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The Hall of Mirrors/Statue of the Self-Made Man (Home thread of Dr. Kaylo B Epsilon) (Open)
#346569 - Tue Jun 10 2003 10:35 PM
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June 10, 2003
Herein the visitor will find the entrance to, and contents of, a Horizon Realm maintained by Dr. Epsilon. Having a passing familiarity with Mage:The Ascension concepts may be useful, but is neither necessary nor entirely accurate. Suffice it to say, the rules of reality on one side of the door are not the same as those on the other. Some things simply do not work, some work but with the potential for unavoidable and unpleasant side effects. Then again, one may find some things to work rather better inside.... It is wise to remember that while one may always try to tell reality what to do, reality may not allow a flaw to remain unremoved.
Inside, the main item of concern to the unaccoustomed traveler is the nature of space. For the most part (an infinite collection of regions which are the most likely places to find) it is relatively benign, with only mild amounts of pathological behaviour. Still, a reasonable chunk (an at least equally infinite collection of regions that you may or may not choose to stumble into) are the home to topologies and geometries strange and bizarre, in the realm of arbitrary combinations of 'inhomogeneous', 'noncommutative', 'non Euclidean', 'discontinuous', and 'pathological'.
From time to time, one may chance upon a singular statue. I say time to time, for this statue is sometimes nowhere, and sometimes in many places, and all that can truly be said is that when it is some place, there it is. The statue is of a man, and of a statue, but before we concern ourselves with the subject, let us look first at the material.
From pedestal to feet to head, light reflects off the structure as if from the most perfect mirror. The base, a flat-faced cube spanning five meters to an edge, would be hard to make out if not for the writing graven into it. This, however, is no mere reflecting surface, as senses attuned to more than visible light might be surprised to find. Even the vision of the Sendryxxi would find that everything is reflected. It is as if, rather than truly reflecting, the surface were a window in space, bent back into itself. Anyone hazarding such an odd guess would be, as it turns out, correct... but that is literally, though not figuratively, immaterial.
The effect of touching the bent space is, for most forms of contact, quite innocuous. A hand placed upon it would feel it's own skin (may we forgo jokes about one hand clapping, for the moment), a metal ball thrown at it would ring as if it has struck a metal ball, and a glob of spittle would strike itself, lose all kinetic energy, and fall to the ground. It is, however, recommended that one not direct lethal varieties of immaterial force at the material, however, for unlike material objects which would simply strike themselves and stop, or perhaps rebound, light and magic have a tendancy to just keep right on going, and one could find one's self the victim of one's own attack. Or, if aimed well or counting differently, of two's own attack.
Let us, however, now be satisfied that the statue gleams brightly in the smallest of lights, and never needs fear from an accumulation of pidgeon stools (except, perhaps, at its base.)
Casting the attention upward, and accounting for the myriad reflections, the form of a man, bent down upon his right knee, becomes apparent. His head is bent, looking not out into the infinite cosmos, nor down upon loyal subjects, but at his left foot and calf, which rest almost on a corner of the cubical base. These, indeed, are worthy of note, in that their portion of the statue is incomplete. The mirrored surface there takes on the shape of crudely carved stone about the calf, and simply a continued block of material about the foot. From the knee up, however, the rest of the man's body is intact.
His left arm is propped on his bent left leg, and holds a chisel, which is aimed at the incomplete calf, as if in the process of finishing the carving. His right arm holds a hammer, aimed toward the chisel, frozen in mid-swing. About the ground are the suggestions of chips and chunks of stone, all rendered in their perfect mirror form, uncleared debris from the process of carving. The right leg stretches out, the toes of the right foot dangling over the opposite corner from the left foot.
The four sides of the base are all distinct in the markings. Facing the man's front right, a plaque-like relief reveals the subject only as The Self-Made Man. Facing the man's rear right, there is a longer inscription, as well as some lichens which have impossibly found a foothold on the frictionless surface. The inscription reads There was a statue which bore an inscription. This inscription told of a statue which bore an inscription, and of further statues, bearing inscriptions of further statues. It told of such statues without end, and the last statue named was this one.
To those with senses beyond mortal ken, this inscription bears the only trace on the edifice of anything other than the reflected world. About the words is a faint aura of raw power... not the stuff that magic is made of, nor of physical forces, but rather the power which endows that which exists with the property of reality, that which allows the utterance "I am". The amount present is as a small trickle, which is quickly soaked up by the lichens.
On the next side, proceeding counterclockwise, is once again a plaque, reading The Hall of Mirrors in large, clear lettering. Lower down, smaller reliefwork adds Tresspassers duly welcomed and cautioned. Finally, below this is a collection of dots arranged in a pattern that tends to induce "Now where have I seen that before?" resposes.
