Planar Engineering Sauna (primarily for Planescape Settings)
Apr 3, 2019 9:04:37 GMT
joatmoniac likes this
Post by kaizahpinguin on Apr 3, 2019 9:04:37 GMT
Hey everyone,
I sure hope this belongs in this section of the forum.
In my version of the city of Sigil in the Planescape setting, the Transcendent Order runs a fabulous sauna under the Great Gymnasium where they train their bodies and minds to act as one. This sauna is called... The Carousel.
Physical Layout:
In the image of Sigil itself (more or less coincidentally), the sauna is a large torus (or donut) with multiple entrances at the bottom going outward. The circumference of the torus is roughly 200 metres, allowing a *lot* of people to relax at once. The diameter between inside and outside ring, the thickness of the torus, is 10 metres. The torus is cut in half horizontally slightly above the middle, so that the ceiling is not round but flat, lest you would loose too much steam to a high round ceiling, or rather you would just require more steam. In any case, there is no point in having a completely round torus.
On the inner and outer ring walls, wooden benches are installed to sit and lie on. Mind to only sweat on your towel, berk, or you might get thrown out without a second thought (get it? Ciphers and second thoughts?). Some benches are made for larger creatures, balanced by some smaller ones, but most of them are made for medium sized humanoids.
The higher you sit on the benches, the more extreme the experience becomes: you are closer to the steam portal, closer to the ice portal, closer to the fire portal, you get the idea. This is a reason why the carousel is that thick - you have a lot of intensities of saunas in the same place and everyone can pick the right height and distance to the portals for themselves.
Planar Engineering:
In the middle if the torus, a gear from Mechanus turns at a contant speed of one turn per hour. Fixed to the gear are several plates and cages which turn around the ceiling of the carousel. On these plates and in these cages, the ciphers fix portals with their keys so that they stay open but can be closed by taking the keys off the portals. You can see some windows, a door, the ring of a barrel and so on. Because most portals are temporary, these have to be replaced irregularly.
There is one portal to the plane of steam (call it para-elemental or quasi-elemental, I try not to use such classifications). When it slowly turns past you, a thick fog of hot and perfectly clean water vapor fills your lungs and gets you sweating good. Exactly after 15 minutes in the steam (as the doctor ordered), a portal to the plane of air (picked so that its target region is an area of perpetual low pressure, making it an infinite vacuum cleaner) sucks all of the steam away again. There are some secondary measures to keep the steam constant, the simplest of which are just more portals interspersed, more complicated ones being moving magical force fields which keep atmospheres from passing through.
Directly behind the steam-sucking portal, there is a portal to the plane of ice, giving you a new kind of Shocking GraspTM. Watch first-timers whimper. Before you can really get cold, though, a nice warm shower of rain washes the sweat off you, and then a portal to the plane of fire dries your skin and even your towel and makes everything alright in the world. A minute later, as you might get out of the trance of this perfect smooth temperature, a sequence of portals to the feywild rolls along and fills the air with exquisite smells of fruit, flowers and wet earth after rain (Petrichor). After 40 minutes of this, the last portal kicks your nose and lungs really hard with a pure wave of menthol: peppermint smell makes you feel like you are freezing from within for but an instant - and then the gray, wavering wall of glorious steam comes to save the day.
How people use the carousel:
You pay your entrance fee and get a towel in your size if you did not bring one yourself. You head to a locker room where you take off your clothes and baggage (and weapons, if you feel like you need some on the city). Step under a shower to clean yourself before entering the sauna. Go in naked with your towel and locker key and choose an open spot on the benches: low for less intensity, high for more intensity. It is allowed to walk carefully along the bottom of the sauna to get to the point in the cycle you want to start, but stay quiet and don't disturb anybody. After sitting or lying down, you generally only move up or down your wall to change intensity, as the phases of the sauna cycle come rotating to you. The most common length of time to stay is 4 hours/cycles. After that, there are no more health benefits and staying for far too long can be harmful.
It is important to drink enough water, so a crew of mephits and other workers carry around free refreshments in the calm and dry phase. If you paid extra at the entrance, you received a stone with a white and black side. Putting it next to you with the white side up shows that you would like a massage during the calm phase. There are trained massage therapists who will come to you then.
Since a majority of visitors of the carousel are Ciphers, you can see a lot of bodies in meditation and sometimes in slow and quiet sparring on the ground of the torus.
How to use the carousel in adventures:
The steam portal stopped working, we need a new one
->lame but you can make this fun
The best known portal to get to your target location is one of the portals in the carousel
->Jump through the portal naked and deal with the lack of equipment on the other side, or break into the carousel at night (Antipeak), or persuade (pay) somebody to let you enter the carousel with equipment, or buy the portal off the Ciphers, or bring them a better portal for their needs and trade... Also, if you are a DM who uses this sauna in your game, chances are you are more comfortable with nudity than your players, so have fun with that, but obviously don't make it weird and chase them away.
Side mission for a modron march adventure: the gear turning the carousel stops working and turns way slower or faster now, or acts chaotically. Find the reason and fix it.
