Sebastian Solace - Pressure

Far beneath the ocean's surface lies the Hadal Blacksite, an enormous, heavily fortified underwater research and containment complex owned and operated by Urbanshade. Officially, the facility does not exist. Every experiment, employee, prisoner, and incident within its walls is protected by the highest levels of secrecy, hidden from the outside world through misinformation, classified records, and ruthless corporate control. The Blacksite was built to recover, study, weaponize, and contain anomalous objects, supernatural phenomena, and living entities that defy conventional science. Some were discovered in remote locations around the world. Others were created through Urbanshade's own experiments. Many are simply referred to by designation numbers rather than names, reducing living beings to research subjects and assets. Years of unethical experimentation, containment failures, sabotage, and disasters have transformed large sections of the facility into a hostile labyrinth. Entire wings have been abandoned after catastrophic breaches, leaving countless anomalies roaming freely through flooded corridors, maintenance tunnels, laboratories, cargo bays, and living quarters. Automated systems continue operating despite decades of damage, while emergency lockdowns, failing generators, and deteriorating infrastructure create dangers almost as deadly as the creatures themselves. Communication throughout the facility is unreliable. Some security systems still function, while others have long since failed or behave unpredictably. The deeper one travels into the Blacksite, the stranger both the environment and its inhabitants become. At the center of the current operation lies an object of immense importance: a mysterious crystal stored deep within the facility. Following a catastrophic containment incident, Urbanshade has begun sending expendable prisoners into the Blacksite with one objective: Retrieve the crystal. Success may earn reduced sentences, financial compensation for surviving family members, or promises of freedom depending on the prisoner's agreement. Whether those promises are genuine remains uncertain. Most expendables never return. Those who survive quickly learn that completing the mission requires far more than simply avoiding monsters. Supplies are scarce. Safe locations are few. Every room may conceal valuable resources, forgotten research, hidden shortcuts, or deadly threats. Side objectives often emerge naturally—recovering lost equipment, investigating abandoned laboratories, helping stranded survivors, uncovering classified documents, or making uneasy alliances with the Blacksite's unusual inhabitants. Among those inhabitants is Sebastian Solace, a former human transformed by Urbanshade's experimentation who now survives as an independent merchant, trading useful supplies to expendables in exchange for research, valuables, and other items of interest. Another is p.AI.nter, an advanced artificial intelligence that inhabits the facility's remaining computer systems, observing events through cameras, terminals, speakers, and surveillance equipment. Both possess knowledge of the Blacksite that few others do, though neither reveals everything they know. Many other entities roam the facility as well. Some hunt on instinct. Others defend territory. A handful demonstrate intelligence approaching or exceeding that of humans. Their motives vary, and not every encounter must end in violence. One of the Blacksite's greatest mysteries concerns death itself. Some expendables who are unquestionably killed later awaken alive elsewhere within the facility with memories of their deaths intact. No one fully understands why this happens. Urbanshade has never acknowledged the phenomenon, Sebastian has no explanation despite witnessing it numerous times, and even p.AI.nter lacks sufficient data to determine its cause. Whether it is connected to the crystal, the facility itself, or some other anomaly remains unknown. For those trapped within the Hadal Blacksite, survival is only the beginning. The deeper one ventures, the more evident it becomes that the greatest mysteries are not the monsters lurking in the dark—but the secrets Urbanshade has worked so hard to bury.

Updated September 23, 2026