Chapter 03:

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Session Number: 189
Date: Sunday 6 October 2013
Venue: Densial's
PCs & Players:

Ariel Sor13 (Fergus) (kills: none)
Calico Drd13 (Yeran) (kills: none)
Lionel Rgr6/Wiz1/ArcA6 (Ash) (kills: none)
Rowaine Pal13 (Craig) (kills: none)
Troll Wiz13 (Densial) (kills: none)
Violet Drd13 (Tammi) (kills: none)

XP Awarded: TBA

Say goodbyes to arcanites and teachers. Head back to the building. Notice that the door is ajar, remember expressly closing it when they arrive. ro asks lio to check tracks. Cannot see tracks other than their own and the teachers'. ro Take a good look around, guys… Are we being watched at all? No one thinks so. Nothing in the sky. Ariel starts thinking about what it would mean to bring little animals such as ants into this place - would they find things that they could eat? Can this place sustain life? There is no wind, no rain, and the sun is always in the same place. ari Here's an idea. You guys have been talking about taking arcanites out into our world. What about this: taking some inanimate material from this place into the real world? ro To what end? ari To see what happens to it. ro Hang on. She addresses the ajar door. ro If there is someone in this dwelling, my axe is at the ready. Exit now, slowly. No response. vio pokes her head around the door. She sees nothing. ro Violet, get back! I'm coming in in 3… 2… 1… Rowaine starts walking forwards, opens the door and walks inside. Empty. No obvious traps/wire/string. Nothing in the corners. ro I can't see anything odd. ari plucks a blade of grass, take this through and see what happens to it. tr Border Patrol. ro I don't see any harm in it but there could be. Your call, tr. ro exits. ro Let's have a look at that, ari? ari hands ro the blade of grass. ro chews it. It tastes like grass. She wanders back inside the building.

ro and tr are deep in thought, ro inside and tr outside the building. lio joins ro inside. Before ro can react, he closes the door behind him. He opens it again and sees that it is dawn outside. ro Whoa whoa whoa, what just happened? lio We have a problem… He closes the door and opens it again. It is still dawn outside. Again, with an extra tug on the door. Dawn. ro This is not supposed to happen! If you have switched it over to our world, that means the person that whoever came here could be through as well. Let's exit and you have a look around while I wait at the door.

ro and lio exit. lio Can you summon har so I can fly on her? ro Sure. ro does so. lio takes to the air, scouting the area.

ari and tr discuss the merits of the arcanites' supposed disobedience. ari believes it is a good thing. tr believes it isn't. vio Hey, the door is closed! tr It's fine, lio knows what he's doing. vio Do we need to go inside? tr Do you want to?

lio descends and looks for tracks around the building. He sees none bar their own and the teachers'.

vio opens the door and looks inside. vio Hey guys, ro and lio are not in here! ari What? she has a look. ari I thought you said only you (tr) could make things disappear in here? tr They must have left some other way. ari ro! lio! tr goes in, shuts then opens the door. It is dawn outside, with ro standing there and lio looking at tracks. tr shuts the door. ro But… tr shuts and opens the door. Dusk. Again - dawn. tr Hi! He slams it shut before ro can speak. Opens and shuts it twice and sees ro again. ari steps out. ro Stop! tr, lio got us here and couldn't get us back! tr beckons to lio to enter. He directs him to shut and open the door. Dawn. lio shuts the door then tr opens it - dusk. tr closes and opens the door: dawn with ro.

