storyline: enter the catacombs FIRST DRAFT
g a t e w a y crater
Synergistics Ltd - a multinational corporate giant that did Important Things that nobody really knew the details of - discovered the crater first, and thus declared absolute rights over everything inside and around it. The Gateway Crater, a large dent in the desert that hinted at the possibility of black oil and pink diamonds, an unknown sinkhole of seemingly epic depth that lead God-knows how deep in to the earth’s crust. They promptly wheeled their machines in and began to dig.
Great black spiders of machinery that dug and clawed at the earth, probing with thick long legs further and further downwards. Miners, industrious little ants, swarmed up and down the mine shafts propping and shoring and testing and evaluating the innards of the earth as they burrowed deeper. They discovered thin ribbons of oil and diamonds, tempting them through the miles, encouraging them onwards and ever further down. Synergistics Ltd set up underground camps, concrete and metal halls and pathways and tunnels full of valves and pipeworks lit by green and amber lights and the camps quickly turned into cities.
After four years they struck gold.
The proverbial kind, that is.
A bubble in the earth - a gaping chasm with the proportions of a cathedral - this was the Gateway Center. Unlike the roughly-hewn caves that they had stumbled upon in the past, this was clearly designed with care. This was no organic creation: phospherant lights hung inexplicable from the ceiling amongst toweing pillars of beautifully crafted stone. Polished marble - or at least it looked like marble, but not a single geologist could determine the quarry it had come from - gleamed underfoot.
It was beautiful.
But then came the Nightmares. Visions, hallucinations, phantoms of the past... the miners claimed that they had discovered the home of the gods and the devils, and the mysterious figures that haunted the dark recesses of the Gateway Center were certainly one of the two. They spoke to the miners, tempting them to mania and murder, driving them away and back in to the underground city that was still worming its way through the earth. And then the mania spread - it wasn't just the miners: the scientists and executives that dwelled in the underground city began to see and hear the visions. The gods and devils, disturbed from their underground slumber, were beginning to work their way through the underground city.
Synergistics Ltd. couldn't take the strain. They stopped mining immediately and abandoned the facility, eventually selling it off to the only corporation that would take it: the private prison company SynchroniCorps.
enter the c a t a c o m b
Years later, the Gateway is a literal hell hole. If you one day wake up to find yourself imprisoned in its depths then someone out there has arranged for you to be indefinitely detained (that is to say, jailed forever) at the courtesy of SynchroniCorps, the faceless prison masters that feed you and monitor your every move. You might have been a hardened criminal or a vicious demon - but on the other hand, you might have led the selfless life of a saint. It doesn't matter. Someone wanted you put away - be it an enemy, a king, god or the devil - and they paid an awful lot to make sure you would never escape.
It's the world's most masterful prison: there is literally no escape. Every route back up to the surface is an impassable blockade of metal and stonework. You have been left to fend for yourself with the other prisoners in the dark, dank corridors of the underground facility against the ghosts and spirits of the Gateway Center.
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WHAT GATEWAY ACTUALLY IS BLAH BLAH
LIKE AMERICAN GODS
ALL THE GODS AND DEMON AND SPIRITS THAT EVERYONE EVER BELIEVED IN HAVE TRAVELLED WITH THE ORIGINAL MINERS AND NOW LIVE IN THE GATEWAY CENTER
SOME ARE NICE SOME ARE HORRID
ALL ARE AVAILABLE TO BE APPLIED FOR
BUT THEY ARE STUCK TOO!!! AND CAN'T ESCAPE!! BLUHH