Which earned her another look and a grumbled not *that* old... Eventually followed by a small twist of the lips: barely *begun* to cause trouble.

Let's say:
They stopped on a small rise behind what passed for a crowd in The Beyond (he'd been in the Steadfast -- through the Tremble Pass and the villages of Navarene; *those* were crowds) to look up at the boulders?

And when Limen mentions plans:
Ha! Those were all short-term possibilities - sure - but no: what got him excited was... "Imagine riding that to the top of the stalk, Limen-pup. You could build an entire exploration camp on top of it: water, supplies, a power source, good beds!" That was a factor when you got to be his age. But- He pulled at his beard, bothered... "It's so *slooow*."

Judging by its position relative to anything stationary near it, he supposed it *might* be descending at something like 10 meters a day -- maybe? At its current rate it looks like it would reach the water collector in four weeks, give or take a week.

"...Going to have to optimize that." (He also saw a maintenance building and a couple of homes also in the boulder's trajectory, at potential risk of being crushed, but who cared about that? They could just move.)

Finally yielding to her more and more insistant prompting, he went straight for Zijan and Lym -- straight through, utterly confident villagers would part before him. And they did. (Truth be told, someone hadn't, once, and he'd walked right over that guy without appearing to notice, leaving neat little footmarks on his back. (He'd done the same to a pressed wall later on.) That tended to stick in people's memory.)

Without further ado he filled the ebony woman and Limen's brother in on his thought process...

At the top of the hill behind the crowd she pauses and stares up at boulder, indeed imagining what it'd be like to ride the thing up to the top. It was enough to keep up that curious grin and have her tapping her chin with the back of her pen. Rather than drag Fraksel along, she walks down the rise, whistling an upbeat tune she'd heard a number of towns back and still hadn't gotten out of her head.

Once back again at the front of the crowd, she drops down to a cross-legged sit beside Lym and begins to flip through the notebook in her lap. "You got any plans?" She asks quietly to him.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 18:51, Sun 21 Oct 2018.

Zijan listens to Fraksel's idea with interest.  "So you have an idea to reverse the descent so you could ride it to the top?  What sorts of things do you need to make that happen?" she asks.  There were areas around here still not entirely explored, places where Limen and Lym's talents would shine in finding and making what Fraksel needed for his experiments.

Fraksel grinned through the white of his beard, gazing up at the floating constellation : "Data." The man could be infuriating sometimes.

Turning his back on the Beanstalk and facing them, he (dramatically) lifted a single, squarish finger, a sure sign The Game was about to begin: "How - do - these boulders - fly...? Zijan?"

Zijan smiled; sometimes Fraksel was, in his way, an entertaining and storyteller bar none.

"An energy from the Beanstalk sustains them, and the energy in the area where that boulder was has begun to run dry for a currently-unknown reason," she proposes.

"A good possibility for us, if we can find a way to bottle it up, or it has some sort of control center... Wonder what will happen when we bathe in it? Will we fly too?"

Without pausing, his brown eyes shifted over to the next contestant: "Limen?" (Or whoever posts next)
This message was last edited by the player at 02:41, Wed 24 Oct 2018.

Limen crosses her arms and taps her forearm with the tip of her pen, looking entirely serious so as to not let down his game. “After my observations and many calculations regarding their trajectory in conjugation with the happenings below, I have concluded these boulders are kept in levitation via,” she pauses dramatically, egged on by Faskel’s theatrics, “the power of love. I suggest we hug each other more.” She shrugs, adding, "That or it's some other kind of balance down here at the base that's keeping it up."

"Zijan can help you with the hugging," generously 'volunteered' the old man -- preventively stepping out of the direct line between the two. And, "Belief that holds up mountains, eh...? But is it *our* belief, or its belief? Maybe *it* decided it needed a hug..." Stranger things had happened in the last billion years...

Next-to-last on the roster. He pointed, smiling with barely restrained excitement : "Lym?"

 "I think Limen is just pulling your leg Fraksel...honestly I think it might just be whatever is at the other end is making the same kinda force that holds us to the ground? So if it gets further away or I dunno smaller the rocks would drift down" As he speaks he strokes his chin as if thinking as he grabs a rock dropping it as he speaks the next part of his idea "so if I'm right once we start climbing the beanstalk, at a certian point we won't be climbing up but instead cllimbing down toward somewhere else...so if we can get the boulder to go back up ,or is it down,the beanstalk it will hover again...though like I said hoverin boulders hardly seem like the kind of thing to waste  our time on."