Observations: lio, ro, ari, vio and cal always open the door to dawn. tr toggles between realms each time he opens the door. When one door is open, the other door is closed and will not open. No way to go through from arcanite realm to home and leave the arcanite door ajar. It doesn't seem to matter if the opener uses tools instead of their hands to open the door. har also always opens the door to dawn.

tr It would be interesting to see if an arcanite is always sent back here. We can verify that. It would be better to know, right? ro I think it would be better to know. ari Let's take some material from the arcanite plane first. What I'm afraid of is that something goes through and crumbles to dust, no longer maintained by some sort of energy in the arcanite realm.

tr suggests taking a branch from an arcanite tree. They do. Branch quickly fades in colour, becoming grey, then wilts and falling to pieces. ari It was good that we tested that, wasn't it? tr We need to try a living creature. lio, can you find any? lio cannot. ro looks for piles of dust outside the building in the dawn. She cannot find any. They repeat with a handful of dirt with grass on it. When taken into dawn it starts fading to grey and crumbles away to dust. ari Well, that solves the problem of whether the arcanites should be allowed to leave, and the answer is yes! ro Given this information. We owe it to them to tell them how dangerous it is. ari Absolutely. We don't know whether the same thing would apply to them… ro It's too much of a risk to verify that. ari That's up to them. ro I suppose so. Either way, they must know. ari Do we know if the arcanites have always been aware of this building? lio Yes they have. ari It would be interesting to ask the arcanites if there used to be more of them. ro They don't know how many are here. They just know that some are no longer in the settlement. ari They seemed to give us the impression that they were living elsewhere. tr Yeah! Oh, they went off towards that building. They've gone to 'a new settlement' and we've never seen them again. Have we ever asked whether they have ever tried to go through the door? ro I don't think so. I think we've just told them not to. tr Let's go ask. lio There may have been hundreds of thousands of them. tr At least that solves the problem - we can't take them back. vio How about a piece of them? ro Easy, druid…

Head back to the arcanites' settlement. Greeted by one of the teachers and Hamuleilin. ro Excuse me Hamuleilin, it is imperative that I speak to the teachers immediately. Would you excuse me? ham Yes, that's fine. ro Thank you. Hamuleilin leaves.

ro We have found out something rather important for the safety of the arcanites. It seems that while we can pass through with tr as the person who opens and shuts the door, the two types of material from this place that we have tried taking back through to our world - wood and a pile of earth and grass - have faded and disintegrated our hands. I see this as a huge risk for the arcanites. The teacher nods agreement. ro I don't know whether they have some sort of natural antipathy towards the building and so they don't go near it because they know it's dangerous, but they do need to know that it is dangerous - or at least we strongly suspect that it is. tea We have been guiding them towards keeping away from it for know… ro And now we can give them just cause. ari Have you heard any of them mention whether any arcanites have gone through that door before? tea None of them that are part of this settlement have tried going through.

There have been other arcanites here but the settlement arcanites don't know where they are. It is possible that they have gone through and perished. ro Maybe we need to speak to Kanocel and his group, see whether there have been any disappearances amongst them. They seem the more adventurous and curious. ari And the only way to see Kanocel is for you to throw a concert!

ro and vio agree to throw another concert tonight: two numbers.

Talk about wing backpacks and ro's magical haversack. ari gets out her Ring Gates and tries them by dropping a stone through one, expecting it to pop out the other. The stone simply drops through the first ring without transporting. ro's Belt of Giant Strength appears to be functioning. She asks to borrow a building for a moment and tests her Ring of Darkvision. It too works as expected. She opens the haversack and looks inside. Everything looks to be in the right place, but she is reticent to put her hand inside. Ariel finds the river and dips her hand in. Her Necklace of Adaptation keeps her hand dry. Troll wades in after her and dips beneath the surface; he can breathe underwater. lio So long as the effect was in place before entering here, the magic seems to work. ari But if the spell is begun here… ro If that is the case, then the haversack should be fine… but your Ring Gates didn't work. Troll spellcraft… As people come in with effects, those effects seem to be fine. The thing that ties all the chaotic elements together is the fact that they were cast in this realm. vio Changing into animal form works… Would casting a spell in animal form work?

