When the Demiurge created the Illusion he needed something to hold it all in place with the stream of Time and Space. It was also required that this 'brace' would hold the illusion in a solid position with all the other planes of reality: Inferno, Metropolis and all the rest. A great machine was created, one made of massive engines of gears and levers designed to hold the very fabric of time and space in position. Each realm had its own name for this great clockwork, and in each realm it had its own appearance. In the Illusion it was eventually given the name "Big Ben".

It has always been here, looming over the surrounding populace. At first it was hidden from our eyes by the illusion, later it became part of the skyline of a surrounding city. Its introduction into our visual reality was done by he who created upon the advice of its maintainer, who was eternally trapped within the structure. But now that the creator is gone, what has become of this structure, its maintainer and its ability to maintain its hold on time and space?

The basic architectural design is still present in the structure on this plane. Although it has been twisted more towards the views of those who live here and has grown much more sinister than before. The outside stone work has taken on the color of polished black marble with the appearance of being one solid piece, there are no brick lines or sectioning visible. The clock face has changed to the color of red, letting of a red glow that gives an eerie illumination to the numerals upon it.

The sound of its bell tolling is one of extreme pain and agony. It has been described as a million souls screaming for release from the agony that is Inferno. Anyone within its sound range is normally deafened for several hours, suffering from a loud ringing left in their ears. Those closer suffer from burst eardrums, leaving blood running down the sides of their head. It is rumored that those too close have their head burst from the sound.

Entrance from the outside is ,as far as any explorer knows, impossible. It always appears in the distance on a far horizon. One who walks towards it finds that they never seem to get any closer. The fabric of Space surrounding it has been altered to stretch the distance farther than what it really is. Eventually they will get closer but all the while they have to contend with the tolling of the bells and with the other residents of Inferno who are nearby. Therefore the only way to get inside is by passing into the Inferno version from the inside of another realities version (see How It Functions Now)

The interior is of long hallways that appear to made of the same material as the exterior. The ceilings glow with an odd red light, the only lighting present inside the entire structure. Along the floors is intracate tilework, each tile being its own individual work of art. A few of the tiles are missing showing the same black marble underneath. A few doors are present, made of heavy iron and steel. These are unmoveavle by normal human standards, each having its own individual pass phrase that must be spoken outloud by those wishing entrance. What the phrases are and the what is in each room is totally up to the gamemaster.

There is a staircase situated at the center of the tower. Made of metal rods and railing with ornate sculptures of depictions of human death and torture along the hand rail. The stairs themselves are coated in a red sticky substance that appears to be human blood. The sound of metal racking across metal can be heard as one ascends the stairs, this is produced by the spiral works that reside at the top. As one descends the screams of death are heard as one will arrive on the first plane of Inferno.

A few razides and nepharites wander the interior locked in a repetitive pattern of patrolling for intruders. They seem to be able to come and go through any door they please using a mental command. This is one way a person could attain entrance into the rooms. Although getting out would be a problem then.

This is the most varied version of Big Ben. Instead of being a massive towering structure it is in the form of pyramid. The stones are of white marble like material, with a few lazy streaks of light grays and pinks. The clock face is located at the top, centered perfectly, emitting a soft white glow. There is only one entrance into the pyramid located on the side that is facing towards the center of Heaven. It is simply an open archway with no doors or guards. The area surrounding is composed of a park like appearance, fountains, trees, benches, etc. Only close inspection will reveal the decay present here. Small chips at the base of the pyramid, various sections are not as cleaned up as others, with piles of leaves and tipped benches. Even here all is starting to come apart.

Around the pyramid is a massive courtyard. Here there are several fountains of intricate designs, most of them no longer work with stagnant water pooled in them while others flow slowly at almost a trickle. Courtyards stand empty save for a few benches and statues of unknown people. Vines have overgrown much of the nearby buildings making some of them no longer accessible without tearing through them. The air has a slight chill to it and there is some condensation on a few horizontal surfaces now and then.

Inside the pyramid there is a central hallway with one intersection. To the left leads to a small collection of paintings inside a small room. Each painting depicts various important parts of the illusion and the machine. To the right leads to a dead end. Forward continues up a set of stone stairs to the Spiralworks positioned at the top of the pyramid between all the clock faces.

Few visit here in this present era with the Demiurge now gone. There stand around a few seraphim who stare blankly at the clocks, motionless and unresponsive. Some Awakened voyage here in hopes of finding more insight as to the real reasons for the imprisonment of mankind. Masters of Time and Space eventually come here to study the clock in hopes of understanding its inner workings better. Old servants sometimes venture here in hopes of finding some clue as to the disappearance of the Demiurge and maybe even clues as to when he will return, if ever.

The appearance of Big Ben in Metropolis is one of degraded and attempted restructure. The outside has fallen to pieces in some places, various parts of those sections have been modified using metal plating and other building material. Scaffolding covers the lower half of the building, while several small cranes can be seen at the top. At varying times you can see what appear to be workers clad in heavy gray material either in the scaffolding or hanging by ropes from the cranes. Sparks, crumbled brick, wet cement and other such materials rain down as they weld on more metal and continue to try and rebuild the outside. The clock face is in bad condition as well, with a few large cracks reaching across it. However the hands continue to travel around in their circles.

