Welcome Gothamites,
This is a preview of the next chapter of the Gotham by GASLIGHT game to be played in the Lion's Den.
In the last chapter you recall the incident at the Museum of antiquities in which Julie (Batman's fiancee) and her father Dr. Madison were kidnapped by two separate gangs. The museum was bombed with a dynamite explosion that leveled the attendees at the opening reception for The Treasures of Cathala.
The interior of the museum has become a den of evil and seethes with the corpse smell of death. Evil creatures of nameless form and description - most with bat like wings of leathery foulness slither and flit through the wreckage of the once proud display area. Dala, the partner in death with the foul vampire Cathala controls the key to the sarcophagus! Will she be able to assemble the key and unlock Cathala!
The explorer and archaeologist Dr. Madison, gathered the pieces of the key and unwittingly brought them into proximity of the sarcophagus and cast into motion the awakening that would bring into the realm of the living the undead soul of the ancient vampire Cathala.
Cathala, from the land of the Mysterious Mountains beyond the River Dess ruled an unholy collection of subjects that only can be described in modern terms as monsters. He is defended by the massive and powerful werewolf as seen above. He has scores of Imps that flit and bite to annoy and infect the living. He has blood servants that are a bit stronger and will cause certain death if encountered.
The department of Gotham Homeland Security and Secret Service have sent a team of crack agents to the scene to investigate the para normal activities that have been reported.
Bop Gun Jackson, and the Penguin have teamed up to unleash the vampire. They currently have the closed sarcophagus with the vampire contained. They need the key of eternity to unlock and unleash the monster on Gotham.
Inside the museum the unholy ritual has begun. Dala has the main key that will assemble the others. Like a siren call the worms crawl to the source of the amethyst stone piece of the key.
To Serve and Protect. The Gotham GCPD with detective "Lockjaw", will try and support the Secret Service and also to try and avenge the loss of citizen and department life in the original encounter with this evil.
If worms could scream, and if you could survive hearing this worm scream, your sanity would be sorely tested. This Key worm is part of the puzzle that will unlock Cathala the Vampire.
The museum main gallery is a writhe with the bat like creatures din of unholy high pitched skreeeeeeee-ing!
Dala wants her master. The Secret Service want to lock all this down for study. GCPD wants revenge. Bop-gun and the Penguin want the key. What do you want?
Thanks for looking in and taking time to peruse the blog. It makes it fun to see the readers count and I always reply to comments.
Next Chapter:
Ransom, Ransom
The World of Polyhedral Dissections
ReplyDeleteBy Stewart T. Coffin
Chapter 7 - The Diagonal Burr
All of the burr puzzles described in the previous chapters have been orthogonal, i.e. rectilinear, Cartesian, with right angles. They are the most familiar and the easiest to visualize, analyze, explain, and make (but not necessarily to solve!). The time has now come to venture beyond the comfortable world of right angles and explore the wondrous geometry of the diagonal burr.
The diagonal burr can be regarded as a standard six-piece burr in which all of the sticks have been rotated 45 degrees, with the notches V-shaped rather than square. The six pieces shown in Fig. 85 represent one version. The piece with no notches is of course the 'key" which slides in last to complete the assembly. Two of the other pieces have an extra notch to accommodate it. The reader can probably solve the puzzle mentally by studying the drawings. It is also easy to whittle a rough model from square sticks of some soft wood.
Fig. 85
After having solved this puzzle one way or the other, now make the surprising discovery that the "key" is not really a key piece at all, but more properly called a pseudo-key. It need not go in last or come out first. In fact, it need not even be used. The burr can be assembled in total symmetry using six identical pieces with two notches each by mating two mirror-image halves of three pieces each (Fig. 86).
Fig. 86
Like its orthogonal counterpart, the origin of the diagonal burr is a mystery. The earliest US Patent is No. 393,816 to Chandler in 1888, but it shows a more complicated version with sliding key. The earliest record of the symmetrical version appears to be US Patent No. 779,121 to Ford in 1905. Curiously, in his patent description, Ford shows a very awkward method of assembly rather than the simple mating of two halves.
The diagonal burr has also had its share of variations over the years. As you might expect, a favorite theme of puzzle inventors has been to increase the number of pieces, which is quite easy to do with this type of arrangement. Carrying this to the extreme, US Patent No.774,197 to Pinnell in 1904 (Fig. 87) shows a horrendously complicated assembly of 102 diagonally notched sticks. (The patent notes that no model was submitted!) Another variation has been to enclose the burr in a spherical outer shell (US Patent No. 766,444 to Hoy in 1904 and US Patent No. 1,546,025 to Reichenbach in 1925).
Fig. 87
Someone, somewhere, perhaps in the mid-19th century, made the marvelous discovery that the ends of the diagonal burr sticks can be beveled to produce a puzzle that, when assembled, is the first stellation of the rhombic dodecahedron. According to puzzle collector and historian Jerry Slocum, a puzzle of this sort was sold as early as 1875. The only patent on it that the author is aware of is Swiss Patent No.245,402 to Iffland in 1946.
The word intriguing is used frequently throughout this book to describe various polyhedral dissections, but none can outshine the brilliance of this simple dissection (Fig. 88). From one point of view, it may be regarded as a diagonal burr puzzle in which beveling the ends of the pieces produces a totally unexpected and beautiful new shape. From another point of view, it is a surprising dissection of the stellated rhombic dodecahedron into six identical pieces that amazingly assemble and interlock! It has more interesting properties too: when viewed along one of its fourfold axes of symmetry it is square, while along one of its threefold axes it is the Star of David. And perhaps most surprising of all, it is a space-filling solid.
Fig. 88