Lost Media Library
rating: +13+x

LIMSPACE CLASSIFICATION


Difficulty 3/5 Hospitable for short-term visits, but the Library does not contain sufficient amenities(food, clean water, fresh air) to sustain long-term habitation without extensive preparation. There are dangerous and malicious entities dwelling here, but they do not generally pose a threat unless you are exploring.
Entity Count 3/5 Due to its accessibility there are generally other living beings in the area, the residents librarians are fewer in number but equally omnipresent.
Chaos Gradient 3/5 It is largely static in nature, stuffy and suffocating. In the aggregate it is highly disruptive.
Basset-Frazier Index 3/5 Although not outwardly lonesome or isolated, this place is a dead zone and it is dangerous to grow too fond of spending time there.

DESCRIPTION


Milling

Photo of the office complex most commonly used for entry, in background.

The Lost Media Library is a collection containing all known instances of lost media1. Each copy within the library is a unique final copy procured at the time it became lost.

These contents are organized along a pre-Dewey Decimal system which seems to have been made in-house. A series of master catalog lists are available2, with one volume at a time given on request to browse. The media is sorted by its medium, then into sub-sections depending on the year, month, and day on which it was lost.3

If the request is sufficiently detailed, the librarian will exit through the nearest doorway and disappear, re-appearing through the same place approximately fifteen minutes later with the desired media.

The librarians will allow for anyone to stay indefinitely as long as they are not vandalizing the building. Materials smuggled out of the Library will rapidly degrade into dust, with all Library-related memories becoming ephemeral and dream-like. Recordings and sketches of the interior will be blanked after exiting. Previously lost memories stemming from the Library are not restored upon re-entry.

The layout of the Library itself is sprawling like an octopus with fractal tentacles. The antechamber has corridors leading to separate wings, each dedicated to a medium. Any building in reality with its construction would collapse due to a lack of structural integrity. The walls are stacked to the ceiling with whatever medium the explorer is seeking, filling the walls and shelves lining confined tunnels. Some areas are impassable due to caved-in media.

It is difficult to provide a specific description of the Library due it affecting memories of how the Library looks. Photographs, written notes, mnemonic devices, and any other attempt to bring records of anything in the Library back out of it will be extinguished upon exiting. All attempts at subverting this have failed, occasionally leading to damaging memory and the mental health of the explorer.

Tunneling through the walls does not lead to the other hallways or media selections. It is however possible to tunnel through sufficiently dense caved-in materials in order to proceed deeper inside the Library. The only light fixtures are wall-mounted candlestick holders.

The primary rationale given for visiting the Library is curiosity about its contents, with repeat visitors also citing positive emotional memories or feelings of catharsis they wish to continue revisiting. It appears most patrons of the Library seek out one specific piece of media which they have an emotional connection to, usually stemming from their childhoods.

It has not been completely mapped out yet due to hazardous conditions and long traveling times. Mapping efforts have also been hampered by the fact that working on them is impossible outside the Library, as previously mentioned it is impossible for anything documenting the Library from the inside to leave it.

Access to the Library is generally stable. It is not recommended to stay any longer than a few hours, as though time spent there is forgotten it still passes, creating dead air in the life of the repeat visitor. It will steal your life away if you let it.


NOTES & ADVICE


Library Facilities Notes
Cold Storage Some areas, such as the where film nitrates are stored, have extremely frigid temperatures in order to preserve the film stock. No safety measures present here to avoid trapping people.4 Several of these rooms have also burnt over the years due to the potential for spontaneous combustion inherent to film nitrite. It is unknown if anyone perished in these fires.
Computer Lab Prototypes of many computers which will be familiar to modern and long-time personal computer users, none of which have access to the public internet but instead allow users to browse a collection of defunct and lost web pages. Each computer has a sticker reading "Enjoy cyberspace catalog- available by Christmas!" which, if you ask a librarian about it, they will not talk to you ever again.
Stacks Where the primary book and magazine storage is found. In deeper areas, these stacks can reach up to 40 meters and higher in height. Falling books and toppling piles may cause serious bodily harm or even crush an explorer. It is better to ask a librarian for help than to attempt locating a specific volume on their own. Doldrums are known to be lurking in these spaces.
Packaging Archive Packages for food and other edible substances are stored with complete packaging in their role as media, however the contents are universally inedible and are likely to cause serious illness if consumed. Nothing found here is fit for consumption.5



Objectives Recommended Equipment
Browsing At least one meal's worth of food per day planning to be spent inside, bottled water, filtering masks6 disposable gloves.
Exploring All of the above, plus hard hat, steel-toed boots, head-mounted flashlight, self-defense tool (optional)
Mapping All of the above, plus surveying tools, night-vision goggles, padded joint work-clothing, chalk, compass, self-defense tool(non-optional).



LonCheneyMoviePoster

Lost media referenced by a repeat visitor.

