The Fourth Place

Welcoming glyphs on a time-worn sign; light-burnt, sun-kissed, smiling yet somber. Behind it, hulking metal spines and ivy-wrought spires, burdened with kaleidoscopic bunting and overgrown with lichen and fungi. Six-foot doorframes, and yellow-picket fences, and plastic astroturf that's long-since more turf than plastic. The language on this sign is built for a stranger, older mind than yours. Letters that you cannot read for want of age and premise sit stark on a bed of paisley and flowers.

Still, their shape invites their meaning.

“Here be joy. Here be laughter. Here be dragons.”

“Come one, come all. Come to the Fourth Place.”

— From an old theme park sign, faded with time.

The Fourth Place is an abandoned theme park, once filled with joy and laughter. It seems to have been radically repurposed to aid the lives of every Kingdom after humanity's extinction.

In size and scale, it seems almost too vast to all be contained within the fenced walls that keep the wastelands outside. Towering rides, tented buildings, rusted machinery, overgrown walls… mingling with stoic blocks of hotel apartments, and glistening spires laden with row on row of hydroponic farms. Somewhere in this odd harmony, you've found a home.

The Fourth Place is a complex of entertainment facilities ranging from the end of the human industrial revolution all the way to their extinction. While it was modernised over time, it clearly could not completely replace its heyday aesthetic — acid-washed and tie-dyed bright colours, emphasising yellows, blues, and pinks. A distinct yellow smiley face adorns many nooks and crannies as though it was a common logo and motif. Nonetheless, colours are often either dimmed from moisture, or too bright from sun-bleaching.

In areas not meant to be seen by public eyes, the architecture becomes utilitarian. Dull greys often go unseen in the background, housing things like stored supplies, mechanical parts, and kitchens or warehouses. All around the park is a similar metal fence, sturdy and unweathered by time. Oddly enough, some areas are in near-perfect condition despite the march of time, whilst many are downtrodden and falling apart.

Some parts of it seem adapted for life past the human era. Tall hydroponics farms, built from strange metals that resist the wear of time and weather, supply a stable and nutritious source of food. The hotel blocks, unbothered by the eons, provide shelter. The taps still run. The power sockets have been brutishly stripped out and replaced with higher-voltage supplies, suitable for recharging Emulated. A deposit for biomass and scrap has been installed, and on the back of every door an invisible plastic poster politely asks, in languageless pictographs, that all waste be recycled into it.

Despite these adaptations, the passage of time has created many obstacles. Only the park's accommodation section seems to have benefited from the miracles of engineering that keep it standing. The rest is ruined and crumbling, and exploration is blocked at every turn. Some parts are flooded, blocked by large and deep streams, or have collapsed buildings in front of old paths. Gates remain locked between areas and bridges left drawn up. Whatever secrets the Fourth Place holds, they are buried beneath rubble, entangled in plants, or simply so far away from the front entrance that even reaching them would involve bypassing a dozen trials.

The Fourth Place lay abandoned for a very long time, it seems, except for brief stays by pilgriming Hominists over many years. There is a long-standing taboo on living in human ruins — they are dangerous, and eerie, and often revered — and it certainly applies to the Fourth Place. Due to the surrounding wastes, very few have bothered visiting. Most that arrive at the Fourth Place do so only out of desperation.

All inhabitants have come from far and wide to the Fourth Place. There is no single way people have heard of it, but its name has persisted throughout time, plastered on old city billboards and posters, in advertising spaces and on plastic merchandise. Myths and rumours abound, describing it as a place where resources are abundant and happiness guaranteed. Few heed them. But recently, several groups have stumbled upon the ruins, or been drawn to them for their own reasons. You might have arrived with them, or made your own way.

Most live within a cluster of hotel blocks near the entrance of the theme park, with enough rooms for everyone. Every so often, there will be meetings of its inhabitants to discuss daily lives and resource management, on broadly informal terms, with different groups and peoples sticking to their own.