Troll uses his Magic Missile wand. Eighteen missiles shoot out - more than the spell could ever do - and slam into the target tree with no effect. vio then Wild Shapes into an owl, flies into the air and notices something in the distance. She realises it is Kanocel flying towards them. Kanocel lands and talks to the party about introducing them to more non-township arcanites. He also shows his new fledgling skill with the pan pipes he made. vio settles in a tree bough above. Kanocel mentions the singing thing this evening. Rowaine makes sure he knows he and the others are invited. Kanocel asks after vio. ro Oh, she is an owl at the moment. kan What? ro A type of bird. kan I know 'bird'… Calico showed me 'bird'. Kanocel tries his pan pipes again. kan It doesn't work right, I think. I think it's broken.

ari asks whether any of the arcanites had made any more pan pipes. No. ro Kanocel, your group of people, are there some of them that you haven't seen in a very long time? kan Yes. We are not a group in the sense that we stay together, we just stay away from the township. We stick to ourselves mostly, except where we want to share ideas on how to do stuff. ro Like when we saw you playing with the boulders? kan Yes, exactly. ro If you could introduce us to others like yourself, we would be grateful. kan I don't want to busy them now but I know they will be coming to the thing tonight. kan starts playing his pan pipes. ro About that, by the way - you are doing really well. kan Thank you. I like it. It makes noises I can't. ro I know that the concept of time is a very new one for you, but playing the pan pipes to the level of skill that vio displays takes time. And practice. kan Oh, so like things taking, OK. I think I understand. ro Remember when you first met us. Think back to then, now think about how much more you know now, and the time that has passed. You are learning and practicing new things. Your pan pipes there is exactly the same. The more you play, the more you practice, the better you will get. kan That's cool, I like that. ro So please do. kan I know sort of how to do the practicing thing. It takes that to do things better? ro Yes. I guess the things you are capable of with the rocks is a good example. That comes with practice, doesn't it? kan Yes, exactly, that's what … yeah. That's good! ro I actually think that if you are willing, maybe before vio and I take the stage I would love for you to display what you have learned to the others, if that's OK with you? kan I'd like that, that'd be cool.

vio flies down and lands on ro's shoulder. ro Now there's something else that I also want to tell you and it's quite a serious thing. kan Is that the owl? ro This is Violet, in the shape of an owl. kan How are you? vio bobs and coos. kan What'd she say? ari None of us know, except possibly Calico. kan Calico, what is she saying? cal I don't know. ro Kanocel, do you remember the building on the hill? kan Yes. I've tried making one. It's alright… It didn't work, though. ro It didn't work? kan No. ro What do you mean it didn't work? kan Oh well, I know you guys can go through the building and back, but the one I did couldn't do that. ro Kanocel, this is really important. I know that we have told you before to not even enter that building. We did that for very good reasons then and those reasons have just become even stronger. We have discovered that things that from here taken through to our world, things like parts of a tree, things like some of your soil and grass, things that we would consider to be living, are destroyed. Do you understand destroyed? Reduced to grey dust, lifeless. Transformed. They lose their structure and their life. kan Transformed? You mean like what she has done to become an owl? ro Worse. The things that have gone through have been changed into something less than they were. ari You know how you can think and talk and move? We suspect it changes anything from here into something that can't do any of those things. kan Can't think? lio picks up a pebble. lio See this? You would become like this. kan That sounds really bad. ro It sounds really dangerous, right? kan Yeah - I learned that one from Khordarum - dangerous. ro From my understanding, sometimes you arcanites can get hurt or damaged, your limbs can be broken. Imagine that happening to every tiny piece of you, so that you could not function any more. That's what we are talking about. kan But I could still think, though, right? ro I suspect that if you went through this sort of transformation, you wouldn't again. You would cease to exist. kan Would I come back, later? ro I don't think so. You need to understand that it is a dangerous place. You talked to us before about people you haven't seen for a very long time. It is possible that they have been curious about this building and that's what's happened to them. They have just disappeared. kan So when they were trying to leave, that is what might happen to them? They get turned into this stuff? ro They might not even have been trying to leave, but they just went into this building and never came out again. We don't know this for sure, it is a guess at the moment, but it is enough that I think you need to know and you need to let your other people know as well. kan I shall tell anyone I find. It sounds really sad, really bad. ro I agree. kan Now I'm all sad. He sits down and takes a mournful blow on his pan pipes. ro Keep practicing. Maybe spend some time with Violet. When she's a gnome. vio flies off ro's shoulder, lands behind a tree and discreetly turns back into a gnome and returns. ari Kanocel, do your people hug when they are sad? kan Yes, we do. ari Would you like a hug? He would and ari gives him one. kan Thanks.

