#45 The Survivor's Club

Age: 200 Years

Hidden or Lost?: No

History: If you’ve ever lived through an airplane crash, a massacre, a natural disaster, or any other event where most others perished, don't be surprised if you hear from a member of the Survivor’s Club.

Dating back two centuries, the Survivor’s Club bills itself as a sort of private society and support group for those who lived. But hidden behind the false walls of their swanky clubhouse, a far more sinister purpose lurks.

The club was originally founded by Brittania Kress-Sanders, a wealthy socialite who was nearly killed in a steamer ship explosion, but miraculously survived (despite the length of pipe lodged in her skull). After the accident, Kress-Sanders claimed that she was now privy to a hidden universal truth, that random catastrophe was culling all but the chosen few. According to her visions, the survivors were meant to lead the rest of humanity like sheep. Moreover, she now had a higher calling: to continue testing the worthiness of disaster survivors until an unkillable messianic figure emerged. Kress-Anders jotted down her mad ramblings in a series of dense texts which came to be considered scripture by the growing number of acolytes in her club.

Today, long after Kress-Anders’ death, the Survivor’s Club continues her holy mission, their clubhouse a maze of deadly trials meant to cull the unworthy. Groups of survivors are regularly invited to club soirées, and the chosen few are allowed beyond the ‘Doors of Life,’ above which hangs a plaque bearing the club motto, ‘God Kills. God's Survive.’

Through the grand door are the trial rooms, each one a deadly test of luck and fortitude. There is a room known as The Shattering Clouds in which a sea of glass chandeliers sways, crashing against each other and sending a rain of deadly shards to the floor below. There is The Lead Bramble, a tangle of taught razor wires, most of which will trigger firearms hidden in the walls, but one of which opens the exit. Each new room presents a peril to be overcome.

Anyone who survives to the final chamber will face the Lion of Fate, wherein they will be placed in an arena with the reigning club president and a starving lion. Whoever survives the ensuing battle is considered to be the new chosen one, and they are shown to the Final Mystery, a chamber said to hold an actual fragment of the divine.

Whether the Survivor’s Club is truly the fruit of a divine plan or the rantings of a madwoman, only those who survive will find out.

1. Museum of the Living

2. Survivor’s Hall

3. Kress-Anders Library

4. The Violence

5. The Three Doors

6. The Lead Bramble

7. Vehicular Gauntlet

8. Hall of Lightning

9. Gnostic Closet

10. The Shattering Clouds

11. Parlour of Disease

12. The Wild Trials

13. Lion of Fate Arena

14. The Final Mystery

15. Door of Life