After pointing that out, Wrinkle will approach the the wall with the ramps and inspect the purple crystal, both visually and with some of the spells he'd developed to study the uncertain stone.

Mischief, meanwhile, having glanced up and down the room and assessed its construction, walks up the ramp (though careful to make sure that if it works the way she think it does that she won't be leaving the aura).

"We don't know why Brittle Hollows is stable. In fact, we have some evidence that it isn't because occasionally bits of it do fall inward; but somehow it's survived for the million or so years since the Nomai built there and however long it was in existence before that.

"The best answer we have, though a fairly unsatisfying one, is that gravicite, the same material that's refined to make that purple crystal over there, is somehow increasing the structural integrity of the planet and through some sort of dynamic process maintaining the position of the black hole in the center. But we and the Nomai have avoided studying the process actively out of fear that it would disrupt it and collapse the planet and passive observations haven't revealed the full details of the mechanism."

The purple crystal exerts a force near it that reduces the pull down and increases the pull towards the wall. It's turned to be stable once you're fully in its area of effect but outside there's a gradient of effectiveness.

Wrinkle looks a little disappointed, but nods along with Sandy as he responds. "<Reasonable to not want to risk having the entire place collapse.>

It works just as she suspected. It's good that her Dungeon-delving sensibilities are still sharp.

It does make sense to her, if these things can basically rotate which way is down, that having them laced all throughout a thin should could let you set it up so that it floats at whatever height you like.

With that now ascertained, Sandy (and Wrinkle, a little while later, after he's satisfied that there isn't more he can learn from the gravicite without damaging it) will join Mischief on the wall, and generally familiarize themselves with what moving around the gravicite's area-of-effect is like. Then they'll see what information is available about the 'gravity tiles' that were mentioned earlier, as well as about Brittle Hollow in general (and in particular the structures, and what they can expect from the environment immediately around the teleporter destination near the black hole forge...and about the black hole forge as well, if there is much information about it).

The gravity plates are a purple glowing tile. They work mostly like the crystals but their range is more limited so jumping is often enough to go beyond their range which is potentially very hazardous since the teleporter to Brittle Hollow places you on the ceiling upside down and only protected from falling by those plates.

The Black Hole Forge is actually a movable building built on rails that descends to brush against the black hole at the center of the planet when it's in active use. The Heathians have leaned enough to make simple teleportation cores using the facilities there but more delicate and sophisticated applications are still beyond them. The entrance when it's raised is on one of the lowest levels of The Hanging City. You can move between levels with either grave lifts or with long shafts with vertical gravity plating that allow you to walk between the various levels.

Well, the plates are simple enough to navigate, even if it's somewhat inconvenient that aerial maneuvers aren't going to be reliable there.

Oh, the black hole forge is related to how the locals construct their teleporters! Well, that potentially bodes well for it being the right place to start their search for a way back home, at least.

Receiving Wrinkle's intent, Sandy poses another question to Hornfels, "<Is there anything more you can tell us about how the black hole forge is used in helping create these 'teleportation cores', or how your people use them?>"

"We haven't learned quite enough to reproduce their teleport platforms but we did learn how their shuttle return mechanism works and we've made scaled down versions of that for our little scouts. They're tools we send ahead of us to check for danger before we go ourselves. The warp cores allow us to retrieve them without going to pick them up.

"I guess that wasn't exactly your question though. The Black Hole Forge uses the intense environment at the edge of Brittle Hollow's core to catalyze the creation of additional black hole white hole pairs. And then the systems there build frames around them that contain and focus their effects so they're safe to work with.

"Despite reading a lot of Nomai records about how it all works our understanding is still pretty limited. There's limits to our ability to translate specialized technical terms even after all this time spent learning their language."

