Final Story!

And so begins the final story for chapter 7 of Mysteries of the Arcana!

A little while back it there was some postulation in a reader comment about the nature of the physical laws of the various arcana.

In fact, most arcana have similar physical laws because they are all made out of the same four elements (that is, each is made of pieces of members of the four original families of minor arcana). As such, you tend to find gravity on most arcana as well as matter, energy, and so forth.

And time. Every arcana progresses, for most beings, in a linear fashion. That is, moment B comes after moment A and both come before moment C.

Of course, there specifics of how each of those physical laws work changes from arcana to arcana. As you can imagine, time passes differently in the Fool (which has no stellar bodies, no axis rotation, no universal drift, and so forth) than it does in the Heirophant (which has all those things). The difference, as measured by atomic half-life decay, isn't so great that it is revealed on casual observation (Kludge, for example, could go home to a class reunion and no one would say he looked any younger or older than he should) but it is different enough that it comes into play in this story.

See you Thursday!

Fairportfan (Guest) (2017-03-06)

Ohmighosh!  It's a geehaw whimmydiddle!

JD (Guest) (2017-03-07)

Naw, I believe it's a chrono-topograsphere. Sure, it looks a lot like a geehaw whimmydiddle and they're both used for measurement of quantum fluctuations, so the misidentification is understandable. However, one can see the difference between the cam actuator and the column wheel.

JD (Guest) (2017-03-07)

Another note: at the very top of the device it appears to be disintegrating... turning from gold to silver and crumbling?

Sensei Le Roof (Guest) (2017-03-08)

Hey look, it's a... um... coughcoughcoughmeter!

Fairportfan (Guest) (2017-03-09)

That's what i said.  Only in Smartass.

Sensei Le Roof (Guest) (2017-03-10)

That's what i said.  Only in Smartass.

Kessy_Athena (Guest) (2017-03-13)

Obviously it's a Do Not Touch!  Also known as an Ohhh, What Does This Button Do?

It reminds me of some reconstructions I've seen of the Antikythera device.

Most of the laws of physics you can't really mess with too much or normal matter will become unstable.  It would kind of suck to step off the Royal Road only to immediately blow up.