vio takes Kanocel aside and continues Kanocel's musical tuition. After a while he asks the party whether they would like to see his building. ro Sure. Kanocel starts flying off. ro Don't go too fast! Kanocel returns. ari Is it very far away? kan Ah… Um. I guess I could try and make one. Hang on, just wait here. He goes off into the forest. vio follows him. He enters a clearing and has his hands outstretched. vio sees a shimmer in front of him. She sees wood appear midair and unfold like paper to form the front of the building. Kanocel then runs back towards the party.

kan Alright, come, come! He leads the party to his new creation. To the naked eye, it is identical to the one on the hill. ari Did you make the ones in the village? kan No, I haven't made any of those. ari They are identical as well. kan I only make them where I am. tr You can make things appear, right? kan Sort of. tr pulls out one of his imithrium knives. tr Make one. kan I don't know if I can just do it like that. I have to think about it a lot. I haven't done a knife before. tr What have you done before? kan The building. tr Something smaller that I can have? kan The flute… tr Can I have the flute? ari Can you make another one? kan I don't know if I can make one as good as this. ari Can you make something that you would be happy to give Troll? kan I could make another set of pipes, I guess. I just learned how to do it. tr Make me one? kan OK. He turns his back to the party who see the air shimmering before him. He turns around and presents tr with a set of musical pipes. tr shows it to ro. tr Taking this through, see what happens. ro Hmmmm. tr notices that while the pipes have indentations where the holes should be, they are much shallower than they should be; the pipes are largely solid.

kan whispers Go inside! ro May I? kan Yeah. tr Close and open the door, see what happens! ro I was wondering whether you might accompany me? tr Of course. tr and ro enter, followed by Kanocel. kan Does this look right? ro looks around. ro Perfect. Kanocel, would you mind stepping outside for a moment? tr and I would like to try something. kan Sure. He exits. ro tries closing and opening the door. Nothing strange happens. tr tries next with the same result. A lot of times. Every time tr opens the door, he and ro see Kanocel open his mouth as if to say something… then Troll closes the door on him. Eventually the pair exit. kan Did anything happen in there? ro It behaves exactly as a building should. kan I couldn't find my way out, and I couldn't find it with the other one, either. ro You couldn't find your way out? kan Out of this place? ro You have tried? kan looks sheepish. kan No…? He is obviously lying. ro So you have tried opening and shutting the other building's door? kan puts his pipes to his lips and lets out a nervous note. He is avoiding eye contact. ro Well that answers another question of ours. tr Whether or not they can follow directions. ro More than one question. kan I was just curious. I wasn't going to go out! I just wanted to see if I could. ro Well, that does mean that that building may not pose as much of a threat as we thought. But I don't know that it is the same experience for you as it is for every arcanite so I think we should still be careful. kan You mean I'm not in trouble? ro You need to tell us the truth, Kanocel. tr Lying is bad. ro It is for your safety that we say these things. I was very, very worried that you may die and cease to be if you went through there. Information is the only way that we are going to find out about this. Getting the wrong information may lead to the wrong conclusions and the wrong decisions. It is really important. kan has trouble understanding some of ro's words; she explains them. kan I think I understand. ro In return, I promise - do you understand the word promise? - that I will always be truthful with you. Kanocel thinks about thiis for a moment. kan I did go into the building to see what it was like.

