Archive - Downwarp - Darkunder

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Subpage: Forge + Lab

Darkunder

You stand on round metal catwalk that skirts a tall twisted column of conduits in a massive underground cavern. The column vanishes into the shadows of a bizarre ceiling far above. The cavern's roof is studded with loose chunks of concrete, remnants of the basements of buildings, even several ramps from a parking garage, all of which are tangled in steel re-bar and raggedly crisscrossed I-beams. Tubes and piping drape downward from the rusted sky, the corrugated stalactites joining similar outgrowths from the cavern's floor. Steadily burning globes of fire atop towers space unevenly along the ground provide enough shifting light to see the surrounding area and to make the shadows dance beyond their reach. The smell of ozone, iron, and oiled friction fills the air. The cave wall to one side is covered with churning gears, massive spinning driveshafts, cranks, counterweights, pistons, flywheels, and the occasional jet of steam.

Reverberating thumps, clanks, booms, hisses and whines provide a neverending cacophony of mechanical sounds, beating to a deep regular rhythm. All the pipes and conduits converge into the face of the wall, among ladders and walkways that carry the occasional drone maintainer. Suspended rails from the darkness carry a steady flow of large egg-like pods into an opening in the wall, while another set carries what appear to be mechanical drones wrapped in plastic upwards toward the ceiling and beyond. Set into the wall is a round <gate> that opens with massive gears and slams shut every few minutes in mechanical precision. Drones and other beings enter this portal, but not many exit the same way.

Just on the edge of light lies several huge, ancient machines, their articulated multi-jointed limbs frozen in rust around each other in a complicated embrace: whether in combat or orgy it is difficult to tell. Their bodies are sealed to the floor by a mass of parallel curving rods welded together resembling a giant ribcage. Tubes and power cables still faintly glowing run around, atop, and into various openings in the fallen machines. Flickerings of light can be seen within and underneath the husks, one nearby oversized tungsten coil shaped into the words of a sign that reads in orange-white light 'FORGE'. Below the sign is a <arch> between joints that provides an entrance. 

A hole in the closest column reveals the <stairs> heading up towards the surface.

Mechanist Factory

     Precision. Unison. Cyclical processes in unending perfect rhythm. This is the impression you get of this place before all else. All motion in the room beats to a systematic timing with an underlying inrush of air and release of steam--it /breathes/. *clank* *woosh* *whirr* *BOOM*  The beat dulls the senses to near-hypnotic sleepiness until you can clear your head to look around, and, not surprisingly, find yourself on the floor of a factory.

     Well, not quite the floor, but rather part of a large circular gear-tread on the equator of a sphere hundreds of meters across. The structure rotates slowly, and many rails and chain-treads loop in all angles along its inner surface. Along these traces crawl parts, machines in various states of conversion or repair, and capsules of raw material. Somehow the vast complicated maze of belts work together, intersecting in precise patterns for each assembly node. Whitehot molten steel flows in troughs across the gravity-inverted ceiling, the primary illumination of the chamber. Hydraulic presses slam into belts, triple-jointed arms spark rapid flashwelds, metal is formed and reformed. Vaguely bipedal forms twist and move in the shadows, emerging from the conveyors on the other end of the factory as identical brushed-metal drones.

     Rotating in the very center of the sphere, fed by countless conduits and meter-thick cabling, a smaller sphere is formed of gear-rings rotating on multiple axes. What you can make out of the inner <core> is often obscured by one ring or another, but there seems to be a figure inside. Catwalks ringing the surface climb into the skysphere. If you time it right there may be an opening to duck through as well, just like the cyclical door leading <out>.

Factory Core

  Wheels within wheels within wheels. The core of the factory is contained in several ring-gears that rotate along all axes, supporting in their center a complex web of cables and chains. Either you have shrunk, or the inside is truly larger than the outside, because the floor curves into the slope of an immense bowl. The sides of the bowl arch up overhead to close in this loose spherical cage. 
  Hanging in the center of the web like some immense spider is a rough-sided crystal of amber nearly fifty feet across. Filigrees of light and shadow chase each other across the rifts and valleys, often causing the entire surface to quiver like jelly. Pulses run up and down the sinewy cables, while the chains are pulled taught against the crystal as it spins erratically with the innermost gear ring. Golden light from within the core meets the red light suffused from the factory floor, giving an impression of fire and the tang of ozone. In the bands of electromagnetic flux, the region around the core is highly concentrated, torn into unnatural contortions by the whirling masses of iron and steel. 
  One can duck <out> between the spinning gears to return to the factory floor.

