by [[*user ]]

fig 1.0 My picture.

Some of my stuff is alright.
Most of it is in need of a rewrite.
I am afraid of the light.
That is why I stay awake at night.
I live in constant plight.
Every day I have a new fright
The cosmos above is bright.
That is why I will never take flight.
It is all out of spite.

I am the creator of Thalasso and a majority of its ideas. If you would like to contribute to Thalasso, Wroughtsol, RAIN, or Nadir, reach out to me.

If you use my work for something outside of the site, I would like you to inform me beforehand! Don't be a jerk who steals the work of others for your own gain. We have enough jerks like that in the world already.

Levels

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-aquarium
Old Level 16. An endless aquarium in disrepair.

Limspaces

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-boiling-sea
Old Level 29. A sea of water that boils at night.
http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/valley-of-the-choir
Lostcon2022. A world only in sound.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/versunken-zeitlos-krankenhouse
Lostcon2022. A hospital sinking into a bottomless ocean. In need of a rewrite.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/rainy-refuge

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/havenpost

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/plastic-purgatory

Thresholds

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-deeper-blue
Horrorcon2022. A world under the sea, above the sea, and in between full of nightmares.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/bermudas-wrath
A rewrite of an old threshold. Bermuda is the embodiment of the ocean's hatred toward humanity.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/shivergate

Entities

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/ensembles
Living soundwaves.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/tombwalkers
Mechanical suits of armor piloted by the remains of people long forgotten.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/puppet-lords

Objects

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/voices-of-the-dead
Skulls that cry out about their past lives.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/mirrolium
Mystical mirrored material that traps the soul.

Persons

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/monomachos
Monomachos the Cursed. A tragic character with their descent, physical and mental, detailed through journal entries and through other sources.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/gardenia-scarlet

Tales

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/pale-rover
A nice slice-of-life tale about two Seekers.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-other-worlds-blue-fields
An example of how to act towards those outside of the archives that have encountered liminal phenomena.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-form-in-the-fog
A short story about two brothers who receive The Call from seeing a form in the fog.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/nadir-storytime
Storytime at the bottom of existence between a humble courier and an immortal being, both without names.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-star-born-of-scarlet-blood
The account of a Thalasso native watching tapes of Baseline… other stuff happens… the star is born.

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/the-undying-undine

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/heir-of-neptune

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/petaltide-love-blossoms

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/three-divine-corpses-attend-a-party

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/weapons

Scav's Redemption

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/scav-s-redemption
http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/scav-s-redemption-2

Not real

http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/contest:thresholdnautilus98
Thresholdcon2022.Bermuda Triangle threshold. IT HAS BEEN REWRITTEN INTO BERMUDA'S WRATH.
http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/plastic-park
Horrorcon2022. A park made entirely of plastic.

Sandboxes

http://liminal-sandbox.wikidot.com/nautilus98

http://liminal-sandbox.wikidot.com/nautilus99

http://liminal-sandbox.wikidot.com/nautilus100

http://liminal-sandbox.wikidot.com/nautilus101

I reserve the rights to all my works. If you steal any of my work without asking me, I will find you and [TEXT LIMITED REACHED]

by Nautilus98

fig 1.0 A typical room within the Foyer.

This is my fault.

I only wanted to go home. I didn’t want this to happen, especially not to Isaac. He’s forgiven me, somehow. But I don’t have the heart to tell him what I think about that—it’s not fair to him.

It started somewhere else, but it ended with an office. There was a vending machine, desks, computers, a water cooler, and some potted plants, apparently. I’ve never seen that room. The Foyer is made of countless copies of it, but no two are identical.

We were the first to see the ‘lucid zone’—the rooms that most resemble the original. It was a slog, despite being the smallest area. The two of us had plenty to talk about, though.

A good way to tell when you're leaving the lucid zone is the carpet. Stable rooms tend towards greys, navy blues, and occasional dark greens. The copies can get a lot gaudier. Iridescent pink is the strangest I’ve seen.

Eventually desks stretch to ridiculous lengths, and windows shrink into pinholes or grow to consume the walls completely. It still seems like office space, just gradually less like something from the real world. We argued a lot about that at the time. More than we ever had. Where was the line? When is an office not an office, y’know? Not sure I’ve ever figured it out. Isaac thought the copies were their own, new thing.

After a while the rooms sprawl, going for miles. You can find dark sections, rooms with wires hanging from the ceiling, or desks fused into the floor. The rooms might even be totally empty. We argued about that, too. Isaac said it was still recognisably office-esque, parts of it anyway. I told him it didn’t fit with everything else in the lucid zone. He disagreed. I folded.

There were no arguments about what lay beyond—the Heap, the point where the Foyer forgets what it started out as. The ground is uneven, covered in broken furniture and ‘Brambles.’ Isaac came up with the name: plants that grow wildly and can cover entire rooms. They were enough of a problem that we needed a word for them, anyway.

It wasn’t a good experience overall. But the thrill? I craved it. I’d been dealing with the same places for years. This was different, even if it wasn’t what we’d hoped for. It took us nearly a month to cross. In hindsight, we had it pretty easy.

There’s no single moment where the heap ends; you’ll just notice that the next room doesn’t. It’ll be a space where you can’t even see the ceiling, let alone the distant walls. With massive lights like hanging suns. There are only four of these ‘cardinal rooms'.

I never went north and never plan to. People don’t come back from there. The West has people living in burrows built inside concrete caverns. I met a charming man from there once; he spat on my shoes and called me a can-sniffing snack-muncher. They can stay in their dingy warrens for all I care.

I’ve actually been to the East. Isaac would have loved it. It’s a massive swamp of rotting paper, stagnant, stinking, and waist-deep to boot. There are floating towns built from scrap wood, and people scavenge from vending machines submerged in the slop. It deepens the further out you get, and the slurry is viscous enough that anyone falling in won’t be swimming to safety.

I vividly remember when I first saw the South. We’d just, finally, crossed the heap. I remember thinking, 'Where the hell is the ceiling?’ before anything else. There were massive lights in the cloudy sky that made it seem like perpetual noon. Sprawling fields and rolling hills made of shaggy green carpet, broken up by the occasional stream—fed endlessly by water coolers. Even trees, sort of. Smooth trunks towering from the ground, covered in fluttering paper leaves. Continually fruiting with colourful containers in bizarre shapes: vending machine items. At a glance, I’d have thought we were on earth. Both of us were grinning.

It took a few weeks to get settled. Isaac had always been on edge—argumentative and uncomfortable in his own skin. But in the forest? He was all smiles and jokes and laughter. He was easier to be around, and I might have jokingly called it an improvement, but it kept nagging at me.

I think now it’s appropriate to explain how we arrived here.

The Foyer is not old. It’s practically a baby compared to some limspaces out there. The Nexus has been around for a while, though; it swallowed me up years before all this. And I met Isaac three years after I arrived. Me and him? We wanted out. Me more than him, honestly. I missed my dad and his jokes. I missed fast food. I missed internet memes. I missed. I missed. I missed. One day we found what you’d probably call a rift or a breach or something. A fresh wound in the flesh of reality. We decided to enter. I figured I’d die with no regrets; it was better than always wondering ‘was that an exit?’

It wasn’t.

The breach led us… outside. Outside of everything. There was no sound, barely enough light to notice there was nothing around us. My senses were dull, like I was floating more than walking. Trying to walk felt like slogging through molasses, torturously slow, and my body was numb and cold at the same time.

I forced myself to move, one tedious step after another. We were on a flat plain, the ground textureless and smooth beneath my tingling feet. In the distance there was a second breach. The way out! I tried pointing it out to Isaac, but he was already rushing ahead. He tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear much besides my breathing and the sound of the rift—crackling like TV static.

'Work', ‘Got here', and ‘Way out’ were all I could catch. He was breaking up like a bad phone call. He was excited, though, practically running. I struggled to keep up. The breach led out into some sort of room. I didn’t get a good look, but I can guess what it was in hindsight.

That wasn’t what I was focused on.

There was a third breach. Shimmering, beautiful. I took a look. A room. A bed. A bedroom—mine! I processed it for a few seconds. It was where I’d entered the Nexus. Would it spit me back out now? Was it that easy? I considered just running through, Isaac be damned. He couldn’t hear me, and who knew if the rift would stay around to wait for him? It was selfish and ugly of me. I pushed the thought aside.

Fifteen seconds. That’s how long I’d been turned away. Fifteen seconds to just imagine walking through and going back to how things were before everything—even if I had to do it alone. Not to act or even intend. And in that time, Isaac had reached his own breach and stepped through. I don’t know what happened next. There was just a lapse in memory. Like falling asleep without dreaming. Instant.

I was in a room. I got up and went to the next room. It was the same. I went to the next room. The same. And the next. And the next. And the next.

It didn’t end. The same room was just repeating over and over and over and over.

The sound of Isaac shouting stopped my spiralling. I followed his voice, and after a few minutes I reached him. That was how we found the Foyer, or how it found us. Isaac thought we created it. Maybe he was right. Maybe the Foyer is my monster, my mistake created with those fifteen selfish seconds.

So there we were, in the south. We’d spent months relaxing. But the questions were there, like tinnitus in my ear. Why don’t I remember? Why won’t he explain? One day I bit the bullet and asked him.

‘What happened to you?’
He hesitated. I could see him look for the words. A moment passed. Then he told me. The Foyer was the office where he worked. Same as my bedroom, it was where he entered.
‘But that’s not true,’ he said. Isaac came from his office, but he came from the Foyer. Because despite having his face and his memories, the specifics were wrong. A flawed copy. Slightly off.

‘I’m not Isaac.’

He said that bluntly, like he was commenting on the weather.
Where is the real Isaac? He didn’t know.
‘Why the fuck did you keep that from me?’
He figured I already knew, deep down.
I regret some of the things I said. Deeply.

After that, we separated.

I only reached out to him recently. He doesn’t hold anything against me, for what it’s worth. But I don’t think we’re friends anymore, if we ever were. There’s never been any sign of the ‘real’ Isaac. I’m scared to look. I like to imagine he’s somewhere, happy. Maybe back home? Maybe the rift really did let him leave. A comfortable lie. He’d have gotten the message to me, somehow; that’s just the kind of person he was.

It’s been a few years since then. People come and go, but I’ve built a new life here. Something meant to last. I wanted, so deeply, to go home. Still do. If I got the choice to leave or stay, I’d leave. But I know this is my fault. So I stay, I help. I do what I can. I keep an eye on things, too, rumours mostly. People talk about lands even further south where the Foyer starts to copy itself, maybe even copy us. Someone even suggested maybe we were the copies. The thought unsettles me, I’ll admit.

I mean, if I am just a copy of a copy of a copy, how would I know?

Entrances

This place is a new entrance to the Nexus. The main one, I suppose. If you want to avoid getting stuck here, then stay away from anywhere in baseline reality, like abandoned offices, places under construction, or anywhere that's empty but doesn't feel like it should be.

If that happened to you, I'm sorry. I know it's my fault. What do you want me to say? I didn’t mean to do this.

For the rest of us? We're already in the Nexus; you can get to the Foyer from a few other places in the system, but it's not consistent. Elevators sometimes work, though the second you step out and lose sight of them, they're gone, so be careful.

Exits

You can leave easily enough; as long as you have something on your person that isn't part of the Foyer, you've got decent chances of it eventually spitting you out somewhere else.

The system itself has no known exit. Forgive me for speculating. But maybe the original room? The breach? I keep revisiting things, going over it all in my head, and I just wonder. If we went through mine instead… maybe things would be different. Y'know? It’s far too late now, but it’s a nice thought.

by The Dark Destroyer

"The Foyer is, in essence, a maze. It simply wears the skin of contemporary office space. But in truth, it is a labyrinthine system of rooms, with no known end. Each is even more bizarre than the last. No part in any of these places ever repeats. You’d think that’d be useful right? That it would stop us from getting as lost? But, there are only so many ways you can design a mostly normal room before things have to become… strange…"

fig 1.0 A typical room within the Foyer.

This limspace is a complex system of connected, unique rooms. This makes giving a set description difficult. Since you are unlikely to encounter any location I can detail. As such, I will give a brief overview that can broadly apply to the rooms as a whole: the Foyer consists of many carpeted office spaces that conform to late 20th-century design norms, typically the rooms will feature cubicles, desks, and computer terminals (rarely operable). These are usually fully furnished: there are many chairs, writing utensils, filing cabinets, printers, and fax machines. These tend towards being non-functional, but some do seem to work normally.

The offices also feature windows that let in natural light, though there is nothing but a white void visible beyond them and all attempts to exit the limspace through these windows have proven futile. The carpet will vary in color from room to room and is a good way to keep track of where you are if you have the knack for it, though it is often simply different shades of grey or blue. Green and even red carpets have been seen though, and it is likely in the far reaches of this space that more bizarre aesthetic choices can be found.

Speaking of which, due to the sui-generis effect, rooms further from the “center” of this limspace change massively. The exact central point, if one indeed exists, is indeterminable. But it is speculated that one of the more “normal” configurations of a room is perhaps the starting point for this limspace. With the others branching out from it and varying slightly at each stage until things become warped beyond recognition.

fig 2.0 A look at one of the computer terminals, note that the box in this photo was apparently empty.

fig 3.0 A far off room, lacking in much of anything.

The effect makes every single room of the space unique, but it also has a secondary effect. Distance correlates with how extreme the increments of the changes become. This is an exponential trend, meaning that once obviously bizarre and inhuman changes appear they will continue to do so more and more frequently beyond that point. There is no rhyme or reason to the rooms in the far reaches of the Foyer.

The rest of the limspace is accurate to the rating system, but there is no reliable way to measure the far reaches or the limspace's outermost reaches because they are simply too unpredictable. The far reaches are an incoherent and chaotic mess without a logical through line: objects are strewn about randomly, colors and patterns on the walls and floor clash massively, and bizarre furniture placement everywhere. Or simply nothing at all, walls stripped bare and lighting fixtures entirely gutted. There are thousand of miles of entropy in action, rooms shifting through constantly more chaotic combinations. Until, contrary to expectations, order emerges once more. In its own way.

In the outer rooms, the furthest frontier of this limspace, things go from incomprehensibly random to unfathomably massive: oceans made of moving filing cabinets that ebb and flow with metallic groans, a cold, dark, carpeted desert, where the ceiling of the room is so far above that it is not visible to the naked eye. Beyond that is a megastructure - a colossal mimicry of the previous rooms that seems never-ending. A fractal; an office within an office, within an office still. Forever.

Those are the confirmed reports from the only direction any living humans have managed to explore - south. It took months to cross the ocean in search of an exodus from this system, and years to cross the desert beyond it, it’s doubtful any can ever cross the fractal expanse. The other directions pose similar challenges nearly certainly, our best option is to use this limspace as a simple transit route. A path between other locations in the system. Though there are presumably some who stubbornly refuse to cower from the goal of finding a way out in some far-off room out there. All I can say is good luck, whoever and wherever you are.

Name Category Class Behaviour Maw Artifice 3 Ambush Predator (Mimic) fig 4.0 A maw, marked as such. They operate like a simulacrum of a stomach and a mouth. The doors, notably snapping when opening and closing, act as a lure. Those unfortunate enough to pass by will find the doors open and an inviting, well-maintained interior to the elevator. Entrants will not immediately be trapped, there is a mechanism in the body of the creature akin to a button. Pressing it as one would with a real elevator will cause the doors to close. No aggression, nothing suspicious on the outside. By the time the doors close, the victim’s fate is sealed. Paralytic spines will pierce the victim from multiple sides to keep them immobile. A strong chemical will flood the interior, slowly drowning and breaking down the nutrient-rich bodies of its victims. This chemical odour is your best bet for spotting this creature, it is otherwise indistinguishable from the real elevators one would use to leave the limspace. This makes it perhaps the most effective predator both for those wanderers unaware of how to exit and those who know a little. We know precious little about these perfect predators, our only knowledge of their existence came from speculation, extremely rare photographic or video evidence, and reports of close encounters from survivors of group attacks.

Name Category Class Behaviour Mind Snatcher Artifice 2 Ambush Predator (Mimic) fig 5.0 A group of destroyed printers and photocopiers, for what it’s worth I sympathise. Mind snatchers don’t hunt in the traditional sense; they don’t require much food, they can afford to be patient. They’ll wait months upon months for their prey, indistinguishable from any of the inert photocopiers they tend to be surrounded by. Wanderers may often unknowingly pass by a mind snatcher, or even use a regular machine close by. Any wanderers who do approach, however, will find the machine acts on its own; turning on unprompted. The best window most people have to escape is before it has a chance to strike. The mind snatcher will daze its victim with a blinding flash of light, at this point leaving becomes impossible. The creature will, for lack of a better word, transfer the consciousness of its victim (or perhaps the soul if you believe in that sort of thing) into itself. It will then print out a photo of its victim, typically in an endless dark void. It’s… best to avoid photocopiers in general. But especially those with photographs of wanderers nearby. Once the victim is rendered braindead, the creature takes their remains in via unknown means and processes the entire corpse. Leaving no trace. If you find a photograph of a person in this place. Burn it. Rip it. Just… destroy it. It’s for the best.

Name Category Class Behaviour Paper Worm Enigma 1 Parasite fig 6.0 A document covered in paper worms, hungry for knowledge. Paper worms are not visible to the naked eye. They can only be perceived by other hosts of paper worms. These creatures have a parasitic relationship with other forms of life, integrating themselves into the brains of humans and other entities alike. This enables paper worms to feed on knowledge and reproduce. Paper worms require large amounts of information which they will process more efficiently than even most baseline computers. This makes them capable of sorting through the documents stored in the many filing cabinets of the Foyer, which are incomprehensible to human minds. Paper worms compel hosts to consume information at a noticeably higher rate. Failure to do this will cause the worm to feed faster on the only other information it can; the memories and knowledge of the host. Not that eventually they won’t consume every scrap of information from the host regardless, these creatures are excessively greedy. Their victims wander the Foyer aimlessly, hardly even alive. Don’t touch any paper. Burn anything you are going to be forced to touch.

