| The door to the building is locked. Office times are drawn in elegant dauphin characters over a sign visible to you: "08:00-22:00 Mon-Sun". There's a container for pamphlets next to the door and the intercom. The pamphlet's front page reads: "Steele Industries (est. 1437) - For metal products always ahead of their time", and has a picture of the city's Melpomene transit station sketched out below it. Inside, the pamphlet has more information on the factory (here) and more information on the Steele brothers (here). |
PinkGoth2 would like to thank:
AVARICE -- for supplying the rough draft of the building description
DARKENTITY -- for funding 25€ worth of donation
LADY KAYURA -- for helping develop the storyline to begin with
The factory at Umbrella and 44th takes up the entire block with it's size. To the enourmous space it claims horizontally, the building has three stories, making it quite visible in height, also, even without the double glass dome that rests on top of it.
The factory walls are made almost completely of concrete, except on ground level where almost half the building seems to be wrapped in glass that is kept painfully, spotlessly clean, starting from the main entrance in the south which refracts the sunlight falling in onto it from Umbrella, being edged towards it noticably. Specifically, the glass is 'wrapped' around the building to the east of this doorway, and then again most of the western side of the building, with a small segment of the northern wall, westwards again, also falling into the category of transparency. The second and third levels have windows where neccessary, but these are insignificant and few notice their presence when looking at the building.
Upon entering the building, one finds oneself on a short corridor that soon T-junctions to lead off into various offices, labelled nicely with clean aluminium signs with engravings, typically the name and status/title of the person off in that direction. (Should one chose not to take this T-junction, westwards (to one's left) lie the doors to an elevator of equal spotlessness.)
Following this junction to the right, there are two doors on one's left on the entire stretch of the corridor in one's sight, both which are usually locked - heavy doors leading off to the manufactoring part of the first level. To the right on the same corridor are offices, none of greater significance.
Following the same junction to the left, one can step forward about two meters before the corridor twists off to the right (the north). Here are purely office workspaces, with the factory owner and manager's office right at the end of the corridor, the farthest north.
The elevator at the entrance glows the letter 'E' upon entering - below this light and it's respective button lies one for '0' (as the only, written in red), above, in order, '1', '2' and 'D'. Etched into the metal beside the buttons, opposite of the surprisingly elegant characters, are fine drawings, each to further elaborate the level that the elevator is to take you to. The top drawing is a dome structure, obviously representing the glass structure atop the factory. Level 1's drawing shows a strikingly realistic 'copter. Level 2's drawing shows what may well be mistaken for a spiderweb, but is to indicate that here, machinery resides in parts (sometimes suspended with steel rope - ergo the sketch) that spans down to Level 1. Generally, the only thing defining the boundry between Level 1 and 2 is, in fact, the elevator's limited capabilities. Below these buttons is a keyslot intended for workers, who all have a matching key - access to the basement level, which as the only has no drawing. Upon asking, however, one is told that it is no secret, but merely a security issue - the basement is used as an iron forgery of sorts, where liquid metal is handled, which is naturally not a place one wishes guests to land in.
The basement, summed up briefly, when accessed, is mostly an assortment of wild pipes and air ducts for cool and fresh air, with the quiet hum of machinery ever present, and verbal communication hard as the pipeline-structured walls absorb sound surprisingly well, despite their starkly reflective nature when it comes to light. The ground is bare concrete, unlike the carpet of the office above. No one - and that [i]does[/i] mean absolutely no one - is allowed down here without protective clothing, no matter how far away from the actual forgery (nuzzled in the southeast corner of the factory's basement) one plans to move around.
Beyond the heavy doors on the first level - which also need to be accessed by keys visitors usually do not possess - transit rails and skyscraper framework casts from the forgery are stacked and further editted. To the north is an entrance for trucks who intend to move the manufactured objects to where they are needed.
