#27 The Soft Cells

Age: 200 years

Hidden or Lost?: No

History: The living prison called ‘The Soft Cells’ by the frightened lawbreakers of the Kilva Wastes, is not just a dungeon, but a titanic living creature. Known only as the jailbeast, none are quite sure of its origins, whether it’s the last of its species, a mutant monstrosity, or some other anomalous creature. But what is certain is that the giant wandering prison is ruled and controlled by the Jailers of Urn, an order of silent, masked warriors who worship incarceration.

As the jailbeast lumbers across the blasted landscape, nearby settlements and larger cities will often deliver their undesirables into the hands of the Jailers in exchange for scrap and salvage. Other times the Jailers themselves will chase and detain wanderers, accusing them of having broken one of Urn’s inscrutable codes. However the sentence is passed down, once a person is given to the Soft Cells, there is no escape.

It’s believed that the jailbeast is sustained by the guilt of those inside, so rather than being fed to the beast, inmates are lowered into a series of reeking blowholes in its back. From there they are processed through a series of psysensitive intestinal tubes that squeeze and sort each poor soul based on their supposed crime. The remorseless and truly evil are sent to a wide gastric sea of acid to be burned to nothing (although some say a small community of the very worst still survive in secret). The majority are sent to the Soft Cells themselves, cramped chambers of living tissue that emerge like blisters on the inner walls of the jailbeast’s labyrinthian ventricles. Jailers of the order patrol the flesh halls, checking in on the inmates through the thin-yet-indestructible membranes.

There are only two ways out of the Soft Cells: to be released by the Jailers, although there is no recorded instance of this, or to be consumed by the cell itself, broken down and finally excreted by one of the thousand sandy teats on the jailbeast’s underbelly as bonemilk (the Jailers live on the stuff).

Be careful where you sin, because if you feel the rumble of the Soft Cells rattling across the cracked plain of the waste, it may already be too late.

1. Gut Warden Cl’Tek’s Office

2. Guard Towerhorns

3. Jailer Barracks

4. Entry Elevator

5. Temple of the Confined God

6. Guilty Pits

7. The Caged Heart

8. Sea of Bile

9. Organelle Fields

10. Hidden Chapel

11. The Soft Cells

12. Intestinal Gauntlet

13. Sacred Cephalus

14. Gallows Flank