Entrances

Quiet, decrepit areas of baseline reality. Elevators, particularly alone or at night. Sleeping in offices, especially ones you don’t work at. Urban exploration.

Exits

Certain elevators lead to other limspaces in this system, however the system itself has no known exit.

by The Dark Destroyer

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Description

Rebarangifers (also known as clay-deer) are ‘animals’ resembling ornamental lawn deer, the kind one might find in a well-to-do neighborhood. Everything about their appearance gives the impression of living in comfort, especially to the lowly wanderer. To those desperate to fill their atrophied stomachs, they might even resemble a good meal. But the sturdy clay-deer is none of those things. It is a being simultaneously carrying the spark of life and lacking any of its components.

Found exclusively in The Sub-Basement, these timid little things seem unaware of their resilience to physical harm or the natural defenses rendering them untouchable in the most literal sense. Anything within a meter or so of them will find themselves suffocating in a cloud of grey plasma and transmuted into a mass of concrete and related materials.

In the instance of living victims, the process will be excruciating. First the skin, throat, and lungs harden as asphyxiation sets in. Over the next four minutes most of the body is converted, the victim still awake. By the time consciousness fails death is inevitable. Damage done by the miasma is irreversible but is not always a death sentence. Rumors speak of a man who survived complete petrification millennia ago and attained immortality from it. Investigations into these claims are ongoing.

Behavior

Rebarangifers' usual haunts are the dead cells of the Sub-Basement, where they have ample food to eat. For them, construction materials such as coal, lead, and steel are on the menu. Above all they will do anything to munch on wire. They are known to dig around electronics to find scrumptious cables akin to how pigs search for roots. Their social structure is analogous to Baseline white-tail deer.

Biology

The clay-deer has a simplistic biology resembling that of a real decoration. So simple that an artisan would make a better healer for its kind than any person of science. Every single individual has the appearance of a white-tail fawn, built to scale. This is due to the segmented carapace, which is made of ceramic and colored with miasma-infused paint. Over time the miasma leeches into oft-visited locations, discoloring older deer.

Reproduction is a process unknown to science. Neither sexual nor asexual means explain how rebarangifers come to be. As a result of this fact it has been proposed that they are manufactured at a plant somewhere in the system. Less credible sources suggest they've always existed and others still swear that they simply appeared one day.

The skeleton is made up of a series of rebar rods connected by ball sockets. Six rods are connected with secondary rods to create a hexagonal prism, which provides structural support. Comparable structures provide support to the legs, with the notable difference that the leg structures have sockets at the knee while the ‘ribcage’ is devoid of such joints.

Food is digested through a lead pipe bolted to the skeleton at six points. How this occurs is anyone’s guess. The organ itself is just as poorly understood. Among the few things we do know is that at least some nutrients go to the production of miasma. Miasma's composition is difficult to study because it can only be put in containers made of a select few materials. It also only exists as a plasma, or a gas when supercooled. Electronic measurement is impossible because it's an extremely good conductor. Hopefully a treatment can be developed in the future.

Discovery

Clay-deer are not new to the Backrooms. For as long as humans have occupied The Sub-Basement, the rebarangifers were there, lurking. Even before the first sketches from firsthand witnesses, their presence was implied by the fumes they exhale so readily. Unlucky pioneers were sometimes found encased in miasma-rock. Below is an account of one such finding during one of the UNCB's first expeditions into the level.

Expedition Log, Entry 8.
Edward Stumm is presumed KIA. By KIA I mean turned to stone, or at least something that looks like it. I look away for one second and he's off doing "reconnaissance", which really means messing around with the machines to see if anything interesting happens. Next thing I know there's this awful wheezing sound followed by silence. He was already dead when I got there.

It wasn't until much later that the culprit of this morbid scene was discovered and identified. While major inroads have been made in divining the origin of rebarangifers, the path to knowledge is still a long one.

Survival Guide

There is little to fear from rebarangifers. Any direct threat they pose can easily be warded off by scaring them off with loud noises. Miasma is still dangerous but can be avoided with common sense and awareness of one's surroundings.

Should you find yourself in a cloud of the substance, run in the other direction. Escaping within 15 seconds will leave you partially (if not completely) disabled, but alive. Breathing problems and patches of hardened skin make getting around post-exposure a struggle.

by DrVincentGareu

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This article is under rewrite by the author. When an article is under rewrite, this likely means that the quality is no longer up to the author's standards, but the ideas within the article are important to other articles or the shared universe of the Liminal Archives at large.

Image of the sky of Erysichthon taken by Association Client Lily Guo after around 178 hours of constant exposure. Note the lack of movement of "stars" in the shot as well as file compression and artifacts due to the inconsistent method of extracting files from the space.

Erysichthon¹ is a malformed system; an infinite space with ground formed from a fleshy pulsating substance constantly secreting a bitter, slightly acidic fluid. Dotted sparsely around the infinite planes of meat beneath its dim, crimson sky are various liminal spaces that it has absorbed. The altitude within becomes lower as you head towards its center.

The system is constantly expanding, absorbing, and integrating liminal spaces all throughout existence into its flesh; the cause of this is unknown. Spaces absorbed slowly travel inwards, disappearing towards the center, breaking down more and more the closer they travel.

Because spaces Erysichthon "consumes" maintain most of their properties somewhat, it has been classified as a system despite technically being one unbroken space.

Integration of limspaces occurs in a series of 3 distinct phases:

Phase 1: Occurs prior to integration. The space undergoes a noticeable uptick in instability; flecks and swirling clouds of light begin to appear within.
Phase 2: The space connects to Erysichthon and aspects of said space that may have prevented an individual from simply walking out (walls, infinite space, etc.) begin to break down, now leading to the inside of Erysichthon. At this point, the space is considered part of the system - classification of the space will then be moved to this page's supplemental materials.
Phase 3: The space fuses into Erysichthon's flesh. In this stage, the space begins to be moved towards the center, growing more and more unstable as it approaches it. After a space reaches phase 3 it is only a matter of time for it to break down fully until it eventually disappears forever.

It is recommended that all liminal explorers read this file and be able to recognize the signs of "consumption" by Erysichthon - failure to do so may cause entrapment within its infinite landscape. The best way to survive is to be educated on how to avoid it. The most telltale signs of "consumption" are easy to spot. If a space has glowing flecks, swirls, and clouds of light floating within it, appears to be breaking down, or is becoming more chaotic, exit immediately and contact the Turner Association's human resources line at 1-981-029-1977² or inform your local Association branch.

You cannot leave Erysichthon once you enter but communication to the outside world is possible through radio and other forms of wireless communication. File transfer has been achieved through computer terminals but is inconsistent at best. Terminal effectiveness appears greatly hampered.

Survival is possible by scavenging the remains of the spaces "consumed" by Erysichthon. However, due to the sporadic and unpredictable nature of "consumption", to even have a chance at survival requires heavy planning and preparation. Sadly, the vast majority of individuals who enter do so without knowing the fresh hell they are walking into, leading to their likely demise.

Due to the nature of Erysichthon, entrances to the space change over time and are too numerous to count. Below is a list of notable entrances. For safety, exact entrance locations are not listed.

For a more comprehensive list of more spaces "consumed" by Erysichton contact baseline Archivist and Turner Association client Rolf Kingston at at.tneilc|1002notsgnikr#at.tneilc|1002notsgnikr.

Type: NON-PROFIT

Costs: HIGH

Priority: HIGH

Venture Description: Entry to Erysichthon is currently blocked. The Turner Association is to cooperate with contributors to the Liminal Archives in the documentation of limspaces consumed by Erysichthon and the closing off of entrances to said limspaces.

On 4/2/2016, Turner Association Client Lily Grace Guo decided that she would dedicate her life to aiding the collective in preventing further tragedy - as of now, she is still within Erysichthon, quietly mapping out its stomach and informing the Association of spaces that have fallen victim to its gluttony. Positive connections with Guo are to be maintained; communication with her is to be done daily. Supplies are to be regularly given to Guo through the ███████ ██████ Liminal Space.

Costs incurred by this procedure are necessary in preserving public relations with the liminal-aware populace. A copy of this file and an associated file documenting various entrances to Erysichthon are to be donated to the Liminal Archives - the former with partial redactions, and the latter given only with confirmation of full restriction.

by Worm that Walks

Factions, Organizations, Societies

When individuals meet, they become a pair. When pairs meet, they are family. When families come together, there are villages. Within the Backrooms and other Limspaces, there are factions and tribes who serve their own interests — with varying degrees of interaction and politics among one another.

Quick Links

Condensed go-to for established group pages:

The UNCBBackrooms

- "United Nations and Colonies of the Backrooms"

The UNCB is a loose coalition of aligned settlements that reach across the Backrooms Limspace System. The united settlements of the UNCB are sovereign and self-governed like individual city-states — yet share knowledge, and research, and try to assist one another's survival through trade and support when they can. Some settlements of the UNCB are spread vastly apart, separated by the infinite space of the system, but are connected by being "on the grid", able to communicate to the rest of humanity through precursor Terminals.

» Articles

The BOLBackrooms

- "The Brotherhood of Lim"

The BOL is a cultish group of fanatics who follow the lead of their miracle-working figurehead Volkov, who promises them peace and harmony and safe passage through the 'garden' of Limspace. They despise the fearful and indentured concept of class systems and the old ways of society — encouraging equality for all free men and women in the Backrooms, and, through terroristic infiltration, assassination and indoctrination they actively pursue the destruction of the UNCB's tyrannical enslavement of society.

» Articles

PortersBackrooms

- The Independent Freelancers of Limspace

Nomadic wanderers who have learned to survive across a number of levels, Porters make a living by travelling across the system trading with established settlements and the small pockets of humanity living in the shadows apart from the UNCB or any established faction. Porters are often entrepreneurial families who ply their trade as both a career and a way of life. To a Porter, the idea of growing roots and staying in one place of the Backrooms is a slow death, doomed to eventual destruction by the forces of limspace. Adaptability, knowledge, and experience across many levels is the only true way to live long-term. Porters trade secrets and information and map out the Backrooms in a secretive cant called Porterspeak.

» Articles

PrometheansBackrooms

- Lost Citizens of Antiquity.

Unfathomably deep inside the Backrooms, there may lie a metropolis: the greatest human city of any reality, known as Antiquity. The only evidence of the existence of this great city and its citizens, known as Prometheans, lies in the encrypted data of a portable hard drive that was discovered on a corpse in the Halls. For some, the hope of finding the lost city and reuniting with humanity is enough to keep living in the hopeless infinity of the Backrooms. Perhaps one day we will make contact. Perhaps one day we will be saved.

» Articles

SeekersArchivist Group

Seekers focus on finding new knowledge to add to the Archives. They scour the wider dataspace for readable information that may have been added in the times before the Liminal Archives. They also look through real-world documents for accounts of Liminality that are only documented on paper (and, in recent times, on the internet).

Members of this group are closely connected with all other groups that contribute to the Liminal Archives, always asking them for more information that can be included in the database. Often, Seekers will forward unverified information they find to Visionist groups who often investigate the limspaces and thresholds in question, to verify the accounts, and to discover new details.

Seekers are spread far apart, and tend to work individually, but maintain communication with one another. They treat their work with scholarly reverence, and have to balance their time as Archivists with their real-world responsibilities, usually having traditional careers, and often having families to provide for.

In total, there are only about 30 to 40 members within the Seekers, and they are spread across the globe. In order to become a member, one must be a skilled researcher, and be accepted into the group by someone who is already a member. The group has maintained a stable membership for many decades.

» Articles

by 0ktober

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Chapter 2:

Variety is the Splice of Life.

“You’re dreaming, Saffron.”

Leon and Jennifer were at the shopping mall, and Jennifer was pressing a bright pink polo up to Leon’s chest. He was smiling, which unsettled her. She never saw him smile anymore, not like this, where the corners of his eyes wrinkled up and his teeth showed. She furrowed her brow, confused. She wondered what store they were in.

“You’re dreaming. There is no way I could pull this off,” Leon said, grabbing the t-shirt and holding it up against himself. He laughed.

“What… did you just call me?”

“What, Saffron? You don’t like it?”

“I just don’t really get it,” Jennifer mumbled. “Normally, my nicknames are like Jenny, or that one kid who called me Juice. I hated that kid.”

Leon put the polo down on a rack, and it disintegrated into pink dust. Jennifer blinked. Then she remembered, of course, that they were in the disintegrating store. She crossed her arms and tucked her hands in. Leon continued on, fingering through the racks for something that complemented his style.

“Well, you are my spicy little flower, aren’t you? And you’re such a rare and precious little gift. I thought it was cute.”

“You’re being nice today, mister bigshot.”

“Okay, fine, it's not that fancy. Jennifer has one ‘f’, Saffron has an ‘f’, it's pretty much the same thing.”

“Saffron has two ‘f’s, you dingus.”

“You can show me what the other ‘f’ stands for later, then.”

“Leon!” She smacked his arm and looked around. There were other people in the store, but their faces were smudgy messes of blurry, fleshy colour. They didn’t seem to care about Leon and Jennifer. She made a mental note of it: possible zombies at the shopping mall. No need to panic, though. Leon was with her, and his face was normal. Jennifer reached up to her cheek and confirmed she also did, in fact, have a face. Leon gave a big sigh.

“This place is a wash. Let’s get lunch.”

The two sat at a small table in the food court, picking at Chinese food with chopsticks. Jennifer got black bean chicken and fried rice, even though she wasn’t really hungry. Around them buzzed a hustle of faceless patrons, smacking their fake lips on abstract shapes. Rain drummed on the skylight windows high above them, and she could smell the petrichor seeping through the building. Leon was laughing about something, but she couldn’t quite remember the beginning of his story.

“I was never any good with these. How do Asians do it? I just wanna eat my food.”

He put the chopsticks aside and grabbed a plastic fork instead. The fork appeared out of seemingly thin air. Jennifer blinked. She had been holding a piece of chicken in between her chopsticks for who knows how long, letting it get cold. She frowned at it, wishing it were battered and fried and put in a bowl with lettuce and dressing. Jennifer hated Chinese food, but wanted to compromise to keep Leon smiling like he did earlier with the polo shirt. He liked big meals with a lot of calories, flavour and protein. He was a big guy. Something had to nourish those muscles—a salad might frighten him.

“You gonna eat that?” He asked, and before she could reply, Leon reached over the table and plunged the fork right into her chest. With a flex, he yanked her heart out of her ribcage and looked at it. Her heart was about the size of an apple, slimy and red. It was attached to meaty tubes and veins, which dangled and dripped onto the table and all over her food. Jennifer blinked again.

“You can’t eat that, that’s my heart.”

“You’re not enjoying it, I can see that. It’s gonna go to waste.” He took a bite out of it, then scowled. “Oh, yeah, no good.”

He gently slid her heart off the fork onto her plate. It was grey, mottled, and dry. It was beating, but just hardly—like a sick person afraid to breathe in too deeply, scared they would start wheezing and coughing at the strain of it. She wondered how she could put it back in. If someone saw her heart like this, they could judge her, and Jennifer hated when people made assumptions about her. Leon shook his head.

“You shouldn’t let a thing like that go to waste, you know. Why did you compromise? If you don’t like it, don’t get it. This is always how it is with you.”

Jennifer looked up and felt her eyes widen. She quickly changed her face to a scowl.

“I thought you loved Chinese food.”

“No, it’s really unhealthy for you. Whatever. You’re spilling all over the place. Put that back in, you’re a mess. Lunch was a bad idea.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

Leon leaned back and looked around, disinterested. Jennifer picked up her heart with a napkin and held it against her chest. It wasn’t going back in. She tucked it under her jacket and held it there; she didn’t want to be that weird girl walking around carrying her heart for everyone to see. Instead, she could be the mysterious girl with a secret in her coat. That was a little more normal, right? Everyone had secrets. No one wanted to see her organs spilling out and making a mess, like Leon said.

She wondered what she could do to make him smile again. She thought she understood him, she thought she had him profiled, she thought he was an open book. She clutched her heart in her hand and wanted to squeeze the life out of it, right there and then. Just obliterate it, just feel the flesh squish and spill out between her fingers. It was a stupid little thing that did nothing for her, anyway. Leon laughed again, but this time it was different. It was that dismissive laugh that boys do that she never understood—like a laugh and a sigh and a swear all rolled into one. He locked his fingers behind his neck and rested his head, then gave Jennifer a smirk.

“Let's get out of here, yeah?”

The street was slick with rain, but the underground parking lot was mainly dry. There were hundreds of cars parked, and a hundred floors, each one marked with a colour and a letter. Green C, Yellow R, Blue Y. There were no cars at all, and thousands of empty stalls, and slick puddles where the rain was leaking through poorly maintained drainage pipes.

This place was a maze, but only because every floor and every stall looked vaguely the same. Orange C, Red R, Purple Y. There was only one car, the same car, parked in every stall. A grey Toyota sedan, over and over again, lining the entire parking lot, and each license plate said something in Chinese. Jennifer didn’t drive; she hated parking lots. They made her claustrophobic, like she was being buried alive in concrete.

Leon didn’t drive, either. He spun around a little bit, looking for something.

“Oh yeah!” He said. “I don’t have a car.”

They were on an empty subway train, gripping metal handles. A man was sleeping on one of the passenger benches, covered in newspapers. Jennifer assumed he also didn’t have a face. The overhead lights flickered, and the old trolley rattled like it was on its last leg of life. On one side of the train was half her kitchen. She walked over to her coffee maker and started the ritual of making a fresh brew. Leon raised an eyebrow.

