Peek: The Music of the Spheres (Patreon)

Coda thinks this may be the Forman's most ambitious project yet, and that's saying something. It may even be more ambitious than the idea to revamp the labyrinth! The revamped labyrinth will be more complex, surely, but the sheer scale of the floating islands puts them at the top, in Coda's mind.

So long as the spherical version is chosen. It is, without a doubt, the safer of the two potential varieties. Even the bowls will have delvers exploring to find the edge, and then trying to leap off, just to see what'll happen. But the greater surface area of the spheres, as well as the safety of them having their own down enforced by the simple shape, makes them Coda's choice. He just needs to solve the issues of making spherical islands actually be delvable.

The structure is surprisingly simple, especially with Slash's ingenious implementation of being able to tune the tension in the reinforcements. He'll likely need to recruit some of the capstone denizens to adjust them as needed. He doubts any single group of denizens will have the numbers to dedicate to the spheres, but they all should have their own members who have little else to do.

The potential towers sticking out of each sphere even gives him an idea for how to solve the perspective issues. Having a horizon so close that one can see the curvature of the ground is something he can easily imagine as disturbing. Anything with flight will have little issue, but being stuck to the floor and being so used to it looking flat... there needs to be a solution. And he has one that will be simple in concept, if complex in execution: don't let the delvers see the horizon.

He first tries drawing out a series of rooms, and though he's confident it'd make acclimating easier for the delvers, the dinosaurs will need a lot of room to run around, and Foreman Thedeim doesn't want to restrict them to small rooms. But if he combines it with a few other ideas he's heard drift through the bond, he might be able to make it work.

The idea of a hollow earth is an odd one, but one he thinks the orbs will be perfectly suited for, as the embedded pillars will be able to properly support the outer shell and connect it to the hollow interior. The supports and the apparent walls/ceiling of the shell should make the perspective unique while also able to be adjusted to for the delvers. A horizon that's too close is wrong, but a tunnel sloping off past your vision is just how some tunnels are.

He'll just need to ensure there's enough room for the largest of the dinosaurs, but he has Sue as a convenient measure. If she can appreciate the headroom, he can't imagine any of the other spawns being larger than her. As for the surface, if he makes them overgrown enough, that should keep the delvers happy. He'll need a lot of the new vines to modulate and monitor the gravity anyway.

Perhaps he should design ruins to cover the spheres? A good puzzle is an excellent way to engage the delvers and let them physically recuperate after battles. He'll have to run that by the Foreman via Teemo later. The difficulty with some puzzles is in making them continue to be a challenge after they've been solved. If it's a simple series of buttons and levers and other things to interact with, the challenge is gone once someone figures it out and tells everyone.

But some puzzles are difficult because actually inputting the solution is difficult. Sliding picture puzzles are a great example, though there are techniques to solving them. There's a cubic version he's glimpsed from Foreman Thedeim, and while there are techniques for that as well, he doubts many delvers will bother learning them.

Slash also seems more interested in the spheres than in the past expansions, too. Some musical puzzles could be an excellent new challenge for the delvers, too. He'll need to coordinate with him later, and maybe they can both present the idea to Teemo for approval by the Foreman.

But all of that is still a long ways off. First, he needs to get these things structurally stable. Once they're up, it shouldn't be too bad, but building them in the first place will be the hard part. Or, as he likes to think of it: the fun part.