Zenith : In Character → Threads, Logs, Events

Who: Lennon, Kiley and OPEN
Where: the maze of doom
When: morning!

( what would be left to strive for if everything were known? )

Who: Scotty and OPEN (Multiples welcome!)
When: Morning
Where: In the MAZE OF MYSTERY

( MAZE MAZE MAZE MAZE )

Day 70.

Weather: It's nice out, but it'll take a while for anyone to see that...

Events: Everyone wakes up some time after 8am, on a wooden bench in a small, windowless room. The floors are bare concrete, the walls white brick. The ceiling is dominated by harsh fluorescent lights. Does this sound familiar? Does this sound really familiar?

So yeah, everyone is back in the small rooms on the edge of the arena again this morning. But something's different. When everyone gets to their respective locker rooms, they don't find a protein bar breakfast, but a selection of fruits and pastries. While still comfortable, the change of clothes waiting in everyone's lockers aren't gym clothes, but things like tunics and robes, something you might wear to a Renaissance Festival or in The Hobbit. And the maze that waits for them all in the arena?


Yeah, it is not a bounce house.

Where an inflated bouncy maze stood just hours before, there are now solid, dark stone walls, reaching about ten feet up into the air. There's a hallway ahead of everyone which, like yesterday, splits in a few different directions. The rooms are dim, and illuminated by torchlight. While the first hall is safe, the rooms after that seem a little less so. They're also... not too different from the maze yesterday. Hell, if people are really paying attention, they might notice that the obstacle rooms are in the same order. The actual maze is the same, it's just... a dungeon now.

So, where people were jumping into ball pits and over hurdles yesterday, what will they find in their place? The course has been altered as follows:

Trampolines Hallways: Other than the first hallway and the rooms that are just forks in the road, there are several rooms that are just empty hallways. Except, like any good ancient trap, these rooms have pressure pads in random spots in the floor that will shoot darts out of the wall. Well, no, not darts. They're paint balls, and like the paint ball games, if you get hit, you're paralyzed. It's 2 minutes per hit, no matter where the paintball hits you.

Pillars Levers: Arranged in a circle in the middle of the room are a dozen levers, just sticking out of the floor. There's a closed door on the other side of the room that's locked until, you guessed it, you pull the right lever. If you pull the wrong lever, you get shocked. The shocks get worse with each wrong lever pulled, and they don't exactly start out light. Everything resets shortly after a subject leaves the room.

Slides: You climb up one side, then slide down the other. These aren't any different, other than the slides being metal now. There's no danger here.

Hurdles Mini-Maze: Yo I heard you like mazes so I put a maze in your maze These rooms are filled with mirror and glass panels, and are arranged to form a smaller maze within the maze. There are no hidden dangers here, it's just a small mirror maze that may not even lead you to where you want to go.

Tunnels: Two tunnels, next to each other, that require crawling through. The tunnels have no light within, which makes it nerve wracking when there are pinches that will be difficult for some of the larger subjects to get through. The dark also hides the many, many bugs and spiders within.

Ball pits Water Traps: The pits have lost their color, and are instead filled with dark, murky water. The water is generally between waist and chest height, with sharp drops hidden by murk and much that will plunge anyone who missteps deep underwater. There's also debris under the water, ready to trip you up even more.

Climbs Rocks: Where the walls yesterday had nice little handholds and everything being squishy, what people have to deal with today is not as nice. Now, climbs mean pulling yourself up a steep pile of rocks. And a lot of those rocks just aren't fixed in place, so climbing means the chance of stepping on a loose rock, or pulling rocks out completely, causing a small avalanche. None of these are heavy enough to kill anybody, but if you do end up in an avalanche, it's going to hurt.

Pyramids Peaks: Two pyramids next to each other. The two structures glow and pulse in many lights and colors, but the lights and colors stop as soon as a person steps through them. The first person in a group (or any single person not in a group) to walk through the pyramids will be hit with a strong wave of euphoria that'll bring them to their knees. The euphoria only lasts a couple minutes, and isn't really a danger to anyone, it just slows progress when you're traveling with someone who's high as a kite.

Ropes Lasers: Here's the laser trap that yesterday's obstacle was emulating. If you break the line of the lasers crossing this room, it activates the zapping mechanism in your implant. You could hypothetically just power through the lasers, but it's not a good feeling.

Balls Beams: A balance beam that goes from one side of the room to the other. The good news is that the beams are easier to balance on and get across than the balls yesterday were, but the beams are up a little higher, and the drop is... Well, it won't kill you if you fall, but there is a layer of fog obscuring the ground, and there's no clear way back up if you do fall.

Creatures Sphinx: No more fun inflatable creatures to climb up. Instead, each of these rooms have a large Sphinx statue in the middle of it, and once you're in the room, the entrance and exits surprise you with a pocket door that slides shut. The Sphinx will then "ask" a riddle, as sphinxes do, over an unseen speaker. The voice is robotic, and will not respond to questioning aside from repeating the riddle. Luckily, none of the riddles are particularly complicated. The doors will slide open again once the riddle is answered.

The maze once again ends with a large slide that will drop you off at the elevator up to the old trading post, where people will find their phones, some snacks and drinks, and a dry set of their own clothes. Today's maze will for sure take more time than yesterday's, but may take about the same amount of time to actually get out of, since most people chose to play around on the bounce course. Everyone should make it out during daylight hours.

The exception to that is Lucy and Ulani. People may notice that they have lockers waiting for them in the morning, but no one will see them in the maze, or leaving it, and their belongings are nowhere to be found in the rooms that they were staying in. They have both been either removed, or claimed by the maze.

Oh, there's one more thing: Those subjects whose subject number ends in 1 (That's Scotty, Owen, and Tobias) may feel like their affinity has gotten a little boost, which may help them with certain parts of the maze. It's not anything supernatural, they're just feeling pretty good today. Too bad there aren't prizes for today's challenge, or they might have had an edge.