Level 242
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Notice!


The following article contains mentions of gore, trauma, extreme acts of violence, psychological horror, and graphic depictions and descriptions of events, places and entities.

Please continue reading with caution, and at your own discretion.

SURVIVAL DIFFICULTY:

Class Deadzone

  • Strictly Uninhabitable
  • Sustained Entity Population
  • Insurmountable Cognitive Hazards


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Image L242-00 - Colorized.

Description


Level 242 was discovered by an M.E.G. task force comprising teams "Psi-11" and “Cytokine Storm” of Regiment Compass Point, as well as a few additional operatives — 23 members total — during an exploration of Level 444. In the middle of their original expedition, the task force came across a set of large, bronze-colored double doors. After requesting and receiving approval to enter the doors, the task force went completely radio silent. Contact between the task force and the M.E.G. was lost for a total of 23 days and 4 hours, before a message was received from one of the task force members requesting immediate assistance and medical care.


When M.E.G. extraction team “Wonderland” arrived at the rendezvous location, they found only a single member of Psi-11, operative Damien Horde. He was discovered lying on the ground in a fetal position, babbling to himself in a delirious state. Damien was immediately escorted to M.E.G. base Epsilon, where he was given a complete physical and psychological examinations. These revealed that while Damien had not suffered any major physical injuries, his ordeal behind the double doors had resulted in severe psychological trauma. For Damien, this has had severe and lasting effects including memory loss, regular migraines, recurring nightmares, insomnia, and paranoia, from which he has yet to fully recover.


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Image L242-01 - Colorized.

Damien spent the first five months following his return under constant psychiatric care. For the entirety of this duration, the M.E.G. was unable to acquire any information on the expedition due to his fractured mental state. The only documentation recovered was a set of drawings, which Damien had created throughout his ordeal, depicting the things he had witnessed. Research staff, working with Damien’s psychiatric caregivers, attempted to identify the meaning of the drawings, and to put together a cohesive timeline of events. At around the four month period into Damien's time under psychiatric care, he managed to regain enough mental capability and motor function to color several of the images he had previously provided.


After he was discharged, Damien would give his account of what little he remembered . Incomplete as they were, Damien’s recollections proved crucial in creating a timeline of events, and a sufficient description of the horrors which lie beyond the double doors.




When asked about the fate of his fellow operatives, Damien replied:

They’re almost certainly dead. And if they’re not… they’re suffering a fate far worse.




The Plains


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Image L242-02 - Colorized.


Level 242 is primarily composed of fields that stretch on indeterminately, made entirely of an unidentified, undulating, fleshy-red substance. Above the fields is a pitch black expanse of sky, casting a dim glow across the fields despite the lack of light emitting celestial bodies. Structures such as pillars and houses can be found, along with the occasional bone jutting from the fleshy ground.


“It was like walking through a field that existed on a… higher… plane, of some kind. The flesh that made up the floor was constantly squirming in a way that just felt inexplicably… wrong. Even looking at it made me feel like my brain was melting out through my nostrils. I don’t know what it is, but it’s certainly not the fourth dimension. It’s much, much higher than that.”

– Operative Damien



According to Damien, the ground within Level 242 warps and twists in ways the human mind cannot comprehend. As an operative with an extensive background in navigation through fourth-dimensional spaces, Damien could attest to the fact that Level 242 operated far differently, though he was unable to articulate exactly how.


The nauseating "higher plane" effect made traversal through the level extremely difficult. According to Damien, almost immediately after entry, the task force lost sight of the double doors, becoming disoriented and hopelessly lost. The constant shifting of the terrain caused many of the task force members, including himself, to become violently ill with motion sickness. The group was forced to stop regularly to allow its members to calm their stomachs — or to empty them upon failing to do so.

"The first three or so days after we entered the level was spent documenting everything we came across. After all, that was our job. I'm not sure what happened to those documents, but I'm pretty sure they were destroyed. Maybe… even by one of us. There were things we saw that no one should ever have to even read… let alone to see."

– Operative Damien






The Pillars


38069994506_e650feccba_b.jpg

A sketch of a pillar by Damien.

On around the third day of the expedition, the task force came across several pillar-like structures. These structures each appeared as a protrusion melded into the fleshy ground, gradually transitioning to possess a stone texture as it rose, then taking on the appearance of a a detailed man-made construction toward its apex. Atop every pillar, a long, jagged rod emerged, which relayed radio frequencies from the tower to the surrounding environment. This was picked up by the receivers of several task force members, who had kept their lines open and on full volume in case the M.E.G. managed to reestablish contact.


