premise and setting.
Jan. 8th, 2017 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaswenPREMISE
Welcome tosidereality, a science-fiction horror-action setting located within a technological marvel only identified as the Tower. The Tower stands thousands of floors above a dense blanket of churning smog and beneath a poisonously red sky. Nightfall is silent save for when electrical storms thunder in with spectacles of white-purple lightning. Some days, it seems like that smog is rising higher and higher.
Though our intrepid heroes (...) can't be sure exactly what happened, this is what we know: the Tower is highly technologically advanced, built to operate as its own independent enclosed city, and it is uninhabited. It is powered by generators that collect energy produced by the echoes of a collapsing black hole. Looking out any window shows a vast nothingness most of the time, though on a clear day, the distant image of a similar tower very far away to the northeast can be spotted. Upward is the heavens, downward is a solid layer of impenetrable toxic pollution. The tower has thousands of floors, and the closest floor to the ground, the generator level on 599, is the lowest safe level to be on. The higher you climb, the safer you might feel, as the electricity runs smoothly and the disruptions are fewer. The lower you go, the stranger and more dangerous things become.
The name of the tower or the planet, the identity vanished population are all unknown. We do not know what happened. We may never. (Do we actually want to?)
THE TOWER
Residential apartments are generously proportioned and yours for the claiming, clustered together more for a sense of community than need for space. Whole floors may be committed to life-giving engineering purposes, such as jungle-like gardens for the purposes of fresh oxygen, hydroponic laboratories for farming produce, and refridgerated DNA "libraries" that contain the sequences for a variety of animals that can be installed into an incubating machine for the purposes of growing your own livestock. How thoughtful!
You are both invited and encouraged to assume setting features at your liesure, both its benefits and its horrors -- research laboratories, floating swimming pools, overgrown aquariums, galleries, and so on. There are thousands of floors, with only a few reserved for plot-specific mechanics, noted here.
THE GENERATOR LEVEL
The source of power for this place is also the pullpoint for characters emerging from their own worlds. The infamous Level 599 is the generator level, which ostensibly fuels the entire tower: a vast floor full of humming, shuddering chambers, catching incoming deep-space static from satellites high above. Whatever controls they had are long fused, unable to be manipulated, and largely held behind (so far) impenetrable force fields. Reality does not always like to stay consistent on the generator level, because reality was not meant to withstand constant bombardment from static energy produced by a collapsing black hole.
As such, sometimes things with energy in them - organic things, living things, undead things - appear in the generator room. Like a desiccated piece of gum or a paper clip being shaken out of a piggy bank when you expected pennies. All kinds of things. (Like you.)
At the far end of the generator level is a set of double doors that have been jammed permanently open. On the wall to the left of them is a message: TAKE ONE OF THE COMMUNICATORS. GO UP. DINNER EVERY SEVEN DAYS AT 1900HRS, FLOOR 3001. DO NOT GO DOWN. YOU WILL BE KILLED. GO UP.
THE LOWER LEVELS
Darkness, save for fits and starts of power surges running through light sources that haven't yet exploded. While newcomers are invited to go up, a great many terrible things have filtered downwards, home to just about anything your imagination can conjure. Zombie swarms, starving dragons, drifting clouds of gnashing teeth and glowing eyes, demon-possessed wolves, and as many diverse creatures as there are worlds.
Beware, too, of some of your standard problems of flooding, doors suddenly closing and locking, the occasional ominous rumble of an explosion nearby, or the actual explosions themselves.
THE COMMUNICATORS
The communicators are smartphone-like devices that connect to a shared network. They are capable of video and audio transmission, as well as texting. Each one comes with inbox capabilities, and private phototaking and video recording. You can set your own username and change it after the fact, but each communicator comes with a unique identifying tag that requires some hackery skill to disguise or change, but a general anonymous feature is available to all.
These devices also operate as your key to the building. They are required for opening doors and accessing levels, and also provide a rough map to help you go where you wish to go. They can also be used to lock down any residential room you wish, which becomes inaccessible to anyone else unless you set it so it permits certain devices.
THE SMOG
The mysterious smog that blankets this world is thick and ever-present, and even when it seems like high winds are battering at the Tower's windows, it only seems to make the fog fitful rather than disperse, like a riled ocean. It is confirmed to be highly toxic, and though you might catch a glimpse of some shadow or shiver of movement lurking down there, do you really want to meet whatever is capable of braving such elements?