"Is she now?" He glanced at the young woman and then back to Lym. "Then she'll look EXTRA silly when she wins, won't she?"


After Lym exposes his idea:
"Falling to the Promised Land...? I like it! Much easier than walking." A mechanical hand on Lym's shoulder: "Nanoes call it Gravity. And discovering its secrets might well be worth *several* of your lifetimes, Lym-lad."

Back to general address, "Its reverse is Counter-Gravity, and *that* is my guess: obviously the rocks themselves are laced with a substance that repels the ground instead of attracting it! Right now they've got just enough regular rocks around them to weigh each block down to neutral buoyancy. Except that one..."

Hu...

Making it up as he goes: "Well, maybe there was a Counter-rich part that broke off, leaving the rest too 'matter-rich'? Oh-Oh, or maybe Counter burns itself with time, like uranium, boiling away until it can't support the regular matter around it anymore? If this guess is even half-right, then we'll just need to gather enough of the stuff, purify it, and there: we too can get to neutral gravity. One tiny push (off the Beanstalk? Propellers?); one small pull (Grappling rope? Air balloon?) and we're off towards there," - a triumphant point upwards - "towards the very tippy-top."

Obviously.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:25, Thu 25 Oct 2018.

When the three utterly failed to comment, much less worship at his feet, Fraksel humphed, then grumped something about young people not knowing: pure genius if it bit them in the softies.

But never mind that right now.

Hands back behind his back, half-grin back in place, fire in the eyes: "So what will it be? How can we test out some of those theories, hm?"

Etra the elder can't help bu overhear parts of Fraksel's theories. She steps up to him to interject, with Scytain by her side.

"You are clearly a learned man, sir, as I see you have had at least as many years alive as I. While I appreciate your approach to discerning the numenera affecting the boulders which Detlun..." she indicates the middle aged Aeon Priest "...has been studying for the last two decades with only a handful of theories to show for it, we now need to make some decisions. While we do have three or four weeks before catastrophe strikes, likely any solution we decide to implement to prevent it or deal with it will easily take that long, if not longer without applying haste."

Detlun, having noticed he was being spoken of, comes over to join the conversation. "There's merit in Etra's words. I myself can fall into the trap of waxing theoretical on the nature of numenera, as it is something I do relish in. This may be a time to act first and theorize later. Perhaps one of you are versed in working with the numenera, helping us conceive some sort of force field around the water collector? Or developing an alternate way for us to collect water?"

Zijan nods at Etra and Fraksel both.  "We shall need to employ solutions based on two things - failure and success.  We must find an alternate water source, whether that be from moving some or all of the current collector to safety, or finding a new solution to bring water to the town.  And then we must find out why the boulder is descending, and if any others may do so, which will likely involve ascending the Beatstalk.  If we cannot do both, we must do what we can do most effectively."  She gestures to the collector, and turns to Detlun and Fraksel.  "What is known about the extent of the collector and how to power it?  And what is known about the interior structure of the Beanstalk?"

Detlun fields Zijan's questions. "Yes, the collector seems to be powered by some sort of numenera. It's as if the water below the ground is attracted to something within the collector, and is drawn to the surface as laaks to an injured aneen. No resident here is confident in disassembling the collector and reassembling it elsewhere without permanently disrupting its function, or worse. Even if successful, we would need a means of drilling down far enough to reach the water deep below the ground.

"As for the interior of the Beanstalk, nothing is known of it. No one I know of, in tales or alive today, has ever been inside it. I believe there must be a way in, but I'm not sure of the way."

Did a bit of scene re-arranging, hope that's alright with everybody?


Humph! "We do *not* 'need to decide now'," contradicted the old inventor without any hesitation -- and with some bother at the interruption, actually. "In fact we *shouldn't*, as a basic rule, make important decision with both eyes closed tight, Etra... Not if we have a single reasonable bone in our body."

Well-meaning amateurs- Well-meaning amateurs should stick to their own affairs.

Tensions were beginning to rise, when Zijan's smoothly intervened (this was by no means the first thing she'd  had to smooth over between Fraksel and the elder...)

(...)

Hm. Fraksel settled down after that, now that they were at least actually discussing data instead of proposing foolhardy leaps of faith (also, the phrase 'studying the boulders for the last two decades' had finally penetrated his dwindling annoyance).

