Architectural Tropes

Abattoir
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR Alternative Designations: None known (Other countries have regions similar in nature, but not in style.) First Encountered: 4th Landing.

Red brick walls, metal doors, black tiled floors, lots of drains and grilles which lead "who knows where" and lots of gulleys, first encountered on level 4. The area is permeated by a smell described as "thick, cloying, metallic and wrong". It is accompanied by the sound of buzzing flies. Traps primarily include metal hooks attached to a massive system of chains and pulleys pulling the victim towards a grinder with more hooks coming for anyone daft enough to follow.

Primary life forms of the area assigned the sobriquet "butcher". They are humanoid, resembling elongated orcs, ranging in colouration from black through crimson to scarlet and wielded meat preparation tools as weapons.

Durkheim
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR Alternative Designations: None known (Other countries have regions similar in nature, but not in style.)

Imagine a black, paved road in a city that goes around in a square. Lining the sides of the road are two or three-story tall buildings made of materials resembling concrete or brick, with sidewalks. Each building is of a different style, but there are no gaps between the buildings to make an alleyway. The rooftops are of all different heights; there is no glass in any of the windows or doors in the doorways, and the 'furniture' in all the buildings are also made of brick and stone and are structurally parts of the floors. The 'sky' above is made of blue stone rippled with white, with many small light-shafts coming in through it. The 'sky' starts at the 'back edge' of the roof as a wall, becomes a ceiling above, arches over the 'street', then ends at the other edge of the street. There are occasionally 'manholes' which connect these regions to a variant of Waterworks structures under the 'streets'.

When you reach one of the corners, however, you see that the 'street' turns a right-angle straight down. The entire structure is copied, but on it's side; the road and skies become walls, the road-way becomes a shaft, and the manholes into the Waterworks become corridors. And, upon rappelling down the sides of the sideways city, the bottommost edge of the region is a copy of the topmost but flipped vertically- the 'sky' becomes the floor and the 'road' becomes the ceiling, with water leaking down from the 'manholes'.

These regions are nearly devoid of hazards in the 'roads' or 'skies', but are almost always populated by humanoid beings living in communities. The nature of these communities are the difference between the two types. Durkheim communities are anarchistic and in continual war with themselves; different groups war against one another continual strife. How they manage to be so densely populated with constant war is a mystery. Durkheim regions tend to be on the higher levels, but are quite dangerous. Still, they're quite dense with rewards and opportunities for allies. Stay out of here if you don't have a mission going here, though. It's no place for FNGs.

Variant: Panopticon

 * Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR
 * Alternative Designations: None known (Other countries have regions similar in nature, but not in style.)


 * On the other hand, Panopticon regions are the exact opposite; every creature in the region, orc or gobilin, drow or lookabout, sword-swallower or pixie, all act and live and fight in harmony with one another, showing signifigantly improved tactics and teamwork over even orcish groups. Anything percieved as a threat will be mercilessly hunted down by the members of this community, and anything known to one member is known to all. We advice avoiding these regions at all costs. Fortunately, their members never leave the region. It is suspected that in the center of the Waterworks of these regions there's a Controlling Intelligence (C.I.)- capturing or destroying a C.I. would be a great coup.

Giger (GG)
Primary Designator: Dante Project. Alternative Designations: None Known. First Encountered: Beyond 3rd Landing.

This name may just be a nickname among Dante's operatives! The very existence of this style is classified and only a few crews have ever returned from this kind of environment. Apparently everything there looks and feels like the inside of some kind of titanic organ, everything is covered in slime, acid or poison, and no xenofauna was ever encountered. However, strangely enough a few highly sophisticated thaumatechnical items and some very efficient weapons can be found down there. This style may only be encountered deep below 3rd Landing, and the only access points seem to be in Thuringia, the South Pacific - and maybe in XXXX

Kubrick
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: None known.

Kubrick is a quite artifical-seeming style, with flat floors and walls at right angles. The floors and ceilings are made of a matte luminescent white stone, while the walls are a polished black, with disturbingly normal 'wooden' furniture vaguely reminicent of western colonial style scattered about. There is very little decoration. Samples of this furniture show that it is actually made of chitin. Kubrick areas only occur very deep into the basement, and are remarkably stable for occuring so low. Xenofauna and xenoflora avoid these areas. Indeed, no teams have reported any hazards of any kind in Kubrick areas. However, the corpses of long-missing teams are often found in these regions.

Variant: Bauhaus 2000 (B2K)

 * Primary Designator: Dante Project
 * Alternative Designations: None Known.


 * Wooden objects are rare; instead silver, steel, and adamantium elements seem to be quite common. Deep within such locations, smooth rounded objects made out of a bright white substance have been found; analysis shows that this is an incredibly resilient form of ivory from some unidentified creature

Kyklopes (KK)
Primary Designator: Dante Project. Alternative Designations: None Known. First Encountered: 1st Landing.

An environment only encountered under the French access point in the South Pacific. Giant blocks of black and dark green stone form the tunnels and halls of this truly cyclopean architecture. Most places are wet and covered with weird kinds of - sometimes bioluminescent - moss, fungi or lichen. Complicated glyphs and runic inscribtions are also quite common. These seem to be a severe cognitive hazard, especially to highly intelligent or artistically talented operatives. All of Project Dante's data on the xenofauna of this environment is highly classified and secured with some new kind of codes - work on this continues.

