Similar to attempting to leave the island, characters would be drained by the atmosphere quickly enough that they would not be able to escape the effects and would die, whether they were trying to head to the surface or outer space. (Empatheias does have a moon with similar phases to Earth's, yes!)

While the staff could work fine for communicating and storing items and images, its ability to "store" people would be limited to one day from the perspective of whoever was inside.

Three minutes sounds like a reasonable time frame to us! The only restriction we would place on it is requiring permission from all players affected by it for it to work on those characters.