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Caught in the Draintrap
- Series(?) of tales (with HarryBlank?) about Site-246 in the 90s/00s after the defection of Florence and the dissolution of Delta-3.
- Probably not a single overarching plot, but a bunch of standalone snapshots of things going on at 246
- Possible stories to look at
- What was Westbrook doing the day that Florence "died"
- Pietrykau shows up to yell at Corwin and Westbrook about fucking up the Special Asset Task Force Program
- Explore the Overwatch politics of the SATF Program more thoroughly. Corwin jumps ship to continue ladder climbing, leaving Westbrook out to dry.
- Origin of the Special Asset Task Force Program — Pietrykau's meetings with O5-03, selection of Corwin as lead director, origin of the Nightingale Contingency
- What happens when the Foundation figures out Florence is still alive (as seen from her perspective in When Parallel Lines Diverge)
- The staff of 246 are picked off by competing sites — 87 (and maybe 64?) steals the thaumatology program; Corwin moves to Direct 64; 43 probably takes the MTF and support crew; all that's left is Westbrook, Devlin, and a few stragglers
- Procurement and Liquidation proposes selling 246 to the US government; Westbrook is forced to justify himself and his site to the O5s. (Maybe he fails and the O5s agree to sell the site, but the US won't buy it because it's a white elephant? Or maybe Florence uses her leverage within the UIU to sabotage the deal? Or maybe Westbrook does manage to defend his own hell.)
- Could be interesting to put a P&L psychic in 246 for a bit — some very bad vibes in that place
- A day in the submarine drydock — what's it like for the people who are left there at the bottom of the lake
- The logistics of this awful place — moving stuff through the soo locks, resupplying via submersible, dealing with the winter freeze
- What's in the vaults? There's some interesting high value/low risk stuff there, maybe (mix of safes and decommissioned thaumiels, maybe?)
Some various thoughts for titles
- "The Nightingale's Dirge"/"The Nightingale's Curse"
- "The Phoenix Drowns"
- "Ghosts of the Lake"
- "Down the Drain"
- "For Sale: Foundation Site; Small Leak"
- "In the Shadow of Itself"
Some chat snippets
GW
there's a whole, like, underlying theme throughout PNM about how everything they're doing is in the shadow of the last occult war
it fundamentally shaped the modern view of normalcy and how everybody acts in enforcing it
all the lessons the foundation is applying comes from it
heck, the very first mission Delta-3 is deployed on is to fight an Obskura holdout
246 in the 2010s/2020s would very much be a sort of continuation of that, where it is now living in the shadow of itself
its greatest glory is behind it
it's raison d'etre has passed
very much haunted by the ghosts of better days
GW
There Was Something Great Here Once, But No Longer
GW
which is doubly reinforced by most of the senior staff being some of the core players in the special asset task force program
Westbrook and Devlin (the assistant director of personnel and task forces) have this complicated and fucked up relationship where they both bitterly respect each other
GW
oh, if you want another point of reference for the general vibe of Site 246
think of something like the Midway Museum or Alcatraz
where it's very well-maintained, but also very clearly a Relic
Site-246 is still technically an active site, but it probably has commemorative plaques in a few places describing the history of the place and the greater significance of seemingly mundane things
or, like, an air force base that's been downsized since the end of the cold war but is still kept open
the aircraft boneyard at davis monthan is a good example too
lots of very old equipment maintained in very good condition
GW
it is definitely a place of endings
maybe a place after endings
purgatory
it's purgatory
HarryBlank
The drain at the bottom of the lake
GW
Lake Superior is a huge part of the aesthetic too
since it is, in a lot of ways, the coldest and least forgiving of the great lakes
it's like america's cold, icy heart
but yeah, if you just, like, look at Duluth as it currently is, and then combine that with, like, McMurdo Station in Antarctica
you get a good sense of the vibe
GW
the deep vaults from the -A site are also definitely a source of tale fodder if you want to play in that space
some of them still had stuff in them that couldn't be moved safely when they were flooded
echoing backlash almost a century later, rippling through the cold still lake
sometimes, if you go down to the bowels of the -B site late at night, you can hear rumbling in the deeps
coming from the flooded vaults below
oh, that's another thing, the whole place is absolutely never silent
there's always some low level hum of activity from, like, air circulation fans, bilge pumps, whatever
just a quiet pulse of machinery, keeping the place alive
whoomp whoomp whoomp whoomp
GW
oh, also, as you might imagine, it's extremely isolated
the nearest town of any significance is Duluth, and you gotta take a bathysphere up to the surface and then a boat ride to get there
there's communication with the rest of the foundation through the surface comm buoy, but there's not, like, satellite TV or anything
all you've got is on site media
it is, again, very much like living in antarctica
like, you don't get to go home at the end of the day
everything is in terms of "shore leave" or "surface leave"
which wasn't so bad back when it has a hub of activity and there was, like, stuff to do and people to talk to
but when it's just, like, a couple dozen or so crusty old fossils and a few score trainees under their supervision
sort of a cautionary tale too for new agents
"yeah, you don't want to end up here forever"
