Archive - Downwarp - Darkunder - Forge and Lab

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[Archivist’s note: this area had multiple descriptions over the course of time, due to various plots. They are preserved here in their entirety out of self-indulgence on the part of the Archivist--who can get away with it because ve wrote them.]

Forge [Default]

Blistering sparks of light and sound cascade the senses. Along the somewhat narrow optical band of the electromagnetic spectrum, the room is darkness stabbed by harsh actinic flashes from arc-welder torches. For those who can sample the more exotic spectra, the place is a riot of false-color heat signatures and gleaming webs of magnetic flux. Fortunately one does not have to be limited to one or the other--a brushed-metal fox stands near the door passing out complimentary full-sensor-array goggles. Once adjusted to the chosen input-gestalt, the room's appearance becomes clearer.

A vast dancefloor sprawls across the open space in the center of the room. In peak times with energized music the floor seethes with all manner of sentients: organic, metallic, trans-dimensional and otherwise. Ebbs and surges of the crowd are constant--there are no true stops in the flow of metallo-electronic beats. Oddly enough the music seems to be in part created by the precise movements of those dancing--footfalls translated into crashing guitar chords and flashes from the welding torches. A particularly strong discharge draws attention to the vaulted ceiling. High above the dancefloor rotate immense menhirs, great stone slabs suspended in loose spiraling formation. They hang in tightly defined nodes of magnetic flux, emitting bolts of blue-white lightning sporadically as they orbit each other.

A rift in the gyrating crowd reveals a curving <bar> fashioned of rough corrugated steel against one wall. To the direct left of the bar is a large thick metal-plated door with numerous <warning stickers> clustered below a sign simply stating <Lab>. A corridor across from the bar leads under the <arch> towards the greater cavern outside.

Lab [Default]

A vast space arcs upward in the hazy flickering Tesla-tower discharges. Bolts crackle in spirals in the ceiling of this chamber as in the Forge just outside. Sullen red glows emanate from two translucent spheres hundreds of feet across that hang on networks of thick power conduits. The spheres pulse strongly in deep rhythm, sending banded ripples of light down the conduits towards the main lab area. The power is distributed through spiderweb wires into hovering supply stations ready to provide tools, materials and power sources.

Dark steel towers tipped with rounded bulbs soar above a maze of half-constructed experiment platforms. Data coalesces on flexible screens mounted in floors, walls, tabletops and modular stations. The laboratory seems capable of performing and monitoring many experiments at once. Several automated systems are carrying out a few already.
 
A heavy steel door leads into the <forge> just outside.

Forge/Lab [Exterior, Mobile, Strangevirus]

A towering monster of animated rusted steel crashing around on misjointed legs a hundred feet high. Two rusted-together colossal old robot bodies once lay fused together, now arms and legs bent downward on all sides like a haphazard spider.

It steps carefully around any obstructions, while blueish light crackles from a blown-apart chamber where the Lab once was. Inside through the windows, one can see a concentrated mass of black and silver virus-stuff, wrapped around a small figure in the center of the controlling web. The room is just barely recognizable as what was once Nikolai's laboratory. Around to the back of the chassis there is still an <arch> high up off the ground with a flickering sign that reads 'FORGE'. It seems to be the only way in, if one can reach it.

Lab [Strangevirus]

This room is dark. It's difficult to see anything. Wait. *thump* There's something... *thump* It's not from the Forge outside. A rhythmic pulse down into the bones. *thump* With each pulse is a faint amount of illumination, and with that you can see...oh, horrors. This isn't the Lab--but it was.

The pulses of dull blood-light come from a two-chambered heart suspended in the high roof of the chamber within an arterial web of networked spider's silk. *thump* Towers of slick living obsidian arch from the sides of the room, honing to points just piercing the heart's psuedo-flesh. The lower portions of the towers all contain alcoves walled in with semi-clear membranes and scaled with datascreens. *thump* Across the center of the room sprawls a linked network of equipment enclosures, most barely visible except in short glimpses. Bulbous growths droop from the towers to extrude tools with spindly legs.

*thump* The cages...on the tables. Oilsheen pillars curl inward, encasing fractal trees all spines and venom. *thump* Around one tree, a chevroned silver-black snake, deceptively long. A broken mirror reassembles crystal shards in moire patterns. *thump* Other half-eaten, half-uncertain experiments lie all in imaginary realms, the heartlight pulses not giving form to unseen nightmares.

*thump* If one peers closely, there's a faint crack from under a steel <door>, with a faint noise-music behind...the only apparent way out.

Lab [Crystalline, Post-Strangevirus Purge]

The room is cold, so very cold. Massive crystalline blue rods spear across the room and block access to most of it. The rods subdivide into smaller and smaller subdivisions, white sparks running across the zones where they touch. Pools of white liquid lie dormant with shiny black oil floating on the surface.

There isn't anything alive in here, merely a complex latticework of strange metals and semicrystals and flat, unrecognizable minerals, crackling with remnants of flowing blue energy. It was a laboratory once, filled with brilliant experiments and mad science. But after Strangeinfection, and conversion from this universe to an utterly alien one and back, this is what remains.

The <door> out has been melted, blasted inward by fierce heat.

