Setting: The Library

[ze_arteests]

General Description

The incomplete layer of the world has been torn away, and where space used to fade into emptiness there now stretches out a horizon of endless stormy water and a cloudy twilight sky. In the morning, the western sky always glows with dusky red-gold from the rising sun, and gradually fades into an indigo night. The moon is always rust-red, resembling a lunar eclipse, although it may be obscured by cloud cover. The weather ranges from pleasant to less pleasant, with rainstorms a frequent event.

A behemoth library has replaced the gallery you knew, and is the only thing to break up the flat horizon, a giant half-sunken vertical labyrinth of white stone and metal. It's been divided into four levels, each with their own advantages and threats.

Three teams portraits are in each area, none of them particularly close to each other, and all welded unmovable into the walls. Aside from the team portraits, the familiar living portraits seem to have vanished. Now empty frames are placed into the walls, but the canvases inside are empty-- until it's time for a competition, then they all shift to show the repeated design of the same painting, over and over, before characters are pulled in.

LEVEL 1: The Sunken Level
Teams: Canary, Fawn, Cardinal

Area Description

Water has seeped through the library down through the white stone halls and stairwells. In the shallowest, most usable hallways the water laps at just ankle depth, sparing the books in these shelves. But the halls don't stay consistently elevated, slopes and stairwells crossing over each other in bizarre non-euclidean geometry. Some halls are drowned completely, useless, with failed shelf barricades sunk to the bottom of the rooms full of slowly rising water.

The darkness here is abated by light from glowworms in the water, and glass aquarium columns filled with bright bioluminescent jellyfish, somehow maintained despite the disrepair of the rest of the library.

To pursue the old volumes in the shelves nets books that are mostly unreadable, pages fused together and ruined from moisture. But looking through their spines, the contents appear to be old classical literature dealing with the occurrence of abnormal or inexplicable phenomena of the natural or human worlds.

One book is more intact than the others, right near the stairwell up to the next floor. The journal talks about water, and maintaining barricades. It should point teams in the right direction.

Following instructions on old sepia pieces of paper, the teams have found an area with a broken hot water pipe, and labored to clear the area of debris and assemble the onsen. Woven reed mats filter the water and make cushions, and old shelves have been disassembled and made into waterproof boards to section it off from the cooler waters of the rest of the flooded level. The waters steam at a warm comfortable temperature, and the onsen pool is large enough to allow several teams to enjoy it.

Threat: Flooding.

Characters will need to maintain barricades and divert waters to other places to prevent the water from rising too high and flooding into their portraits, or even forcing them to go a level up until the problem can be taken care of. Drains are located high on the walls, the strange gravity behind what occasionally allows water to seep through them. However, if water isn't diverted there, it's more likely to flow into other less convenient places than back to the ocean outside.

Provisions

Seaweed: Occasionally found washed up on the stone floors of the shallows in long strings. The leaves can be shredded and dried into sheets like in paper making production, or they can be boiled and eaten in soup.

Water Lily Roots: Potato-like tubers can be connected from this plant, as a starchy staple food. The water lilies are found only in rooms with deep water, so you'll need to swim out to get them. The flowers emit a dim red glow.

Water Lily Fruit: while the roots are something like potatoes, a starchy staple crop, the fruit produced from the flower of the water lily are quite a bit like olives. Need to be leached in salt water first, or boiled.

Jellyfish: Range in size from a few centimeters to half a meter long, they provide a clear steady blue light. Columns full of them are already set into the walls, but they're also found swimming freely where it is deep enough for them. Their sting is harmless to humans, though if you run into a lot of them it will get a bit itchy.

Glowworms: Live off moss growing on the damp walls and ceilings. They provide quite a bit of ambient light down on the lowest level. Eating them is inadvisable.Clay: In rooms where it's knee deep or less, a pale clay covers the ground, and can be harvested for building material, to seal up cracks, and various other things.

Glivin: Beetles that are the adult form of the glowworms. Unlike their larval state, they do not produce any light. They have a thin papery shell, and are attracted to lights. They are useful to feed lasants and also act as prey for tyrrin.