The 'first level' really extends up to the 'second'. Light from the west filters in from a large window on the second, most of the light needed for work being supplied like this during late work hours. It's the only first/second level exception to the concrete walls. The daylight casts the ropes and both railing and crisscross wire of the 'second level' into eerie silhouettes and traces the strangest shadows over bent and twisted machinery. Light for even later shifts is supplied by radiant strips of a warm neon, aligned vertically against the walls where there is no machinery, like abstract art; and in part secured to the crisscross wire of the structure above, like a delicate trust to give something that seems to fragile and easy to tear down to break. The only solid structure on the second level is the elevator itself and a square platform before it - then, hugging only the walls, made of aluminium and similar lightweight metals and alloys, are paths that lead past power switches, control switches, buttons, and more delicate machinery that needs regular checkups at this height. These crisscross wire pathways are suspended by steel ropes that are attatched to - in part - the ceiling or - alternatively - the walls. The ceiling of the second floor extends seemingly just as far as the pathways do but in a circular cutout rather than rectangular, leaving the center open for light to fall through. On top of it rests the inner glass dome. At the right angle, tilting one's head to peer up from a pathway to the dome, with no light coming in from above to obstruct view, but with the sky still light enough to allow silhouettes to exist, one can see the delicate stairways reach up, winding around it.
On the third level, 'D', the theoretical top of the building, a visitor is wedged between the inner and outer dome - a space of roughly three meters across, well enough to move freely. Breezes and temperature leaks in from evenly spaced gaps in the glass, cut out neatly, at spaces of one meter apart each, less than five centimeters in thickness, but almost as tall as a human walking past them, starting at the concrete the dome is built on - as if waiting to be latched onto it in a lego like fashion. Roughly every twenty meters, a lightweight metal staircase traces itself across the inner glass dome, allowing the curious to step up and look down at the activities if they so please.
(description © 2004 PinkGoth2)
Steele Industries gets it's surprisingly suiting name from Narayan and Mercurian Steele. The two daywalker brothers from the Immolators Guild were in business since before their turning - since then both they and their company have grown quite beyond themselves. No one in the human world knows that Narayan and Mercurian Steele are vampires, though rumours of course occasionally bounce around - and much less do people in general know that the two are the owners of the Immolators Guilds. The only who know this are informed clan leaders, the Immolators themselves - and the gekkonids.
The coordinates for "Steele Industries" was bought by the vampire PinkGoth2 early September 2004. PinkGoth2 is also known as Dread to many, and hangs around mostly on The Abyss and VADA. She's a crassly anti-resting-rule game "politician", and her god is called RavenBlack (well, no, it's not quite that bad =) ). Her clan? The Splinters of Dusk - the gekkonids.
Splinters of Dusk
"Power is not an aspect of blood."
Philosophers at the core, the Splinters of Dusk are mercenaries with absolute neutrality. Anyone (that OOCly acknowledges their existance) can contract them and in turn be a victim. There are no alliances and no grudges kept.
http://blood.datavibe.net/splinterdusk/
Splinters of Dusk: Forum
http://blood.datavibe.net/splinterdusk/forum/
Splinters of Dusk: Immolators Guild History Pages
"I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of game interaction one finds in roleplays. All game-interaction there is, bases around wars: around holywater and scrolls. But we've been given the most interesting NPCs to potentially roleplay with - and no one has seized the chance to integrate them. Until now, I suppose."
This is an ongoing Splinters of Dusk project. The entire Immolators Guild history is made up, of course, but it's something worth tapping into regardless - finally, RP game depth can be added. No expansion to the other Guilds is intended, btw, so if you want one, there's still a few up for grabs. (Links will be put here as they are made) http://blood.datavibe.net/splinterdusk/immolators/
The Abyss
The Abyss is a mostly OOC community around the vampire game. It's a good oppurtunity to write up your own vampire's history in the Roleplaying section, or join a roleplay that needs to have no correspondance with in-city events, but base off on them (Sidewinders). With over a thousand members, The Abyss has become huge - boredom will not come easily. The Abyss is run by Az, Dread is a global moderator there. Also: Remember to check out the Abyss RPG City when you're there!
http://www.abyss-uk.com
VADA
The main Yahoo! Group with the same promise as The Abyss. There are no extra rules here. The game will be played as the game was coded to be played - with rules only applying inter-clan, as the clans themselves decide.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/V_A_D_A
The Bloodpoints Database
Share your vampire stats and browse clans! Maintained by Dread (or, at least, she tries).
http://blood.datavibe.net