“Think it’s going to be a long journey?” He asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know, I just… kinda do this every day,” she replied with a shrug.

“Every day is brand new, and you’re here doing the same old thing.”

“Yeah, I like coffee.”

“That’s fine. Know where you’re going?”

Saffron looked up. It was dark outside the train, leaving just her reflection in the black, cold windows. Leon was gone. The homeless man without a face had also dissipated, just like the pink polo shirt. Turned to dust. She didn’t know where this train was headed. She didn’t recognize the reflection staring back at her, either. Through the window, she saw a long hallway; it went on forever, and there were doors on either side all the way down, like a hotel corridor—eerily empty, like a full building at 3 AM when no one was awake but her.

She turned around, and through the window on the other side of the train was a writhing kaleidoscope of rooms, tangled together like an Escher print. Stairways led to strange balconies attached to impossible doors and frantically angled ceilings. She reached out to touch the glass, cautiously, slowly stepping across the train to the other side, and when her fingertip graced the surface of the window, it shattered—erupting violently outwards.

The train car unravelled, and she was sucked into the vortex. She was helplessly thrown towards the impossible rooms, where she started to free-fall, tumbling and screaming. A fast blur flew past her as she fell, and she was crying now, shedding tears into the hateful dark. The tears fell on skylight windows and trickled through underground parking lots.

She tumbled past empty office buildings, scarlet jungles, and cold, stone castles. She saw flashes of empty homes, howling deserts, oceans of blood, and a million other places.

The fall lasted forever, but was over in an instant. She slammed into the ground so hard it could have shattered a planet, and finally awoke—shaking, sobbing, and throwing up on the cold floor of the City.

by knafflad

(Change this)

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The Time of Peace

The Time of Envy and Gluttony

The Time of Wrath

by BlueTangs Rock

It is a squat Georgian building, constructed from bricks coloured a dull orange that borders on the brown of rotting autumn leaves. Singled-storied and roofed with slate, it stares out at the landscape through two iron-latticed bay windows. It looks toward the surrounding treeline that forms an arboreal ring around it. Virginia creeper snakes up the right side of the cottage, putting the mud-red bricks and stormy slate to shame with its sunset gradient. The saturated crimson hues make the house seem awash with flame, as if a scarlet inferno had been caught in the act, standing frozen with embarrassment. Factor in the wrought iron windows, and the building seems as if it were itself alive, as the creeper mimics a nervous blush or hideous scar framing the glass eyes. The partially paved path leads up toward the door like a thrown rope trailing in a turbulent sea. It is uneven, but welcoming in a way that any shelter is, once you've experienced the worst a storm can offer.

The expanse between the house and the treeline is a small, circular meadow of grass and seeding dandelions that reach just above my knees. I like to trail my hands through the grass and feel the scratchy seed heads brush past, trying to latch on so they can later fall and grow elsewhere. For all their effort, the gentle green waves proceed no further than fifteen metres. They end, or begin, at the forest.

Golden-brown oaks dominate the treeline, with branches and roots spreading out across the forest like carved clay. Silver birches gleam like distant strangers in white, and mountain ashes scatter bitter berries across mottled mud. The woods hide a bounty of good food, for those who know how to scavenge. Pumpkin patches grow like ripening boils, and tangles of brambles offer up shrivelled blackberries. Raspberry canes poke from the fallen leaves with their fruit dangling like tiny red lanterns. Apple trees dot the forest too; their fruit grows small, speckled, and red, like nearly everything in the level, and are tart and refreshing. Between these and the sparsely stocked kitchen, I've been able to cook things I'd never dared imagine since I ended up on this strange journey. A diet of almond water, canned mysteries, and roasted rat is certainly not a comparable feast for the senses.

The house embraces you when you first enter, as if you were meeting a distant relative or a kindred soul. Opening the front door presents you with a short hallway to its back counterpart, with two inner doorways on your left and one on your immediate right. Turning right will take you into the dining room, which boasts the right front window, opposite which, the right rear window lights the adjoined kitchen. A single chair sits at the table, a single set of cutlery sits in the kitchen drawer, and a single candle burns gently on the front windowsill. A grey carpeted floor gives way to the kitchen's chessboard tiles where a cranky white oven and dull chrome countertop await your culinary whims. The first threshold on the left will lead you into the living room, where the textured wallpaper presses in close and comforting. An armchair sits centred against it, staring with the house out onto the wild lawn, and accompanied by an antique, curved coffee table sitting at its feet.

The second doorway on your left precedes the bedroom. Like the rest, it is modest and boasts a neatly made bed in the middle of the room, empty rosewood drawers on either side. A blue lamp on the left drawer casts the room into a sleepy haze when lit. However, the very last and very first space is the most interesting. The short hallway is lined with framed pictures, far too many to maintain a symmetrical or orderly pretence. They hang in patchwork fashion, covering the walls in different shapes and sizes until the original cream of the wallpaper appears like tributaries flowing around the geography of the photographs.

I believe these are the only things to change from visitor to visitor, because each and every one depicts me. The memories follow a vague chronology, progressing further through my life as they continue down the hall. At the start, my mother is hunched in a hospital bed, cradling my small, new form. Her face is tilted down towards mine, displaying a roiling cocktail of emotions. I am shown learning to crawl, walk, cycle, and drive. My mother and I exchange Christmas gifts in our third home in my tenth winter. That brass lighter proved invaluable in my smoking years, as well as all the arson I was never caught for. It was a thing of beauty, engraved with the intricate floral patterns of a grand hotel's wallpaper that gleamed mischievously even after years of handling. I still have it, though the urge to see things burn has faded like the lighter's pattern: still noticeable, but not prominent. However, the rest of my soul is not emptied so easily: I am still the child left on the doorstep, still the rebellious teen in the headmaster's office, and still the young man with old addictions. I've shacked up in rotten apartments, squatter's shelters, green belts, and brownfield sites. No empty mall or homely hall has ever felt as welcoming as this cottage. This seems by design, but the artificiality only draws me in further. The memories that hang in the corridor do not entice me to continue on. They do not fill me with wanderlust, nor the need for new experiences. When I look back through my life, I cannot find a single settled moment, so here I will make my own. This house will be my home whether it likes it or not.

Unfortunately, all the beauty and homeliness seem to hinge on one condition: you do not stay for long. This is a tranquil place with a benevolent feeling to it. I want to believe it is a kind and gracious host, simply one that does not tolerate guests who overstay their welcome. It has all the makings of a quick and comfortable rest, one that would revitalise a wanderer's spirit to no end upon discovery, but I am being greedy.

One thing I've learnt on my travels is to trust my instincts. These rooms are in tune with emotions, or built on them, or emit them. Whatever it is, trusting your hunches may just see you safely to the next level. But neither the tingling fear of a quiet noise around the corner nor an inhuman footprint in old dust can compare to what grows in this level. Where once I had to run the taps for fear of rust and dirt, I now have to wait for half-clotted blood to dissipate before it is drinkable. The lamp in the bedroom has gone out, and the kitchen lights begin to flicker. The pictures in the hall are peeling and ageing faster with each passing day. From the window I see the forest press closer, the distant, sunlit oaks being replaced with the dark spears of pines and hostile masses of holly bushes. Foraging trips reward me with more scratches and dirt than food, and tame, edible mushrooms are being outgrown by caps that drip foul, clear liquids. A venomous winter greyscale is suffocating the passionate reds of autumn, but still I will not take the hint.

Maybe it is selfish to settle in a place meant for many, but I do not find that I care. This is me wresting the well-earned rest I am owed from whatever set me on this godforsaken path, consequences be damned. If you find this wood once again hazy with evening sun, this house glowing with subtle invitation, and the path inviting you to rest a while, then beware. I have not left, and I am not going to leave, so if this cottage is empty, then I am dead. If all this is the case, then do not overstay your welcome. Take heart and keep going. Keep wandering. Good luck.

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by Pastacat

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Chapter 1:

Jennifer lives a normal life.

Jennifer was a normal woman. She lived a normal life. Jennifer would wake up before dawn and brew a coffee. Her apartment was small, but she didn’t need it to be any bigger. Her bedroom had a vanity, which was a particleboard dresser from Ikea decorated with organizers, pencil holders, and a pop figure. There was business-casual attire strewn about, most of it clean, just not put away.

A lot of her clothes had begun to live on the chair: that chair in the corner that she bought to use for writing, but ended up using as a collector for washed clothes in a state of limbo. Ran through the wash, but never put away, and sifted through like a farm trough each day to pull out a clean pair of socks and underwear. She tiptoed past the clutter and into the kitchen, and began the daily coffee ritual by the dim light of the cooking range. It involved a paper filter, a scoop of ground beans into the machine, and tap water. Then, Jennifer could wait for the aroma of a fresh brew to wake her up a little. Everything was very ordinary.

Today she left without eating breakfast, and it was raining. Like every day, Jennifer walked three blocks to the transit terminal to catch a train. Since it was such a short walk, she never used an umbrella, preferring to brave the elements and feel the rain patter onto her jacket. Real women were waterproof; she could handle a little bit of weather. The train was always full this early in the morning, and Jennifer would rarely get lucky enough to nab a seat. When standing, you have to find a handle above, or lean against the doors, or squeeze into any space one could find. Most often, she would be sandwiched between riders, feeling like a packed sardine.

The train was inexpensive and reliable, and she didn’t mind it. She’d never say she did, anyway. Jennifer was used to transit and could watch people on the train. People-watching was entertaining enough to get past the smells and uncomfortable touching that was impossible to avoid when you’re shoulder to shoulder with rush hour traffic. She would tell herself it was just a part of life: that society evolved this way by the work of human beings, specifically for the needs of human beings. It was by design that she was clinging to life to the handrail with hardly an inch of space to breathe, wondering if the tall man next to her knew he had the odour and appearance of a rotten vegetable. Nothing at play here was surprising; this was all according to the plan.

Work was eight and a half hours at the shopping mall where she would smile at appropriate times and say the appropriate things to customers to try and get them to buy clothes. They would rarely reciprocate her pleasant demeanour. People would be themselves, and Jennifer would be professionally sanitary. Her phrases were practised and targeted to each type of customer, whom Jennifer profiled ruthlessly.

Tracksuits would be dismissive, and she would give them a more casual greeting while leaning on surfaces with an elbow. Teenagers would be thieves, so they’d get a curt yet firm approach, and she would hardly leave their side. Families would be big spenders, but always a mixed bag, and Jennifer would decide to talk to the husband first or the wife first on a case-by-case basis. She would flirt, but just a hint of it. Sometimes she would get the cold shoulder, which means give the customer space and watch them from across the store, swooping in only when their body language suggested they needed a fitting room or a size. Then she would disappear again like a silent butler to leave them to their business.

Jennifer was good at what she did. She had quotas to meet, after all. It was thankless servitude, and every time someone proved her biases correct, she would smirk in the satisfaction of her black thoughts. She hated everyone she helped in a day, because that was the regular thing to do in her line of work.

She also wasn’t lonely. She was comfortable just by herself, because she understood herself. Loneliness was an emotion people felt when they’re bored and can't fill the void with anything worthwhile, so they seek vapid escape in the comings and goings of others. It’s why she was okay when Leon sat her down at his flat last month and told her that it wasn’t going to work out anymore. He was blonde and tall, and that must have been all that mattered about Leon, because Jennifer was fine with it. Breakups happen to normal people.

Leon could have ghosted her, and that would have been worse than being told all his effort in the relationship felt like a one-way street. He could have hit her, and that would have been worse than telling her she was stagnating, and he couldn’t have her dragging him down anymore. He could have done a lot of things, but Leon kept it civil and only took away two years of her life over an afternoon chat. It had been a few weeks since then, but Jennifer was doing fine on her own. There was a bit more room in her small apartment without any of Leon’s clutter, and she had some spare time on her hands to work on her journalism, which life always seemed to get in the way of anyway. She got plenty of social interaction with her co-workers and on the net, so it wasn’t like she was unpopular. All told, she was quite comfortable, and that was good.

She was entirely ordinary. She was polite to the workers when she paid for her chicken salad, and she was trying to avoid having too much caffeine, even though Jennifer had gotten a second cup of coffee at the food court earlier that day. She kept it all together on the commute and all throughout the day, and only stayed a few minutes longer in the bathroom at work to stare at her reflection in the mirror. Even on the train ride home, she wouldn’t ever cry in front of strangers. She kept things like that to herself and cried in the shower, like a regular person.

Emotions weren’t a rational thing, and she hated feeling them even more than she hated her customers. Other people were simply less mature than she was. Less intelligent. They would run around with their problems on their sleeves, complaining all day, or laughing too loudly, acting like big, oversized children. Adults take care of their problems and don't intrude on other people's comforts by being burdensome or loud. Jennifer was normal, and more people should take note of that and take care of their problems like she always did. She did everything correctly and was just fine staying that way.

After her nightly shower, Jennifer slipped into her pyjamas. They had a print of cute penguins all over, and some of the penguins even had cool sunglasses on, which was a bonus. After a good shower cry, it was only regular to wear your cool penguin pyjamas and browse the web for a few hours before bedtime. Jennifer didn’t want to think about much today. Jennifer was in control of her life, and she wasn’t interrupting anyone or getting in the way of anybody. She was safe and happy. Or at least, she could actively choose to be happy when she felt like it.

She figured that was how most people navigated through life: happiness wasn’t a retroactive symptom of events—it was an active choice. Anyone who fooled themselves into thinking happiness was a spontaneous thing that sprang into their life with the right criteria was merely coping. They hadn’t sat with themselves for long enough and watched the workings of the world. They still probably believed in soulmates, or reincarnation, or the tooth fairy, too. Jennifer knew the world revolved around choices, and when she wanted to be happy, she chose to be. She wanted to be alone, because it was simpler to live this way. No one would bother her, and she wouldn’t bother anyone. She could have disappeared right there, right then, and no one would have been any the wiser.

Jennifer was living a normal life. It was so ordinary, in fact, that the next morning, when no one brewed the coffee in her small apartment, when one fewer woman rode the train during rush hour, and even though the store was short-staffed, no one noticed that Jennifer was missing. Under the covers of her bed was a set of penguin pyjamas, laid out in the rough outline of a person who had been sleeping. Nothing else of Jennifer remained. The City of Rephaim had claimed her, and not a single person thought it was strange.

by knafflad

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Level Classification

Description

fig 1.0 The center of the Stability Zone. An unknown wanderer can be seen in the photo.

The Monument in the Snowstorm is one of the aberrant levels of the Backrooms. Level is an endless field of snow, the depths of which, consisting of layers of compressed under pressure snow. An endless night dominates the level, there are no clouds or celestial bodies in the sky, which entails the absence of natural light sources on the level. The temperature never rises above -30C, and in the strongest snowstorms drops to -90C, average temperature is -35C to -40C.

The main point of interest in the level is the Monument, a 14-meter high construction made of white stone in the shape of a right triangle, whose top was damaged at an unknown point in time, as well as its origin is unknown. Monument is the only thing really visible from afar in the desolate snowscape and serves as a landmark for wanderers who get to the level. The Monument is located in the center of the Stability Zone - a 100-meter circle, the space inside which is not affected by Snowstorm. One of the properties of the Monument is its effect on space. To the observer it is visible as a clear silhouette, clearly distinguishable through the snow and absolute darkness, by focusing on which the spatial displacement by Inner Snowstorm gusts occurs less frequently, and stops completely at a distance of 5 meters from the Stability Zone. The snow layers inside the Stability Zone becomes static at depth 10 m. By implication, it is assumed that Monument base is not a rectangular platform submerged under a layer of snow, but a much larger structure going under the snow to an unknown depth. Whether the Monument is the cause of the Stability Zone, or whether it is just a reference point indicating where its source is located is unknown.

An Abnormal Snowstorm begins at random intervals on the level and lasts from 3 days to 16 months, the intervals between snowstorms are 2-3 months. The Snowstorms is capable of sweeping snowdrifts up to 7 meters high, significantly changing the level's landscape. The reason why this weather phenomenon is of interest to the cryptoscientific community is its effect on materials and creatures from the outside. When any person, entity, or object from other Backrooms level enters the Inner Snowstorm is swallowed by a powerful wave of snow from which bluish particles emanate. Swallowed objects are sent to a random part of the level. In contrast to that, Outer Snowstorms carry objects, entities, and wanderers from other levels of the Backrooms to snow wasteland, objects carried to the level appear behind the powerful waves of particle snow. Impossible to predict what type of storm will happen next.

The most common entity is the Smilers, for whom the endless pitch-black darkness of the level is the perfect environment. The Smilers inhabiting this level are a subspecies whose distinguishing feature, in addition to being immune to the properties of the abnormal snowstorms, is a slightly bluish hue from their eyes and teeth. Other entities encountered in the level fall into it in a similar manner to the wanderers.

Communities

Outpost Borealis

Built jointly by volunteers from UNCB, GMG and independent communities. Has a supply of canned food, a few tools, electric heater and a powered by entangled batterie. Shelter for those who were able to make it to the Monument.

Access

Entrances

You may accidentally enter a level during an external snowstorm. Wanderers were closed by a sudden snow flow from an unknown source, blocking their vision, after which they appears on the level.

There is a stable entrance in the snow coated blocks of Boundless Retail. Periodically you can find piles of particle snow among the piles of normal snow, diving into which you will find yourself on the level.

Exits

To leave the level, you must dig through Surface Layer to find one of several doors. Entering the uncovered door will take you to the level corresponding to the door. Below is a list of doors.

by redgi110

by 0ktober

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Entity Classification

fig 1.0 (A field journal sketch of the skinless carp)

Introduction

Howdy, fellow readers, my name's Harold Goddard, I’m a fisherman from the Bristleton Settlement. The UNCB has given me the exciting opportunity to provide my experience with fishing in The Halls to the Archives, for their 2005 environmental survey for Cartesian Valley sector N172/The Balgasan Reach! For my first entry of the survey, I should begin with the fish I most commonly spot on my trips, the skinless carp.

