penumbra: setting & locations

[shadowyfigure]

SETTING & LOCATIONS

PENUMBRA PLACE

Penumbra Place, also known as 5561 Penumbra Crescent, is the main setting of the game, where characters will spend most of their time. Outside of the apartment building, the world is empty - it looks as if the apocalypse happened maybe 100 years ago, with the destruction settled and rot long past, with almost nothing salvageable.

The building is mainly constructed from concrete and looks to be built approximately 45 years ago - angular and U-shaped, the building looks somewhat rundown on the outside while the apartments inside are actually quite nice. While the rest of the world is in ruins, Penumbra Place just looks like it needs a good powerwashing and is otherwise completely intact, with fully functioning water, electricity, and internet services. In fact, it looks as if it were inhabited and bustling with life only a few minutes ago, and everyone simply dropped everything and left.

1ST FLOOR (AMENITIES & SHOPS)

The first floor of the building is dedicated to the main lobby, mail room, and amenities. Outside the building, if you walk around the back, the first floor is lined with various shops that occupied commercial rental spots in the first floor. Both amenities and shops are in the same state that the rest of the building is in - looking lived-in but in good shape, and usable.

AMENITY: GYM

A sizable and modern gym, well-lit, with various machines and a squat rack, set of weights, and full mens', womens', and gender-neutral changing rooms. When you use the sauna and the mist starts to form in the air, it's impossible not to see faces in that mist, looking at you. The faces can be twisted with pain, screaming; or demonic in nature with gaping toothy grins.

AMENITY: SWIMMING POOL

A large swimming pool with full mens', womens', and gender neutral changing rooms. A perfectly normal chlorinated swimming pool with a "No Running" sign. Or at least it's normal other than the fact that the bottom drops out of the last few feet of the deep end, leaving a black gaping hole that leads to who knows where under the ground.

AMENITY: BOWLING ALLEY

A small two-lane bowling alley complete with a variety of balls and bowling shoes in a rack in a large variety of sizes and styles. The bowling alley is completely normal. Party!

AMENITY: PARTY ROOM

A generic, open room with an unstocked bar, some couches, and stacks of plastic chairs and two fold-out tables along the wall, meant for parties and other gatherings. Feel free to use this space however you see fit, though you will always feel like someone's watching you in this room.

BUSINESS: PEARL BOUTIQUE

Despite being called a boutique, this looks more like a clothing outlet, with racks and racks of clothing available to take, ranging from underwear to outerwear. The clothing is in a wide, wide variety of styles, and you may find something from home if you look hard enough, always marked 80% off. The Boutique is the only source of clothing other than the closets and dressers in the apartments. Stock refreshes once per month, on the 15th. Occasionally, while you are perusing the racks, the clothing will burst apart under your hands and a childlike voice will say "Boo!" as if a child has leapt out of the center of the rack to startle you, but no child is visible.

BUSINESS: DISCOVERY COLLEGE

Discovery College: Occupying three of the commercial spaces under the building is a small college campus from what looks like an off-brand college offering shifty degrees for those looking for some quick schooling to get a job as soon as possible. All the desks have stationery supplies laid out on them, as if the students just left, and the pages flip sporadically, without being touched.

BUSINESS: SKIDOOCH'S PUB

Despite being a pub under an apartment building, once you enter Skidooch's, you'll find yourself in what looks like an old English pub, with sturdy wood furnishings, booths, tables, and a huge mahogany bartop with stools arranged along it. The pub is cozy and well-appointed, but looks almost like it was built a longer time ago than the building it's part of, almost...historical? While in the pub, time seems to pass more slowly than elsewhere, so a few minutes feels like hours. There is no barkeep but the alcohol is well-stocked and re-stocks automatically every month on the 15th. There are cigarette vending machines in the back of the pub that spit out cigarettes at the turn of a knob (no change required!) and that seem to never run out. Want to take over running Skidooch's Pub? Feel free! (Contact the mod if you'd like to run Skidooch's Pub.)

