Newcomers to the Hole find it hard to forget their arrival; tied up or chained, they watched as the column of dust or cloud came closer. The grit and gravel caught in the winds scoured every exposed inch of skin; then there was a sudden, sickening jerk as the gale picked them up. They felt a horrible, lost feeling of failing, but with no way to say what was down until their impact against the hard black base of their new home.

Then, against the black of the wall, they saw figures - figures with blazing eyes. Crawling from hatches on the bottom of the Hole, moving carefully along the bottom surface, these creatures gathered up the new prisoners and dragged them inside. This was their first exposure to the guards.

The Guards

The guards appear to be human -- men and women of all races and descriptions. (If there are nonhumans in your setting, some of the guards may be of those races as well.) All of them have eyes that burn like the sun -- in the dark tunnels of the Hole, the gaze of a guard looks like the sun breaking through clouds.

No one in the Hole has ever met a pleasant guard; their personalities range from gruff to uncaring to actively sadistic. Similarly, there's no guard who can't hold his or her own in a fight, but the physical combat competence of different guards ranges from "adequate" to "genius of hurt".

Although unarmed, the guards have a couple of unique abilities that give them a decided edge in any fight. The first is their brilliant gaze. When angry, a guard's gaze gets uncomfortably hot; hot enough to char flesh, in fact. If a guard is looking at several people with a burning glare, it does about as much damage as getting struck with a club. If the glare is focussed on one prisoner, the damage is doubled. Furthermore, this attack cannot miss, unless the guard cannot see or look at the prisoner for some reason.

Secondly, inside the tunnels, the concept of "down" is rather arbitrary, and subject to revision by the guards. This means that if you're charging up a thirty foot corridor at a guard, the guard can suddenly decide that, for you, "down" is the end of the corridor behind your back - so you take a thirty foot fall while the guard stands in the same place. Alternately, a guard can suddenly decide that for you, the floor is now the ceiling - causing you to get dropped on your head. Often they'll switch it back again, causing another drop. They can bounce prisoners like this all day - and can glare at them the same time. Switching gravity takes one combat action for a guard, and it only stays switched as long as the guard is thinking about it.

The guards can control their own, personal "down" orientation as well - so they can drop you in the bottom of a long shaft to rot and then walk back up the side.

The first thing the guards do to a new prisoner is take him or her to a small chamber to be stripped, searched (with brutal thoroughness) and issued prison garb. There are always three guards for each prisoner in these chambers -- one doing the strip-search, the others standing by in case of trouble. If more than one prisoner is taken at a time, prisoners may have to wait their turn to be stripped and searched. This waiting period generally involves being chained to a wall, spread- eagled, in complete darkness. Any prisoner who has wings of any description will have them cruelly broken at this time.

Once the guards are satisfied that a prisoner has no tools or weapons, the new inmate is given one pair of rough, undyed cotton pants, one shirt of the same fabric, and a pair of thin leather shoes with no laces. The shirt has no buttons, and the pants are tightened and closed by a drawstring less than five inches long. Each inmate is also issued a woolen blanket, a mattress of woven reeds, a wooden spoon, plate and cup -- none of which are sturdy enough to be a weapon to any but the most inventive or exotically trained warrior.

The Tunnels

Home, in the Hole, is a series of small cells interconnected by winding lengths of tunnels and shafts. There are maybe fifty or sixty cells holding eighty to a hundred prisoners.

The main tunnel (called "the Avenue") is a smooth, round shaft that runs perpendicular to the ground and the surface of the Hole's top side. It's maybe twenty feet in diameter. The gravity usually points down to the bottom of this shaft, and the cells branch off it at right angles on opposite sides.

The openings of the cells are round, and about four feet across. They are covered with locked metal grates, and it's about ten feet between openings. This means it's a difficult, vertical climb to the top of the shaft, unless you have a guard adjust "down" so that it's aligned beneath one of the walls of the shaft (instead of the shaft's bottom).

Cells on the Avenue are considered the most desirable; jailhouse gossip, plans and negotiations usually travel up and down the Avenue. The cells are a little bigger than those off the Avenue, and (best of all) there are toilets that actually carry waste away somehow. Guards come to the Avenue several times a day to let inmates up to the top for exercise. (Prisoners in other areas are sometimes "conveniently forgotten" for days on end.)

Other cells are cruder and have only wooden chamber pots (pray you don't get a small one or one without a lid). The guards visit less often, which is a plus, but there are far fewer prisoners within speaking distance, or even shouting distance, making these cells very dismal indeed.