The white-bearded nano focused his interest on the robed Aeon priest: "What did you discover during your study of the floating mountains, Father...? Looking at them right now, I've been sort of wondering if they remain perfectly pinned in place or if they bob up and down - orbit each other - with the seasons and the years?" He pulled at his chin hairs. "Has anybody gathered a piece? Do you have a sample now?" Which, granted, all boiled down to an interested: "Can you show us your research?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:30, Sun 28 Oct 2018.

Etra sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I'm not talking about taking action without examination. My concern, Fraksel M'ba, is that you would be apt to getting caught up in analysis paralysis, going about this too academically." She then turns to Detlun. "My concern encompasses you as well, Detlun. His point is a good one. What have your twenty years study revealed about the Beanstalk and its floating attendants? Have they merely gained you an opportunity to expand the tie of your sash from our hospitality?"

Detlun's face reddens and his brow tightens as he looks from Fraksel to Etra. His retort struggles in its forthcoming as his mouth open and closes like a fish in a dry boat. Finally, his words come with a bit of pride in divulging information Fraksel appeared not to have. "To the untrained eye the boulders appear completely stationery, not rotating, revolving, orbiting, or bobbing in any matter. However, they do indeed move, as would not be apparent observing them with the naked eye for a handful of days. The largest boulder maintains exact alignment with the position of the sun as it rises over the Black Riage, which changes with the time of year, and all boulders move relative to the largest one's position. Even the Beanstalk itself aligns with the boulders' movement, as it is suspended 30 meters off the ground it is free to pivot on its vertical axis..."

Etra interrupts the Aeon Priest. "You're not telling us anything we don't already know. We can tell that it turns when we look at it from the observation decks. Perhaps you can share some information that-"

Scytain holds up his hands, turning to show his palms to all involved in this particular discussion. "Everyone, STOP!" When the discussion halts, he continues. "Tensions and egos are getting the best of us." He indicates Zijan. "I concur with her, who seems to have the broadest perspective and the most inclusive observations. We need both actions and studies, not one at the exclusion of the other. We also need contingencies in the event any one solution or line of study leads to a dead end. Now, let's continue this conversation without undermining one another, shall we?"

The older of the Aeon Priest coughs. "Yes, of course. M. M'ba, no one has any samples from the suspended boulders at this juncture. And unfortunately, I am not at liberty to show you my research by order of the Papacy."

Zijan waits until everyone has had their say, looking intrigued by the various ideas.

"An elderly aunt of mine had a seskii hound who was the calmest beast you'd ever meet.  Spent every day cuddled up to her, as easy as you please.  Until the day he would not stop growling at something beyond one particular window.  One of the wall segments had begun to fail, making a high-pitched noise only the seskii could hear as it crumbled.  Only when the local wright found the fault in the matrix did they realize why Demma's seskii hound had been growling.

"Which is to say, Detlun, Etra, Scytain is there something in that direction which has changed around the time the boulder started falling?"  Zijan gestures to the native Beaners for their response.  "Limen, if the water station cannot be moved, and the source is very deep, is there an alternative way to bring water to the town, even on a temporary basis?  Lym, in your explorations around the area, have you noted any potential places for salvage?  Fraksel, while gravity may or may not be able to reverse once we are on the upper reaches of the Beanstalk, do you have a way to climb it now so the boulder or its former floating area can be investigated?"

Fascinating, thought Brother M as Detlun expounded on the boulders, a delighted grin spreading across his rough features. That seemed to imply a direct link between the Beanstalk and the bould-


Of course, bitterly thought Fraksel: Because knowledge in the hands of the people might actually be useful......

"Three days," he decided. "Give us three days to study the problem and *then* we can meet here again to choose a solution that actually might work."


To Zijan's question the nano gave a pleased grin. "Bah, who needs climbing when you can FLY? Was planning to unveil this a bit later, but:" From a robe pocket he proudly produced a cobbled-together piece of tech wrapped around a changing, iridescent crystal, bit smaller than his thumb. "Just one person though, so what we really need is about 200m of strong cabling, light as can be. (400 would be better so we can set up a pulley system)."

He fired a bushy-eyebrowed look Etra's way: take that, old biddy! Analysis paralysis indeed...

Limen had taken to sitting back and listening, looking between speakers with bated curiosity as tensions raised and then were quelled again.

To Zijan's question, she shrugs. "I could ask around and see if anyone knows of any other gatherings of water. Even something 'not exactly potable' can be made drinkable with some effort. The longevity of that solution'd take more details than I've got right now, but," she shrugs again, as though to dismiss the worry. She then gestures over her shoulder, back towards the water collector. "We could run some math and see how deep that giant rock is going to bury itself into that building. If the thing that draws up the water is below the 'will be crushed' ground range, we might be able to just reroute it."

