CORRUPTED CISTERN
by Christopher Lutz
2016-2017 was a banger of a year for Chris Lutz. No End In Sight saw its final release, with three awesome levels from the author in the four-episode package, including the stunningly gorgeous "The Blood Beneath" (E4M5). We got a similarly fabulous Hellscape, reimagining the original Doom II's Hell episode with forbidden, Stygian vistas and built around his previous The Dying End. Later, we saw the super-fun and super-huge Dark Tide, a late entry in TNT's sort-of-series, The Return. Now, in 2022, we get a new evolution of Chris, an ultra-detailed level in GZDOOM: Corrupted Cistern, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Be still, my beating heart!
This adventure doesn't come with much of a story prompt other than "Clear the ancient water caverns of the evil Hellspawn". Thankfully, Lutz is a master of environmental design and implied storytelling. Corrupted Cistern uses some of the Ancient Aliens textures to give it a wonderful, otherworldly color. It also pegs the underground aqueduct as a mashup of Mesoamerican as well as Egyptian iconography. I'm not saying that it was aliens...but it was aliens. The demons aren't performing some sort of pollution-terrorism like turning the gorgeous blue water into toxic doodoo, but they ARE extracting hearts and conducting unclean rituals. Naturally, they've got to go.
Corrupted Cistern is a fantastic level because it is absolutely dripping with atmosphere (and water), uses the gorgeous Ancient Aliens day-glo color palette, and is exquisitely detailed with complex, three-dimensional geometry. This map is a non-stop visual treat pretty much from the moment you see sunlight peeking into the first chamber, but those little midtexture candles stole my heart from the get-go. (Make no mistake, though--they CAN burn you!) You don't get a sense of just how far Chris has pushed things until you reach that first colonnade-mounted staircase. Like, there's a ton of tastefully gorgeous slopework to make arched doorways, roofs, and sconces, not to mention dirt collapsing through failed masonry, but I had to reevaluate my expectations once I met that downward climb.
This is a huge, non-linear level with a relatively relaxed monster count. Most of the map is networked together by aqueduct tunnels that you navigate via catwalks that span one side or the other. They're an elegant way of cementing CIS-LUTZ's architectural character, essential connective tissue that ties together the smaller, nondescript side rooms and the larger, more ornate spaces. Some of these bigger areas butt up against a vast darkness that permeates Lutz's work, most prominently in the later acts of Caverns of Darkness and Phobos: Anomaly Reborn. It's a kind of cosmic horror where the player is dwarfed by an infinite unknowable, whose precipice you are poised at. Are the demons denizens of this sable space, or is this merely a sphere in which, like the player, they are just as infinitesimal? Hellscape's underworld topography echoes the vast scale suggested by these mammoth, underground locales, but there isn't much question as to what lurks in the periphery. There is only more Hell, and it goes on forever.
Lutz cites Unreal as an inspiration for this level's design and Dynamo drew a more specific comparison to Unreal's water temple ("Chizra - Nali Water God" and its follow-up, "Ceremonial Chambers", by T. Elliot Cannon aka the Doom Community's Myscha the Sled Dog) in the 2022 Cacowards. It's been a loooooong time since I played through the Unreal campaign and looking at a longplay of it I can safely say that the parts of the experience that I could recall involved 1) a lot of water to dip into, 2) acquiring the 8-ball grenade launcher and blasting a ton of aliens with it, and 3) those tentacle things that stick to the ceiling. I can see Lutz drawing off of features in the first level like the catwalks, and he works shallow water pools and cascades into a lot of the map to give it a sort of peaceful beauty when you've silenced the demons, but the overall character of Corrupted Cistern parallels "Ceremonial Chambers".
"Ceremonial Chambers" is a much darker level and features rocky intrusions the deeper you delve into the water temple. There's even a rickety lift that you take down to the raft that marks the level's final sequence, which Lutz appears to echo in the westernmost elevator. The coloration of the grotto with said raft is the closest that the water temple comes to meeting Corrupted Cistern's color scheme. As far as textures go, well, the Nali temple with its grinning Chizra frescoes and engraved tiles vaguely resembles a Mesoamerican theme. CIS-LUTZ's masonry feels...European overall, most strongly in areas like the "tree" court in the northern-central portion of the map, which looks like part of a large, underground village.
