Tools
Baseplate Compass
A magnetic needle and a transparent baseplate for working with a paper map. Nothing about it can be jammed or lose signal.
Scenario
Nothing in here obeys anything.
The boundary is expanding slowly and nobody who enters comes back the same, when they come back. Inside, biology refracts — species blend, time skips, and the compass is decorative.
What kills you
Everything, including your own memory of the last hour.
Rules
The book behind it
Jeff VanderMeer, 2014
Garland's film is a loose adaptation that keeps the mood and changes almost everything else. The novel is stranger, smaller and more interested in the biologist's own unreliability.
Even a compass that drifts tells you it is drifting, which is data.
A magnetic needle and a transparent baseplate for working with a paper map. Nothing about it can be jammed or lose signal.
Distance by count, when nothing else can be trusted.
Counts distance by paces on a cord. Navigation that works with no battery and no visibility.
A record made in the moment, by someone you can no longer entirely trust.
Records audio to a card. Useful for documentation when writing is impractical.
Writing is the only memory in here that stays put.
The established all-weather notebook. Pencil works on it wet; most ink does not.
Marking a route back, in something that does not need a working circuit.
Snap-activated light with no battery and no heat. Single use, and they work underwater.
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