Pendulum

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Ruko

Professional Otaku
Original poster
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per day
Writing Levels
  1. Elementary
  2. Intermediate
  3. Adept
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Female
Genres
Fantasy, Magical, Horror
It is late evening, and a low smog hangs over the city of early Victorian London. The streets are dark, lit only by oil lamps, which cast a dim yellow shade over the damp cobblestones. Few people are outside now, the factories closed for the night, and the workers gone home to their families. A young man hurries along a road, rushing through puddles, which part like the red sea for his heavy stride. He is unknowingly carrying a valuable treasure, an item destined to change the path of the Empire forever. He arrives at his destination, and opens the door, causing a bell to tingle faintly. He throws his hood back to reveal a weathered face that bears the fresh scars of adventure. The building is a stark contrast to the outside world. It is bathed in a warm golden light, and completely full of oddities. A staircase rises up from the far corner, to which the man heads. The second floor is much like the first, however, the clutter is noticeably shinier, and is more organised, on shelves and desks rather than just on the floor. An old man sits at a typewriter in the center of the room. Some words are exchanged, as are some coins, and a small chest, the size of a football. The man counts his coin, before fleeing into the night.

35 years later:
A man dressed in a black suit with thick grey hair stands on a viewing platform on the edge of a massive replica of Big Ben. Far below him, a city twice the size of London stretches out in every direction, with many smaller clock towers spaced at regular intervals in each of the twelve directions of a clock face. Twelve roads link these smaller towers and the main tower, in the center. Beyond the outer towers, a chest-height wall surrounds the entire town, separating the interior from the vast expanse of white and blue. Around the city, hundreds of airships float, cannons aimed at the central tower. The man smiles, and makes a wide gesture, right as the clock strikes the hour. Golden lightning arcs through the ships, each strike appearing randomly in the air and taking down a dozen of the vessels. Some turn to flee, others open fire. Metal orbs fly, smashing into the tower, shattering stone and shaking the entire city. At regular intervals, as if beating in time to a silent song, a pulse of white light explodes from the clock tower's summit, and any damage that had been done is instantly repaired.

This is the floating citadel, Sundial, the Impossible City - it goes by many names. It is ruled by the Lord Aster Kindlewood, now 104 years of age, who is said to have not changed in appearance at all for the last 35 years. It is considered an independent nation, with it's own currency and laws, and has pledged it's allegiance to the Throne of England. No one knows why it is shaped like a clock, or why the Lord Kindlewood has such an obsession with clocks, though some suspect it has a key role to play in the strange events that have taken place over the last 35 years.

First, it was noticed that the burning of coal and oil produced triple the energy it used to. Shortly afterwards, Lord Kindlewood announced that he had successfully achieved alchemy - converting base metals into gold. He used this to construct the great clock tower, on a savanna in mid Africa. Around this, the city slowly developed as it became a trading post between south and north Africa. One day, the lord instructed workers to build a wall around the entire town, and to make is sturdy, with foundations buried several meters into the ground. Later that month, citizens awoke to a low magnitude earthquake, finding themselves hundreds of feet above the ground, with seemingly no mechanism holding their city up.

To begin with, scientists flocked to the city to try and work out what was going on. 5 years ago, however, anomalous things started to happen around the world. A titanic beast the size of a mountain crawled out of the ocean on the coast of Brazil and destroyed a huge town, before disappearing into thin air. Huge crack-like canyons appeared overnight all over the world, and occasionally, entire villages would be massacred overnight, with no trace of the bodies or the killers. Once these anomalies began to be observed and recorded, it was noticed that every anomaly occurred exactly on the hour, not a minute early or late. Within the last 6 months, these events have been escalating in frequency and magnitude. Still with no leads, investigators look towards Sundial for an explanation.

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Inside the great central tower of Sundial, nicknamed "Really Big Ben", there is a colossal device. It is a clock, in all rights, but it also contains the item that Kindlewood bought 35 years ago. It is unknown where this item came from, who made it, or what it was intended for, but it has the ability to manipulate the space-time continuum. Since this ability has to be activated in a rhythmic pattern, Kindlewood quickly realised that it could be automated by building it as the pendulum of a clock. The item has absolutely no power if activated out of rhythm, and it can be pretty difficult to synchronise internal rhythm to the clock's rhythm if you screw up, too. So far, no one else knows of the item's existence beyond Kindlewood, so he alone has control over it. The Pendulum can be activated when it reaches it's lowest point as it swings - when it hangs completely vertically, and it reaches this point every 4 seconds.

Do not misunderstand though. The Pendulum does not possess the ability to use magic. Everything it can do has been designed by Kindlewood, after 3 decades of study into what the space-time continuum actually is. It's ability to prevent Kindlewood from aging, for example, is not a continuous effect - he uses it to record his body's exact biological layout, which then gets automatically restored if he activates that particular effect - much like creating a snapshot of a computer's programs to be restored later if you accidentally screw something up. The Golden Lightning is also manipulation of the space-time continuum. The clock selects points in space where a lightning strike is taking place and basically teleports it into the air around the citadel, rather than actually creating lightning bolts.

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What role you play is up to you. Some of you may wish to try and prevent the anomalies. Some may be trying to claim Sundial for your own. Some may just be ordinary citizens living ordinary lives. For 'tis an open world RP. You may go anywhere and do anything you like. It's the Victorian era, around 1870, lets say. Technology is steam-punk level, so airships and the like exist. Anything that happened in 1870-1871 you may engage in, and you may come up with your own things to do too. No magic though. Any amount of weird stuff you want can go on, but no player-owned magic.

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When making a character, remember it's the victorian era, and working class citizens aren't going to own an airship, at best they may crew one. For convenience of having people meet up, they'll all start in Sundial.

Name:

Age:

Gender:

Occupation:

Reason for being in Sundial:

Important Assets: (Airship, house, expensive things.)
 
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