Drift Network

The Drift Network is the hall the Meridian built to hold the doors it cannot close. This page covers the hall itself: how to reach it, what stands inside it, and the two walls of the south wing - the Meridian's six-door ladder on the east side and Assay Row on the west. For the wider story of the Meridian's work and what the drift is, see The Drift Network.

Getting there

The hall is reached two ways: the recall command /dn carries a character there directly (the same kind of short cast as a Marketplace recall, interrupted by moving too soon), or on foot through the "Drift Network" portal standing in the Marketplace of Dereth, beside the ordinary Town Network portal there. Leaving is the same in reverse - a "Surface" portal inside the hall returns a character to the Marketplace.

The hall

The Drift Network is built on the same hall the retail Town Network uses, but its purpose is inverted: where the Town Network gathers safe doors for anyone to use, this hall gathers the dangerous ones so that no one else has to stand watch over them. Its central crossing and four branches keep the familiar shape, but the town's usual portals are gone, replaced by the Meridian's own people and instruments:

• Eight class trainers, one per class, who teach Class Abilities in exchange for Class Ability Points.
• The Skillmaster, who refunds any unused, unspent training token back into its points.
• Two reckoning-stones standing together in one alcove: the Reckoning-Stone of Radiance, which renders a character's Luminance into Class Ability Points, and the Reckoning-Stone of Toil, which takes unassigned experience instead. Both charge a rising price, one measure at a time.
• An "Unstable Drift-Door" standing among the trainers - a pinned, leaking door that cannot be opened, kept only as a reminder of what the rest of the hall is built to hold.
• Dispatcher Corwen Hale and the six per-door wardens who route characters to the south wing's doors and pay out its rewards.
• The seven craftspeople of Assay Row, each standing beside the portal to their own mine or quarry on the wing's west wall.
• Meridian soldiers, the peaceful garrison holding the south branch.

The south wing's own alcoves carry a run of stone arches, tinted in a shade gradient from pale grey to deep navy along the length of the hall, with a single iridescent arch marking the alcove that holds the entry to The Iron Sill.

South wing doors

Walking the south branch in order, it carries eight doors: the entry to The Unanswered Rookery, the six-door Meridian south wing ladder, and the entry to The Iron Sill.

The Requires column is the hard minimum to step through the portal at all. Every door on the ladder holds its gate at or above the level its hall is tuned for, so a character who can step through is one the hall expects.

Order	Door	Rung	Requires
1	The Unanswered Rookery	-	no gate
2	Busy Door	D1	Level 30
3	Rusting Door	D2	Level 40
4	Held Door	D3	Level 60
5	Breathing Door	D4	Level 70
6	Miscounted Door	D5	Level 90
7	First Pin	D6	Level 100
8	The Iron Sill	-	no gate

Each of the six ladder doors pays out a piece of the Meridian reward set the first time its rung is cleared, and the First Pin additionally awards the Meridian Commendation.

Assay Row (west wall)

Across the hall from the ladder, the south wing's west wall is Assay Row: seven alcoves, each with a portal down into a mine or quarry and a Meridian craftsperson who trades a collection task for a lesson in one of the six crafting materials - Prismatic, Tiger Eye, Tourmaline, Serpentine, Amethyst and Obsidian - and the tool that works it. Six of the bays run in a fixed order, each portal refusing entry until the previous material has been taught; the seventh, Firecut, has no material and closes the wall out with a two-boss fight and a Class Ability Point.

Bay	Portal	Requires	Material	Craftsperson
1	Peculiar Stone	any level	Prismatic	Grainwright Alys Fenn
2	Banded Adit	Level 30	Tiger Eye	Platewright Odell Marsh
3	Open Cut	Level 40, Prismatic taught	Tourmaline	Edgewright Kenji Ashida
4	Grain Quarry	Level 60, Tourmaline taught	Serpentine	Ulgrath the Grain-Reader
5	Geode Field	Level 70, Serpentine taught	Amethyst	Slotwright Yusra Tannim
6	Glass Shaft	Level 90, Amethyst taught	Obsidian	Glasswright Rin Kuroda
7	Firecut	Level 100, Obsidian taught	none (capstone)	Assay-Warden Vittorio Sarra

See Assay Row for what each bay asks for and what it teaches.

See also

• The Meridian - the institution that built and runs the hall.
• The Drift Network - the wider lore behind why the hall exists.
• Meridian reward pieces - the south wing's item rewards.
• Meridian soldiers - the hall's garrison.
• Dispatcher Corwen Hale - the clerk who greets arrivals at the south wing.
• Assay Row - the west wall's seven mining bays.