A maglev station in the Southside district of Granite City, Colorado, that was originally designed by Samuel Luke, a brilliant artist and architect. It has since fallen into serious disrepair, and seems to contain far more than its share of secrets. It is nine levels deep, with the ninth being a maintenance level that is inaccessible to the public, and has many side doors, corridors, and passages. It is notable for having a broad variety of angelic architecture and artwork, most of which has become defaced over the years since its original installation.
Per their Wikipedia page, Samuel Luke Station was built as part of a contract with Granite City by famous architect Samuel Luke. Samuel Luke was responsible for construction of the maglev stations of Granite City between 2036 and 2042. These stations were retrofits of original subway stations - Samuel Luke Station was originally Southside 3rd Street Station - converted to the new maglev system. While most of the stations follow traditional values decided upon by the Granite City Civic Aesthetics Commission, the station named after Samuel Luke was designed entirely by the architect, and he was given free reign over the structure and decor. As such, in addition to being a major reconstruction and remodeling project, it was also a major artistic project. The aesthetics of Samuel Luke Station seem centered around Christian mythology, although it is noted for having a variety of other influences, including Gnostic tradition and Jewish mysticism.
The station is a nesting ground of the criminal and seedy element, with two primary street gangs taking up residence in its tunnels and passageways - the Serpent's Youth and the SLS (Samuel Luke Streeters). The Serpent's Youth, while creepy, have yet to be considered a significant criminal threat, but the SLS has caused enough damage to the neighborhood that local activists are pressing the mayor to clean up the station.
The station has seemingly never been updated to deal with modern technology; its original network grid was set up decades ago, and is as decayed and defaced as the rest of the place. Trying to access the Net from within SLS is a bad idea, as the connection path is virus-laced and probably highly unsafe, if it even remains functional for long. Cell uplinks and similar devices tend to fail or malfunction starting at the third level, which is one of several reasons most 'business' tends to be conducted at the food court. The restrooms are almost never 'in order', and it's a bad idea to travel through the station after dark…
The existing mag-lev lines:
When the Granite City city council decided to expand and modernize the subway system, they awarded the contract to maverick architect and artist Samuel Luke. Luke kept to conventional design principles for almost all of the stations, but he insisted on full creative control of one station, to be named after him. He surprised the city by selecting a station in a failing industrial area.
Luke personally painted and sculpted all of the chosen location’s embellishments. Like all of his creations, the art in the station displays his love of melancholy religious iconography. The intersecting vaults in the glass ceiling of the top level, coupled with the arching walls and the statues of angels and saints, led many to compare Samuel Luke Station to a Catholic cathedral. At its unveiling, the delicate craftsmanship and powerful imagery awed onlookers, though many felt there were too many disturbing pieces among the decor for a public facility.
The station has fallen into significant disrepair since then. The granite walls are caked with layers of graffiti. Almost all of the statues are defaced; some have been smashed to unrecognizable lumps of filthy marble. Budget concerns and a lack of interest in the area have stalled plans to remove or replace the damaged pieces, so the station remains in its marred state.
More than the art has decayed over the years. Homeless people use the station for shelter, gangs for a meeting place, drug dealers and prostitutes to find customers, and thieves and robbers to acquire a fresh source of victims. This unsavory element, combined with the disturbing appearance of the station’s shattered stone angels, has resulted in many ghoulish rumors. The neighborhood deteriorates just as the station does.
Samuel Luke was a man of many rumors and few facts. He delighted in giving conflicting stories about his past, when he agreed to give interviews at all. Those who worked for him spread stories of his eccentricities: He refused to work on Wednesdays, shake hands (unless sealing a bargain), or eat in front of others.
He is known for architectural projects that combined the grandiose and mystical with the mundane and prosaic, adapting elements from gothic cathedrals for use in public structures. Samuel Luke Station was the pinnacle of his career… and his final work. Soon after his location was complete, Luke dropped out of sight and has not been heard from since.
Many people asked why Samuel Luke placed his station in a part of Granite City where his art was sure to be vandalized. No one received a satisfactory answer.
