System mechanic — questline

Heaven's Fence

A four-chapter questline with a real, opt-in mechanical system attached · starts on Earth, the road at the edge of the Based Department

A note before you read on: this questline is a dark-comedy parody of a real-world group and a real tragedy. It's written by the game with that clearly intended, and this page describes it the same factual way it describes every other system here — but if that's not something you want spoiled or described in detail, skip this page.

What it is

Two recruiters, Re and La, approach you on the road and offer "the Next Level" — not experience points, they're careful to clarify, something else entirely. In exchange, they ask for total, deliberate renunciation: your possessions, your marriage, your name, "no intoxicants, no pleasures." It plays out across four chapters (THE NEXT LEVEL → THE ASCENT → THE COMPOUND → DEPARTURE), and unlike the game's other questlines, saying yes to this one comes with a genuine, working mechanical system attached — not just dialogue flags.

The premise, the recruiters' calm bureaucratic manner, the promise of a "Vehicle" waiting behind a comet, and the finale's ritual are all a recognisable parody of Heaven's Gate, the real 1990s group whose members died believing a spacecraft was following Comet Hale–Bopp. The game plays every beat of it completely straight-faced, which is where its dark comedy comes from — Re and La never once break character, and the horror is left for the player to notice on their own.

The four chapters

THE NEXT LEVEL — Re and La make their pitch. Accepting means surrendering your entire inventory and cash into a labelled glass case (only starter tools are exempt — "the starter tools are not possessions, they are the shape of a person"), and — if you're married — paying a flat 1,200 coin fee to formally sever that marriage as part of joining. You can back out at any point before finishing this chapter and get everything returned in full.
THE ASCENT — where you actually take the vow (see the mechanical system, below). Chalk marks on a wall track your progress, in-fiction, toward the hundredth level under the new flat system.
THE COMPOUND — reaching that hundredth level opens a door into a bunker at the Yard, where you're put through chores described in the game's own writing as "deliberately, aggressively boring" — filler; three scripted sixty-second "Stillness" pauses in between, where every action except reading is removed, are where the actual lore is delivered.
DEPARTURE — the finale. Re tells you about "the Vehicle," waiting behind a comet, piloted by someone who "will take anyone." Getting aboard requires a ritual with a sealed foil pouch and a choice between two flavours offered without further explanation. The pilot — dressed as a working man in a hi-vis vest with a halo slipped slightly off true — asks the same question you were just asked below.

The mechanical system: the Vows

Taking the vow in THE ASCENT genuinely changes how your character levels, for as long as you keep it:

Every skill starts leveling on a flat rate: exactly 50,000 XP for every single level, in every skill, regardless of how high that skill already is. The game's own stated philosophy: "a level of one thing costs what a level of any other thing costs."
A genuine trade-off, not a pure buff. The normal skill curve gets steeper at high levels, so early on the flat rate can make levels come faster than normal — but late-game, the normal curve can be cheaper per level than a flat 50,000. Banked XP is never touched either way; only which levels that XP currently translates to changes.
Breaking the vow is a real, mechanical consequence, not just flavour. The game's own comment calls it "the spec's own quiet horror": break it, and your levels are recalculated from your real, unchanged XP total against the normal curve — which can mean your displayed level actually drops compared to what the flat count was showing you.
The vow breaks automatically if you get married or take a summon — matching the questline's own premise that spouses and pets are "handles." It isn't a separate penalty bolted on; it's the same renunciation enforced mechanically rather than just narratively.
There's a level cap of 1,200 either way, the same ceiling the normal curve is built to. This wasn't always true — for a stretch the flat-rate path had no ceiling at all, letting dedicated players push a single skill's level into six figures, which (since enemy difficulty scales off total level) produced a real, reported bug of enemies displaying level 100,000+ on the HUD. Fixed by applying the same cap both ways.

Is this the same as "The Vowkeeper" dungeon?

No — related in name and theme only, as far as confirmed. There's a separate, ordinary combat dungeon called The Unmade Vow (gated at Total Level 450), whose boss, the Vowkeeper, cannot be killed by damage in the usual sense: bring it to exactly 20% of its health and it kneels, taking zero further damage forever. From there you get one of two permanent, mutually exclusive choices — lift the crown (it rises unkillable, pays gold, cash and Mining XP) or strike the heart at a nearby altar (it actually dies, pays the identical amount in gold, cash and Attack XP instead). Three "witness stones" can be called beforehand to double whichever reward you take. A one-time, no-take-backs choice with no third option — but a dungeon boss encounter, not the same system as the vow described above, and doesn't grant or require it.

Trivia

Both arms of the Vowkeeper's choice are worth the exact same amount, deliberately — the game's own comment states the reasoning plainly: "a fork whose arms are not worth the same is a puzzle with an answer, not a choice."
The chores in THE COMPOUND being boring is stated as intentional in the game's own design notes — the tedium is the delivery mechanism for the lore beats between them, not a mistake.
The tracksuit Re and La (and later, you) wear exists only in the writing — the character model has no clothing slot to actually render it.