The Building and the Descent · Underwanderer Archive

Testimony

“Up top there are four floors of offices, ordinary ones. Down below there are thirty basements and each one is more wrecked than the one above.”

The building is the verticality of Level 0, with an office tower that goes up and a chain of basements that goes down. Wanderers move through it by the staircases and the pits, and all agree the feeling changes when you cross the ground floor.

The structure

The tower. Offices from floor 0 to 3, with long corridors, cubicles and low ceilings.
The basements. From -1 to -30, degrading as you go down. People speak of basements as deep as -100, but nobody has seen them.
Of the ten floors the archive has mapped, only four can truly be walked.

Cubicle ceiling: what you see on an office floor

The decay

The farther down, the more the building falls apart. The carpet lifts, the plaster cracks, the fluorescents fail, and each basement looks less like an office than the one before. It ties in with the general idea of depth that runs through Level 0 and with the pits, which are the fastest way to fall.

Who lives on the floors

The upper floors, which for a while were empty of creatures, now have inhabitants. The Floors Above tells it. Floor -1 is different: there are many stretches below grade 0 there and no creatures have been recorded.

How to survive

Climb with a light backpack. One floor costs the same as any other, but the weight shows on every step.
Before going down, leave a bed or an anchored base on the surface, because you won't want to climb thirty floors with your sanity low.
Bring your own light. The lower you go, the less you can trust the fluorescents.

What people report

Thirty basements force you to go through them one at a time, and there's no record of anyone who has gone down that many in a row.
The word is that there are basements beyond -30, and that the decay doesn't follow a straight line, and that the lower you go, the closer you get to something that is no longer a building.
On floor -100 every account says something different. Some speak of an enormous room and others, of nothing.

Sub-entries

P-011 · PhenomenaThe 63-Meter StaircaseTwenty-one flights of three meters in a zigzag and, at the top, a place you can't reach any other way. Everyone tells the ending differently.P-012 · PhenomenaLevel 0 StaircasesIdentical steps, measured to the centimeter, with a landing every few meters. You always climb more than you expect.P-022 · PhenomenaThe Floors AboveFor a while, going up a floor left the world without creatures. Not anymore. Up there, too, someone is waiting for you.

Mentioned in

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-012 · SublevelsLevel 0.1: danger zoneA degraded layer of Level 0: mold on the walls, red light and a loop of corridors with warnings from other survivors.P-023 · PhenomenaPitsOne-meter holes in the carpet, with no railing and no bottom in sight. Falling leads to Level 1, and climbing back is another story.P-019 · PhenomenaGreat HallsHalls 48 to 96 meters across where the ceiling disappears. They are the only relief from the corridors and the only place where you feel small.O-007 · ObjectsOffice SignsPlaques, A4 sheets and wall lettering. An office that keeps to its routine long after the last person left to follow it.O-003 · ObjectsSafety NoticesStandardized plaques with a pictogram and text, and always one part erased or wrong. They look genuine until the second read.P-009 · PhenomenaHow It All Fits TogetherThree levels joined by pits, stairs and doors to nowhere, and sublevels that have no door and are reached by mistake.S-017 · SublevelsPit FieldAbout twenty-five small holes in the floor, each with a crude platform at the bottom, and a single walkable path.S-002 · Sublevels“Infinnovation Outpost 1” BunkerA closed building with an open metal door beside its opening and a name that appears in no directory.S-022 · SublevelsThe Space Above the Drop CeilingAbove the ceiling tiles there is a low gap with room for ducts and, some say, something else. A hatch marks it.