FACILITY LOG 1
The last of the wondrous architecture has completed construction. Operations to catalog entity specimens started today. Five new legal transformations have been recovered today. None have much practical use.

The Great Work has begun.

FACILITY LOG 344
The first round of long-term inspection of the magical protections across █████ has concluded. All are holding steady.

Specimen testing is proceeding at an average rate of fifty-one new entities per hour.

FACILITY LOG 498
Facility population is growing at a steady rate. The current recruitment strategy seems to be working.  

Specimen testing is proceeding at an average rate of seventy-two new entities per hour. 

FACILITY LOG 4,234
An indefinite interdiction has been placed on extraplanar communications with the █████ █████ and associated regions. The watchers have been instructed to purge all relevant proper nouns from the archives. Indirect references will be replaced from a list of neutral terms.

Specimen testing is proceeding at an average rate of thirty-five new entities per hour.

FACILITY LOG 21,220
A functional spell that grants eternal life has been developed based on study of specimens A-74751 and O-41081 along with information conveyed by a friendly entity of the kind A-17178. Unfortunately, it consumes a substantial amount of experience. It cannot be scaled without at least a partial method of free experience accumulation.

Specimen testing is proceeding at an average rate of sixty-four new entities per hour.

FACILITY LOG 40,305
The wards of mental protection covering the the seventh facility have ceased to function. Recovery operations were unsuccessful. Losses exceed twelve hundred.

Specimen testing is proceeding at an average rate of forty-one new entities per hour.

FACILITY LOG 41,612
Facilities one through five have fallen to outside forces. Recovery has been deemed impossible at this time. 

Specimen testing is paused until ██████ ██████████ returns to us. Indirect study continues.

FACILITY LOG 57,954

All remaining non-extradimensional facilities whose wards mental protection failed have been lost to a plague of nightmares. Recovery has been deemed impossible at this time.

FACILITY LOG 97,777
S̶p̶i̴d̷e̸r̶s̷ ̷a̵r̸e̶ ̷g̵r̷o̶w̵i̴n̴g̴ ̷f̵r̴o̵m̵ ̴o̸f̷ ̴t̴h̴e̷ ̵w̷a̶l̸l̴s̷ ̴o̵f̴ ̷t̵h̶e̴ ̸g̷a̸r̴d̵e̶n̵.̵

FACILITY LOG 122,694
Ǝ̶ʌ̸ǝ̵ɹ̵ʎ̸ ̴p̴ɐ̶ʎ̷'̸ ̴I̷ ̷ɟ̷ᴉ̵ƃ̸ɥ̶ʇ̸ ̵ɟ̴o̶ɹ̴ ̴ɯ̶ʎ̷ ̴l̴ᴉ̸ɟ̷ǝ̶ ̴ɐ̷u̶p̶ ̵ʍ̷ᴉ̷u̷˙̸ ̴Ǝ̴ʌ̴ǝ̸ɹ̵ʎ̸ ̶u̵ᴉ̵ƃ̷ɥ̶ʇ̶'̴ ̶I̵ ̶ɟ̸ᴉ̵ƃ̷ɥ̴ʇ̷ ̴ʇ̶o̸ ̶ɹ̵ǝ̸ɯ̶ǝ̶ɯ̸q̸ǝ̴ɹ̶ ̵ɯ̷ʎ̸ ̶u̶ɐ̵ɯ̵ǝ̵ ̸ɐ̸u̸p̶ ̷l̴o̸s̷ǝ̸˙̸

FACILITY LOG 342,435
All facilities are clear of the horrors for now. I do not have sufficient materials and experience to reconstruct the wards at their historic strength. I've started moving what could be recovered of the archives to facility sixteen. Specimen testing has resumed.

The ruins of facility four hold a great deal of valuable magical equipment. It's very impressive it survived out there for this long. Nonetheless, it all needs to be moved to a location which is actually secure.

A long hallway stretches out before him. It's far longer than it should be. The floor can't seem to decide what shape or consistency it wants to be. Right now it's a churning mess of lava and acid. 

He shapeshifts into the form of O-16541 and flies down the hall. This kind of being is immune to temperature changes and chemical reactions. They also have wings. A very strange kind of half-demon half-angel creature.

Immunity to energy damage doesn't stop the fanged eyes that sprout from his skin—

He's under mind blank. Try that some other time.

The rooms that branch off from the hallway are filled with magical equipment. They're also filled with amorphous beings covered in eyes.

He shapeshifts into the form of A-1549 (a more powerful variant of A-374). This kind of being has ten magical eyes that shoot rays of death and disintegration and petrification and a host of other nasty effects. It also has an eye that projects a huge cone of antimagic which he will keep shut.

The strange amorphous beings are dead and petrified and disintegrated within short order.

He shapeshifts back into O-16541 for its defensive potency and begins collecting. The expensive and irreplaceable objects are now in his bag. Back to facility sixteen where the wards still function.