The most important thing to remember coming here is that all the time that's passing, you're learning nothing. In the moment it feels good, because you're getting so much new information that's completely unavailable anywhere else. Go through all of Hitler's last documents, see the works from the Library of Alexandria, watch London After Midnight as many times as you want.

I always bring popcorn. I don't know the movie well but I remember the feeling it gives me. It must be amazing every time. You don't get the memories back when you return, the feeling of finding it for the first time every time is addicting. A novelty that never treads itself bald.

We have to presume that's what's in there at least, because once we're outside it's lost again to us too. Knowing this place adds nothing to your life and takes time. But the mystery is so alluring, stepping into a repository of all things lost to be known only to you for that snippet. Once you've been, going again is never going to stop hanging in the back of your brain; a siren's song for a dead zone.

Don't forget to wear a watch.

Stop killing yourselves for the promise of a glimpse at fleeting immortality.

It’s a place for lotus eaters. It is a roach motel. It’s a trap. Do not be fooled by the promise of ephemeral euphoria.

There’s no avenue for verification of anything we think we know about it. You’re only going to lose yourself instead of finding anything lost.

This whole thing is a bad joke.


COMMUNITIES


Lost Fanatics

Obsessives who take journeys deep into the Library's tunnels, usually due to being on a personal quest for a specific piece of media they can’t remember enough details on to prompt the librarians to retrieve. Often violent when confronted but few in number and are usually weak from hunger and thirst. Their fate is usually either to die of malnutrition, dehydration, accident, or misadventure. If not, and they find a way to survive, they will become one of the Doldrums.

Lost Fanatics are most often repeaters who began visiting the Library more often than time spent outside it, due to being unwilling to lose the memories upon exiting. This sunk-cost fallacy line of thinking leads those with sufficiently driven personalities to ignore the dangers and seek out extremely obscure and ill-remembered volumes on their own.

If possible, try and convince them to leave if encountering one in the corridors. They are less dangerous than they are misguided and usually only need a human conversation to realize what they are missing by obsessing with their self-imposed quest for lost media.


Librarians

Permanent inhabitants, a collection of sexless, androgynous humanoids with pale skin and all of which appear to be in advanced old age. Able to find any requested media within fifteen minutes. Do not require food, water, or sleep. Will not engage in conversation unrelated to material check-out and returns.

Almost nothing is known about their personality or preferences except for the posters and other media unique to the Library, which is possible to remember upon exiting and presumably was an in-house creation. These creations are all unsigned and their appearance in the Library may be coincidental.7

Librarians only answer to the name "Librarian" and they only sometimes breathe when they believe nobody is watching. They're generally dismissive of the Doldrums and Lost Fanatics, and will flee and escape by disappearing from sight if they are confronted with violent action. If any Doldrums attempt inciting violence in or near the antechamber, a Librarian will disarm them by surprising them from behind.

There is a portrait gallery on one of the walls in the Library's antechamber, which depict every Librarian who has ever served. It is not known whether these individuals have passed away, retired, or otherwise disappeared from their position.


Doldrums

Those who are lost in the lower bowels of the Limspace and refuse to leave, whether by virtue of how much time they've already been spending, choosing to live in this isolated dead zone, or other means. Constructing villages and squatting in hovels deep inside of the Library. Often the line between a Lost Fanatic and one of the Doldrums is a willingness to engage in cannibalizing lost explorers or otherwise preying on unarmed innocents who stray too far from the light.

They are pale, lean-muscled with greasy, matted hair and overpowering body odor. If they are wearing clothing, it is made either from rags or paper. The oldest ever seen was estimated to have been in her late thirties, was missing all of her teeth, and lost an eye to an apparent gouge attack. She had no finger or toenails and all her hair had fallen out. Sighted two times, if she has since died a body was never recovered.

Doldrums have a micro pop-culture of their own which is incomprehensible to outsiders, due to their entire media diet consisting of pieces unavailable to the general public and impossible to remember long-term without descending to their level. At least one home-made movie theater constructed by their hands has been discovered.8

It is not known how deep the Doldrums have colonized the interior of the Library, if they are any deeper than has been heard of in rumor than it is probable they have discovered a source of nutrition other than outsider flesh and stolen rations. Their total population is virtually unknowable, but they have an at-best sparse population density in spaces where they are present.


Whatnow

Stranded due to accidental egress


ENTRANCES & EXITS



Entrances

The easiest entrance is from a storage closet located within an office complex found in the downtown of Cleveland, Ohio. There is a depressed 3x3 square of dirty carpet which will transport the stander to the entrance at a rate of one person per fifteen minutes.

The office was formerly occupied by a Dentistry which was friendly to travelers, now it is occupied by a fingerprinting operation which is less friendly, but will accept entry for business.


Exits

There is a marked exit which leads out the back door of empty buildings in the Cleveland area. Occasionally, the librarians will announce “Make way to the egress” over the PA system if they feel too many occupants are inside at once. Following this announcement, most doors will lead to the same empty field in Nebraska with no chance of re-entry. Listen to the PA and exercise caution, especially during Winter months of the northern hemisphere where the field is located.

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