Important Question: Does the Temple have elevators?

StealthSeeker wrote:

evilauthor wrote:So from the description of the Temple in OAR, we know the inhabited portions of the Temple is roughly five or six stories tall. The wings contain offices and the residential apartments of VIPs like the Vicars.

So the question is: Does the Temple have elevators?

In ancient Rome, the most affluent people in an apartment building lived on the ground floor or close to it while the poorer ones had to live upstairs because climbing so many floors was a chore. If the Temple has no elevators, escalators, or other means of powered lift, then apartment desirability should follow the same logic.

But in the Temple, Clyntahn - arguably the highest status member of the Temple outside the Grand Vicar - has a corner apartment that looks out upon the city of Zion, implying it's NOT a ground floor apartment. In fact, implying a top floor or close to top floor location. And of course being the fat ass he is, Clyntahn himself wouldn't want to climb any more stairs that he has to.

I would say that it does not have elevators. Elevators require a lot of maintenance and the kind of mechanical knowledge that safehold residence just don't seem to have. AND!!... you can have a "view" from the lowest floor of a building if the building is built on a high hill or mountain.

I've just come again across the bit in HFQ [p341 hardback]where Rayno comes

'through the mystic sliding doors... The office walls' ever changing mirror of God's handiwork... Another golden streamer, from no discernable source, struck down to illuminate Cyntain's actual work space... distant birdsong and wyvern whistles came quietly...'

Seems to me that since the Temple contains working eight hundred year old sliding doors, light sources and high def video and sound systems, all of which are completely out of Safeholds capability, then working elevators is not massively improbable!

StealthSeeker wrote:I would say that it does not have elevators. Elevators require a lot of maintenance and the kind of mechanical knowledge that safehold residence just don't seem to have. AND!!... you can have a "view" from the lowest floor of a building if the building is built on a high hill or mountain.

Theoretically, Temple's cooling/heating systems, lights, automatic doors, ISpy, cleaning servitors etcetera, etcetera would also require maintenance and mechanical know-how beyond Safehold. We've seen ample proof that TF tech was built to last, so it's not impossible that lifts would also be so hilariously durable.

And while agree with your other point, I don't think Clyntahn's office would be on the ground floor. Someone with his level of authority would probably command someplace much higher, for one, and for other, IMO the ground floor is probably the "public" part of the temple, with higher floors being reserved for officials' quarters. Besides, I seem to recall dimly something about Clyntahn's quarters being on the 3rd floor? I may be wrong, though.

Kakai wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:I would say that it does not have elevators. Elevators require a lot of maintenance and the kind of mechanical knowledge that safehold residence just don't seem to have. AND!!... you can have a "view" from the lowest floor of a building if the building is built on a high hill or mountain.

Theoretically, Temple's cooling/heating systems, lights, automatic doors, ISpy, cleaning servitors etcetera, etcetera would also require maintenance and mechanical know-how beyond Safehold. We've seen ample proof that TF tech was built to last, so it's not impossible that lifts would also be so hilariously durable.

And while agree with your other point, I don't think Clyntahn's office would be on the ground floor. Someone with his level of authority would probably command someplace much higher, for one, and for other, IMO the ground floor is probably the "public" part of the temple, with higher floors being reserved for officials' quarters. Besides, I seem to recall dimly something about Clyntahn's quarters being on the 3rd floor? I may be wrong, though.

Any moving part will break with some probability after centuries. Hell...what happens when Clyntahn throws something at the magic screen? Does it stay broken forever? There must be some sort of maintenance capability whether nanobots, tinyish bots, or larger service bots.

Yep. The house elves must come out at night and fix things up. Which probably means that 'something' tells them to do so.

Just came across this paragraph in OAR:

"The Wylsynn family had provided no less than six Grand Vicars. The last had been only two grand vicarates before, and one of the - Grand Vicar Evyrahard the Just - had been a fervent reformer of Temple "abuses" a hundred years earlier. His grand vicarate had lasted less than two years before he'd somehow mysteriously fallen from his balcony to his death..."

So if the Grand Vicar has an upstairs office/apartment, I would think the rest of the Go4 would as well. I have not yet anyway, seen a reference to stairs/elevators/escalators etc.

Kakai wrote:
Theoretically, Temple's cooling/heating systems, lights, automatic doors, ISpy, cleaning servitors etcetera, etcetera would also require maintenance and mechanical know-how beyond Safehold. We've seen ample proof that TF tech was built to last, so it's not impossible that lifts would also be so hilariously durable.

And while agree with your other point, I don't think Clyntahn's office would be on the ground floor. Someone with his level of authority would probably command someplace much higher, for one, and for other, IMO the ground floor is probably the "public" part of the temple, with higher floors being reserved for officials' quarters. Besides, I seem to recall dimly something about Clyntahn's quarters being on the 3rd floor? I may be wrong, though.

In my way of looking at it, if it doesn't move, like walls and stuff, and if it's made of indestructible TF materials, it could last for a very long time. Plant mechanicals, the heating and cooling stuff, could be geothermal powered with almost no moving parts, kind of like steam radiators but made of more of that indestructible TF materials and technologies. Again it would last almost forever.

The sliding doors are a relatively short movement mechanical stuff, again it's something that could be made to last a long time. But an elevator? I helped install one of them once in a manufacturing plant, just a small one to haul no more that 2 people and 50 pound bags of material to the top of a 4 story building. It was so much hassle getting everything to line up exactly so that the car traveled in just the right way and stopped at just the right spot. The counter weights had to be installed with the same care. And none of that included setting up the electrical motor and pulley system that made every thing move. And don't forget 2 sets of double doors that had to be installed, each with lots of little things that could go wrong with them. Having experienced that, I can't imagine elevators that would last for the same "forever" that non-moving technologies would. So if I were to build a building that I wanted to last forever, there would be no elevators.