His study is as he left it, next to one of the last living gardens.

He unloads the equipment into some adjacent rooms. Once that's done, he returns to his study and dims the glowing orbs with a mental command. Time to rest.

A couple of hours go by. He's fully rested very quickly.

He turns on the lights and spends an hour preparing spells and poking at his item of clairvoyant sense. 

The unwarded facilities are full of horrors again.

Of course they are. What does the primary exit look like?

The primary exit is sealed shut. The outside takes the shape of an ocean full of eyes and organs.

He misses when the world was more creative. It's been at least a dozen cycles of eyes and flesh and water.

It's time to collect some specimens. Shapechange. He becomes a horrible demon-spider with the ability to shift between dimensions (O-364) and leaves the extradimensional garden.

The ocean is alive, for it is not an ocean at all. Layers upon layers of indescribable substance, varying in size and shape dramatically, fill the space beyond the primary exit.

He shapeshifts the form of an incorporeal spirit (U-18) and many of his senses fizzle away. Undead forms are always strange to take. Without a body, the water and eyes and flesh don't impede him.

The ocean of the current layer goes on for miles. Strange and horrible things swim across the depths.

He has a photographic memory and is perfectly capable of memorizing their forms to try later. Absolute direction doesn't exist here, but he can move relative to the facilities. He travels upward for a long while.

The layers shift a few times. Now he's in a sky crackling with lightning of impossible colors.

He hasn't seen a layer like this in some time. Wildlife?

The typical eldritch horror nightmare selection, of course. 

Wonderful. He will memorize their forms, which cannot drive him insane because he's currently immune to insanity.

Eventually, deep inside a storm of screams...

A strange bipedal entity clad in an obsidian shell floats motionless.

He has since shifted into O-16541 for their nearly universal energy immunity. Incorporeality is less helpful in a layer full of air.

What is that? The humanoid body plan is incredibly rare. It looks somewhat like a golem? He flies over to it.

The strange entity remains motionless.

In addition to their impressive defenses, the form of O-16541 possesses telepathy with a one-hundred foot range.

Hello.

There is no response.

Hmm.

Can you hear me?

There is no response.

If he floats up right next to it...

Nothing.

Huh. Will the entity let him lay a hand on it?

The entity does not move. Its shell feels like smooth ceramic.

It's probably a golem of some kind. To survive out here, it must either have self-repair capabilities or be incredibly durable. He will memorize its form and move on.

There are many other strange and terrifying things in this layer of storm and sky. 

He flies around for a while longer. When he returns to the primary entrance, it's in the form of a celestial lantern (O-233) with at-will teleportation across unlimited distance. 

The doorway is sealed shut.

Yep. Demon-spider time. He crawls across the planes and arrives in a room of facility sixteen that isn't sealed against teleportation.

Everything is as he left it.

He walks over to the laboratory for form testing. The walls of that room are made of magically hardened stone plus an additional metal layer. If one of these forms is innately destructive, it shouldn't harm the rest of the facility.

Most of the forms are weird and horrifying but don't have any particularly powerful or novel abilities. 

Within a few minutes he gets around to testing the humanoid entity from the screaming sky.

The humanoid entity from the screaming sky is a construct. Its outer shell is formed from a strange ceramic material which surrounds a mass of magically animated non-biological muscle. It's impossibly durable and invulnerable to all attacks except for pure blunt force. Thrice per day, it can increase its strength to an incredible level for a few seconds, exceeding even that of a titan.

Once per year, it can alter reality as though it had cast a wish spell.

What the fuck. Why is the solution to the Great Work a random mindless bipedal construct. How does that make any sense.

He needs to test this—perhaps the construct has the ability to trick anyone who assumes its form into thinking it can alter reality in such a manner. He runs over to a storage room containing, among other things, nonmagical jewelry.

This storage room hasn't been opened in a long time. It's dark and dusty.

He turns on the lights with a mental command and starts rifling through the drawers for a spare ring.

There's a few rings around. They're fashioned form a variety of materials; gold, silver, iron, et cetera.

He grabs the silver ring. It's not magical.

He draws on the well of impossible power within this form. How would the ring like to be a ring of major spell storing?

The silver ring suddenly has a strong evocation aura.

His mistake was clearly expecting the world to make sense at all. He forgot that it doesn't. Sure. Why wouldn't it work like this. The Great Work is finished and he doesn't know how to feel about it. He's not even sure what the next construct number to assign is. Constructs are rare enough that the facilities have only encountered a few dozen ever.

Can he alter reality some more?

Once per year. He will have to wait.

If he shapeshifts into a celestial lantern and then back into the impossible construct—

Once per year. The magic isn't recharged by becoming something else.