BUSINESS: SWELL RX PHARMACY

Next to Skidooch's Pub sits Swell Rx Pharmacy, offering a more legitimate way to feel better, and something to cure all your ills. Inside are various over-the-counter medications from cold meds to antacids. Behind the counter, you will find prescription drugs of many various varieties, ranging from antipsychotics and antibiotics to birth control and diabetes medication. Restocks every month on the 15th.

OTHER FEATURES

THE ELEVATOR

The subject of the first rule of living in Penumbra Place, the elevator looks like a normal elevator from the 80s, with doors that squeak slightly, stained carpet, and a handrail you might not want to touch lest you catch something. Between 1:11 and 3:33 am, the elevator goes dark, the lights inside flickering, and anyone foolish enough to step foot inside the elevator for that time period will find their bodies slowly and painfully disintegrating, starting with the feet and hands and working inward. Disintegration takes approximately 10 minutes. Leaving the elevator before the disintegration completes will just result in permanently lost limbs.

THE STAIRWELL

All bare cement and plain metal railings, the stairwell is creepy enough on its own, but it also has some...quirks. Using the stairwell instead of the elevator can be a bit of luck of the draw. Sometimes one will go down 11 flights of stairs to get from the apartments on the 11th floor, with the number of the floor painted on the wall at each exit matching the floors they should. Most of the time, the number of flights that have to be used will vary wildly depending on the building's "mood." Sometimes it takes 15 flights to get from top to bottom, with floors repeated. Sometimes it only takes 5, with floors skipped.

THE BACK PATHS

Around the back of the apartment building, accessible through the back door, there is a garden that consists mostly of evergreens, bushes, grass, and a few flowerbeds. Throughout this garden, a narrow stone-paved path winds its way, ready to be followed on foot. As the path is followed, one will come across stretches of grass perfect to picnic on, and wooden frames around squares of bare earth where people from the building are welcome to plant mini gardens. Anyone wandering the back paths will find that they go on much...longer...than should necessarily be possible, considering how small the garden area looks from above through the windows in the apartment building. These paths, if followed to their conclusion, will always lead you back to the entrance, however, even if the trip takes hours or days. Sometimes, exiting the back paths will result in going to an alternate version of this world, where the apartment building is as empty and destroyed as the rest of the world. Going back into the back paths and re-navigating them will lead you back to the inhabited reality.

THE LOBBY MAP

In the lobby of the apartment building, where the mail boxes are, there is a large map hung on a bulletin board, that seems to cover the destroyed city that the apartment building is located in. There are many scribbles on the map in various colours, and there are areas marked "Dry Waste" and "Wet Waste" outside the city center where the apartment building is located. The map itself is dogeared and tattered around the edges, reinforced in various areas with clear tape, and looks overall on the verge of disintegrating off the wall. This is the only item in the lobby or elsewhere in the building that looks like it originates from the same time period as the ruins outside. Large map of the area with the Wet and Dry Waste marked. (Map credit to Owen Reading.)

OTHER FLOORS

2ND FLOOR

Featuring 25 usable apartments, this floor consists of a long hallway with apartments on either side. The hallway is more dimly lit than other floors, resulting in pools of shadow that long spiderlike limbs emerge from, reaching out for inhabitants as they pass. Whether these shadows are entreating for help or trying to pull inhabitants into their shadowy prison, it is not known. More details on the Housing Page.

3RD FLOOR

Featuring 25 usable apartments, this floor consists of a long hallway with apartments on either side. The lights on this floor constantly flicker, and continue to flicker regardless of anyone changing the lightbulb. When the lights flicker out, you can see flashes of the shadowy figure, even in the daytime. With each flicker, the figure moves closer, until you leave the hallway. More details on the Housing Page.

4TH FLOOR

Following a fire that happened approximately 30 years ago, the fourth floor is a burnt out mess, though it is accessible by both the stairwell and elevator. Upon entering the fourth floor, skeletal wall structures are visible, still standing but looking fragile enough to crumble to ash under the slightest touch, and the doors have all burnt away, their sooty metal numberplates fallen to the burnt carpet in the hallway. Inside the apartments are remnants of personal belongings that indicate that the apartments were inhabited by families, couples, and single people when they were burned, with melted children's toys in several of the burnt out apartments. While exploring the fourth floor, one will see ghostly figures via peripheral vision every few minutes, and may hear echoing screams coming from various apartments - but never the one being explored.