Art majors from the local college believe that Luke designed the station as a form of avant-garde art, and the inevitable defacing of the angelic and saintly images is a metaphor for a loss of innocence or the modern degradation of values. Others offer stranger theories: The station is a cover-up for a secret government project. It is being used for occult rituals. It is a gate to Hell. And at least some of these are true…
Samuel Luke is built on three levels: the entrance, a courtyard, and the actual station. Inside the station, there are oak doors that lead into the washrooms and the ticket booths, and the mysterious unmarked metal doors on every subterranean level. The entrance has heavy oak doors on well-oiled hinges. Luke’s original locks on these doors have been supplemented with modern security systems, but the locks themselves are still in good repair.
Graffiti covers much of the station. Although the usual gang tags, angry slogans, and offers of sex do appear in Samuel Luke, they are mostly confined to the upper sections. The messages spray-painted on the walls of the lower levels are religious, cryptic, or most often both. Biblical quotes are common, such as Isaiah 14:12 (“How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”) and Revelation 20:1 (“And I saw an angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand”), as is the name “Samael Lucifer,” an obvious reference to the station’s creator. Other popular phrases are “Heaven is emptied,” “Kingdom of the Blind,” and “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” People have left graffiti in other languages, particularly Hebrew and Latin. Strange symbols lurk in odd corners, phrases in unrecognizable languages and crude, disturbing images of demons and suffering.
At street level, a grass lawn with a gnarled cedar tree and tangles of dying weeds spreads out in front of the subway station. A stone path leads to the entrance. A pair of stone cherubim sit on either side of the doorway. Though the cherubim were carved to appear as lions with human faces and four wings each, their wings have been snapped off and their faces smashed to lumps. A plate-glass roof spills daylight into a courtyard below. Commuters can descend to the courtyard by a staircase, twin escalators, or an elevator, all located behind the wide station doors.
Fifteen minutes after the last scheduled train has gone through Samuel Luke Station for the day, the escalators stop and the custodian locks the doors.
The courtyard at the foot of the stairs has corridors on both sides leading to pay phones and public washrooms. During the day, vendors with carts offer cheap food and drinks, newspapers and magazines, or, occasionally, fresh flowers. The vendors change frequently, but there’s always someone willing to put up with the weird surroundings to sell a few cups of coffee to weary commuters.
Most of the pay phones have been pried open, had their handsets broken off, or been torn off the wall. The few remaining phone books are almost unusable, with most of the pages torn out and words and pictures scribbled on the ones that are left. The inscriptions are in the same style as the rest of the graffiti, except that they relate directly to the book’s entries. New names or phone numbers have replaced some existing ones. Other entries have been completely blacked-out, and new entries have been added. Comments such as “Not the One,” “Give her three apples,” and “Do you know me?” annotate many entries.
The washrooms at Samuel Luke Station are infamous for drug deals and prostitution. These rumors are likely exaggerated – who would use washrooms in such a state? The mirrors are shattered, the walls are coated in graffiti and unidentifiable stains, the toilets have backed up, and the floors are covered in toilet paper and pools of liquid.
On the other side of the courtyard is a small garden. It is open to the sky and rises to street level; in wet weather, this frequently results in mud and puddles throughout the station. The garden includes ash trees, cedars, and a pair of apple trees, all tangled with weeds and bushes. A marble Francis of Assisi sits on one side of a bench now grown over with foliage, preaching to a flock of stone birds. His eyes have been chiseled out and his fingers shattered, and some of the birds are gone save for sharp lumps where their feet once perched. A marble angel beneath the cedar tree wrestles with a hippopotamus-like beast, both long since decapitated in an impressive feat of vandalism.
A life-size granite statue of a woman stands between the two apple trees. She has fangs, a snake’s tail instead of feet, and she holds up her hands in desperate supplication toward Heaven. This figure, which most people identify as Lilith, is the only completely undamaged piece of art in the station.
A fountain sits at the boundary of the garden and the courtyard. At its center is a statue of the Virgin Mary, clasping a vase from which pours a stream of water. The statue is chipped all over and streaked with blood-red paint. Her robe completely covers her feet, which piques some Catholics (traditional iconography always shows at least one of Mary’s feet, proving that she is not a hoofed devil in disguise). People use the water around the statue as a wishing well, tossing in coins, animal bones, little dolls, and other strange objects; it’s difficult at a glance to distinguish the occult offerings from mere trash.