He figured as much, which is why he made a ring of major spell storing. He can put shapechange into the ring and have someone else turn into the construct and alter reality to create a scroll with more wishes. Those wishes won't have unlimited experience to spend, because there's a limit to how much magic any single item can have, but they can conjure simulacra who can then shapechange with the ring and alter reality. He could scale that forever, if he wanted to.

Technically this is not a full solution to the free experience accumulation problem because it can't give experience to a creature directly but who cares. The ability to conjure arbitrary magic items basically sidesteps the entire reason behind wanting to grant experience in the first place.

He has decided that he wants to feel very excited about this development! He will need to pull someone trustworthy out of the memory crypts and explain the situation to them. They can alter reality for a scroll of six more wishes (according to magical theory, the highest number of standard wishes a single scroll can hold is six).

His first priority is increasing his wisdom, followed by his other ability scores. He's incredibly smart and a fairly wise. It would be better to have more. Minor decisions he makes now could have major impacts in the future. To the memory crypts!

The memory crypts are a dark and quiet place. Rows of long storage containers are embedded into the walls. The number of containers marked 'empty' far exceeds the number of containers marked 'in use'. Mental pressure emanates from the containers which are in use.

The crypts hold people in stasis using quintessence, a psionic substance that inhibits the flow of time. It also inhibits the usage of psionic powers. Ennis is a wizard with no psionic talent and is thus unaffected by the mental pressure.

He removes the latch on one of the containers and slides it out of the wall.

The container holds a woman in a well-made outfit. She's sealed within a large amount of shimmering translucent silver substance.

Disintegrate.

The quintessence turns to powder. The woman unfreezes and slowly sits up. "What—"

"The Great Work is finished. I require your assistance with the next steps."

"Oh. Who are you? How long has it been since I was sealed away?"

"It has been one hundred and thirty-two years since you went into stasis. My name is Ennis Yul. I'm a ninth circle wizard."

"I—" She takes a moment to absorb that. "I didn't think we'd ever have an archmage again. Why do you need me for this?"

"I am the only member of our order who remains outside the memory crypts. All others chose to seal themselves away. Those who did not were lost to us when most of the facilities collapsed. Records indicate you possess high security clearance and are cooperative and pleasant to work with."

She seems split between amusement and dread. "So everything went horribly wrong and my old records survived." She climbs out of the storage container. "The Great Work is finished? Will we all be archmages soon? What do you need me to do?"

"It is finished but not in a way that can grant experience directly. I expect the end results will be similar if not better than achieving that original goal. Please follow me."

She seems confused but follows him anyway.

He exits the memory crypts and walks across facility sixteen. He makes a detour at one of the magic item storage vaults to pick up a small magical pearl.

His follower peers at the pearl. "What does that do?" 

"It's a magic item known as a pearl of speech. It grants the ability to speak one language. Draconic, in this case. I will explain why we need it shortly."

"You're being vague on purpose."

"Only a little. We have almost everything we need." He takes a short walk to a nearby vault.

This vault is full of magic weapons and armor. Its most notable item is a large unmoving flesh golem, stored in the very back.

He turns to face his follower. "I have discovered a kind of non-unique creature that can alter reality as a wish spell with no experience cost. It is a supernatural ability that functions once per year. I am going to give you a ring of major spell storing containing the spell shapechange. You will conjure a scroll containing six normal wishes."

She takes a few moments to respond. "How uncomfortable is this going to be? Where does the pearl of speech come in?"

"The form is a bipedal construct. You will not experience any discomfort. The pearl of speech is a necessary component of a stable source of reality alteration. Remember that any given creature can only use the supernatural ability once per year. The flesh golem in this vault obeys me but lacks the ability to speak and so cannot activate command word magic items such as a ring of major spell storing. The pearl will grant that ability without granting any form of intelligence or mind to the construct. I will use the scroll of wishes you produce to create simulacra of the golem. Since any given reality alteration can produce up to six simulacra, this setup can produce more reality alterations than it consumes. It is an ethical source of disposable creatures to fuel magic item production."

He really needs to come up with terminology to differentiate wishes stored within magic items (which lack the necessary experience to create or improve magic items) and the supernatural wishes from the construct form (which possess no such limitations).

"That... makes sense. Okay. I'm ready whenever you are."

He casts shapechange into the ring and tells her the command word. It's an obscure magical term in Draconic. He gives her the ring and a long blank scroll lacking any magic.

Then he shapeshifts into a strange bipedal construct made of dark ceramic. "This is the form you shall assume."

She takes the scroll and puts on the ring and speaks the command word.

Ah. That's quite something. Well. She would like this scroll to contain six wishes?

Magical writing covers the scroll. It possesses a strong universal aura.

Wow. She can barely believe that just happened. She hands the newly magical scroll and the ring back to Ennis.

"Thank you. I'm going to set up further production elsewhere. You are welcome to join me." He commands the flesh golem to follow him and leaves the vaults.