Vascular Network

Description

The Vascular Network is a form of public transport managed by the Integumentary System & the Basocytes. It is dominated by the Strain of Gravity.

It is a huge network of ancient magnetic railway lines and stations that flooded during the creation of the supermassive lakes. The network has since been repurposed and partially restructured.

There is now at least one station under or in close proximity to each capital Sanctuary.

Many of the tunnels are flooded and now house a great deal of the planets’ ancient biodiversity, long after the tropical ocean surrounding the tubes evaporated. This created long stretches of “overland aquarium tubes” where Orchades and Undarians move between the supermassive lakes and Sanctuaries.

Safety and Regulation

Travel through the Vascular Network is permitted, but due to the complex network and tendency for old tunnels to veer off into dead ends or into deep chasms (called “Dead Legs”), it is not entirely safe.

That being said, The Vascular Network is protected by the Amiiar-Maka (Islumian) Biodiversity Protection Initiative (BPI), and hundreds of Fleurivine-derived security drones sift through the network; both in an attempt to protect Orchades from poaching (whom seem to use the tubes as migratory paths), as well as to map the full extent of the ancient transport system.

Vascular Chambers

Stations, or Vascular Chambers, resemble the giant lofted reservoirs of Terran cities, with huge pillars made of glass and the Sycan’s own ancient form of concrete. Many of these Stations contain old “Stay-Bunkers”, presumably places where ancestral Sycans would have rested between long journeys.

The original mechanisms that ran through the Vascular System before it was flooded looked like Terran hyperloop trains. The large magnetic panels that once powered these lines now lay rusted and unpowered below the water’s surface. Any remaining train cars have been either junked for their metals or repurposed by Burrowers for housing.

The Vascular System is often “generated” by Alkemus, the rogue Phantasm that wanders the wastes building nonsense architecture. He is known for merging tunnels, adding imitation tunnels that lead to nowhere, even false Chambers with bizarre architecture. Alkemists use the most serviceable of these for underground hubs.