Location Descriptions

[Long Haul]

This thread is dedicated to location descriptions on the as-yet unnamed mystery planet. For the time being, to keep the board from being cluttered with stickies, this will be handled as a single thread, although it may spawn sub-threads later on.

This thread is being left unlocked so that players themselves can add to it as new places are discovered, bases built, etc. However, please do not post anything in this thread that is not a location description. Other things posted will be either deleted or moved to their appropriate locations.

General note: Although whatever inhabitants had built all these structures often fancied things that were rather grandly scaled, where it makes a difference it should become quickly obvious that more functional buildings, platforms, tools, etc, indicate a species that was perhaps only a little larger than humans in size. Also, there is every indication that the planet was abandoned quite recently, and VERY suddenly. Things are slowly falling into disrepair, but in most areas there hasn't been time for things to get too bad.

[Long Haul]

Expansive Plains

Flat. That's the first impression one gets from this place: flatness. The flatness is taken up, predominately, by a huge field of long bladed flora, plant life that seems to closely resemble grass. This grass, however, seems strangely muted, drained of color, making it a dull grey-green. The grass is also extraordinarily tall, as grass on organic worlds go - it comes up to the upper thighs of your average car-mode Autobot or Seeker. The tall blades are thick and strong, and although they can be torn by even the weakest of Transformers, doing so takes a noticeable effort. Despite the dull color, it smells like proper, healthy grass for those with the olfactory sensors to determine such things, and it is teaming with insects, alien, but still resembling those that have evolved on many other worlds. The occasional bird can be seen overheard, and now and again there's the impression of something much larger than an insect moving the blades against the wind.

Overhead, in almost blinding contrast to the dullish field, is a sky that, when the weather is clear, is so brilliant blue it almost seems to shade into blue-violet. The dense thicket of trees that can be spied off to the distance... internal compass tells you it's east... also lack the muting of the field, and are a thick, deep, vibrant green. The trees circle around to the south, but to the north the fields fade into hills and, further in the distance, mountains. The horizon to the west, however, seems at first to go on forever, but appropriate long-distance vision reveals that it eventually meets a large body of water in that direction.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. This area is to the west of the swamplands, described below, and south of the Howling Mine, also described below.

[Long Haul]

Swamplands

The smell of decay permeates this region. It lingers in the air and clings to all available surfaces like a putrid lover, whispering sickly sweet obscenities not to the audios, but to the olfactories. Thick, ropey vines of a strange sort of fungi hug many of the trees, feeding off their partners and gifting them with decay in exchange for their siphoned off life-energy. Oddly, though, the trees seem to have adapted to this, as if they exist for that very reason: to grow quick and powerful and strong from the murky, life-rich-rot that covers the ground before slowly giving their energy over to the vampiric fungi. Most the ground is covered in a deep substance that isn't quite liquid and isn't quite mud and certainly isn't firm enough to be stood on. The depth varies, and while in some areas it can be easily waded through by a Micromaster, it will deepen without warning until even a Seeker's head would be under. There are regions of firm ground - not dry ground, mind you, just firm - and in a more eastern region of this marsh there's even indications of habitation, advanced technology. Black, muck-slick metal walkways move betweens alien arches of knife-jagged darkness and strange, curve-walled buildings with ridged supports that come up to central points. In relief on the walls of the building are short, sharp strokes of death-rust red in patterns too regular to be random - decorations, or perhaps a language of some sort, it's hard to tell.

Just as there is death and rot everywhere, so there is movement, and the independency between the death and life is as blatant here as ever on an organic world. Insects are everywhere, sometimes to the point of swarming, and although it's often hard to spy them when one looks, an occasional rustle of moist, dead leaves of the rippling of disturbed swamp-waters proves that other animals move through the region as well. Of the species that built the structures, however, there is no sign. In the rest of the swamp, death leads to decay leads to life leads to death, but the buildings and walkways are naught but dead metal, supporting nothing but themselves.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. This area can be found to the east of the Expansive Plains (above) and the southeast of the Howling Mine (below).

[Long Haul]

Open Air Temple

Everywhere in view, a lush forest of ferns, flowers, grasses, vines, and mighty trees scrabble over each other in their race for the life-giving rays of this world's sun. Everywhere, that is, except for your most immediate surroundings, a large clearing that perhaps once held trees, but so long ago that not even the stumps remain. Vines and mosses, however, still run rampent where trees fear to tread, the smaller plants bounding joyfully across the open area before clambering up to dance amongst the filigree silver archways that stand so proud against the violently blue sky. The archways are obviously artificial, with minute detailing that curves, crosses, and caresses itself and its plant lovers, natural and unnatural intertwined in a visual song that is far more harmony than discord. These shining archeways, arranged carefully in concentric circles and obvious aisles, are designed to raise up nature and celebrate it, not blot it out or hold it down.