There are no outside entrances or any visible exits. They appear to have been built over at some point. One can see where doors used to be but all that is there now is plates of rusted iron, bricks and mortar. The only way that one can gain entrance here is to scale the scaffolding to the upper areas of the tower to the workers access ways. All the while avoiding the workers themselves, machinery and unstable construction.

Inside is a maze of hallways and entrances. Wiring runs along thier lengths along the floor and suspended from the ceiling. Drop lights, flood lights and flourescent bulbs illuminate everything as a few sparks fly here and there. The doors have been removed leaving the rooms open, most filled with construction supplies such as bricks, metal plating, wiring, etc. Techrones and humaniod workers covered in protective gear run to and fro carrying tools and equipment or running wiring. They will ignore anyone unless they are kept from doing thier job, then they will lash back in violence until they are allowed to continue on.

Inside the tower here is the place you will most likely come across the maintainer (see History section) and most of his servants. Intruders are not welcome and will be dealt with harshly and with the upmost quickness. Interuption of the restoration process is the one thing that will not be tolerated. Those who tread here do so with high risk.

In Elysium Big Ben and the tower exist just as we see them. For this section I have provided a few pictures below along with some various points of interest.

There are four dials on the tower measuring 22 1/2 feet in diameter and each contains 365 panes of glass...one for each day of the year. The Bell itself is known as Big Ben not the whole tower itself. It is named, probably, after Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works and weighs over 13 tons. It is also the thirteenth bell in the tower. The clock mechanism, alone, weights about 5 tons. The figures on the clock face are about 2 feet long, the minute spaces are 1 ft. square; and the copper minute hands are 14 ft. long. The Houses of Parliament (aka The Palace of Westmister) has the clock tower on its north end, it also incorporates The House of Commons (destroyed in WW2, rebuilt 1950), The House of Lords & Westminster Hall. It is 286 m in length and has more than 3 km of corridors inside, and on the other end stands the 102 m high Victoria Tower. Big Ben strikes every quarter of an hour with its characteristic loud chime. The tower and bell were built in 1858-1859 and has a height of 320 feet The clock tower was designed by EJ Deut and the bell by George Mears of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. When Parliament is in session, the flag is hoisted on this tower during the day while at night a light shines on the Clock Tower.

There is some chance of running into the maintainer of this Spiralworks here (see history section), he is usually accompanied by at least one guard. He will attempt to get anybody who is there to leave as soon as possible and will have security escort anyone who is caught snooping out of the building. There is commonly one worker present at all times around the clock mechanisms making sure all is right.

With several different realities to maintain the Demiurge needed some way to keep the passage of time in each one on a constant. This would make traveling between them easier and changes easier to put in place. He put his techrones to work constructing a device he called the Spiralworks. It would exist in all the realities at once and hold the fabric of time in a locked pattern in them. In Elysium there would be no physical form of this device, it would have a form in all the others. Once it was constructed he put one of the more trusted lictors in place to watch over it and make sure that it was maintained properly. This lictor who at the time went by the name of Randervis had a long experience of working with the architectural construction of buildings within the illusion, and had worked under several of the Archons.

As the centuries progressed the effectiveness of the Spiralworks in the Elysium grew steadily worse. No amount of work seemed to help make this situation any better. Randervis finally determined what he thought was the cause of this. The lack of the physical structure was the problem. Using his contacts within the illusion he had the belltower built as a housing. The basic desired appearance of the structure was written out and given to EJ Deut as a guide to go off of. Also he had the design built around the Spiralworks in both Inferno and Metropolis. The more alike they are the better they will function as one set piece of machinery was his theory. When the construction was complete his theory was proven correct.

Everything worked as planned and keeping the towers and enclosed mechanisms maintain proved fairly easy and routine. Then the disappearance happened. With the Demiurge gone and his control over everything effectively shattered, everything began to degrade. First the Archons began arguing over who should be in control of the Spiralworks this led to open fighting between them. Some of that fighting among their servants took place near or in the towers. Several techrones were killed in this struggle, massive damage was done and even Randervis was injured severely once. He decided to build a defense to help keep his structures in one piece until the Demiurge returned and put everything straight again. Most of his attacks came upon the Metropolis tower, there he placed most of his workers and began to block off all the outside entrances hoping to hold off his attackers. In Inferno there was surprisingly little interest in the tower from either the Death Angels, their servants or from Astaroth himself it was left as it was. In Heaven there were absolutely no attacks upon the Pyramid, for the seraphim stood guard outside of it and no one dared to attract their attention. In Elysium he used his influence on the monarchy to have extra guards stationed through out the tower and employed his own private guards for a short period.

