollows the Bloom's roots hang down through the roofs. The Old Halls are the pale worked stone of whoever was down there first. You can't sleep there ("You can't sleep down here. Something is always listening."). If you're carrying a fragment, it whispers: "home. we are home. come and find us. we are deeper."
Two places to look for: Low Marrow, a hamlet the ground opened under one night, pulled down whole into a cavern of its own, its cottages tipped over and half sunk in a lake that isn't water any more and its church upended in the middle (the reeve and the priest both wrote down why); and the Old Halls, at the end of a road of way-stones (squat columns with a spiral cut in them like an ear and an ember cap burning on top) that starts at the Gullet.
The older ones
Something was down there first, and it hates the Chorus as much as it hates you.
- The Listeners can't see you. They hear you: every step, every block broken or set, every door, every mouthful. A Listener goes to the sound fast and rakes whatever's there. Sneak and it can't hear you walk; throw something and it goes to where it lands. They nest in the root hollows and hunt the Chorus's forms too. Stitch two of their ears over leather boots (with string) for Hushed Boots and walk as quietly as sneaking (Not a Sound).
- The Deaf King is the oldest thing in the Deep, the one that carved the Old Halls. Long ago it drove a plug of stone into each ear so it wouldn't hear the Chorus singing. It can't hear or see you; it feels you through the floor. Stand still and you aren't there. It sits on its dais at the end of the Old Halls. Kill it (Stand Still) and its crown cracks off and leaves the King's Ear-Stones. Carry them into the last fight.
The Warm Heart
Follow the fragment to where the Chorus went to ground ("here. we are right here. we are finished growing."): a great round chamber, its floor of flesh running down to a lake of blood under a vault of chitin ribs, with four nerve nodes on their stalks round the shore. Come down into it and the Chorus, whole rises out of the blood, made again from everything it took, with a second pair of arms and the Bloom's roots run all through it. "Up out of the blood it comes - whole again, and every voice in it singing."
It fights in three parts. First as it did in its pit, harder, with its nodes and its hands round the shore. At two thirds the walls crack and the older ones break in: the Listeners come through for it, its things and you, and its song gets worse (carry the King's Ear-Stones and the song can't get into you at all). With a third left it tears itself up out of its lake, ripping out its cords as it goes: no nodes any more, everything it has, as fast as it can. Then it dies. Really, this time: every voice in it goes quiet one after another and it sinks into the blood. "Far below, the singing stops. It doesn't start again." Everything of its in the chamber falls apart and the world above stops feeling it. See the Chorus for the whole fight.
Out of it comes the Last Voice, the one voice it couldn't swallow, still trying to tell you something (The Last Voice). A while later, someone else has something to say to whoever was there:
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.
Hold the Last Voice up and it talks too: "...there's a door. at the end. he sealed it...", "...take me to the end of the world. i'll open it for you...", "...the one in the black coat knows. ask him what he locked up...". Its lines are collected on Tapes and broadcasts.
What comes next
The story's music changes to Quiet Now, the Lullaby's tune in a major key. But the Watcher has just told you he sealed something, and the Last Voice wants to be carried to it. Take it into the End: that's Chapter Six: The Door at the End of the World.