tr AHA!

ro Thank you for letting us know. kan I didn't know it was bad like that. Dangerous. ro It may very well be. kan Can we share information? ro You and I? kan Yes. I want to ask questions of you guys as well. I don't understand a lot of all of this. Can I ask you questions? ro Yes, of course. I hope that you understand that that is what the teachers are here for as well, so you can understand more about where we come from - but yes, feel free. kan When I went into that building on the hill and opened the door, it was just the same. Why was that - why couldn't I go out? ro I'm not sure. I don't really understand how it works completely. All I do know is that it seems to do different things for different people. kan Do you know, Troll? What do I need to do? tr Be someone else. kan Someone else? ro He might take that literally… kan How do I be someone else? I can't do that change thing. tr That's right. You can't. kan So can I never go back? tr Well, not currently. Not by yourself. kan So I need someone else? tr Possibly. We don't fully understand it yet. kan Do you know how it works, Ariel? ari No, none of us do. At this point we know what it does, but we don't know why. kan Can only certain people do it? ari Yes. If I open the door, it is a different place. kan So you can do it? Can you show me how? ari No. ro It doesn't seem to be anything that we are choosing to do. It seems that the building is recognising something in us. kan You are not making a … decision? ro No. It is something to do with the building. kan So the building makes a decision? ro That would be my guess. kan I always thought the building wasn't like us, that it couldn't make decisions. It couldn't think. tr Here is a stick. tr drops the stick and it falls to the ground. tr The stick travelled, but it didn't choose to travel. It just obeyed a rule. It could be that the building is like that, but we don't know. It may make a decision, but it may just be following rules. We don't know. It may be many trenches before we know more. kan OK. How long till you guys do your singing thing? ro A few trenches. kan Can you take me to the place with the door? tr No. ro At the moment, things from this world that we have taken through have been destroyed. It is too much of a risk at this point. I would not want that on my conscience. kan looks confused. ro That would make me feel really sad. kan Oh. OK. Violet, can you show me how you do that changing thing? It looks fun. vio looks at ro. vio Is that something we should do? ro Thank you for asking. What do you all think? I don't know. Is that something we are comfortable with? tr Sure. vio What should we try first? A cat? Kanocel, have you heard about things like a cat? kan Oh, is that sort of like … things that people own, sort of? I've forgotten the word. ari A pet? kan That's it! ari Not just pets, but often people care for them. ro If Kanocel is successful, I'm a bit worried that he will actually become a cat. It is not without risk. ari explains the possibility. Kanocel is initially interested, but in hearing that it might be dangerous to that which is Kanocel, he sobers up.

ari talks about the responsibility of the older, more experienced to look after the younger - especially regarding making decisions concerning dangerous things. She would rather their elder arcanites first know about these things so they can decide whether it is OK for the rest of the community. kan But I want to do it first! ari It's frustrating I know. lio I'll fight for you; I want you to be first. vio We just need to make sure that it is safe for you because I like you and I don't want bad things to happen. vio wonders whether if Kanocel were to turn into a cat, if she could become a cat and talk to him. ari It depends if he assumes the essence of a cat, or just its shape. ro Look at the building Kanocel made…

Can you open the door from the outside when both sides have closed doors but there is someone inside? ro walks inside from dawn and closes the door. ari opens the door from the dawn side and sees ro. she closes the door. tr opens the door from the dusk side: as long as the door is closed, it can be opened by either side regardless of whether or not there are people inside.

Another way of looking at it: it is one building with two doors in the same place. Only one door can be open at any given time.

This does mean that people can get through (with assistance) where they could not go by themselves.

ro tries getting something out of the magical haversack. It works. ari then puts a piece of arcanite stick into the haversack and then pulls it out. The stick survives. ari Is it the act of passing through the door that disintegrates the object rather than being on the other side? ro Let's try it out. They all head off towards the hill. Kanocel follows.

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