The final side of the statue, facing the figure's front left side, is not so much a side at all. Rather, it is an opening, beyond which can be seen a mirror-walled (and ceiling'd, and floor'd) corridor that stretches the length of the statue's base, then continues on unobstructed by the fact that it ought to run into the far wall of the base. Even from outside, it is visible that some distance down the corridor, there is a branching, though seeing further than that is not easy, given the myriad of reflections.
Should one actually choose to step inside, is attuned to such things, and is not excessively distracted by their own image reflected so clearly (And given the egos in the Dream, it is a valid concern!) one may notice that the rules here are... different. Those with a GG-esque Conversion Matrix might detect the device adjusting to a change, those who reshape the Dream with nothing more than their will might notice the shape if reality within the statue is less flexible. Those whose friends are prone to firing beam wepons are well advised to discretly disable such devices, due to the potential for an unfortunate bounce.
For the land-bound, doing more than stepping inside may prove a challenge, albeit one you are welcome and invited to creatively overcome. The surface of the floor (and walls and ceilings) is frictionless. While a boot will rest firmly upon it's "reflection", any lateral pressure by your foot would encounter the same problem as if you were standing one someone else's (upside-down) feet, and they moved their feet at the moment you did. It is an issue of getting nowhere at an arbitrary speed.
OOC: At some times, the corridors may be modified with handles, or a roughened surface, or even wall-to-wall carpeting (donations welcome!) and these will be noted through edits to this post.
Traction history:
Inception-Present: Frictionless
Current state: Frictionless
For those who successfully delve into the corridors, the initial regularity of squared-off side hallways eventually yields to more varied branches, though the central corridor retains it's 5 meter square dimensions. The branches, which branch further in turn and criss-cross in ways no tunnel embedded in Euclidean space could, are sometimes square, triangular, rounded, lumpy, slanted, polyhedral, stalactited... with sufficient exploration, the variety is endless. The act of desiring a particular geometry will tend to guide the intuition in choosing branches, and the guidance will generally be correct.
In addition to branching corridors, caverns, halls, and rooms of all shapes, sizes, and configurations may be discovered, with the same means of locating a particular site as the corridors. Some have but a single entrance, while others have exits leaving in all directions, up and down included. The rooms, however, differ from the corridors in a rather critical aspect. While the passageways completely deserve the title of Hall of Mirrors, some rooms contain portals as well, letting in light, fresh air, in some cases even water. Pools, fountains, and brightly lit focal points adorn some locations, though by some trick of reflections, the entering light fails to reach some regions entirely.
But, let us return our attention to the statue, where it all began. It is not standing where it was when we first found it... between one look and another, it may as likely remain as vanish without a trace. It is, however, standing where it may be found again, both by searchers and wanderers.
Update, June 11: While the walls are generally useless for propulsion, even those with the weakest of Telekinetic ability may note that space itself is "easy to grab" here, making it a viable means of propulsion, even if it usually is not.
Update, Sept 1, 2003: A room has been found for some high school student to conduct their studies in, and they can follow this thread to get to the room
Update, Aug 16, 2004: A statue of the Self-Made Man can be found outside the Department of Public Works in Kalsiv, among other places.
OOC: Got questions? PM me, and further description shall be forthcoming. Important additions I hope to edit into this post, along with time-of-addition stamps.
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(OOC: Heh, I remember meeting you as one of my alts! But I thought I'd explore here as this curious individual...)
Chad comes across the enormous statue, and just blinks in surprise. It certainly seemed to be a magnificent monument, if a bit unusual. Well, more than just a bit.
Walking close to it, he studies his reflection in its surface. It was clean and unblemished, more reflective than even the best-made mirrors. Reaching out to touch the pillar, he finds its surface just as unusual, feeling not like metal, but... foam rubber? It was as if he were touching himself...
A bit unnerved, he takes a few steps back to look up at the statue, and then walks around its base. The inscriptions are puzzling, but then he comes across the entrance. The fact that the hallway appears to go on much farther than it normally could suggests a warped space of some kind... perhaps a pocket dimension, or a wormhole-like gateway. Still... nothing ventured, nothing gained.
His first steps into the mirrored hall cause a bit of a problem, however... as the frictionless floor resists his efforts to move. Instead, his feet simply slide about with ease.
"Gaaah! This place is pretty slick!" he says, shifting about, turning to see if he can reach the doorway again, before his tangled legs give way and he lands facefirst on the mirrored floor.
