Belowkeeper Hollows
Below the Overworld’s dry hill country, dripstone vaults open onto mossy clay shelves and blue-green drainage pools in the Belowkeeper Hollows. Mara’s crews called it the middle level: too damp for the dry miners above, too stony for the surface marshes, and quiet enough to hear the rock settle before a roof gives way.
Look underground where dry cave climate meets dripstone caverns. The Belowkeeper Hollows occupy the drier half of the dripstone cave climate, keeping the same cave openings and transitions into neighbouring caverns. They appear in newly generated chunks; existing caves keep their saved biome. Entering the region adds a permanent field note to the Places tab of your lore journal.
Read the vaults
The floor alternates between dripstone stone and mossy clay ledges. Pointed dripstone hangs above damp shelves where Glowcaps and glow lichen take root. Carry light, watch the ceiling before crossing a wide shelf, and listen for water or stone shifting ahead.
The Hollows also hold Stalactite attunement. Meditate with a Blank Rune using the ordinary attunement ritual. It shares the daily rest of dripstone caves; crossing into an adjacent dripstone cavern does not grant a second rune before that rest ends.
Creatures and nurseries
| Look for | Approach |
|---|---|
| Sporeback Snail | Slow mushroom-shelled grazers on damp stone and moss. Offer a mushroom and collect Mycelial Dew with a bottle without harming the snail. |
| Rootmolt Strider | Six-legged cave stalkers drawn to mature Glowcaps. Watch for their warning line, step off the raked path, or answer them with Mara’s Empty Bell. |
| Mossveil Dormouse | Small shelf foragers near glow berries and moss. Watch where they pause before stepping into the same niche. |
The Glowcap Nurseries and Mara’s Drainhouses guides cover cultivating caps, harvesting gills, restoring the return desk and crafting Rootbound Greaves.
Listening stations in the dark
Belowkeeper Listening Stations sit in dry underground vaults across the Belowkeeper Hollows, lush caves and dripstone caves. Look for a mossy deepslate hall with timber shoring, a fenced drainage sump, a copper listening bench and a western resonance frame carrying a shuttered redstone lamp and lever. A damp bed inside holds six living Glowcaps, and the lectern carries What the Empty Bell Kept, a four-page account of how Mara’s crew read roof pressure by bell-tone.
A Belowkeeper Listener tends the station. Use the resident to open ordinary mason trades. Crouch and use them to hear their stories, leaving a short pause between lines. Meeting the listener adds them to the People tab of your lore journal, and each story remains under Talk. The listener explains the Glowcap bed, the drainage vaults, and the sanctum belfry deeper in the stone. Returning as your investigation advances unlocks guidance on the delve ledgers, the resonance shutter and the optional Bell Sanctum challenge.
Finding a station earns Ears in the Stone.
Follow the Empty Bell
Speaking with a Belowkeeper Listener through their fourth story opens What the Empty Bell Kept in the lore journal. Visit a Collapsed Delve or Deepslate Vault to complete The Pressure Records, comparing the dry miners’ shoring with Mara’s water-tables. The final chapter, The Resonance Shutter, asks you to flip the lever on a Listening Station’s western resonance lamp and stand within six blocks of the lit shutter. A shutter lamp another traveller already lit also counts.
The three chapters pay 90 XP, five Blank Runes and one Aura Shard in total, once per player, with no combat or Aura stage required.
Old vaults and the Bell Sanctum
Deeper in the caverns stands the Belowkeeper Bell Sanctum, a circular deepslate and copper resonance court with four cardinal passages and a northern alcove holding a Listening Belfry and The Unclappered Bell. Waking the belfry in Survival challenges the Hollow Bell. The encounter is optional and separate from the peaceful Listening Station journal route.
Mara’s Drainhouses, Collapsed Delves and Deepslate Vaults, and the Resonance Chamber can also appear in these depths. The region has no Heart Circle or Aura requirement, though ordinary cave monsters still gather in unlit passages.