There's some interesting world-building, here, as it suggests that the aqueducts housed a secret community hidden deep underground. This echoes the ruined complexes unearthed in Caverns of Darkness, which were part of some sort of chain of Christian chapels that marked the road on a pilgrimage to a place where the border between our world and Hell was thin. The Corrupted Cistern is decidedly less Abrahamic, however, with Mesoamerican frescoes dominating (and a few Egyptian ones), particularly the creepy death's-head grimace with the headdress. This is the Corrupted Cistern equivalent of Chizra apart from the fact that it doesn't appear on any door panels. I don't know if Lutz intended to draw any comparisons to, say, the Aztec goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, who was the deity of water at the time of the Spanish conquest. This is the great thing about implied narrative and world-building, though. You get to fill in the blanks with your imagination!
Chalchiuhtlicue is an interesting figure. In Aztec mythology, she was the ruling god of the previous incarnation of the world (the "Fourth Sun") and destroyed it in a massive flood. To quite Wikipedia, she held "...a dual role in Aztec mythology as both a life-giver and life-ender. ...She built a bridge linking heaven and earth and those who were in Chalchiuhtlicue's good graces were allowed to traverse it, while others were turned into fish." ¹ An underground cult that attempts to gain a foothold in the next world is... pretty part for the course, actually. The Cistern seems especially her jam, given that "her shrines were by springs, streams, irrigation ditches, or aqueducts" ². We don't have any clues as to the downfall of the subterranean civilization, but I'm guessing that it was demons.
The Aztecs don't have a clear analogue for devils apart from, I guess, the Tzitzimīmeh, which as I'm reading about them sound amazing. They were cosmic beings who were "interpreted as...attacking the Sun, thus causing the belief that during a solar eclipse, the Tzitzimīmeh would descend to the earth and possess men. It was said that if the Tzitzimīmeh could not start a bow fire in the empty chest cavity of a sacrificed human at the end of a 52-year calendar round, the fifth sun would end and they would descend to devour the last of men." ³ Any reading that relates these beings to Doom's demons would necessarily involve doing away with their other role, that of "protectresses of the feminine and progenitresses of mankind" ³. Or maybe this is how Chalchiuhtlicue and Tzitzimīmeh chain together, with some sect of humans attempting to supplicate the water goddess, the ur-female, for their selfish purposes, only for cosmic, amoral guardians to step in when the state of a particular epoch made it possible.
I wonder whether Unreal has more or less influenced the majority of Lutz's authorial career. I loved Unreal and apart from its scenic vistas and broad adventure I remember its vast loneliness, with its didactic storytelling elements accomplished via info tablets, all of which lead to deceased humans. The diaries may not be there but, paging back through the years, you get a sense of Lutz increasingly relying on the bodies of dead marines to justify the placement of weapon and ammo pickups. Part of this appears to be a desire to have items where they make thematic sense, using implied storytelling to resolve a question of convenience. The narrative portrayed to the player echoes Unreal's stark lonesomeness, with the player fighting for survival across Phobos, the Corrupted Cistern, or the topography of Hell itself, and having no human contact except the corpses of those who had gone before.
CIS-LUTZ's nonlinear layout makes it fun to explore but it's also responsible for a good portion of its challenge. There's plenty of supplies in whichever direction you decide to push and even an "early" rocket launcher pickup, found at the main forking point. Rockets are a sometimes food, though, and most of your gunplay will be accomplished via shotgun and chaingun. This draws out your encounters against beefier foes like the occasional packs of cacodemons, Hell knights, and revenants. I found a super shotgun fairly late into my playthrough but I imagine that it will change the character of your combat experience if you acquire it relatively early. Well, maybe not those areas like the north-central yard. That revenant guarded by a handful of commandos is just an awkward, hardened point.