Great... now what? he wonders, as his attempts to life himself with his hands simply results in them sliding about.
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OOC: Oh, so now I'm supposed to start keeping track of everyone's alts? Eeep! Well, thanks for dropping by, at least! I updated the core description slightly, since I failed to add in one of the ways "some things work better" explitly: space itself is easy to grab onto with TK here... and while space itself won't be much inclined to move, pulling on it should work pretty well. 'Course, for those with TK that aren't accoustomed to that already, it may take a while to think to check it, but it's there if they do.
I ponder sloping the floor by the exit ever so slightly so people have a convenient exit if they go in on foot...
An air-hokey player's dream, and an engineer's nightmare, one of the drawbacks to a frictionless floor is that for all the falling down, spinning about, and toddler-esque ice-skating one cares to do, one's center of mass maintains something very close to its original velocity.
In other words, the momentum of Chad's first couple steps, small as it is, continues unabated inside the hall as the foam-rubber man slowly but inexorably slides farther into the corridors... and away from the exit.
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(OOC: Sorry, I'd just remembered encountering you in your intro thread, in the form of Greg Carlyle, and was happy to see your posts. And this does look like a pretty cool place to explore...)
Chad blinks as he slowly slides along the hall, at perhaps a half-meter per second (2'/sec), slowly rotating from his attempted turn to face the exit, which he saw slowly receding from him.
Well, I suppose eventually I'll reach the end of this hall... he thinks, simply watching himself sliding along in the mirrored walls... until he grows a bit tired of the (admittedly intruiging) sensation. Instead, he releases control of his body, shivering as it springs back into its default shape, and then uses his telekinesis to lift his body from the ground so that it is suspendedin midair.
Unfortunately, he is still quite unpracticed at the art, and his telekinesis functions better than expected. His lightweight body instead is propelled upwards, until it strikes the ceiling with enough force to be squashed flat. Gah! Idiot! I'm not lifting 180 pounds or whatever I used to weigh... He moves his arm to rub his head... and thus releases the TK supporting him against the ceiling.
"Ack!" *splut* Chad finds himself once again on the floor... and feeling rather dismayed at TK in general. Fine, I'm just going to push myself along the floor... that seems to work... Thus, he ends up pushing his rather inanimate body along the floor, hoping this frictionless hallway ends soon...
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OOC: Much laughter at the antics, and indeed I recall Sir 'Alias' and the Meals Rejected by the Enemy. Almost picked some up IRL the other day for a weekend hike because of that...
Sliding down the long, rectangular corridor, passing branch after ever more contorted sidebranch, Chad begins passing by some chambers that exit immediately onto the corridor. Within, the decorations do not seem as much a matter of "One of the endless possible permutations", but rather seem to have some design to them. The first clue is that a hell of a lot of them look like fountains, replete with water-filled basins, jets of water, and the occasional grotesque face (made more, or perhaps less, grotesque by the lack of skill expended in their formation).
The second clue is that, from one doorway a little farther down the corridor from Chad, a silvery head sticks out into the passage, turning slowly as it tracks his movements. Getting into viewing range, the head is attached, of all things, to a clothed male body... clothed in the sense that it has a pair of cargo shorts on. The third clue arrives in the form of a question, as the mirrored head speaks:
"Are you just passing through and checking out the designs, or looking for something in particular?" the figure asks, head continuing to turn and track, with an interested expression, Chad sliding along with his body in it's 'default' shape.
It is debatable whether it is a 'clue' that the spherical room the figure looks out of is carpeted, 'wall-to-wall' and 'floor-to-ceiling', as it were. Regardless of its status as a 'clue', however, it is, as far as the eyes can see, a 'fact'.
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(OOC: The 'default' pose for Chad's body is, in essence, as if he was standing at attention -- body straight, arms at his sides, legs together. He normally flexes his body out of this position with his TK, but if he decides to use it for other things -- like to pick himself up, or something else -- he currently loses control of the flexing of his body, and it springs back into this shape. Whee! And just wanted to say... so far, I've been having a blast in this thread! It's an intruiging place! )
Chad slowly slides his way along the floor, occasionally letting his body slide along the frictionless surface in order to try and sit up, or at least turn his head to look into the rooms that he passes. Each time he returns to guiding his body, however, his body springs back into its normal form, which becomes a bit aggravating after a while.
I wonder just how big this place is! he thinks, passing another branching corridor. You could get lost in here so easily...
As he guides himself along, he notices the silvery figure leaning out of one room, watching him. He slowly stops his motion outside of the door with his TK. "Well... the former, I suppose. I'd noticed the entrance outside, and thought I'd take a look. I hope I'm not intruding or anything..." Carefully, he uses his telekinesis to lift the immobilized body into a standing position, so he can at least talk to the man face-to-face.
