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Save Point: The Hybrazeal Arcology

Hybrazeal Colony and outpost

You are in the Hybrazeal Arcology, in front of the inner door. Your guide has removed the blindfold from your eyes, although you get the feeling that this is a formality or something that has become a ritual, your unique appearance doubtless reassuring them that 'you are one of them' or something of similar kind.

The arcology is laid out as a sort of large inverted pyramid, the central part as a series of broad open spaces starting widest at the top, descending downward to the main floor of the central atrium in which you find yourself standing. This large underground space is illuminated efficiently through an enormous glass ceiling overhead, which you realize must in fact be the underside of the sparkling pool or lake that you flew over on your way in. Each of the small lesser pools that make up the whole spiral galaxy layout you saw must act as a light-well to various parts of the complex.

There are many other minor light sources around the place, brightening corners and underhangs, but they have been carefully selected to try and match wider daylight, or at least to give off a subtle illumination that doesn't overwhelm. In some places there's even a hint of humor, sconces made up to look like burning torches or oil-lamps in translucently hallowed animal horns.

All of the major structures, external walls and floor, are made of a sort of generic, homogenous rock that bears all the signs of being re-nanofactured, probably from the same limestone-based country rock that makes up the rest of the local surroundings. It's a sort of pale cream, almost but not quite a tawny gold, probably carefully selected for maximum visual appeal out of the range of shades that could be engineered from minerals in the raw feedstock.

To supplement the overhead lighting, as much use as possible has been made of glass and reflective or transparent surfaces. There are crystals grown deliberately from the upper angles and corners of the walls, placed to deflect the light to where it is needed at various times of day. Despite being near entirely below ground, the space is light and airy, like some vast cathedral, a temple to apportioned space. It's the offspring of a water cistern and a shopping mall.

In a quixotic gesture, someone has planted a huge tree in the middle of the atrium, with shining silver curls of bark that gleam just a little too much, as though some sort of actual foiled material had been drawn into the xylem _.__ It has thrived on the rays of sunlight being cast down between the free swimming fish, even though its sky is essentially an ocean._

Next to the tree on the raised rim of the planter boundary that separates it from the floor is a small plaque. Your conversational Azatlani is much better than your grasp of the written language, but it isn't too long and you can mostly guess what it says by sounding it out.

The plaque reads as follows:

"The Hybrazeal outpost began essentially as a colonial era over-expansion, a small trading post and fort built over a location housing a small evaporite deposit containing rare earth minerals. The very name 'Hybrazeal' means both 'hollow' and 'underground place' (specifically a fort or mine, although the phrase originally refers to a cave, usually in a hillside or cliff-face).

"As a consequence of this mining, large amounts of underground free space became available, and so instead of building outward, early settlers and miners built downward instead, turning the outer parts of the mine, exploratory tunnels and veins, into an exterior defensive network and the inner parts into their homes and living spaces. For practical reasons, the general shape of the main body of the mine was and is that of an inverted pyramid, optimizing weight distribution whilst removing the body of rock containing the largest possible volume of valuable minerals.

"After this single mine played out and no others were found, economic justification for a continued presence in such a remote area mostly ceased. Political and legal changes meant that there was no reason to continue further expansion, but that a limited remediation of the site was legally required, and so many of the former miners and traders, who wished to stay on in the place that had become their home, volunteered to be part of the reclamation effort. Improvements in technology occurring around that time made it feasible to not just recover the site, but to rebuild it completely as a self-contained underground arcology with little opposition to the change.

"The rebuild required new and additional personnel with different skill sets, at a time when many of those individuals who fulfilled those requirements had found themselves on the wrong side of the then-current administration. It had always been a traditional threat to government employees and corporate servants that if they misbehaved, they might find themselves posted to Hybrazeal to serve the mine and any other trading interests that might then have been current, and many of the miners had ended up working there not of their own free choice, but after having been shipped away from more 'civilized' places without the price of a ticket back.

"Already seen as a place of exile, somewhere that attracted the different and the strange, Hybrazeal embraced the different and, attracting strange and eccentric talent, soon flourished in an age where bizarre and inspired vision was now more valuable than consistent mediocrity. When augmentation began to show up individuals whose emergent abilities started to seem like a potential threat, they fled to Hybrazeal or were pushed, deported under one excuse or another to a place with less human collateral, where they might perhaps keep one another in check.

"So welcome to our home. Be polite. Or else."

Well, that seems fairly self-explanatory. You look around the atrium, which as its resemblance to a shopping mall suggests, is full of people wandering around and socializing, with lots of stores set off under the various overhangs, and various stairways leading to each of the different levels. The entry floor you're on is more decorative, with green grass and lots of flowing plants in planters and so on, designed to make an impression on visitors and act as a rest space for the locals, with seating about the edges and an amazing view. The next level up is a food court of sorts, and then the rest seems to be a whole range of shops and other gathering places.

It seems reasonable to assume that this is the fair public face of the city, and that the real places, the workshops and dwellings, are out further from the center and deeper behind everything else, quite possibly beyond the orderly shape of the upside-down pyramid and occupying whatever shafts and adits and exploration tunnels may have become handily available. Based on discreet hatches in the corners of the rooms and some stray industrial signage, it seems that somewhere down below, in the inverted apex, there is a waterworks to which the water used by the arcology descends to be purified and pumped back up around the rims to maintain its self-sufficiency.

The moderate not-quite-a-crowd, more like a large number of very distinct individuals, going about their business in the park and food court, and roundabout between all the shops, are the strangest assortment of people you've ever seen, not just compared to Azatlan City but back home as well. The sheer profusion of colours is near-paralyzing, hair and skin and fur alone in a whole range of shades never seen in nature, even disregarding the montage of remixed animalisms and odd extra features that change the very silhouettes of the group to the point where not one is the same as another. The tattoos and pupil modifications and piercings take it to whole new level.

There seems to be lots to do here, and you could probably spend days wandering around meeting all the fascinatingly weird people and visiting all the shops, but the mission objective is clear. You need to find Terrowne Kilroy Ziusuadra and persuade him as quickly as possible to come back with you to Azatlan, before something bad and unspecified happens involving your brother.

What do you do?