When the group approached one of the towers, all open radio lines began to broadcast a screeching sound. The noise caused those within hearing range to scream and fall to the ground, locked in a state of shock and paralysis from the pain. Seven of the task force members had been sent to the outer areas around the tower to keep watch and survey their surroundings. They were therefore initially spared from the radio's effects. When one of the seven attempted to approach the afflicted to disable their radios, they too fell prey to the same effect, collapsing to the ground in pain. This left the task force with six remaining members, including Damien.

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An image of the mass of members from Task Force Psi-11 - colorized.

The six members, while maintaining their distance, stayed around their suffering companions for the following few hours, attempting to devise a plan to rescue them. Approximately two hours later, Damien himself went to check on the affected members, and called attention to the fact that their flesh had begun to melt. After a total of 7 hours, the fallen task force members had been fused together into a single, horrific mass of congealed bodies and limbs. Forced to accept that there was nothing they could do, the survivors left them behind, and returned to their exploration in the hopes of finding an exit.


During his interview, Damien stated his belief that his fellow operatives were most likely still there, and still alive. Suffering.




The House


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A sketch of the house structure by Damien.

The House is a structure the task force encountered on day 7 of their exploration. The groups were estimated to have stayed in this location for roughly 10 full days. Not much is known about the structure, as Damien's memories of their stay within it are nearly non-existent. From what little he could recall, the group had decided to take a break within the structure, as they had been walking for over a day straight without rest. When they first entered the house it seemed as if nothing was out of the ordinary. However, after they attempted to go to sleep, all the windows and doors disappeared. After this point, Damien's memories go nearly completely blank, apart from the fact that they were placed in a state of constant pain.

“I can’t tell you what happened in that house. But I can tell you that there was a reason I made myself forget.”

– Operative Damien


During Damien's time under psychiatric care, the M.E.G. attempted to interview him on multiple occasions, with little success. During one of these interviews, however, he made mention of events that occurred within a place he termed "The walls that screamed". When asked to recount his experience, he provided the following description:

The walls watched, they watched with thousands of unblinking eyes. They watched as we were torn apart. Limb by limb. Then put us back together, only to repeat.

The pain grew numb. They did not.

– Operative Damien


Following his discharge, Damien claimed to haver no memories of the events he described, nor even of the interview in which he described them. Hence, the validity of his description has been deemed as questionable at best.


At some juncture, a large fire occurred, and it is his presumption that they managed to escape during the chaos. After this, there were only four task force members remaining. When asked about what happened to the two members who were lost, Damien said that one was lost in the house. He cannot remember the fate of the other.




The Featureless Faces


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Image L242-03 - Colorized.

On the 18th day of the group's exploration, Damien recalls that the sky above the level, which had once been pitch black, had become filled with uncountable numbers of "featureless faces". These blobs of flesh, each resembling a blank human face, appeared conjoined to one another, as well as to an indiscriminate mass lying above them, moving as one across the sky in a wave-like motion. Ever so often , one of these faces would be violently constricted by the faces surrounding it, causing it to stretch at the seams and rip open as it let out a shrill, haunting scream. The face would then be expelled from the mass, the clump of flesh falling to the ground below. The surviving team that agreed that their lives were not worth finding out if the creatures survived the fall.


At first, the group simply ignored the featureless faces, as they seemed to pose no threats. However, on either the 19th or 20th day, while the group had stopped to take a break, Damien watched as one of the creatures extended several giant arms from the conglomerate of heads above, one of which swiftly reached down and grabbed one of the four remaining task force members. Damien described — in quite vivid detail — how the arms ripped their compatriot apart, before assimilating his flesh into the mass in the sky. The M.E.G. has deemed his description too graphic to include in this report. Following the incident, the group would remain constantly on the move, only taking rest in areas where the sky was covered, either by a structure or by the warping ground.




The Castle



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A sketch of the castle structure by Damien.


During his post-discharge interview, when Damien was reintroduced to his own sketch of what appeared to be a castle like structure, his disposition became far more hostile and erratic. When he was eventually pacified, he revealed that it was the location the group had been heading to, since they had first entered the level. The structure was visible from all across the level, elevated high above the plains, and radiating a pure, untainted light, which Damien described as their “beacon of hope”.

When the three of us finally made it, we weren’t disappointed.

The palace was luxurious. It was blissfully clean, free of the flesh and rot that had been all around us since we arrived.

Words cannot describe its beauty. And even if I could describe it, you do not deserve to know. And neither do I. That is my burden.

After we’d spent some time exploring, Zack and Cathy decided they’d take a rest in one of the bedrooms. I kept going. Wandering the halls. Don’t remember why. At some point, I remember I’d turned around. And I was running… running as fast as I could, back to the bedroom.

