Zone 0 "The Redrooms"
🌎 I - Low
☠️ I - Low ⏱ X - None 🏰 No base 📻 iNet - Yes |
Zone 0 is a virtually infinite labyrinth of photography darkrooms, hallways, and supply closets full of abandoned cameras, development equipment, chairs, and tables from all eras of time. Many of the darkroom gear is broken, dusty, or dilapidated. Dim red darkroom lights illuminate the endless randomly generating rooms, with mysterious strange abstract photos hanging on some walls, piled in stacks, or bathed in development chemicals, all of them being black-and-white. Interestingly many have reported feeling nostalgia, sadness, or deja vu when looking at some of them. There are theories that this phenomenon is related to some kind of greater mystery or puzzle surrounding The Darkrooms.
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There is an always-present smell of old film and the distant sound of air-conditioning here, with the temperature hovering around 55 F. Sometimes a light breeze can be felt in the halls with no apparent source. Realistically there isn't much use in trying to map out this zone as oftentimes when you turn away from a previous room and look back, there is a significant chance you will see a different room or perhaps a solid wall from the direction you came. This confusion is very disorienting for wanderers, leaving many to despair and a slow decent into madness. Some travelers have been lost in this level to never be seen again.
Entities - Level 0 is nearly devoid of any life with only one known rare exception. There have been a few sightings of the mysterious entity known as "The Recorder" on occassion.
Entrances
- Level 0 is primarily accessed by accident from darkrooms in reality. Some have clumsily tripped and knocked over darkroom supplies or furniture, some have been trapped inside a darkroom for an inhumane amount of time, others have weakened the boundaries between dimensions by being intoxicated on psychedelic drugs such as DMT or ketamine in a darkroom, and some have been transported to Zone 0 with no memory besides that they were simply at work developing their photos. What seems to be in common in most of these cases is the accidental conditional nature of their clipping into The Darkrooms. The vast majority are flabbergasted & horrified by it. It's genuinely challenging and rare to transport onesself here on purpose.
- There is an under-wraps unstable portal that the exploratory physics/metaphysical research team T.A.S.K. (Tactical Advanced Systematic Knowledgeseekers) has gotten to work on ocassion by experimenting with electromagnetic fields and nuclear fission.
- In some very rare cases (only 15 known occurences or so), the traveler has been accidentally photographed between frames in a film camera so their image is faded into more than one negative with an unusual overexposure or underexposure causing them to clip into Zone 0. Researchers are unsure about the exact patterns beyond that to say definitively what the parameters need to be for this entrance method.
Exits
- After quite a long distance wandered, one may happen across a large heavy rusted steel door that takes a massive amount of effort to force open. Usually these doors will lead directly into Zone 1.
- One can exit The Darkrooms entirely through the T.A.S.K. portal, however this is a rather unreliable exit due to the ever-shifting nature of Zone 0's layout. T.A.S.K. researchers rely on infrared imaging, radio communications, and strategic timing to return to the portal, but even still there is a high possibility of these navigation methods failing. And most importantly using the portal carries a massive risk of fatal distortion, with only 5 of 32 having successfully returned through the portal. Generally the portal is just used to send data back to reality with radio communication and update reality-side researchers on the latest discoveries in The Darkrooms.
Entrances
- Level 0 is primarily accessed by accident from darkrooms in reality. Some have clumsily tripped and knocked over darkroom supplies or furniture, some have been trapped inside a darkroom for an inhumane amount of time, others have weakened the boundaries between dimensions by being intoxicated on psychedelic drugs such as DMT or ketamine in a darkroom, and some have been transported to Zone 0 with no memory besides that they were simply at work developing their photos. What seems to be in common in most of these cases is the accidental conditional nature of their clipping into The Darkrooms. The vast majority are flabbergasted & horrified by it. It's genuinely challenging and rare to transport onesself here on purpose.
- There is an under-wraps unstable portal that the exploratory physics/metaphysical research team T.A.S.K. (Tactical Advanced Systematic Knowledgeseekers) has gotten to work on ocassion by experimenting with electromagnetic fields and nuclear fission.
- In some very rare cases (only 15 known occurences or so), the traveler has been accidentally photographed between frames in a film camera so their image is faded into more than one negative with an unusual overexposure or underexposure causing them to clip into Zone 0. Researchers are unsure about the exact patterns beyond that to say definitively what the parameters need to be for this entrance method.
Exits
- After quite a long distance wandered, one may happen across a large heavy rusted steel door that takes a massive amount of effort to force open. Usually these doors will lead directly into Zone 1.
- One can exit The Darkrooms entirely through the T.A.S.K. portal, however this is a rather unreliable exit due to the ever-shifting nature of Zone 0's layout. T.A.S.K. researchers rely on infrared imaging, radio communications, and strategic timing to return to the portal, but even still there is a high possibility of these navigation methods failing. And most importantly using the portal carries a massive risk of fatal distortion, with only 5 of 32 having successfully returned through the portal. Generally the portal is just used to send data back to reality with radio communication and update reality-side researchers on the latest discoveries in The Darkrooms.