Lair

A **Lair** is an area of space enclosed by a shimmering barrier.

More information may be found in the book *Sameter's Lair Atlas*.

## General information

* A lair's entrance is a shimmering barrier, that divides the "real world" from the lair which is conceptually a pocket-dimension with alternate physical rules. Upon touching a lair's entrance, it displays in the script of the one touching it, what Area Rank this lair is. A lair's entrance may only be crossed by eight persons at a maximum, although some high-level adventurers can bend those rules. The entrance also tells which elemental aspect it takes, and its charging status.
	+ Practical rules: The average level of the party should be equal or higher than the lair's rank in order for a raid to be successful. Entering a lair should be done with as close to a full party as possible, in order to be successful. Especially entering a lair alone is foolish.
* Inside a lair, there is a party screen (something that is not visible in the regular world, and that shows relative stats for all party members).
	+ Practical rules: Stat bars dropping to zero doesn't indicate death; saving someone is still possible
* Lairs fall into different categories: Some tell a story, some have several challenges, some are simple gauntlets with just one level, some are labyrinths full of self-resetting traps, some try to entrap people in loops. Possibilities and variations are endless. The levels of monsters and the challenges they pose vary: A lair may hold unchallenging monsters and a supremely powerful boss, or monster swarms of low challenges. Many lairs have monsters that are higher-level than the lair's rank, although the "blue" Essence Monster is regularly lower than that rank. So far, all observed lairs had only a single essence monster, as their second-most important feature.
	+ Practical cheat: a few lairs allow challengers to incapacitate the essence monster and move it close to the entrance. This trick allowed Rain to awaken entire parties of Unawakened who all killed the incapacitated essence monster together. Lairs that don't allow a party to backtrack or to leave without dealing with the monster, or lairs that are impractically large, would make this trick impossible to perform.
* The **Core** (alternately called the **heart** or **nexus**) is the most important feature of any lair, as it gets totally and irrevocably destroyed when the core gets destroyed. Only Awakened can do so, though. The Core is usually located in a naturally-formed, large open room where it sits as if on display. Despite having some similarities to organisms, Cores are considered to not be alive, nor intelligent. There is always a path to the core.
* Clearing a lair of its monsters, is slowly depleting the charge of a lair. Once it is sufficiently low on its charge or once the challenging party reaches the core area, a lair breaks into a **core-panic**, which causes all remaining monsters to rush into an attack on the challengers. A fully depleted lair has nothing to protect the core anymore, which leaves the challenging party with two options: Destroying the core (i.e. harvesting it for essence/awakening or an accolade plate), or just leaving so that the lair may slowly recharge.
	+ A lair that recharges doesn't spawn an essence monster until very late in the recharging process, and the longer it remains unchallenged after fully recharged, the higher level the essence monster can expected to be. Lairs may need weeks or months to provide a new essence monster again. For that reason, lairs with impractical access are often harvested for the lasting one-time benefit of their accolade, while more easily accessible lairs are farmed to awake people.
* Material mined from Lairs disappear after a few days according to the fable of Gimmen's Folly as recounted by Rain.
* Most lairs are located below ground, with their entrances in caves etc. Much more rarely and only within ranked areas, lairs are located on the open surface, although they then may also have underground elements to them. On that note, lairs blend in with their environment and cannot be remotely found without the usage of Mana Sight: From outside a lair, Detection (the Aura skill) senses only mirror images of the geographic features surrounding the lair, which makes even the regular visual sense more helpful than Detection in this case.
* Nothing physical can cross a lair envelope without an entity carrying it in some manner.
* Aspects of a lair can spill over into the surrounding environment. For example, the area around the Breathless Wastleland is extremely dry.
* Aura Anchors do not function across lair boundaries.

## List of documented lairs

The story of Delve has so far revealed the locations (and delved into the interior of several) of the following lairs:

* Everdeep Fortress: Dark-aspect Rank-5 Lair, featuring a Dire Darkmonk essence monster, rank 5.
* The Fells: Chemical-aspect Rank-11 Lair, featuring a Corpulent Gill Monitor essence monster, rank 6.
* Essed Frostbarrows: Cold-aspect Rank-9 Lair, featuring a Frost Hound Alpha essence monster, rank 5
* The Sparkscale Deep holds a yet unexplored Arcane lair of level 36. As Arcane lairs are known to not let people out until they are finished, Ascension left it alone.
* Sale family lair, Heat-aspect Rank-9 Lair, featuring a Firetail Gecko essence monster, rank 7
* The Menovik hunting camp lair, holds a yet unexplored green (chemical?) lair of unknown level.
* Breathless Wasteland: Arcane-aspect Lair
* Nadir: A Light-aspect Lair situated in the settlement of Nadir, with which it shares a name.

## List of known, destroyed lairs

* Ander’s Copse (green plate)
* Southshore Rat Warren (dark grey plate)
* Hoarfrost Labyrinth (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* Badlands Heat Lair 3057 2 8 (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* Badlands Heat Lair 3059 9 2 (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* Badlands Arcane Lair 3055 4 19 (Arcane-aspect, purple plate)
* The Ice Cavern (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* Blackfoot Trench (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* The Halls of Corruption (Chemical-aspect-aspect)
* The Fire Well (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* Snow Sprite Lair (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* Badlands Cold Lair 3060 1 4 (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* Nerek’s Point (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* The Fire Fields (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* The Bottomless Well (Force-aspect, light-grey plate)
* Oh Gods! Not Another Chem Lair! (Chem-aspect)
* The Icy Cellar (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* The Solar Temple (Light-aspect)
* Sharpton’s Delving (Dark-aspect, black plate)
* The Hole (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* The Shifting Sands (Force-aspect, light-grey plate)
* The Pride of Eker (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* The Everburn (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* The Gravel Pit (Force-aspect, light-grey plate)
* The Lair of Embers (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* We Can’t Just Call It ‘The Lair’ (Force-aspect)
* Raining Fire Cave (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* The Dunch Pit (Chem-aspect)
* Badlands Heat Lair 3059 3 8 (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* Frost Hollow (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* The Sunken Arena (Dark-aspect, black plate)
* Badlands Cold Lair 3040 11 24 (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* Burrik’s Abode (Heat-aspect, red plate)
* The Game (Force-aspect, light-grey plate)
* Greenfort (Force-aspect, light-grey plate)
* The Winter Tomb (Cold-aspect, blue plate)
* The Broken Fields (Force-aspect, light-grey plate)
* Hollow Gate (Dark-aspect, black plate)
* Heatmarsh (Heat-aspect, red plate)

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 121
2. ↑ Chapter 47
3. ↑ Chapter 120
4. ↑ Chapter 118
5. ↑ Chapter 117
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 246
7. ↑ Chapters 39-45
8. ↑ Chapters 84-89
9. ↑ Chapters 118-121
10. ↑ Chapter 164
11. ↑ Chapter 173
12. ↑ Chapter 218
13. ↑ Chapter 244