The Three Phases (Floor-8 Key Hunt)

Cascadia's announced structure for clearing Floor Eight. At phase two every squad is teleported to a starting room, picks a destination, and is locked to exactly six totems thereafter; their map marks a key 10–15 km away, to be retrieved within 48 hours, that opens only the stairwell beside their own starting area. At phase three, keyholders teleport back near their start to exit, while any keyless squad is dropped onto a keyholder's doorway to block them, free to murder them for the key. Multiple keyless squads can stack on one door, so crawler-on-crawler bloodshed is all but guaranteed unless every squad finds its own key.

Book 6 appearances

• Chapter 27 — Cascadia announces the phase-two/three exit structure: pick a destination, lock to six totems, retrieve a distant key in 48 hours.
• Chapter 38 — The on-the-ground version: Donut explains the token premise, that the squad must collect nine tokens before it can fight the last guy for the key.
• Chapter 40 — Chris scouts the final boss area and finds it blocked by a giant vending machine that must be fed all nine tokens to open; the enemy deckmaster inside only activates and becomes corporeal when the squad leader approaches.
• Chapter 52 — The stairwells open: every squad with a key is marked on the map, and keyless squads are teleported to a keyholder’s door to fight for it.
• Chapter 53 — Phase three turns the door fights into card battles with one twist: a keyholder who plays a Flee card automatically forfeits a key to the victor, and keys can be neither dropped nor voluntarily traded.

Related entries

• Deck-to-Deck Combat (The Card System) (Notification)
• Cascadia (Character)
• The Eighth Floor — The Ghosts of Earth (Place)
• Carl (Character)

Browse

• All System Notifications
• Everything debuting in Book 6, Chapter 27
• All of The Eye of the Bedlam Bride