Reorean: A fish found in the shallows in areas well-lit by glowworms, their prey. Suitable for catching via. spearfishing. They are about a foot long fully grown, with aggressively vibrant spots and stripes, to scare off predators. The spines on its fins carry a poison, but not one deadly to humans if ingested. Rather, it will cause auditory and visual hallucinations, persisting about an hour or so, along with a dizziness that lasts a little bit longer. If filleted properly, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Portrait Locations

All portraits on the first floor are equidistant from each other and the central spiral stairwell, wrapped around a hydropowered lift that leads up to the second level.

Canary: Canary's portrait is placed high on a wall, appearing to be accessible only from the ceiling, but walking forward makes it clear that the gravity shifts, the wall becoming the floor, and then the ceiling. The water makes it's way 270 degrees around the room, leaving just one wall(the portrait's wall) dry.
Fawn: A waterfall from a topsy-turvy staircase curtains off a small hall with two jellyfish columns on either side of their portrait.
Cardinal: Cardinal's Portrait is located on the wall of a room with deep water. Book cases have been piled up high and form a path that can be walked along, just barely emerging from the dark surface. Water lilies float on the surface on either side of the path, glowing red and lighting the room up.

LEVEL 2: The Beasts' Lair Level
Teams: Celeste, Lilac, Copper Rose

Area Description

The mad escher architecture leads up a single central spiral staircase into darkness. The dampness dissipates, and with the absence of the jellyfish columns and moss, the layer is left in darkness.

In the central hub torch chandeliers are installed, and wall sconces down well traveled halls. Into more obscure passages, lost in the library's labyrinth halls, it's clear they tried burning anything to keep the lights on from charred remains of books and bookshelves, and the piles of ash. Deep claw marks score the floor, where it was clear they failed. You aren't alone in this nocturnal darkness.

The books here are torn and missing pages, treated roughly. Pages are stuck together with blood and grime, but the few that are semi-readable appear to be the remains of survival manuals for a place much colder than this, though they read a bit like propaganda . . . "The glorious people's resourcefulness", and similar phrases feature.

One book is different from the others here, as well. A journal is found in the shelves in the open area beneath the chandeliers, with warnings of not letting the lights go out.

Threat: Don't let the lights go out.

Travelling into the darkness and areas without chandeliers and wall sconces to hunt is one thing, but to just let them go out invites all sorts of predators into the inhabited areas.

And. . . complete darkness might just invite some of the older, largerbeasts to go on the prowl.

Provisions

Herbivores

Hales: A small, abundant rodent with a black pelt, making them difficult to see in the dark. The meat is soft and tasty. They're likely to get into anything left out, and carry off things left in the dark. If you don't want to lose things, don't leave them where they can get at it.

Sibera: A rodent of unusual size, an oversized hare more than anything, it stands approximately three feet at the haunches and has a black pelt dotted with grey spots. It is ridiculously fast prey that requires traps (and sturdy traps, to hold strong against a creature of that size) and planning to corner, and with the force they run at, being rammed into by one could cause broken ribs. But there are benefits to taking the time to hunt one: being larger means it will feed more.

Lasant: A small and extremely rare bird with gamey meat, like most birds these are occasionally egg laying. If fattened up and protected they will produce a few eggs a week. Finding eggs without raising them is extremely unusual.

Glivin: Beetles that are the adult form of the glowworms. Unlike their larval state, they do not produce any light. They have a thin papery shell, and are attracted to lights. They are useful to feed lasants and also act as prey for tyrrin.

Carnivore

Stoxat: A black-pelted predator with sharp teeth, this long bodied beast stands the size of a fox and makes a meal of all the common herbivores but especially the birds and their eggs. Bites are likely to get infected if left untreated, and you could lose some fingers or toes, but fatalities are highly unlikely from the venom.

Kasian Leura: Death comes from above. These lynx-like chimera lurk on the top of shelves and swoop down on unwary travelers. With over thirty kilograms of raw muscle and a wing span of fifteen feet, they’re strong enough to carry smaller humans to their nests and happy to maul even skilled combatants.

Terines: Rare roaming packs of angry, angry carnivores with a patchy black and white pelt, a single terine that can only be put down with a concerted effort. Mauling and death from rabid hungry beasts: Likely!