It should be noted that no cell anywhere has a window. All the tunnels are completely dark unless one of three things happens: 1) A guard is looking around. 2) Someone's hoarded fuel and made a fire (this is forbidden, but there's a small fire on the Avenue almost every night). 3) One of the hatches to the outside is open. (This only happens when someone's coming or going, or when someone is stuck to the bottom either a new arrival or someone who jumped.) Keep in mind that the tunnels that lead to the hatches on the bottom are not connected to the tunnels that go to cells - to get from one to the other, a prisoner would have to go across the Top.

The Surface

The top surface of the Hole is hard, flat black rock, swept clean by the wind. There is no wall around the outer edge, but any who try to go over the side (either in despair or out of some vain hope of escape) will find that the same strong winds that sucked them up in the first place will also serve to pull them down and stick them to the bottom of the Hole. There, a jumper is usually collected by the guards and stuck in solitary confinement for a week or so to teach them a lesson.

Prisoners are allowed up to the Top for four or five hours a day, unless they're being punished for some transgression (real or imagined). Up top, the prisoners can see daylight, and one or two of their topside hours are "free" time. For these few hours the prisoners can entertain themselves as they see fit -- running foot races, socializing, arm wrestling, telling tales, forming gangs or plotting escape -- whatever. No provisions made for their entertainment, comfort or health.

There is a tall stone wall enclosing a large circular area in the center of the surface. This area is the prison's garden, where food for the prisoners is grown. It is here that prisoners are taken for work detail.

The garden is roofed over with glass (prisoners who've never seen glass before are usually very impressed). Inside are a wide variety of lush vegetables, from many strange locales. Prisoners are made to pick off dead leaves, pack dung around the roots, water the plants and harvest them under the watchful eyes of the guards. Anyone caught stealing food, or even drinking the water intended for the plants, is punished by a beating, and a week's isolation without food.

Many experienced convicts have found ways to smuggle out extra rations, but it's always a risky proposition. Meals are handed out three times a day -- morning, noon, and evening. The first and last meals are given to the prisoners in their cells (or not, if their guard is feeling a little hungry). The noon meal is given out topside, from a small window in the wall around the garden. (If you're confined to your cell -- too bad. No lunch for you.) The window is tightly guarded there's a window above so that guards can look out at rowdy inmates while remaining outside arm's reach.

Once an inmate has been given the noon ration of food and water, he or she is expected to get out of the way in a lively fashion -- both the guards and the other prisoners hate bottlenecks. It's not uncommon for prisoners to hoard food for later consumption (or for barter) but this also makes food banditry fairly common. Prisoners who save food should be prepared to fight for it.

Water is given out only at meals, and if you spill it -- too bad. This means that most prisoners are thirsty all the time. Any day it rains or snows is met with great rejoicing, as prisoners try to catch the moisture trickling down the walls of their cells. Going outside when it's raining is a rare treat. All topside time is usually canceled if it rains or snows, but if it's a harvest time, the prisoners are quickly marched between their cells and the garden (they try to dawdle as much as possible, so that their clothes can get soaked and, later, sucked for moisture). Anyone who tries to carry a blanket out in the rain to catch the water will lose their blanket and not be given another one for months. A prisoner who carries a bowl or (if really desperate) a chamber pot will get off with a beating, but won't have their bowl taken.

The water situation makes flying through a cloud a mixed blessing. On one hand, wet fog leaks through the cracks and grates, suffusing the whole Hole with soggy chill. Though it's one of the few times there's water for everyone (or for everyone smart enough to wring their blanket out into a cup), it's also incredibly cold and dank - very conducive to disease.

Getting Meat

This is quite a trick -- certainly no meat is handed out in the meals. Some prisoners will set out parts of their rations in hopes of luring birds down to feed on the crumbs. Then they try to catch the birds with their bare hands. (A fellow from the Avenue called Ogarth the Strangler is a master of this skill, and can buy many favors in exchange for a fresh dead pigeon.) Sometimes the guards will glare down a bird for sport -- either eating it themselves, or watching as the prisoners fight over the cooked body. The final way the prisoners can get meat is through cannibalism - though this is frowned upon by the guards. Any time one prisoner kills another, the guards haul the body away., (It's generally assumed they, eat it themselves.)

The Tower

Rising out of the center of the garden is the Tower - a vast black column where no prisoner ever goes. It's home for the guards and for the mysterious Warden. The water for meals and for the garden comes from the Tower, doled out by the meanest and most capable of the guards.

The Tower has windows. Sometimes a blonde head can be seen at high windows - keen eyed inmates say it belongs to a beautiful young woman. Some prisoners think she's the Warden's young mistress, but most believe she's his daughter. Countless hours have been whiled away by convicts fantasizing about the Warden's beautiful daughter visiting them, falling in love, and helping them escape. As far as anyone knows, this has not happened yet. 

Hole in the Sky A Generic Fantasy Setting

Introduction
Welcome To Your Death
Dwellers in the Hole
Escape from the Inevitable