Laboratory
- Template
- Place
- Status
- Canon
- Kind
- Room
- Parent
- Mansion
1. Summary
The laboratory is a dark underground single-purpose bunker-lab, slightly larger than a futsal court, centered around a vertical stasis tank containing the father suspended by cables.
It is clean but not elegant, technologically advanced but not glamorous, secretive and industrial rather than cinematic or polished.
Its visual purpose is to make the player feel that beneath the mansion's comfort there has always been a hidden machinery of truth, fear, and preparation.
2. History
Beneath the property, their father secretly constructed a technologically advanced laboratory containing a stasis system derived from classified technology developed at the Amazon facility.
See: Places › D5
See: Timeline › Master Timeline
On the twins' eighteenth birthday, Hamish leads Edmund and Lorraine into the laboratory, where they discover the central mission. See: Campaign › 2. Now I Am Finally A Man
3. Function and Contents
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3.1 Core Concept
Its purpose is extremely narrow and specific: to maintain the father alive in long-term stasis.
This is not a massive underground research complex, and it must not feel like a large institutional facility. It is a single-purpose improvised bunker-laboratory, built and adapted around one central objective.
3.2 Central Element
The central focus of the room is a vertical transparent stasis tank.
Inside it, the father is suspended upright, held in place by cables and connected to wires, tubes, and life-support systems.
This tank must be visually dominant and impossible to ignore.
When the characters enter the laboratory, the player's eye should be pulled to it immediately.
The father should appear:
- alive, but dormant
- medically preserved
- physically vulnerable
- unsettling, but not grotesque
The tank is the emotional and visual center of the entire room.
3.3 Equipment and Infrastructure
Around the tank, there should be:
- medical monitoring equipment
- heart-rate and life-sign displays
- brain activity monitors
- computers and terminals
- cables running across the floor
- power conduits
- cooling / refrigeration infrastructure
- support machinery required to keep the stasis system operational
The arrangement does not need to be perfectly tidy.
It should feel like a system that was engineered for practical survival, not for beauty or presentation.
4. Architecture and Style
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4.1 Scale and Spatial Feeling
The laboratory is fairly large, but not enormous — roughly a little larger than a futsal court.
There is enough room to walk and run inside it, but it should still feel like a contained, enclosed underground chamber, not a sprawling multi-level installation.
The player must immediately understand that this place exists for one reason only.
4.2 Visual Identity
The room has a dark industrial laboratory atmosphere.
It should feel:
- underground
- reinforced
- functional
- secret
- improvised but technologically sophisticated
It is clean, because the butler keeps it maintained, but it is not pristine, elegant, or highly organized like the mansion above.
This room should feel visually separate from the mansion:
- no paintings
- no decorative objects
- no luxury styling
- no aristocratic atmosphere
- no attempt at comfort
Everything here exists only for maintenance, monitoring, energy, refrigeration, and medical support.
4.3 Lighting
The room should be very dark overall.
Lighting comes mainly from:
- monitor screens
- indicator lights
- medical displays
- the stasis tank itself
- a few sparse industrial light sources
This is not a brightly illuminated clinical lab.
The desired atmosphere is:
- dark
- industrial
- secretive
- focused
- slightly oppressive
- visually technical
The computers and screens should stand out strongly against the darkness.
4.4 Emotional Function
This room marks a major tonal break from the mansion above.
The mansion is warm, wealthy, lived-in, and emotionally safe.
The laboratory is hidden, secret, controlled, and disturbing.
It should create the feeling that the player has crossed from a world of comfort and inheritance into a world of buried truth, duty, and technological dread.
The room must communicate:
- secrecy
- sacrifice
- long-term preparation
- moral weight
- a father who did not choose this lightly
4.5 Things to Avoid
Avoid making it feel like:
- a giant sci-fi complex
- a sleek futuristic corporate lab
- a sterile hospital room
- a luxury bunker
- a decorative sci-fi setpiece
It should feel like a purpose-built underground stasis chamber, assembled with serious resources, but still fundamentally improvised around one single mission.
5. Security and Access
It is entered through the concealed entrance and keypad-locked security door in the butler's bedroom.
6. Connections
The laboratory is a hidden underground bunker located beneath the butler's private quarters, accessed through a concealed wall mechanism in his bedroom and a deep staircase.
See: Places › Mansion
7. Concept Image
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8. Open Questions
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