The Center of Time

[fireinthedust]

Duncan leaps across the room but slides to a halt beside the tunnel when he notes that the good priest has paused in place.

Duncan moves to where Seregal had fallen in, bends down and holds the edge of the hole with one hand (in case this doesn't work) and "rolls" to the side on one knee so that he's kneeling on the wall of the tunnel as well. The warrior says nothing, only pausing a moment to take the wonder in; perhaps what he has seen has numbed him to odd details like this.

If it works: Duncan stands up, attempts to walk up the wall so that he's "standing" on the "ceiling" from Seregal. Whether or not he can (or if there's a fixed path of gravity on the tunnel wall) his voice rumble-hums.
"Let's get some rope and tie it to something up there, and I'll tie it around my waist. I'd like to see what's at the bottom of this. I'm... worried it'll be *too* hot down there, and I want someone to be able to pull me up if I need it."

 

[Tashtego]

Seregal blinks, confronted by his sudden dislocation in his geometry. “Uh, Echo? Shouldn’t you be falling down?” He screws up his face. “Or am I the wrong way? How intriguing. I wonder if this place has unique spacial properties…”

As he rambles to himself, he seems surprised to see Duncan rush up. “Be careful,” Seregal cautions. “You don’t really want to rush it when things get… tricky… like this…”

Seregal tries to move around, examining his new perspective, trying to get up and carefully wiggling and jumping around.

[OOC: Can I walk around with my new MC Esher like angle? Is Duncan affected by my new perspective or by the old one? Can I try and figure out how the gravity thing works?”

I will roll a ‘Figure this stuff out roll’, which I’ll use my Searching or Numenera skill to reduce the difficulty by one step…

Hmm, invisible castle is down! Where is is a GM-approved dice rolling site?]

 

[iamrpgdm]

Antor remains cautious as the lift goes down. As Father Seren and Echo head towards the middle hole, Antor heads towards the hole on the left. He starts examining the panel (1d20=12 trained in Numenera) and sees Father Seren fall into the middle hole out of the corner of his eye. He quickly rushes over reaching the hole along with Duncan. Looking into the hole, Antor sees that Father Seren appears to be alright, although on the side of the hole and not the bottom. As Duncan proceeds to enter the hole after Father Seren, Antor gets out some rope and throws it to Father Seren. "Tie that around you just to be on the safe side", he says as he looks for a suitable place to attach it to up here. "Duncan, I'll get a rope for you as well if you'll hold for a minute."

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Duncan, you lower yourself down, but quickly realize that where Father Seren is standing is the "floor" of this place. From your new perspective, you're standing in a hallway with a large pit at on end and a door at the other.

Seregal, you look around carefully, seeing grooves at intervals along the walls, perhaps gripping places if the orientation of this "corridor" were to change. There are likely controls for it somewhere, and the most likely place for them to be would be at either end. The panels at the top of the roll would be a prime spot for them to be. The smell in this corridor is of plasma, salt, and warm earth, but also a peculiar iron tang, somewhat reminiscent of blood.

Antor, as you head down the lift, Xaion and Wisco say they'll stay behind. Wisco wants to examine the broken hounds and see if there's anything different about them, and Xaion says he'll be more useful guarding against further attack up here.

Down below, Antor examines the panel. [sblock=Antor's discovery]It seems one set of symbols is used for changing the orientation of the pit. The other set on the other side of the panel a grouping that includes some sort of quantitative measure, a speed factor, a temperature factor, a mix ratio, and some sort of... recall function? [/sblock] Your attention is pulled away by Seren's fall and unexpected recovery. Quickly you can tie off ropes to the base of the panels and lower them down.

OOC: If Invisible Castle is down, anywhere where you can link to the roll is good. But if all else fails, roll your real dice and use the honor system. I rolled you a 15, Tashtego.

 

[fireinthedust]

Duncan adjusts easily enough to the strange new surroundings.

"There's a door here. I'm going to take a look. ...don't push any buttons until I call over, I don't want to be incinerated by the heat down here. ...and hold that rope in case I need to run back." He rumbles.

Duncan draws his medium sword and moves along the tunnel cautiously, looking for any lines that could be shields. If it gets too hot he stops and moves back a pace.

[roll=Numenera or search check I expect.]1d20[/roll]

 

[iamrpgdm]

Antor gets the ropes tied off. "Father Seren and Duncan, if you'll come back out of this pit, I think I understand the control panel enough that we can see what it does." Antor will explain the information he has gathered about it's use to the others. "We can toss some shins in there to see what happens as we adjust the controls, rather than one of us."

[OOC - Assuming they come out, Antor will start with the orientation and get it set to the "best" setting for traversal. He then try each of the others in turn and see what happens with the shins. If they don't come out, Antor will tell them tell them to hold on and just adjust the orientation to the "best" setting for traversal.]

 

[fireinthedust]

Duncan stops from heading down the tunnel when Antor speaks, and steps off the edge of the pit. He prepares himself to land in that strange new-directional gravity distortion.

He waits patiently while Antor presses buttons, weapon still at the ready.

 

[Shayuri]

Echo watches, fascinated as some of the others cross over. She carefully places a foot on the edge, then the other, and then pushes herself forward, as if falling flat onto her face. Gravity changes, and she finds herself standing upright, with her heels dangling.

She looks around curiously at the tube she finds herself in and walks past the others towards the aparture at the far end.

"It's hot," the nano remarks absently, trailing her fingers along the wall. "I wonder if this is what's making the pass warm. Old machines, starting up again. Venting."

She goes to the far end of the corridor and peeks out without stepping through just yet.

 

[Tashtego]

Seregal crawls out of the pit, looking delighted. "Isn't this amazing? We can move the 'floor' around relative to everyone else!"

He rubs his hands together. "Let's start experimenting! There could be an exciting stash of numenera devices here. The whole thing is one device. How about I go down one of these holes on the end of a rope? I'm quite mobile, you know! We'll learn more with a human exploration than throwing coins around. I believe young Antor has a good grip on these controls."

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Duncan, you explore the tunnel carefully, and though the heat does get more intense at the door at the end, it doesn't seem to be the sort of heat that would harm you. You do see some more of those ubiquitous symbols on the wall near the door.

Echo, you also traverse the corridor with Duncan and see the same symbols you've seen on the platform that brought you down to the first room. Both of you then retreat as Antor does some experimentation with the gravity. Tossing some shins into the shaft and changing the various gravity orientations shows there is a definite "floor" for horizontal travel, and then two modes for vertical travel. One is basically the gravity manipulation off, turning the hole into a hole, and the other is a reverse gravity, propelling the shins up toward the ceiling before the fall naturally to the floor. With a touch more experimentation, there is some additional gravitational force that can be applied, as Antor can make the shins shoot up out of the hole with increasing and decreasing vigor.

But it seems, if you would like to get to the door at the end without going splat, the horizontal travel orientation with standard gravitational pull will be quite fine.

Once gravity is established, you can walk down to the door at the other end without the additional worry of possible gravity failure.