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mysteryfleshpit · 2 years

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Q&A 005

@shnowyfox asked:

Where do you find so many of these artifacts relating to the park's history? And have you ever found artifacts that may have been from before Jim found the pit? (Like things from the native American tribes and whatnot?)

A few years ago, I forget now how many, I came into possession of a small storage building previously owned by a local community college. What I have posted has largely come from this scattered and disorganized collection of items and documents. As far as I have looked I have not found many artifacts from before the “discovery” of the pit by James Jackson.

@bub14dog-blog asked:

How does the Pit stay hydrated? And does the Pit seem to have a urinary system?

The Superorganism shares an adjacency to both the Edwards and Ogallala Aquifers, which Geobiologists speculate supply most of the water needs of the organism. However, it is worth noting that the Superorganism appears to have a high hydration retention rate with minimal water loss for its size. Much of the internal water volume is located in the chemical composition of the fluid found within the Gastric Seas, or within smaller but nonetheless massive water bladders which seem to provide reserves of fresh water for the biological process of the Superorganism.

Urine, or other identifiable forms of liquid waste, are probable but as-yet undocumented. The unique geobiology of the Mystery Flesh Pit suggests a complex metabolic cycle in which typical waste materials (namely minerals) are broken down and sequestered for use in other parts of the anatomy instead of totally expelled.

@love-abandon asked:

have you recovered any information regarding the state of the mystery flesh pit during the 90's?

Most of what we know about the pit comes from the 1990s, as that decade is widely considered the “golden age” of the park. From 1989 until around 2002, the park experienced yearly visitor throughput comparable to regional tourist destinations like SeaWorld or the Magic Kingdom. While the bulk of infrastructure development and construction took place in the early 1980s, the 1990s saw massive public and private investment in such infrastructure, including the Intrapark Resort and the renovations to both the Lower and Upper Visitor Centers. If there was a time to have gone to the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park to experience it at its best, it would have been the mid 1990s.

@joebob6448 asked:

Have there been any occurrences of ecological interactions between the creatures which live within the superorganism and ones outside of it besides amalgamations? For example, predation, parasitic, or even non-mutagenic symbiotic relations?

It is now well-known that many of the parasitic species within the Permian Basin Superorganism routinely surfaced and hunted small wild and domesticated animals, with some reports dating back to the mid-1800s. Even with the intervention of Texas state Fisheries and Wildlife personnel, as well as interventions from the National Park Service, it continues to be a minor problem in the areas surrounding surface orifices. Prior to the introduction of European cattle and other livestock to Texas, however, it is unknown to what extent this sort of scavenger hunting took place.

@goblinus-maximumbo asked:

How does Corpusite form? Also what's Oscuralite and why is Anodyne mining for it?

Photograph of an operating mining team clearing out fluid buildup. Oscuralite is the mineralogical name given to “black bone”, so named due to its incredibly dark coloring. This coloring is the result of a dense concentration of microscopic, helically-oriented carbon strands. Oscuralite occurs within the center of certain mineral bone structures within the Superorganism and are theorized by Venteriologists to function as a rigid reinforcement or “primary skeleton” to complement the more conventional (if not enormous) skeletal system which serves as a more pliable, “secondary” skeleton. Oscuralite exhibits a range of incredible material properties, such as structural rigidity higher than steel, a strength-to-weight ratio fifty times higher than titanium, thermal insulation capabilities greater than that of aerospace-grade ceramic composites, all while having a mass of less than 730 grams per cubic meter of material. Corpusite, or “Pearls”, as they are often referred to in the industry, are nacreous mineral formations which nearly always exhibit exceptionally-perfect spherical geometry. Due to the sub-molecular spherical tolerance that Corpusite spheres demonstrate, they have become invaluable as precision components in certain optical and measurement applications. Additionally, the near-complete uniformity of the crystalline structure which comprises the spheres has exhibited a secondary (though arguably more valuable) property of superconductivity at a temperature range of -38°C to over 1100°C. These spheres are commonly found in loose clusters within specialized tissue structures within the Superorganism, and are believed by venteriologists to be formed through a nacreous aggregation of discrete, though structurally-identical layers. The exact venterial function of Corpusite, as well as the organs which produce the material, is hypothesized to serve some role in the coordination of the nervous system of the Superorganism, but this is still poorly understood.

