Entombed in a vast megastructure, countless civilizations live through their long ages.

Though they have attempted every method, the walls and ceiling of the structure remain unbreached. The path outside has never been found.

And in the structure’s overgrown far reaches, many nomads wander, living off the remnants of battles fought among the many warring states and corporations…

Beneath this soldier you find a military operations journal. It spans numerous entries, going back many cycles.

It begins by listing provisions for several hundred soldiers and marching orders for a tremendously long-distance mission, and continues by exhaustively describing the travel up through two separate megastructure stratas.

It often remarks on the struggle soldiers are having with controlling their movement, as a result of the lower gravity in the upper stratas. Their bodies unused to the lack of gravitational friction.

But it also makes note of increased effectiveness of hitherto less used tactics, such as the unexpected advantage their large bodies gained in melee combat.

Unfortunately, the journal cuts off abruptly right in the middle of a supply inventory count, before it can imply anything more of the soldier’s mission.

A collection of old magazines and newspapers. Likely used to pass time by the mercenaries, and stashed away here to hide them from their superiors.

All of the papers are many cycles old. The newest issue you can find frontlines a retrospective on the anniversary of CSMG gaining majority control in the running of this strata.

The article tells how many people of the strata, as well as most of CSMG’s workforce and leadership, suffer from extremely high UV-light sensitive bodies. The same ceiling lights that warm the flesh of other species, torch the bodies of those born here.

CSMG gained control of the strata on popular support, after they promised to dim the strata’s ceiling lights as their most important policy. As a result, this layer is unique in that it holds permanent midtone conditions.

Diary of Arisa Reid, junior CSMG drill specialist, entry for cycle 12 of Triste 713…

"It’s common knowledge in the field that CSMG build their vast architectural projects over the stratiform ruins of the old states and kingdoms. This isn’t the first drill site like this I’ve been to…

And yet, I was still unprepared for the real thing. Me and the other crew keep uncovering plates and markings, mentions of a cities and countries we no longer have record of…

And I have to wonder, deeper down below, who knows what else they’ve found?"

Unmistakably marked by their distinctive pictographic script, these ruins must belong to the Viilomeer people.

The most famous story we know of them says that, long age, they tried to build a tower to reach the very ceiling of the world.

They failed, of course. And now their greatest relic lies buried underground, as deep beneath layers of sediment as one can reach.

A contained ledge, written o na traditional rolled paper. It details a pact made between a disaffected splinter faction of Rhea Secretorum and military officers of Central Sirenean Mining Group.

Rhea Secretorum is to give military support, and act as a helping hand in mining state’s plan to bomb the area and hide its truth. In exchange, they would be afforded provisions, as well as either citizenship or safe passage back to the lower stratas.

One line in particular jumps out to you…

"No heavenly fields awaited us beyond the structure and no God to fill our empty stomachs."

Opening last sent message…

"The generally held belief is that there is no such thing as a completely closed structure, a completely isolated system.

This would violate the laws of thermodynamics that we understand, not to mention create a simple energy supply problem, in the case of a megastructure as massive as the one we find ourselves trapped in.

Therefore, even if the megastructure’s supposed outer walls have always been far too difficult to drill or bomb through…

(and you especially, minister, should know the exuberant costs that drilling even the smallest amount have incurred in the past)

The hope of finding a maintenance tunnel or a ventilation shafthas at least always been present.

And it is exactly one of these passages that we believe we have now found."

~ Message from Heaed Researcher Lusien Arvegen to Holden Istve, CSMG Minister of Finance

And to answer your other question minister (off the record, of course), the UV-light diffusion we have measured in the outer structure has been at far below standard levels, where it can even be measured at all.

I’m tremendously happy to report such a space would indeed solve our most major concern.

The gears that have not been used in eons grind in violent resistance against your demand for movement.

Before you, millions of miles of concrete and steel stretch out, dwarfing a great crimson sphere. You Watch as endless tides of hard matter unfold, on solid, stacked surface after another.

And as the slow descent of the elevator continues, you begin to glimpse for the first time the true vastness of your escape.

Many hours later, the elevator descends to its lowest point, at last coming to a halt above raging oceans of liquid coolant, the industrial towers holding up the ceiling like mythological giants of ancient tales.

Finally preparing to leave the elevator, and facing an ever stranger landscape, you nonetheless find the familiar step of your nomadic wandering returning: the promise engraved in every mile traveled that the seeking itself is the answer.

Megastructure designation: h5-articentric-7r16
Structure type: Counterweight world

Description: A counterweight world is a type of physically smaller, although much heavier megastructure built within a far larger one.

Counterweight worlds were created with the purpose of gravitationally binding orbits of planets and other celestial bodies that would find themselves in the way of the outer structure’s expansion.

Having been created before most of the nearby outer structure, they would restrain and prevent the intruding celestial body from striking its walls or ceiling, thus ensuring the structure’s future stability.

They were most often built in the very earliest ages of construction, especially in what we now regard as the former inner Solar System.

Additionally, like with many other utilitarian yet crucial complexes, a large maintenance team would remain inside these structures.

The species they were known to seed often had their origins tracing back to well-patterned gene pools. Their biological parameters usually chosen to best assist in specific tasks of the structure’s future preservation.

However, with the megastructure’s expansion past the Kuiper belt, and with maintenance teams having left the structures, contact with many of these counterweight worlds has been lost.

As such, it is very difficult for us to verify their present stability.

Log end…

You are a guardsman, one of many, standing poised in a dark corner of a large concrete hall. The industrial lamps of the room cast their hard shadows on the group in its middle, the corporate leaders of Central Sirenean Mining Group. You remember they’ve been arguing for hours.

Vech Kajen, Minister of Operations
“You are mad! Blow it up?! The greatest discovery of our age?!”

Eryn Lirre, Minister of Infrastructure
“Consider it. If people start leaving the inter-structure, so much of what we have created here will cease in its relevance. Our assets value will plummet, and our concern will struggle for mere survival. It is the sensible course to take. We have been granted this opportunity to see ahead of the pack, and we should take whatever actions are necessary to keep it that way.”

Holden Istve, Minister of Finance
“Could we really do that? And what of our condition?”

Eryn Lirre, Minister of Infrastructure
“Don’t be coy, we can deal with that perfectly well here. We have seen nothing. We know nothing. All that we have ascertained is one of our dams wasn’t built to hold and broke under the pressure. The engineers responsible have already been dealt wit-”

There is more arguing, more shapes moving angrily in the half-illuminated halls, but you are beginning to have a harder time differentiating between them.