Haven Clock Tower

It's a watchtower too...and I mean for looking around, not like a wristwatch. Cradel's CLOCKWORKS. WATCH tower. The puns never end. This tower is well-built, so it will never stop ticking...hopefully.

It could be behind the auction house in Haven, centered up there, with the top out of view unless it's climbed. It is a complex building with many aspects.

This clock tower displays in-game time, a set 24 hour clock, to any players who care to look at a digital display on the front of the tower.

You can view this clockdata ticking away any time in your newsfeed, at the top. It will also be on your login screen and on the SK main page. I feel that having "gametime" will solve a lot of these timezone issues, and be generally fun too. I know I've seen "spiral gametime" suggested before :)

Players can walk up to the top via a SPIRAL (THE PUNS) staircase around the tower.

At the top, the camera angle gets down near your butt like it does before the Vana fight. Thusly, your knight gets a flat, long-distance lateral view of lots of things in and close around Haven, including the chasm you crossed shortly after crashing, the arcade and its mysterious entry gates, guild hall towers, and so on. You might even see Krogmo's coliseum in the distance, and just barely see little figures moving around capturing points or blasting bombs. There's a telescope and binoculars up here if you want to get a better look at things. In the tower's base is a wall of screens for depth observation, since all you can see up here is stuff in the skies and on the surface. These screens are similar to what you see in standard mission lobbies.

You can interact with the telescope and various binoculars around a rim up here. One of the binoculars brings up the spectate lockdown menu.
- these will show random detailed scenes each time you interact with them - a different scene each time, usually (RNG might show you the same one 5 billion times in a row idk) - don't worry about hogging them, a huge number of knights can use the same one at the same time, this is a game not real life. Each telescope viewing will last as long as you want, terminate it by pressing "attack" again. The view is "complete," meaning your HUD and Chat and other distracting things disappear - I have a feeling these views will make good desktop backgrounds!

The binocular views last around 10 seconds, or until you press attack again, whichever is first.

Telescope:
-Cradle's moon. Sometimes you'll see that giant metal(?) band too, depends on the time of day.
-Random constellations - does that one look like a twinkle aura? I think it does.
-Large chunks of debris - did that scrap metal have part of the spiral order's symbol on it...? Was that part of the skylark, stuck up in orbit...?
-Mysterious asteroids...are there slimes on those...? It looks like it.
-Unsettling clouds of thick dust with blue electrical shocks. What could these be? They're too close to be nebula...These will only appear 3 days before an event and for the duration of said event (like March of the Tortodrones)...I think they're clusters of Cradel's "mist" energy that have been destabilized due to strange or seasonal machinery in flux, and are trying to find balance again.

Binoculars:
There are four of these. North, south, west, and east. These can be used to imply that like, say, the gloaming wildwoods is soometimes to the north of Haven, but sometimes to the south and sometimes not within viewing distance at all - the clockworks moves things around, and that should not be forgotten. So you won't see the same area in the same binoculars as time goes on, but over a long period of time, you will. See?

-Sometimes you'll see slime meteors crashing down in the distance near spires of the Royal Jelly Palace (scripted to happen daily at certain times).
-Frequently you'll see flocks of regular snipes, greavers, silkwings, etc. flying in the distance. Wonder where they're going?
-Occasionally you will zoom in on a sleeping snarbolax, a snuggling pack of slumbering wolvers, and other cute things like dust bunnies playfully biting each other.
-Frequently you'll see NPC knights in a steampunky zeppelin hot air balloon thingie way off wherever. They have binoculars too, and will wave at you.

But not all things are fun to see. Sometimes you'll see a carnavon shambling on a flat plateau all on its own just outside candlestick candlelight...and at the last second it turns to face you...

You can view fiends doing strange things in dark places. A trojan is summoned, but instantly turns to stone (death animation), with dark matter falling out of its back and shattering on the ground. I wonder what went wrong?

Okay no more dark things. Sometimes you'll see a love puppy - it will turn and bark a heart at you, which will read out your binoculars. whoah! love transcends all distances doesn't it :)

Frequently you'll spot a recon ranger/scarlet scout etc. on a mountaintop or really tall clockworks thingie. They will be placing a recon module down and send off a flare which will trigger other flares far off in the distance and then touch a hand to their ear to activate a com unit. Fun to watch the spiral order work! Don't worry - these guys are very sneaky and know what they're doing, only spiral tech can spot them, they are 2ninja4 monsters.