A few days ago, however, the Fourth Place's plentiful resources suddenly ceased. The automated farms shut down, the taps ran dry, the power was cut. Investigations tracked the problem back to the Umbilical, a vast tube that appears to have supplied the accommodation block from deeper into the ruins. It has been severed, close to where it branches out to reach the various different buildings. An expedition has been sent down the long, shadowed maintenance tunnel through which the tube runs.

When the expedition returns, a meeting will be called to discuss how to proceed — the setting of the first Uptime. Only now the Umbilical has broken, are they all forced to communicate and solve this problem together.

With the toll of time and general closure of the Fourth Place, many places within are inaccessible and may only be seen with further exploration. For now, here are the places available to visit.

A large gate house, attached to an old ticketing station. It’s too easy to jump the ticket gate, but the outside could be completely locked away. Somehow, of all parts of the Fourth Place, it seems very intact and robust.

It is also attached to an old gift shop, filled with broken trinkets and merchandise gone mouldy. Who knows what is lying in those old storage rooms.

The main living quarters of most inhabitants of the Fourth Place. In its heyday, this hotel would have served luxurious guests visiting the theme park. Now, certain floors are dedicated to certain types of inhabitants, in relatively poor condition, but nothing a bit of decoration couldn’t fix. Each room has power sockets, and an en suite with running water. Downstairs there are a number of kitchens that would once have served the hotel's various restaurants.

Among the hotel's buildings is a gleaming hydroponics farm which tends to itself on an automated system. It grows all sorts of foods adapted for the different Kingdoms, but it is entirely unclear how it sources nutrients to actually grow the plants. Perhaps the Umbilical supplies them (or did, before it was severed), but where from? Does it simply recycle the biomass placed in the deposit?

Overall, this hotel is in very good condition for its past and current usage. It seems out of character compared to the wasteland and decaying smaller buildings nearby to it.

Once, this sit-in restaurant would have served fancy dishes in evenings for fine dining participants, looking for a taste of the high-life within a theme park. Its outside condition is impeccable, seemingly reinforced at some point and keeping it standing.

The building is now mostly empty, save for a large mechanical tube running through it. This Umbilical outputs useful supplies for living in the Fourth Place, like spare parts, clean water, plant food, meats, and other resources. From here it splits off to reach all the other buildings. Just inside the restaurant's kitchen it has been severed, the vast tube somehow torn in two.

Alongside that is a scrap and biomass deposit. It kindly requests for extra resources to be recycled back into it. Where it goes is a mystery.

A vast tube wrapped in matte plastic, that delivers resources to the hotel from deeper in the Fourth Place. It emerges from a maintenance tunnel, deep underground, runs out through the restaurant, then splits to deliver power, food and water to different buildings.

It also connects to a deposit that accepts both scrap and biomass, which it draws away to be recycled. Presumably these inputs are needed to keep the whole system running, given how enthusiastically the deposit is advertised.

Just past the gates is a large, open plaza. It’s filled with tents, stalls, and miscellaneous small rides to spend time on. Most of these have completely collapsed due to the lack of permanent infrastructure around them, but some skeletons remain. If anything, it resembles a large pile of rubble in the centre-front of the Fourth Place.

Aside from in the hotel, some decide to hoard their resources here, and it has become the immediate welcoming area for any new visitors to the Fourth Place. Many believe there are still things waiting to be found beneath the rubble.

The theatre was once the crown jewel of the Fourth Place, and seemingly from where the theme park expanded from. Palace-looking and located directly in the centre of the park, it visually clashes with the rest of the park. Its vintage feeling reflects its indoors as well, with red velvet carpet and neoclassical architecture. A shame almost all of its doors are locked except to the main stage.

Despite this past grandeur though, much of the building is decaying and falling apart.

This old aquarium is currently flooded, and more akin to a swamp than any fresh or seawater tank. It's a home for some aquatic inhabitants of the Fourth Place, or at least a feeding ground for any basic mosses and algae in the area. If water supplies ever get dire, then this place is always an option, to the dismay of its dwellers.

Most of the inhabitants tend to stay near the surface of these waters, letting them run down the various large streams of the Fourth Place, but who knows what could be hiding within the depths.