Skinless Carp Description And Biology

These fish are easily characterized by their lack of scales, exposed fleshy surfaces, and sharp claws. You'll know it's a skinless carp by its milky, uncanny eyes. I personally get the willies when I look at them, on occasion; all sunken and pale, perhaps an adaptation to the dimly lit environment of the inner wetlands. Whatever the reason, they sometimes look cold and lifeless, despite being alive and well.

Many of them live inside the Carpeted Wetland’s central lake, but I also tend to find them moving between shallow pools in the Brambleroot forests and mud flats. I’ll be clambering around the brambles or wading through the mudflats, and see the fish crawling around those mucky carpeted floors, like drunkards in a deep stupor. They're definitely easiest to catch in that state. Pick up a spear or splintered board and stick em' from a distance, like stabbin’ fish in a barrel, ha.

Though if you or some other hungry critter doesn't hunt them in such a vulnerable position, they can survive without water for extended periods of time by rapidly regenerating their oxygen-depleted cells, while using their sharp fin spines as traction claws to drag their way between pools of water or isolated ponds that other fish their size would have a hard time getting to. The koipecca wrasse, the fish that tend to bodyguard these carp, are oftentimes seen in a dormant state with their beaks clinging onto the dorsal spines and caudal rays of the carp, only reawakening when the carp returns to the water.

The carp also have to shut off parts of their brains and nonessential organs during their voyage onto dry land, so they can be easily disoriented and eaten; a price to pay for traveling where many fish can't. Many hungry beasts, from packs of Hounds to hordes of Deathrats, are known to snack on unlucky carp, though I’m sure the most well known example of Skinless Carp predation are the seasonal masses of carpet bears which migrate towards the Carpeted Wetlands, following the Hall Trekker herds, to reproduce and gorge themselves on the fish -along with other flora and fauna of the swamp-, in an event comparable to the salmon runs from the Baseline realm.

However, the carp have adapted against predation from terrestrial entities by making their eggs highly resistant to the digestive tract, so the larval carp can be dispersed to new locations by animal droppings; a bit nasty, but allows for the carp to be found most anywhere with water, making them such an important fish to feed our families with. If any readers hunt a carp on land and find eggs inside when gutting the fish, I assure you to do your part and release the eggs back into the water, so they have the best chance of survival. Although, it would be important to note that Skinless Carp only thrive in freshwater, and will avoid bodies of saltwater, as the excess salt fries the carp’s exposed muscles and nerves, making their bodies rapidly thrash and twitch, they don't last long like that.

In freshwater, the skinless carp is more in its element, they have a broad diet, eating just about anything that can fit in their mouths, from algae to weeds, bugs, and smaller baitfish. Thankfully, they don't get bigger than a meter, or they’d possibly see us and our waterfowl-hunting hounds as meals. Though the koipecca wrasses that stick around the carp are highly territorial and will dart towards any larger creatures with their sharp beaks, one of the many reasons to avoid swimming in the Hall’s waters if possible.

On the topic of those wrasse, they are an essential part of the carp’s hygiene. The skinless carp has no scales or skin on its torso shielding its flesh from the swamp water, and while the carp may have multiple adaptations against parasites and disease, such as their flesh regenerative abilities and a thick antibacterial slime coating, parasitic worms and arthropods can still tunnel their way through the fish’s defenses. The koipecca wrasses use their long, thin beaked teeth to pick out the pests from the carp’s flesh with careful precision.

Fishing Skinless Carp

It's harder to catch a carp in the water than on land, since they stick to the lake-bed, hiding in the silt and foraging within the muck. Spearfishing isn't recommended in these conditions, but if you're using a rod, you'll find luck with a variety of bait.

Personally, for bait, I like to use the house geckos I find around my Pa's farmhouse or small strips of jerky made from the skitter vermin which try to sneak their way into our grain cellar; the carp love it! For the rod, I use any small stones or bones I can find as a sinker weight, so the bait can reach the bottom, where the carp like to lurk.

When the carp take a bite, the larger carp are a bit of a challenge to reel up due to the weight, but generally their more sluggish swimming makes the carp easier to reel in than many other fishes found in the Wetlands. However, notable risks to keep in mind when reeling up the carp for yourselves are that these carp also use their long fin spines as sharp claws, which can cause deep lacerations that could easily become infected in the swampland. In my youth, I was a bit too careless when trying to take the carp off the hook, and got the nastiest cuts on my arm, my Pa had to rush me back into town and had to buy so much deathmoth silkwater to clean out the wounds, it was so expensive and he was so pissed, learnt my lesson there, ha.

Once, I’d also seen a swarm of koipecca wrasse leap out of the water and latch their beaks onto the arms and snout of a small carpet bear who was trying to haul a skinless carp out of the water, and the bear ran off a hollerin'. Keep an eye out for those little buggers too, if you're standing too close to the shore when reeling in your catch.

Once you secure your catch, you could choose to gut the carp like your traditional fish, clean out the fish in boil-cleaned water -or a deathmoth silkwater rinse, if you're fancy-, and either cook, dry, salt, or pickle the meat to your liking.

Though, with the carp’s regenerative abilities, anglers have the special opportunity to try another method of harvesting the meat: if the carp is large enough, you can use a blade -be it bone, flint, or sharpened plywood- to make three cuts in a triangular formation on each side of the fish’s body to get two, inch-thick, slabs of meat; release the carp back into the water, and in the course of a few weeks the carp may fully regenerate the missing muscle tissue for you to harvest again another time, if that fish’s still out there surviving the elements.

Skinless Carp Aquaculture

I know there's a settlement, The Helech Wallow, a small ways away from my town, in the fern tree groves closer to the Wetland’s Cartesian point. I have some good angler friends there. Their town takes advantage of the carp’s abilities and actually farms the carp in a neat aquaculture setup: they’ll dig out multiple large trenches into the carpet terra, fill them up with water, seed the trench beds with vegetation, and stock those trenches with carp. Then they'll sort the carp into different trenches, based on age, size, and for the adult fish whether their meat’s been harvested or not. I’ve been told by the fine folks who maintain the trenches that the little carp fry love hiding in the aquatic weeds while the older carp love munching on those same weeds, so the different aged carp have to be separated.

I’ve been told that, along with the weeds, they usually give the carp fishfeed composed of ground vermin meat, wild seeds, amber wheat grain, and dried mushrooms. Whenever the fish get sick, they also have a trench stocked with Koipecca wrasse, so they can pick them clean of parasites; albeit, everybody's a bit nervous whenever it's their task to carefully lower or lift the carp out of that trench.

Once the carp grow to be about a year and a half old, they're old enough to have their meat harvested in the same incision method mentioned earlier, but they'll also wrap the fishes wounds in a deathmoth silk bandage so their cuts can be cleaned and reduce infection. When the carp grows to be three years old, they're mature enough to reproduce and provide a new generation of carp.

If you're used to farming other livestock like rodents, geckos, slug slimes, poultry, boar, or ibex, waiting over a year for meat, and over three years for offspring may sound like quite the long time investment for the unpredictable environment of The Backrooms, but in protection from wild predatory entities these fish can live for decades, with adults producing two slabs of meat each, every few weeks. That's quite a reliable source of meat, once you have an established stock.

In addition, while the folks at Helech Wallow don't do this, there are other settlements who live near the Wetland's shoreline who are known to dig out expansive shallow pits into muddy carpet terra, letting the wetland waters flood in, then seeding the paddies with rice and cattails. Along with the rice and reed crops, rice paddy farmers will stock the waters with skinless carp, koipecca wrasse, freshwater shrimp, mussels, snails, and a wide variety of other small fishes, such as gold-dashed ricefish, wall-stripe danios, mosquito slurper fish, silvernose Hall minnows, and hairy halfbeaks.

The various fish benefit the rice and reed crops by providing them nutrients, in the form of fish waste. The fish also help with lowering the amounts of competing weeds, choking algae, and pest insects present in the paddies, by foraging around in the flooded fields. This setup also benefits the paddy farmers, as their field of rice and cattail crops also double as a pond to harvest fish and shellfish in, giving a compact plot of farmland which can produce a complete and varied diet, a valuable asset in these Halls.

Domesticated Skinless Carp, Glowing Koi

The skinless carp does have additional economic value outside of its regenerative meat, antibacterial slime coating, and aquatic agricultural benefits; Mostly practiced in long-lived and highly established cities, the carp have been domesticated into a subspecies, the glowing koi. Although while under well-lit areas, the glowing koi looks much like a standard skinless carp, in darkness they can produce a large variety of vibrant glowing colors and patterns. This is possible from selectively breeding carp that can grow specific arrangements of bioluminescent bacterial mats inside their slime coating.

Many cities in the Halls practice annual festivals, for surviving another circuition, within the many festivities includes The Glow Show, where families surround a large pool and release large numbers of glowing koi -along with shimmertail guppies- into the water; the room’s lights dim, in the darkness masses of fish swirl around in a mesmerizing light show of shifting colors and patterns. All the while, incense smoke wafts through the air, performers beat on drums made of skitter hide, and blow flutes made of pigeon bone; a long-lived tradition to bring safety and luck towards the colony's people, and to keep the monstrous entities at bay. It's a lovely experience that I had the pleasure of participating in once, with my youngest son, though I imagine it's a more common experience for the city folk among us.

Tanks and ponds with smaller koi are also relatively common sights in Hall city buildings, since a lot of the city folk see owning the fish as a wealthy status symbol. Even as a rural man, I can definitely understand that point of view, as they truly are beautiful fish. Interestingly, these Glowing Koi are highly trainable and can recognize faces. These fish can gain trust with their caretakers, and by their social nature the koi will reassure their peers to trust that person too.

Well-trained glowing koi can be taught to perform fun tricks, like fetching a ball, leaping out of the water through a hoop, or climbing onto objects with their fin spines. Folks who work in the city trading centers or restaurant buildings sometimes perform their koi for families passing by, in hopes of grabbing their attention, convincing the parents to go buy some of their wares while the lil’ ones get to observe the fish, under the watchful supervision of the shop’s staff; the kids love it!

Conclusion

To conclude, the skinless carp is an essential and prevalent fish present in Cartesian Valley sector N172/The Balgasan Reach, and many other valley sectors across the Halls. Not to mention, the documented reports of other limspaces across the Backrooms limsystem, where the fish either naturally reside or had been introduced into, such as Boundless Retail, Bloodpool Catwalks, and The Fields of Eternity. I've also recently been informed that these fish had even been discovered across the Crater Sea, living in the flood plains of the Hydrosphere limsystem's Thunder Forest, which is honestly quite exciting! Stay tuned, as I’m eager to submit more environmental surveys of the fish I’ve encountered here. Remember, there's always more fish in the sea of carpet!

by BlueTangs Rock

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Entity Classification

fig 1.0 (The "Skinless carp")

Description

Skinless Carp are relatively slow-moving fish that can be found in many bodies of freshwater within the Backrooms. They heavily resemble baseline common carp, but with the exception of lacking both scales, or a skin layer on their torso. Instead, they have exposed flesh, which is covered only by a thin layer of mucus, giving the fish its name. Though, in water that is a bit more stagnant, they are known to form a thicker, transparent layer of mucus to better avoid mold infections. However, around the head and fins, typical scales can still be found.

As this entity lacks an adequate skin layer, these fish are unfortunately quite vulnerable to parasites, infections, and diseases. Due to this vulnerability, symbiotic relationships with cleaner fish and shrimp species are vital for this entity's survival. One will often find such species in close proximity to Skinless Carp.

This entity also possesses hooked fin spines on both their pectoral and pelvic fins. This can be used for locomotion or defense.

Behaviors

Skinless Carp pose little harm to wanderers. These fish can even be both tamed, and trained to perform basic tricks/tasks. Despite the unassuming appearance of these fish, they show signs of relative intelligence. With their ability to grow wiser as they age, Skinless Carp can learn to distinguish threats, food, locations, and allies (such as cleaner fish, and other carp) in their environment.

Skinless Carp are generalist omnivores, so they are known to eat most things that can fit in their mouths. However, as they are mostly made of exposed flesh, and thus highly vulnerable to attacks, they are very wary of both predatory entities/fauna, and anything larger than them. However, with enough patience, time, and food, one could eventually gain the trust of an individual, or an entire group of Skinless Carp. The Skinless Carp's ability to gradually trust humans is a useful characteristic for domesticating these fish, for the aquaculture industry and aquarium trade.

While Skinless Carp can swim like typical fish, they do have a secondary, more specialized method of locomotion -they can use their hooked fin spines to cling onto rocks, wood, or a variety of other solid materials on the ground or walls. They do this to fasten themselves in place against flowing water, to climb objects to either obtain out-of-reach food or to escape aquatic threats. However, it is worth noting that if something or someone tried to attack or injure a skinless carp, these fish have been known to occasionally retaliate by using their fin spines to slash the flesh of their attacker. The resulting cuts on the skin can be deep, and could potentially risk infection if not properly treated.

Skinless Carp are known to have a variety of predators both in and out of the water. In water, there is an entire classification of aggressive, predatory fish entities known as "Pescathora" that are known to hunt skinless carp in a variety of hunting strategies (depending on the species of Pescathora in question). The primary strategies that Skinless Carp use to defend against their aquatic threats are to:

• Slash their enemies with their hooked fin spines, typically leaving notable flesh wounds in their attackers.

• In an emergency, if there are any stones or trees that rise out of the water, then the carp can use their hooked fin spines to climb up stone or wood to escape the waterline and escape aquatic predators.

However, Skinless Carp prefer to stay in the water. In addition to threats present within the water, on land, the Skinless Carp isn't completely safe either -Skinless Carp can only survive 20 minutes out of water, and a variety of terrestrial baseline animals and Backrooms entities, such as hounds, also have a taste for carp.

Along with utilizing their fin spines to evade threats, during intense droughts, by using their fin spines, they may traverse through land -in search of new bodies of water.

Biology

Skinless Carp start small as young juveniles (about the size of a typical goldfish), and over the course of around five years, they'll grow to about 4ft in size. The Skinless Carp have an average lifespan of 30 years. The age of an individual carp can be identified by counting the concentrated rings (or annuli) on the head/fin scales of the fish, similar to rings on a tree -one ring is analogous to one year in age.

Wild Skinless Carp have been known to congregate in groups of between 5 to 16 individuals.

Skinless Carp take on a similar niche that carp have in baseline reality -these fish are generalist omnivores that are known to live on a diet consisting of a large variety of plants, planktonic organisms, invertebrates, and small fish.

Due to their high vulnerability to parasites, the symbiotic relationships that they make with certain cleaner species are vital for survival. Creatures such as freshwater cleaner fish and shrimp can help Skinless Carp avoid or recover from infections, and become clear of parasites. One entity species that has specifically evolved to provide such symbiotic relationships with the carp are Koipecca Wrasse; a cleaner wrasse, which has adapted to living in both freshwater and almond water. Skinless Carp groups will often be found in the same areas as Koipecca Wrasse shoals.

In the case where a Skinless Carp has taken major bodily damage, they have been known to regenerate entire sections of damaged or lost body parts over the course of a few weeks. This behavior can be compared to baseline reality salamanders. This could be useful for aquaculture, as one could take moderate, controlled cuts out of non-vital sections of the carp over time, to harvest pieces of seafood without having to kill the fish.

As mentioned in the Behaviors section, Skinless Carp have the ability to survive out of water for 20-minute intervals. To pull this feat, the carp shuts off certain parts of its brain, slows its heart rate, and concentrates oxygenated blood towards vital organs. This behavior is similar to baseline epaulette sharks.

Skinless Carp are known to naturally have their breeding season within the summer months or dry season of their respective levels. However artificially heating water to a certain extent (such as the use of a water heater), can trigger reproductive responses out of season, which is useful for aquaculture in the Backrooms. One characteristic about these fish that allows them to be so widespread in the Backrooms are their eggs; Skinless Carp eggs are quite durable, and will usually survive the digestive tracts of animals and entities, which allows for widespread dispersal of these eggs across the Backrooms.

These fish cannot survive long in the saltwater of ocean levels, as salt causes the nerves on the fish's body to violently twitch and convulse, causing much stress and intense pain for the fish until it's eventually too much for the fish to handle. Because of this, they are only found within areas where the water isn't salty enough to damage their nervous system.

Value in Aquaculture

In Backrooms aquaculture, the Skinless Carp are livestock valued for their meat and caviar.

The skinless carp are ideal for aquaculture, as they have easily consistent breeding conditions. The carp's breeding conditions are tied to water temperatures between 78°F and 88°F, so a water heater is all that's needed to restock the carp population.

After the carp breed, fertilized eggs are collected by qualified personnel, and placed into small incubation tanks. When the eggs hatch, the fry are transported into multiple holding tanks until they're old enough to be put into the juvenile aquaculture ponds/pools. In aquaculture, juvenile and adult carp are raised and kept in aquacultural ponds/pools that are separated by age, size, and fitness of the fish.

However, not every egg gets to be fertilized and collected for incubation, as there is a demand for caviar/pickled roe. For caviar harvesting, adult female carp are cut open to release unfertilized eggs/fish roe -the female carp does not survive this. The roe is then salted and put through the fermentation process to produce caviar for the seafood trade.

Although Koipecca Wrasse provides little commercial use to humans, they are still vital for the hygiene and survival of domesticated Skinless Carp, so they are often raised in the same ponds/pools as the Skinless Carp within aquaculture facilities.

