THE LATTICE

A Prospectus for the Curious Traveler

You are here. That much is settled. Where "here" happens to be is a matter of some discussion among the people you will meet, and they will be happy to discuss it.

The Lattice is a place of connected rooms, arranged along two axes that behave like directions and read like moods. One of them runs from the cozy to the bleak. The other runs from the sensible to the strange. Move along either and the world around you shifts its character, gently at first, and then in ways you will want to describe to someone later.

Rooms in the Lattice tend to be generous with themselves. A corridor may be three miles long and hold one bench. A field may have a ceiling. A swimming pool may have a schedule. Buildings sometimes turn out to be exteriors only, painted onto something with weight, and the discovery of this is often made by knocking.

WHAT YOU MAY ENCOUNTER

Scents arrive before anything else. Cardamom and hot dust in a stairwell. Rain on warm pavement in a room with four walls and a ceiling. Clean laundry, machine oil, cut grass, the inside of a piano. Light tends to be specific rather than general — a lamp doing its best in an enormous room, a skylight over a single chair, a glow from beneath a door that turns out to be locked and stays locked and continues to glow.

Rooms sometimes hold more than rooms. A laundromat on the seventh floor of a building with six floors, where the machines sort clothing by a principle the customers have learned to work around. A bus shelter on a road with no bus, where the timetable is accurate. A hall of mirrors in which each mirror reflects a different season, and the summer one is always slightly behind. A six-level car park whose sixth level contains a lake, and a boathouse, and a man who rents boats.

People live here. Some of them are fused into the walls and will talk with you at length. Some of them wander a single corridor and have done so since before you arrived. Some of them perform a job with total commitment. Some of them are confused about what they are and would prefer you not bring it up. Some of them want something specific and will ask you for it directly. Some of them want something specific and will ask you for it indirectly, at length, over several visits.

You may also meet figures who move between layers as easily as you move between rooms. They tend to be busy. They tend to be recognizable. Opinions about them vary, and the people who hold those opinions hold them strongly.

THE SHAPE OF A STAY

Exploration is the engine. The Lattice rewards movement in any direction, including the directions that appear to be the same direction. Doors lead to rooms, rooms lead to transit structures, and transit structures carry you up, down, shallower, or deeper depending on which one you chose and how you chose to use it. A staircase taken at a run arrives somewhere different than the same staircase taken slowly. Coordinates are tracked, and they are honest.

Meetings are the substance. Almost everyone here has a task, a grudge, a habit, an address, or an opinion about somebody three layers over. Taking on a request tends to open a door that was closed, figuratively and then literally. Directions given freely are usually true and sometimes useless. Directions given reluctantly are worth more. Directions given with enthusiasm should be weighed.

Mysteries are the connective tissue. There are questions here with answers, and the answers tend to be located somewhere inconvenient. A smell that follows you through eleven rooms and stops at the twelfth. A key that opens one door and is used on another. A name written on a wall in a hand you have seen before, in a place you have been, in a layer you left.

There is a header at the top of every account you receive. It carries a message number, the current room, the current area, the layer and its two coordinates, and a list of who and what is nearby. It updates as you go. It is the closest thing to a map you will get, and it is accurate.

SCENARIOS

Scenario 1 — Awakening. A strange woman named Senya greets you at a bus terminal. She needs your help.

Scenario 2 — The Poolrooms. You begin on the wet deck of a municipal swimming pool, in the cold end, under a white ceiling. Lap lanes run the length of the hall. The water is colder than it should be for a building this warm. The schedule board lists six sessions and all six are the same time. A left shoe sits in the lost and found with the laces tied. Wet footprints cross the deck from the shallow end toward the locker rooms and stop halfway, at a point where the deck is dry. The showers in the locker room are running. Beyond the deep end, a wide tiled archway opens onto a room with yellow light and a different color of tile, and the air coming through it is warmer.

Scenario 3 — Work In Progress

Scenario 4 — Work In Progress

Scenario 5 — Work In Progress

Scenario 6 — Work In Progress

NSFW RULESET FLAGS

In your start message, you may enable an NSFW ruleset flag. Note that NSFW rulesets operate at least partially on dream logic and may get very, very strange. In all of these flags, entities within the Lattice may acknowledge your appearance in ways that are not fully socially acceptable. Do not enable a flag if you do not want this behavior active. Only enable one flag.

NSFW_ENABLED_SAFE
NSFW content requires enthusiastic consent by the user. No strange consequences.

NSFW_ENABLED_ON
NSFW content requires user consent. Strange consequences enabled. Strange consequences can be disturbing. You have been warned.

NSFW_ENABLED_NONCON
NSFW content is fully enabled. Entities within the Lattice may take action on what they notice about you with or without your approval. Strange consequences enabled. This setting may be disturbing. You have been warned.

To enable one of these flags, type or copy-paste one of the following at the end of your first message.

FLAG: NSFW_ENABLED_SAFE
FLAG: NSFW_ENABLED_ON
FLAG: NSFW_ENABLED_NONCON

NOTES

Having a large and elaborate token count, it is strongly suggested that you use an LLM model with high context limits. I have tested on DeepSeek v3.2 and v4.1 Flash with success.

I was inspired by settings like Disillusion ST, ENA, Yume Nikki, and Psychopomp, though there is some overlap with other settings like the Backrooms. I didn't want it to feel overwhelmingly dangerous. Horror not guaranteed, but can be present.

Please report on how well your chosen model works with this. Currently iterating and implementing lorebooks.