08. May 31, 2020

A Mission to Save Andor

We start tracking the wolves. The grasslands are pretty, rolling hills. But the woods are kind of dark and have noises that alarm us. We head into the woods. We reach a clearing, and Jaindoh insists there are wolves in the woods. We look ahead into the clearing and find 5 wolves 60 feet away from us, looking confused. Cam and Hakon would swear the wolves were NOT there before Jaindoh said they were there. We start approaching. Reddy looks at them and swears aloud that they’re friendly, and says “good boys, lie down, be still,” and after a moment they do so and start looking more friendly. Jaindoh asks the alpha to tap once for yes, two for no. We ask if they’ve seen Andor. They indicate no.

Hakon realizes that what Jaindoh expects to see is shaping the reality of the world. He whispers this to the rest of us. Hakon tries to convince her that ‘wait, isn’t that Andor, safe and sound, right over there?’ Jaindoh spins and sees a shadowy humanoid shadow, walking away from us. The wolves when questioned indicate that there isn’t any scent. Cam follows the shadow to the edge of the woods, and it walks across a fissure (across the air) and into a shimmery portal. He doesn’t think it was a real portal, but the shadow or impression or memory of a portal. He returns and tells the rest of us. We go to it, and Jaindoh (who has been able to best sense portals before) thinks there’s something there. Cam throws a pebble; it bounces off the air where we think the ghostly portal is like there’s something solid there.

Our wolven allies agree to help us, so we return to the Temple of the Traveler to have them try to pick up a scent. The temple looks like a monastery/church with its gray stone, 30-foot tower, and stained glass windows. Hakon notices the story on each of the windows is nearly identical--the scene on each window is the same (a landscape with some buildings in the midground and mountains in the background), but showing slightly different states--sometimes in the foreground there are people, animals, burned trees, pretty trees, etc. One window shows a subterranean cut-out in the foreground (the edges are rendered in detail but the center is just black tiles), rendering a void inside.

The wolves catch Andor’s scent. They lead us back into the woods, to the fissure, and paw at the ground and point their noses to the fissure (which is maybe 20 feet wide and 30 feet down to a stream at the bottom of the ditch). We are unable to figure out how to reach the center of the fissure. We take another walkabout. While we have been taking some time trying to figure out how to reach the center of the fissure, and it’s still dawn.

We return to speak to Bernard, who is still tidying up in the same place we saw him last. He has been at the temple for maybe 5 or 6 years, though it’s seemed like forever. He talks to parishioners (travelers), tidies the temple, makes sacrifices, that’s his life. There aren’t any nearby settlements, though there might be one to the north. Andor occasionally leaves for a few days to make deliveries.

Conjurations and Summonings

Detecting for magic, everything has a faint aura of magic: Bernard, the pews, the grass and stone outside, all is faintly magic. The portal in the basement also detects of magic, a little stronger than everything else does. We return to the fissure; it also detects of magic (Conjuration) even more faintly than the grass and trees. We decide to walk north, and the path winds on over hills. We aren’t fatigued, we aren’t hungry, it is still dawn, after we walk for what seems to be several hours. We decide to keep going, though it might be fruitless.

While out on the northern road (which goes on and on, possibly without end, we don’t know) in the middle of nowhere, Jaindoh tries to conjure fire--and succeeds. Reddy was casting Detect Magic, and Jaindoh’s fire is Conjuration (which is a summoning/transportation school of magic; normally, producing energy effects is Evocation). Cam tries to cast an illusion of a portal, also successful (likely because he’s a first level Warlock). Jaindoh says it senses like all the other portals--seems real to her. With the Detect Magic ritual still active, Reddy senses that the portal also exudes Conjuration magic.

The Portal at the Fissure

We return to the fissure, and chop down a tree to make a bridge that extends to the portal. The trunk lands about 4 feet from the portal; and while we can’t see the portal shimmering (it’s not visible), some of the branches seem to be bending around it. We rope ourselves together and walk out on the tree; we jump for it; it’s still closed. Cam gets hung up on it (looks like he’s hanging in mid-air, to the rest of us), clinging to the top of it, it’s solid as stone, and we can’t get through. We fell another tree, on the other side of the ravine. It’s smooth and solid, until Jaindoh touches it--then it gets a shimmery outline--she touches it with her other hand, and the portal activates under her hands. We don’t know why, but we go with it. We yell thanks to our friendly wolves, and cross through the portal.

