Foreword: All ASF personnel assigned to RPC-830 were equipped with microphones and cameras in their helmets. Though not strictly possible, audio recordings from within RPC-830 were still transmitted during exploration, allowing for these logs to be constructed.
As RPC-830 technically has an upstairs portion, the floors are listed in negative. Portions not exclusively described as being rooms assumedly had stairs nonetheless, although no recording was made of how they were traversed.
Floor 1: Entry point. The door closed behind me as I entered- though, I was told to keep recording despite this. The room is, well, concrete, with a scratched out emerald slab on the wall above the doorway. I'll try to keep these as clinical as possible, in case they're found. The stairs went both down and up, though upstairs had a blindingly bright glow coming from it. It was taunting me, as if to say: "You wouldn't dare." It was right, though I was ordered to go down nonetheless.
Floor -1: Blank concrete cube, besides pedestal containing another emerald tablet. I'm going to remove the stair portions, as they are all uniform.
Floor -2: After descending the stairs, the level opens up anomalously to reveal a cold desert, somewhat typical of the Antarctic landscape. Notably, one may still see the upper floors from the desert, alongside stairs to continue downward. The desert is lined with symmetrical rows of hexagonal salt-laden stones, interrupted by a mountain range several kilometers away. The stairs are unsupported, held up by anomalous means. Though abnormal, this level is otherwise mundane.
Floor -3: Normally proportioned level, with architecture atypical of the rest of the structure. The room resembles that of a Catholic church bell-tower, notably with a bell in the center of the room. The staircase revolves around it, though the bell is notably cracked down the middle. Inscriptions are visible on both sides of the bell, written in latin. Translated, it reads: "That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended."
Fig 3.0: View from Floor -4.
Floor -4: Notably, the stairs to this floor are much shorter than previously encountered. This level is proportioned the same to its exterior, with windows present. From the windows, one may view the numerous structures dotting the underground landscape of the city. The windows are structured from stained glass, and the room is outfitted with a woolen rug. The most comfortable room as far.
I took a picture, with my headset camera.
Floor -5: Architecture similar to Late Antique, with marble columns supporting the structure. A statue sits in the center, which seems to anomalously follow you with its head. The columns, despite being marble, are dark in coloration. Statue is made from the same marble, but the eyes are made from organic material. It resembled an ancient Roman senator, though its left arm was replaced with a limb similar to a crustacean's leg. It clutched another emerald tablet to its chest, the words illegible.
Floor -6: Same as Floor -4. I found a man sitting on the rug, wearing a duster and waistcoat. The amount of notches on his pistol were enough to spell 'psychopath' in braille. He offered me the gun, and grimaced. His tongue was missing, and his face bore signs of some recent fight. I didn't want to know what caused it, so I left with the pistol. I figured he meant for me to fight something with it.
Floor -7: Going down the stairs revealed another bigger on the inside room, this time a large open prairie. I believe this is where the gunslinger came from, as there was a dead octopus-like creature laying on the stairs. It was furry, though with tentacles. Grass grew on the stairs, an abnormality from the other open-area room.
Floor -8: Another gothic-styled room, without any kind of light source. It appeared much bigger than the exterior, with layout similar to a kind of long hallway. An ornately decorated door sat at the end, with bullet holes in its granite surface. The walls were supported by a number of pillars, resembling those of Roman architecture. When I looked closer, I saw they were made of bones, sinew, and mechanical components. The machine parts were black in color, though gave off a faint blueish light, the only light in the room.
Floor -9: This room was barren, simply a concrete cylinder with a table in the middle. The table, also a simple concrete cylinder, held a black orb structure atop it. The top of the cylindrical table was decorated in a mosaic of a sun, notably similar to those found on medieval shields and emblems. The orb was dripping, though the substance was absorbed by the mosaic.
Floor -10: An infinite ladder, offset by a ashen fog. The ground was hexagonal stones again, the ladder looking to be made of wood. I didn't try the ladder.
Floor -11: The level is almost normally proportioned, cubical in shape. Walls are decorated in generally blue-gray mosaics, depicting scenes of an unknown figure fighting a large crowd of seeming humans. The figure is mostly silhouette, though depicted with a crimson red cape. I heard whispering when I looked at the silhouette, so I didn't record the remaining mosaics; as to avoid possible memetic properties.
Floor -12: Tentacles, similar to an artist's interpretation rather than a normal cephalopod. The floor was made of tightly knit grass-like plant matter, and the tentacles were all approximately a meter in length. They attempted to touch me as I walked past, doing nothing more than brushing against my coat. It scared me nonetheless.
