Trunk zone

Trunk zones are a special category of zones found in the Labyrinth.

The term trunk appears in the location descriptor of a Professional while in the zone, but not on the transit gate descriptors.

The existence of trunk zones has spurred the speculation that other type of zones may exist, but the existence of any remains unconfirmed; speculation about "end zones" (zones with a single gate), "treasure zones" (filled with only lairs) and other wild imagining remain rampant.

General appearance

Trunk zones appear in general as standard zones, with a much lower variety. All trunk zones follow a relatively simple and unvarying theme for the zone, and typically have a single type of creature inside, with few variations.

Trunk zones are also relatively small in size, much more than any other zone encountered.

Lairs

Trunk zones do not appear to have well-defined lairs. Instead, there are individual guardians spread around the zone. Each defeated guardian grants a completion for its own encounter, similar to major lairs with only a legend.

Fast Travel and Recall

Trunk zones appear to have a permanent day hour and no visible moon.

Accordingly, neither Recall nor Fast travel time charges accumulate while in a trunk zone. A Professional who enters a trunk zone with no charges for either has no other option but to leave by Gate, hopefully to a zone where charges accumulate normally.

Plaza

All Plazas in a trunk zone are guarded by a special guardian, either an Ancient in tier one, or a Legend in tier two and above.

Defeating the guardian of a Plaza grants completion for it to every participant in the fight. The Plaza Guardian does not appear to count as a lair for Gates, but anyone with Plaza completion can access every Profession for the tier, regardless of the Plaza's actual Profession set.

Access

Access to trunk zones is non-obvious. Instead of being at the connecting zone's periphery, the Gate connecting a normal zone of the Labyrinth to a trunk zone is always located at the end of a lair. To distinguish itself from a normal Gate, this access gate appears to sport cubic metal shapes rather than the normal decorative creature head sculptures that every other Gate has.

While normal Gates require completing a number of lairs equal to the tier it opens to, access to the trunk Gate itself requires every Professional in range to have completed every single lair in the zone. This is more challenging than normal completion, as the zone may have a huge number of lairs, non-obvious or hidden lairs, major lairs requiring the defeat of a legendary creature, or rare lairs whose guardians spawn only infrequently.

Gate connections

Trunk zones appear to have a fixed scheme of Gates. There are six Gates, located in an hexagonal pattern. Four Gates lead to four different, widely separated zones of the same tier as the trunk zone's. Two Gates, at opposite points of the hexagon, lead to a lower-tier trunk zone and an upper-tier trunk zone. That scheme and the relatively small size of each trunk zone has led to the speculation that trunk zones are intended as shortcuts to cross the Labyrinth when Fast Travel is not an option.

Following the theme, Gates to normal Labyrinth zones appear as standard decorated Gates, while the two connecting trunk gates sport the blocky cubic shapes that appear to highlight the nature of the gate's target. The Gate itself does not appear to require completion of every encounter in the trunk zone, prompting the speculation that the full completion criteria only applies to getting access, not crossing the Gate. This distinction appears to be more of a philosophical nature than a practical one.

Size

All interconnected Trunk zones constitute a so-called trunk, stretching across a limited number of tiers. The lowest and highest tiers in the trunk have sculptures looking like Gates at the locations that would lead to upper or lower tiers, but made of simple stone, and inert.

An exception to that rule is that a nexus zone sometimes happen to connect to the end-point of the trunk instead of a simple dead-end. Unlike a normal connection, the Nexus zone is of the same tier as the last trunk zone it connects to.