@ansalander asked:

Is there a wedding chapel?

And

@247slayc asked:

reactivated and rebranded this account just to ask has there ever been a wedding at the park before its defunction?

Yes, many marriages were officiated (and subsequently consummated) around and within the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. For reasons understood neither to myself or the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, the park was a popular nuptial destination. Within the Lower Visitor Center itself was an interfaith chapel which could be rented for wedding ceremonies with a small deposit. Additionally, due to a pre-NPS contractual clause requiring an ordained ecclesiastical minister to be on-site within the LVC during operating hours, officiation of wedding ceremonies was also a limited service offered. The addition of several hospitality facilities in the late 1980s to the park only increased the annual instances of weddings and on-site receptions. The Hilton Intrapark Resort even openly advertised wedding packages.

@jurassicateer asked:

Mystery Flesh Pit National Park Tycoon video game?

Frontier Developments, Colossal Order (or anyone, really!), my DMs are open. If you guys want it to happen, you'll have to let the world know. The same goes for a TV show/Film/miniseries/Chili's promotional tie-in. @bearb0i asked:

So I HAVE to ask— The Bronchial Forests, I noticed there were a few enclosed restrooms. I wonder, is there any information on where and what they did with human waste inside the park, especially in a system like lungs?

Restrooms within the park (both those found within larger structures like ranger stations as well as stand-alone restroom structures along trails) all feature active plumbing connections for wastewater removal as well as freshwater supply. Strict guidelines regarding policies for waste disposal within the venterial environment had been in place from the beginning of federal management of the park in the late 70s. A complex system of pumps and lifting stations collected wastewater before transporting it to a water treatment & reclamation facility adjacent to the support plant on the surface.

@bub14dog-blog asked:

Have any discoveries been made about the Dermal Layer?

As discovered during surface borehole drilling operations, the typical dermal thickness of the Superorganism is much greater than the entry orifice zones would otherwise seem to indicate. On average, the outer layer of the Superorganism consists of several dozen layers of dynamically-oriented cartilage plates, interlaced with dense networks of carbon-rich connective tissues which brings the overall average thickness to well over 300ft. Diamond-embedded carbide bits were required to successfully drill through this outer carapace, but the process was tedious and costly as it necessitated the sacrifice of multiple tooling bits and weeks of labor to bore a single 6” hole.

@rin-aldrin asked:

Has anything resembling ambulatory organs or limbs been discovered at the edges of the Superorganism? If not are there any theories of how it would move if/when it wakes up.

Yes. These “limbs” are responsible for bioseismic movements monitored by the United States Geological Survey. Because of this movement, more is generally known about the gross anatomical form of this part of the Superorganism than sections above or below these limbs, though geobiologists have known for decades that the organism consists of a large “mantle” which sits above the five primary limbs. Below is an artist's rendition of what the Permian Basin Superorganism might look like if it ever became fully active and ambulatory:

Artist’s depiction of a fully ambulatory Immanis colosseus.

@schwulerschmetterling asked:

I couldn't help but notice on the map, and now I'm quite curious. What is the "hall of horrors"? Judging by the fact that it's on an un-reinforced trail and isn't marked as park infrastructure suggests it's a natural formation. Also, it seems to be marked as an area to be quiet. What exactly is it?

It's no mistake that there isn't much information to be known about the “Hall of Horrors”. To even get there required a very strenuous hike by experienced, adventurous visitors. Perhaps in an attempt to preserve the mystique of the area, all who have seen it politely refrain from describing it in any meaningful way, insisting instead that it should be experienced in-person.

@darbussy asked:

Does the pit have teeth or does stuff fall down to get digested by the acids in the stomach?

While lifeforms have fallen into entry orifices shortly before being consumed, venteriologists believe this is more of a response to accidental incursion of foreign wildlife than a deliberate feeding mechanism. Instead, scientists have observed that the Superorganism requires a relatively small amount of organic tissue matter for its day-to-day metabolic processes. However, the volume of organic tissues “in reserve” required to sustain this leads many venteriologists to speculate that the Superorganism operates on extremely long feeding cycles many hundreds of millions of years in length. Fossil & bone evidence found within the gastric systems of the Pit supports a theory that the Superorganism was aquatic at a previous point in its life, and utilized an as-yet-unknown feeding mechanism to filter an entire ocean out of its large, tissue-rich organisms through this mechanism and into digestion and storage organs. This is also the working hypothesis for the prehistoric whale carcass found within the park.