Floor -13: This floor opens up to the city, with six arches holding up the tower's structure. It opens to an unfrozen courtyard, made from an unknown rock material. Strangely, I heard music typical of a commercial ice-cream truck from beyond the nearby glacial walls. Buildings were coated in frost, some encased almost entirely in the ice walls. The music began approaching, and I went further down without looking too much at the buildings.
Floor -14: Another one of those gothic-styled rooms with windows. The windows are almost entirely encased in blue ice, and the carpet was laden with dirt and snow. One of the windows held a stained glass picture of a woman, with fire coming from one of her hands. Her face was covered in actual soot, though the picture also looked like it'd been made black there.
Floor -15: The level is anomalously big, with hardwood panelling on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Filled with black marble bookshelves, laden with more emerald tablets. All of them are written in some form of ancient Akkadian, and touching one resulted in an ominous 'thud' sound.
I'm liking this less and less.
Floor -16: As I walked down to this level the room began to shift, like a snake changing its skin. I didn't have time to see what it had been, its walls expanding and morphing to more ornately decorated black marble. The room expanded more notably in one direction than the other, forming a hall. At the end, a spider had been sculpted from the black marble, its eyes emanating a red glow. Most of the hall was lit from an unseen source, dimly enough that the red glow reflected off the marble floor. As I walked away from the stairs, the spider seemed to move. I didn't stay to see if it was real or not.
Floor -17: Contrarily to most previous levels, this one was anomalously small. Only big enough for the stairs and a small pedestal in the center, everything in the room was made from shimmering green emerald. A bronze chalice sat on the pedestal, filled almost to the brim with a pale blue substance. When I approached, an old woman's scream came from the chalice, shaking the liquid.
Floor -18: This level is constructed from basalt, the walls seeming to spin in a circle when I look.
Floor -19: A ballroom, resembling Victorian-era architecture. Most of it was a gross green-yellow tinge, with people in theater masks dancing in the center of the room. The people had strings attached to their limbs, dangling from tracks placed on the ceiling. As they moved, their movement followed the tracks. A woman approached me, I think trying to get me to dance. I ran before she could.
Floor -20: Anomalously small, again. This room is built in strange resemblance to the enlarged inside of a tin can, with grooves and the like. Stairs get progressively smaller as they go down, to compensate.
Floor -21: I think I'm getting close to another open part. This floor was another one of those window ones, but it changed just as I entered again. There looked like marble tendrils behind the walls as they formed, seeming to flee from me. The room's windows, after forming, were again blocked by blue ice.
Floor -22: Upon entering this room, I could see a mountain range in the distance. Despite this, the surroundings show resemblance to the Sahara desert. Entities moved in the distance, humanoid but much taller than humans. Another group passed by me, dressed in a strange mixture of Arabic and Spanish conquistador clothing. One of the smaller ones, I'm assuming a child, took a look at me. The rest passed.
Floor -23: This next room makes no sense. I won't even try to describe the physical proportions, as they changed at random intervals. The walls looked to be stained glass, though moving and deforming like liquid. I could see the sun at some points, though I have to be too deep by now. The stairs threatened to move away with the walls, so I left quickly.
Floor -24: I'm starting to enjoy this. In a malformed, stockholm way. I never consciously thought about it- tried not to think about anything that went on in this tower, but I've started to realize it nonetheless. This room was simply white, the only disruptions being the stairs up or down.
I've started going back up now. The feelings will only get worse.
Floor -23: …scratch that, scratch it all out. The rooms change once you go back in them. Floor -23 is now another windowed room, with blood in the carpet. I hear growling from above. I want to get out, but I also don't.
Floor -22: It's the spider room. The same black hallway, the same eight abhorrent eyes in the abyss. I believe the growling is coming from the spider, though it seems to be coming from everywhere in the hall. I acted irrationally, I shot the marble spider. The growling stopped, the only noise the reverb from the gunshot. I went back down, on instinct.
Floor -23: The windowed room, still unchanged since I saw it last.
Floor -24: Still formless white. Thank God.
Floor -25: The room is a concrete cube, with a brass door. When I opened it, it opened to a balcony, carved ornately from granite. Below me sat the city, of which I took a picture earlier, walkways connecting to the tower like roots to a tree. Buildings huddled around the streets, of many different makes and ages since past. I saw movement far below, though it seemed more mechanical than organic in a way. The city seemed miles below, as impossible as that would be. A name had been carved into the balcony's granite railing, alongside an arrow pointing to a specific building. The building's lights were on, though it looked like a cathedral. Glacial ice sat far beyond, like city walls.