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"Intruding?" asks the figure, appearing to scratch his head as he wonders how ambiguous the sign reading Tresspassers and visitors duly warned and welcomed might actually be. "No, I don't think you are, unless you particularly wish to be." The reflective shoulders shrug in a fluid, relaxed manner.
"Well, enjoy looking around," the man says, pulling himself out of the doorway and starting to walk up along the near wall/ceiling. With his head turned away, the echos of his voice on the walls of the carpeted sphere sound a bit odd, but clear enough to understand: "If you spot anything you'd like to buy, or need help finding something, you know where to find me, andplease do stick your head in on your way back out and share your thoughts on the place?"
Pausing a moment, head angled down slightly, the man turns back around. "Oh, is there any time after which I should come looking for you? You're welcome to hang out in the halls as long as you like, but there is no end to them, and I'm sure there are confusing spots somewhere out there, even if I haven't found any yet."
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Chad slides his body over to the doorway to the room, looking into it curiously. It seemed gravity was rather arbitrary here in places as well...
"Well, unless you wish to show me around, I suppose I will explore at random then..." he says. He'd smile if he trust his body not to slip and fall over as soon as he released it to regain animation. He then pauses a moment. "I suppose come looking for me in a couple of hours, if I have not returned. I seem to have a habit for getting into trouble."
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"Show you around?" the mirror-man laughs. "I got me a big brain, and a bigger ego, but I don't have enough of either to believe I could give you a grand tour of an infinitely branched place like this. There's no maps, it keeps changing, and the best you can do for directions is that you tend to find the kind of formations you're looking for faster than the ones you aren't. Slightly convenient that way."
Pausing, he turns to grin and shrug. "As for me... well, I can get around alright, but that's because this place is part of me. Problem is, I don't completely understand myself, so I can't very well share. Oh..."
Reaching up into a desk drawer, a silvery hand digs around, pulling out what looks like one of those little firecracker/confetti/champagne popper party favors. Lobbing it in Chad's direction, he adds, "If you get really stuck and don't wanna wait for whoever comes by next, that'll take you to the entrance. Little one-shot wonder, but good to have, just in case."
With that, he sits up at the desk, pulls over some paper, and starts writing something.
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(OOC: *grins* Just when do you post? It's middle of the night for me... XD)
Chad blinks, and catches the 'party favor' with his TK, rather than try to animate his body to do so. So, this place is somehow related to him... his mind? Creeeeeepy.... Still, so far nothing untoward had happened, and so he resolved to continue with his explorations.
Sliding his body back away from the door, he starts sliding down the hallway again, although an unpracticed nudge sends it toppling over, and he has to leave it sliding for a moment to grab the favor once more. He manages to stuff it into his pocket, and then keep himself moving down the hallway. Might as well stop and check out the next interesting room that turns up... Don't want to just tour hallways here. he thinks.
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OOC: Well, see, it varies. Right now, I'm staying up a bit late. Sometimes, I get up early... it varies. I'm about to fly off to the west coast and go hiking for a couple months, so I expect I won't be posting at all for a while... i.e. unless you post again real soon, this'll be my last one for a while.
Though a generic side-room would contain some random assortment of curves, planes, angles, and twiddly bits (no two being the same), and though every possible combination could, eventually, be found, the next room is still within the range of those that look distinctly artificial, again, based on the contents...
In one corner, a () shaped distortion may catch the eye which, when observed from the right angles, bears a striking resemblance to a lens... or, at least, the effect of a lens, given that there is no physical material at the distortion. The lens is positioned between a large, thin torus of mirror-stuff, which upon closer inspection marks the edge of a portal of sorts, looking out onto a grassy field somewhere unknown (OOC outside the Hall of Mirrors), and towards which a mirror in the field is pointing, reflecting a copious amount of sunlight. In the opposite direction is a sink-sized pool of water, contained in a vaguely sink-shaped mirror-stuff enclosure which hangs freely in the air a few feet about the ground. At the bottom of the pool is a mid-sized, dark rock, upon which the light from the lens is focused. The water itself is steaming lightly, radiating heat. Nearby, a much larger enclosure also houses steaming water, this container's interior sloped and contoured to look remarkably like a hot tub's bottom. The waters swirl about clockwise, and manual inspection can reveal that, concealed within an overhanging ledge of mirror-stuff are a few small (bowling-ball-hole sized) portals, from which hot water is jetting into the pool. The overflow seems to be handled by similar concealed outlets, higher up by the waterline.