In the center of these circles is a raised dias and upon that, a platform that resembles nothing so much as an alter. From the center looking out, the filigreed structures line up in such a way as to form picture-patterns, stories of alien-animal gods that stand upright, some as bipeds, others with four legs and baring some distant resemblance to what humans call "centaurs." Depending on the light hits, the stories change with the interplay of reflections and shadows. Battles are fought, lovers are taken, lives are lost, new lives begin, and the whole thing starts over again.

In the forests beyond and the skies overhead, life goes on. Brilliantly plumed birds flit about or rest on branches, small reddish brown rodents scurry across the floor, and occasionally there is the brief rustle of some much larger creature further away.

This temple has doors but no walls, its only ceiling the sky, and here was worshiped life and nature and death and artifice and the interplay of them all. Bird song combines with the rustle of trees, while trees and vines sing silently with the frozen metal notes of the temple arches. But of the singers who wrote those lyrics, there is no sign.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. It is to the west of the Tourist Beach (below). To the far west is Black Desert (below)

[Long Haul]

Howling Mine

Before visuals can discern anything, audials report a forlorn moaning. Wind rushes by continuously, a damp, stinking breeze brought up from the depths. A brief examination of these darkened environs show this to be very clearly a cave, and not of any natural sort, but more like a mine. Sleek, dark metal braces stone walls, and armored runs of cable litter the ceiling, feeding (or rather, failing to feed) energy to dead lights on the ceiling, ventilation fans that spin not of their own accord but due to the air forcing their way past them, and other, less obvious machinery. Nearby there is pedestal set against the side of the shaft, one with a slanted, flat top that contains what seem to be gages and controls in some indecipherable language. The ceiling is very high, allowing even a Dinobot-sized robot to stand upright (although not comfortably), but too small to admit a Guardian robot or Gestalt. In the center of the floor, running parallel to the walls, are ebon-metal magnetic rails worn to a bright, reflective finish. These rails are quite far apart, indicating that the machines that run on them are rather large. Here, the mine is not steep, but there is a definite slope indicating which way is up, and which is most likely down. Whether you look into the winds or away, however, subtle curves prevent seeing either exit or end. This mine may as well go on forever.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. This area is in the mountains described to the north of the "Expansive Plains" above, and is therefore generally to the northeast of the "Swamplands" described above.

[Long Haul]

Tourist Beach

Soft white sands stretch out to the north and south while waves whisper softly against them and the breeze gently rustles the nearby trees. The plants, though unfamiliar, indicate a tropical environ, and the deep green leaves are punctuated by a riot of brilliant color in the form of large flowers and garishly plumed avians. The water is as clear a turquoise as one could hope for, and wading into it, no matter how deep, still allows one to see clearly the rocks, pebbles, and shells at the bottom, not to mention the seemingly fearless fish in between. This is no pristine paradise, however, no untouched utopia. Though the beach is strangely lacking in native intelligent life, their mark is apparent in the buildings that rise from far beyond the line of trees, their cacophony of pigments and oft clashing decorations proudly displaying alien characters that still say "tacky" no matter the language. Unlike many worlds, care is taken here not to allow the manmade structures to damage or edge out the rest of the environment, but still, one thing is made clear: "tourist traps" are universal.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. It is to the east of the Open Air Temple (above).

[Long Haul]

Black Desert

Hard packed, parched soil of a strangely black color stretches far in every direction, reflecting up the heat of an unrelenting sun during the day. Here, nothing lives, nothing grows, and even the pale blue-violet sky above seems leached of vitality by a sun that grants not survival but slow, inexorable annihilation. The ebon land is riddled with cracks and devoid of any moisture, and the occasional knife-sharp rocks and hills that break free of the flats provide shade, but little else.

Still, while the desert stretches far, it is not endless, and those with the proper distance-vision can see to the south and to the east the beginnings of scrublands, of tough, determined plant life fighting to survive. These signs of life are many days' walk away, but fortunately, Transformers rarely have to walk if they don't want to. Eventually, one determined will encounter the beginnings of life and it is said that where there is life, there is hope. Perhaps that's true, even here.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. To the east is the Open Air Temple (above), although it's a fairly long distance.

