Superfluid

The Club

Superfluid is a dance club and social nexus opened recently on the planet Halcyon by Nikolai. The lighting, motion, and other effects are run by Flume.

Superfluid, Topside

The large open club floor appears like it’s in the foundations of what used to be a skyscraper—no walls, but tall concrete pillars around the edges and a few in the middle, all broken off to exposed rebar at various heights. Otherwise the dance floor itself is a very large circle several hundred feet across, strewn with colorful dancers of all shapes and species. One end of the circle sports a DJ booth of modest size, down on the same level as the dancers—definitely not the central focus of the space by any means. Scattered about the rest of the sides are a few bars, tables and chairs, and sets of stairs heading downward.

Further out, past the edges of physical dance floor, thick columns of water defy gravity and arc seemingly unsupported up and over the space, enclosing it in multiple overlapping circles. These tend to spin on their own axes independent of each other, though they often intersect and merge in aesthetic ways. More water flows beneath the transparent dancefloor itself, responsive to the footfalls of club patrons with bursts of light and concentric ripples. Meanwhile, up above at the peak of the dome, several huge menhir-like stones float serenely in small circles, electricity continually playing between them and the exposed rebar of the pillars. The rest is open to the sky, at all times and all weather. The overall look is somewhere between Down and Neptunian.

More club lights line the pillars, and when the lasers fire, they reflect off the inner surface of the sphere itself. The lights tend to be minimal, though, as the real lighting effects are the sky itself. The club moves swiftly enough through the water that it can meet or exceed the planet’s rotational speed. This enables such things as perpetual sunrise, sunset, fixing stars and moon in specific locations for a long period of time, even hunting down storms to ride out. Even in a violent storm, subtle systems dampen out the wind and the rocking on the waves (and the inertia of motion) to a minimum. The rain tends to stay at natural levels—everything in the club is waterproof, and most often the patrons are too—but the dancefloor never gets too slippery to dance on. The outer field of the club also dampens out noise in both directions, so nobody is overwhelmed by the environment, and none of the non-sapient marine life are disturbed by thumping bass echoing through the depths.

The stairs around the edges of the floor lead down past what would be the surface of the water, to the teleport station and chill space.

Superfluid, Station

A large circular room opens up here, exactly the same size as the dance floor above, which you can hear slight thumping from echoing down the stairs. Lining the wall around the entire circumference of the room are portals, shimmering with blue glow like water mounted vertically. The portals are wide arches, each with a different label above them for the different regions of the planet that they correspond to. The floor beneath has a huge mural of the entire planet of Halcyon, a very flattened projection with the north pole in the very center, and the south spread around the edges. Longitude lines arc straight out from the north pole, all the way to the portals at the walls. A great circle on the flattened globe marks the Line roughly on the equator, with a bright glowing spot traveling around it showing the location of Superfluid on the Line, and planet.

People (and non-people) are often popping out of one portal another, and not all of them enter one of the club spaces, but instead pass across to another portal and vanish again. The space in fact serves both as nexus for the dance club, but also as a handy quick-transit network across the world. Inward from the portal wall, but closer to it than the center, four sets of stairs follow the circular curve downward from above, all spiraling in the same direction. Each has a sign marked “Superfluid.” Two sets also spiral down from here to the lower level, with signs marked “Submerge”.

Superfluid, Submerge

Cool underwater chill lounge club thing (still WIP).

The Line

A network of fast-travel portals scattered around the entire line that the club travels around. It’s near but not quite the equator, set to avoid intersecting any landmasses. Bunch of bouys/small pads with the portals themselves. They also have warning/proximity lights for when the club is about to pass by. Part of Lai's compromise for building a planet-traversing club was to make sure it could also be useful for traveling, at least on a personal scale. (also WIP)