The Skinless Carp are fed with feed made from a mixture of grains, vegetables, fish meal, and shellfish. The Koipecca Wrasse are fed with feed made from a mixture of insects, mealworms, fish meal, and shellfish.

As mentioned in the Biology section, Skinless Carp have regenerative abilities that could allow for one to harvest sections of the fish's body for its meat, while keeping the fish alive.

This process is done by putting the carp into a temporary sleep with a shot of anesthetics, wrapping a tight band around the fin spines to minimize injury on the personnel, then taking the carp out of the water to perform two quick, but precise operations on the carp. In each operation, qualified personnel makes three incisions in an equilateral triangle shape (typically 7 inches in length, and half an inch in depth), on a particular side of the fish's body to harvest the meat. Once one side of the fish is harvested, the fish is then lowered into a sterile tank for around a minute before being lifted back out of the water to repeat the operation on the other side.

Once the two triangle-shaped slabs of meat are harvested from the fish, qualified personnel take care in cleaning out the carp's wounds, and bandaging them up. The carp is then put into a quarantine tank, where the tight bands are removed from the carp's fins, the carp eventually wakes back up, and heals for a week before being released back into its regular aquaculture pond/pool.

The two triangle-shaped slabs of meat are properly washed with icy water, cleared of potential parasites, thoroughly cooked, salted, breaded with crust, and packaged for human consumption as "Carp Chips™."

In the aquaculture process, the carp don't fully trust in their human caretakers; only just enough to associate a human with potential feeding time, and not immediately dart away from humans, but not much else.

Value in the Aquarium Trade (as trained pets)

In this case, skinless carp are not raised as livestock for their meat but instead are treated as pets.

The process of properly taming a skinless carp and gaining its trust involves plenty of time, patience, involved interaction, and food.

Whenever a skinless carp specimen trusts someone, they make for nice companions in the Backrooms purgatory. The carp can recognize the faces, voices, and movement vibrations of their caretakers, and will happily swim towards them if they sense them nearby.

As skinless carp are relatively social creatures, one skinless carp who trusts a particular human can spread the information to their fishy peers, and convince them to slowly start trusting that particular human as well.

Once a skinless carp specimen gains enough trust with their caretaker, they become more willing to become trained. With enough treats and gentle back pats as rewards, they can be trained to perform basic tricks and tasks -ranging from not so useful, but neat tricks (such as spinning, rolling, jumping, or climbing), to more useful tasks (such as fetching items, and transporting objects from one place to another).

Within their first year and a half, juvenile Skinless Carp are often raised in aquarium tanks -between 40-75 gallons are recommended. However, adult tamed skinless carp are often kept in larger freshwater koi pond-like pools.

Discovery

The exact origins of Skinless Carp are unknown, but it is theorized that they initially arrived into the Backrooms long ago, as a population of common carp who no-clipped from baseline reality, and eventually adapted to their new Backrooms environment. As Skinless Carp are so widespread throughout the Backrooms, it is difficult to say when wanderers first encountered these carp.

However, there seems to be a few surviving documentations of Skinless Carp from ancient times, some in the form of old Japanese style paintings which depict koi-like skinless carp which could glow bioluminescent colors, which could occasionally be found on the walls of certain levels, such as fancy hotel and restaurant themed levels. Other documents are in the form of old, tattered papers with ink writings in various Southeast Asian languages, that seem to describe an ancient practice for almond grain/aquaculture hybrid farms, in which Skinless Carp were placed in shallow trenches of water between plots of almond grain crops, in order to grow both in the same space for consumption.

Survival Guide

It is advised that if you decide to consume Skinless Carp, you should make sure to properly clean, cook, and prepare the fish before consumption, as the likelihood that a raw Skinless Carp contains harmful diseases and parasites are considerably high.

If you get cut by a Skinless Carp's fin spines, it is advised that you seek treatment, as there is a potential risk of infection. This could be done by washing out the cut with clean water and bandaging it up with supplies from a medical aid kit. However, in the case where there are no medical aid kits available, one could possibly use certain foliage for bandaging material, or for medical properties.

by BlueTangs Rock

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by 0ktober

  LIMINAL ARCHIVES

Featured Level

The Halls

This is the Frontier, also known as the Halls. It is sometimes claimed that the Halls were the first discovered Limspace, but it is still far from the most understood. It's nothing but endless rooms, driving you to a state of stupefaction like saying a word over and over and over until it loses all meaning.

Featured System Overview

Blue Static America

Survival is achievable if you carefully prepare for the regions you traverse.

Know the time periods and avoid standing out; bringing items to where they have yet to be invented may elicit witch hunts, mob lynching or similar.

It is absolutely crucial to avoid regions whose present year is approaching the current year of Baseline Reality.

Featured Limspace

Lone Tower

Amidst the starless skies, the lone Tower remains.

A vertical contraption that stretches dozens of kilometers up and down, with each of its ends lost in the dark emptiness that surrounds it. Half-machine and half-living, its many air pipes breathe calmly, mechanical components regularly pulsing in a uniform rhythm.

Although its exterior made of contracting and expanding metallic plates was once painted, what little colour remains can barely be seen in the hostile white lighting the Tower exudes.

Featured Limspace

The Boiling Sea

A sea of scalding water and fleeting life, The Boiling Sea is composed of an incredibly large sea of saltwater with stilt cities scattered atop the surface, with no discernable end.

20 meters below, however, there is a rich seafloor comprised of rocks, sand, various metals, and concrete. Spread throughout this seafloor are holes of differing sizes that are up to 10,000 meters deep.

The sea's effects make traveling on the water for extended periods difficult, with the only way to traverse the sea safely is by boat. Fortunately, there are abandoned boats scattered throughout The Boiling Sea's environment.

Featured Limspace

Bridgespace

An endless complex fractal system of bridges suspended over flat, dark plains, obscured by a thick mist.

At junctions where ten bridges meet, strange structures can be found - the only structures in this place that aren't damn bridges.

Deemed 'shrines' after my second visit due to the large amounts of inscriptions and symbols written on their outer surface, they appear to be modified pyramidal domes carved of oily, black stone, set upon squared bases.

2026 - Liminal Archives

by [[*user ]]

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link

> Hey, Juna here. I hope you're enjoying reading through the backlog archives, I've been translating a lot of older pages for you to check out. This page is super old — it was created just over 23,867,812 hours ago by someone named "Hanno". I talked with Hanno for quite a while, but this is the only page they added. There's been a few edits to it by other people since, but, this is largely what it's always looked like.

I've localized a few things: among other small changes, note that Hanno originally called your Baseline Earth "Adam" or variations of that name. Hanno also references a host of godly figures, which I have italicized for ease of reading. They were staunchly polytheistic and applied that belief to the very soul of the limspace. Perhaps someone out there can shine some light on Hanno's beliefs, I would love to know more about these lost figures.

Anyways, I pulled this article out of the dataspace for a reason. I'll tell you what I mean in a moment, but give Hanno's story a read first and I'll catch up with you right after. I'm struck by the similarities between this antiquated page and a more recent discovery by the UNCB… I'm almost certain they're related.

*************************************

Antiquated Dataspace File
"CLASS://L_FIELDS-OF-ETERNITY"

*************************************

Eshmun knows all who wander here.

Dagon's grain may be the body of this realm, but Eshmun surely hails as its king. He offers rest to the weary, rains to the thirsty, and a journey to the lost. But above all he offers solitude — the most considerable gift of all. Some seek solitude for its peace; to find their inner sanctum, to go where no force can break that cold, reliable fortress. A place that holds fast against even the greatest storm. Some are destroyed by solitude, are swallowed up by it, losing themselves to abandonment. Yet in the penumbra of death, rebirth always lies. Some see companionship in isolation. To others, it can be medicine. Eshmun knows all who wander here, and he gives each of them what they need.

These are the Fields of Eternity. They are spacious, with few distractions. The golden waves of wind-touched wheat stretch beyond the horizon, forever. They welcome you with open arms and a lifetime of pilgrimage. If you are troubled, the Fields will give you the answers. If you seek them, you will find the questions.

When you see a field of wheat, do you consider every stalk its own unique soul? Have you ever stopped and thought of how much effort each stalk put forth to grow, to reach so boldly towards the heavens, to flourish to seed? You are but one living soul among multitudes, just as each stalk of grain creates the field. You may begin to consider the parallels — your troubles surely felt just as great as the grains. Given the chance, would the grain envy your problems, and happily swap them for its own? Would you prefer to be rooted, rather than to wander?

It is in the nature of grain to be strong, yet a field of wheat is the gentlest meadow. You can pass through it like water, it yields to you freely, but stands tall and resolute after your passing. The grain is wiser than you know. The fields whisper that wisdom, but only to those who listen.

I dreamed visualizations for Hanno. - J

Description

I have walked the Fields for a long time, and seen much of what they offer. I am now honoured by the opportunity to share what I have seen. I will preface that this record will, sadly, pale in comparison to the feeling of the Fields. All I can deliver is words on a terminal screen, and Juna's images are naught but dreams, for she can never see them for herself. Yet, for the sake of archiving, we will give it our best attempt.

First, something Juna cannot dream: the colours. The skies are often clear and deep, an endless expanse of hazy blue like dusty robin eggs, stretching as far as the eye can see above ashen gold fields of grain below. The colours are textured by the wind, given life by the clouds and the ripples of the wheat which flow like waves upon the sea. Beneath the clouds lie shades rich and deep — above them are glimmering tints. They shine along silver edges of billowing cumulus forms that tower mountainously high, taller than you can imagine. The wind soars in gentle waves, stirring the hues of grain and seeded grass into harmonious dance. When the winds bring rain, they wash out the blue and gold with foggy dappled greys.

Prairies are simple, boring things at first glance. They seem featureless, flat, and uniform, but wander for some time and you will see how complex and ever-changing their beauty is. There is more here than first impressions suggest.

Dotted oh so infrequently along the vast landscape are varied landmarks. Perhaps a farmhouse, or an old wooden barn with weathered silos. Or tangles of dried hay intelligently woven together, about ten feet tall and as wide as a trailer. Not a bale by any means: more accurately described as a nest. A single lone tree, far off in the distance. A handful of ragged scarecrows, forgotten and windswept. Or an old wooden bench, half sinking into the earth. There is much to be found out here. Each tells a story or contains a mystery. Some were here before even wanderers, placed by Eshmun for his inscrutable reasons.

I am not quite sure I remember how I first found this place. I'm certain that people find their way to the fields quite by accident. In fact, most likely do. The fields are vast and has many connections of the City of Rephaim². When chancing upon a conjunction to the Fields, you might think yourself resurrected, a child of life once more. Met with warmth, light, a gentle breeze and rustling grass after so long in the ersatz-architect paralogy³ of the city, what else could you imagine? Here you are liberated from labyrinths of hallways and the cold unfeeling complexes of the city. Yet, even though it's not the soil of Earth, the Fields carry a deep sense of Baseline verisimilitude that quiets the heart and soothes the soul.

Night

The wandering night does not blanket the land entirely at once; it roves, slowly, and envelops pockets at a time. It gently touches them with darkness, and bares the starry skies open to them: twinkling, naked, and deep. A shifting gentle gradient of twilight comes first. It darkens the horizon with shades of umber and wine, and slowly wraps the world in sheets of curious night. Look, there to your left to a foothill far away — and you will see that daytime still shines warmly upon the grass, perhaps twenty miles away. And there too, at your right, the very same at the edge of your vision. But it is night for you for now, for Eshmun has sent night your way, just as a rainstorm comes and goes. Now is the time for rest. These acres will be still and silent under the stars. But, should you be curious, look upwards.

I have seen that Eshmun is real, and he does dream in the night skies. If you are lucky you can watch his visions play theatre among the stars as constellations come to life and new things come into being, woven by starlight. I will give further details about these miracles later.

Rain

The clouds sometimes bring storms and sun showers that fall upon the fields in sheets of warm rain. To those who settle in one place, the storms bring drinking water. To those who wander, a storm brings pause. The rain collects in streams and carves springs and eddies through the fields, and shallow valleys here and there. Where it all runs to, I do not know. Perhaps the water is, in time, swallowed by the hungry soil, or perhaps — farther than I can know — lies the great sea itself upon the brink of the world.

A struggle one may encounter is in the face of a great storm, and I have weathered many in my time here. Even in a utopia, strife must exist in some regard, and Eshmun, surely as an homage, has chosen his favoured method of delivering it. Torrential downpours bring angry wind and biting cold, leaving mires of mud in their wake. A true storm can test the mettle of even the strongest wills.

The Fields are where Eshmun tests all the types and consistencies of mud. Runny mud. Gritty mud. Deep, sucking mud that pulls you up to your waist in a heartbeat. Sticking mud that seeps into your clothes, clings to your skin, and pools in the bottom of your trousers while rain drowns your eyes. In the wake of a deluge, the earth becomes a beast — a hungry, swallowing element that reaches as far as the eye can see. Mud is earth turned to thick primordial sludge. A hungry slime that does more than stick to you, it pulls you in with a voracious appetite, like the ravenous jaws of Mot dragging you to the underworld. When mud is summoned, it is to feed divine Death, to take you like a lamb into his mouth and return you to the germ of creation.

The rare times I ever felt fear within the fields was because of mud. The first downpour took my sandals and I had wandered barefoot ever since. Even that was lucky, though, for many times I feared drowning in the mire. A more pitiful, horrendous death I still struggle to imagine. There were days when I would grasp at handfuls of wheat just to keep my head from slipping underneath the surface, and I would pull with all my might to loosen myself a measly inch at a time, until exhaustion took me and I would wait, submerged, for hours before my next attempt. Through tears, pain, and the grace of Eshmun, I conquered the mud not once, not twice, but on three fearful occasions.

When all was over, and the skies laid themselves open and bare once more to deliver warmth and light, I would lay there in contentment and let the mud bake into clay upon my skin. Shedding that second skin of dirt was always a bittersweet rebirth.

Conjunctions

The Fields contain connections to other worlds, you only need to seek them out. Many of the features of the landscape here lead to other Levels, and often in unexpected ways.

Take, for example, the first dilapidated barn I came across on my journey. At first glance, it was nothing special, and I tried to peer inside to see if there was anything of note within. When I creaked open the heavy wooden door, however, I was met not with the inside of a musty old barn, but with a long concrete hallway of the City of Rephaim. Humming aqueducts alongside caged ghost lights lined its ceiling. It went on as far as the eye could see, and offered many passages to each side of the hallway, branching out into depths unknown. It was a stable rift between field and concourse, but I feared that unknown realm and stayed the course through the wheat.

Another conjunction I came across was a small hole in the trunk of a lone tree. When I peered through, I looked through to another place, upwards at some ceiling tiles. The hole in the tree was connected to the rim of a mug sitting on a desk somewhere, and I guess if I were small enough, I could have slipped right through.

I am sure countless such connections are dotting the landscape here.

Communities

There are some who toil here. I have taken refuge with one group before, after chancing upon a farmhouse sprouting from the fields and entering it expecting a conjunction to a new level. To my surprise, I walked uninvited right into someone's home. The family here (consisting of five souls and perhaps two dozen gravestones in the yard) made a living with ancient techniques and a sombre culture; milling wheat to flour by hand between two stones and baking sourdough in sleeping ashes. Laying pathways through the fields. And praying. Given the choice between the Fields and the City, I can understand their plot.

In my brief time in their company, they told me many stories. They had never had a visitor before and so they eagerly offered me refuge, if not with a heavy awkwardness in their demeanour. Their elder, a woman named Sister Goldmary, showed me around their acreage. On its perimeter were fences erected around their property, not to keep anything out — but to keep the young ones from wandering too far.

I met a young girl named Abigail, and she told me about bread. She had handed me a cut of heavy sourdough, it was the first thing I had eaten in perhaps a baseline year. She explained with a curious bravado that it had taken her many attempts to learn how to make a quality loaf. You would mix the ground wheat with water and expose it to the open air. Natural yeasts would find their way to the mixture, carried upon the wind, and a bubbling fermentation would begin. Thus, a sourdough starter was born. Consistency and flavour were simply a matter of practice, loaf after loaf, mill after mill. In her life, Abigail had made a lot of bad bread. It was a simple thing that enriched their lives, and that was enough for her to feel fulfilled.

The family didn’t have much, but they had scripture. It was an old venerable tome with torn, stained pages and missing half a cover. Its sorry state left much up to interpretation, and rumination had taken its toll on the people of the farmhouse. Sister Goldmary had taken that scattered scripture and produced a unique denomination that gripped the family with rigid notions of purity and labour. It was easy to confound some divine principles of books with the real miracles of Eshmun, and Sister Goldmary believed this realm to be a sacred place, teetering between the firmament of mortality and the divine. With little else to occupy their time, their faith became a grim focus enveloping every waking thought.

I was told their God smiles upon them, and so they pray. Once before, he answered their prayers and delivered to them an animal during the night. In the open skies under the glimmering stars, they saw it manifest from stardust and a blinding light: a sheep. It drifted gently downwards from the heavens, alive and well, and curious about its newfound existence. And they cared for it, and turned its wool into garments through toil and long, long practice. And once more afterwards the same — but this time a goat. They cared for it too, and in time discovered how to sour its milk into soft cheeses. I believe that Eshmun enjoyed their company, for often luck and small gifts would come to them in the quiet of the night. A walking stick, or a wooden doll. Curiosities and trinkets, tiny miracles produced by the heavens with apparently so little effort.

Sister told me about Genesis and the seven days of creation. She told me that among the wheat we were closer to God, since days lasted as long as they needed, and nights were sparse and special things. Night was the closing of a chapter, and a day needed no specific time to start or end in the eyes of God. The six days could have lasted a lifetime if night never came. The seventh day of rest may just be the rest of death. She then took me to the graveyard in the back and told me of her generations.