Fraksel then was given a wide, toothy grin as she claps her hands in front of her once. "If all you need is a rope, all I need to provide are some materials and a bit of time. Maybe a bit of iotum, but," she pats her shoulder bag, "I always keep spares. 200 meters, you said?" (Using either a craft check, or perhaps her "right tool for the job" technique - whichever makes more sense) She says excitedly, eagerly wanting to play into her teammates' plans.

Zijan smiles widely.  "Excellent, we have a way to get up, and a problem to sort out for down.  Let us work on the up, the down, and," she gestures in Lym's direction, "the far for those two or three days.  In the interim, those structures which can be evacuated or moved in the danger zone should be emptied and other lodgings or storage areas found.  If the projected timeline holds, with enough people, most of the other buildings can be readily emptied and even possibly dismantled and relocated."

"And light, Limen-pup," reminds the wall breaker. "Entire roll shouldn't be more than a single man can carry -- if that! Although... No, no - Go for long and strong and we'll hoist it up with a smaller cable if turns out too heavy to lift, what do you think? Then we'll work on sensors."

His feet are already itching to get him back to the workshop!

From what he communicates to those around him, these seem to be the things Fraksel would like to build/see built:

• 400m of strong rope, with an anchoring pulley system (force-multiplying block-and-tackle style). Eventually with a powered ascender as well, but in the meantime let's just recruit 'volunteers' to pull the rope :D
• A rough gravity sensor (weight+a spring scale at the end of a long stick will do fine), a magnetic sensor (same with a magnetic weight), and a stethoscope; anything fancier they can scavenge out of pre-existing machines (radiation/energy/heat/distance/elevation) (?). He'll ask Deltun if he has anything of the kind to loan to the expedition? (Or come measure himself)
• Some way to collect samples or dig holes into rock (explosives, portable diamond drill rig, vorpal blade, hammer and chisel?)

Urm. Brother M abrubtly turned round, catching a few of eavesdropping crowd by surprise : "And you lot! Think HARD! If you've seen anything. Or heard any old stories about the boulders - the Beanstalk itself. Or you know about an artifacts you think might help, no matter how remote the chance..." A dramatic pause, mouth open... "Go see Zijan and tell her all about it as soon as you can, no questions asked!"

The white-bearded old man started beating a hasty retreat before the obsidian-skinned Arkus could wreck her revenge. (That was close: he'd almost volunteered for that one!)

"You coming, Limen...?"

Limen pulls a renewed wide grin and pops up to her feet. The little bobbles and doodads of deconstructed and half-reconstructed machines in and tied to her shoulder bag rattle against each other and her tools.

"'Course, Old Man 'M." She says cheerfully, trotting to quickly catch up. A glance is sent over her shoulder, back at her brother. "Lym? You coming too or will I be seeing you around later?"

Not that old, auto-grumbled the venerable nano before coming to a dead stop- And then quickly started back-tracking all the way to the front of the crowd, his plas sandals slapping the drit allegro. It quickly became clear that he was heading straight for... the robed Deltun and his distinctive priesty hat!

Fraksel came to a stop before him, hands behind back. "Forgot to mention it, but -uhurm - tracking the boulders descent will be of utmost importance -- *especially* if it starts accelerating (or I guess, the reverse). Changing course- Well that might be good, or that might be... not so good. This will require great precision, and *unbreakable* constance..." His sharp eyes looked up at the man's rounded visage. "Can we- Can the whole aldeia entrust you and the priests with being their advanced warning system, Father Deltun?"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:15, Thu 01 Nov 2018.

Detlun holds Fraksel's gaze, then clears his throat. "Of course the aldeia can count on us," he says rather huffily. "I would be observing them carefully in any event, even more so at this time, and I will be taking copious notes on its descent... or otherwise should any changes to its progress come about. I also have Kullan here to check my notes and measures." He looks to the young man who is nodding obsequiously. "You worry not about my work and my affairs regarding the boulder, and I won't worry about you not destroying the entire Beanstalk with your- well, whatever it is you plan on doing with this ragtag bunch you seem to be aligning yourself with..."

He then looks to Zijan and clears his throat again. "Of course, present company excluded, m'lady..." her says demurely.

Ha! Feet, meet mouth! Fraksel raised both eyebrows. "Blowing up the Beanstalk, you say? Now there's an idea! But... I'll have to get back to you on that one, Deltun; Let's save it until after my raggedy bunch solves this little boulder problem of yours, hm?"