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The BlotWorks
Also known as: The Black Mill (among the InkKeepers)
Type: Ink extraction rig, and fortress of the Not Loom
Region: The Ink Well
Built by: Null
Holds: The Not Loom, one of The Denial Looms, and the stolen element If's Spindle
Creatures: InkDrinkers (Splugs, Sploads and Splats) and Smudgers
Guardian: The BlotQueen
Status: Active
"Ye'll hear it before ye see it. Clank and hiss and that whine underneath, and the water gone still as a held breath. If ye can hear the Black Mill, love, ye've already come too far."
-- Fergus FenFilcher - Punter of the Deep Channels
The BlotWorks is a vast ink extraction rig, built by Null deep in the swamp of the Ink Well to drain it dry. It stands far beyond the punt routes and the InkKeepers' Keeps, where the mangroves close overhead and the black water goes perfectly still, and the journey there is long and arduous: few ordinary Threadlings would ever attempt it, and fewer would come back with their nerve intact. The InkKeepers call it the Black Mill, and do not like to say even that too loudly.
The BlotWorks is Not made into machinery. Its purpose is to pump the ink out of the swamp, spin out the Inklings that live in it, and lock them away where no idea can ever reach them, so that nothing new can be written anywhere in Threadbare. Above it all rises the Blotted Spire, the rig's great derrick, shaped like a giant fountain pen. At its summit, the drained ink turns the InkWheel, which drives the Not Loom.
The BlotWorks rises out of the ink on iron stilts blackened by ink, a grim echo of the InkKeepers' own stilt-houses. It is a place of catwalks and gantries, ladders and platforms; of pipes, thick and dented and sweating ink at every joint; of levers, valves, stopcocks and pressure gauges whose needles never rest. Pump jacks shaped like giant dip pens nod endlessly into the swamp. Pipelines snake out from the rig across the swamp, over reed beds and under mangrove roots, to every coloured spring they can reach. Waste pipes spew bright splashes of hollow ink across the reeds, the only vivid colour for miles.
Everything is blue, purple and blue-black, slick with an oily sheen of violet and green where the light catches it. The rig is never quiet. It clanks, hisses and groans; ink bubbles in its pipes and drips from every rail; and over it all, rising and falling, comes the whine of InkDrinkers.
The BlotWorks is a closed and patient circle:
- Pumps draw the ink up out of the swamp.
- Separators, great spinning drums, pull the Inklings out of it.
- The Inklings are locked away in holding vats, where, with no ideas to feed them, they slowly grow dull and fall asleep.
- The drained ink is carried up the Blotted Spire and poured over the InkWheel, a great wheel built like a water wheel, which drives the Not Loom.
- The Not Loom spins If's Spindle into InkDrinkers.
- The InkDrinkers fly out across Threadbare, drain pages, and carry the ink and its Inklings back to the BlotWorks.
For years, no one in Frays End knew what became of the Inklings drained from a page. This is where they go.
The Blotted Spire is the BlotWorks' great derrick, and the final climb. It is built like a giant fountain pen, standing nib-up over the rig: its barrel is the tower, its feed climbs the inside like a ridged channel, and its split nib is the summit. It is wet and dry at once, built in layers of ink set like wax that has dripped and dripped, in bands of indigo, violet and blue-black. The oldest layers are dull and cracking; the newest are still soft, glossy and slick. Its walls are covered in writing: sigils, scribbles and symbols that no one can read, many of them redacted under heavy black bars. Somewhere in it, wet ink is always bubbling in a channel or dripping from above.
The StoryWeaver crosses the BlotWorks in six stages:
- The Wellhead. The stilt approach from the deep swamp, beneath the nodding pump jacks, where InkDrinker swarms first rise to meet the StoryWeaver.
- The Pump Deck. Timing and traversal across moving pump arms, pistons and walking beams.
- The Separators. Halls of great spinning drums that pull the Inklings out of the ink.
- The Holding Vats. A vast tank farm, glowing faintly with captured Inklings, and the greatest rescue in the BlotWorks.
- The Pressure Hall. The pipework heart of the rig, where every line meets. Smudgers breed in the sludge sumps below.
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The Blotted Spire. The final climb:
- The Barrel, where washing redaction bars with water reveals hidden sigils to be matched.
- The Feed, where opening and blocking the rising ink fills the right chambers and lifts the StoryWeaver on its surface.
- The Drip Gallery, where ink drips from above and sets like wax for a few heartbeats before softening again.