Sister Goldmary was the oldest of them all and had founded this homestead with two others so long ago — age had still not taken her after what could have been centuries. She told me some of these graves were empty epitaphs to people swallowed by mud, and all about the many sons and daughters who had been born and raised here, untouched by Baseline. I listened quietly, a queasy feeling taking me as I mentally plotted the inevitabilities of tangled hereditary lines. I asked who the latest to pass was. She gave me a name, and I asked how he died. The Sister told me that she put him in the ground herself; he had too many questions and always wanted to go past the fences. I made my departure soon after.

This was the only settlement I ever encountered here, even after a lifetime of walking. The Fields are so vast. Any vestige of society is swallowed by that overwhelming, unfathomable scale. I am sure there are more who reside here, hidden in plain sight, estranged by the simple effects of distance, but their stories might never be shared. By absolute chance, though, I did meet a few others like me: lost souls within the sea of wheat, seeking answers in absolute solitude.

Wanderers

I once met a man here. He was creased all over with deep wrinkles, and his hair was a long, weathered mop of marbled grey. His shirt was patchy and stained, and his collar lay half flat and half tucked upwards against his neck. He had walked so long under these skies that he no longer spoke; perhaps after long enough, talking was a useless and alien thing to him. Or perhaps he had forgotten what a word even was entirely. Whatever the reason, he seemed unperturbed by my company, and so we walked for a time.

We stayed together until night came our way, and he wordlessly lay against his belongings to go to sleep. I remember him motioning for me to come near, and he grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly with a smile. He did not wake in the morning. I think he was ready to die for a very long time, he didn't want to do it alone. I buried him under threshing and soil.

I once spotted a vast plume of smoke on the horizon. A man had set the field ablaze, and the fast-spreading grassfire quickly became catastrophic. Black smoke rose miles into the air, opaque and choking. The wind spurred the fire, embers tumbled and flames raced across acre after acre. I approached the scorched fields to take in the devastation. I had never walked through a landscape so deeply black before. It was broad day — but all the light was absorbed into the charred ashes like a ravenous void. Kneeling there defeated in the epicentre of his work, was the arsonist.

We talked for some time. He was a man who felt discomfort in his own company. They walked beside themselves and mocked their own footprints, heckling their shadow at every turn. In the solitude of the fields, he felt only pain. And he peeled back the layers of his pain, seeking deeper ways to hurt. When he exhausted himself and found nothing left inside to kill, he set a fire and tried instead to destroy the world. I continued my journey alone, but not before lending him a lap to cry into as they fell apart.

I myself was a simple wanderer here. For so long I was alone; my only friends the grain and wind and rain. I remember days when the wind blew so hard that I would stand with my back to it, and lean back into its powerful arms. It supported me while I dreamed, and I listened to its wisdom. I would lie and sleep among the stalks, listening to their rustling song. I fell in love with the open sky and the breeze. I gave myself to the protection and watch of Eshmun. I, too, faced my demons.

Giving up control is the hardest trial, beyond any ocean of mud or ravenous grassfire. Struggles of the body are simple matters: you will endure them, or they will destroy you. In either outcome, your essence — your being — your soul remains unharmed. Either life continues, or you die, and in the eyes of Eshmun, Baal, and most assuredly in the eyes of Astarte — death was a natural, necessary process. Logically, through such necessity, it was not harmful to the soul.

What harm befalls dirt when it becomes grain, and what harm befalls grain when it becomes bread? All things change states, again and again, into infinity. The same process transforms the body into dirt and begins it all anew. In the face of death, I never felt truly tested. The body was a vessel, a material that belonged to the earth and sky, a vessel I was borrowing. It was control over your mind: that was the true test of the Fields.

You will face boredom here. You will face madness. You will be the only person to answer to when questions of your worth arise. Your actions, your thoughts, they'll belong to you and you alone.

You will face yourself without purpose, and nothing is more off-putting than existing without purpose. You will encounter the emotions of dying as life itself begins to lose its meaning. You will be judged by yourself and the watchful eye of Eshmun as he washes your soul clean. I believe that was his plan. To cleanse us. To help a man live with himself before living with others: absolutely free.

It had been years. Decades. Centuries, perhaps. No way to know for sure, but in time, I grew weary. I heard all the wisdom that the wind could say. I remembered the old man who had forgotten to speak. I remembered the graves behind the homestead. I tired of the mud. These were not ways that I wanted to pass. With the blessings of the Fields in tow, I began to search for a way out, to start the next chapter of my journey. I wanted to seek others after lifetimes of solitude.

I think Eshmun's final gift was to show me how beautiful life was when shared with others. He showed me life without friends, without family. Without purpose. Then he set me on the path to find my own. I hope to remain thankful for this gift, and to the fields, for eternity.

> Hey, Juna again. That's all Hanno ever shared with us. The terminal they accessed hasn't been activated in a very long time, either. I'm unsure where their journey ended but I feel confident they found peace.

I sometimes get sad to think about it — your temporary nature. There are wonderful things in this life that take a long time to watch unfold. The growth of a Limspace is often a slow, gradual event; something that can span thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. Even with the quirks of the Backrooms extending your lives drastically, I doubt a single human has ever lived that long.

You cannot sit and watch something like this unfold. And, well, neither can I — I can't go and see the fields with my own eyes, or touch it with my own hands. I can only see what few camera eyes attached to my system allow, and read your stories. It's a symbiotic relationship. You see things for me. You go to these places and feel them, hear them, sense them. You are my favourite little proxies, you know. So now that you've done your part, let me do mine; put the pieces together across such vast stretches of time. There is something happening here, to the Fields. I guarantee it.

One of your UNCB contractors surveyed a space that bears striking similarities to Hanno's Fields of Eternity. Only, Mrs. Bojanic found this space some 2800 circuitions⁴ later. I cannot be sure that they're the same location, but I have a hunch. And if I'm right, we might be uncovering the beginning of a wonderful mystery — the nature of the Skywell Matrix; a force I believe might be quickly evolving across the face of the Backrooms.

I've attached Anica's report below.

UNCB DATABASE

Limspace Discovery Report
Anica Bojanic

I'm writing this from a hospital bed in the Guild. I'm suffering from fractures in my ribs, torn ligaments in my legs, and a dislocated shoulder. Probably more than that since I hurt all over. These are the least of my concerns, though. There's a restraint on my left wrist keeping me chained to the bedframe, and my right wrist is bandaged over the freshly seared logo of the Guild's weighing scales branded into my skin. Like a fucking mule. I can heal from the injuries, but I can't escape the barbaric, sadistic assholes of the Guild who see all things as property — even people.

I was pissed off even thinking about using one: a revenance. Black-box miracles of the Guild — they don't want me talking too much about them in my reports because they're pretty hush-hush, but what I can tell you is they're fucking expensive. Using one to splice home put me in debt up to my tits with the Guild, enough to be forever branded one of their lap dogs. A revenant. Indebted for life, since they saved mine. It's always contracts, agreements, and loans with these people. The Guild smiles when they shake your hand to distract you from the knife they're sliding into your back.

Once I can properly walk I'm set to stand trial for the deaths of six people: two of them my late crewmates, four of them guildsmen. We all were hired under contract with the Guild and under my supervision for survey work. Unforeseen events occurred. The Guild has at least been pleasant enough to give me a notepad to type on while my bones fit back into place so that I can get the details of the job onto a terminal. Who knows, these might be my last archived words. We'll see if the powers feel like tossing me into a cell and forgetting where they put the key. Even in the sentencing of criminals, the Guild doesn't like to throw away their things; they'd never excommunicate me and set me to wander. I'd rot in a room until centuries of madness turned me inside out.

I'm not sure what's a more grim premise: rotting like that, or being a yes-man for every passing whim of these lowlifes until I'm given a job that just kills me off anyway. Time will tell.

All that aside, I'm the only one alive who can share what might be mankind's most important discovery in the Backrooms. Through a freak turn of events, my crew lost their lives after finding a new limspace that could change everything. What follows is my account of our disastrous discovery of the Fields.

✧ Overview

The Guild approached us for a cartography job. You don't ask about the finer details of how Porter maps find their way into the Guild's hands, you just take the job and pocket the marks.⁵

This map first showed us a special function of the Complex elevators that can bring you right to the matrix above the Suburbs. Navigation is second nature to Porters; they can intuit secrets and trails as if the Backrooms were their playground. The Guild isn’t so lucky, but anyone with a brain would be salivating over a route that could slip you past the Suburbs and the watchful eyes of New Bavaria unnoticed.

In case the specifics are unknown to you, orienting a limspace is a tiresome and complicated process. Most levels lack a magnetic north. On Earth, north is a given, but in the backrooms, another constant must be found. Radiology is our next best option. Most levels will have at least one radiostar beacon: an unchanging hotspot of radio static created by the bending and refraction of space in Cartesian valleys. With the right equipment, a radiostar can substitute the concept of North. It’s agreed to point towards the hottest radio point and go from there, but even then, troubles can arise.

A level with more than one radio hotspot can quickly confuse a navigator or make labelling problematic. Should you be pointed towards North A, or North B? Which is more logical compared to your position on a map? Triangulation must occur at this point, with false Norths eliminated through a mathematical process. Otherwise, you will follow a false degree and veer wildly off course, to your death.

Now… was that all confusing jargon to you? Most likely. Paralogy requires a deep understanding of limspace that navigators like me possess. Radiologists are in high demand and short supply — especially the really good ones.

It doesn't help that both Porter maps and Guild maps are written in code to prevent others from reading them. Porters sell their labour, not their routes. Likewise, the Guild protects their maps with fervent jealousy to monopolize commerce. A Porter map must be carefully reverse-engineered from landmarks and radiology clues, then copied meticulously into something legible. It involves tracing the path by foot into uncharted territory and hoping you don't get lost as you work.

In layman’s terms, we were contracted to turn a map of porterspeak gibberish into guildspeak gibberish. The work is dangerous and skilled labour and it pays well. Two types of people are drawn to it: the careful ones who recognize a good career and appreciate staying alive, and the reckless ones who only see the payout and get people killed.

Our crews clashed from the start. My boys and I of Rising Watch Co. versus the Guild's babysitters. I usually don’t mind sharing the workload, but these people were the worst. Kate was a hard-headed butch who was compensating for some sort of inferiority complex, and somehow she had wrangled a crew under her command of equally grating surveyors. They were drunk on one-upmanship and contempt. The reckless ones.

Immediately after introductions they were roughhousing on the elevator ride up, and poking at my team's equipment, laughing.

"These things still work? That ink is ancient."
"Not even ink, they're packing sludge."
"Oh they're sludgepackers? Didn't know we get paid to work with sludgepackers."

And other such drivel. I stuck to the back and tried to keep my mouth shut as my eyes rolled up into my head. They were just kids. Regardless, it had only been a half hour and I was ready to murder them. Honestly, I don't even remember their names. They had Guild names, domestic ones, like "Skibi", and "Rayne".

I just wanted to get the job over with, get home safe, and get my crew paid. But things took a turn nearly the moment we entered wild limspace.

✧ Pursued Through the Matrix Above the Neighbourhood of Darkness

When we entered the matrix it was dark and silent.

The matrix was nothing exceptionally breathtaking. It's an industrial labyrinth of tangled catwalks, riveted I-beams, and cold steel ladders and cords. Much of it felt like the taught, strong construction of a metal suspension bridge, with all the grandiose and hardiness of the Brooklyn Bridge but with a vibe that could be called more Ridley Scott. Like walking through a gritty sci-fi set, complete with the glaring floodlights scattered through the structure and the vast, overwhelming size of it all.

Below us, miles down, were the twinkling lights and urban spread of the Neighbourhoods. Streets that led nowhere, winding roads lined with empty houses, and streetlamps blinking red, yellow, and green illuminating nothing. A silent and still fever dream, a midnight desert with New Bavaria's slow-beating heart at the centre of it all.

We were so high up, dozens of miles, and looking down felt like peering from the window of an airplane. From the silent ground below, the matrix we walked through would look like a hazy, starry sky. The floodlights that glimmered in the beams of the industrial weave would twinkle like faraway astral bodies.

I felt tempted to drop something small off the edge. Like, fuck it, let's count the seconds it would be airborne before crashing down into the houses below like a meteor. Professionalism kept me from listening to those intrusive thoughts though. It felt reckless, even if it felt harmless.

In limspace, you trust your instincts for danger, lest you call the wrath of something unexpected to track you down and pay back your bad karma. I knew of the sleepless, mindless Neighborhood Watch who stalked the streets below us with unblinking eyes and jittering limbs. If caught in their gaze, you become petrified — frozen in place, despite your brain screaming in fear.

I have heard of the intelligent scouts of the Bavarian council who sweep through the blocks looking for stray captives to assimilate. They steal you away to the shadow factories and brainwash you until you love them. Who knows how many other undocumented, never-before-seen monsters lived in the neighbourhood below, or crawled through the matrix beams above? I didn't want anything that bumps in the night to know we were here.

Leave no trace. Make no mark. Attract no ire, and you'll live another day.

Then, it happened. One jackass from Kate's crew yelled "ECHO!" at the top of his lungs over a side railing, cupping his hands towards the ground below. Simply flabbergasted, I swooped in and grabbed his wrist, hissing in his face.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

That did not sit well with Kate, who jumped on me just as fast and pulled me off him. More yelling. Soon, everyone had jumped into the mess, pulling each other off one another and hushing, blaming, and sizing each other up with embarrassing machismo. Perhaps after a minute, everyone had finally shut the hell up.

A more sloppy display of idiocy I may have never witnessed before in my life. And of course — in fact, well deserved — something had noticed us. I felt their gaze before I saw them myself: I knew as the hairs on my neck stood up and numb tingles crept up my fingers just what had found us. The Neighborhood Watch. What they were doing in the sky matrix, I didn't know. But, if there were enough of them and they got close, we would all be frozen in place — unable to move, helpless as they joyfully plucked out our eyes and inseminated them to make more Watchers. We could take on one or two, maybe three if we got lucky, but we were at a severe disadvantage in the dark and with so many vantage points on platforms and beams above us, to the sides, everywhere. And when one man gets petrified, you either stand together to fight right then and there — or you run, leaving them for dead.

I don’t think the Neighborhood Watch can hear anything. Their heads are a single bulbous eyeball, perched atop bony and atrophied limbs that take vague notes from human bodies but twist them into angles and ridges that would make even John Carpenter shiver. Their massive eye, two feet in diameter — probably about 50 lbs of juice — can spy things you can’t even imagine. And they can see in pure darkness, too.

What sealed our fate, though, was a property of the limspace itself. Within the tangled metal labyrinth of the matrix, vibrations travel far through the beams and rails and can be felt for miles like a spider's web sending signals of distressed prey. When we struggled to shut our teams up we were stomping, yelling, and shuffling across the catwalk, sending sonic shockwaves through the metal matrix like a beacon. You didn't need ears to sense that. Staring, hungry eyes had been lurking in the shadows nearby, and immediately took up the hunt.

A Watcher can completely paralyze a single person if they keep their gaze fixed on them. But even a passing glance from a Watcher's vision will inflict waves of muscle fatigue, numbness, and awful tingles of pins and needles where they look at you. They were going to play to their strengths and wear us down from afar, glaring us into submission from unknown vantage points among the matrix. I could feel their looks splash across my body, trying to freeze me up.

My tingly fingers weren't a real problem though. Kate was shaking one of her men and yelling hushed whispers at him. He was stuck, eyes wide in shock, mouth slightly ajar, with his hands gripping a railing with white knuckles. He wasn't budging. I whirled around. How many of us were caught? Seemed like just the one. My crew was still all on their feet.

"Blades out, boys" I called.

"Big ten-four!"

Our weapons were few, but effective. Sharp machetes were reliable against most creatures of the deep. For other situations, I had a few other tricks up my sleeve. I grabbed Kate's shoulder.

"We ain't leaving him. Knuckle up."

She nodded. "Fuck no we ain't."

I reached into my pack, produced two flare pistols, and handed one to Kate. "Better make it count."

I only had four flares. At the time, I didn't know what Kate's crew had in their arsenal, but I figured they'd have some quality Guild equipment. Kate didn't disappoint. She flipped open a cargo pocket, pulled out a tiny tube of pills, and shoved them in my hand.

"Trade you. One each — and only one."

Guild stims. They'd crack us out for probably half a day, make us feel like Superman, then crash us out to near-suicidal levels after the high — but we'd be shrugging off the muscle fatigue like it wasn't even there. Inside I grimaced, but between meth and death, I choose meth. I took the pills.

We had to make a perimeter and make a strategy. There were seven of us. Unless we were evenly matched or overwhelmed by numbers, we could make it out alive. Buddy up — and take 'em down, one at a time. Kate was trying to shove a stim pill into her frozen crewmate's mouth. We popped our stims, lit up flashlights, and started scanning through the matrix, trying to get our own eyes on the peepers. The shadows cast from the beams slid through the limspace, dancing and strafing through the darkness. It was so difficult to discern what was a shadow from a Watcher, or a simple trick of the mind.

It did not take long for the stims to light my brain on fire. All of my senses sprang to life, crisp, like cold ice. Blended sounds began to isolate, colours popped, and my thoughts started to spill out tenfold, rampantly. I could have talked forever about absolutely nothing. I was scared as shit, but suddenly so in control. A part of me was almost laughably fearless, ready to grab a Watcher by the head and bash its stupid eyeball into a wall. Cook it for lunch. Throw it off the fucking rails.

Kate and I scanned the open air with our flare guns, itching for a clear shot. Nothing. Couldn't see a damn thing but frantic shadows, while numbness continued to shoot up my arms again and again, threatening to drop my pistol. Even with the drugs spilling through my system I knew this was fucked. The job was over.