Antechamber [Crystalline, Post-Strangevirus Purge]

The section of the lab here is jumbled together with huge columnar crystals, somewhat jury-rigged into a strange apparatus. Two large hexagonal pillars jut up not quite vertically on either side of the room, plated with strange metals but clear within their cores. Several loops of metal are attached to plates on the sides of the pillars facing each other. The crystal pillars themselves rise above a huge pool of silver light, a rippling containment field shimmering over a large quantity of collected magic mirror. Bright sigils and lines glow around the edges of the pond, keeping it from merging with the rest of the lab's mirrorstuff.

Suspended above the pool and equidistant between the two columns is a perfect octagonal blue-white crystal. Each surface of the crystal is plated with different kinds of metal, and it swings freely from a metal rod somewhere in the ceiling. Various wires and sensory devices coil haphazardly around the crystal and its support.

On the back wall behind the pool rises a strange concentration of crystals of all sizes, arranged across the space in seemingly random clusters until one looks closer and finds that mounted underneath the clumps is three long rows of black and white keys. A panel off to the side sports stops and controls, as well as a digital interface for tools and other plugins.

A winding route between cluttered crystals is a way back <out> into the main lab.

Forge [Mobile, Rave]

Blistering sparks of light and sound cascade the senses. The Forge has been transformed from a closed concentration of energetic darkness into an exploded flower of light and music. Blue-white light ripples from silvery liquid streaming all over every available surface, casting underwater interference-patterns into the air. The ceiling and walls have unfolded into themselves, leaving nearly all but the floor open to the sky. For those with alternative sensory inputs, the arena is a maelstrom of magflux fields and heat-signatures.

In the open space across the center of the room sprawls a huge dancefloor of clear glass atop a pool of more mirror-liquid. Dancers on the floor excite the liquid beneath and shafts of colored light often spear upwards from the footfalls. A constant crowd surges in and out of the dance, the music itself seeming to be created by the movements of those dancing. A few curved buttresses rise at the edges of the room, arc-welding torches along their length strobing in time with the changing beat. From the tips of these ribs discharge electrical bolts into immense stone menhirs suspended in the air above the floor. The stones glow in varying colors as they pass through the beams of light, spiraling in complicated magnetic node formations.

An <arch> leads off the dancefloor and out of the complex. On the opposite side is a massive growth of bluish crystals and odd liquids that was once Nikolai's <Lab>, and is now consumed in a wild liquid fire, the apparent source of the magic mirror substance. There was once a bar off to one side, but is has melted into a series of low couches to lounge on. 
[[NOTE: What goes on 'outside' can be seen and heard here as well.]]

Lab [Mobile, Rave]

The room sears with light pouring from somewhere in the center. Massive crystalline blue rods spear across the room and block access to most of it. The rods subdivide into smaller and smaller subdivisions, white sparks running across the zones where they touch. Pools of white liquid lie glowing with quicksilvered energy. Beams of light refract and rebound through the glassy surfaces, pouring out of the missing back wall of the Lab.

Across the complex latticework of strange metals and semi-crystals crackles blue and white light, tracing crazy tribalistic patterns. It was a laboratory once, filled with brilliant experiments and mad science. But after Strangeinfection, and conversion from this universe to an utterly alien one and back, it was transformed into a dead sterile place. Now, magic mirrorstuff courses over everything, fueling the dead bones of the lab and causing it to rise again.

The <door> out to the Forge has been melted, it now ripples with silvery-white light as the mirror clings to the edges like a portal to a planet of liquid skies.

Forge [Exterior, Mobile, Rave]

The first thing one sees is the legs, thick as freeway overpass pillars and taller than any two-story apartment complex. There's at least six or seven steel and hydraulic struts dripping with old cables and rust, touching down across an area of several city blocks. Following the leg supports a hundred or more feet upwards to the source finds a jumbled complex of immense and ancient robot hulks, themselves the size of several buildings. Their corroded metal bodies wrap around each other while the former limbs sprout from the mass and hang down to form the legs.

The immense size of this mobile structure is either an illusion or some dizzying spatial distortion, however, since it appears to fit easily between even the smallest of buildings, and clambers along public areas without crushing anyone. This might be due in part to the substance that courses though the entire edifice: silvery semi-liquid that coils around the limbs, spirals in vinelike profusion around the upper body, and provides the impetus to haul the long-dead carcass into motion. On the other side, if one can get up to it, there is an <arch> to go inside the transformed Forge.

Forge [Exterior, Sitting, Rave]

Glimmering silvery masses of magic mirror wrap the husks of two joined buildings, formerly robot bodies. Struts from folded-up legs rise three or four stories into the air above the main structure. The base itself has unfolded, walls melted away on one side into a vast dancefloor surging with life. Music can be heard pouring up out of the quicksilver-covered struts and walls.

Despite the immense size of the structure, it seems to fit in whatever area it finds itself. Light spears upwards from the dancefloor, electricity crackles and bounces off hewn chunks of stone floating in loose circles directly above. The converted magic-mirror glows blue-white along its entire length, soft and pale like moonlight. On the apparent front of the golem is an open chamber that blazes with an intense light, fragmented and refracted into a thousand blue-white beams by crystal growths covering the walls. A solitary figure might be seen within, shrouded with light. There is the remnants of an <arch> among the unfolded walls to gain access to the floor inside.