- The Crossed-Out Hall, where every line on the walls is struck through mid-sentence, and writing each one a new ending opens the way to the summit.
- The Summit, with the InkWheel, the Not Loom and the guardian.
Before the StoryWeaver sets out for the BlotWorks, the InkKeepers give them two tools:
- Ink, to write and draw things into existence: bridges, stairs, handholds, keys and doors. Everything they make must be new, which is the reversal of Not.
- Water, clean and carried in special stoppered bottles, to wash away redactions, clear smudges, and drive off Smudgers.
The tension between the two, one that makes and one that thins, runs through the whole of the BlotWorks.
The holding vats of the BlotWorks are full of captured Inklings, growing dull and sleepy for want of ideas. The StoryWeaver must rescue them. Freed Inklings leave the rig through BookWorm Portals: books in which a BookWorm waits, ready to open a WormHole home the moment its story is given an ending.
Every Inkling freed joins the StoryWeaver's ink, so the more they rescue, the stronger and longer-lasting the things they write and draw become. When the Not Loom falls, every rescued Inkling goes home to the swamp.
The rescue is built around a piping puzzle that runs through the whole rig, growing more complex stage by stage. Each puzzle is a network of pipework that must carry Inklings from a holding vat, through the machinery of the BlotWorks, to a BookWorm Portal. Inklings are too small to see, so in the pipes they show as a shimmer or glow in the ink, coloured by their temper.
Parts of the network
| Part | What it does | What the StoryWeaver does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Holding vats | The source. Each shows the colour and number of Inklings inside | Wakes dull Inklings by writing a word or telling a story into the vat, so they will move |
| Pipes | Carry the flow from part to part | Rotates, swaps and slides sections into place, draws missing sections in ink (which fade after a while), and caps open pipes against InkDrinkers |
| Valves | Open, close and divert the flow. Some run on timers; some are linked, so opening one closes another | Sets each valve to send each batch the right way at the right time |
| Pressure gauges | Warn when a section is over-full | Balances the pressure before opening a line. Too much, and a joint bursts and the Inklings scatter back into their vat, to try again |
| Separators | The great spinning drums that pull Inklings out of the ink | Jams a drum with a lever or a written wedge, reverses it to return its Inklings to the flow, or times a batch to pass between spins |
| Filters | Mesh screens. Some are clogged with Smudger sludge; some are colour-keyed, letting only one colour of Inkling through | Washes clogged filters with water (without washing the Inklings away), and swaps colour filters to sort a mixed batch onto separate routes |
| BookWorm Portal | The exit. A book on a lectern at the end of the line, with a BookWorm waiting inside | Writes the ending of the book's story in ink. The BookWorm reads it with enormous satisfaction and opens a WormHole, framed like a glowing golden capital letter, and every Inkling that reaches it is carried home |
Tempers on the line. Each colour of Inkling travels differently, so a route must suit the batch:
- Red Inklings are restless. They rush, so their route must be short and fast, often a timed run through pulsing valves.
- Gold Inklings are generous. Their glow lights dark pipework, revealing hidden sections, and powers dead machinery along the way.
- Blue Inklings are patient, and will only move through quiet pipes. Any pump running nearby must be shut off first.
Hazards on the line. InkDrinkers drink from any open pipe or uncapped vat, and carry the Inklings they catch straight back to the holding vats. Smudgers crawl into joints and clog them. Inklings are never lost for good: any that are recaptured simply go back to their vat, ready to be rescued again.
A worked example. In the first puzzle of the Holding Vats, a vat holds a mixed batch of red and blue Inklings, and a BookWorm Portal waits at the far end of the hall:
- The StoryWeaver writes a word into the vat, and the sleeping Inklings wake.
- They open the main valve, and the batch flows out, straight towards a spinning separator. They jam the drum with a lever, and the batch passes safely.
- The line reaches a colour filter that splits the batch. The red Inklings take a short, timed pipe that the StoryWeaver must pulse open at just the right moment. The blue Inklings take a long, quiet pipe beside a pump, which the StoryWeaver must shut off before the blue batch will move.
- Both lines meet at a filter clogged with Smudger sludge. A bottle of water washes it clean.
- The Inklings pour into the book on the lectern. The StoryWeaver writes the story's ending, the BookWorm opens its WormHole, and the Inklings are carried home. The rescue tally ticks up.
Design reference: the Mudokon rescues of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. The rescue loop borrows several proven ideas from Abe's rescues of the enslaved Mudokons, adapted to Threadbare:
- The rescue tally. Abe's Oddysee counts every Mudokon saved, and the total shapes the ending. The BlotWorks shows Inklings rescued out of the total at every stage. A high tally brings a richer reward, such as stronger ink for the rest of the game and the Ink Well's colours fully restored in the Finale. A low tally never blocks the way forward.