[Long Haul]

Zoo

Dusky-dull red-orange metal covers nigh-on every surface, winding through the area in blatant pathways and trails, crossing and curving and twisting in an organic fashion. In between these pathways rise clawed metal frames that reach for the sky, like the corners of buildings that lack walls and roofs. Some of these frames appear as windows to other realms; looking through them seems to reveal places that are Not Here. They look out, instead, on forests, swamps, snow-swept tundra, even the depths of the ocean. And directly in the center of each proud little portal, as though part of some grand display, is the decimated carcass of some strange animal, each with features that indicates it belongs in its respective environs, each obviously starved to death.

Closer examination of these 'portals' reveals that they are not doorways but walls - cages of invisible energy separate the outside world from the elaborate, perhaps even solid illusions that provide habitat for each creature. Habitat, but no sustenance. Inside the cages, the winds blow, the grasses stir, the leaves rustle, and sea-plants wave gently in illusionary water, but in each cage the only thing real is death.

These are the 'portal' frames, and they are relatively few compared with nearly identical but empty metal spines. In some cases, malfunction can be discerned through obvious damage, while the problem with others is subtler, but seems to do with the lack of the faint energy fields that can be sensed from the operating cages. These cages contain no dead animals, but careful examination of some will reveal that they held live ones not too long ago. Careful listening, or a fleeting glimpse from the corner of the visual field, or perhaps the wafting of the breeze, shows that the animals that they once held have not gone far, and unlike the ones in the active cages, some have found ways to survive.

And some of those broken electric cages are quite large.

Welcome to the zoo. Please do not feed the animals.

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Note: This location is one of the potential "appearance points," a possible location for newly arrived Transformers to appear in. It is located in a small, somewhat squat city on a river to the south of the Black Desert location, to the southwest of the Open Air Temple, and west southwest of the Tourist Beach.

[Long Haul]

Magnetic North

The light blazes dazzling bright, brilliant sun bouncing off endless white. It takes a few seconds for most optical sensors to filter out all the excess light, and in that time, other sensors are able to take their measure. For example, whether one has their internal temperature gauges set to Cyber-Celsius or Astro-Ferhernheit, all systems of measurement agree on one fact: it's fragging cold. What's worse, magnetic-based direction sense proves utterly useless, as do most other magnetic-based sensors, although the strength of the local magnetic field can generally be inferred to be "very, very powerful." By the time all this can be discerned, visual sensors have adapted to the dazing brightness, and detail can finally be seen. There proves to be little difference, for everywhere around, as far as the eye can see, is flat, compact ice, a wasteland of white threaded through with deep, black cracks, fissures that are, for the most part, wide enough that even normal-sized Transformer may risk falling in, although some are larger and others smaller. These cracks run so deep that only those with the most specialized visual array can see bottom*, and to all others they are just ebon-dark. The sky is pale and cloudless, although the tint runs somewhat towards the violet, and the expanse of the waste is so wide that the very curvature of this planet can be viewed.


*If you can, and are wondering what's down there, the answer is: more ice.

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Note: This is one of the arrival points that has been designated "remote." It is north of all other locations listed so far. Very north of them.

Radio devices will be undependable here, but not completely inoperable (fuzzy, barely understood distress signals make fine RP hooks!). The magnetics in the area occasionally fool with other electronics and can induce current into circuits.

[Rodimus Prime]

The General Layout Around The Decepticon Mine

First, the area is fairly mountainous. There is a road through the mountains, and on either side of the road is a thin strip of woods. On one side, after the forsty-stip is over, the mountains climb further up, and on the other, they climb further down, as steeply or shallowly as needed for a scene, pretty much. Sometimes small rivers or brooks interrupt, and have to be bridged over. At one point, there is a branch from that road which leads directly to the mines, and what used to be a small grouping of mining shacks and storage/utility buildings, but is now the surface-side section of Decepticon base (which also continues into the mines). This area is fairly well cleared of trees, and always has been. Somewhat down the road, but still within sight from the mining entrance, is the town itself, which mostly served to support mining operations. In it is the fountain (where meetings often take place), the tower, the warehouse Shortround used to use to store toys, and so forth. On the side of the town nearest the mine is where the meeting with Starscream and Rodimus took place, and where Bumblebee is currently. Somewhere between is Shortround's old warehouse, and where Rodimus, Shortround, and Shockwave are having their encounter. On the far side of town is where Shockwave used to have his temporary lab set up, and Perceptor is currently tormenting repairing Synapse.