Beds and Shelters

Testimony

“You recognize a shelter by what they left: a bed, some tape, a can. Signs, no, nothing like that.”

Shelters are the basis of survival, a nook to sleep in, store things and come back to. They aren’t found ready-made and have to be built from what is at hand. Wanderers insist on three ideas: build with the resources of the surroundings, dismantle realistically, and treat backpacks and transport as part of the routine, not as a nuisance.

Beds

Placing the bed sets the point where you wake when you die. That is where you return, with the little you were carrying. The original bed is the sleeping bag and the second is the Cot, a sturdier camp bed built from shelter pieces.

Building with what is at hand

A starter shelter goes up in about ten minutes if you have gathered what you need. The essentials:

Large materials are carried in the hand and small ones in the backpack. A panel doesn’t fit in a backpack, but screws do. See Backpacks and Weight.
The structure rests on a one-meter module frame, with seven panel types. More details in Frame and Panels.
A prop holds its weight without dragging down the rest of the build if you remove it.
What joins the pieces is the Fastenings: screws, nails, cable ties and tape. They are the scarce part, and so the bottleneck.

To open a way through or recover material, see Breaking Walls and Floors. And to find out whether what you build will survive the next Displacement, see Stabilization.

How to recognize one

A nook with a bed, some tape or a cable tie in view and a personal item: a can, a flashlight. No sign or icon. The Fastenings turn up loose in boxes and furniture, and their scarcity is the sign that someone used them up here. The only change you will notice is the absence of nearby footsteps.

What is said

In abandoned shelters someone saw a can stove.
There is talk of a floor note next to an empty bed: “I slept here twice.” It is one of the found notes that comes up most often.
Some say a well-kept shelter calms you and makes you lose less sanity.

Sub-entries

O-023 · ObjectsThe Fastenings: Screws, Nails and Cable TiesScrews, nails, cable ties and tape: the small things that keep a shelter standing, and the only thing that is truly scarce.

Mentioned in

O-001 · ObjectsAlmond WaterThe only flask that restores sanity. It removes hunger, thirst and wounds, but it only turns up in rooms almost nobody sets foot in.P-004 · PhenomenaChunk DisplacementEvery chunk has its own countdown and, when it runs out, the place is rewritten. Anyone who doesn't anchor their shelter loses everything with it.O-008 · ObjectsConsumablesFood, drink and medicine, the only things that refill the body’s bars. There is little, it is scattered and the labels come torn.L-001 · LevelsLevel 0: yellow officesEndless offices of damp carpet and humming fluorescents. Every wanderer wakes here, and nobody leaves by the way they came in.S-025 · SublevelsGeneration Error VestibuleYou pass through a wall, the color is no longer the same, and a reception of absurd furniture, a bunker from 1989 and pits that invite you to fall appear.O-014 · ObjectsHand-Crank FlashlightThe only light that never fully runs out, because you can always stop and wind it. But lit, it gives you away at almost forty meters.P-013 · PhenomenaStabilizationMetal, circuits and batteries on a workbench so a piece of the labyrinth stops moving. Only the anchor pins it down completely.P-017 · PhenomenaThe Wanderer’s GlossaryThe words wanderers repeat until they stop explaining them, with the entry where each one is told.O-024 · ObjectsBandages and WoundsThe bandage doesn’t heal. It closes the wound on an arm, and the strip of cloth is the only sign that you did it right.P-003 · PhenomenaSanityIt drains on its own, faster with creatures nearby, when you're alone or in an unstabilized chunk. Only Almond Water restores it.P-002 · PhenomenaA Day Down ThereExplore, loot, stabilize and return: the routine of anyone surviving in a labyrinth that moves. Tear off a piece of it and make it yours.P-010 · PhenomenaThe Building and the DescentAn office tower going up and a chain of basements that rots the lower you go. Nobody has come back from the bottom with news.