Steam Maze

Survey notes

Beneath the cave layer, the Engine's service infrastructure forms a labyrinth of steam pipes, cooling conduits, crawl spaces, and ventilation shafts — the plumbing of the whole civilization. Nobody lives here. The tunnels were built for small maintenance drones on timed rotations, and the layout is deliberately non-linear to discourage casual traversal. When the maze misbehaves — steam looping through routes that never existed, dead warning lamps flickering red in patterns like handwriting — the wild caves and the ordered machine city suddenly become the same place.

Dog catches a scent from Transit Hub: old brass, mineral oil, coolant salt, and Source-resonance residue. It is the Steam Horn, an old original-Engine instrument built by old-age masters, made to turn pressure into music instead of clamping it. But the maze defeats ordinary tracking. Steam erases scent, oil trails split into false patrol loops, and several paths leave the floor entirely.

Full recovery demands the wider game's lessons: Grapple Hook for suspended pipe routes, Portal Grenade for maintenance-portal rooms and the stranded Foundry Crane, Scanner for invisible robot oil trails, Cleansing Mist for poisoned steam, Fire Grenade for flash-frozen condensation walls. Six keys, six branches, one locked chamber. The Steam Horn is no harmonic — but played during the Warden battle in Sundered Village, its old pressure chord disrupts her sealed-route language.