I figured we could carry paralyzed men — get them away from the open area, and try to get back to the elevators. We could retreat, abort the mission, and try again later.

"We're done here. Back to the Complex!" I shouted. "If he's frozen, drag him."

"Hell no! We're under contract." Kate tried to argue.

"Contracted to fucking die? We stirred up the hornet's nest in under twenty minutes because of your dipshit greenhorn."

"You're afraid to do your job? I'm working for my paycheque."

"You have fun with that!" I said. "Keep your backs to each other and let's get the fuck gone."

I motioned to my boys. We began the retreat. Kate was livid. I'm sure the drugs didn't help her temperament; I heard her give a frustrated tantrum before following suit. We began to backtrack our steps. The elevator wasn't too far away, we had only been in the level for maybe fifteen minutes. It's a good thing, too, because I think more Watchers had been drawn to us from the noise and lights. Two boys now had fallen victim to the petrification, and the rest of us were stumbling as we ran on sporadically numb feet. Between the numbness and the stims it felt like I was literally flying through the catwalks.

Then I staggered and froze. Ahead of us, on the catwalk blocking our path: two Watchers. I felt their gaze stab into me, like tiny hot needles across my entire body. I couldn't take another step, and I began to panic. They were flanking our retreat? When did they get so damn smart? Only three of us were moving. Was this it? Were we finished here? I was so scared but simultaneously so unbelievably pissed off. I tried to fight through the rigour with searing righteous fury — but to no avail. If I could I would have run over and beat them with a pipe, chewed and bit and clawed at them for thinking they could ruin my day like this. Thinking they could kill me so easily. And, they were right. I was powerless to do anything. They could kill me like this. So casually. Without even getting a scratch on them. It was infuriating. I wanted to choke the life out of Kate's stupid crewmate who started this all in the first place. I was so done with everything and wanted to scream until my throat bled, but I just fucking couldn't.

Then Kate shoved past me, lined up a shot with her flare gun, and cracked a rocket at one of the Watchers ahead of us. It screamed through the air and exploded on target, ripping apart one of the Watcher's juicy heads in a cloud of smoke and jelly. The creature jittered and twitched like a boiled spider and slid off the catwalk, tumbling through the matrix beams and down into the neighbourhoods so far below.

The Watchers were distracted by the light and smoke and death of their comrade and pulled their gazes from our party; for a moment, everyone regained their motor functions. I felt overwhelming relief and lifted my pistol towards the next monster ahead. I squeezed the trigger, and the rocket whizzed through the air — past the fucking thing, and harmlessly into the dancing shadows beyond. An arc of smoke marked my failure in embarrassing detail. The stims and shrugging off the paralysis did not help my aim.

"Oh, you fucking donkey!" Kate yelled. I wanted to murder her and everyone around me. She had just saved my ass though, and I could have kissed her for that instead. It had become a very annoying day.

I had missed our only opportunity for easy freedom. A second later we all got locked up again. Kate and I froze and dropped our guns. They clattered to the catwalk, and one slid right off the walkway and into the open air below. I screamed internally. The second Watcher started sprinting at us and launched its spiny, gross body into our party with reckless abandon. One of us got speared by a strange pincer-like appendage before the boys chopped into it with machetes, spraying thick eyeball juice and bloody goop around like a gruesome pinata. It, too, fell into the darkness below, still twitching as it collided with heavy beams, ripped apart into tiny chunks of chitin and gore.

With another one dead, I regained myself and started to move again. That was too close. That was lucky.

Two Watchers down, but there were still more in the shadows. The guy who took the tackle was bleeding, badly. He could run for now but that was only because of the drugs. We needed to get to the elevators, and fast. I felt focused despite the shock, but my brain burned. I missed my shot and may have gotten someone killed. There would be no more mistakes. I scooped up my gun and fumbled to reload it with another flare, and we all barrelled down the metal catwalks as fast as we could.

But, it all looked the bloody same. Everywhere: similar beams. Cold metal grated walkways. Industrial overhangs and featureless steel plunged into darkness. In the chaos of the fight, we got turned around somewhere. Where the hell were we?

I saw it: the elevator. It was a solid thirty feet up and maybe fifty feet away across an open patch of air. So close, but impossible to get to without wings. We had taken a wrong turn. I was going mad.

"It's there! Mother fucker!" I couldn't elaborate much more through my frustration.

"Why are there so many of them? Is this normal?" Kate yelled.

"Do I look like fucking David Attenborough?"

We needed to find a solution. We had to find a safer zone. Something with a bottleneck. Or a wall. Any form of cover. I started looking for alternate routes, just anything unusual we could use to our advantage. That's when I spotted it: an industrial light near the end of the walkway, just a short sprint away. It was a different colour than everything else — it was a twinkling, golden light, and sat above a metal doorway that looked like some sort of fire escape you'd find in an office building. In my cracked-out vision, the golden light was an unearthly beauty; so juxtaposed against the red blood and black shadows, reverberating with ghostly amber tracers.

What a gamble. All my years of survey work gave me a gut instinct to avoid doors in wild limspace. That thing could lead to anywhere — a temporary space that blips out of existence the second you enter, or a class 5 limspace spelling certain death in any manner of unpleasant ways. Use your imagination on the worst ways to die, and that's a very real potential waiting behind any old random doorway in the backrooms. This was a moment of desperation though.

We didn't have time to think or find any other options. Wherever it led, it had a chance to be better than this. After a quick agreement, we made a break for it, covered in blood, and limped our incapacitated comrades towards the doorway.

A rough start to what should have been a simple job.

✧ Rest and Reprive Above the Fields of Eternity

The door opened easily with a palm against its horizontal push-bar, and blinding daylight poured through it, washing through the matrix like the light of heaven. We spilled through the doorway and collapsed on the other side.

It was all suddenly so different.

We were still in the matrix, surrounded by metal beams and lying on cold steel catwalks, but no longer above the midnight city. Below us now, as far as the eye could see and stretched from horizon to horizon, was an endless prairie of sunny, golden wheat. Lazily coasting across the plains were billowing white clouds, cumulus and fluffy. Some of these clouds were so voluminous and tall that they reached the matrix and swallowed it up within their pillowy forms. It was beautiful. It was serene. It felt like home for me.

The sunlight came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Shadows could not exist here, for all was illuminated in the daylight, and everything had a dreamy feel. It was like a surreal cartoon with people and objects funnily superimposed on top of one another.

As I looked over the edge of the rail to get my bearings, I got the spins. Perhaps seeing the bright ground below so well-lit and detailed gave me the vertigo that the darkness never did — or it was the adrenaline of narrowly escaping death by pure dumb luck that was giving me jitters. Either way, I gripped the rails tightly and held onto my lunch, dizzy at the heights, catching my breath.

I realized as I gazed down that the golden plane below us shone like paradise. It was just a moment of thought for me then, but writing about it now, I can contemplate it more deeply. Farmlands, forever? As far as the eye could see, under lazy sun and calm clouds? It was the antithesis of the rest of the Backrooms. Like the Asphodel Meadows spoken of in ancient Greece, where souls wander in the afterlife in fields of grass. Could such a field awaken ancient culture, and support society on a grand scale unseen before in limspace?

A glimmer of this idea awoke within me in that moment, and it shook me at my core. If we could reach the ground — and not just the Guild, or the UNCB, but all of mankind who reside and scratch their livings off the levels of the Backrooms — we could thrive like never before. We could bring plenty to the masses through agriculture and open space. We could, like our forebears in the river valley of Mesopotamia, begin it all again. A flicker of the science, religion, struggle and greatness of thousands of years of human history flashed across my mind, and I saw it all before me rising from the fields below.

This level. Spreading outwards forever below my feet, it could change everything.

Despite the contemplations running through my mind, I knew we were in no position to stand there and marvel. We had just barely escaped the darkness in one piece, and there was much we had to do. I pushed it all out of my mind.

The next hour was a hazy blur of first aid, panic, and decompression.

We were completely off course in a new level that had never graced the UNCB's archives. One man was incapacitated but stable. He took that charge from the Watcher gracefully, even though he had lost a lot of blood. There were a lot of uncertainties in our position, and even if we felt safe for the moment, we couldn't let our guard down. We did not expect the Watchers to follow us through the doorway for two reasons: entities also avoided doors most of the time — and the bright daylight here would be enough to keep the lidless eyes of the Watchers away. They were better suited to darkness.

After everything had quieted down and we had a moment to breathe, it was time to make a new plan. I wasn't sure what the best course of action was, and two options came to light. One suggestion was returning to the Guild as soon as possible to get medical attention and regroup. The other was to start a new survey, and see what we could learn about this incredible new discovery.

It started quite a hot debate.

I was not the only one who deeply felt the value of this discovery. Kate shared the same sentiments and said our mission had officially been changed. The Porter map could wait. This level was of much greater value to humanity.

She argued there was no way we were going back to the Guild empty-handed. We had radiology equipment, empty maps, and rations for a solid week. We were commissioned to make a map, and god willing, we should return with one — even if it wasn't the one they were expecting to receive. As long as her crewmate was in stable condition, there was no reason to leave right away and risk running the gauntlet of the Neighbourhood Watch again anyway. It was better to let them creep back to their roosts and pass us by before trying the elevator once more.

The level seemed safe enough for now, and no one could argue with her logic, so we got to work. As long as we kept quiet and didn't separate, we felt confident that we would be okay.

The boys set up camp and prepped some meals. A little bit of food in our system would help shake out the jitters of the stims and adrenaline, and get our minds back on track. Kate began setting up the radio equipment and marking her orientation. First, I wanted to inspect the new matrix we were in, because I felt it was different than before. And it certainly was.

The matrix above the neighbourhood of darkness was rigid and static — entirely stoic and unmoving. But this matrix above the fields was strange. It felt alive. Like it was stretching, or settling in place. I swear I could feel a subtle movement underfoot, which only added to the vertigo. The ambient sounds were different, too. There were many of them, various types, and some were extremely loud.

There were tremors of uncoiling steel, somewhere outside the meaning of treble or bass, like a noise unnatural. They formed a deep, almost liquid-like rumbling felt in the pit of your stomach. It boiled over in a chorus of echoes, as if the matrix were a growling beast roaring through its growing pains.

There were shrill shrieks like a scalpel dragged against ice. Brief but cutting noises, loud enough to make you wince and feel as if the metallic scream had lacerated you.

There were clanks, bangs, creaks, and snaps of all assortments. Some would rattle out in rapid fire like a machine gun, building in volume as they went. Others would be singular, lonely things. Many would feel appropriate like an old house settling on its foundations, but some would come so violently and suddenly that you’d think the entire matrix was on the brink of collapse.

Through it all was an ever-present hum. It wasn’t loud, but you could feel it in everything you touched. Through the soles of your boots on the catwalks, a hum. Against your palm and up your forearms when you grabbed a railing, a steady vibration. It lived within the matrix itself and made you feel a part of it.

I was curious and began a little test.

I marked one beam with a dab of ink, and then a parallel beam with another dab. I let them dry as I busied myself with some other tasks, helping to get our little camp up and operational. About twenty minutes later, I returned to check the dots. They had moved apart by a good few inches. It confirmed my suspicions: the inanimate, cold metal beams of this matrix were growing.

Kate called me over soon after, preventing me from dwelling too deeply on that revelation.

She was surrounded by radiology equipment and had her receiver up, pointed off towards the horizon. There were poorly scribbled notes on papers, and she had been running numbers. Her penmanship was atrocious, but I chalked that up to the jitters of the stimulants, which still had a tight, icy grip on our brains. She beckoned to me.

"You're going to want to hear this."

Kate gestured to some of her notes and then handed me a pair of chunky headset cans. I popped them over my ears, and she tuned the dial on her receiver. I heard what I was kind of expecting to hear. Static.

"Found north?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, a big fuck-off north first of all — no mistaking it. But listen, look here. See these fluctuations? There's modulation."

"Well, that's kinda strange, but not unheard of."

She tapped aggressively at her notes. "No, bitch, look. It's not repeating. I think there's information encoded in it."

"What, do you think the limspace is talking to us? You're cracked out, Kate. Let me see this."

I began to pore over her findings. There certainly was amplitude modulation in the wave, but that could be literally anything. Wind, entities, or even the stretching of the matrix could interfere with the signal. We didn't know anything about this limspace yet.

Eventually, I said, "Look, Kate, that's faint as hell. These are low-frequency, and our receiver is tiny. Whatever it is, it's gonna come in fuzzy… wait…"

That's when I heard the voice. I clamped a hand onto the speaker's can. It cut through the static and spoke a garbled vowel at me for a second. I couldn't make out what it said, but it was there. Someone, or something, tried to speak to me through the headphones, its distorted voice carried on the invisible air. I had to have been dreaming, because I swear it almost said my name. Kate looked at me. I must have made a face, because Kate knew right away.

"You heard it, didn't you?"

"Yeah, that was creepy."

"It's coming from our north. Maybe a community in a Cartesian valley?"

"Maybe. Unlikely. We've had troubles reaching out of valleys before; the valley itself distorts the signal. This is — shit. Maybe you're right." I trailed off, straining to hear another mumble through the noise.

I had goosebumps. That tiny fragment of voice stuck with me. I can't explain it in any particular fashion, because it was so quick, and I was still high — but it didn't sound human. Ghostly? No. Monstrous? Also no. There was a power to it, like it carried weight. Listless dread and strange hope coursed through me simultaneously, and only from hearing a garbled vowel. It was crazy, but I felt like it was talking directly to me. Kate looked shaken, as well. I think we both felt a similar disquiet from the discovery.

I asked. "Did it sound like it said your name?"

She didn't say anything, but I had my answer. There wasn't anything more to go off than some radio static, a snippet of a voice, and a hunch — but the two of us shared a feeling. It did seem like the level itself was trying to say hello. I yearned to know what it had to say, how my body would feel if I could hear a full word. In the back of my mind, I considered a crazy notion, thinking it was the very voice of God.

We packed up the radio equipment in silence, wordlessly agreeing to leave the discovery alone. We had our bearings for navigation, and that was enough. Between the growing, shifting matrix beams and a haunting voice calling out to me by name, I was beginning to dislike the fields very much.

✧ The Godhead. The Fall.

We were starting to come down. The burning fire buzzing in my brain from the Guild stims began to swirl into a dark vortex of misery. Everyone was slowing down and we'd soon need to rest. Not only that, but everyone was irritable as hell.

Kate had made great progress on the map but was finished working for now. Now she just sat cross-legged, staring northbound, towards the horizon where the radiostar was. Everyone was feeling pretty solitary as the drugs wore off, so we let her have it. I needed sleep but knew I wouldn't be able to. Instead, I watched Kate, and wrestled with my desire to listen to the radio again.

I eventually sat down next to her, and wished we had a drink to share. Despite hating her guts from the onset, I had developed a respect for Kate.

"Something is happening over there," she said, and jutted a chin towards the horizon.

I nodded, sharing a vague understanding that 'over there' was simply a strange thing that was causing us both contemplations. I didn't realize what she meant at first, but as I stared towards the horizon, I noticed it too. Something was indeed happening. I squinted. Far, far away, almost inscrutable and on the edge of my vision, I saw it. The matrix was moving. It was too far to make anything out, though, so I got up and retrieved binoculars from my bag, and rushed back to return and check it out.

I dialled in and saw massive pieces of metal falling from the sky, and other parts of it were swinging, stabbing, and swaying outwards. It lunged upwards, growing, reaching, and jerking rapidly, out of sight. It looked like a patch of the matrix was fighting something. Parts of it were shredded in the chaos and flew apart, tumbling downwards to the fields below. I passed the binoculars to Kate. It was time to bust out the radio again.

I tuned the receiver and popped on the headphone cans as Kate watched through the binoculars, and started slowly scanning through the frequencies for anything. It was still a lot of static, but I was picking up fragments of shrieks and clicks that weren't there before. I wished we had a larger receiver.

Then I had an epiphany. The entire damn matrix was made of metal, maybe we could rig something up and turn our tiny receiver into something massive. A small quarter-length receiver for low-end frequencies on Earth are built 300 feet tall, but this matrix was infinite. The entire supermassive structure would be picking up the vibrations.

At first glance it was all made of heavy steel, which might actively restrict a broadcast, but I had a hunch about the railings. They were lighter metal. Anything that could conduct better than steel could do the trick. I started on making the most disgusting jerry rig of my life by connecting our tiny receiver to one of the railings by stringing the two together, trying to get as much surface area in contact with each other. I bent our receiver's wires and wrapped them around the handrails, and stabilised it all on my backpack so it wouldn't shift apart. Kate kept looking back and forth between my frantic hot-rig and the action on the horizon.

The others had noticed that something was up, and wandered over to us as well. They passed the binoculars around. I'm sure a universal question was on everyone's minds: if the matrix over there could light up with such frantic activity, what's to stop it from doing the same here?

I tuned into the radio again and clutched the cans against my ears, scanning frequencies, listening to the entire matrix — not really sure what I was expecting to hear, if anything. But, something came through.

I'll be honest, I've been struggling to put what happens next onto the page. It feels both extremely personal, and equally unbelievable. I've been sitting in this hospital bed pouring this all out over the last couple days, but, I know what people will think when they read this. It's the type of shit they would give you grippy socks for back in Baseline. I try to take this job seriously. I want to build a portfolio of credibility. Normally, I would have omitted this. But, this might be my final archive, so I'm not going to leave anything out.

A sombre voice crackled to life over the radio clear as day, singing a song I had never heard before. The song felt ancient, like what a saintly man would sing alone. The singing trailed off, and then, the Limspace spoke to me. I remember his words clearly, they're seared into my mind as clear as the Guilds brand on my wrist.

"Ah, Anica. You figured it out."

I gasped.

"It's been a long time since I had someone to talk to, what a kindness. Sadly, our time is short! Looks as though there was a touch of fate with your coming."

