"Well, I'm not volunteering to be a test subject."

"Perhaps we should find one."

"Perhaps multiple. Oh! We could run some of the residents of Split through. It'd be funny, even if it doesn't help merge them. We'd have to get them into the entry chamber, but I think I can figure out how to do that."

"That does sound like fun."

"Then let's explore! Get ready for our guests and all."

"It wouldn't do for them to know more about the mechanisms than we."

"Let's see which of these connects to the start, then," she says, gesturing to the teleport pads.

Time to explore. Are they activated simply by stepping on them?

Seems so!

The four pads go to viewers for the start and the end, into a series of maintenance tunnels for individual rooms, and to a teleport pad with a hidden door into the actual front room that the captives will be dumped into. The viewing rooms are connected to each other by other teleport pads; there's a linear main progression but there's some room to play, and the controls look pretty intuitive. Glint's pretty sure that last teleport pad, into the entry, is going to be the easiest for the people of Split, assuming they're transporting everyone while unconscious.

"So shall we bring them here and thence to the entrance?"

"Yeah!"

She leads the way out into the village, easily identifying three more isolated people who shouldn't be missed too quickly - wouldn't do to alarm the populace. A Khajiit girl reading (both halves in fact seem to just read), a Manic Dunmer girl lurking in the woods with her Demented half stalking her, and a Dunmer man - the Manic half locked into his house, the Demented half lurking on rooftops to watch people.

They're all quite easily knocked out; Glint makes a game of doing that without anyone, including the people themselves, seeing her.

"I'm thinking we just drop them as-is," she says as they transport the six bodies back. "Handicaps might be fun for some of the later ones, though, who look like they'd have an easier time of this."

"That is only fair. Two at a time, or all at once?"

"Hm... All at once has some advantages, such that they're more likely to survive some challenges, but also more likely to form teams... Might be good to force both halves to work together... If we don't mind tarrying here a bit, two at a time might be a reasonable start. See how they do."

"The catfolk girl first, then."

The Khajiit girls awaken soon after being placed in the front chamber. They both scramble away from each other.

"What did you do?" the Manic one demands, bright eyes narrowed.

"Me? You're the one always behaving weirdly!" the Demented one says.

The Manic one makes an upset noise. "Stories that start like this don't go well."

The Demented one shakes her head. "It'll go poorly if you're here. I'm going to - to find who did this! And make them regret it."

She spins, finds the door, and stalks through.

The Manic one hesitates, looks for another door, and can't find one, following only reluctantly, her tail notably puffed up.

The room's not very large. There's a single twig monster in it, apparently ignoring the girls.

"One of these? They're not that scary..." the Demented girl says.

(In the observation room, there's two buttons. The grinning one for a Manic solution, the frowning for a Demented. The notes didn't really describe what either does, except saying that the Demented solution here is usually a bit less deadly than average.)

On the one hand, making something they've just explicitly disregarded dangerous would be rather amusing. But on the other, if these two died on the first room, that would be slightly disappointing.

She pulls out a coin and flips it. It comes up tails, and she pushes the Dementia button.

A swarm of little twig monsters pours from the ceiling and attacks! The girls scream, running in different directions, but both doors out are locked.

They get quite bloodied by the time the Manic one gets the lock to the next room open, defended by her Demented half. The door slams behind them, and they collapse, the Manic one crying and the Demented one twitching.

There's a pile of treasure, in this room, behind a locked gate, and a similar button set up.

The two girls look at it, say, "Trap," and then start arguing over tropes and whether it's really a trap, sure this one just said that but the other can't be trusted...

Glint stops laughing to hum. "Probably the Manic solution for this is supposed to manipulate greed? And they don't seem like they'd fall for that. Pity. Dementia it is!"

She taps the button, and several tiles in the room beyond the observation screen start spitting fire.

The girls manage to jump to a (currently) clear tile before they get more than singed, and start leaping and jumping across the room, frantically looking for an exit.

"Crispy kitties," Elatra laughs.

Glint's laughing, too, especially whenever the girls stumble or don't move quickly enough.

The girls (fortunately for them at least) make it alive into the next room. It's full of columns and statues, and the walls have holes. The two girls collapse near the entrance.

"I think we let them get their breath and then hit mania?" Glint asks. "Should probably keep this balanced, and all, and this's only a four-room sequence."

"Two and two. Very good."

She waits until they go themselves back up before pressing the next button.

It goes dark in the room, though the view screen shifts to a desaturated view. The Manic girl shrieks, while the Demented just takes in a sharp breath. "We'll go by our whiskers, what kind of cat's scared of the dark you big sissy - " the Demented girl hisses.

Of course, that's when little puffs of air start escaping the holes.

And then there's a slithering sound, a skittering sound, a rushing sound...

Both girls jump and start looking for the exit. In the dark, of course, with an increasing number of creepy crawlies around them...

Oh, that is a delightfully devilish little trap.

Both seem on the verge of total breakdown by the time they find their way out.

The final room is bloody, full of corpses and skeletons (possibly fake given they don't rot).

The girls huddle together in the center, turning slowly to look for the way out. (There is none.)

Of course not. Let's see if the Mania button reveals one, and what the cost of passage will be.