Now the fighting has died down quite a bit. The Archons are more involved on their plots against each other and the Death Angels and paying little attention to the Spiralworks and its abilities. Randervis has begun repair work on the massively damaged tower in Metropolis trying to stabilize its deteriorating structure. In Inferno he noticed that its tower has slowly become like that of its surroundings, dark and evil, its still functions properly so he has left it alone along with the pyramid in heaven.

With the loss of control that the Demiurge always maintained, the clockworks machinations that reside inside Big Ben no longer function the way that they were intended. It still maintains time and space in place inside the illusion, to a limit. But now some side affects have begun to appear throughout the past few years. No one knows the extent of the side effects or how they will affect all the realities in the future. Only one thing is certain though, they are slowly getting worse with each passing decade and the breaking point cannot be very far off.

Before, it was used to hold the realities together in a similar passage of time and to send any alterations that needed to be done to the illusion into it. Whenever the bell tolled it would send out a 'wave' through the very fabric of the illusion, this would put any abnormalities back in to correct placement. Also anything that needed to be 'changed' was also sent with this wave. It would cause gates that once existed to suddenly disappear, passages in books to suddenly be changed, and other effects such as that. Whenever the wave would hit something that had been altered since the last one, it would create ripples that would reach back to the tower, this way they could detect those who were altering the fabric by finding the area where they operated. Now there is no one to keep track of the waves and the return of the ripples. There are a few who know how to send changes through it, but doing so is a task that even the most powerful Mages of Time and Space do not attempt unless absolutely necessary.

In the center of all the gears, springs and cogs lies the very heart of the clockwork known as the 'Spiralworks'. It is a giant mesh of twisted metal all moving in precise motions at precise speeds. To those in the illusion it only appears as a regular part of the clocks inner workings, all cogs and gears. Those who are able to see through it see it as it really is. The most important thing about the Spiralworks is that it exists in all realities at the same time, occupying the same space. This area is particularly dangerous during the midnight tolling of the bell. It is at this time that one may pass from one reality to another, from heaven to Inferno, Elysium to Metropolis. It occurs when those present try to leave the area during the tolls, they cross over into whatever place the Spiralworks is currently in. This is up to the Gamemaster as to where they go when this happens.

One of the character comes across the journal of the experimentation's of a conjurer who was mostly skilled in the lore of time and space. Throughout the detailing of his trails and errors he keeps hinting at a greater power in the fabric of time that he has to contend with. It is written for only the writer to understand therefore he never actually wrote down what it was. The reader(s) must piece together all the small clues located in the various passages to actually figure out what it is. Mentions of London being the center of it all, the clock-face is what holds everything together, etc. This is useful in letting the players know that there is something special about Big Ben and then its up to them to track down more info or to actually go there.

While in London a character who is adept at the lore of time and space is looking through a local art gallery when the bell tolls and sends a wave through the fabric. During the split second that this wave passes through the surroundings the conjurer sees a glimpse of true reality. The undead face of a guard, the paintings that are moving, the foreign skyline that encompasses the city. But it is only for that brief period that he can see this then everything is back to normal. This another way of letting the players know that there is more going on than what appears.

While in London the characters find themselves near the clocktower either sight seeing or through a series of events that set them up to be there. When the bell tolls there is a shift in reality in thier imediate area. Cars seem to slow or vanish, movement is restricted, nearby events seem to repeat themselves. Once the bell has stopped tolling everything returns to normal. This should prompt most people to decide that the role of Big Ben has something to do with reality as a whole.

Randervis. In the illusion this lictor appears as a large stocky man, a little over six feet tall with powerful build. He is an imposing person to see. With graying black hair cut short and a neatly trimmed beard covering a face that displays little emotion aside from displeasure. A squared jaw and narrow eyes add to his outward appearance of authority. Normally he is wearing a business suit that is not very formal but more suited to that of a worker (loose tie, sleeves that may be wrinkled from being rolled up, no decorative cuff links etc). He likes grays and blacks, with accents of silver for any buttons or other accessories such as a watch or rings which are kept to a minimum. When he talks it is very short and to the point, with a well pronounced loud voice.

His true appearance is different than that of an ordinary lictor. He is taller and quite thinner, within the size of human standards. His skin is thicker and more to the shade of a humans with no transparency. He is also stronger and faster than most normal lictors as well. He lacks claws on his fingers and is usually dressed in clean work style clothing. His speaking mannerism and voice are the same. Some strands of hair are appearing on the back of his head. It almost appears as if he is changing from a lictor and into something else, maybe even human.

The Black Tiles. Each of these tiles recovered from the halls of the Clock Tower in Inferno have great powers within the illusion. Well at least power in the hands of those who know how to use them, making them some of the most sought after items by users of the Lore of Death.

Game effects: Lore of Death users who integrate these tiles into their temple gain the following bonuses: The LR of all spells is reduced by 2, the percent of Endurance cost is reduced by 10 and the duration of all rituals is doubled. Anybody who has one of these tiles in their possession has all of disadvantages amplified making them much harder to overcome or resist and gain animal enmity.