If one does anything rash like put dye in the sink-shaped pool, one will find it, too, seems fed from some unknown source, and the overflow also exits by the waterline. After a substantial delay, dyed water that exited the sink appears in the pool. The delay could, upon investigation, be explained by what might otherwise appear an ornamental fountain along one of the walls... a series of vertical streams of water. The 'sink' feeds into the first column on the left, the water falls to the base of the column, which feeds into the second column, which feeds to the third... by the time the water reaches the last column, it has attained substantial velocity and is fed into the large pool.
As might be expected, the apparently free-falling water in the columns does do sideways splashes, but they don't manage to travel nearly as far as they ought to, as if there was a lot more distance crammed into the region between 'column' and 'rest of the room' than normal measurements would allow for. Trying to touch one of the columns is possible with a 7 meter pole which, in the process of getting from 'the rest of the room' to 'the column' will appear to be shrunk down to a length of about 2 inches.
Yes, space is bent, stretched, and folded a little differently here.
Elsewhere in the room, one may find a seat floating in the air (rather bucketlike seat, considering it's also made of stuff (bent space) and is slippery... the induced slouching is probably bad for posture, but, hey...) Applying force to the seat would reveal that it behaves as if hung by very stiff, invisible ropes, though said ropes would be anchored to some visible, silvery spheres suspended some distance up in the air.
Upon a table-like surface sits a bazooka-looking... contraption. Mainly a large cylinder, one end capped flat, the other rounded off, with an opening in the side through which is visible a periscope-like mirror that directs light into and along the axis of the tube. There are three black wooden 'controls' visible upon its surface, one of the few things around not made out of stuff. Each is labeled somewhere in sloppy, burnt-in lettering. The first, a stick that can be pushed around along two axes, is labeled 'input', and the periscope-mirror moves about like a car's door mirrors when the stick is moved. The second and third, knobs labeled focus and frequency, induce no noticible change on the contraption, but were one to subject the 'input mirror' to sunlight and aim it into the barrel properly, intense, monochromatic light would issue from the flat-capped end, and I think you can figure out what 'frequency' and 'focus' would do from there. A paper note, taped to one of the device's knobs, reads "Make R.A.C.E.R. time-independant using near-solar input portal. REMEMBER TO SEAL INPUT!!!".
Near the 'RACER' device is a sword-handle shaped bit of stuff, the grip wrapped in duct tape. Despite the lack of friction due to co-movement that is a problem for stuff, the duct tape seems to stay pretty well in place, sticking to its own, reflected adhesive to stay on the stuff, and trapped between widened flanges at the top and bottom of the handle. No blade, however, extrudes from the handle. There is ablade-shaped distortion parallel to the handle, starting about a foot beyond the end of the handle, and picking up the handle would reveal that, despite the intervening space, is are somehow 'attached'. Careful investigation might reveal there is a V shaped pair of portals, such that if the V were closed, it would really just be normal, but as the V splits open, and then terminates abruptly (the wide part of the V being about 1/2 mm wide) it could cut by virtue of portaling something in half, and then closing off the portal while the halves are 1/2 mm apart.
The last item of interest seems rather mundane... so, perhaps isn't an item of interest, really... a few ring-shaped tubes of stuff, about the size and shape of gymnastics rings. The shape makes them not too difficult to pick up, but they behave a little oddly once released... from the first touch to when one is let go, it moves as one might expect a light metal ring to move. Letting go, hoever, a ring will not fall, but remain suspended in the air. Grasping it again will show it to be unbudgable, and you could even grab it and hang from it, if long-forgotten monkey tendancies still held sway. Letting go, it remains in the air, but on touching it onec more, it moves just as freely as before. From here, the cycle repeats of sticking in the air on one touch, and being mobile the next.
OOCThere, hope that's enough to play around with for now... I'm heading off... see you all in a few months!
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(OOC: Awww! I'll miss ya... this was a lot of fun to post in! So, some questions... is the floor still frictionless?)
Chad examines the various features of the room, and ends up most intruiged by the columns, although the chair and rings beg for their share of attention. Studying the falling water, he reaches towards it, trying to touch the droplets of water that fall outwards, but seem compressed inwards...
(OOC: If you get the chance tonight... can post what might occure XD)
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The floor here has no carpeting, so no friction, but judicious use of the rings might make movement by body-motion workable...
Reaching for the water, Chad's hand feels absolutely normal, but looks shorter and shorter, like how things look to be different sizes and angles when going into water. It would, actually, be possible to move up to the falling water, though in the process it would look like the room became dramatically larger.
