![[SL-37-1.png]] Once everyone had woken up we got back on the road, hoping that we would have a calm trip to [[Hueteville]]. About an hour into our walk we spotted the owl that was speaking to [[Emma]]. "Hello, friend of [[Emma]]" I said in Fey as we approached, to which the [[Owllen|Owl]] responded "Hello" in common. We asked if there was anything we should be worried about in front of us, to which the [[Owllen|Owl]] claimed that there is something wrong with the road ahead. They claimed that we would not drop into another plane again, but that "things seem bendy right now". I was not sure what that meant, but our only real recourse was to just be as attentive as possible and hope that things did not become too problematic. I then asked if I could have their name, but they claimed they did not have one. [[Thatch]] called them "[[Owllen|Pooter]]", and [[Eos]] called them [[Owllen]]. I feel that [[Owllen]] is a more reasonable name, and as such I will continue to use it in my notes. --- I want to point out that you *explicitly* said "May I have your name", which you know is a common fey trick to try and steal someone else's name. I get the feeling [[Owllen]] may have not been willing to give us one, simply to try and avoid you using some magic to steal it permanently XD. --- We got back to walking as [[Owllen]] flew off, knowing that we were definitely in for something in the not too distant future. Perhaps this is why [[Emma]] had the cart taken to [[Hueteville]], she is getting us to test things for her. I am not going to let her hear the end of it, unless she starts being clearer with us. We do want to help, but this level of toying is just going to make us frustrated and not want to help. After a bit more walking it began to pour rain. [[Kiara Ironfang|Kiara]] and [[Xander Ironfang|I]] were fine with this as my umbrella and our magic are fairly good at keeping it out, but everyone else was really getting soaked. I considered recommending us to stop and take some cover, however [[Thatch]] noticed something before I got to ask. [[Thatch]] was scouting all around us and noticed that there was a sudden shift in the scenery behind us, telling everyone to turn around and take a look. Behind us was a large house which absolutely was not there before. I quickly began to look through the [[Mirdo]] lens, finding that it had once again turned an opaque white just as it did in the Feywild. I personally think that this means we have gone to another plane, however given what [[Owllen]] said, it is possible that there is more to it. In any case, we turned around and started heading towards the house. I became more active with my magic detection, and [[Eos]] asked me to let them know if I spotted any weird magic so that they could try and smell it. Given what occurred last night I guess that is a reasonable course of action. We reached the door, knocking to see if anyone was home. There was no response and the door was not locked, so we decided to head inside to at least get out of the rain. Once the last person had gotten inside, the door slam shut and locked behind us. I honestly should have expected that, however I was far too curious to figure out what was going on. The house was a single floor, two small rooms on either side of the entrance, and one large room in front of it. On our left was a room filled with bookcases and books, all of which were blank inside. The covers still had their titles, so I grabbed 5 which I figured were interesting. Most notably I took a book labeled "A Treatise on the [[The Ghrian Republic|Ghrian Republic]]", which may benefit us should we be able to see the contents of it in the future. On the right of the entrance was a room with a well made chair sitting in the centre. In front of the chair were 4 large mirrors, each capable of flipping vertically around their centre. [[Thatch]] flipped one of the mirrors, noticing that it was showing the same thing as it would have been in it's original orientation. [[Gobby]] then sat in the chair, and looking through the flipped mirror we could see [[Gobby]] with a porcelain mask. Flipping the mirror back to it's original position caused the mask to disappear, and flipping all of the mirrors around caused them all to show the masked [[Gobby]]. After a few moments the masked [[Gobby]] desynchronized from the real one, watching me for a bit before standing up and walking out of frame into the main room. As one last test, I held one of the blank books up to the mirrors, wondering if it would show the original contents of the book. It did not, however it did show the words "HELP" raggedly written on the page. We moved into the main room, finding a large fountain placed in the centre. There were two different rings in the fountain, one of which was filled with bubbling water, the other filled with bubbling black ichor. In the ichor was a shadow of a person, almost as though there was a body