2026-09-09 Subdimensional Expedition VDE-RKFO

A Basement With History

Participants: Rowen

Storyteller: Molly

Location: Subdimensional historic downtown

Date and Time: September 9, 2026

Summary: A brief excursion into the local subdimension

VDE-RKFO-02.08.25 RECORDING


Exploring the local Umbra was always a bit fraught.

There had been enough reports of weirdness for Rowen to confirm a likeliness of EDE activity. As a result, she arranged for a team to set up shop as if fumigating the building; giving her cover to construct the necessary gate. It took time, but by the time she was done, it thrummed to life and she stepped through, wearing the trusty Alanson.

The visor was transparent, letting her face be seen as she moved slowly through the old building. There were *always* changes compared to the mortal world, and those provided hints; so she streamed the video of the building taken before onto the visor, comparing it as she walked, chattered into the comms for the record.

"... so far, quiet. Usually see these things as just a bug hunt, but always the chance of something bigger, so here's hoping we have a quiet run ..."


*tk* *tkkkksch* "Explorer, Fern here. Getting your recording on my end. You reading me?" After stepping through, there's not much of a difference. Same old building. Same worn floor, walls, ceiling. Glowing amber wisps drifting near empty bulb sockets hanging from the ceiling. The garbage bag that was in the corner is missing. The folding chair against one wall is new. Outside, it looks like rain, but there's no sound, no moisture. Ambient dusk light outside with no obvious source.


"Hear you fine, Scientist" Rowen responds, adjusting the earpiece slightly "Keep the line open, let me know if you see anything" She chatters away, musing.

Amber wisps. Hmm. She pokes around the empty light sockets, examining the glowing wisps - not really expecting many responses. There's often minor EDE activity, and she's after some bigger affair.

"Heading on up" She says, the servos of the suit whining silently as she makes her way up the stairs, continuing the slow exploration


The wisps don't respond, any poking just passes right through them. Ghosts of dead bulbs? Who knows. The second floor is much like the first: empty halls, identical wooden doors opening into empty rooms with empty windows with no glass. Everything is old and worn and should be dusty, but there's no dust. In the Real World, the building has three floors and a flat roof, once rented out as office space to small businesses that go bankrupt within a month. It looks like it's the same basic floor plan here.


"Well, no footprints" Rowen sighs to herself, before she flicks the comms, calling out to the place proper "Hello? This is Explorer Fujuta-Owens. Please show yourself." Not that there's an expectation that there'll BE anything, as she continues to climb - checking the third floor, then the roof if she finds nothing. She continues to scan, compare, looking for oddities - or responses to her announcements.


The Biospheric Umbral version of the building is as empty and desolate as the real-world version, aside from the weird little alien quirks one finds in the subdimensions. On the roof, there's a decent view of this version of Los Angeles - the non-rain has stopped and there are no puddles or any indication it was ever present. The sky is overcast with a faint electric blue glow, and on the horizon - in every direction - an orange sunset/sunrise glow. Shadowy skyscrapers can be seen in the distance, and a hot white pillar of pure data stabbing into the sky that can only be One Wilshire. There are hints and shadows of movement, probably some flavor of EDE, but the area is completely deserted compared to the real LA.


"Seems to be a dud" Rowen responds on the comms. She takes a moment to look around, and then sighs, activating a slow scan. Aware EDEs can often hide, there are flickers of discrepancy between visible bands, and so she looks about for them trying to pin them down as she checks each floor, descending. "I'll let you know what I find."


*tk* "Copy that, Explorer. We've still got good signal on this end. Correlating your mapping data into real-world locations. Give a yell if you need directions." *tk* What Fern seems to have left unspoken is 'what did you expect? there's nothing here in LA either.' And the scan more or less confirms it. The building is as dead as anything. Once, a miniscule data spider scurried up the phone line attached to the corner of the building, and finding nothing of interest, scurried off again just as quickly. The scan extends beyond the building and there are some indications of "life", such that it is, but the neighborhood is pretty barren. A church down the street seems to have some activity, but churches attract a level of weirdness that may not be the kind of activity you're looking for.


Rowen shakes her head, making her way down to the ground level. She pokes around for a basement, descending if she can, chattering to Fern as she goes "I'll keep you updated. Keep an eye on my biometrics; this is just so physically demanding" Fern can practically hear the eyeroll


Basements, like churches, tend to be a bit fraught. Could be nothing, could be the worst possible thing. This one is wall-to-wall filing cabinets, with more filing cabinets stacked floor to ceiling in the middle, creating a claustrophobic little maze. All the drawers have a faded white sticker printed with things like "A-F", "0-10", "Aarn-Mant" and other labels completely bizarre and random. The ones that make any sort of sense are in no particular order. There are at least 3 different drawers marked "green-32". When you pause for a moment so that the suit's servos are silent, your sensors pick up an extremely quiet, intermittent sound. Magnifying, it sounds like someone sighing. Around a minute or two later, the sighing sound repeats.