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Chad yelps as he finds the floor as frictionless as the hall... not a notable improvement. Thus, he ends up once again sliding about on his back with a sigh. The rings could be quite useful, if he could reach them. If they're lying about on the floor, he experiments with them, and soon finds how useful they are, for they can keep him off of the floor.
Assuming he gets ahold of them, he uses them like monkeybars, soon getting the hang of swinging along underneath them, in order to reach the columns of water. Hanging from one, while reaching for the water with the other, he's surprised by the optical effect.
I don't feel compressed at all... but it looks like it. Well, he's taken enough general relativity to understand the basics of how light can be warped. Like fitting relativistic ladders into garages, isn't it? he thinks with a grin. Curious, he tries leaping from the hanging ring towards the column of water, and thus into the region of warped space, to see what it looks like from the inside.
Of course, the frictionless floor means he's likely to end up sprawled out within it.
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OOC: Inside description, eh... make me work, huh? *gets out
paper, pencil, and fires up some math software* This'll take a few
minutes...
Leaping from the ring, chad hits the floor in short order, well before
reaching the water, and, naturally, sliiiiiiiiiiiiides. The water,
fortunately, is a viscous (if not much) liquid. Unfortunately, at the
rates the water is falling, it's more of a solid column and, by some trick
of good aim, it's what Chad's foam-rubber body runs into.
One will note that 'good aim' is a relevant point, because it would only
have required being off by less than half a degree to miss the column by
more than ten feet. Then again, the 'good' part is also debatable, because
the associated spray from the falling water, which is more in the form of
supersonic microbullets than a solid column, are the main slowing agent,
as well as the main punching-holes-in-Chad's-body agent. By the time he
bumps into the solid, somewhat saw-like edge of the continuously falling
water, it only takes a few more inches of bodily loss before he comes to a
complete stop, at which point only a few stray droplets here and there
cause continued bother.
OOC: Ok, not a room to let kids play in unattended... urk!
Being stopped, however, does provide Chad with an interesting, though
potentially disconcerting, view of the room around. In size, everything in
the room looks considerably smaller than it out to, for the apparent
distance that the column was at from its surroundings... but to anyone
using binocular vision and whose mind is accoustomed to telling distance
based on how crossed the eyes are, everything feels at most a foot away!
Small, and requiring the eyes to focus distantly, but cross as if things
were close!
Also, this close to the falling water, movement itself is somewhat
strange. It feels almost as if there are a series of increasingly heavy
weights extending away from every joint... moving a hand from the wrist is
still pretty easy, moving from the elbow requires more work, moving from
the shoulder requires a substantial amount of force... much less if the
hand is by the shoulder, much more if it is extended away.
OOC: For the curious and technically spoken, it's a local region
of hyperbolic space about the waterfall, embedded in an otherwise
euclidean space.
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OOC: Please, please please PLEASE use the threaded view here and keep your posts in an appropriate thread! The Hall is a big, really immensely huge place, with plenty of room for multiple concurrent lines of action going on, and I'd love to let that happen... but without threading, I think it'd get messy. So, please wipe your feet and watch the threads!
Somewhere in the distant inner recesses of the tunnels upon tunnels upon tunnels in the Hall of Mirrors, Kaylo scurries about, searching, searching. His movement is achieved discontinuously, appearing for a moment before the entrance to one cavern, shaking his head, turning to look down a tunnel, dissapearing, and appearing for another moment before the entrance to the next cavern down the tunnel.
"Gotta find something with seats... something like seats... and a desk... flat floor... man, they're coming TOMORROW! Come on hall, don't fail me now!"
The Good Doctor's tone is a bit harried, but somewhat excited, as he delves deeper into the unplumbed depths of the limitless tunnels. Every now and then his pauses are slightly longer, or accompanied by a thoughtful "hrmmm", but each time he ends up shaking his head and vanishing again.
Each time except, of course, for the last. The last time is easily recognized, both by the reader and by Kaylo himself, by the exclamation "AHA!"
Kaylo reaches a leg back, kicking off the tunnel wall to propel himself into the cavern... which looks highly un-cavernish. It could almost be mistaken for a room... although one which had the misfortune to be owned by a chrome plating manufacturer who loved their wares.
Much of the floor looks disturbingly like the surface of a gold ball, having a collection of four-to-twenty inch diameter indentations covering most of the central area. On one side, the frictionless, mirrorlike surface of the floor curves up sharply, rises a couple feet, and then plateaus with a very slight concavity before plunging back down to the floor. The effect, one might say, rather resembles a wide desk, especially considering the two similarly chair-like floor-bulges directly behind it.
