The Destination

rating: +11

11 votes (+11, -0) 5★

rating: +11+x

Limspace Classification

Jurisdiction 1/5 Although claimed by the Anterior Transport Company, not a single person aligned to the group lies within at any given time. Despite this, it remains the largest hotspot of Anterior-related activity excluding their headquarters.
Difficulty 4/5 In the depths of the vast, warehouse-like storage, supplies are plentiful. Unfortunately for survivors and wanderers alike, automated processes exist to prevent the scavenging of such resources.
Entity Count 5/5 Contained within The Destination is a factory, from which come forth the malformed wretches.
Chaos Gradient 3/5 One can find high-tech machinery beyond the understanding of all but its supposed creators. That, and other abnormalities make for a chaotic environment.
Basset-Frazier Index 4/5 There is very little reason to come to this place. From what has been gathered, any attempt to save the doomed will be fruitless.

Description

The Destination. A gargantuan station harboring many types of trains, from which no traincars exit. Although it is more than one large open area, its central chamber is approximately 8 miles in width, and 50 miles in length. The height of The Destination remains undetermined, as the walls seem to extend upward indefinitely past a multi-layered metal lattice.

Even though the massive complex may seem impressive, it has certainly seen better days. The Destination keeps from crumbling at any second due to the sturdiness of the rock outside of Metrolim's tunnel walls. This incredibly compressed material can only be barely chipped away by the tools at most groups’ disposal, making the prospect of creating a new system of tunnels to navigate through or around The Destination laughable.

On either side of the capacity are the notorious and massive “recycler” mechanisms, the first of an enclosed assembly line of sorts. Among the behemoths of demolition and reconstruction are other automatons, some of which have no known purpose. Others resemble massive cranes which move shipping containers, non-functional vehicles for the purpose of carrying wooden palettes, and machines that might have once sorted the vast storage. Areas that remain “occupied” by operational factory equipment tend to be outlined with caution tape or other markers. One misstep or an instance of carelessly rummaging through this hazardous space may result in being shot down in an instant by automated turrets. Upon further observation, wanderers were perplexed to find that these defenses had somehow learned to only react to things that did not include Anterior Abominations.

Machinery becomes more sparse as one travels closer to the center, as its presence is replaced by massive rafters, efficient-yet-cramped storage, and even racks with shipping containers. Although hard to distinguish due to the rubble, and multiple obstructions, a small trolley track can be found spanning the width across the dead-center. This track eventually leads into a tunnel away from The Destination, and towards certain death in the form of The Anterior HQ.

Littered all throughout the treacherous complex, if automated defense and horrid creatures were not enough, are places where the floor gives way to holes with seemingly no end. Fortunately, most of them remain marked by being connected to some of the deactivated machinery. Waste could’ve been funneled down the pits, or byproducts of no-longer-operational processes.

destination_map.png

fig 1.0 Map of The Destination.

Factory Processes

As a few survivors of the horrors of Metrolim scavenge in this dangerous place with the purpose of finding what is needed to survive more consistently, a grating noise echoes and overwhelms the whirring of the factory’s intricate process. What they see is a train, entering the station at a considerable speed. Slipping onto a modified track, the train is halted. Knowing that the train contains passengers, they imagine what they are going through. Stunned and terrified by the forceful stop, the people are unable to react to what will be their demise.

The group of scavengers came back home today. Not a single one shared much input about what they had seen, but I can still see the terror as they know that they could’ve been among these people.


The above passage was an excerpt, sourced from a small explorer group wandering the tunnels. It's hard to see any reason to walk where Abominations do the same. Anything to feel alive, maybe?

As sometimes seen in Abominations, metal scrap from the trains and the flesh of the unfortunate aren’t always separated perfectly, but the system of doing so seems to be streamlined. Massive rotating blades haphazardly cut into the cabins of the trains, followed by cranes precisely dropping in to grab people or other moving objects, like a horrific claw machine.

Many assume that these machines were created with the intention of causing as much suffering as possible. To some, it may be just the most efficient way of turning people into Abominations. It may be true, but something about the fact that most people remain conscious until their untimely deaths supports the former theory.

What awaits the victims of The Destination is the entity assembly line, its processes mostly shrouded by large shells enveloping the creation process on nearly all sides. There are very few places where one can observe the “unfinished” abominations. Frames of bone assembled seemingly at random, patchworks of skin yet to be sewn onto the entities, and even unadjusted body parts have all been seen.

Near the fraction of warehouse machinery still operational, the leftover scrap and raw non-organic materials pile up, as if these resources were meant to be shipped away. Oddly, they remain there, cluttering up the vast interior more and more. From the ends of the entity production lines, abominations flow out into The Destination in waves, or are transported elsewhere, potentially utilizing passageways not accessible to wanderers.

The machinations of flesh wandering the Metro Limspace System are a plague. This place is only their point of origin. They have grown beyond Anterior’s grasp, and now amount to much, much more.

Access

The majority of visitors are unwilling, arriving at The Destination to be recycled. Without an integral interruption that may save the lives of many, the journey of Anterior-affected trains lasts anywhere from two to ten hours. The trolley track, and other smaller connecting tunnels connect both Hub 2 and The Anterior HQ to The Destination. The rather cramped tunnels are preferable for easy access and egress due to the massive multiple-lane winding mess of rails that are the main routes often harboring entities.

People who have not stumbled into the safety of any group of survivors may end up here. It is advised to help these people, especially if they are anywhere near the entrance to the Anterior HQ. All who follow the track to the entrance of the Anterior HQ will meet their end, or more worryingly, face intervention by actual Anterior Transportation Company personnel. May whatever we see as sacred save us all if they ever seek us out. The same fate awaits us if anyone ever successfully damages any of their “recycling” machinery.

Conclusory Regards

When suffering is displayed so plainly in message, it's hard not to feel concerned from an outsider's point of view. It would be foolish to consider The Destination as some sort of fact of life, yet we do. It is something we must accept if we are to avoid the potential deaths of the many who have worked so hard to stay alive in these hellish winding tunnels.

Anterior is managed by people — more than that, people with powerful-enough technology to execute actions on never-seen-before scales. Even if they aren't acting so open about their actions anymore, this does not make it logical to make the first strike. It would be entering a fight we are doomed to lose. In the meantime, try not to grow remorseful or grieve. The amount of trains pulled into The Destination matters not, only the future in which it happens no more does.

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