5TH FLOOR

The fifth floor is completely locked from the inside out. Neither the stairs nor the elevator will take you to this floor. More information will become available with future events.

6TH FLOOR

The sixth floor is completely locked from the inside out. Neither the stairs nor the elevator will take you to this floor. More information will become available with future events.

7TH FLOOR

Featuring 25 usable apartments, this floor consists of a long hallway with apartments on either side. The carpet in this hallway is moth-eaten and looks ragged due to the plethora of maggots that are constantly spawning in the tatters of the carpet. They can be found squirming and traveling on the floor, all of them perpetually trying to get to the east side of the hallway. They disappear once they reach it. More details on the Housing Page.

8TH FLOOR

Upon entering the eighth floor, one might immediately notice that the carpet is...just a little squishy. The walls are slightly squishy too, and the ceiling drips what appears to be bile, a sticky reddish-yellow fluid that has stained the ceiling tiles. The doors to the apartments are likewise squishy, almost fleshy, and they open with ease, none of them locked. However, if one enters the apartments on the eighth floor, they will find the apartments looking lived-in but everything wet and shiny. Extended time spent in these apartments will result in them being digested alive.

9TH FLOOR

The ninth floor is completely locked from the inside out. Neither the stairs nor the elevator will take you to this floor. More information will become available with future events.

10TH FLOOR

The tenth floor is what may be referred to as "the pantry." While the apartments are empty but looked lived-in just like the habitable floors, as if someone just stepped out to run errands, they have one benefit that the rest of the apartments in the building don't - there is food in the fridges and pantries of these apartments. Ranging from perishables like vegetables and fruits and meats to non-perishables like canned soup and twinkies, each apartment has enough food to feed 2 people for one week. Every two weeks, like clockwork, spectres can be seen carrying grocery bags into the apartments and restocking the cupboards and fridges. This is the only source of food in the apartment building besides some chocolate bars in the pharmacy that restock monthly.

11TH FLOOR

Featuring 25 usable apartments, this floor consists of a long hallway with apartments on either side. Each resident of the 11th floor will see every door along the hallway open with various ghoulishly injured people poking their heads out of the doors, except for their own door, which remains blessedly closed and locked. The ghouls will stare at anyone walking down this hallway as they pass, and opening the character's own door will prompt the ghouls to all slam their doors shut at once. More details on the Housing Page.

THE WASTELAND

THE DRY WASTE

A large swatch of land outside the apartment building is marked on the lobby map as the Dry Waste, an area of ruined land that would take approximately half a day's walk in all directions with the apartment building in the center, with the borderline ending near the river that roughly encircles the city center. Nothing living exists in the Dry Waste, there are no plants, no animals, and the air is stagnant with wind and rain being very rare in this area. There are the ruins of various buildings, ranging from single-family homes and schools and places of worship and malls and office buildings and other apartment buildings and government buildings. These ruins are so broken down that everything that could fall has fallen already, and they are dry, without rot. Rot has long passed this area. While it might be possible to scavenge some useful things from the Dry Waste, the items scavenged would be ancient and prone to crumble unless they were glass, metal, plastic, or other sturdy and relatively stable materials.

THE WET WASTE

A rough area northeast of the apartment building and bordering on the other side of the river from the Dry Waste, the Wet Waste is a marshy, flooded area that would take approximately a day to cross on foot. From what is visible of this area, it appears that the river escaped its banks in this area and completely flooded a large park as well as a nearby settled area. The flooding is inconsistent, with some areas of the marsh simply being wet spongy ground, some areas a foot deep or so with water, ranging to some areas being flooded almost to the tops of the houses that are in the area. Debris floats on the surface of the marsh waters, both from the ruins of the houses and rotten, molding detritus from trees and other plant life that have been slowly rotting for years. The water of the Wet Waste is murky and tannin-brown, impossible to see through and likely polluted with chemicals and biological waste.

Large map of the area with the Wet and Dry Waste marked. (Map credit to Owen Reading.)

Questions

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