Project Deepwater is part of Pentex's Special Projects Division. It is focused on the spiritual taint of Chulorviah.
Overview[]
Under the Pacific, a blight swells on the sea floor. The undersea arcology/Technocratic research platform, under the public cover of an Endron International mining rig, has become a veritable Agar dish for the spiritual taint of Chulorviosis.
While the original mission of the installation is noble, it has been corrupted beyond repair since then. Worse, it has proven a source of great Banality, strangling the nearby coral city of Xinqux. Deepwater is killing an average of one mer per week, and the Rokea are beginning to organize a planned attack — a Gorge — against the undersea arcology. Worst of all, though, the installation has cut the Rorqual off from the Gnosis-rich environment of the Trench, originally the most powerful Grotto in the world. As the Rorqual suffer, cut off from their undersea energy source, all suffer as the ecology of the seas is dealt yet another blow.
History[]
In 1910, a small but vocal contingency of the Void Engineers that would come to be known as the Earth Frontier Division (EFD) revealed that they were interested in attempting to create a colony under the water. Their project schematics were all in order and would have had the Project open for colonists by the late fifties. Despite the obvious viability of the program, the New World Order had other ideas. With the backing of the Syndicate, they quashed the project almost immediately, demanding that the Void Engineers have space exploration up and running before the end of the century. Deepwater appeared to be sunk — and would have been, too, had there not been a case of serious happenstance in favor of the colony.
In the mid-’20s, a young company called Premium Oil hired on a drilling expert named Mr. Klieg. Mr. Klieg was remarked as bearing an odd resemblance to company founder Jeremiah Lassater’s son Jacob, despite his having died in a boating accident years ago.
Klieg brought a slightly waterlogged copy (no one was quite sure where he had obtained it) of the Void Engineer’s plans straight to the Board of Directors. They saw great potential in the idea of an underwater colony pumping millions of gallons of crude back to the surface. Premium Oil sent a group of representatives to certain… contacts of theirs among the Void Engineers, and after a several martini-lunch, a deal was struck. In return for a mining claim, Premium would gladly supply the EFD with the necessary funding to begin Project: Deepwater. Shortly after this point, Premium Oil became Pentex Incorporated.
A site was determined in the center of the Pacific Ocean, near the edge of the powerful Mariana Trench, about half a mile down. Although initial construction didn’t start until the late '30s, and despite the obvious delays caused by World War II, Deepwater built up a great deal of momentum in the ’50s.
In the early ’70s, Project: Deepwater officially opened its portals to select Pentex executives and researchers as well as Void Engineers, Progenitors, and Iteration X technicians. Although technically open to all members of the Technocracy, it is clear that Syndicate members and New World Order Agents were never and are still not welcome there today.
Deepwater is right on schedule to open to the Masses in 2010. There are already smaller experimental branches open in the Florida Keys. Although not complete, Deepwater is the most powerful undersea research platform in the world, and an indispensable installation for both Pentex and the Technocracy.
In the Umbra, Deepwater has attracted thousands of Scuttlers and is literally crawling with the aquatic arthropods. These creatures infest every level of the installation.
In the Shadowlands, however, Deepwater is even more disturbing, as it appears in a haze of bloated dead fish, crustaceans, and human bodies. As one gets closer to the installation, the haze of bodies becomes a diseased, almost impenetrable soup. Those who penetrate the murk to reach Deepwater in the Shadowlands find the installation in fine condition — it’s just everything around it that’s dead.
References[]
- WOD: World of Darkness: Blood-Dimmed Tides, p. 19, 28, 30, 31
- WTA/cMET: Laws of the Wild: Changing Breeds 4, p. 137-138