Overview
BR-002, also known as the Oblivion Pit, was a Black Ring that appeared in the Inner Bay region of the DisSea near Drifter Camp. The Black Ring appeared in N.F. 104 due to the actions of Nirvana to suppress an organized labor movement, and was neutralized soon after when its Corpus was defeated by the Underground Shepherd. As the only Black Ring outside of the FAC's ability to monitor, it was key to Rustfire's plans for rebellion against DisCity.
Despite the Ring's neutralization, the Corpseborne of BR-002 survived in a damaged state until it reappeared in N.F. 113. The renewed BR-002 was the largest Black Ring ever recorded outside BR-000, and it briefly expanded to cover all of Syndicate before being destroyed in November of that year.
Descent and Neutralization
In N.F. 104, automated mining technology made the workers of Inner Bay obsolete. Nirvana deemed the Inner Bay Hypercube mines a negative asset due to the cost of outdated equipment and persistent contamination causing large work injury compensation costs. The workers protested against the mine's closure, which would cut off the last economic lifeline to the West District, and as a result of their action the company agreed on November 25 to hand over the largest of their mines, mine W-31, to the people.
Three days later, in order to prevent their monopoly on the Hypercube trade being broken, Nirvana activated a secret code implanted in the mine's robotic equipment., This protocol ordered the mechs to turn on their operators, and they began to massacre the human workers. As panic spread, the mass-Mania of the workers allowed the Ring's Corpus to call down the Black Ring. Details as to the Ring's appearance, such as where its Corpus came from or whether Nirvana intended for a Black Ring to appear as a result of their betrayal, remain unknown.
13,004 of the workers in mine W-31 were trapped and died in this event, while only 200 survived and escaped the mines. These survivors went on to found the settlement of Drifter Camp; there they engraved the names of the fallen on a memorial at the bottom of Romanesque Hall.
Due to the close proximity of the two Black Rings, the appearance of BR-002 also caused rapid expansion of BR-000. It was barely halted at the FAC's third Broken Frontline, but not before the surging contamination overtook all of the remaining safe spaces in the Inner Bay. The former industrial zone became completely isolated from the outside world, with even the FAC unable to penetrate its layers of contamination.
A few years later, FAC monitoring confirmed that the M-values inside BR-002 disappeared completely, but could not determine why. Nirvana claims to have destroyed the Black Ring, but this assertion is almost certainly false, or at least significantly oversimplified. The Ring's Corpus was defeated by the Underground Shepherd, its Corpseborne body was cut in half, and it was believed dead by the authorities.
Hibernation
For the next several years, the Black Ring remained dormant. After the Corpseborne was cut in half, its dead lower body remained buried deep in DisSea. However, the upper half continued to live, on the brink of life and death, and spent years slowly spreading Mania and devouring humans' spiritual energy in secret. Somehow, the energy consumed by the living half continued to be transferred to the dead half and leaked as contamination into its surroundings.
Even within its boundaries, the slumbering Ring was significantly less dangerous than its active counterparts. Aside from the persistent atmosphere of corruption, the primary danger to intruders was abandoned Nirvana mechs still operating on their murderous directives. The mine was also roamed by resonance phantoms left behind by workers, who repeated both memories of Inner Bay's glory days and the panic of the Black Ring's descent. However, these phantoms were rarely hostile unless provoked.
Reappearance
In N.F. 113, the FAC detected fluctuations in the remains of BR-004 caused by the 002 Corpseborne's stealthy passage through Keylan Square. This alerted the Chief of the MBCC to its existence and began a hunt that culminated in the near-appearance of another Black Ring in Drifter Camp as the Corpseborne spread its contamination through the settlement in an attempt to return to life. Although the Corpseborne was defeated and another Black Ring temporarily avoided, the Corpseborne was still able to consume enough energy to reawaken its lower half. As BR-002 became active again, the FAC dispatched troops to investigate, while Langley of the 9th Agency acquired the complete information on the Ring's history from Nirvana. Although the Chief soon succeeded in destroying the Corpus's lower body, due to political demands on the FAC from the City Council to prioritize defending Eastside and the outbreak of the Ten Days of Rustfire, BR-002 was not fully neutralized. In accordance with the machinations of Shalom, the escaped Corpus ultimately merged with Julien to cause the eruption of a new Black Ring in Drifter Camp.
The reappearance of BR-002 had been orchestrated as part of a plan by Paradeisos to lure the Underground Shepherd to her annihilation. According to records found by Rahu, the reappearance of BR-002 initially threw a wrench into the Underground's plans. However, due to the Shepherd's intervention, its descent occurred three days ahead of when Paradeisos had scheduled and its capabilities far exceeded Paradeisos's projections. It quickly became the largest secondary Black Ring in history by mass, and rapidly expanded inward to “unimaginable” depth.
