LEAP Organization and Lifestyle
It’s well known by members of LEAP that the League was founded in the Grand Library by a small collective of individuals who refused to submit to the challenges of the labyrinth. With few options available to them, they worked to chart and catalogue the labyrinth and the knowledge held within. To this day the Grand Library has been constantly staffed, and many League members sleep in cots and hammocks between the stacks.
League members seek out discovery competitively as a means of survival and as a pastime. There are enough resources in the labyrinth to enable a sedentary lifestyle, but a strong culture of personal charisma and determination leads many to risk themselves and explore. Those who do not provide often take up facilitating roles, or become subjects, servants, or even sycophants to those who succeed in exploring the labyrinth.
The League is largely sustained through goods found in the labyrinth, and has routinely been able to find enough goods to sustain its members. A distinct advantage of life in the labyrinth is that one can sometimes find pre-existing facilities in working order. One such facility is a large conservatory and greenhouse that enables the cultivation of some ‘backbone crops’ that form the baseline of the league’s diet.
The Age of Discovery presents many new opportunities for knowledge, and Wayfarer Trade Princes have been fairly accommodating towards LEAP in consideration of the information and unique resources they can supply.
Depths of the Labyrinth
The depths of the labyrinth are treacherous as to be considered unfair, with a host of bombs and traps that sometimes reorganize, seemingly in spite of that try-try-again spirit. Failed explorers are not reviled or outcast, but regarded with pity - sometimes exploited by the promise of another venture. Some areas of the labyrinth already have resurrection tethers, while others are occulted such that you cannot return to an area where you have died.
Deeper corridors play host to a series of monsters referred to as “Deep Dwellers”. Isolation within labyrinthine locations have lead these creatures to take on distinctly inhuman shapes. Not all of these are hostile, and may observe explorers with bizarre curiosity, or make offerings in the hope of amiable consorting. Their motives and abilities are alien, one of the mysteries of the labyrinth.
Locations
Grand Library - the central bastion of the League, and their greatest repository of knowledge and treasures. Entry by non-members demands a strict screening process, and the assignment of a library card.
Eden’s Leftovers - a large greenhouse and conservatory, irrigated by mechanisms built into the labyrinth walls. Operated with little incident for many years, but many hold that the processes of this facility will someday dramatically fail, or that an unknown entity is controlling the facility.
The Wishwall - a large clay wall that molds and shifts to display messages carved into the walls throughout the labyrinth. Messages carved into the wishwall can sometimes be found by those wandering the labyrinth’s corridors, and essences pressed into the wall will appear elsewhere, supposedly where they are most needed.
Smoking Lounges - among the resources available in the labyrinth, there is an odd surplus of tobacco and alcohol. There is a plant that grows through walls and cracks in the labyrinth known as lungvine that steadily filters pollutants and smoke from the air. League members have had success in cultivating and relocating this plant to keep the air clear in dedicated smoking lounges. It’s said you can only locate a smoking lounge if you bring a story to tell.
Organization
The constant shuffling of the labyrinth can be managed so long as a given space is occupied, there are unique objects in the space, and its relation to other occupied spaces is documented. The shifting of the labyrinth is never witnessed directly, but occurs when rooms are unobserved. Less-adventurous members of the league maintain a constant presence in rooms that are needed to support life within the maze. Some members of LEAP spend their entire lives within a single room, continually tidying and polishing the relics that form landmarks by which the labyrinth is charted.
Any person who primarily maintains such facilities is titled a Custodian, and the head of any large and important facility is titled a Curator. Of special note are those who staff libraries and places of learning. The title of Librarian is considered a privilege and a badge of honor among the league, as knowledge is the meter against which “rival” explorers are compared. A well-read and well-studied custodian may come to know more than an explorer, and command commensurate respect.
Both explorers and custodians take apprentices and pass on their knowledge to younger LEAP members. An apprentice’s success reflects well on a mentor, and a prominent mentor can provide a leg-up when a student seeks a role in society.
Lifestyle
Within the labyrinth, one is never far from danger. With the sudden rearrangement of passages and appearance of traps, injury and death become a matter of course. Some become discouraged and withdrawn, worn down by this constant struggle. Others can become callous, and devalue the hardships that others may face.
Despite extensive facilities and several wondrous things, the Labyrinth has very little in the way of technology. There are books about technology in the labyrinth, but the resources to build such things come up short. League members enjoy a number of simple distractions and pleasures, and spend much time reading, playing word games and simple board games such as Chess and Go.
Rival explorers within the labyrinth can sometimes get rough with one another, but there is little in the way of a formal justice code amongst the league. Violence is forbidden in most public facilities. There is a superstition among league members that those who chart a bloody course will meet a bloody end, and the labyrinth seems apt to deliver on this notion time and time again.
Clothing within the league diverges between matters of practicality and matters of station. Practical wear generally consists of found gear with a lot of pockets to facilitate the use of tools and gathering of found objects. Successful explorers will sometimes have a lackey with a bursting backpack. Clothing of station is increasing in popularity among those LEAP members active outside the labyrinth, as lesser danger enables greater finery. Reading jackets and smoking jackets are considered to be in-style. One commonality is hats - the labyrinth is well stocked with weathered fedoras, pith helmets, stetsons and bucket hats.