Travelling through machinery areas

When I originally described machinery hexes I imagined only the machinery of the ship, but these zones are huge at six miles wide. As such I was trying to imagine how I would describe them as players move through, it can’t just be more pipes. In practice, several features have come to light through play.

Also, there is the factor of lighting. I don’t imagine this as a perpetual "underdark". There is still functional lighting and sun lamps that allow for a natural day night cycle of the normal hex crawl. Well in most cases anyway, some areas may be dark and rundown. In the main, I want these spaces to be large, larger than life, interiors that function as exteriors. Players can always traverse areas more like corridors, but I need large areas that you can fly an airship through. 

I eventually plan to make a 1.5 mile hex generator for each 6 mile hex to flesh them out. You could also roll 4 randomly to describe the travel through a hex in narrative form. So far, I have come up with the following three main areas, though I'm still trying to brainstorm a few others.

Plazas

Most travel is along massive open plazas with mile high ceilings, garden corridors, balconies either side and transport corridors passing through. These areas remain illuminated. They could have once been residential or commercial in nature. Given advanced materials production, industrial areas would be fundamentally different.

Describe it as though the players are walking through a valley. Vast mile-wide plazas. Many of the old terraces and buildings on either side are overgrown with plants and fungi. Overhead old rail lines become bridges crossing the spaces between. Over a mile above sunlamps glow, bringing light to the environment - sometimes through small clouds of vapor. Sometimes pillars dot the landscape with their tops branching out like trees to give the impression of an impossibly tall forest canopy. Some have rivers running through them and lakes, either intended by design or as a result of decay. Creatures roam between, both monstrous and timid, and villages dot the landscape.

Travel by mainline involves traversing the wide open spaces. Travel by subway involves using the bridges and roads on the edges and ramps. Slower corridor travel limits movement to the edge balconies.

Domes

These open spaces are like miniature hab cylinders at a little over a mile wide. They consist of a large open landscape with a huge dome encapsulating it. The landscape can be plains suitable for farming, rolling gardens with a mansion within that was once inhabited by a figure of wealth or land housing test subjects in controlled conditions. Some possess domed illusion roofs that give the impression the area is a part of a larger world, especially where they were designed for recreation or deception of laboratory experiments.

They often have sunlamps above providing natural light suitable to the environment below. Some may contain machinery or conduits above creating a dark open space of unknown purpose that are overgrown with bio-luminant plants and fungi.

Mainline travel through these sub zones involves direct travel through the main area and transitioning hanger doors. Subway travel often extends above or below the main area bypassing the dome in many cases. Walkway travel is often done around the edges of the dome, with occasional windows looking in.

Conduits

Giant pipes and tubes flow and pump through these areas. In many cases, pipes that are hundreds of feet wide now act as corridors or passageways to the inhabitants in much the same way as an abandoned sewer. Where light is present, it is often through smaller crystal panels or bioluminescent fungus that coats damp areas.

While at first glance not conducive to life, many scavengers and Bog’ans often favour these locations as prime sources of water and fungal farms. 

Travel by mainlines is through large pipes that once ferried material through the ship that are no longer in use. Alternatively, a conduit may have been an actual hanger passage to other sections of the ship. In many cases lighting is scarce. Subway travel is often trough old transport tubes or mid-size pipes. Walkway travel is through old maintenance tubes and connecting passages between old machinery zones now dormant and overgrown with fungus.