Factory Core [Broken]

     Wheels within wheels within wheels. The core of the factory is contained in several ring-gears that rotate along all axes, supporting in their center a complex web of cables and chains. Either you have shrunk, or the inside is truly larger than the outside, because the floor curves into the slope of an immense bowl. The sides of the bowl arch up overhead to close in this loose spherical cage. 

     Dangling from the center of the web of wires is part of a huge yellow crystal. Fragments of it are littered on one ring no longer spinning. Filigrees of light and shadow chase each other across the rifts and valleys, and spill out of gaping crack in the lower half. Pulses run up and down the sinewy cables, while the chains are pulled taught against the crystal as it spins erratically with the innermost gear ring. Golden light from within the core meets the red light suffused from the factory floor, giving an impression of fire and the tang of ozone. In the bands of electromagnetic flux, the region around the core is highly concentrated, but vortices spin chaotically around the hole. 

     One can duck <out> between the spinning gears to return to the factory floor.

Necropolis cavern

    There is a sense of space here, choked in with crumbling buildings, houses leaning on each other, alleys and shadowed spaces.  The city is deep and strong, thick with the dust of corpses.  An image of compression clings to you, of spirits everywhere, watching, touching your presence in their space.  They gather, move, disperse and reform, obsessed with the things that keep them here.

    The streets have lamps at each corner, though often their light has been extinguished: filaments burnt out, valves rusted shut, candles burned away.  Shadows flicker even within the soft and lonely pools of glowing comfort beneath each aged post.  Occasionally a lamplighter comes by to return the darkness to light: a raised hand and ritual chant, replacing bad parts, lifting the burning candlestaff - each has a special ritual for this.  All are effective at their jobs.

    Alleys stagger left and right; the streets are paved with what seems like cobblestones.  A closer look reveals names engraved on each one, sometimes memories as well.  Most are worn to smoothness by the passage of countless and invisible feet.  Most paths here are directionless, like worms have crawled through the softest spaces and left the rest to sit.  Sometimes a building is found standing in the road as if it crawled out and died there.

    A few ways have signs; most ways have signs; no ways have signs - it depends on where you are.  Some of those signs point up, toward the <gardens> above. Some of them point inward to <secret> paths, open only to the wise or the fearless.  A few even point out, toward the <Darkunder> cavern.  In one of the busier areas, you can sense the disturbingly lively vibrations of a dance club, the <Pit>.

[ Exits: <secret>, <Darkunder>, <gardens>, <Pit> ]

The Pit - Club Floor

The room looks like a pair of converted warehouses, one wall knocked down between them and a mismatched bit of wall erected to join them more solidly.  Smoke fills the air, the tarry and bitter scent of tobacco mingling with the warm scent of cloves, the cool scent of menthol, and the occasional whiff of something more exotic.
  
Bodies fill the room.  The booths at the walls are waited on occasionally by black-clad androgynes in lipstick and heavy eyeliner.  The dance floor is filled with people gyrating and sweating to the beat.  The lights pulse softly in time with the boosted bass, other lights swooping in time with other elements of the music.  It's hypnotic.
  
The bartender is a large, surly man with a dour glare and a pack of playing cards in his sleeve.  He serves your drinks, brooks no excuses, and cuts off anybody that looks like they'll have a hard time walking home.  Not to worry, the other people around the bar will help you to somebody's home, even if it's not your own.  Occasionally, the <shadows> of old friends can be seen through the corner of your eye, inserting themselves into your life for the moment you see them.
  
To the back of the room, halfway hidden behind the <DJ's booth> is a stairwell leading <upstairs>. Back where you came from, a <gray> door sits.  In a quiet corner away from the core of the commotion, there is a <black> door.

Laboratory of the Psychonaut

This room seems completely disconnected from the main room, despite being linked by a thick door.  The walls, the floor, the ceiling are all white.  The light is white.  The work surfaces are white.  Even the air feels white, when inhaled.  Despite being a laboratory, there are no racks of equipment to be seen.  Only the two large, white medical [gynecologist?!] tables in the centre of the room give this place any sense of purpose.
 
From here, one may go back out to the [main] room.