Morlock in BREACH | World Anvil

Morlock

I voted for 'Mario World', but not even BREACH has the legal budget for that.
— Anonymous BREACH agent
Morlock is a bleak and seemingly unbounded industrial subcity, a maze of pipes from nowhere to nowhere, filled with liquids and gasses of every description except 'pleasant'. Explorations along the rusting gangplans and corroded walkways crumbing stairs have found nothing to indicate a passage out, nor a hint as to what sort of world might be out there. It might not even be a world; some speculate this is part of a spacecraft or orbital station, though the materials and methods of the construction indicate otherwise. Others believe it to be a pocket universe, like the Hedgemaze, immense but bounded, somehow.

Exploration has been severely hampered by the source of the world's name. When the first-in team began to cautiously experiment with the environment, such as seeing if an unmarked valve would even turn, or scraping a rusting pipe to determine its composition, loud banging sounds echoed through the maze, and within minutes, a horde of humanoids descended on them bearing primitive weapons, clearly scavenged from the environment. No attempt to communicate was made, and despite a general reluctance to turn first contact into slaughter, the team had no choice but to resist with deadly force as they made their way back to the breach point.

Subsequent efforts have been no more successful. Each intrusion is now detected quickly, within an hour at most, and no effort to show good intent or open any dialog has had a positive result. Leaving food or trade goods, entering clearly unarmed, and so forth has not had any impact on behavior; neither has the opposite factor, that the so-called "Morlocks" are bringing clubs and metal spears to a gunfight.

Analysis on a corpse, prior to it destabilizing, shows a distant human ancestry, combined with either extreme mutation or advanced genetic engineering. The dominant theory, because it fits most people's assumptions, is that these were bred or created as guardians and maintenance (observation by remote shows them making what look like repairs, though if so, they are far behind schedule; some think they may be enacting rituals handed down, without actually doing any good), and conditioned or taught to consider all not like them as 'the enemy', implying some ongoing war is, or was, happening somewhere. For now, leaving the 'pipe world' is not possible for BREACH, and the frequency is locked until further study is possible.

World Type
Alternate History?
Divergence
Unknown
Current Year
Unknown
TL
5?

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