The wall immediately by the entrance door boasts a series of poorly-matched hooklike protrusions, one of which Kaylo quickly puts to the use of hanging his colorful patchwork cloak.
"Hrm..." he says, ignoring the reaches of the room away from the 'desk' (and, coincidentally, leaving the details up to PM'd suggestions) "floor could use a bit more friction... though the students were told to bring their own non-slip mats. Plopping one of those into a concavity should provide a reasonably stable place to sit. Unless they start pushing, then it'll be a giant game of bumpy air-hockey."
At the thought, the doctor grins brightly for a moment, but the immediacy of incoming visitors removes the grin soon. "Right, but students... really should have something for the teachers to write on. The walls certainly won't take anything... but... hrm. The Math tower in Princeton... they had plenty of chalkboards. In the bathroom, even! I bet they wouldn't notice if just one was missing..."
With that, Doctor Epsilon makes his way to the side of the desk... though his feet never really touch the ground in the process... and stares at a region of space nearby. He moves around, face taking on a mixture of 'concetrating' and 'constipating' expressions, and goes through an elaborate mime routine which, if one didn't know better, might look like someone unscrewing the frame of a blackboard, removing the wood, and jumping back as the heavy slate fell and broke at their feet.
"Oh [censored]!" Kaylo exclaims, face arranging itself into a thoroughly guilty expression. "Hrm, well... slates! Yes, slates for the students..." and, the constipated expression returning, a floor full of shattered slate fragments fails to not have been in the cavern. With a few judicious nudges of his foot, the Doctor sends the slates sliding into one of the larger depressions near the front of the room, by the desk, takes a breath, and starts in on the mime routine again.
This time, however, there is no jumping back. Rather, there is a grin of satisfaction as a medium sized chalkboard (quite whole and undamaged) also fails to not have been in the room. Strangely, it fails to fall to the floor, as well, despite being completely unsupported. This continues to be the case even as Kaylo reaches up to the top edge of the board, hooks his hands over, and pulls himself up until his chin clears the top.
To nobody in particular, he explains "Alright, looks like it's not going anywhere. Hope this'll work. Oh, bah, chalk..." Turning to the desk, the mime act of palming a few pieces of chalk from a box is rather anticlimactic, but the goal is getting chalk, not being dramatic, and after setting the chalk in his hand down in a concavity on the desk, Kaylo has at least achieved his goal.
"Now, just have to make sure they all can find this place..." the former mage says, snatching up his cloak from the silvery peg-hook. Reaching inside its folds, he extracts a large ball of yarn and ties the bitter end to one of the curlier-looking hooks. Then, string in hand, he walks out of the room and down the tunnel, turning this way and that, eventually reaching the exit of his abode. Once outside, it is a very short matter of time before a sign has been erected, with the beginning of the string attached.
Hopefully, dear reader, you have already realized what the sign says...
Quote:
Incoming students!!! Follow this thread!
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(OOC: Going to... threaded view..... Heheh.)
Chad's "good aim" means that he plows straight into the falling stream of liquid -- and its relative incompressibility, particularly compared to his body, means that the fluid punches through with the force of solid metal. Like an industrial press or saw, the falling column of water virtually disintegrates a chunk of his torso, before the impact slows him to a stop. A few stray droplets of water go straight through him like bullets, adding a sort of swiss-cheese look to the rest of his body.
Fortunately, thanks to his construction, he feels absolutely no pain -- in fact, due to the "rewiring" of his sense, it produces a rather pleasurable sensation. Still, he knew what that wave of pleasure meant. Gah!!! It's going to take a while to regenerate from this... he thinks, blushing a bit in embarassment. Anyone who saw him now would have no illusions about his true nature, since bright pink foam rubber showed through every hole.
Noticing the odd appearance of the room, he blinks in surprise. So this is what it looks like inside that warped space... he thinks, trying to move his body. The frictionless floor doesn't help much, but he notices the odd effect on movement and effort as well, from the distorted space. His hands flex easily enough, but moving his arms and legs seems to require a lot of effort -- possibly more than his limited telekinesis can provide!
Urgh... this is a bit of a pinch... he thinks, worried.
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OOC: Thoroughly OOC hint... in and out motions are fine, it's rotational ones that are problematic, the longer the arm of rotation is... so eventually one might figure out that curling fingers, then bending wrist, then bending elbow in, then drawing arm in to side, is a bunch of pretty easy motions, rotating when the mass is close to the center of rotation is easy, and extending the arm back out in a different direction is similarly easy... it's the Straight-From-A-To-B approach that's rough.