Tyrrin: A species that appears to be halfway between a bat and a bird, with the bat's leathery wings but with the beak of a bird. They feed off glivin, and tend to roost in cracks in the walls, and hanging off unlit chandeliers and sconces. They rely on being unreachable from their predators, so their hearing is not excellent, if you track down a sleeping one or lure one with glivin, they aren't hard to ambush.

Found only deep into the unlit areas.

???: (don't let the lights go out)

Portrait Locations

The dorms on the second level are arranged in a fairly intuitive way. The main path of torches leads from the stairwell and life from the first level to a central path hub, an open space with chandeliers, and following the torches leads to another stairwell at the end of the second level.

These stairs are ordinary white stone, leading back and forth up out of the darkness, but besides them is a strange straight vertical slope that can be walked along as it it were an ordinal path. Near the end it loops around back to a regular horizontal path, luckily, as gravity is less strange on the third level.

Celeste: Located in the hall nearest to the stairwell/lift down to the first level.
Lilac: Located in the central hub of the hallways, the floor's most open area, where the strange topsy-turvy architecture is most visible by the lights of the multiple chandeliers.
Copper Rose: Located by the stairs up and path beside it up to the third level.

Level 2: The Bigger Picture

In the same central hub as Lilac, across the opposite wall, is the bigger portrait.

LEVEL 3: The Overgrown Level
Teams: Teal, Saffron, Byzantium.

Area Description

Continuing upwards the architecture begins to conform to a consistent point of gravity, and the halls are half lit with diffused light. Big arching white stone windows have had the glass broken out, and vines push through, invading the library's insides. Mushrooms and other fungi grow out of bookshelves, and air plants hang off off looping vines in stairwells.

Plants and fungi have completely overrun the area, and thick woody vines grow rapidly and in the process of invading new areas. Some halls have been completely blocked off by living barricades. The greenery is beautiful yes, but not very forgiving.

The remaining books appear to have all been bound in some sort of hide-- in various shades of human dark tans and pales, scars and ink tattoos on some of the books only confirm what it is they're bound in. The remaining pages show them to be anatomy volumes.

A journal is here by the slope from up from the second floor, talking about vines and how they entirely cut off their access to the roof, of someone found tangled in vines after sleeping too long.

Threat: Rapid plant growth.

If left unchecked it will cover halls and make navigating the level impossible, possibly even covering up the entrances to team portraits. They'll need to be at least pruned and cut back. With most the flora being living, and water being plentiful, burning is very difficult and mostly results in smoke, causing new problems rather than getting rid of the original one.

Farming

The growth of crops, like the rest of the flora on level three, is sped. They take about a week to mature

Plants grow only on level three, in the fertile dirt littering the stone floors created from decomposing plant matter. Soil beds can be made from knocked over bookshelves, and they will need to be regularly maintained to keep wild species from choking them out. (on the top floor, the acid rain is an issue, the darkness prevents the second level from working, and the first level is too damp.)

Plants listed under this section only grow if cultivated and the seeds will need to be acquired from games. The following plants are not found wild.

Vinar: a pod fruit. Cutting open the long pod of a vinar reveals a set of grey seeds which can be ground to use as spice, or the entire thing can be cooked, and used as a pepper. Very spicy.

Doholn: grows gourd/pear shaped, with the outside skin being similar to that of an eggplant, in red. Cut open, the inside is gelatinous, with large hard seeds, about five clustered in the center. These are like white chestnuts, and can be cooked and eaten the same way. Grow in small bushes, like peppers or tomatoes. Sweet.

Gaat: Thick hard fibrous shell, the flesh inside is a pale pink, and with the consistency of a citrus fruit. It grows on the vine in a spherical shape. Sour.

Jifrin: Grow in clusters, with shells that split open when they're mature to reveal the salty morsels. Taste similar to salmon roe, but with a nut's texture, rather than the gelatinous one of roe.

Venisca: A plant with purple trumpet shaped flowers. The reedy stems and and leaves are edible, which have a bok choy like texture and flavor.

Karrem: Look and taste like tiny white artichokes.

Provisions

Net mushroom 1: Edible.

Net mushroom 2: When the "fruit" is cut open, it explodes into a slimy, foul-smelling toxic spore mass. Inedible once mature.

