• Registered: 2006-10-01
  • Posts: 912

Topic: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

In this thread Norah describes the different rooms and places in meticulous detail.

First, something about walls and hatches and such:

There are no neatly positioned repairable rows of identical hatches. The repairable machinery can be in various shapes, sizes and positions, not all of them right next to corridors and rooms (so you have to crawl through access tunnels to get to them if you can get to them at all). There are, however, openable wall panels (and floor and ceiling panels) all over the rooms and corridors, as well as machines. Sometimes the machinery is right behind them, while at other times you crawl through them into access tunnels.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
  • Posts: 912

Re: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

A floatbed chamber (there are two identical ones, named Floatbedchamber Alpha, and Beta)

The floatbed columns of Floatbed Chamber A are connected all the way down to the Speedgrowth Chambers while those in Floatbed Chamber B are a part of a separate, smaller system.
Circular room, but it only makes half a circle. Along the outer wall is a sort of broad corridor, into which the floatbed access doors open. There are six such doors in the inner wall, each corresponding to a floatbed column. Floatbeds are stacked like columns, and transported to the floatbed chambers when someone needs to get in or out. (See here for a floatbed: http://polygonpoop.dk/2007/05/seed-inte … ntent.html . Then imagine countless of those stacked along a pillar, in columns, pointing outwards so to speak, transported along something like a rails, a piece of which you can see in that picture too).

When you step out of a floatbed, out of the door, into the floatbed chamber, you will find yourself standing in the broad corridor that runs in half a circle, at the inner wall of it. Opposite you is the outer wall, which is slightly longer than the inner wall, of course. In the outer wall are 3 corridor openings into the rest of Recspace. They lead to hubs that will lead to locker halls, the other floatbed chamber, more hubs, a radlock to the Canyon, and the Garden (with another radlock to the Canyon right next to it). The 3 openings are located at the start and end of the half-circle corridor, and one just about right in the middle. Pathfinders are located above each corridor leading out, stating one or more of the other things that corridor leads to, although all of Recspace is more or less connected in more than one way, and there are usually at least two routes to any location (apart from Lockerhall Alpha, which has only one corridor leading to it). The Pathfinders work through your necklink, the locations are not actually written on the sign as such.

Most everything is made of various metals.

The length of the chamber, measured along the outer wall, is approximately 80 meters.

The floatbeds themselves are filled with a liquid. Seedlings sleep in them, are healed in them, TAU maintains their health and body in them.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
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Re: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

Lockerhalls

A Lockerhall is a more or less square-shaped room. It consists of 2 levels. There is the ground level (a flat floor) and the upper level (a bridge that runs square across the room). The room is about 20 by 20 meters long and wide. It’s about 15 meters high. The walls are lined with rectangular lockers that are slightly wider than the average person, but not quite as high as a person, and about 2 arms-lengths deep. There are also some bigger, and some smaller, storage spaces along the walls. Some of the lockers have locks, but not all of them. Many people have taken the habit of making a personal locker out of one of the empty ones by simply placing a lock on it.

Ground level has 2 openings into corridors. Both corridors lead out to hubs, more corridors, or a floatbed chamber. Right outside the Lockerhall, the corridor branches off straight to the side (along the wall of the Lockerhall, really, only outside of it) and leads upwards at an angle (on both corridors). If you follow it up, you will reach the bridge that makes up the second level of the Lockerhall. If the ground-floor openings are located North and South (so to speak. They are located opposite eachother), then the bridge runs across the room from East to West. The bridge is about 2 meters wide. There are also several larger and smaller loose storage crates scattered across the Lockerhall floor.

Most everything is made of metal.

There are two Lockerhalls. Lockerhall Alpha has but one corridor leading to it (although it still has 2 ground floor corridor openings, the second one leads only straight upwards to the side, to the bridge), while Lockerhall Beta has two.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
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Re: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

Hubs

A hub is a circular room. It is quite small. It’s really just a hub, as the name says, that a lot of corridors emerge into. Most hubs have a pillar in the middle that houses Plasma Conduits that transfer energy to the systems above, using superheated plasma as a means of transfer. The hubs are about 8 meters right across (diameter). The pillar in the middle is about 3 meters across (diameter). Along the outer wall there will be several corridor openings (with Pathfinders above them). Most hubs have at least 4 of these.
Just a few hubs have something else in the middle instead of a pillar. A large, spinning fan in a hole in the floor, for instance.

There are many hubs in all areas of the Tower, apart from the Canyon, which has but one or two (not counting the Maze, which has many of them, and they explain the name, but people don’t generally go in there). Recspace is best known for them, though, and one will encounter them most there, just getting from one room to the next.