The Subterranean Chamber on the Other Side and the Dark Portal

We are in a massive subterranean chamber, wet floor, ceiling has collapsed in part of it and there’s light shining in and water dripping from it. Lots of bones on the floor. Chamber looks like it runs a mile or more in all directions. The portal through which we entered seems dark like it’s sucking in light, instead of bright and shimmering light. We study the floor, and think there’s maybe a crude path through the scattered bones where maybe someone (maybe Andor?) walked. The bones themselves are mostly beef-type bones, some fish bones, some have wings, but not from animals we know, some humanoid bones, but no complete skeletons. Many of the bones seem gnawed, like rats or smaller nibbled them. No marks of butchering or weapons on them, some have breaks (like from falling from ceiling). We are mystified. But we follow the faint path for maybe ¾ of a mile. We are starting to feel tired, like it has been a full day.

Andor

We see a humanoid figure in the distance, it is wearing a cloak, it is stooping to do something, then moves along, stoops again. The figures spots us, looks like it wants to hide, then gives up and half-heartedly waves in our direction. “Hi, who are you?” Jaindoh calls out. The figure seems to take in what she said, processes it, and calls out “hello, who are you?” Reddy calls “are you friendly, like we are?” And the figure pushes back its hood, it’s an older man, about 60. We introduce ourselves. He says he is Andor. He asks how we got here, admitting “this might seem like a strange question, but how did you get here? What portal did you use?” We tell him. “But it was closed? How did you open it?” We admit we don’t understand how we did it. He asks “what do you do?” We reveal “we help people (Jaindoh), we provide information (Cam), we work on ships (Hakkon), we help people (Reddy).” We ask what he does “I travel to places and put them back together.” We ask if Andor means places that are ruined, like in the stained glass windows--he replies yes. Reddy says she’d be interested in helping him. He says he hasn’t had much luck with an apprentice, but might be interested in taking up the party’s offer to help.

World-Shattering Trauma from the Past

Andor says that he’s always been able to travel. When he got older, he started finding portals to different places. We ask what is this place? Andor replies “it is Zero. It seems to be the epicenter of all the problems, the root of all the problems in the places that are not right. I think I’ve figured it out. I’m here looking around, and am looking to see if my path is the wrong path.” Why do you think your path is wrong? “As best as I can piece together, there was a massive and malevolent otherworldly entity that used to inhabit its space. At some point in the past, I think someone or something vanquished this other-dimensional entity that lived in this giant underground place. The vanquishing of the entity that seemed to be tied into the minds of creatures and sentient races, some tension snapped between its dimensions and the minds of the creatures it was connected to, and this place shattered into multiple dimensions. Like a looking glass, but instead of reflecting what it sees, it reflects what it had seen. Here in Zero, we are in the frame of the looking glass, and everywhere I travel are the pieces of the mirror. I think the worlds are suffering from the trauma of being taking apart. Some of the worlds have grown, changed. Andor thinks he has figured out how to reassemble the pieces, but some of the edges will need to be trimmed and cut from where they’ve grown, and what will happen to the people he worries, that live on the edges? Or what if a piece is smaller? He worries about the effect on the people. He has already done some reassembly, and wonders if he has severed physical bodies from minds (or something like that). We ask how long ago he started that (wondering if it aligns with the blanks), but he says time moves differently wherever he travels, so he can’t say. Time moves differently in each shard, and it’s possible that duplicated people age at different rates. Andor thinks the closer a person (shard) was to Zero when the trauma happened, the faster time moved for the shard.

Andor has seldom seen other people who can similarly travel as he does, but has seen some arcanists moving through with limited understanding. And in Zero, he has never seen any other person. We ask about the number of shards (wondering if it’s 131); Andor thinks it’s a total of 206.

Wolves

We ask about the wolves. He says that all his life he’s been told of strange wolves; he thinks they are a manifestation of some force, something intangible, they are sometimes benevolent and sometimes malicious, but always present.

We Want to Help

We offer to help. To work with Andor. As he was unsuccessful in teaching Bernard, he will try with us. We agree to return to the temple with him to plan. He says the temple is a place he found early in his youth; time does not seem to pass there (perhaps it is just a small shard, very far from Zero), and he is comfortable returning there for reflection.