The Elysium Plaza rises up from among the surrounding subdivisions like the mesa from "Close Encounters". Built in the early 1960's, the three-storey mall is a circular structure of mid-twentieth century postmodernism with a variety of odd towers and minarets crowning its ramparts. Visitors never have to walk across a hot parking lot; the underground parking garages are extensive and always seem to have room for one more minivan or SUV. Visitors enjoy a climate-controlled shopping experience--lack of windows and skylights mean no direct sunlight--among a bewildering variety of retail outlets. There are a wide variety and number of stores for a shopping center its size. No less than three major "anchor" stores and any number of oddball boutiques fill a confusing layout. There are often complaints that the passageways twist in unnerving manners...or can even seem to shift randomly...but the deals one can find draw people back.
It's also not as if there's anywhere else to go within twenty miles.
Customers might think otherwise if they understood that underneath the great fountain in the center of the Plaza is a tiny, highly focused hellmouth. The investors who created the Plaza really should have checked the credentials of the architect. He turned out to be a secretly-insane cultist who worshipped the Old Ones. Selecting the site on a known weak spot in reality and using a form of "unholy architecture", the architect sacrificed himself in an obscene ritual that morphed the reality-tear into a full-blown hellmouth. It is a small one of its kind, for the effects don't reach far beyond the walls of the Plaza. Unfortunately, the reality warping effect of this baby "boca del inferno" is quite intense.
Stuck with a white elephant, the owners papered over the chaos visited on unwary shoppers with a *really* good PR firm and the general cluelessness of population when it comes to the supernatural. Still, the Elysium Plaza is the subject of much legend among the teenagers who congregate and work part-time there. They say you really don't want to get too deep into the lower levels of the parking garage. Or eat at that strange fast-food place in the corner of the food court. Or piss off mall security. And that mapping out the hallways results in a floorplan eerily like a pentacle in a circle.
Also, don't shoplift. The mannequins in the department stores may not have always been such...
It's also not as if there's anywhere else to go within twenty miles.
Customers might think otherwise if they understood that underneath the great fountain in the center of the Plaza is a tiny, highly focused hellmouth. The investors who created the Plaza really should have checked the credentials of the architect. He turned out to be a secretly-insane cultist who worshipped the Old Ones. Selecting the site on a known weak spot in reality and using a form of "unholy architecture", the architect sacrificed himself in an obscene ritual that morphed the reality-tear into a full-blown hellmouth. It is a small one of its kind, for the effects don't reach far beyond the walls of the Plaza. Unfortunately, the reality warping effect of this baby "boca del inferno" is quite intense.
Stuck with a white elephant, the owners papered over the chaos visited on unwary shoppers with a *really* good PR firm and the general cluelessness of population when it comes to the supernatural. Still, the Elysium Plaza is the subject of much legend among the teenagers who congregate and work part-time there. They say you really don't want to get too deep into the lower levels of the parking garage. Or eat at that strange fast-food place in the corner of the food court. Or piss off mall security. And that mapping out the hallways results in a floorplan eerily like a pentacle in a circle.
Also, don't shoplift. The mannequins in the department stores may not have always been such...