Over the following months, the FAC, Rustfire, and the Underground battled constantly for control of the Black Ring. This conflict culminated in the Blockade Operation throughout August of N.F. 113, in which the FAC successfully established control of the Ring’s perimeter. However, Shalom's "silent rebellion" at the end of the Blockade Operation destroyed the Hush system and crippled Paradeisos's ability to monitor the Black Ring.
Expansion and Elimination
Despite its extreme power, BR-002 quickly stopped expanding after its initial eruption, with even Corruptors and mania creatures returning to the ring's interior and rarely venturing out again. Unbeknownst to those outside, this was because Julien was locked in a stalemate with the Ring's Corpus for control of the Ring's spiritual realm. During this period, Julien warped the interior of the Ring into a complex mechanical maze that trapped its monsters inside, and channeled the energy gathered by the Ring away from outward expansion and into a constantly-rising High Tower that lifted the nexus of its contamination farther and farther away from the people outside. However in November, seven months after the ring's reappearance, Parma and other Underground agents were able to infiltrate the FAC blockade and enter the Black Ring. There Parma steadily fed contamination energy to the Corpus, tipping the struggle with Julien in its favor. The breaking point came when Paradeisos forces attacked Rustfire's refugee camp beneath the Black Ring, having been misled by Parma into believing that the Chief was being held hostage there. Panic spread through the camp, providing the final burst of Mania necessary for the Corpus to take control and for the Black Ring to erupt again.
Already the largest secondary Black Ring ever recorded, BR-002 rapidly expanded past the FAC's blockade and soon enveloped all of Syndicate. With Julien's consciousness supplanted by the Corpus, the maze within the Ring disintegrated, releasing the monsters inside to rampage freely. Soon after, the Underground Shepherd entered the Ring. While the Corpseborne focused all its strength on preventing her from ascending the Tower and getting revenge for its first defeat, Paradeisos faced the prospect of imminent defeat if the Shepherd succeeded at consuming this most powerful Corpus. In order to prevent it from growing stronger still, Paradeisos ordered the execution of a Purge Order to be carried out within 48 hours.
The crisis was ultimately resolved by the reawakening of the Chief, thanks to the combined efforts of Julien, Donald, Hecate, and Bai Yi. The Chief was entrusted with a Schorl by EDGE 01, who intended that they would use it to perform a suicide attack with the Rules, sacrificing themselves to destroy the Corpus and avert the need for a Purge Order. With Shalom's help, they devised an alternative plan to strip the Corpus of its strength by empowering the people of Syndicate who were providing the energy that fueled the Black Ring. The Chief correctly surmised that the people remaining in Syndicate were not the violent chaos-lovers (who had been annihilated and subsumed into the Ring's first appearance during the Ten Days of Rustfire) or the weak and fearful (who had fled the District since the beginning of the crisis), but rather the resolute survivors who were determined to persist throughout any dangers. These survivors turned the psychic strength of their will to live and to see a better future against the Corpus, destroying its protections and dissolving the Black Ring entirely.
Aftermath
The ruins of BR-002 gave rise to the largest stand-alone Hypercube mine ever seen. Nirvana mounted a bid for ownership, but the shuttering of the Observatorium and its effects on super-loop communication meant that Nirvana would not be able to carry out unmanned, machine-based mining; it would have to be mined manually, which gave Syndican interests immense bargaining power. Surprisingly, Paradeisos also refused to back Nirvana's bid. The promise of enormous Hypercube production on the horizon brought the chance for Syndicans to forge new alliances and investments from progressive elements in Eastside, monied elites, and even interested Outlanders, and this new mine became the epicenter of an industrial and economic renaissance for the district.
The enormous, months-long efforts to contain and destroy BR-002 severely stretched DisCity's resources, forcing the city-state to abandon previous high-cost defense plans and adopt new, safer, and more efficient methods of responding to Mania crises. Among these was a systemic reform to official policies regarding Sinners, which were made all the more necessary by the dramatic increase in the number of Sinners caused by months of uncontrolled radiation from the Black Ring. During the Ten Days of Rustfire, more Sinners were created by direct contact with the Shackles than all the Sinners that had appeared for the prior 10 years combined. However, even that paled in comparison to what was to come; when BR-002 expanded over all of Syndicate, nearly 60% of the remaining population of the District became low-level Sinners. As a result of these reforms, the FAC and other official forces began to accept Sinners in their ranks as long as they were confirmed to be safe and mentally stable by the MBCC. The need for less costly methods of disaster-control also spurred a new necessity, if not necessarily willingness, to cooperate with Outland powers such as the Eastian Alliance.