As far as what floors the most affluent people would be on... I once visited the Biltmore Estate and found that in that Victorian age the most important rooms were on the ground floor. But the more personal private spaces like the library and bedrooms were on the second floor. But the "cramped" upper levels is where the servant staff lived. Who knows which mentality of what floors are more important exists in the CoGA universe.

I don't remember what floor the fat man is on but I think I do recall that the group of 4 descend down stairs to get to their small secure meeting room.

StealthSeeker wrote:

Kakai wrote:
Theoretically, Temple's cooling/heating systems, lights, automatic doors, ISpy, cleaning servitors etcetera, etcetera would also require maintenance and mechanical know-how beyond Safehold. We've seen ample proof that TF tech was built to last, so it's not impossible that lifts would also be so hilariously durable.

And while agree with your other point, I don't think Clyntahn's office would be on the ground floor. Someone with his level of authority would probably command someplace much higher, for one, and for other, IMO the ground floor is probably the "public" part of the temple, with higher floors being reserved for officials' quarters. Besides, I seem to recall dimly something about Clyntahn's quarters being on the 3rd floor? I may be wrong, though.

In my way of looking at it, if it doesn't move, like walls and stuff, and if it's made of indestructible TF materials, it could last for a very long time. Plant mechanicals, the heating and cooling stuff, could be geothermal powered with almost no moving parts, kind of like steam radiators but made of more of that indestructible TF materials and technologies. Again it would last almost forever.

The sliding doors are a relatively short movement mechanical stuff, again it's something that could be made to last a long time. But an elevator? I helped install one of them once in a manufacturing plant, just a small one to haul no more that 2 people and 50 pound bags of material to the top of a 4 story building. It was so much hassle getting everything to line up exactly so that the car traveled in just the right way and stopped at just the right spot. The counter weights had to be installed with the same care. And none of that included setting up the electrical motor and pulley system that made every thing move. And don't forget 2 sets of double doors that had to be installed, each with lots of little things that could go wrong with them. Having experienced that, I can't imagine elevators that would last for the same "forever" that non-moving technologies would. So if I were to build a building that I wanted to last forever, there would be no elevators.

As far as what floors the most affluent people would be on... I once visited the Biltmore Estate and found that in that Victorian age the most important rooms were on the ground floor. But the more personal private spaces like the library and bedrooms were on the second floor. But the "cramped" upper levels is where the servant staff lived. Who knows which mentality of what floors are more important exists in the CoGA universe.

I don't remember what floor the fat man is on but I think I do recall that the group of 4 descend down stairs to get to their small secure meeting room.

Don't forget that the Temple was originally built by people who were raised in a thoroughly modern mindset, and that would certainly include the idea that the height of one's office or residence correlates with power and prestige. I'm not sure cultural arguments against better real estate being on the upper floors would make sense with that kind of subconscious baggage.

The sliding doors, lighting, A/V displays, and other systems all rely on electronic parts as well. Nothing is purely mechanical. Hell, over the course of a thousand years I'd expect that they'd lose at least one lighting fixture to time. All of this implies that the Temple has a rather robust self-repair mechanism to maintain its mystical systems. And there's likely a series of sealed maintenance tubes for servitors to access various aspects of the Temple that allow them to continue to function beyond human sight (similar to what you'd have on a spaceship such as Jefferies tubes on Star Trek vessels). Merlin's own comments would seem to support that, when he mentions that his nannies would be able to rebuild his PICA even if a large percentage of it was destroyed or damaged.

The Temple likely has a large supply of nanites, significant fabrication capabilities, and large supplies of necessary elements. All of that would be necessary to ensure that anything that malfunctions can be replaced promptly, or more likely, before it fails if possible. It'd also give any returning personality, AI, or PICA access to any capabilities they might reasonably need to adjust Safehold's development after a thousand years.

As for the elevators themselves, they're probably not mechanical devices like what we have today. Given the prevalence of countergrav tech in the TF, it'd not only be well-developed, but make an excellent elevator replacement. Not only would they be faster, it'd be incredibly smooth without any bumps and shifts that you can get on an elevator today. That'd fall in line with the Temple's miraculous nature, after all, why would God build anything that's less than perfect?

I think it is safe to assume that the Temple contains a hidden AI. That it uses cloaked remotes and servitors to maintain the building.

That Schuler and Chihiro are being kept in storage as either PICAs or in cyro. Keeping them to be awakened at a predetermined time to conduct an inspection of Safehold.

The Temple's AI user interface is designed in such a way to give the Church use of some of the systems, with out them knowing they working with a computer. The AI's personality if developed like OWL's is probably really nasty and zealous. Given its exposure to the Church of God Awaiting.

The Temple's AI also probably does not have access to the Orbital Bombardment Weapon. They probably do not even talk or are even aware of each other. Since the orbital weapon would have alerted the Temple to the presence of Federation technology, back in the first book. When Nimue sent a SNARC to investigate the orbital weapon and the SNARC was blown up.

Just at the beginning of BHD:

The suite assigned to Grand Inquisitor Zhaspar Clyntahn was a case in point. It was a corner apartment on the Temple's fifth floor.

This is the only reference about position of any room or suite in the Temple I've found.