Oh, and don't forget, I believe Chad still has one of the rings, just not both. One should still be enough though... and even if it's not, using TK on the discarded ring (whether it's in 'movable' or 'immovable' mode) could prove useful...
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Chad lies within the distorted space for a while... he's not sure how much time passes. It's not like anyone comes walking by, or the light changes, or there's any indication of day or night. And his body, being virtually solid foam rubber, does not get hungry or tired, really.
Still, he decides that he can't just lie here as a fixture for the rest of eternity. It would get monumentally boring, for one. Carefully, trying to use only small rotations and radial motions, to ease the strain of moving, he tries to edge himself away from the pounding column of water. He already looks like swiss cheese, but sees no need to disintegrate more chunks of his body off.
Of course, his efforts, particularly on a frictionless floor, might result in unexpected rotations and such, that may result in extra damage anyways. (OOC: Up to the host... ^_^) The ring comes in handy here -- he can place it in midair as a support to pull himself along radially with, although no doubt his motions will cause extra rotations along the way...
Hopefully, he manages to get a meter or two away from the column of water, far enough to avoid damaging himself further.
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Even small rotational movements seem to have an exaggerated effect, and some damage does occur. The first few rotations and pulls seem to be working well at extraction from the sawlike water, but then a combination of the wrong motion (radial) and the wrong time (a fan shaped bit of spray) in the wrong place saw off a leg mid-thigh, though only chip slightly into the other thigh.
Aside from that one issue, though, patience and caution succeed, and Chad manages to extract himself from the immediate vicinity of the water and is sliding slowly back into more normal parts of the room, lacking in weird hyperbolic structures and dangerous bits of water.
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Kaylo in more detail
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Chad lets out a brief yelp of surprise, as the fanlike spray of water manages to slice his left leg free in the middle of the thigh, although only a divot is taken out of his right leg. Still, being peppered with more bullet-like sprays of water, he's starting to bear a notable swiss cheese sort of appearance.
Grumbling, he reaches for the severed leg, intending to reattach it at some point. If he can, at least. Otherwise, he'll have to nab it with his telekinesis later.
At least the frictionless floor is taking him to safer parts of the room, where he can recover and take stock of just how much damage he took.
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Poor Chad. Leg in hand, he slides out of the locally hyperbolic space around the roaring column of water which, as he retreats, one again appears to be a much smoother, more sedate column. A column of water that has claimed bits of his foam-rubber body and holds them, in very very itsy bitsy pieces, in its ever-descending grip. By this point, I think it's safe to assume he's got the 'hang' of using the ring, so coming to a stop mid-slide or restarting the slide should be no issue at this point.
As for damage, he's going to need to pull himself together at some point, and does have some holes in his personality to fill, but probably no more than 10% of his body mass was actually claimed by the water-saw.
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Kaylo in more detail
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Chad breathes a sigh of relief as he finally escapes the warped space. At least the ring is handy, in helping him move about. He studies his severed leg with a critical eye for a moment, and then looks about the room, trying to get reacquainted with distances and relationships being normal instead of distorted.
I wonder just how messed up I look... is there a mirror around here? he thinks to himself, looking about. If none presents itself, he'll look for any suitable reflective surface -- even the floor.
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No magic mirrors standing randomly about... just, well, every surface! Walls, ceiling, floor of course... the trick is finding things, like the water, that -aren't- reflective!
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Kaylo in more detail
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In response to questions regarding "Where is the Hall of Mirrors?"
In some senses, this is like asking "How many is red?" or "When is five miles?"
The Hall of Mirrors, and much that has to do with Kaylo, tends not to be a meaningful subject of the questions "When?" or "Where?". The mobile entrances... the Statues of the Self-Made Man, whereever they may be, do have location relative to their surroundings. If you want to find the walls of the Hall from 'the other side', however, the effort is fruitless. There is no 'other side'. The Hall is its own space, location meaningful only (sometimes) in reference to itself, and its silvery walls are the very edges of the space.
The Hall is not "In" the Napping Cat's Dream, though it tends to have exits there, just as it is not "In" some other systems where it also has points of egress.
From a Gaming-Guardians perspective, the Hall can be considered as its own system, which happens to connect to some other systems. For those arriving through Jauntspace, the Hall-Of-Mirrors system is visually identifiable as a Statue of the Self-Made man. Entrance via the statue is as simple as stepping in. It is, however, rare for anyone who hasn't entered by the Jauntspace entrance to depart by it. Or even find it.
Those entering directly via Jauntpad are almost guaranteed to find themselves just inside the Jauntspace entrance. Other arrival destinations may be achieved through a Petition Of It Would Be Cooler That Way.
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My card? Here you go.
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