Hammer Valley has a story, and it is the reason the smith keeps moving. It is told in small pieces: a few painted cards, letters, the lines people say when you walk up to them, and a Journal that fills a page at a time as you work. This chapter explains where to find each piece and who is telling it. It does not spoil the ending.
The premise
Seven years ago your older sister Wren walked out of Hammer Valley. A metal trader had come through with a lump that was still warm three days off his cart. Everyone called it a scam. Wren called it ever-iron, and was packed by morning. She was the better smith of the two of you, and you both knew it.
She wrote once from every place she stopped. Six letters came back. The last one said only: It's real. Don't follow me.
You are following her. The road costs more than a farmhand earns, so you light her cold forge, build the valley up, and work your way along the road she took, one map at a time. The game's three opening cards tell you this the first time through, and the Journal has a "How it began" button that shows them again.
Seven witnesses
There is no narrator. On each map one person met Wren, and each of them remembers her differently. Each is sure of their own version. They are your helper on that map: they explain the work, remind you when a hand can be hired, and react when you strike a clean run.
| Map | Witness | How they knew her | What they think of her |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammer Valley | Brann, farmhand | Has the hat she bought for him and forgot on the bench | She'll come back. |
| Ironbridge | Wick, the runner | Carried her letters out, and read every one | She was better than everyone and knew it. |
| Steelhaven | Sal, site boss | Hired her, then fired her | She was cheating. |
| Port Sable | Meg, pilot | Flew her out on a one-way seat she didn't mention | She was a reckless fool. |
| Silicon Reach | Noor, facilities | Has her on the security log for eleven nights | She was a thief. |
| Selene Station | Hale, suit tech | Fitted her last suit, and was the last to see her | She went up there to die. |
| Ares Colony | Tova, quartermaster | Never met her, or so she says | She isn't here. |
The fun is in the gaps. Seven people, seven slices of one person, and none of them tell the same story. Watch how a witness's view shifts as you prove yourself on their map.
The letters
When you first arrive on a new map, before you have sold anything there, the witness tells you what they think of Wren and shows you the letter she wrote from that place. On Ironbridge it begins: The guild is a wall. I went round it. The valley has no letter, because she never left one there; Brann has the hat instead. Ares has no letter either, and the game makes a point of saying so.
More letters arrive with the work. Some deliveries come with a note in her hand: one fished out of the river in the valley, one pinned to a tower board in Steelhaven, one on the Exchange noticeboard at Port Sable. They appear a few seconds after the order's thanks, marked "A letter." Read them when they come; they are not repeated.
The Journal
Press J or the JOURNAL button to open it. It has a chapter for each map, and each chapter has six pages. A page is earned by the work, never bought:
- On maps 2 to 7, the first page comes with your first sale, the next four with each of the first four orders delivered, and the last with the Commission.
- In the valley the pages come with your first sale, lighting the furnace, hiring the Digger, the Hands' Home reaching tier 3, hiring the Carter, and the hat-pin.
Each page is told by someone on that map who saw Wren: the cook who fed her foundries, the lock-keeper whose paddle gear she cut in one night, the fisherman who heard the rolls sing after she clocked off, the fleet tech whose drones will not fly over bay nine. When a page is earned, its teller says it aloud and the Journal button pulses. Pages you have not earned show as dots with the line "A page not yet earned. Keep building."
The Journal also shows, for every map you have reached, the name of its Commission and whether it is forged yet. Locked maps say only that the road is not open yet.
The Commissions
Each map closes on one last request from its witness: the thing Wren left unfinished there. Chapter 1 is the Hat-Pin, half drawn out and left in the slack tub. Then come the Guild Key, the Remembering Blade, Meg's Compass, the Cold Core, the 400-Hour Seal and the Hundred Hands. Each one is a small object with a lot behind it, and finishing it is what changes the witness's mind. It also earns that chapter's last Journal page. How to trigger them is in Orders and stages.
Reading the story without missing it
- Talk to people. Walk up to anyone on a map and press the action button, or tap them. Each has a few lines and cycles through them. Brann's "If you get rich, I want a hat" means more once you know why.
- Do not rush past the arrival. The letter for a new map appears before your first sale there. Give it a moment.
- Open the Journal between orders. A page lands with every delivery, and the pages are where the witnesses start to doubt themselves.
- Listen at night. Each witness has a line for nightfall on their map, and on Ares it is worth hearing.
Where it ends
The road ends on Mars, at a colony where nobody admits to lighting the forge on the far ridge. What Wren found, and why she told you not to come, are the last chapter, and they are better found than read. Everything the seven witnesses told you is a clue, and so is every map you leave running behind you.