I was too late. By the time I arrived at the door… blood. Blood, everywhere. Their… entrails… whatever was left… desecrated, ripped to shreds across the floor. It was eating them.

I saw it.

The King had come.

– Operative Damien



Beyond that point, Damien claims that his memories are completely blank, up until he found himself outside the level.




Entities


During the 23 days Damien spent within Level 242, he and the task force came across a variety of different entities. Below is a collection of reports documenting the most notable specimens.


Scurriers


CONCORD ENTITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
ENTITY ID: 242-A
HABITAT(S): Level 242
IETS:
0DXX
CLASS:
Zoophoid
PROPERTIES:
HVM
VRL-A
VRL-B
NCR
MCH
CBR
SYN
DMN
SSV
CVL
RLA
UNQ
AGR
BNV
{$custom-tag-name}
{$custom2-tag-name}
{$custom3-tag-name}
RAD
NRO
TXC
PYR
284065245_020efb2a68_b.jpg

an image of a Scurrier - colorized.

According to Damien, scurriers are one of the more common entities found within Level 242 ubiquitous across the entire landscape (apart from the palace). The entities are large insects, similar in appearance to centipedes, though with far fewer legs and on average the size of a small dog. The creatures behaved passively, and did not attack the members of the task force, preferring to wander mindlessly around the level like mindless animals. They are apparently edible, though Damien likened their taste to the smell of the mass of flesh melted together by the radio signals of the pillars.


Bone Stalkers


CONCORD ENTITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
ENTITY ID: 242-B
HABITAT(S): Level 242
IETS:
???XX
CLASS:
Zoophoid
PROPERTIES:
HVM
VRL-A
VRL-B
NCR
MCH
CBR
SYN
DMN
SSV
CVL
RLA
UNQ
AGR
BNV
???
{$custom2-tag-name}
{$custom3-tag-name}
RAD
NRO
TXC
PYR
2308572823_47d31f772b_b.jpg

An image of a Bone Stalker - colorized.

Bone Stalkers are large snake-like entities with jagged bones protruding from various parts of their body. The creatures are made from skin and muscle tissue, with veins spilling from various places and trailing behind them as they move. They contain no observable facial features, aside from a mouth which is covered in a thin layer of skin. The entities tended to watch the task force members from a distance, stalking them for days on end. It is unknown if these creatures wished to do harm, though Damien has stated that they never demonstrated any overt aggression towards the group while they were on Level 242. The entities merely observed them, as a vulture does its dying prey.


The King Of Flesh


CONCORD ENTITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
ENTITY ID: 242-C
HABITAT(S): Level 242
IETS:
5AXX
CLASS:
Chimeric
PROPERTIES:
HVM
VRL-A
VRL-B
NCR
MCH
CBR
SYN
DMN
SSV
CVL
RLA
UNQ
AGR
BNV
{$custom-tag-name}
{$custom2-tag-name}
{$custom3-tag-name}
RAD
NRO
TXC
PYR
5236253645_50142f5d0d_b.jpg

A sketch of the Flesh King by Damien.

The King of Flesh is the singular entity residing within the castle on Level 242. The creature has a face similar to those of the featureless faces in the sky, and the torso of a regular human. Below the waist, it is composed of a conglomerated mass of flesh, with appendages, eyes and ears protruding all around. This mass is partially covered by a thick flowing layer of detached skin, almost resembling a skirt, concealing the horror underneath. Though the mass contains no visible mouth, its screams can still be heard, a cacophony of agonized cries of those it has consumed and made part of itself.

The King of Flesh is extremely hostile. Damien has witnessed its power and aggression, killing and consuming the two remaining survivors of the task force before his very eyes. He does not recall any of his own interactions with the King – but he knows that there is a reason he made himself forget.


Entrances and Exits


The only known entrance into Level 242 is a set of bronze double doors on Level 444.

The method of exit is currently unknown, as Damien has claimed to not remember how he had managed to escape. However, he believes that it happened while inside the castle, suggesting that an exit lies somewhere within the structure.

Additional Notes


It is worth noting that the contents of this article only encompass that which Damien and the task force experienced while within the level. There may very well be far more hazards lurking within, that the group did not encounter. Furthermore, the reliability of the information is questionable at best. Due to Damien’s fractured mental state, there is a good chance that what he has provided may not be completely accurate.

Nevertheless, all who read this document are warned – regardless of where their allegiances lie – to avoid the horrors beyond the bronze double doors, which lurk within the Fields of Rot.

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