The following are prestige-related views. You're guaranteed to see the relevant one first if you have not completed the prestige yet that day:

Time set: you'll see an NPC knight fighting and go down, and get shoved in a cage and dragged into a tunnel.
This only happens on days that have the prestige "scared to death" or "white collar captives."

Time set: you will see a bunch of gremlins tinkering with something, but it will explode and knock them all back and down. Let's find out what they're up to.-Hazardous Heist

etc.

Events:

During thanksgiving, you'll see flying gobblesnipes. The plump ones will animate especially hilariously.

During winterfest, you'll see Impostoclaus' various minions flopping about making snow shapes and throwing snowballs.

Lots of possibilities! I could go on but then we'd all die of old age. Time is a valuable thing...

There is a clock face as well as a telescope up here that shows GameTime up here.
Wow, spiral knights can sure pack a lot of function into one thing!

under the telescope-clockface dome is a round chamber with a very high-tech bell, one that when rung banishes the undead and stuns beasts...Defender of haven, and pretty too. It will toll 4 times, once a second for 4 seconds, each day right before the server reboots.
If players are in haven (anywhere - garrison, bazaar, arcade, town square) they will hear the bell. Each toll is for a member of the alpha squad, whom we should never forget...and never give up hope, because they might still be alive. If a player is on the top of the bell tower or very near it when the bell rings, their screen will shake violently.

NPCs up at the top of the tower say they're watching for ghosts of the Skylark and gremlin attackers, as well as rumbling changes right under the surface. One says he swears the planet is mocking him by making skylark-shaped clouds.

There is also a crazy NPC "prophet" knight that in actuality provides "Spoilers" to players about future updates. What he says changes based on what the dev team is willing to tease us with, and I think he should speak in riddles. This prophet wears a grey feather cloak and cowl, but his cowl also has a mustache-beard in addition to glow-eyes. How'd Bechamel manage that one?

At the base of the tower is a round "memorial" garden, with an electronic display in the ground of how many days have passed since the skylark crashed. The tower casts its shadow within this garden as the eternal day drags on, acting as a sundial too (which of course matches the time of the clock face at the top of the tower).

Around the rim of this garden are stone carvings of various monsters - wolvers, chromalisks, greavers, etc. Consider it a sort of Zodiac. Think about your crash date as your spiral birthday - what would be your monster? hehe. Another fun social thing.

Inside the clocktower's base (the spiral staircase winds around the outside) is a new room where knights can enter in from the back. (entering starts a loading screen). The staircases go down a ways into a room from this back entrance, and amusingly, you can access the back of the auction house from in here. Nothing special, it's the same auction house, but I find tying buildings together like this to be entertaining. This room is more than that, though.

It's where Spiral HQ has decided to keep all we've learned about Cradle when not using it in the Lab's research - so it's full of books, datadiscs, sextants, and various other nerdy library booky things. A model globe of Cradle is in the center of this room, always rotating. Various interactive panels (books on desks, screens, recon modules, etc.) provide a lot of lore and tips about monsters and such - this is probably a place where newly crashed knights should visit to learn about Spiral Knights, and then practice what they've read about in the Training Hall. A librarian at a rounded desk around the base of the globe says "shhhhhhh! don't bother Beubow" if you talk to her. Wonder what that means?

An owlish, golden-white snipe sits on a on top of a carefully hung grey owlite shield (which happens to be so sparkly it's also a lamp) on the left in this room (emphasis lol) and wears glasses. Whoooooo are you? Interacting with this snipe makes it go cookoo, cookoo, cookoo clock! I think maybe it doesn't know what it is either. The librarian mentions that you shouldn't disturb Buebow - which is yet another allusion. It's especially appropriate if you've seen the old Clash of the Titans, where Bubo is a robotic owl, and we're in the clockworks after all. And don't our Game Masters tend to take on Greek names? Fun stuff.

The right-hand wall is full of screens that are spying on things in the clockworks. One in particular has Hubert trying on a dapper combo in a mirror.

On top of all this is the sky - which now has a day/night cycle...but it's not a nice consistent one like us real people have on Earth, oh no. It depends on what's boiling up from under the surface as well as Cradle's orientation to other celestial bodies. Basically, haven will randomly be night/day as time goes on for all players- but only if you want your knight to see it, otherwise you'll have constant day vision like we do now.

Alrighty, another long Dracora Post. One that is not gameplay - changing, generally non-profit coding time for OOO, and in essence just something fun and game enriching.

Who are you? Why are we here and where are we going? How long will this last? I think you decide that for yourself, as time goes on and the clockworks change with you. But let's build a clocktower to distract ourselves. Let's hear your thoughts.