@lagartija-69 asked:

What would happen if you filled a dump truck full of red bull or something and put it in the pit?

If the scale of the containment operations are any indication, I would imagine that you could dump a hundred dump trucks' worth of red bull into the Mystery Flesh Pit and might not receive any satisfactory response.

@mooncandy10101 asked:

Would you think the park could ever reopen?

Of course, I think it is inevitable unless it kills us all first.

@vv-i-o-l-e-tt asked:

Purely out of curiosity is there any particular reason that cave cooper the mascot so closely resembles that orange devil of home improvement, Homer the Home Depot mascot guy

If I had to speculate, I would guess that an untalented hack illustrator, beleaguered with the task of coming up with a silly looking mascot over a short period of time (say, for example, a lunch break), did the lazy thing and just traced an existing silly looking mascot. But no one knows for sure.

stinkw333d asked:

does the creature have a singular heart? or is it multiple smaller systems throughout the body like the nervous system/brain?

The vascular systems of the Superorganism are distributed in a way similar to the nervous system, though not as neatly organized. The Flesh Pit contains many separate but interdependent circulatory systems. This diagram may be helpful:

bandit--6 asked:

Was there ever any protest or push back from Animal rights groups or environmentalist after the discovery of the pit? I've read through the blog and haven't seen talk of any such event, I may have missed it. Part of me can just see them trying to keeping the equipment from entering.

There were in the late 1970s, though such efforts were and continued to be uncoordinated. It's worth noting that the exact nature of the Mystery Flesh Pit was not well known by the general public, and many did not view it as an “animal” at all. The fractured and sporadic nature of what protests did occur largely led to a decreasing awareness until post-2007, when the issue received substantially more attention.

anonymous asked:

Were there any plans to expand the park further or do any other crazy things like the resort in the gastric sea?

In the early 2000s there was an effort to open a “2nd gate” at one of the entry orifices that was much closer to the Midland/Odessa metropolitan area. Guests would have descended the entry orifice via an articulated elevator to a second Lower Visitor Center. A high-speed monorail would have connected this second resort to the main National Park complex, but the project never made it beyond the concept phase.

@arcticsirius asked:

If the moving of flesh is such an issue, would it be possible to make a base inside a bone-structure of the organism or have bones not been found as of yet?

One of the main principles in venterial engineering is the establishment of anchor points wherever possible. For this reason, many larger pieces of infrastructure (ranger stations, utility facilities, mining facilities) are built within/near skeletal or other rigid tissues. Additionally, it is essential that any venterial survey conducted of an area of the fleshscape have at least three reference points on/within a bony or rigid tissue body by which to gauge movement of the surrounding viscera.

@a-gucci-household asked:

Can we hear more about the “Marrow Folk”? What cause this rumor to pop up? Is there any substance to these claims?

@scarfanon asked:

Given that the Permean Basin Superorganism was discovered by accident during a mining excavation, is it possible that more than one of these creatures exist? Perhaps one was responsible for the Bloop recording, or may be lying dormant within the Yellowstone supervolcano.

This was an issue of concern in the years following the discovery, but no evidence of another Superorganism, or at least no evidence of one anywhere close to the size of the Permian Basin Superorganism, has been located domestically or abroad.

@eldritchdraaks asked:

What quarter of 2022 or even 2023 can the MFP book be potentially expected to be made available to the public?

And @bigorangemooseman asked:

Progress on the book? And where one would be able to purchase?

Early-to-mid 2023 is a generous date that I aim to have something out by, but as I am attempting to publish the book traditionally, this of course will most likely change. I am still in the process of finishing the writing portion for the book, so I have not yet formally reached out to any literary agents or publishers, but will update my progress when I begin that process on my Patreon page.

#mystery flesh pit #mystery flesh pit national park #worldbuilding #text #lore #cosmic horror #body horror #unreality #horror art #horror worldbuilding

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