Designation derived from the greek name for the members of the mythic cyclopean race.

Limbert
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: None Known.

Limbert regions are immense rooms, where the ceiling receeds to at least a mile above the surface, and the far wall is often several miles away. These surrealy large caverns are at the 'bottom' of light shafts, and are flooded with searing light and heat from the 'surface' above; the ground is littered with shards of dark-colored stone, sharp enough to shear the boots from your feet on extended excursions. There are the occasional small chitinous huts and low, stone buildings in these rooms. Traps are rare, but the primary hazard here is the heat, light, and the ground itself. None of these rooms have been completely mapped, due to the size and difficulty in survival.

Linear
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: Classical Cubism (CC) — Dante Project.

Linear style is prevalent in higher strata around the American base. Everything seems to be made of cubes; every passageway is as wide as it is tall, the rooms are all cubes (of different sizes), and everything is quite regular; however, Linear regions are almost always in poor repair, so there are often chunks taken out of walls, rubble, and other irregularities that can be tactically useful. Hazards are uncommon. 'Gnomes' and 'Goblins' are sighted often in these regions.

Radial A
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: None Known.

Radial A is characterized by round passageways and spherical rooms connected at odd angles. Radial A passages are almost always clean of debris or damage, and all surfaces are covered with even rows of hieroglyphics. Hazards are extremely common in these regions, as well as Orcs. The distant noise of stone grinding on stone is a common sound in Radial A regions, but it does not seem to signify anything at all.

Variant: Elf Nouveau (EN)

 * Primary Designator: Dante Project.
 * Alternative Designations: None Known.


 * In areas classified as Elf Nouveau, the hieroglyphics look more like pseudo-arabian calligraphic texts. Spiral patterns are common.

Radial B
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: None Known.

Radial B structures, also known as Towers, are built around light shafts. Massive multi-floor structures line the insides of these shafts, with metal-barred balconies looking out onto dark space. The thinnest shaft room seen so far is ten yards across, with the widest a quarter-mile across; the shortest shaft-room seen has been 80 yards from top floor to bottom, which was only 10 stories; the longest has yet to be traversed to it's bottom, but is at least ten miles high. The rooms on the immediate outside of these shafts tend to resemble residences, with the rooms leading off of it having radial symmetry. The shaft-rooms themselves and the immediate rooms tend to be highly stable, and always include staircases, elevators, and in one case a set of escalators. The rooms leading off of the shaft rooms, however, are highly variable.

Vacuole
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: Vadose — Looking Glass.

Vacuole regions are immense rooms of a reflective grey stone, often more than a mile across in their smallest dimension. Rooms of this size have occasionally been spotted in other regions, but a Vacuole has characteristic architecture. First, the walls, ceiling, and floor are not in any way distinguished — vacuoles are generally completely rounded and often fairly shapeless. Additionally, the vacuole contains long bridges or tunnels of matte black metallic material extending from one surface to another, interconnecting fairly randomly, like a spiderweb or random map. The bridges have distinct floors and steps where necessary, but no guardrails. Often they are dozens of feet wide so as to make guardrails unnecessary, but they can be dangerously thin. The tunnels have distinct ceilings, walls, and floors, stairs where necessary, and windows of varying size. There has benn as yet no sign of the 'great beasts' which the Caravan has described as inhabiting the vacuole regions.

Variant: Wells

 * Primary Designator: Looking Glass.
 * Alternative Designations: Star Room — Project LONG STAIR.
 * First Encountered: Landing 6


 * This subtype appears to maintain a reasonable adherence to the Vadose trope, apart from 2 significant differences. The first is a periodic mist that instills what has been described as a feeling of intense malevolence. The second, and far greater of the two came over, is that the roof and ceiling appear to be missing almost in their entirity, with the end result being a bottomless sinkhole open to the sky of a location displaying non terrestial stellar phenomena and star patterns unlike any found in the skies of Earth. Analysis indicates significant blue shift, suggesting the observation point is moving away from the stellar mass.

Only 2 such chambers are known by Western programs to exist as of this time

Waterworks
Primary Designator: Project: LONG STAIR. Alternative Designations: None Known.

Waterworks regions have walls and floors of teal stone with the strength of soapstone. There is no clear distinction between 'corridors' and 'rooms' in waterworks areas, swelling wider or contracting tighter fairly randomly, intersecting seemingly randomly to produce larger hollowed out areas. There's almost never a well defined floor - it's usually somewhat sloped, or walls taper down to a tight angle. Most interestingly are smaller 'aquaducts' that run in and out of the walls fairly arbitrarily, carrying a clear, viscous, non-toxic fluid which is mostly water and is apparently safe to drink - EXCEPT where it gathers in stagnant pools, whereupon drinking it leads to arbitrary, random xenophenomena ranging from healed injuries to hybridization to immediate death. In one instance, a hybrid (Pvt. Swanson) who consumed water from a 'magic pool' returned to normal human state. The water does not retain it's properties long after removal from the pool.

Variant: Venetia Nero (VN)

 * Primary Designator: Dante Project.
 * Alternative Designations: None Known.


 * Often includes wide waterways, including strange unmanned black barges which seem to follow complex pre-set courses, often home to a very dangerous creature the Dante Project call Gargoyle.