in the pool. Four chairs were sat equidistantly placed around the fountain in an almost ritualistic fashion. On the far wall there was a basin filled with a bubbling green liquid attached to the wall. Attached to the basing was a cable which looked to be of [[The Ghrian Republic|Ghrian]] origin. The cable was formerly connected to some sort of machine, however said machine had clearly exploded at some point given the soot on the floor and shards of metal scattered around the area. On either side of the basin was a lever, and of course due to the [[The Ghrian Republic|Ghrian]] construction there was no labeling on them. Finally, there was a bundle of rope off in one of the corners near the entrance which seemed fairly inconspicuous at first. I of course went to look at the [[Ghrian]] technology first, quickly noticing that there was a small corrupted [[Aetheric Battery]] off in the corner. I could tell that it had been corrupted as it was swirling grey and black instead of the normal pure white. I picked it up, and as I did I received a vision. There was a man in front of me, speaking in a language that I could not understand. The vision was very brief and hazy, I could not come up with much as it happened. Once it had finished I realized that the man was [[Ajax Wiltsower|Ajax]], and it's possible that he was speaking so quickly that I just could not understand it. This could mean one of two things, either [[Ajax Wiltsower|Ajax]] has been here before, or touching the [[Aetheric Battery|Battery]] caused my brain to recall a memory. In any case, I pocketed the [[Aetheric Battery|Battery]] for further study. As I did so, everyone heard someone whisper "Thief", to which I refuted that I am simply trying to help, and that this was important evidence. [[Gobby]] came to the basin at the back of the room to take a look at it, stating the liquid is just water with a bunch of algae in it. [[Eos]] broke a leg off the nearby chair in order to test the black ichor with it. As they broke the leg however, everyone could hear a scream! [[Gobby]] tried to use potions to heal the chair, but that didn't do anything. I figured that there was more to this we were not able to see, so I had [[Skelly the Skeleton|Skelly]] bring one of the mirrors into the main room. Flipping it over allowed us to see into another world of sorts, spotting a woman crumpled on the floor next to the now broken chair. [[Thatch]] then moved over to hold up the chair, and the woman got back up and sat down as though nothing had happened. Looking around with the mirror we spotted a second person in the room, tied up where the rope was in the real world. Unlike the woman in the chair, the tied up person was clearly tracking us and watching what we were doing. While [[Thatch]] repaired the chair, [[Eos]] picked up a piece of broken metal from the destroyed [[Ghrian]] apparatus to use to touch the ichor. He was able to determine that the "body" in the ichor was actually just some sort of shadow, and that there was not anything actually there. He then dropped a smaller piece of metal into the ichor, and we all listened as it fell deeper and deeper into the sludge. It kept going for long enough that it went out of earshot, perhaps this pipe is connected to the ones that we found underground near [[Plimoth]]. After he was done screwing with the ichor, [[Eos]] began communicating with the person in the mirror through motions. We were able to work out that the person wanted us to pull one of the levers on the wall. [[Eos]] decided to pull the other lever first, just in case the person was trying to work against us for some reason. That lever caused all of the water to flow away, heading down a long pipe that went about 9m down before turning towards the door. I am very glad he did this, as pulling the second lever caused the black ichor to start overflowing and pour down into where the water was, falling away into the now empty pipe. When we went to look back at the figure, they had disappeared! We heard a faint "thank you", so we figured that our work there was done. Flipping the lever back did nothing, and the woman was still visible in the reflection though, so it was not entirely clear if we were successful. We started walking back to the door to see if it was still locked, but before we could get there a piece of metal from the [[Ghrian]] machinery went flying across the room, almost hitting both [[Skelly the Skeleton|Skelly]] and [[Aian Nuh Monahbi|Aian]]. Suddenly a ghost in a porcelain mask appeared behind [[Crescent]] and [[Thatch]] who were about to reach the door. A fight immediately broke out, and after landing a few solid hits into the masked ghost a second one suddenly appeared behind me, emitting an aura which shook me to my very core. It even caused [[Gobby]] to start running away back into the main room! > [!Session Note] > [[Owliver]], [[Owl]], [[Owllen]], when will we escape the Owls!