A.Journal

Checks

402 checks

Challenging

Underground caverns filled floor-to-ceiling with cultivation beds, fat larvae munching on mulberry leaves.

Trivial

Not one to make idle promises, once is enough for Ramses.

Challenging

Beyond the walls of the dingy bar, the city breathes.

Challenging

The outline of a small alcove with seated patrons shimmers in your mind.

Formidable

A slow death by erosion.

Challenging

Slowly populating itself with your crew members, around you the Fogged Mirror begins to take on the appearance it had five years ago, before your network collapsed.

Challenging

Empty of the other members of your old crew, the Fogged Mirror feels barren, infinitely distant from what it was five years ago, before your network collapsed.

Medium

As if the city itself is winking at you.

Easy

The pawprints are leading to the shed.

Medium

A hundred old women's eyes watch this alley from behind the lacy curtains of their windows.

Medium

The earth is alive; it breathes and shifts in its sleep. Concrete does not. The building is going to collapse.

Trivial

Try again during business hours.

Medium

The kind of places that need security intercoms: Gated communities. Government buildings. Prisons.

Easy

Tautening the outer defences.

Easy

This isn't only way through. You can always go the long way, around the docks to the west.

Easy

Unless you're planning to hop off the end of the pier and swim for it, you're stuck.

Challenging

The flight path from Luz's costal airfields to Portofiro is approximately 60 kilometres, or 3 minutes at supersonic speed.

Trivial

A desolate spit of land on the edge of the city-state. Formerly the site of Portofiro's doomed space program.

Easy

A long, dark, sexy tunnel built on top of a worthless old village. Progress, baby!

Easy

An uncanny buzz in the air, as though a director might pop out of any one of those doorways, yelling 'Cut!'.

Medium

Your inner ear fills with the groans of ancient machinery, hydraulic mechanisms, your nostrils with the smell of exhaust and heavy fuel oils.

Formidable

The genius loci, rising to speak.

Easy

Renotel -- the dolphin payphones. Invisible courier of the city.

Trivial

You dimly remember seeing his signature yellow posters plastered around the city. They probably have his call-in number on them.

Medium

Strange. Somehow you do know where his studio is, despite having never been there before.

Medium

The signal blockers: wiry battlements like the skeletons of titanic insects face out across the strait on Portofiro's most desolate shore, snagging Luzian radiowaves as they enter.

Trivial

Room for two. You were supposed to lie here alongside your double.

Medium

No condensation, moisture stains, or signs of dripping. Not the origin point.

Medium

No planned space for greenery either. No building was ever finished other than the silo itself.

Easy

Stage separation events and plum signatures were observed fourteen times above Luzian airspace in the past decade alone.

Easy

And now she has macrame.

Medium

And somewhere beyond them: the shores of La Luz.

Challenging

Behind you, a hundred black-and-white faces regard you with the sublime indifference of the dead.

Easy

A cargo boat brushes gently against the canal. The smell of fuel oil hangs heavy in the air.

Medium

They only bloom at dawn -- most of the day, nearby buildings block out the light.

Challenging

As much as 75% of the world's commercial jasmine is produced in this vast field. Children as young as five work alongside their parents, wiping pollen and pesticides from their cheeks.

Medium

They'll bloom again tomorrow morning, so long as the sun is out.

Easy

You still don't know what the building above contains. Maybe there's an easier way in.

Trivial

And it seems the GM is no longer blocking the door...

Easy

There's a small room to the east. Might be worth a look.

Easy

In all likelihood, that's the door the GM is guarding.

Medium

The classes may mingle during the day, but by evening they sort themselves back where they belong.

Medium

All around, movement clings to structure. Sightlines, bottlenecks, exits. People move as water does around rocks. A map has begun to emerge.

Easy

The long, dark, sexy tunnel awaits...

Easy

You haven't mapped the space around you yet. No reason to rush for that door.

Easy

The water won't drain unless it has somewhere to go.

Trivial

The large pipe outside the window catches your eye again as you turn away from the console.

Trivial

As you're about to turn away, you notice a large pipe out the window. Might be worth taking a closer look.

Easy

The poet got halfway through the critique, balled up the paper, and threw it in the bin behind them.

Trivial

This rejected submission would imply that their offices are near the bin you found it in -- perhaps the building directly behind it.