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Image: Pandora Gate

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Mon, 2011-08-01 03:10

Aphelion

Image: Pandora Gate

I wanted to give to my players an alternative image of a Pandora Gate, since the ones in the books are fairly abstract. Inspired by some of the paintings in Gatecrashing, I did a little 3D modeling using Blender. Maybe someone else will find the image useful as well. Pandora Gate rendering

Mon, 2011-08-01 10:55

Xagroth

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

It lacks something to give it a sense of scale (the crates in the background... well, I doubt they count ^^U). A human would be good (even with the size variations of the morphs). Personally, I just told my players that "they are like Stargates". Since we don't use Gatecrashing, that gets it done nicely ^^

Wed, 2011-08-03 02:44

Aphelion

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Xagroth, that's a brilliant idea. I added a gate tech taking readings...it should be visible if the image above is refreshed. Now, given that the books are fairly vague on the scale of the gates (and they vary a lot), I'm not sure if I've got the scale right of the Pandora Gate (the one on Pandora, that is). Of course, rescaling the tech-dude is easy. Is he about right, in your mind's eye?

Thu, 2011-08-04 05:20

Xagroth

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

I think it could be a little smaller, in relation to the gate's frame, because if I understood right, the frame moves and changes a lot in a sort of dialing mechanism... also making a variable size transition sphere. Maybe cutting the technician to 60% or so, and making the sphere a llittle smaller and the frame a little bigger.

Fri, 2011-08-05 10:58

Aphelion

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Done. (Smaller tech-guy, somewhat brighter image) Looking at it, you know what they would need? Some sort of variable-height ramp that they could adjust to match the size of the wormhole and whatever is going through. Consider a Gate that could produce a 10' radius wormhole at maximum size. When it's held to minimum size for a gate probe, the wormhole is going to be this black pea-sized sphere 10' off the ground. That is, unless the gate techs have some way of moving the wormhole up and down within the frame, which doesn't seem likely.

Fri, 2011-08-05 12:23

Xagroth

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Aphelion wrote:
Looking at it, you know what they would need? Some sort of variable-height ramp that they could adjust to match the size of the wormhole and whatever is going through.

Old tech is best in this instances: a crane can move a plank and adjust it to necessary lenght and height (since, unlike the boarding plank for a sea ship, there would be nowhere to rest the ramp). Now, I think it's time to consider if we should ask the players to make some athletics or acrobatics test in order to land safely on the other side... ^^

Thu, 2011-08-18 20:52

Aphelion

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

I went a step further and turned it into a 10-second animated movie. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UhuSuYTB8s

Fri, 2011-08-19 12:31

Xagroth

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Simple, yet impressive, just what I call elegant ^^. I like it a lot :)

Fri, 2011-08-19 13:46

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Feels almost like the movie for a wonder in Civilization or Alpha Centauri.

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Sat, 2011-08-20 17:27

#10

KevinWI

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Great stuff, Aphelion. The books do seem to be awfully vague and don't offer any really good pictures on what these gates look like. I think your gate might be a little small though, don't they get vehicles and things through?

Sun, 2011-08-21 07:17

#11

Xagroth

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

KevinWI wrote:
Great stuff, Aphelion. The books do seem to be awfully vague and don't offer any really good pictures on what these gates look like. I think your gate might be a little small though, don't they get vehicles and things through?

Well.. the gates are hard to understand for an euclidean mind, to me the description were like the description of something people sees differently from one man to another. Size... well, a gate can rebuild itself after something that puts a nuclear detonation to shame. So I bet it can re-scale itself if needed... I think what we are seeing there is a simple configuration for the deployment of an exploration drone, or a "maintenance mode".

Mon, 2011-08-22 20:56

#12

Aphelion

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

On size, that's an excellent question. Gatecrashing says the wormholes range in size from a radius of over 30 meters (large enough for a shuttle) to as small as two meters, just big enough for a transhuman to step through, with most of them on the smaller side. (Of course, that's maximum size, as confined by the gate-cage; they can be tuned down to microscopic.) The gates illustrated on GC p.4 & 13 look massive; p.11 & 55, moderate; p.19 probably fairly small. Has Posthuman Studios nailed down the size of any of the solar system gates, or just left it open to the GM?

Mon, 2011-08-22 21:03

#13

KevinWI

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

Aphelion wrote:
The gates illustrated on GC p.4 & 13 look massive; p.11 & 55, moderate; p.19 probably fairly small. Has Posthuman Studios nailed down the size of any of the solar system gates, or just left it open to the GM?

Maybe the size of the gate can be adjusted by the gate operators.

Tue, 2011-08-23 07:24

#14

Xagroth

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

KevinWI wrote:
Aphelion wrote:
The gates illustrated on GC p.4 & 13 look massive; p.11 & 55, moderate; p.19 probably fairly small. Has Posthuman Studios nailed down the size of any of the solar system gates, or just left it open to the GM?
Maybe the size of the gate can be adjusted by the gate operators.

I'd say that both the gate operators and the gate's destiny (and the gate itself) have a word in the size... so, as the GM wishes ^^

Tue, 2011-08-23 13:38

#15

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

That's pretty cool! My only comment is to keep it weird. This is freaky alien tech. It seems to be literally bending reality. Play that up. When my PCs approach a gate, space and time seem to distort. As they get closer, the distance to the gate seems to stretch. Clocks in the room slow or even reverse. Objects in the room begin sliding towards (or away!) from the gate. There are random, destructive discharges. Sometimes random things come out of the gate, including copies of the gatecrashers themselves. I'm not an artist, but I'm sure there are ways to play that up visually as well. Maybe check out Event Horizon for some ideas :)

Tue, 2011-08-23 17:23

#16

Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

The singularity engine! That's what I though about when I was reading Broken Angels, and that what I was thinking about when I read about the Pandora Gates. The visual is just AWESOME And the Lewis & Clark makes a nice small Scum shuttle, too

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Wed, 2011-08-24 03:06

#17

Aphelion

Re: Image: Pandora Gate

KevinWI wrote:
Maybe the size of the gate can be adjusted by the gate operators.

Gatecrashing says, "There is some speculation that the gate sizes may be programmable, though no one has succeeded in reshaping one yet, or at least acknowledged such to the research community. It is possible to manipulate the wormhole size so that it is smaller than the gate; this is in fact standard procedure when connecting to unknown locations". So, we know the gate-cage varies between 2 and 30 meter radius (though perhaps there are larger and smaller ones still undiscovered), and the wormhole itself is easily programmed from micro-size up to the gate-cage radius (but no bigger).