This map for me had two memorable teleport ambushes. The first one was in the grotto with the sloped, spiraling earth that puts you in a two-front pincer attack. It's a great scene for a battle, even if you can just jump down and run out the tunnel. The other is the finale, which looks like a big invasion but is pretty lowkey in terms of having "must kill" elements. I don't mind not being challenged; it's nice to have a straightforward (but for one pain elemental, I think?) roundup for a change. Especially when it ends up with the Cyberdemon eating it over the course of the fight. The most harrying part of this set for me was the abundance of hitscanners, who have no shortage of dark corners, adjacent chambers, and partially obscured windows to snipe at you from.
If you're the kind of player who detests Doom II monsters, then good news! You won't be forced to submit to any techno-organic horrors beyond the Cyberdemon as the mancubus and arachnotron do not appear. They wouldn't want their circuits to short out in the water, would they? Similarly, the arch-vile is not present, as water is not his domain. And, uh, maybe the idea of the player bursting into flames while submerged might have been hard to justify. I imagine that this is also the reason why you won't find lost souls, apart from the ones that are belched out by pain elementals. I'd say it's a shame because the layout and atmosphere of Corrupted Cistern seems to play to their strengths as silently-awakening ambush hunters, but you have enough troubles as it is.
This is a visually stunning masterpiece. I've already talked about the town-façade courtyard but there are a couple of other areas that I want to point out. One of my favorite moments was the haunting courtyard located in the northeast portion of the level. There are two solitary trees here, lit by cracks in the ceiling, and the area is such a moment of quiet peace that I was glad that it had (apparently) no monsters to speak of. I also appreciate the way that the level is bookended as a chiasmus. You walk down a hallway to the west and then north into a circular chamber whose central pool of water is lit from cracks in its dome, then descend a perilous-looking platform staircase. You descend down another crazy spoke staircase in order to reach the finale, which has a large, circular chamber with a central platform--again, lit through a dome--that is elevated OUT of the water. From here, you head south, and then down a hallway to the east, toward the exit.
Corrupted Cistern comes with its own bespoke soundtrack, Jimmy's "Undercroft", and it wasn't even part of Lutz's original, intended release. Jimmy just happened to be so inspired by his playthrough that he wrote it on the spot. It's a lush, atmospheric piece full of dark wonder. The drums instill tension early on, only to roll to a more stoic, martial rhythm by the time you start to realize the full scale of the task at hand, occasionally transitioning into a galloping beat that infuses a feeling of driving action. It's a great track for navigating a gorgeous, time-forgotten superstructure like Corrupted Cistern. I don't think there's anything about it that suggests the element of water to me apart from maybe the cascading... harp line, I think? at 1:53. Capturing the essential action of the map as an aural narrative, though, is masterful in and of itself.
I don't know of a lot of maps that cite Unreal as an influence. The only ones that immediately come to my mind are alando1's Temple of the Lizard Men series, of which I've played LMTEMPLE, LMTMPL2, and LMTMPL3. I think that TotLM has CIS-LUTZ beat in terms of the sheer scope of its adventure campaigns because, well, they're multi-level campaigns (and full megaWADs from Temple of the Lizard Men 3 on) and Corrupted Cistern is a single map. Lutz's work dwarfs it in just about every other facet, though. This isn't meant to bag on alando1; I generally enjoy TotLM for what it is. I think about an entire mapset with the same amount of care poured into it as CIS-LUTZ, though, and with different, evolving level themes, and I get the shakes.
All this is to say that Corrupted Cistern is an outstanding work of beautifully-sculpted art and the sort of adventure map that communicates a concept of a unique and concrete place and gives the player more or less free reign to explore it as they see fit. I don't know what Chris will release next, but if this was him experimenting and getting used to UDMF and Ultimate Doom Builder, then I'm stoked to see what happens. If you're not allergic to GZDoom, then I strongly recommend that you load CIS-LUTZ up.
CIS THE UNDERWORLD TERNS
¹ Chalchiuhtlicue. (16, Jan. 2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chalchiuhtlicue&oldid=1269865763
² Tláloc. (8, Dec. 2024). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tl%C3%A1loc&oldid=1261795140
³ Tzitzimitl. (21, Aug. 2024). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tzitzimitl&oldid=1241470904
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