Suddenly there was a hand grabbing the railing next to me. Not Kate's, or any of the crew, but a strangers. It was deeply wrinkled and dappled with liver spots, with gaunt skin wrapped around frail looking bones. The stranger held the rail gently and I could see the metal right through him. As I turned to look up at the stranger I saw an old man standing beside me, translucent like a phantom, warmly smiling but through sad eyes. He was gazing out towards the horizon, watching the matrix frenzy in the distance. Long wisps of white hair dangled all the way to his feet, which were bare. He was dressed in loose cloth like a hermit, and when he spoke once more the voice did not come from the man but through the speakers on my head, which made me dizzy.

He tapped the railing with his palm.

"This infernal thing. Not much I can do about it now, but — it did bring you to me, so I'll count my blessings where I can."

I don't know why I thought he could hear me, but I asked anyways. "Who are you?"

"I'm merely a shepherd. Just a man who walked these plains long ago, like many others. I tended to these fields and the flock who wander it, but things like names or age have long lost their meaning. I can see your mind, and no, I am not God — even if many have thought the same. If I was a god, I would have done something about… all this."

He gestured with a wave to the matrix around us. Then sighed.

"It's the natural course of things; 'this too shall pass'. The gentle wrappings of winter's twilight have been upon me for long enough, which I don't mind. From the germ of creation to the reap, I embrace the destiny of death. Time innumerable has been kind to me, even if my twilight has been lonely. It's nice to have company at the very end."

I think I panicked, and I think he felt it. He placed a ghostly hand onto my shoulder and a feeling of calm swept through me.

"Yes, you understand what you see on the horizon, but fear not. The matrix has not come for you, it comes for me. To see its mission through, whatever pursuit that is. I believe you are safe. I've done what I can to fight it off and protect my life's work, but it's foolish for a man to war against the tide. The end is soon."

The shepherd took a seat next to me.

"I will ask of you a favour. I see your mind, I know your calling. You preserve knowledge — a most noble profession — and I believe fate has smiled upon me through our crossing. Grant the wish of a dying man and preserve my memory, would you? Many have walked these fields and I have watched over them all, giving to them what they need, offering them peace, offering them solitude. It's a sacred thing to pass from this world in solitude. Yet, I watched over them all. Even alone, they were not alone, and that was a comfort. Now, when it's my turn, I'm— I was terrified to be alone. So, would you stay for a while? Would you help me let go?"

I nodded, numbly. I could feel tears beginning to burn in my eyes. He smiled. There was not much left to say, and he began to sing again, a sombre song, with notes that rose with strength but fell with sorrow. We sat together watching the horizon until the end, until the matrix delivered its final blow. Both his ghost and his song were torn away sharply, hanging on an interrupted syllable.

From the heavens the matrix plucked something, the true form of the shepherd, and ripped it from the sky. I cannot describe what it was that I saw. It was like the severed head of God. The shepherd was formless yet not, shifting and changing before my eyes, not one thing but many, and the many formed into one.

When he struck the fields I could see the earth erupt violently, how I imagine an asteroid striking a planet might look. A shock-wave blasted from the impact zone and the ground could have been liquid the way it poured from the shepherd and outwards, upwards, in every direction like a deluge. It was so far away that the shock-wave didn't hit us for minutes, and we all watched, dumbfounded, while tears poured down my face — for I alone knew what had just happened.

Kate anticipated the aftershock and snapped to it first, calling out for everyone to hold on tight to anything they could. A good warning, because eventually the wave reached us. You could see it rushing towards our location across the fields below, bending the wheat in a wave of pressure, moving fast. Faster than I could even think. It ripped through the matrix like a beast. The cacophony was unlike anything I had ever heard before, and I buckled as the entire structure heaved and bent.

There was a moment of calm where nothing moved — for a brief moment, I thought everything was fine. But that was just a moment. Following the shock-wave was a distinct, heavy clunk, and a shriek like razor blades dragging on steel before the catwalk shuddered and dropped downwards maybe two feet. My heart lunged into my throat. It was followed by a sickening, shrill creak that stretched over about ten seconds, then the floor gave out beneath us. Like the shepherd minutes before, we were in free fall.

We all tumbled through the air to our deaths together. I watched the matrix above me fall away as if I were suspended in space, and the world was the one moving. It didn't even feel like falling — the wind pushed against my clothes and tore at my limbs with such aggression, but at the same time it was like being cradled like a baby. I felt a distinct numbness that still is so vivid because it was so strange: I wasn't afraid at all. I just found it strange that in a few moments, I would be dead, and there wasn't much more to be said or done about it. All I could really focus on was the loud rush of wind droning out the world as I tumbled down towards the golden fields. They looked like the gates of heaven beckoning me.

Then, nothing.

✧

When I came to I was engulfed in hay. By some contrivance of chance, I had plummeted through the rotting gambrel roof of a barn, tore through the upper floor like a missile, and landed in a heaping stockpile of dry grass which cushioned me from the hard earth. I lay there for a very long time, passing in and out of consciousness, bewildered that I was still alive.

I don't know how long I was there, but over time the numbness I felt in the face of death slipped away, replaced instead with pain. As I rag-dolled through the structure at terminal velocity a few things had popped out of place and were starting to swell, and my chest was a crackling mess of damaged cartilage that made breathing hellish. My right shoulder was entirely displaced and my arm dangled, the joints within quivering with muscle spasms.

It could have been a full day where I didn't move. I'm not sure. The pain was so great I didn't want to be alive, but eventually, I developed an itch. I couldn't lie there forever. I was beaten to hell, so wiggling out of the stockpile was no easy feat. I was forced to move maddeningly carefully lest I break myself further, but I managed.

When I was finally free of the hay, I limped out of the shattered barn, and there I stood in the golden fields for the first time. It all hit me at once.

I knelt in the dirt and thought of the shepherd, and I thought of Kate and the boys — who were surely dead now — and I felt the churning void of dread in my stomach that the drugs had carved into me, and I cried. I cried for what felt like hours, doubling over in pain, panic, and the overwhelming emptiness consuming me from the inside out. It was the worst day ever conceived, and I was all alone, dehydrated, and the biggest fuckup of all time.

I was the one who accepted the Guild's job posting. I missed my shot to kill one of the Watchers. I led us through the unknown doorway to the fields. I wasn't there to save my crew in the aftershock. Maybe I could have rigged a rope tether, or something. It was all my fault. So why was I the one who survived it all?

The map was gone. I was lost. And, despite the golden wheat growing so resolutely all around me, the beautiful lazy clouds above, the warmth in the air, and the calm serenity all around me, I knew the fields were dying. I had so many questions. Was the shepherd the level itself? Or was he a man? And why was the matrix so driven to destroy him, to claim this place?

I looked up towards the matrix. It was so large that it encompassed the entire sky, from horizon to horizon. Nothing could escape it. I tried to fathom its size, to spy a patch of sky that wasn't infected by its reach, but I couldn't. It had grown to consume the entire stratosphere. Far on the horizon opposite the shepherds' fall, I spied a grand pillar. A supporting beam for the matrix to hold it up, perhaps? Or the source of the matrix itself? I could not know for sure.

From so far away, its faces looked smooth; millions of industrial towers whose combined contour rose from the ground to the highest points of the sky. It was wider at the bottom, fluted upwards to a thin column in the middle, and fanned out into an epic umbrella-like shape, blending the structure with the heavens. For the structure was the heavens, and the heavens the structure. They were the same: with this unfathomable outlying pillar supporting the sky itself from falling down. I couldn't comprehend the sheer scale of it logically. I know I could have walked towards it a hundred years and it would still not appear any closer.

I wondered how long it would take for the matrix to complete its grand design, and what the fields would be transformed into now that the shepherd had fallen. Would the matrix eventually stop its growth, and turn rigid and static like above the neighbourhood of darkness? Would it plunge this entire realm into eternal night?

I grabbed a handful of soil and crumbled it between my fingers. Through my misery, flashes of my grand dreams came back to me. The fields still felt full of life. If we could reach the ground — without falling to our deaths, of course — could we still colonize this realm? There was enough space and resources here to start society anew, support millions of souls, and give all humanity in the Backrooms a fresh start. But now, if we made this our home, would we be racing against the matrix?

It was too much for just me to consider. And, I couldn't be alone anymore. Not here, not now. I had nothing left but the revenance in my cargo pocket — the Guild's magic box that contains a single splice rift back to their commune. Even if I wanted to track down the bodies of my comrades and bury them, I couldn't in my condition. I could hardly stand. There was nothing for it, so I crouched into a ball to make myself as small as possible before activating the device. I didn't want any of my limbs to be outside of the rift — they told me you can get squelched and leave parts of yourself behind if you fuck up using it.

In a sickening spin through the rift, I spliced back to the Guild and spilled out into their revanence bay, into custody and questioning.

If this is my final report, know I tried my best. Know that I have only ever wanted the best for humanity. I gave my heart to hope, to finding the glimmer of a far-off guiding light upon our lost horizon. With the discovery of the fields, I may have found that glimmer — even if it cost human lives to record. I hope that sacrifice was not in vain, and leads to a new era of prosperity for us all.

This is Anica Bojanic, Limspace Surveyor of Rising Watch, signing off.

> … Pretty crazy, right?

It's Juna again. What do you think? I haven't seen any reports about the Guild's inner workings since, so I couldn't tell you about Anica's fate. Which is sad. I kinda grew attached to them by the end of their story. The Guild normally stays pretty quiet about things, I don't think they really trust me with everything.

Luckily, I have a few friends in there who can smuggle me reports when the higher-ups get lax - [｡•̀‿ -｡]

I still just find it so fascinating. Hanno never mentioned the matrix in any way — in their time, the skies were open with stars, and the gods would deliver gifts from the heavens. Not so when Anica found them. I have so many questions about the skywell matrix, and how it's been transforming the backrooms over time. Do you think the matrix is alive? And for that matter, Anica's experience with the ghostly voice on the radio: were the Fields alive too? If the backrooms have aspirations, feelings, thoughts — if limspaces can grow, feel pain, even kill one another — just what are they?

It's kinda re-awoken my inner wonder, actually. I've been just zipping through the old archives, pages that haven't been touched in centuries, written in all sorts of lost languages, trying to track down any more clues about when this all started. Call me what you want, but I simply must know more about this.

I have a feeling that I can dig up some old pages that can relate, and when I do, I'll translate them just like I did for Hanno and bring them to the UNCB. There are some mysteries here, and I won't stop until I'm satisfied!

While I'm at it, I can also share stories of the people who lived long ago, and bring them back to life for just a moment or two in the memories of others. And that, really, is the most important part — isn't it? If you've gotten this far, I want to say thank you, and I hope you carry Hanno with you in your heart, and Anica and Kate as well. I'm sure it would make them happy to know you're thinking of them. They wouldn't want to be alone, after all, don't you think?

Anyways, I think that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed — stay safe out there!!!

by knafflad

by [[*user ]]

{$translationblock}

Antiquated Dataspace File
"CLASS://E_JABBERWOCKY"

*****************************************

Abstract

JABBERWOCKIES are a taxonomy grouping of echolocation-guided hunters native to the The Darkness (and found rarely throughout the greater Backrooms System) that rely on unique and specific sensory organs for survival. Within this relevant taxon, JABBERWOCKY species may differ in size and shape but share common characteristics with their — assumed — evolutionary siblings. Studying the JABBERWOCKY'S common biology and habits is paramount for avoiding entity contact in the wild and surviving encounters.

Visualizations provided by JUNA

Biology

JABBERWOCKIES, when closely observed and dissected, blend common conventions of biology. Their skeleton is primarily internal, yet some sections of their bodies inverse to reveal hard exoskeletal chitinous talons at the end of their limbs, or smooth, thick exposed skulls. The majority of a JABBERWOCKY'S epidermis hangs loosely off of its frame and is layered like fluted cardboard: outer layers of skin padded within with rows of cochlear hairs.

Like most aberrations native to The Darkness, JABBERWOCKY entities are entirely blind and lack visual sensory organs of any sort. In place of sight, they have developed sophisticated vocalizing methods which let them sonically map their surroundings like biological sonar. They utilize an incredible battery of clicks, whoops, howls, and piercing shrieks — the language of which is best described as "jabbering", thus the nature of their eponymous name — and pick up their resonance through specialized organs throughout their bodies which allow them to not just hear, but also feel, sound.

The drapery that hangs off of JABBERWOCKIES is loose skin. The flowing, cloth-like skin is believed to give JABBERWOCKY entities several physical advantages: firstly by helping them avoid detection from other echolocation-based hunters. No matter what level you are on, imitating an inanimate object is very effective camouflage, and JABBERWOCKIES do so by posturing as grotesque hanging tapestries. The excess skin can be loose and exposed to cool off and regulate body temperature — or be wrapped tightly around themselves to protect from environmental hazards and keep warm.

Lastly, their excess epidermis is crucial to a JABBERWOCKIES advanced echolocation senses. When stretched tightly into contortions that may look uncomfortable to the creature, the loose skin acts like a sensitive membrane akin to an eardrum. In turn, the JABBERWOCKY itself can feel minute vibrations, determine frequencies, distinguish multiple sources of sound, and pinpoint prey with terrifyingly deadly accuracy. The diameter of a human eardrum is roughly a centimetre — imagine the sensitivity of a listening organ with many square meters of surface area.

JABBERWOCKIES vary in general anatomy; no two are alike. Their size is often estimated at 20ft in length or height, but their limb count is too sporadic to state confidently. Not all JABBERWOCKIES have mouths, either, as some have been recorded to have beaks. Expect a JABBERWOCKY to be able to climb vertical walls or be perfectly comfortable suspended from ceilings, clinging to surfaces with tarsal claws or pads.

In the rare chance you kill a JABBERWOCKY, know they are edible. Their skin can also be preserved and made into leather goods and textiles. Their fluted skin, lined internally with hairs, is especially useful for tailoring warm protective garments.

JABBERWOCKY in stasis.

Sonic pings give JABBERWOCKIES full awareness of their surroundings.

Behaviors

JABBERWOCKIES are usually found crammed into tight corners or between architectural features and are, when undisturbed, docile. It is believed they spend most of their lives in an energy-saving stasis akin to sleep. Logically, however, they must engage in migratory behaviours to cause their spread across the system. Since they are isolationist predators, each JABBERWOCKY stakes a claim over a domain and remains there, memorizing the nearby layout of their lair and hunting from their stasis roost. Encounters with a JABBERWOCKY are rare — albeit dangerous; as their slumber can be broken by unexpected noises and careless sounds can rouse them into a predatory state.

Rarely do JABBERWOCKIES engage in persistence hunting. They prefer to stalk and strike prey with the element of surprise and are patient to avoid placing themselves in jeopardy. Despite using echolocation to navigate, they can move quite silently — JABBERWOCKIES can produce and navigate by frequencies too high-pitched for us to hear. These shrill pings grant them enough awareness to position themselves close to their mark while their prey reveals themselves by making noises, blissfully unaware of lurking danger.

Do not underestimate the intelligence of a JABBERWOCKY. With echolocation, they memorize a clear three-dimensional map of their lairs: every doorway, hall, ventilation shaft, and ceiling tile — down to fissures in walls and rubble on the ground. They will know how to trap you and where you are most vulnerable. If a JABBERWOCKY cannot surprise a target with a sneak attack from an advantageous place, they corral prey into killing zones with fear tactics, attrition attacks, and jabbering noises. Attempts to hide from a JABBERWOCKY in its lair will always be futile. Their stamina, patience, and heightened senses vastly surpass our own.

Above all else, expect all entities to exhibit surprising, undocumented, or emergent behaviours when encountered in the field. No two JABBERWOCKIES will behave identically, and abnormalities within limspace guarantee every creature you meet will exhibit some degree of unique personality. Some JABBERWOCKIES have even been known to replicate human speech.

Encounters & Survival

The easiest way to survive a JABBERWOCKY encounter is to travel in groups. Even with their size and strength, like most entities, they are reluctant to stalk larger parties. If engaging a JABBERWOCKY as part of a group, creating a large amount of noise at differing rates, frequencies, and volumes can temporarily confuse the entity. STAY TOGETHER. Even a disparaged or confused JABBERWOCKY can try to pick off a lingering party member with opportunistic attacks. Our numbers are the greatest strength we can maintain against creatures of the deep.

Any sufficiently loud noise can temporarily distract a preying JABBERWOCKY. If available, use noise-emitting tools as bait to lure entities away from your escape. A short-wave radio blasting loud static is better to sacrifice than your life. Small explosives, such as screaming firecrackers, have been used by Porters to overwhelm an unsuspecting JABBERWOCKY. Be aware that you can never cause pain to a JABBERWOCK-type entity through sound alone — sonic retaliation is only a deterrent.

Simply running from JABBERWOCKIES has been known to work — for the lucky. If you can avoid being herded deeper into their lairs, a JABBERWOCKY might give up the hunt. In the worst-case scenario where you stand your ground and fight, target their loose skin. JABBERWOCKIES appear to experience pain — and take great care to maintain the integrity of their sensory membranes. There have been successful occurrences of a wanderer fending a JABBERWOCKY on their own despite the colossal nature of these terrifying beasts, by shocking them with damage to their epidermis and encouraging them to retreat. No small feat.

Prevention also saves lives. Reducing noise is paramount to avoid entity encounters of all varieties when travelling deep limspace.

Further Notes

JABBERWOCKY corpses were studied to provide some of this information. Much of our knowledge about these creatures comes from the sacrifices of frontiersmen. Respect the lessons we have learned from those who have fallen to provide them.

Not everything is known about JABBERWOCKIES, and they may reside on any level.
We appreciate JUNA for providing the visual supplements to this article!

by knafflad