This record tracks the descent of the C-9 as reports reach the upper relay. It is the story the player is part of. The archive does not prescribe Marek’s choices, loadout or ending, and gaps are left as gaps.
# How the descent works
The carrier descends one floor at a time. Each floor is a short operation window in which the C-9 fights off waves of machines, salvages what it can and reconnects to the next route marker. After each cleared floor, Marek seals the hull with a field repair kit and chooses one of three field calibrations. On the tenth floor of each sector, a guardian holds the route key to the next.
If the carrier is disabled, the descent lock holds it at the last route marker. The recovery routine restarts the operation from there with full hull, keeping the equipment and supplies saved in the ledger. Asterion calls each restart an attempt. Marek calls it Tuesday.
# The first ten sectors
- Industrial Rift. The first galleries. Marek meets the shaft’s maintenance machines and the Crusher.
- Magma Mines. Heat, basalt and the Stormweaver’s volleys.
- Frozen Reactor. A coolant network turned glacier, sealed by the Warden.
- Toxic Foundry. Self-repairing lines and the Broodmother.
- Magnetic Vault. Loose metal and the Magnetic Sentinel.
- Ash Furnace. Soot, mirages and Inferno.
- Cryo Laboratory. Abandoned test cells and Glacier.
- Power Core. An impossible generating station and the Overlord.
- Void Passage. Out-of-order signals and the Void Phantom.
- Heart of the Rift. The deepest mapped region and the Heart itself.
# Beyond sector 10
Below the Heart, the shaft begins to repeat itself. Sectors 11 to 100 are echoes of the first ten, harder on every pass. The archive does not know what waits below sector 100, or whether “below” still means anything there.
Reports from the C-9 arrive in bursts. The upper relay currently receives roughly one usable packet per cleared floor.
Related articles
ARCHIVE RECORDThe descent mapHow the mapped Rift is divided: phase intervals, floors, sectors, guardians and echoes, from the rim to sector 100.
ARCHIVE RECORDMarek VennSalvage pilot, younger brother of Ilyan Venn, and the only person aboard the C-9 when it went down against orders in 2217.
ARCHIVE RECORDEcho sectorsWhy the hundred mapped sectors repeat ten environments and ten guardian patterns, and why no echo is a perfect copy.
ARCHIVE STORYFloor tenFloor 1-10. The C-9 meets its first guardian, and Marek learns what the scars on the walls were.