under the street · lift and stair · hold the rail
Arlesglad Caverns
Under the street there is rock nobody dug, and a way down into it that anybody can take. The weather stops at the top of the shaft. The daylight stops too, and the clock is up there with it. What is down here is here because it needs things to stay the same, and down here they do. We are glad of it, which is half the name.
What is down here
- The deeper you go, the steadier it gets. A cave keeps its weather out. At the real Carlsbad Caverns, the National Park Service measures the Big Room at an average of 56°F (13°C), moving a little with the seasons, and the lowest point at a constant 68°F (20°C) with the air close to saturated all year. So everything down here needs something to hold still: a cellar, a crop that grows in the dark, a light that only shows without one, warm water that holds you up, and a room at the bottom that is simply the steady part.
- The only light is the handrail. It runs at hand height along the one route, from the lift to every door, and the rock is lit where the path goes and nowhere else. There is no sky down here and no lamp overhead. Down here the only colour is the light; each room brings its own.
- The lift is the ordinary way down. The stair comes down beside the shaft, and every landing has the same names painted on it as the lift’s panel, so neither one is the other’s alternative. If you came down in the lift, you came the usual way.
- Nobody was sent down here. Underground, here, is a direction and not a place to keep things out of sight. A cellar is under the street because a cellar is always under the street; a mushroom farm is in a cave because that is where mushrooms have always been grown. Down is not the same as hidden.
- Nothing down here moves on its own. The dial still works and each room sets its own noise, but the passage has no ambient layer at any setting. The rail does not flicker, because it is the one thing you are holding.
Down by the lift
One button for every room, top to bottom. A lit button is a door you can go through. An unlit button is a room that is not open yet, and it says so rather than doing nothing when you press it.
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LEVEL B1
Big Steep Fermentables
A brewery and cellar in the cool of the rock: wine, beer and kombucha, and our house styles to try. Every house style comes in a version with no alcohol in it, and every pour says how strong it is before you take it.
open · every pour says how strong it is, and alcohol-free comes first
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LEVEL B2
Mycelium Munchies
A mushroom farm with a restaurant at the end of the growing rooms: all kinds of mushrooms, served all kinds of ways. The house specialities are crispy fried oyster mushrooms, lion’s mane nuggets and mushroom steaks, and everything on the plate was grown here.
open · everything grown here, and every dish says what is in it
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LEVEL B3
Glow Go Gee Gaws
Glow-in-the-dark toys and trinkets, which is light you put in and get back later. Nothing here is for sale: hold a thing up to the rail, take it away, and see what it kept.
not open yet · the button is not lit
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LEVEL B4
Buoyant Bodyminds
Floatation tank rooms. Warm salt water that holds your bodymind up, and the lid and the light are yours to decide.
not open yet · the button is not lit
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LEVEL B5
Stay Frosty
The bottom of the caverns, and the one place down here where the temperature never moves: 68°F (20°C), all year, which is what the Park Service measures at Carlsbad’s lowest point. A quiet place to chill, literally. Chill as in calm, not cold.
open · nothing to press, nothing moves, nothing makes a sound
Where the name comes from
Arlesglad is a play on Carlsbad Caverns, with a glad spin, and with ARLES in the middle of it: the Stimpunks Design Method, whose ladder starts at the bottom, where a person actually is, and works outward to the room and the systems around it. This is the one place on the street you reach by going down, and that is why the name fits. The caverns are not a diagram of the method, though, and no room down here is a rung on it.
Carlsbad Caverns is a real place, a national park in New Mexico looked after by the National Park Service. This is not it. We borrowed a pun and two of the Park Service’s measurements, and say where they came from. The park is not affiliated with Stimpunks and does not endorse us.
Job marker — a length of handrail on the cavern floor
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: Under the street
Before the code: Arlesglad Caverns has one light, and it is very particular about where that light is built. What is it built into?
Hint 1
It is in the second item of the list called What is down here.
Hint 2
It is not a lamp and it is not the sky. There is neither down there.
Last hint
You are holding it.
Give me the answer
The answer is The handrail. The handrail. The strip runs at hand height along the one route, from the lift to every door, so the rock is lit where the path goes and nowhere else. There is no sky down there and no lamp overhead, which is why the only colour in the passage is the light and every room off it brings its own.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: FLOWSTONE
That is the one.
The handrail. The strip runs at hand height along the one route, from the lift to every door, so the rock is lit where the path goes and nowhere else. There is no sky down there and no lamp overhead, which is why the only colour in the passage is the light and every room off it brings its own.
Quest code: FLOWSTONE