Proving Grounds

The Proving Grounds are four sealed trials run out of the Marketplace, each measuring one thing about your character and keeping a public leaderboard of it. Three of them - Attack, Defense and Wave - score damage, survival and endurance. The fourth, Speed, is a timed run through a rotating dungeon. Every trial is solo: you enter a private copy of the arena, nobody else can follow you in, and the score is yours alone.

Staff characters never appear on any board, so what you see is other players.

The four trials

Trial	Measures	Board	Paymaster
Attack	How much damage you can deal	/top dps	Master-at-Arms Ordwin Cray
Defense	How long you can survive	/top defense	Ward-Master Osric Cray
Wave	How many waves you can outlast	/top wave	Field-Marshal Oswyn Cray
Speed	How fast you can clear the season's dungeon	/top speed	Pace-Master Odda Cray

The four portals stand together in the Marketplace, and the four Cray brothers keep their ledgers nearby. Each brother pays out in tiers as your best score climbs, and each tier is paid once. A brother will not pay you while your pack is full - he tells you to make room and come back, and the tier stays open until you do.

Every board lists the top 20. /top level, /top cap and /top stamp race on other things entirely and are not Proving Grounds boards.

Speed

The Proving Grounds (Speed) portal opens into a private copy of the current season's dungeon. The clock starts the instant you land and stops the instant you pick up the season's objective. Your time is recorded, a new server record is announced, and you are sent back out.

How a run works

• Take the Speed portal. Its description names the current season's dungeon. Between seasons the portal is sealed.
• You arrive with the run already live. There is nothing to press - the approach is part of the course.
• The dungeon is gated by objective locks - doors that open when something inside your run has happened: a room fully cleared, a named enemy killed, a set of levers pulled together, the right bells rung. None of it is a key you can carry, and none of it carries over between runs. Every attempt starts from nothing.
• Pick up the objective and the run ends. Your time goes on the board if it is your best this season.

What forfeits a run. Dying, leaving the instance by any route, or logging out mid-run throws the attempt away - no time is recorded. Death inside the instance costs no vitae and drops nothing. Take the portal again and go.

Seasons. The dungeon rotates. Each season keeps its own board, and past seasons stay queryable. /top speed shows the current season's fastest 20; /top speed winners shows who set the record in each season so far.

Pace-Master Odda Cray keeps the Speed ledger in the Marketplace. He pays in Trade Notes (250,000) against your best time this season:

Mark	Pays
Under 5:00	10 Trade Notes
Under 4:00	25 Trade Notes
Under 3:00	100 Trade Notes

Each mark is paid once per season. When the season rotates, your page in his ledger closes until you set a time under the new door.

Season 1: The Lost Coastal Archive

"The Unsung Choir." A copy of the Lost Coastal Archive, emptied of its old dead and refilled with a drowned choir: Drowned Choristers, Brine-Swollen Bearers and Ink-Drowned Cantors for the rank and file, six named singers on the gates, and Grael, the Unsung at the bottom with the objective - The Untranslated Song of Grael. Pick up the tome and the clock stops.

The route runs from the entry hub up through two wings, then down through the archive. Each wing teaches a different kind of lock, and no two gates open the same way.

Gate	Opens when
The Purge Lock (west ascent)	Every enemy in the pentagon room beyond it is dead - all six.
The Reliquary Gate (west ascent)	All three Reliquary Levers in the pillar grid are down at the same time. Each lever resets about 20 seconds after it is pulled, so solo it is a tight circuit.
The Verger's Bar (east cells)	The Verger is dead. The rest of his room is optional - kill him and run.
The Bell Gate (east cells)	The three Chant Bells have been rung. Two Discord Bells hang among them: ring one and your bell progress is wiped and its cell refills.
The Warded Stair (hub, down)	Both The Archivist's Shade (top of the west ascent) and The Warden of the Tide (end of the east cells) are dead.
The Ossuary Gate (antechamber)	The Ossuary Lever behind the antechamber pack has been pulled.
The Choir Lock (crossroads)	Any two of The Cantor, The Precentor and The Sexton are dead - three branches, pick two.
The Archive Door	Grael, the Unsung is dead. It gates the exit portal; the tome is what stops the clock.

The Undertow, a one-way chute at the top of each wing, drops you straight back to the hub.