The escalators to the trains are long and steep; commuters who are prone to vertigo generally wait for the elevator rather than ride slowly down those stairs. In bas-reliefs alongside the escalators, naked androgynous angels fly through the walls, stone hands thrust out in supplication. Most of the hands are missing.
At the bottom of the escalators is a small landing leading to the tunnels. From here down, uplinks get no reception – even radios have trouble picking up a signal. On the landing is a single ticket booth. The booth is always locked, whether or not an employee is inside, and is protected by bulletproof glass. No money is kept in the booth after hours. Drawing the Samuel Luke Station shift is never pleasant, and the ticket vendors stuck in the booth are never friendly. A counter nearby has a sign reading “Information” but hasn’t been staffed in years; there are no security guards assigned to the station.
Tunnels beyond the ticket booth branch off to the right and left, blocked by turnstiles that won’t turn until commuters insert a ticket or monthly pass. These tunnels lead to the two platforms on either side of the tracks. Overhead signs once declared which direction and which lines ran from each platform, but they were ripped down long ago and never replaced. Strangers to the station frequently end up on the wrong platform for the direction they want to take, or even on the wrong train entirely.
More broken angel statues adorn the masonry of the two tunnels, in poses that imply singing, praying, and other more traditionally pious activities. One wall of each tunnel holds advertisements, none of which stay for long before being ripped down, covered in graffiti, or pasted over with flyers for local events. The other wall features Luke’s paintings of angels, prophets, and saints in a variety of poses: Moses parting the sea, John of Patmos witnessing the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Adam and Eve being driven out of Eden by cherubim. God and Jesus Christ are never depicted, though the Virgin Mary frequently appears. Many of the glass panels covering these pictures have been shattered, and many of the paintings are slashed, spray-painted, or otherwise defaced.
When Samuel Luke Station was constructed, the plans called for more maglev tunnels and infrastructure than were actually completed. Locked doors hide these unfinished areas. Squatters inhabit some of them, and they could be safe houses for criminals or the lairs of subterranean monsters. The unmarked doors have spawned lots of rumors, both true and false.
Level 3 is home to the Red Line on the southern side and Blue Line on the northern side.
These levels, accessible through the escalators and elevators, contain additional stations for the various lines of Granite City. The deeper one descends into the Station, the more elaborate the statues and artwork - and the more cryptic and bizarre the vandalism. Worse, there are various tunnels that were intended to connect to other lines, but now are only inhabited by squatters, criminals, and worse…
Level 4 is home to the Green Line on the southern side and Orange Line on the northern side.
Level 5 is home to the Purple Line on the southern side and Black Line on the northern side.
Level 6 is home to the Yellow Line on the southern side and Pink Line on the northern side.
Those who manage to descend to level 7 generally do so via the elevator; the escalators don't descend to this level. Level 7 doesn't require any special key to reach, but those venturing down to it will find two empty subway stations, an empty ticket booth and information counter, and an impressive locked door that leads to the Granite City Transit Monitoring Station. The northern subway station actually conceals the entrance to the EMC Agency base behind yet another ordinary locked door.
The GCTMS' inner workings are unknown; few people enter it or even know that it exists beneath Samuel Luke Station. Those that do claim that it maintains a staff of bioroid custodians who tend to the maglev system in secret, or a sapient AI that monitors not only the maglevs but also all traffic in Granite City, or a demonic spirit arranging for the damnation of those who ride its rails.
Samuel Luke Station has accumulated many legends, some more plausible than others. Who knows if any - or all - of them are true?
A parking garage adjacent to the Station, with a hidden sub-garage connecting to the Agency. This garage is four levels deep and concealed behind a sliding metal door on the sub-basement that leads to a wide ramp down to the Agency parking area.
A mysterious office building with a working phone and a conference room. What secrets lay beyond its doors? You met a Feral vampire here.
A forgotten shopping mall from the days when the maglevs were subway trains, half-flooded. A Lurker was discovered here.