Floor -26: This level resembles a hospital, from maybe the 1700s. Wooden structure, cloth curtains separating little cubicles with beds in them. People lay in these beds, though their faces were covered in darkly purple bandages. At the far end of the hall, a man in purple played a flute, wearing a traditional medieval piper's outfit. He stared into my eyes as he did so, his pupils a bright red; though there was no malice in his face. I stayed a while, listening to him play.
Floor -27: I think it's been at least a day since I started going down. I stayed on this floor for many hours, though I honestly never kept track. This one is that of a cavern, of normal stone rather than ice. The cavern is flat on the bottom, and it is filled with people: human, people. They go about their lives as if they were real, but I know they're not. There's market stalls lining the cavern, selling things such as linen and spices. I traded a flashlight for a basket of fruit, though the shopkeeper spoke no English. I didn't know what they spoke, though everyone kept looking at a certain part of the cave.
When I looked for what the focus was, there was only a badly drawn eye painted in red on the cave wall. It seemed to follow me as I walked. That seems to be the only constant of this place: eyes. Offerings had been put at the base of the wall, mostly things like crops and candles. I didn't know where they got food from, there wasn't an exit. I stayed to eat my fruit.
Floor -28: I'm going to start capitalizing the Tower. It seems like an entire world sits in here, multiple worlds even. It'd be disrespectful, honestly, to not capitalize the name. This floor is similar to the last, though only in that it has people in it. It's laid out like a mosque, though strangely without any Muslim significance. The room is vast, with other offshoots as typical of an entire mosque building. The people were not truly human, their heads were those of assorted different animals. They all wore turbans, despite their differences in head shape. None spoke English, but I thought the language was somewhat similar to Arabic. There were drawings, in some corners of worship, of the Tower.
Floor -29: An open prairie, with buildings in the distance. Big buildings, skyscrapers even. I started to make for them, but saw there was a canyon in the way. The canyon was bigger than even the Grand Canyon, and the bottom held nothing but black. The skyscrapers sat beyond the horizon, taunting me in their omnipresent reminder of normal civilization.
I wonder if there's other people like me, and that gunslinger from upstairs. People who travel the Tower, looking for either a way out or the worlds within. I wonder if there's a set of stairs emerging from a random spot in the desert, in our own world. Our own level of the Tower. Or maybe this is our level, the whole thing, as if our world was somehow significant. I don't really know, and it never told me. I feel like it could, though, if it only had the means.
Floor -29: This level is a courtroom, completely identical to one in Washington D.C. I don't know how I knew that, but I knew it to be true nonetheless. The stands were empty, only the judge's chair held a person. As I approached, they began to turn darker, until their skin was completely shadowed in darkness. It appeared to be a woman, though she only had one eye. When the eye opened, I fled in fear.
Floor -30: Eyes, always the eyes; nothing but eyes in this place. All of the rooms have eyes, I see that now. The Tower beckons now, like a mother to her lost boy. I don't know if I truly want to come home.
Floor -31: Windowed area. I see blue light below.
Floor -32: The Tower's walls open to columned doorways again, though there is no courtyard to greet me. A vast expanse of ice stretches out in all directions, the floor though flat looking incredibly thin, almost transparent. As I stepped outside, the ice seemed to release the Tower from its embrace, crumbling down to the level below. On instinct, I jumped away, and the ice collapsed further and further from the Tower's marble halls. I looked back only to realize it had trapped me outside, in the cold.
I took a picture, of the outside. I long for its intrinsic beauty now, like a lost lover I may never embrace. Perhaps we finally found something truly good in our search for demons. I sent this transcript an hour ago, in the hopes it'll find its way through the ice somehow. If I'm going to die in here, I want to die looking at the beautiful Tower. I can almost see its base, though there's more stairs at the bottom nonetheless, always more. The stairs stretch down endlessly, the Tower going onwards.
It looks like a pyramid almost, with the Tower blooming atop its marble precipice. The Tower which held entire societies in its walls, yet stretched up and down endlessly in its embrace of the multiverse. Our world may be significant, I think, in that we have the outside of the Tower to greet us. We might even have been the top, had I the gall to go up. But we are just another one of the thousand levels to it.
One of a thousand lost worlds of the Tower.