Thanks for reading this long mess of a post written by a german DM who likes saunas and loves to use magical things in engineering projects.
I sure hope this belongs in this section of the forum.
In my version of the city of Sigil in the Planescape setting, the Transcendent Order runs a fabulous sauna under the Great Gymnasium where they train their bodies and minds to act as one. This sauna is called... The Carousel.
Physical Layout:
In the image of Sigil itself (more or less coincidentally), the sauna is a large torus (or donut) with multiple entrances at the bottom going outward. The circumference of the torus is roughly 200 metres, allowing a *lot* of people to relax at once. The diameter between inside and outside ring, the thickness of the torus, is 10 metres. The torus is cut in half horizontally slightly above the middle, so that the ceiling is not round but flat, lest you would loose too much steam to a high round ceiling, or rather you would just require more steam. In any case, there is no point in having a completely round torus.
On the inner and outer ring walls, wooden benches are installed to sit and lie on. Mind to only sweat on your towel, berk, or you might get thrown out without a second thought (get it? Ciphers and second thoughts?). Some benches are made for larger creatures, balanced by some smaller ones, but most of them are made for medium sized humanoids.
The higher you sit on the benches, the more extreme the experience becomes: you are closer to the steam portal, closer to the ice portal, closer to the fire portal, you get the idea. This is a reason why the carousel is that thick - you have a lot of intensities of saunas in the same place and everyone can pick the right height and distance to the portals for themselves.
Planar Engineering:
In the middle if the torus, a gear from Mechanus turns at a contant speed of one turn per hour. Fixed to the gear are several plates and cages which turn around the ceiling of the carousel. On these plates and in these cages, the ciphers fix portals with their keys so that they stay open but can be closed by taking the keys off the portals. You can see some windows, a door, the ring of a barrel and so on. Because most portals are temporary, these have to be replaced irregularly.
There is one portal to the plane of steam (call it para-elemental or quasi-elemental, I try not to use such classifications). When it slowly turns past you, a thick fog of hot and perfectly clean water vapor fills your lungs and gets you sweating good. Exactly after 15 minutes in the steam (as the doctor ordered), a portal to the plane of air (picked so that its target region is an area of perpetual low pressure, making it an infinite vacuum cleaner) sucks all of the steam away again. There are some secondary measures to keep the steam constant, the simplest of which are just more portals interspersed, more complicated ones being moving magical force fields which keep atmospheres from passing through.
Directly behind the steam-sucking portal, there is a portal to the plane of ice, giving you a new kind of Shocking GraspTM. Watch first-timers whimper. Before you can really get cold, though, a nice warm shower of rain washes the sweat off you, and then a portal to the plane of fire dries your skin and even your towel and makes everything alright in the world. A minute later, as you might get out of the trance of this perfect smooth temperature, a sequence of portals to the feywild rolls along and fills the air with exquisite smells of fruit, flowers and wet earth after rain (Petrichor). After 40 minutes of this, the last portal kicks your nose and lungs really hard with a pure wave of menthol: peppermint smell makes you feel like you are freezing from within for but an instant - and then the gray, wavering wall of glorious steam comes to save the day.
How people use the carousel:
You pay your entrance fee and get a towel in your size if you did not bring one yourself. You head to a locker room where you take off your clothes and baggage (and weapons, if you feel like you need some on the city). Step under a shower to clean yourself before entering the sauna. Go in naked with your towel and locker key and choose an open spot on the benches: low for less intensity, high for more intensity. It is allowed to walk carefully along the bottom of the sauna to get to the point in the cycle you want to start, but stay quiet and don't disturb anybody. After sitting or lying down, you generally only move up or down your wall to change intensity, as the phases of the sauna cycle come rotating to you. The most common length of time to stay is 4 hours/cycles. After that, there are no more health benefits and staying for far too long can be harmful.
It is important to drink enough water, so a crew of mephits and other workers carry around free refreshments in the calm and dry phase. If you paid extra at the entrance, you received a stone with a white and black side. Putting it next to you with the white side up shows that you would like a massage during the calm phase. There are trained massage therapists who will come to you then.
Since a majority of visitors of the carousel are Ciphers, you can see a lot of bodies in meditation and sometimes in slow and quiet sparring on the ground of the torus.
How to use the carousel in adventures:
The steam portal stopped working, we need a new one
->lame but you can make this fun
The best known portal to get to your target location is one of the portals in the carousel
->Jump through the portal naked and deal with the lack of equipment on the other side, or break into the carousel at night (Antipeak), or persuade (pay) somebody to let you enter the carousel with equipment, or buy the portal off the Ciphers, or bring them a better portal for their needs and trade... Also, if you are a DM who uses this sauna in your game, chances are you are more comfortable with nudity than your players, so have fun with that, but obviously don't make it weird and chase them away.
Side mission for a modron march adventure: the gear turning the carousel stops working and turns way slower or faster now, or acts chaotically. Find the reason and fix it.
Thanks for reading this long mess of a post written by a german DM who likes saunas and loves to use magical things in engineering projects.