Sandy nods along with the explanation, as Wrinkle silently radiates a bit of disappointment. "<It sounds like it probably won't be the whole solution to our problem, but it should still be helpful. And, if we're lucky, Ounu's ability to interface with mind's will extend to the memory statues that you mentioned earlier, and that one of them will contain a more complex language matrix that we could copy and transcribe for you.>"

Mischief (when did she get this close?) stabs one of their various crystal dowels into his side as she psychically communicates that he should stop offering free services, prompting him to add, "<Though depending on how things have gone, and whether the method Wrinkle devises to bring us home requires much material, we might need to start asking for compensation for that sort of thing.>"

"That would be wonderful if it worked. We know that some of the statues on Giant's Deep went through test activations. It's harder to know if there's any memories still stored though. They didn't leave notes about that and the statues aren't quite like the other ways the Nomai left records."

Hm. "<Speaking of, is there any list of where these memory statues can be found? If accessing them does turn out to be feasible, it would be good to have the locations of all the ones whose locations are known.>"

"Generally we've found them in locations at least loosely related to the time loop project. There's several on the Orbital Probe Cannon in orbit of Giant's Deep, more in the workshop where they were made, one in the black hole forge, one in the construction yard that was used to build the cannon, several in the control chamber inside Ash Twin and more on the sun station that was meant to trigger the time loop. I don't think we've found them anywhere else. 

"We do also have one we took from the workshop here in the museum."

"<Ah, in that case, that particular one seems like a reasonable next stop before we head to the teleporter?>"

"Of course, we keep that in our exhibit on the time loop project. I can take you there now if you've seen everything you wanted to here. I guess the plaques explaining things aren't that useful if you can't read."

"<Yes, rather so. That is another limitation of my and Ounu's translation method compared to Wrinkle's ordinary language solution.>"

And the party will indeed follow to the time loop project exhibit.

This exhibit is as usual filled with pictures. The highlights are those of the Sun Station and the Orbital Probe Canon. Both of them are large structures with scales added on that nevertheless show even their multi-kilometer vastnesses being dwarfed by the Sun and Giant's Deep.

The Orbital Probe Canon is largely a long loose basket weave of a cylinder making up the canon itself with a triangular structure built around it to hold its three habitation modules. While the Sun Station is built from two large hemispheric modules joined by a bridge and each trailing down towards the surface of the sun allowing for both observation and the smaller cannon that was meant to launch the device for triggering the time loop.

Almost as majestic or perhaps even more so is the artificial environment inside the Ash Twin. The gravity provided by the spinning platform and the appearance of a star filled sky offered by the glowing crystals embedded in the rock used to build it.

There's also a close up picture of the massive warp core placed at its center to channel the collosal power of the death of a star.

Since they can't read the signs Hornfels takes it on themself to narrate at least a little about what they see as the highlights.

And of course there's also a large statue of a Nomai with its eyes closed.

Sandy will split his attention between relaying the translated descriptions to his party members and interpreting Ounu's efforts into a more physical framework. He also makes note of where the larger collections of memory statues are (as well as that the black hole forge has one, since they're going to be visiting anyway), in case they turn out to be important.

It really is remarkable how big the natural features of this world get.

Ounu themself will inspect the memory statue with their numerous alien senses, reaching out to it.

The museum is a place that's full of information, even if much is not actively mentalized, so there's a significant background of it here, that colors the psychic atmosphere.

Does the memory statue stand out against this? Does it contain much information? Is it dense with information? Is it highly entropic or structured, and if the latter, is it more like the books or more like memories of organic beings like their host, partymates, and the locals?

The memory statue does actually contain a decent amount of information but it's not formatted like memories. Depending on what capabilities Ounu has they might also be able to detect that it's connected to things elsewhere.

Is there any information coming or going through that connection? And, what structure does the information have, if it's not a direct engrammatic mapping? Is there anything that seems like it could be visual, audio, or other sensory data? Anything more programmatic or procedural?

There is some visual data but the rest of it is text. There doesn't seem to be any data transfer at the moment just a sort of 'I am here' signal being maintained from both directions.

They'll parse the visual at least, but unfortunate that the text is being stored along with anything like a language matrix.