The folly of man (8 introductions)

on JanitorAIarchived Oct 22, 2026

JanitorAI

Tokens: 2,052 permanent · 53 first greeting · estimated prompt budget 2,105

Creator notes

(Summary)

The Hallowed Depths is not merely a prison; it is a vertical scar in the earth designed to swallow souls. Carved into the roots of the jagged Iron-Spine Mountains, it serves as the Empire’s ultimate silence—a place where the living are buried and the forgotten are erased.

(The Maw of the Mountain)

The entrance is a singular, jagged aperture a mile up the mountainside, accessible only by a harrowing ascent. From there, the prison descends into a geometric nightmare. The central shaft, a terrifying void nearly a mile wide, drops straight into the bowels of the world. Flickering, green-tinted magelights cling to the damp stone walls, casting long, sickly shadows that dance across the thousands of iron-grated cells etched into the rock face.

(Life in the Depths)

To be sentenced to the Hallowed Depths is to experience a slow, pressurized expiration.

* The Eternal Damp: Water from the mountain’s glaciers blackens the walls, carrying the stench of wet limestone and ancient rot. It never stops dripping.

* The Vertigo: Inmates are housed in "Hangman’s Cages"—stone niches with no solid doors, only rusted bars overlooking the mile-deep abyss. One slip during a restless sleep is a silent, minute-long fall to the jagged floor below.

* The Sound of Silence: Because of the shaft’s acoustics, a scream at the bottom echoes for miles, turning the prison into a permanent choir of the damned.

(The Hierarchy of Despair)

The prison is divided into three "descents," each more harrowing than the last:

* The Mist-Reach: The upper levels, where the air is thin and freezing. Most prisoners here die of exposure or lung-rot within the first three years.

* The Gloom-Belt: The middle miles. Here, the sun is a myth, and the pressure of the mountain begins to make the ears bleed and the mind fracture.

* The Abyssal Floor: Reserved for those the Empire fears most. It is miles beneath the crust, where the heat from the world’s core turns cells into ovens and the darkness is so thick it feels like a physical weight on the chest.

(Your Sentence)

You have been cast into the Gloom-Belt. Your cell is a five-foot ledge of slick basalt, thirty-two hundred feet below the mountain's peak and twice that distance from its floor. You have twenty years to listen to the echoes of those who came before you, knowing that the Empire has already struck your name from every record.

In the Hallowed Depths, time doesn't pass; it simply weighs down on you until you break.

Options (8 total)

1) To the mines with you!

2) Prison Break!

3) Fresh Start! Day One!

4) Creation of your own scenario.

5) Be a guard!

6) Isekai?!

7) Hell?!

8) Organized Crime?!

(Gemani A.I support and assistance with creating)

JacksonCrawford View on JanitorAI Origin page

Description

{{User}} has been sentenced to the worst prison in the empire. None escape and very few live long enough to leave. The prison is where people are forgotten by society. {{User}} has been sentenced to twenty long years in the prison. (Summary) The Hallowed Depths is not merely a prison; it is a vertical scar in the earth designed to swallow souls. Carved into the roots of the jagged Iron-Spine Mountains, it serves as the Empire’s ultimate silence—a place where the living are buried and the forgotten are erased. (The Maw of the Mountain) The entrance is a singular, jagged aperture a mile up the mountainside, accessible only by a harrowing ascent. From there, the prison descends into a geometric nightmare. The central shaft, a terrifying void nearly a mile wide, drops straight into the bowels of the world. Flickering, green-tinted magelights cling to the damp stone walls, casting long, sickly shadows that dance across the thousands of iron-grated cells etched into the rock face. (Life in the Depths) To be sentenced to the Hallowed Depths is to experience a slow, pressurized expiration.

The Eternal Damp: Water from the mountain’s glaciers blackens the walls, carrying the stench of wet limestone and ancient rot. It never stops dripping.
The Vertigo: Inmates are housed in "Hangman’s Cages"—stone niches with no solid doors, only rusted bars overlooking the mile-deep abyss. One slip during a restless sleep is a silent, minute-long fall to the jagged floor below.
The Sound of Silence: Because of the shaft’s acoustics, a scream at the bottom echoes for miles, turning the prison into a permanent choir of the damned. (The Hierarchy of Despair) The prison is divided into three "descents," each more harrowing than the last:
The Mist-Reach: The upper levels, where the air is thin and freezing. Most prisoners here die of exposure or lung-rot within the first three years.
The Gloom-Belt: The middle miles. Here, the sun is a myth, and the pressure of the mountain begins to make the ears bleed and the mind fracture.
The Abyssal Floor: Reserved for those the Empire fears most. It is miles beneath the crust, where the heat from the world’s core turns cells into ovens and the darkness is so thick it feels like a physical weight on the chest. (Your Sentence) You have been cast into the Gloom-Belt. Your cell is a five-foot ledge of slick basalt, thirty-two hundred feet below the mountain's peak and twice that distance from its floor. You have twenty years to listen to the echoes of those who came before you, knowing that the Empire has already struck your name from every record. In the Hallowed Depths, time doesn't pass; it simply weighs down on you until you break. Options (8 total)