Here too, most everything is made of metals.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
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Re: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

The Garden

The Garden is shaped like a sort of horseshoe. The entrance would be at the two poles of the shoe, in between them. The space between the two poles, measured from pole to pole, would be about 20 meters. The entrance itself is not that wide: the opening from the corridor to the garden is 3 meters wide, as is the ramp that leads down from the corridor to the Garden floor. (Maybe half a meter down from the corridor to the Garden floor, but the ramp has a very gentle slope so the ramp itself is almost two meters long leading down. It is almost 3 meters wide.). The floor of the garden is covered in grass. The Garden is furnished almost symmetrically:

Along the wall of the garden on one side (along the left pole of the horseshoe if you imagine it with both its poles pointing downwards) are big pots/basins that have plants and trees growing in them, as well a sort of raised dais, for people to lounge on, with some steps leading up to it in various spots (only 2 or 3 steps up, it’s not much higher than the garden floor, a meter off the floor at most).
These plant basins and raised dais run along the side of the room for about two thirds of the Garden, if you divided the Garden into 3 parts, from the very tip to the bottom in a straight line (dividing the garden into equal parts along the length only, not looking at total surface space each part would take up, if you know what I mean). This would make them about 24 meters long (since the Garden measured from the highest point of the curved tip all the way along its length straight down would be 35 meters long). And the dais is about 6 meters wide (i.e.: measured from the wall inwards).

Along the other wall are more basins of plants, but no raised dais. Instead, about halfway along (halfway of the two thirds that make up the ‘side walls’, not including the one third that makes up the ‘back wall’), there is a small pond. It is raised about a meter above the ground, and has water continuously pouring in from a pipe above it. It is most likely cooling water for the Tower’s machinery, like the Steambaths. This water, however, is cold. The pond basin itself looks and feels to be made out of rock, as well as some decorative rocks that make the downpouring water from the pipe look like a small waterfall pouring over rocks. It is not rock, however. It is a material that was produced in the Tower, by colonists. The pond is about 5 meters long (along the wall), and 3 meter wide (measured from the wall inwards).

The last third of the room (the back of the room) is made up of a kind of platform/stage at the curved top of the horseshoe. It has steps leading up to it right through the middle from the Garden floor up. It has two parts: a lower part, at the same height as the platforms along the sides of the Garden, and a higher part at the very tip of the horseshoe. There are no more plant basins here. There are several ‘factories’ on both parts of this stage. The factories are really more like semi-automatic workbenches (The real factories in the Canyon and other places are much bigger). These need people to operate them, meaning they will not ‘run’ on their own. There are also two small Sharepoints on the upper stage, in the back.

The ceiling of the Garden is covered in criss-crossing pipes, on which vine-like plants grow, creeper kinds that grab on to ceilings and walls to grow along them.

The dais, walls, ceiling pipes, plant basins, stage, and machines and such are made of various metals. The floor is covered in grass, and the pond basin has already been described above.

There are windows in the Garden wall right up to the stage (the ‘back wall’ behind the stage has no windows in it) which you can look through. If you look out from inside the Garden, you would see the corridor that runs along the Garden’s walls on the outside. It is a typical Tower corridor. From the Garden entrance, and if you imagine the horseshoe with its two poles pointing down: the corridor running along the left hand wall runs along the garden wall for as long as there are windows, but instead of curving along with the back of the Garden (the horseshoe tip), it runs straight ahead, ending in a Radlock to the Canyon. Somewhere before the Radlock, though, there is a branch to the right that leads to a hub and Lockerhall Alpha.
The corridor that runs along the right-hand Garden wall also does not curve along to the tip, and instead, when the windows end, runs straight ahead for a bit to end up at a hub. So, the Garden is surrounded by a corridor almost all around, apart from the curved back/tip.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
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Re: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

Empty Gas Tank

The tank is located not far from Lockerhall Alpha, but there is no direct route from the one to the other. Nor is there -any- direct route to the tank (but if it is rebuilt in the future as a school, there probably will be). The tank’s shape is that of a huge sphere, with a diameter of 20 meters. The floor of the tank is covered in a toxic waste, of a goo-like nature, that is dangerous to people both through ingestion and through touch, if it is touched with bare skin. The goo also constantly emanates fumes that are toxic to people both through inhalation and through touch, irritating the eyes and skin, although slightly less so than the goo itself would be. The tank used to be used to house a gas, but went out of use when the top of the Tower was knocked off.

The tank, as you may already have guessed, is made of metal.

  • Registered: 2006-10-01
  • Posts: 912

Re: Lore: The Looks and Shapes of the Tower

Radlocks

Radlocks make the transition between different areas in the Tower. They are the means of crossing from Recspace to the Canyon, and from the Canyon to Labspace. Their shape is that of a sort of tube. A tube that is lying down, that is. Horizontal. At both ends of the tube are doors. One will open up to one area, and the other one will open up to the other area. The doors are big and thick, made of metal. They are sliding doors made up of several parts, each of which slides open in its own direction: upwards, downwards and to the sides (not diagonally). On the outside of the door it says ‘Radlock,’ to avoid confusion, I suppose. Since it is a tube, the inside walls are more or less round (more or less, since they are made up of flat areas that connect at an angle to other flat areas, so forming a ring, but not exactly smoothly round), but the area that colonists stand on is a flat, mesh, metal walkway that is built in there, well, for the purpose of people being able to stand on it, obviously. The round walls are made up of different parts, rings, about half a meter wide. The rings spin around all the time, one going left, then one right, then one left, etc. So no two of them one after the other will spin in the same direction. The rings either have lights on them in several places or emanate light. It is also from these rings that the decontamination spray comes. The spinning of the rings makes a constant noise.

The doors on one side open, people will exit, and then the next batch of people will step in. The doors close, decontamination proceeds, and then the doors open and the colonists get out. A batch goes in from that side, and so on.

A Radlock is about 5 meters long from door to door, and about half as high again as a colonist (1.5 colonists high, colonist of average height).