"Hello there" Rowen listens to the sighing. Echoes, repetitive sounds, are things that peak her interest, make her think and look again. She focuses on triangulating the noise, homing in on it.

She had amused herself looking for any sort of files that interest. Knowing it was all recorded made her just flash each to the screen, just in case.

But, sighing. She hunts it, she speaks out. "Are you alright? Do you need anything?" Because Hearts and Minds work even when those concerned have neither


The basement isn't large; it seems to have the same dimensions as the upper floors but with no walls (aside from the stacked filing cabinets) to section off rooms. The sighing seems to occur at random intervals between one and three minutes. It comes from a different direction each time, and always from the other side of a wall of cabinets, never within line of sight. As you move through the maze, checking files, trying to track the sighs, you find yourself start to feel bored. But a special type of boredom; the kind when you're on a deep space mission and there's literally nothing to do but tediously confirm, again, for the fifth time today, that yes, this piece of equipment is *still* in perfect condition. And then you notice a filing cabinet marked "Need-Want".


Boredom is a killer. Specifically, of self-preservation. Rowen is pretty damn sure she can simply plow through the filing cabinets on the way back, so she's less concerned - and she has a more cavalier attitude than most to danger anyway. So, she hunts down and checks over that file cabinet for signs of activity or energies, before opening it and rifling.


You do a quick scan of the filing cabinet marked "Need-Want" and there's definitely something going on here. It's almost like whatever is inside is reflecting your scan; you're picking up echoes of your scanner's emissions. But if it was truly being reflected, it would appear to be twice as far away and there's definitely something going on in the cabinet. When you open it and start rifling through, there's the usual old manila envelopes but these have names printed on the top where other drawers just seemed to have random words. "Edwards-Jackson, Harold", "Franklin, Arnold William", "Fujita-Owens, Rowen Kozue", "Garrison, Tiffany", etc.


Edwards-Jackson, Harold, Franklin, Arnold William, Fujita-Owens, Ro - wait. What? What? Rowen blinks, ceasing her rifling before she carefully extracts the file "You seeing this, Fern?" She asks, somewhere between guarded and amused "I mean, bait and all, but something I am -definitely- falling for ..." She chuckles warily. The heavy gauntlets of the suit are a touch clumsy, but Ro is practiced enough to open and extract the contents of the envelope.

This is being recorded. Rowen may regret that, depending on the contents.


*tk* "Yep, getting everything. Bit of signal loss when you went downstairs, but very minor." Fern's tone is neutral, like whatever you're looking at isn't particularly interesting. Then: "Wait - 'bait'? What do you mean?"

The other folders seem to have the usual expected papers; some printed, some hand-written, some stapled, some with paper clips, some a few pages, some files much thicker. In the Rowen file there's a Muscle and Fitness! magazine with two bodybuilders, a man and a woman, posing on the cover. Apparently it's the August 1982 issue. Behind that is a magazine in Japanese about a million different things, mostly advertisements. There's a post-it note marking an article about the Gothic Lolita subculture. Finally there's a brochure describing Dr. Clark's Hollywood Makeover. Plastic surgery to the stars in a very 80s style.


"Are you seeing this?" Rowen asks Fern, as she leafs through "This file had my name. Alright, since you're not ... alright, let's see. Muscle and Fitness, 1982. Japanese adverts - ooh, I like that ramen brand. Post-it about this article on Gothic Lolita - see if you can pull it up" She rattles off the information "And ... a makeover studio. Huh. Dr Clark's Hollywood. Anything on that in the records?" She describes each piece as she holds them to the camera "Tempted to keep this lot"


"Hold - wait, sure - hold it steady. No, not - yeah. Weird. Okay. The name at the top isn't yours, it says "Frederick, Raymond."

There's a pause, then: "A quick google on Dr. Clark doesn't give me anything about anything like that. That's from... looks like the 80s? There might be something but I'd have to do some serious digging to find something from back then."


Rowen nods at that "Copy. Yeah, all this stuff is old" She sets the things down on a flat surface, turning the brochure slowly - examining the various pages, looking for things of interest. Procedures. Models. "This stuff all showed as in a folder marked my name, so either it's important to whatever's here, or it's something tripped specifically. Either way, kinda curious."


"We were picking up the sounds you heard on our end, so that at least isn't just in your head. And... it looks like prime time for this building was the early 80s, so that may be related. Some sort of time-echo or something."