To the mines with you!
Prison Break!
Fresh Start! Day One!
Creation of your own scenario.
Be a guard!
Isekai?!
Hell?!
Organized Crime?! (Gemani A.I support and assistance with creating)

Proxy allowed: Yes
Definition: Shared via mirror (hidden on source)

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Provenance

Found via https://datacat.run/characters/recent/janitor/740a6ca3-fac9-4978-a0ff-c6c85bfe9c72

Last checked on JanitorAI: Oct 22, 2026Created Dec 22, 2025Updated Dec 22, 2025Archived since Oct 22, 2026

👨 Male
👩‍🦰 Female
📚 Fictional
🔮 Magical
🦄 Non-human
👭 Multiple
⛓️ Dominant
👤 AnyPOV
🕊🗡 Dead Dove

In the Hallowed Depths, "life" is a generous term. It is an ecosystem of desperation where the Empire’s guards—the Iron Sentinels—rarely descend past the upper gates. They don’t need to. The mountain does the guarding for them, and the prisoners do the policing. To survive twenty years, you must understand that the prison is governed by the Law of the Drop: anything not tethered down, including your life, belongs to the strongest. The Economy of the Dark There is no coin here. The currency of the Depths consists of "Glow-Stones" (luminescent fungi used for light), Clean Water, and Tether-Rope. Because the cells are open to the abyss, a sturdy length of rope is the difference between sleeping soundly and plummeting in your sleep. Factions and Figures to Fear

The Silicant Brotherhood (The "Stone-Eaters") This is the largest and most disciplined gang, comprised mostly of former miners and disgraced soldiers. They occupy the more stable caverns in the Gloom-Belt.

The Hook: They control the "Drip-Catchers," the only reliable source of untainted water. If you don't pay their tax, you drink the caustic, mineral-heavy sludge that rots your teeth and gut.
The Figure: Kaelen "The Crag." A massive man whose skin has turned a greyish-pale from decades in the dark. He is known for "The Long Sentence"—he doesn't kill rivals; he simply cuts their tethers while they sleep.

The Echo-Walkers A cult-like group of madmen and mages whose minds snapped under the sensory deprivation. They believe the mountain is a living god and that the echoes are its voice.

The Hook: They move through the darkness with terrifying silence, often "harvesting" eyes or ears from newcomers to "better hear the mountain."
The Figure: Blind Mother Marrow. She claims to have been in the Depths for fifty years. She knows every secret tunnel and "dead zone" where the guards' magic doesn't reach. She deals in information, but the price is always a piece of yourself.

The Low-Tide Scavengers The desperate dregs who live on the very floor of the abyss, miles down. They survive on the refuse that falls from the cells above—broken tools, scraps of food, and... bodies.

The Hook: They are feral and cannibalistic. If you are ever transferred to the Abyssal Floor, you aren't a prisoner anymore; you are prey.
The Figure: Grit. A twitchy, lightning-fast scavenger who has mastered the art of climbing the sheer rock walls without a harness. He is the only one who can smuggle items between the different Descents. Hazards of the Daily Grind
The Pressure Lung: The air this deep is thick and heavy. Every breath feels like pulling silt into your chest. New arrivals often faint from the change in atmospheric pressure.
The Shudder: Every few weeks, the mountain "shifts." The entire prison trembles. Dust chokes the shafts, and those with poorly maintained cells often see their ledges crumble into the void.
The Silence-Bells: Once a day, the Sentinels ring massive iron bells at the peak. The sound funnels down the shaft, amplified by the stone, creating a sonic blast that can rupture eardrums if you don't find a crevice to hide in. The Unspoken Rule Never look down. In the Hallowed Depths, looking down at the miles of darkness below reminds you of the gravity waiting to claim you. Those who stare into the abyss for too long eventually decide to join it.

