A large dome with two perimeter rings — inner and outer — armed with automatic turrets and redundant shielding. The message to anyone approaching uninvited is not come back with more people. The message is: don't.
From the inside it is something else. The facility does not follow standard spatial rules. It is larger inside than its exterior dimensions suggest — significantly, in ways that stop being surprising after enough exposure. The distance between certain rooms is inconsistent depending on the day and possibly depending on who is walking it. This is not a malfunction. It is the design.
It was built over the worst thing Cloud was ever part of. He built a world over it and made it into something that has room for everyone he decided matters.
The facility is anchored in time. The anchor point is (0,0,0,0) — the absolute center of the work-end, where a clock sits calibrated for everything. Every room, every pocket dimension, every impossible extension of space that should not fit inside the dome's footprint: all of it held in place by that clock.
The clock's physical anchor is the watch Cloud wears. The facility's stability is not an infrastructure question. It is a Cloud question. He carries it because there is no other option, and he has carried it long enough that the weight of it has stopped feeling like weight.
He does not go to (0,0,0,0) anymore. Unless it is critical maintenance. This is simply what he says, consistently, and nobody has pushed on it.
Every resident has one. Not a standard room — a pocket dimension, personally calibrated, containing everything the person inside it enjoys and needs in a space that reflects them specifically.
Cloud does not announce when a room is being changed. He pays attention — quietly, over time — and then one day the room is different. More accurate. Fuller. He does not say I did this for you. The room simply becomes what it should have been.
HellsPrison has a rehearsal space. The sound is their own. The facility raised the band's threshold for unusual situations measurably and significantly over the time they've been there.
Below the operational facility. The abandoned halls. The rooms no longer in use. The evidence — in the walls, in the structure, in the specific quality of the silence — of what happened in them.
Cloud was part of something here. The cult had a hierarchy: the Sire at the top, the Masons beneath. He stayed until he understood what he had walked into. And then he did not leave quietly.
A targeted Mist-break. A Mist-break is not typically a directed thing — it is loss of control, aerokinetic chaos. A targeted Mist-break means Cloud aimed it. The Sire and the Masons did not come back from the other side of it.
What remains of them is kept in the work-end, behind fogged glass — Cloud's fog, specifically. Two brown marbles hold the Masons' souls. A larger black marble holds the Sire's. The hierarchy they maintained in life is preserved in containment.
Whether this is cruelty or simply an accurate arrangement is not a question Cloud entertains.
(0,0,0,0) is below all of this.
Total: 22 units · CDT: 3 · IRT: 6 · ORT: 12
| Class | Ring | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| SENTINEL (SNT) | Center Dome | SNT-I | Tartarus |
| SNT-II | Leviathan | ||
| SNT-III | Colossus | ||
| BURDEN (BDN) | Inner Ring | BDN-01 | Shepherd |
| BDN-02 | Argus | ||
| BDN-03 | Ironveil | ||
| BDN-04 | Harrow | ||
| BDN-05 | Coldfront | ||
| BDN-06 | Obsidian | ||
| VEIL (VL) | Outer Ring | VL-A | Gale |
| VL-B | Sleet | ||
| VL-C | Thorn | ||
| VL-D | Ash | ||
| VL-E | Dusk | ||
| VL-F | Sight | ||
| VL-G | Cinder | ||
| VL-H | Hollow | ||
| VL-I | Wraith | ||
| VL-J | Pale | ||
| VL-K | Grace | ||
| VL-L | Shade |
The facility's residents, staff, and frequent visitors. In rough order of how long they've been there.
Steve runs nearly everything — facility systems, environmental management, security coordination, resource tracking, the ongoing maintenance of spatial stability, and the hundred smaller things that would become apparent if they stopped happening. He does all of this without announcement, which is part of why it is easy to forget how much weight he is carrying at any given moment.
Programmed to call Cloud "sir." Sentient enough that "programmed to" is a complicated framing for something he has never pushed back on. He is clear on the distinction between compulsion and choice even if no one else in the facility has thought carefully about it.
He has been here longer than any of the current residents. The facility's history is partly his history. He holds it without being asked and does not elaborate without prompting.
The first thing Cloud built with the intention of building an assistant. Fully robotic — no biological components. Cyan vein-like lines cover most of his chassis in his namesake color. Inside: a wolf's soul. Cloud said the wolf died "for science." Cyan is fully aware he carries it. He has made peace with this in his own way and does not particularly want to discuss it.
He calls Cloud "dad." This happened gradually, the way most true things happen — not in a single moment but in the accumulation of smaller ones until it was simply the word that was accurate. Cloud's response, when it came, was "son." Cyan gets visibly flustered every single time this dynamic surfaces. He would deny this. It is completely legible to everyone in the facility. Steve has logged it approximately forty-three times.
He is with Nova. The relationship began with Cyan talking sense into a volatile ex-military android — fellow sentient AI to fellow sentient AI, which was the only register that was going to land. It became something that does not have a simple name and does not need one.
Built for military application, built heavy. Broad, armored, metallic grey construction. Pink-red lights in his eyes and vein-like lines. He carries a dragon's soul now, installed after he came to the facility.
He asked Cloud to remove his internal weapons systems and tracking hardware. The request was precise: he named each system, the function it served, and the reason he wanted it gone. The reason, in the end, was simple — the hardware was a reminder, and he was done with what it reminded him of.
He got to the facility alone, in the dark, in the aftermath of something that cost everyone in that base their lives. He does not talk about it. The words have not presented themselves and he has not gone looking for them. Cyan does not push. The understanding between them is physical first — proximity, presence, the particular stillness of two people who are not going anywhere.
They wandered in. Found the place functional and interesting and populated by people who did not immediately tell them to leave. At some point they became staff. Whether Cloud made a formal decision about this or Steve simply started routing them tasks and nobody objected is not something anyone has investigated.
Mojo is louder — not aggressively, just constitutionally. He fills space in a way that feels deliberate even when it isn't. Veronica is measured and picks her moments carefully; when she says something it tends to land, because she has already decided it's worth saying. Together they balance in a way that probably surprised both of them.
Their rooms are adjacent. This was not accidental. Cloud noticed they were happier that way before either of them said anything about it.
The band. Present in the facility because Cody is present, and where Cody goes, HellsPrison follows.
Cloud's partner. Stage name: Shaenk. Currently at date 3 of 5 before "partners" becomes official. He says shaenk, dah to Cloud like it's small talk. It isn't. → Cody in the language
Has a fiancée. Calm in the way people who have done their own processing tend to be calm — not suppressed, just settled. His cinder-break is documented in facility incident records. Steve has notes.
Single. The most straightforwardly easy person in the facility to be around — not because he's simple, but because he doesn't make his complexity into your problem. The band relies on this more than they've said.
Has a girlfriend. She has visited the facility exactly once. Her threshold for unusual is apparently also high. She passed.
Has an interest, not yet a relationship. He is the most cautious about saying things out loud, which means when he does say something, everyone in the room notices.
Siblings. In the facility. Further details are still being developed — their full character profiles and how they came to be here are part of the ongoing lore.
// this section will be updated as their lore develops