Level 3: Electrical Station
A cramped substation of humming transformers and failing strip lights, where the walls carry current and the dark between them carries worse.
- Entities
- Smilers and Skin-Stealers both reported. Neither is common; both are lethal.
- Environment
- Live electrical hazards throughout. Standing water in the lower runs.
- Resources
- Sparse. Some tooling and cabling, occasionally useful. No food or water.
Level 3 is the first level where the architecture appears to have been built for a purpose, and the purpose is not one anybody has satisfactorily explained.
The layout
Rows of transformers, breaker cabinets and cable runs, laid out on a grid that almost makes sense and then does not. Strip lighting overhead, perhaps a third of it working, the rest either dead or failing in a slow irregular flicker that makes moving objects hard to track.
It is loud. Not the Level 0 hum — a heavier electrical drone, loud enough to mask footsteps, and that cuts both ways: it hides you, and it hides everything else.
Electrical hazards are the primary killer
More explorers are lost on Level 3 to the level itself than to anything living on it.
The equipment is energised. Not all of it, not predictably, and there is no way to tell by looking. Cabinets stand open. Cable insulation has perished in places. And the lower runs of the station collect standing water that sits in contact with all of it.
The rules that keep people alive here are dull and absolute:
- Touch nothing metal. Not to steady yourself, not to check a door.
- Do not enter standing water. Go around, even if around is long.
- Treat every cabinet as live. There is no safe way to verify otherwise.
The flicker problem
Level 3’s failing lights create the worst possible conditions for Smilers. Illumination that cuts out for a fraction of a second, repeatedly, gives them exactly the observation gaps they move in — and unlike Level 2, you cannot solve it by managing your own torch, because the level’s own lighting is doing it to you.
The standard advice is to move through flickering sections with your own light held steady on the direction of travel and to accept that you will be slow.
Skin-Stealers
Level 3 is one of the few places above Level 5 where Skin-Stealers are consistently reported. The electrical drone masks the speech irregularities that usually give them away, which removes your best early warning.
Assume anyone you meet on this level is not a person until they demonstrate otherwise, and demonstrate it from a distance.
Getting out
Descent to Level 4 is through the service corridors on the far side of the station, where the cabling thins out and the construction turns to plasterboard and dropped ceiling. The transition is gradual — most explorers report realising they are on Level 4 some time after arriving.
Entities on this level
Exits from here
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