Building of Elementals & Elemental Forensics
"If I ever find out who named our building, we're going to have a long conversation about acronyms."
Purpose / Function
The original purpose of this building was to be the morgue of Treford. However, with police headquarters far enough away that too much time was spent by officers and detectives driving to and from the sites, the city implemented a plan to keep the morgue and expand the building for the forensics teams.
Eventually, the building's purpose changed again. It was enlarged a second time, with both previous buildings being added to, and then another two floors were added to the forensics building so that elementals could work with their partners there.
Currently the place is called the Building of Elementals and Elemental Forensics, and the "morgue" part has been deliberately left out so the area can remain safe.
Design
The design of the rooms depends if a person is going into a bereaved meeting room (square), either the positive/negative temperature rooms (rectangular), an office (rectangular with a semi-circle at the end), or a storage area (square).
Entries
The only places that have windows are the offices. The bereavement rooms are kept private due to grief, and the morgue doesn't allow windows since "too many dead will be up and walking again if a necromancer has sight-access."
For this reason, there is a line of salt across the entire property (set during construction), buried a few inches under the soil. This doesn't hurt any of the elementals that live/work in this building, but it prevents a necromancer from completing the magical link they need to bring the undead back to life. [Salt still prevents *most* magic uses from being able to use their abilities, however, it is not a 100% effective method for prevention.]
Doors and windows can be locked, they are made of reinforced materials, but there are no bars over the windows here.
Sensory & Appearance
The first thing people notice when they enter the building is that it's cold (and this is outside the morgue areas). The temperature of the building is kept to about 78F (25.5C). Supposedly this is the best temperature to keep the whole building at so there's not too much of a difference when going into and out of the morgue areas, but the fire elementals and those paired with ice or water elementals are not happy about how cold the temperature is for them.
Lighting in the main parts (corridors, walkways, etc.) are steady and bright. For private rooms the lights have more than an on/off switch and have a range they can be dimmed to. The morgue itself has two different types of lights installed in the ceilings: lights that the average being can see by, and ultraviolet light (the UV light makes bloodstains glow when sprayed with a chemical additive or when used in conjunction with a fluoresce spell. In the case of elemental pairings, the elementals might be able to sense that there is hidden/unseen blood in different ways, but their partner will then need to figure out how to find it.).
The smells of the main area (where many of the bereaved stay to talk after they've identified the body) is floral, with the scents cycling between rose, lavender, citrus, plum blossoms, and other such fragrances. Those smells stop at the doors to all other areas (due to a combination odor eliminator and spell preventing the smells from mixing).
Contents & Furnishings
Contents and furnishings will depend mainly on the room, and when it comes to the offices, it will depend on who is using the office and what type of elemental is their partner. Fire elemental partners tend to have items that are fire-resistant (or fire-proof when possible), along with multiple AC units and much less paper. Water elemental partners have water-proof and resistant items, but also tend to have a lot of towels on hand (and again less paperwork), etc.
The bereavement areas have soft, cushiony chairs with desks that only take up a small space (that way they're not see as "just" information). Morgue sections have long, rectangular spaces for bodies to be stored, along with work areas. Many of them will voice information and then go into a smaller, personalized office to enter the information into a computer.
Hazards & Traps
As always when working with dead bodies, there are hazards dealing with chemical exposure (formalin, solvents, etc.) and biological exposure (virus, bacteria, etc.) in addition to the "normal" occupational hazards of eye strain, muscle strain, trips, falls, etc. There are also magical hazards (both inside and outside) that need to be dealt with out-of-control elementals, necromancers, etc.
Special Properties
Most of the special properties in the building are related to elementals. There are spells and technologies designed to immediately go off during a flare up (the common term used when an elemental loses control of their element). Each one is specifically keyed to the type of problem that might occur (the fire department is notified every time a fire elemental flares up, for instance). There are also items in the storage rooms that are specifically to help during fire, flooding, blackouts, etc.
Alterations
The first alteration was when the building's purpose was added to, the forensics team being placed next to the morgue. The morgue itself was a square building, with one side (the right) having a positive temperature atmosphere (bodies are kept between 36F and 39F (2C and 4C) so that the body can be kept for up to several weeks, but decomposition still continues (even at a slower rate than room temperature). The other side (the left) has a negative temperature atmosphere (bodies are kept between 14F and -58F (-10C and -50C) so that the body can be identified and/or studied for clues. Decomposition is reduced more than in the positive temperature atmosphere, but "life finds a way" and while reduced, cannot be prevented.
On the side of the square morgue was added a long, oval-shaped three-story tall building that served as a place where forensic science could be practiced. These were the offices for forensic scientists, some areas for storage, and the first floor was made into place were the bereaved could come in to ask questions or give answers (depending on the situation). It was deemed to be more comforting to a person than delivering the information at a police station, or at the hospital.
The second alternation was when the building needed to house elementals too. During this time period, the way that elementals were talked to, treated, and worked with changed, and several forensic scientists found that they had new partners with particular concerns that needed to be taken care of; the floors were made as fire-resistant, water-resistant, electric-resistant, etc. as possible (for this reason, the cafeteria was made of a particular stone). In addition, the offices had their space doubled (which cut down on the amount of scientists who could work there), and eventually the jobs in the building only went to forensic scientists who were partnered with elementals, or those who were stars in the field. The alteration was added onto the oval-shaped part, making it a double-oval.
Architecture
The original building was mostly made of "normal" construction materials, with tiling on the floor and up half of the wall sides to make clean up easy and effective. When elementals were added to the building, a brand new type of building material was added, a rock-like substance that is flame-resistant, water-resistant, electric-resistant, and which can also be cleaned as well. This substance was about twenty years in the making, and the company who made it was one of the first to see the need for elemental-friendly building elements.
The offices where families of the deceased are met have very soft and neutral colors (pastels for the most part) while the positive and negative temperature areas (where the bodies are kept) are done in the color of the elemental-friendly building material that was just made (which, incidentally, is a charcoal black). This ends halfway up the walls with a white, easy to scrub title that takes over when the stone isn't seen as being needed so much. With all the black stone work being used in the building, with some exception to the parts available to the public (only the floor there is made with this material). As elementals don't use toilets, and beings do, the company made the toilets places with more color than black and white. Each floor's toilet area is gender neutral/unisex and painted in hues of one color (all the shades of green, orange, blue, etc.).
The outside of the building is a non-descript tan marking it as a governmental building, and the walls are not a smooth tan, but the "jagged" tan of stucco with a lace trowel texture. The parking lot is large enough to hold about fifty cars, but there is also a bus stop nearby that many of the non-elementally paired employees use.
History
This building keeps out of the public view, and to be honest, not much has happened here. The most important "events" that have happened are more "which famous dead people" have been in this morgue or "what weird and creepy serial killer things" has this building seen.
Tourism
The "tourism" of the Building of Elemental and Elemental Forensics tends to be of the academic sort. There are forensic scientists who tour the building (all places), schools that bring their students (several places are off limits for those tours), and there are people conducting research on elementals that come to "harass" (aka ask questions) of paired personnel. [Tours are conducted on Tuesdays and Thursdays only, between the hours of 2pm-5pm].
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