The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, London, March 16, 2008
The Worshipful Company's Guildhouse had seen better days since its inception in 1888. The gilt had faded with the passing of time, and the once gracious building had grown ragged with age.
Yet, it still operated, and deep in the ground beneath it time did not pass. It honoured a sacred trust, handed to it by Alexander Hartedgen, one hundred and nine years ago, when he deeded them the building.
This late at night, it stood empty, its security so poor as not to be worthy of the name. If one were to enter it, to walk down its corridors - that wound inward in an ever decreasing spiral - one would find an ancient staircase.
At the bottom of the staircase was a door, and behind that door was a wonder.
It was a room made of rock, carved from the bones of the earth, with five chambers radiating off of it. In the exact centre lay the machine, emitting a slow ticking, the light above reflecting the dull gleam of curved brass.
Twenty-five feet high, it was circular in construction, resting on a base of five cylindrical pipes. It looked somewhat like an astrolabe, consisting of skeletal globes laced one within another, so that each could move independently.
At the centre lay the most mechanically complex part, a partially enclosed steel dome housing a series of cogs and ratchets that allowed the movement of the various metal bands comprising each globe.
The brass strips on the outer globes were calibrated with finally engraved measurements, and the curving bands were marked: one with minutes and hours of the day, another with the days of the year, and another with the years of the centuries.
A watcher would see the inner bands shift fractionally, providing a subtle alteration in the composition of the whole. Immediately, there was a buzz and a tiny blue flicker of electrical light at the centre of the device.
Each pipe led from the base of the machine to a chamber, where it spilt into six branches, each one joined to a gleaming brass pod, and it was down these pipes that the pulse of light travelled. Another and another and another. One pulse per minute, no more, no less, just as it had done for one hundred and nine years.
Under a square of hinged glass lay a complex switch. Once it was pulled the light would stop, the machine would hum to a halt, and the pods would open, freeing those who slept inside.
[ooc: This is the post for our retrieval team to shut off the machine, and our victims to wake up from stasis so they can come home.
Please wait for OCD is up! Info in the OOC thread, as per usual.
Some text lifted from Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler.]
Yet, it still operated, and deep in the ground beneath it time did not pass. It honoured a sacred trust, handed to it by Alexander Hartedgen, one hundred and nine years ago, when he deeded them the building.
This late at night, it stood empty, its security so poor as not to be worthy of the name. If one were to enter it, to walk down its corridors - that wound inward in an ever decreasing spiral - one would find an ancient staircase.
At the bottom of the staircase was a door, and behind that door was a wonder.
It was a room made of rock, carved from the bones of the earth, with five chambers radiating off of it. In the exact centre lay the machine, emitting a slow ticking, the light above reflecting the dull gleam of curved brass.
Twenty-five feet high, it was circular in construction, resting on a base of five cylindrical pipes. It looked somewhat like an astrolabe, consisting of skeletal globes laced one within another, so that each could move independently.
At the centre lay the most mechanically complex part, a partially enclosed steel dome housing a series of cogs and ratchets that allowed the movement of the various metal bands comprising each globe.
The brass strips on the outer globes were calibrated with finally engraved measurements, and the curving bands were marked: one with minutes and hours of the day, another with the days of the year, and another with the years of the centuries.
A watcher would see the inner bands shift fractionally, providing a subtle alteration in the composition of the whole. Immediately, there was a buzz and a tiny blue flicker of electrical light at the centre of the device.
Each pipe led from the base of the machine to a chamber, where it spilt into six branches, each one joined to a gleaming brass pod, and it was down these pipes that the pulse of light travelled. Another and another and another. One pulse per minute, no more, no less, just as it had done for one hundred and nine years.
Under a square of hinged glass lay a complex switch. Once it was pulled the light would stop, the machine would hum to a halt, and the pods would open, freeing those who slept inside.
[ooc: This is the post for our retrieval team to shut off the machine, and our victims to wake up from stasis so they can come home.
Please wait for OCD is up! Info in the OOC thread, as per usual.
Some text lifted from Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler.]