Stabilization

Testimony

“Stabilizing doesn't stop the floor, it just hesitates a while longer before moving, okay? Still, properly still, that's the anchor and nothing else.”

Stabilizing a chunk is the wanderers' answer to Displacement: spend scrap and workbench time so a piece of the labyrinth stops being rewritten. Staying costs that. Anyone who raises a shelter knows the floor under the bed moves too, unless someone has secured it first.

How it’s prepared

Everything is made at a workbench. Without a workbench there is no recipe, and no shortcuts.

Tier	Cost	Workbench time
T1	10 Metal, 5 Circuit, 1 Battery	immediate
T2	25 Metal, 15 Circuit, 3 Battery, 10 Cable	15 minutes
T3	50 Metal, 40 Circuit, 10 Battery, 30 Cable	30 minutes
Anchor	50 Cable and a tool that doesn't wear out	25 minutes

T1 is a patch that comes out instantly. T2 and T3 make you wait beside the workbench, with the hum overhead, while the chunk's timer keeps counting down. The anchor takes the chunk to the anchored state.

What changes in the chunk

Unstable. The timer drops one point per second and, at zero, the chunk shifts.
Stabilized. At zero, 95 times out of 100 the timer resets. The other 5, the chunk shifts anyway. Stabilizing lowers the risk and doesn't cancel it.
Anchored. It never shifts, and it is the only total guarantee. Zones in Level 4 are born already stabilized and anchored.

All three tiers of stabilizer protect equally, since the place only tells a stabilized chunk from one that isn't. The archive has never seen a mark expire once placed.

Effect on sanity

A stabilized or anchored chunk saves 0.2 sanity per second compared with an unstable one. Sleeping on firm ground shows in your head before it shows in your body, and the difference is the same with T1, T2, T3 or the anchor.

What people report

A stabilized chunk sounds different, because the hum drops a semitone.
People talk about a mark painted on the door frame, one stroke per tier, and a plaque screwed on wherever there's an anchor, though nobody has come back with a photo.
Everyone places a stabilizer their own way. It is made, loaded and carried to the chunk's door, and what happens after that nobody knows.
Beside an abandoned workbench someone left this written: “T2 doesn't last.” It could be a complaint or a warning.
The scrap comes from cabinets and electrical panels. Anyone looking for Cable in a panel rarely finds it the first time.

Mentioned 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.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.P-017 · PhenomenaThe Wanderer’s GlossaryThe words wanderers repeat until they stop explaining them, with the entry where each one is told.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.O-006 · ObjectsBeds and SheltersA nook with a bed, tape and a can. Sleeping in it sets where you wake when you die, and building it is the closest thing to a home.P-028 · PhenomenaFluorescent HumThe sound of the place is a low electrical hum that never quite goes quiet and, now and then, something being dragged far away.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.O-010 · ObjectsThe Metal Shelving UnitA tubular wire rack with sixteen fixed slots. What you store is visible on the shelf, and visible to anyone who walks by.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-008 · SublevelsLevel 4: reserve and epochsA bounded region where the rooms redraw themselves every ten minutes and the entrance door closes after five.S-020 · SublevelsBreaking Walls and FloorsSome say a wall or floor in Level 0 can be broken, and that what is broken stays broken for everyone. Nobody has managed it.