- Simple commands. Abe leads Mudokons with a few words of GameSpeak, such as hello, follow me and wait. The StoryWeaver guides loose Inklings the same way, by writing simple marks in ink on a nearby surface: come, wait and go.
- Portals in batches. Abe opens bird portals with a chant and sends Mudokons through in groups. A BookWorm Portal opens when the StoryWeaver writes the story's ending, and stays open long enough to send each batch home.
- Hidden rescues. Abe's Oddysee hides Mudokons in secret areas. The BlotWorks hides vats behind redaction bars that only water will wash away, for players who look closely.
- Moods and tempers. In the sequel, Mudokons have moods that change how they respond. Inklings have tempers (red, gold and blue) that change how they travel.
- Recaptured, never harmed. Unlike the Mudokons, Inklings can never come to harm. At worst they are carried back to their vat, to be rescued again.
- InkDrinkers. Woven on the Not Loom, they swarm the rig in long, whining clouds, and come and go laden with drained ink. Three kinds haunt the BlotWorks: Splugs, the regular InkDrinkers, which spit ink from their trunks; Sploads, bloated and slow, which explode when they get near the StoryWeaver, shaking the ground and throwing off their aim; and Splats, small and fast, which fly straight at the StoryWeaver and burst, briefly blotting out part of their view.
- Smudgers. Oily, slug-like Fray that breed in the sludge sumps and the wetter layers of the Spire, and leap at the StoryWeaver to smudge them out. Driven off by water.
The guardian of the BlotWorks is the BlotQueen: a huge, bloated InkDrinker, heavy with everything the rig has drained, coiled around the InkWheel at the summit of the Blotted Spire. She has not one trunk but many, and every one of them spits ink. She can fire single drops of ink at the StoryWeaver, or fire and hold whole lines of ink right across the chamber. Wherever her ink lands it stays, in sticky puddles that slow the StoryWeaver to a crawl, so the summit grows harder to cross the longer the fight goes on. The StoryWeaver's grapple is their best friend here: swinging over the puddles and out of the path of her lines keeps them moving.
She cannot be beaten by force, only diluted. Bottle by bottle, the StoryWeaver thins her, and as she thins the ink in her chamber drops and the fight changes around her: she moves from the pool to the feed channels to the nib slit, changing her tactics each time, and calling in Splugs, Sploads, Splats and Smudgers as she goes. When at last she runs clear, all the stolen ink pours out of her and back into the swamp, the coloured springs at the swamp's edge run again, and she shrinks to an ordinary InkDrinker and whines away into the mist. The InkWheel slows and stops.
Then the StoryWeaver destroys the Not Loom, which unravels back to loose fibre, and takes If's Spindle home to the Eternal Loom.
The BlotWorks ends the arc for the Not Loom in Act Two of the Threadbare Plot, guided by the LoomWarden Whim. The StoryWeaver sails the Ferries of Fable to The Imagine Isles, where Venture shows them the empty Blank Bolts, then follows the trail to the Ink Well. There, with the help of the InkKeepers and the clue in Frith FrayWalker's Letter, they make the long journey deep into the swamp to the BlotWorks.
- An industrial nightmare in a quiet place. The Ink Well is hushed, patient and old. The BlotWorks is loud, mechanical and new. The contrast is the point.
- Blues, purples and oil. Keep the palette to indigo, violet and blue-black, with oily sheens. The only bright colours are the splashes of hollow ink.
- Every puzzle is a rescue. Wherever possible, a puzzle in the BlotWorks should free Inklings and send them home through a BookWorm Portal, so the player always knows what they are fighting for.
- The Fray are driven off, never harmed. InkDrinkers, Smudgers and the guardian are diluted, outwitted and sent away. See Content Guidelines.
- The Ink Well - the swamp of ink where the BlotWorks stands
- The Denial Looms - Null's three looms, of which the Not Loom is one
- Inklings - the tiny creatures of magic the BlotWorks holds captive
- BookWorms - whose WormHoles carry the rescued Inklings home
- InkKeepers - who give the StoryWeaver ink and water
- InkDrinkers and Smudgers - the Fray of the Not Loom
- If - the FirstSpun of Imagination, whose Spindle drives the Not Loom
- Null - who built it
- Threadbare Plot - the StoryWeaver's journey
TBC
TBC