Witches Butter: Edible but tasteless. It adds a gelatin texture to soup, and prevents things from spoiling longer.

Multicolored wall fungus: A very distinct species. Edible, but unplatable, with a secondary effect. Consuming them will boost how long you can hold your breath, supplying oxygen to you. Valuable for use before diving in the waterlogged area.

Tough bracket fungus: A thick, stiff paper can be made from this species.

Ink Mushrooms: Edible if picked young, but they only stay good for six hours after picked, before they turn black and dissolve into ink. The older ones also tend to dissolve.

Vine orchids: Petals can be ground and the resulting powder dissolved in water for a headache remedy.

Pipe flowers: Cutting open the white stems reveals a heavy white gel that topical contact with skin causes a deep stinging numbness. If diluted, it is suitable for use to sooth burn wounds.

Red Cap litchen: The red caps can be boiled into a thick syrup that helps with recovery from blood loss.

White flowering plant: A tea made from the leaves of this plant causes drowsiness. If especially condensed, can be used as a knock-out drug.

Portrait Locations

All of the portraits are placed on the inside of the outer wall, arranged so they're all equally far from each other. Unlike the single main stairwell of the lower levels, multiple stairs and slopes lead up from here to the rooftop level.

Teal: North on the compass, on a wall surrounded by high arched windows, all blocked by vines growing in.
Saffron: East South-East located amongst a few still standing bookshelves, red cap lichen having long taken the place of any books.
Byzantium: West South west. Their portrait is halfway up the wall, in a room where the ground has crumbled away, but thin looping vines that braid together have formed a rope bridge that is almost tough enough to be a second floor, leading to their portrait.

LEVEL 4: The Sea and Sky Level.
Teams: Shell, Iris, Sage.


Area Description

The white stone of the library gives way to art nouveau steel structures, staircases, slopes, pulley lift platforms, and precarious white stone landings suspended high above the water below. From up here there's a perfect view of the sky. Clouds cover the sky in patches, but sometimes form a uniform sheet blotting out the light and heralding rain.

Most books here have been soaked through completely, multiple times. Opening them up rewards you with pages and ink far too warped to be read. They seem to be histories, and manuals on rule.

Except for one book, a journal that seems newer than the rest, on the same platform as the forge. It talks about the acid rain that once existed, and maintaining the metal, as well as some of what needs to be done.

Threat: Absence!

Metal stairwells and catwalks need to be reinforced and maintained. There's no supplies on this level, so it's necessary to explore the other floors for food and water. Occasional rain and hailstorms threaten the rickety, rusted and otherwise damaged structures.

Provisions

The Scrap Heap: A big central platform has been piled high with scrap metal, from big sheets to little patches of steel wool useful for scraping off rust from the steel structures. It's protected from the elements by a large white stone landing

The Forge: A platform with a central hot, continually burning fire that doesn't go out even in the rain is on a lower platform, almost down to the third level. The central flame is hot enough to be used as an incinerator, but some forges and kilns have been set up around it as well, for fire to be put to less destructive use. Abandoned sets of tools and water buckets are also discarded here.

The Clock: A giant central clock set into the roof of the library, seen from over the edges on any platform. Despite the perpetual twilight, it tells time is moving forward through morning, afternoon, and into night. Standard clock face, with roman numerals I-XII.

Sunlight: Don't knock it. The rest of the library is indoors, but up on the rooftop levels things can be left out to dry. Not just clothes, but helpful for paper making or nori sheets.

Portrait Locations:

Shell: On the topmost platform. The spiral stair wrapped around a lift set-up from the first level returns, going directly up to Shell. Only the back wall is a proper wall, the rest of the walls here only go halfway up, to the waist, before turning into columns. The portrait is shielded from the rain by arches forming from the tops of columns, the columns more closely spaced together against the back wall.
Iris: Located against a wall on a stairway landing, halfway up before it changes directions. It's shielded by the stairs crossing back over it again, in the opposite way.
Sage: On the lower part of a double platform, art nouveau steel patterns supporting the long jut over the ocean of the platform above. This one ends before that, not nearly so far out over the water, but nicely shielded from above. The portrait is welded onto the steel halfway down the long hall. Both upper and lower platform are accessible by lift on the end closest to the library.