Flinger

The flinger is a dual purpose transportation and entertainment device located above the Tempest Falls in River's Rest, up a set of stairs near the waterfall leading the local Order of Voln outpost. The person being launched is likely to sustain injuries upon landing. It is commonly used by Beacon Hall Archive for merriment.

Appearance

The flinger's location:

[Tempest River, Mound (Lich room 23969)]
A circle of brush surrounds the mound top like a monk's tonsure, leaving its crest bare but for a number of weeds and an old rust-covered catapult. Over the top of the brush, one can spy the Tempest River as it disappears over the falls and the resulting cloud of ever-present cloaking mist. Even further beyond, the twinkling lights of homes and businesses of the turtle egg-shaped island can be seen. Barely discernible in the darkness, the catapult looms over the weeds. You also see an overgrown pathway leading back to the old port village and a pile of tiny pins.
Obvious paths: none

Inside the flinger:

[Flinger Basket]
The walls and floor of the basket are woven with reinforcing strips of metal, tinted brown by decades of rust, the flakes of which have created a reddish brown stain underfoot. Metal hooks are placed across the floor in neat orderly rows, perhaps once connected by rope or leather as a means to separate the basket's contents. Scrapes in the rust along the walls imply that not all launches from the catapult were executed cleanly.
Obvious paths: out

Usage

One person enters the catapult and SITs down while another person PULLs the lever. The dial and wheel can each be advanced to a higher numerical setting by TURNing and moved to a lower setting by SPINing. The wheel and dial can be set at any time before the lever is pulled, which will launch the contents of the flinger basket. The dial and wheel are always reset to zero after each launch.

The dial determines the region the rider lands, while the wheel fine tunes the exact location. The dial has six setting options, while the wheel has seven positions, making for a total of forty two possible combinations, although not all of the settings are unique. In general, each dial setting has two locations, one is typically more interesting, while the other six are identical and more mundane. (Note: Dial setting 3 should be checked again to see if it ever has an interesting landing location.)

Settings List

One can LOOK at the catapult to see the current setting:

The wheel is set to position zero, and the dial is set to position zero.  You also see a lever.

Tempest River landing location accessed by dial settings one and two leads automatically to the North Fork by the dock, similar to Dock Diving.

Dial	Wheel	Destination	Lich ID
1	1	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
1	2	[River's Rest, Town Commons]	10861
1	3	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
1	4	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
1	5	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
1	6	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
1	7	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
2	1	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
2	2	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
2	3	[The Warren, Broad Way]	17666
2	4	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
2	5	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
2	6	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
2	7	[River's Rest, Tempest River]	17665
3	1	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
3	2	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
3	3	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
3	4	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
3	5	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
3	6	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
3	7	[Maelstrom Bay, Surface]	11450
4	1	[Krolvin Carrack, Main Deck]	11557
4	2	[Krolvin Carrack, Main Deck]	11557
4	3	[Krolvin Carrack, Main Deck]	11557
4	4	[Krolvin Carrack, Main Deck]	11557
4	5	[Miasmal Forest, Old Road]	11611
4	6	[Krolvin Carrack, Main Deck]	11557
4	7	[Krolvin Carrack, Main Deck]	11557
5	1	[Millah's Fen, Lookout Hill]	16214
5	2	[Millah's Fen, Lookout Hill]	16214
5	3	[Millah's Fen, Lookout Hill]	16214
5	4	[Millah's Fen, Lookout Hill]	16214
5	5	[Millah's Fen, Lookout Hill]	16214
5	6	[Marsh Keep, Courtyard]	11712
5	7	[Millah's Fen, Lookout Hill]	16214
6	1	[Ravine Bottom]	11357
6	2	[Ravine Bottom]	11357
6	3	[Ravine Bottom]	11357
6	4	[Ravine Bottom]	11357
6	5	[Ravine Bottom]	11357
6	6	[Ravine Bottom]	11357
6	7	[Citadel, Battlement]	11391

Messaging

When someone gets flung, many people around the area of River's Rest and outdoors may see a glimpse of their body flying overhead:

A small shadow streaks across the sky overhead!

Games

A typical approach to playing a game with the flinger is to roll dice. Note, however, that 7-sided die are hard to come by, and some consideration should be made for rolling a standard set of two 6-sided dice. Beacon Hall Archive officers can procure a rust-flecked die with darkened pips (7-sided, marked with a wheel) and a stone-hued die with grey pips (6-sides, marked with a dial) that make playing the game easier.

A particularly brutal version of the game can be played with Dice of fate, dubbed the 'Flinger of Fate'.

Do Not Animate Dead

It is not recommended to bring a corpse via Animate Dead (730) into the flinger following you and try to fling their dead body after disconnecting with them. Once you leave a body in the flinger, there will be essentially no way to get it out. For obvious reasons, the exact details of this point have not been fully tested.

Behind the Scenes

The Flinger was released in November, 2014. The idea was formed circa 2004 when a group of players were fooling around in the town commons and one lamented there was no flinger with which to toss a notoriously annoying local gnome to the mainland. The idea quickly became a regular theme in roleplay in the Rest, with the original gnome threatened with it even claiming to be in the process of building one himself for several years until GM Xayle pushed the idea forward into a reality, crediting GM Vanah with finishing up aspects of mechanical coding (the bulk of which was done by GM Emeradan in 2011).