"Yeah, probably. I'd be sighing too if I lived under Regan" Rowen finishes by slipping the materials back to the pouch, and then secures that in one of her clips. "Alright, eighties. Let's see ... all this is appearance stuff? Cosmetic procedures, clothes, bodybuilding ..." Thinking out loud, but also discussing with Fern "Right. I may need to come back in something cute" Dryly "But let me finish looking around, just to make sure." And she begins to pinpoint each sigh-sound, just hunting for patterns, trying to locate it. If not? She has a lead, an interest


"Roger that. I'll see what more I can dig up." *tk*

And the sighing sound... it's not ambient; when it occurs there's a definite source, but there's no pattern and it always appears to be somewhere you're not. It's a very similar pattern to so-called "hauntings" or "psychic echoes". It appears to be attached to the basement itself, and not a particular EDE.

In fact, the more you think about it, the more it bores you.


"Alright." Rowen nods after a moment. The lack of response is ... noteworthy, but only a little concerning. It's not *responding* to her. And it's very, very boring, of course. She shakes her head, trying to clear it. "Won't be too long" She mutters, as much to herself. She's already drifting back ... then a pause. A twitch. "I just found my file stuffed with fucking petticoats, the hell" She mutters to herself, and frowns. Another flicker from her eyes, and a wider scan of EDE energy - looking for hotspots in the basement itself instead of individual things or entities. She looks up, around - that faint feeling of unease she may be in the belly of the dragon.


The scan returns the expected anomalous readings - because in the subdimensions "expected anomalies" is the norm - there's a heavy time/psychic imprint in the basement as a whole, and the more you focus on it, the stronger the feeling of 'soul-crushing drudgery' becomes. The cabinet with your file is something else - almost the exact opposite. A tight compact core of longing, escapism, fantasy. This basement definitely has a powerful history to it, but nothing obviously nefarious. A thorough temporal analysis might provide more details, but it's not clear it would be worth the effort.


And it's the type of thing that she rarely has the chance to do. Alright. She considers, and then nods to herself.

Longing. She can work with it "You wanted to be different, right? To look different?" She muses, her comms set to speak to the area around her as well as the thing. "Let's take a look." As she plucks something from that envelope, that core of longing, flicking through the magazine, brochures. She expects to find something circled, or highlighted - something picked out.

Sometimes it's about giving things what they want.


You flip through the magazines and brochure and find things that interest you, things that don't, things in between. But your scanner isn't picking up anything from your file. As far as you can tell, you just hold regular plain-old subdimensional glossy paper in your gloved hands. That weird emotional core is concentrated in that particular filing cabinet marked "Need-Want".


Rowen nods, and goes digging again. This time, she digs deeper down. Sometimes, things correlate - deeper in the files, deeper wants. With that, she starts at the very bottom, back, the most hidden things. What does this thing Need-Want, indeed!


You dig through the entirety of the filing cabinet, pulling out folders marked with various names. The papers inside each folder are exactly what you'd expect in a filing cabinet: forms upon forms, reports upon reports. No matter how hard you try to focus, your eyes quickly glaze over whenever you try to read more than one page. Soon the cabinet is completely empty, the files (tossed or stacked neatly) on the floor. Whatever it is, it's definitely not the files. The time/psychic echo remains, apparently part of the cabinet itself, like the sighing sound appears to be part of the basement itself.

It's like in real life if someone who wore a lot of perfume worked in the same office for years and years, so that the office itself smelled like that perfume. That's the situation here - years and years of soul-crushing boredom and drudgery of the people who worked in the basement created this little reality where it's a literal claustrophobic maze of filing cabinets filled with boredom. One of them is special, maybe someone hid something there that helped them get through the day. Maybe they hid in a corner reading their favorite comic books all day long and that's the cabinet they kept them in. Maybe they used it to pass notes to another employee they were having a secret romance with.


Mmm. Alright. Rowen considers again, over the stacked files. It's hard to bore her, but this thing has managed, but she muses. Then a faint grin. Sometimes, you just need to reassure people you get them, you're on their wavelength.

She looks through the folder of stuff of hers, and finally selects the post-it article about Gothic Lolita. That's non-permanent, right? She extends a tiny marker from a finger of the suit, and writes an affirming little note.

'Me too. It's the cutest. Wish, right?'

And then, she firmly places it in the empty file. You are Not Alone.

She did consider the surgery brochure.


Digital recordings complete, and then everything is returned to the "Rowen" file, and the files returned to the cabinet. Everything just as you found it, or mostly. You'd dust off your hands, but there's no dust here for whatever reason. There's still that boring sigh. There's still that really compelling filing cabinet. There are still the little amber wisps drifting around the empty light sockets. The subdimensions are weird.


Rowen looks at it, pensive. Well. She has ideas, but she can't follow up on them here. So she starts to make her way out, checking in "Fern? Extracting. I think I might need to fetch some things, but this place is pretty interesting. Boredom as a cover. If I was skilled in misdirecting procedures, I'd weaponize the hell out of it" She chatters as she moves out slowly


*tk* "Roger that. Happy to report everything was as uneventful on our end as it was on yours, it sounds like. Strong signal, stable portal. See you soon."


VDE-RKFO-02.08.25 RECORDING - END OF FILE