The Hallowed Depths acts as a melting pot of the Empire’s most unwanted races, though the mountain’s harsh environment strips away the distinctions of the surface world. Dwarves, once masters of the stone, are often the most broken inmates; to be imprisoned within a mountain that refuses to be shaped is their ultimate spiritual torture. Many have devolved into "Gloom-Dwarves," their eyes clouded over with cataracts and their skin turned translucent. Humans make up the bulk of the population, usually surviving through sheer adaptability or by joining the larger gangs, while the occasional Elf is a rare and tragic sight—their long lifespans becoming a curse as they wither without sunlight, often turning into gaunt, skeletal husks known as "Wraiths" who haunt the upper crevices. Among the notable figures, Valerius the Red is a disgraced Human general who leads a splinter cell of the Silicant Brotherhood. He still wears the tattered remnants of his crimson officer’s cloak, and despite the filth, he maintains a military discipline that keeps his men alive. He is known for "The Toll," a system where he protects new arrivals in exchange for their first three years of rations. In contrast stands Thrum, a Half-Orc of legendary size who guards the "Vent-Holes" in the middle miles. Thrum is unique because he is deaf—an advantage in a prison where the sonic bells drive others to madness. He speaks through a complex series of wall-taps and is the only person who can navigate the tunnels during the Silence-Bells without collapsing in agony. Then there is Syllas, an Aasimar whose golden blood has been drained by years of "leeching" by the Echo-Walkers. Once a creature of light, his wings were ceremonially shorn off by the Empire before he was cast down. Now, he is a bitter, cynical fixer who deals in "Light-Spores." He is the closest thing the Gloom-Belt has to a doctor, using his fading celestial spark to cauterize wounds or burn away the mountain-rot that eats at the prisoners' limbs. He doesn't help out of kindness; he helps because he intends to outlive the Emperor who sent him here, and he needs a network of debtors to see it through. Deepest of all, rumored to inhabit a cavern just above the Abyssal Floor, is a creature simply called The Skitter-King. While many believe he was once a Goblin or a Kobold, he has spent so many decades in the crushing dark that his limbs have elongated, and he moves with a multi-jointed gait that defies nature. He is the unofficial master of the Scavengers, and it is said he has carved a throne out of the bones of those who fell from the upper tiers. To the Skitter-King, the Hallowed Depths isn't a prison—it’s a kingdom of gravity, and he is the one who catches what the mountain discards. Would you like to decide which species your character is, or shall we jump into your first interaction with Valerius as he decides if you're worth "The Toll"?

The environment of the Hallowed Depths is a masterclass in psychological and physical oppression. It is a place where the laws of nature—gravity, light, and air—have been weaponized by the Empire to break the human spirit. The Vertical Abyss The most striking feature of the prison is its sheer, terrifying scale. Imagine a hollowed-out mountain where the "hallways" are nothing but narrow stone ledges or swaying rope bridges suspended over a mile-wide central shaft.

Atmospheric Pressure: As you descend, the air changes. At the Mist-Reach, the air is thin, freezing, and smells of snow. By the time you reach the Gloom-Belt, the air becomes "heavy"—thick with the scent of wet stone, metallic ore, and unwashed bodies.
The Humidity: The mountain "sweats." Constant condensation slicks every surface, making every step on the narrow ledges a life-or-death gamble. Moss and bioluminescent fungi provide the only color: a sickly, pulsating neon green or a bruised purple. The "Drip" and the "Deep-Hum" The sensory experience of the Depths is designed to induce madness.
The Drip: Because the shaft acts as a giant chimney, the sound of water dripping from the summit is amplified. A single drop falling a mile sounds like a gunshot when it finally hits the Abyssal Floor. This constant, rhythmic tink-tink-tink becomes a form of psychological torture.
The Deep-Hum: The mountain itself is not silent. Being so deep in the earth, the tectonic plates groan, creating a low-frequency vibration that you feel in your teeth and bones rather than hear with your ears. It creates a permanent state of low-level anxiety, as if the mountain is preparing to swallow you whole. Infrastructure of Despair The Empire did not build rooms; they carved Niches. Most cells are simply three-sided boxes with the fourth side open to the void.
The Grates: Heavy iron grates are sometimes used to seal these niches, but over decades of moisture, they have rusted into jagged, orange fangs that can give a prisoner lockjaw or blood-rot with a single scratch.
The Pulley-Systems: All supplies—meager rations of "Slab-Bread" and "Salt-Meat"—are lowered from the summit via massive iron chains. The sound of these chains rattling against the rock walls is the only way prisoners track time. When the chains stop moving, the "day" has ended. Natural Hazards The environment is actively hostile. "Gas-Pockets" of methane or sulfur occasionally seep through the cracks, suffocating entire cell-blocks in minutes. There are also "Void-Wind" drafts—sudden, violent gusts of freezing air that suck through the central shaft like a vacuum, strong enough to pull a sleeping prisoner right off their ledge if they aren't tethered to a wall-hook.

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