The Undercity
"The board copies itself onto your map — Market Row, the Market Gate, Guild Row, the Commons, the Loading Docks, the Frayed Quarter. The undercity is not shown. There is no undercity." — the Visitor's Map Board, on completing its reveal
The pleasant market is real on top and false underneath. The surface is a set, and you can get behind it.
Three rooms sit under this floor. Nothing on the map board mentions them; nothing reveals them until you genuinely go. They are the reason you can level without ever leaving town — descend from safety into a fight and climb back out into a plaza where a Sanitation Sweeper is tidying up.
The way down
Four doors. Each is a deliberate step through — you go down on purpose.
| From | Into |
|---|---|
| A shuttered lockup on Market Row | The Salvage Cellar |
| A cellar annex in the Frayed Quarter | The Salvage Cellar |
| A dock building at the Loading Docks | The Conscription Pens |
| The pens themselves | The Broadcast Set-Struts |
The Commons has no door down. That is why it is the warmest space on the floor: the one district in the Bazaar with nothing lethal beneath it.
The Salvage Cellar
16 by 12, and the honest underside of the market — where the goods on the stalls actually come from. Two Frayed Scavvers work it and a single Pen-Line Enforcer stands a repossession detail.
The cellar holds two things people come for: the staging crate with Albright's calibrated mainspring in it, and the ledger the Captain's chain sends you to read. Goods go down, age, come back up as "found." Each cycle is countersigned. The countersign is a guard stamp.
The Conscription Pens
18 by 14, and the darkest room in the run so far. Pop-Up Personnel's back-of-house machinery, physically present: benches, straps, a queue rail, an intake desk. Karen's third placement is an orientation held here, and nobody else is in the queue today.
Two Pen-Line Enforcers hold the room as standing population. Between them, on the pen line, sit two Restraint Rigs — clamp heads on hydraulic arms, bolted down and wired into the ceiling run. 60 health, defense 3, and while one lives it fires at whoever is nearest every three rounds: 6–10 damage and a coin-flip chance to hold you. Killing them first is the smart route, not the required one. They are metal, conductive and carrying a power source, which is an invitation.
The room also holds the recorder Felicia wants a clip off, and a transcript nobody was supposed to keep.
Coordinator Pruitt
Karen's management layer, one door down, where the temp-agency comedy stops being funny. He runs the pens and the salvage rackets from a folding table under a work-light.
He is a working vendor. He buys anything, sells salvage-grade goods, asks nothing. Doing business with him is a real option and the shelf is genuinely good — riot plating at 20 chits for anyone Pop-Up has Placed.
He becomes a boss the moment you attack him, and only for you. Another runner in the same room still sees a shopkeeper. 631 health, defense 5, hits for 14–19 with a compliance prod, and he is slow: he doesn't chase, the room does.
Kill him and he pays out completely — the Pens Override Key (which opens the locked stash off the pen line, where the rackets bank their take), the Pop-Up Master Contract, and two Riot Plates. There is no fight you have to win to get the key: close out Karen's placements and she hands you a copy.
The Broadcast Set-Struts
14 by 12, behind the pens, and the point of the whole thing. Scaffolding, prop-backs, cable, and the flat rear of everything you have been walking past for hours. No spawns here. Nothing wants you dead in this room. It is quiet, and it is worse for being quiet.
Filed here: the Anthology prop rack with Phil's tape on it, shows sorted by name and some of the names blacked out; and the racked costume — Mr. Whiskerton's lost colleague, cleaned, mended, and tagged for reuse. The tag does not give a name.
Also here: the marked strut. The Captain's chain calls it vandalism. It is measurements — somebody paced the pens from behind the set and marked the doors.
What the floor is telling you
Twenty-five pieces of loose paper are scattered across this floor, and the ones down here are the ones that matter. Somewhere past the intake desk is a transcript of the Network's host with the audience switched off. It appears once per descent, it is the only one of its kind on the whole floor, and the Reference will not quote it.
The surface isn't lying, exactly. It's just not showing you the basement.
Next → Gear & Crafting — what to carry back up.
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