"Okay... and the fog sometimes leads to the Milliways backyard."

"Apparently. I don't know anything about that part. Anyway, as far as I can tell, when a person starts out in Terraria their island is more or less safe - I mean, there are horrible monsters that try to kill you at night or when it rains, and dangerous areas full of even more horrible monsters that try to kill you more vigorously at all times of the day or night, but I can imagine someone without previous combat experience surviving it if they were clever and listened to the soulless person-things. That's how it was for me at first."

"What a place to live."

"You're not wrong. Anyway, but even in an island's safe-ish era, you can get in trouble if you go to the wrong place or do the wrong thing. One of the wrong things it's possible to do is fighting a certain kind of monster very deep underground in what's called the Underworld, because that particular monster carries around a little doll and when you kill them they drop the doll and if the doll lands in lava and burns up, it kills one of your soulless person-things and summons an enormous and extremely horrible monster called the Wall of Flesh. And after you kill a particular island's Wall of Flesh, a lot of things about the island change, including different, worse monsters in more places that attack you more often. But even though it's called the Wall of Flesh, and there's only one of it at a time per island, killing it in one island doesn't affect any of the others. And if for some insane reason you want to fight it again in the same island after you killed it the first time, you can do that, you just have to wait until the dead soulless person-thing is replaced by another one and then drop another magic doll in Underworld lava."

"This is really weird. Almost videogamey."

"I don't know what that means, but I agree that it's very weird," says Sable. "Getting back to the Moon Lord: the Wall of Flesh is the only monster that changes the state of the island like that, but there are plenty of other big nasty monsters that show up under really specific circumstances and nearly always only have one of themselves in one island at a time, and the Moon Lord is the last and nastiest."

"How are you going to find more Moon Lords to fight to get us cool magic artillery, then?"

"Well, similarly to the Wall of Flesh, he can be re-summoned after I defeat him in any particular island. It's just a little more complicated to get from 'I want to fight the Moon Lord' to actually being chased by an enormous green tentacle-faced man with no legs."

"How do you know the Moon Lord is the last and nastiest?"

"It's been about two years since the first time I fought him, I've been all over my island and pestered my soulless person-things for advice, I've checked other islands that have seen the Moon Lord, and I can't find a way to summon the next strong monster. So if there is one, it's uncharacteristically well-hidden."

"This sounds more videogamey every time you say something about the place. I should show you a video game of some kind but all that's coming into my head is Pokémon and it's not that much like Pokémon in particular."

"I'm seeing it too, yeah," says Solvei. "It's really weird."

"If that's everybody who wants a round of candies right this minute, I could go outside and show interested parties what the Celestial Staff does," says Sable.

"Yes please."

Mark and Inlaith don't say anything, but they stand with the group of interested Mileses. (So does Solvei, and so does Elarron.)

"I'll come too."

"Sort of professionally curious, but while dragons are often bigger than houses I'm also not usually fighting to the death..."

"Milan, before you go, you should at least take Bar's free drink. I promise she inexplicably conjures them out of nowhere and she is herself the least scientific being of all time."

"I feel like something must have gone wrong somewhere with my explanations if you're advertising it that way, but if you're sure it isn't dangerous, I might try it..."

Bells do not go back inside.