18.6.2 Orrery
The Orrery of the Spheres is an ancient, Ankyrean astronomical machine once used within the Putoran Hills to chart the relationship between the heavens and the movement of the planes. It was later manipulated by the vampire queen Belladona, who corrupted its purpose by attuning it to the plane of Shadow and causing the daylight hours to diminish. This created an epic struggle between the forces of light and dark, as light tried to change its attunement to Spirit and lengthen the daytime hours instead. Long after the Orrery had fallen into disrepair, it was revitalized and moved to the Scidve Mountains by the Progenitor of the Consanguine, Abhorash. He used its connection to the planes to siphon the essence of Ati, the Shadow from himself and scatter the entity into a thousand pieces across the planes. This act inexplicably and irrevocably changed the purpose of Orrery yet again: now it empowers those whose tether is attuned with the plane the Orrery is actively aligned to. Twice per year, the Orrery's alignment resets due to the orbit of the planes, and the forces of Shadow and Spirit must clash once more in a bid to gain control over its power. ---- The Orrery is located within an observatory in the Scidve Mountains, at room v62642. The observatory is its own separate, small area and is classified as open PK - entering the area at any time will give you the hostility aura. You can view the current status of the orrery with the ORRERY command. Every in-game year, on the 10th of Sapiarch and the 10th of Celes, the Orrery will become active, and a bid for control over it can be made. The way this is done will change each time, picked from a list of possible contentions that will run the entire period the Orrery is active for. Information on each contention can be found in these help files: 18.6.2.1 Scattering contention 18.6.2.2 Assimilation contention No matter which contention is in play, the Orrery will lock again on midnight of the first day of the following month (i.e. 1st Severin or 1st Lleian). The Orrery will align after it locks to the organization that scored the most attunement points while the Orrery was active. The level of alignment is determined by that organization's attunement points subtracted by the opposing organization's attunement points. For example, if the Orrery ends with 6 Duiran attunement points and 3 Enorian attunement points, then the Orrery will be Duiran-attuned at level 3 until the next Orrery season. Bonuses ------- Whichever organization controls the Orrery will find themselves empowered in various ways, depending on the level at which the Orrery was successfully aligned: Level 1: Gain a 5% increase to critical hits. Level 2: Increased gold drops from denizens by 5%. Level 3: Balance/equilibrium recover faster when fighting denizens. Level 4: An increase of 3% to both dodge and divert chance. Level 5: A bonus of 5% extra healing in health/mana from elixirs.
