Location: Northerly Island / Museum Campus
Established: 1930 – First planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, founded by Max Adler
Access: Public (day), Guarded (night), Restricted lower levels
Connected Factions: Crooked Horn (monitor Veil resonance), CPD (discreet overwatch near full moons)  

Description - Exterior

Perched like a lighthouse for the cosmos, the planetarium's aged copper dome gazes across Lake Michigan with uncanny stillness. Weather-stained stone walls clutch the shoreline like knuckles. In certain light, it looks ancient—older than the city itself. On windless nights, it hums.  

Description - Interior

A quiet cathedral of starlight and echo. The public floors shimmer with polished glass, celestial murals, and soft-spoken docents. But there are doors that don’t open and hallways not on any tour map. Deep below the projector room, cold air rises through cracks in the tile, carrying whispers and a scent like turned soil.  

Public Face

A proud cornerstone of education and discovery. School groups visit during the day, astronomy clubs hold stargazing events, and evening lectures keep it academically respectable. To the city, it's a symbol of progress.  

What's Really Going On

The Adler sits atop a resonant Veil node—a celestial pressure point where space, time, and memory fold thin. Crooked Horn believes the observatory’s original blueprints contain sacred geometry disguised as astronomy. The dome itself channels otherworldly signals. Beneath the main exhibit space lies a sealed sublevel that hasn’t been documented in city records since 1933.  

Notables

Eliza Moon – Night shift security; claims to have "seen stars inside" during a new moon blackout
Dr. Herschel Crane – Aging astrophysicist obsessed with spectral fluctuations no one else detects
Mother Iris (Crooked Horn) – Veil priestess who believes the dome is a “listening bowl for the forgotten”
Detective Halek – CPD assigned to monitor odd reports from the museum campus (never stays past 10PM)  

Rumors & Hooks:

• The old Zeiss projector turned on by itself and displayed an unfamiliar star chart with no input
• A corridor below the east wing was sealed shut after a curator vanished during renovations
• Crooked Horn believes a Veil-wrapped entity is trapped beneath the dome—some want it freed
• Visitors sometimes lose track of time in the lower halls—when they return, their watches are frozen
• At least one known Veil Mark has appeared etched into a telescope’s lens without any sign of tampering
• A recording exists of a choir singing in an empty auditorium—no choir was booked that night
• A patron asks the crew to recover a journal left in the Adler’s archives—marked “DO NOT CATALOG”
• The dome responds to certain tones—tones someone is trying to reproduce using blood and steel
• A CPD box of evidence from 1931 references “Object 4” found under the dome; the box is now missing