"<Right, yes. Mischief is very private so probably we should not be giving out any sort of personal details. Hopefully that's not too great a disappointment?> Sandy says with apologetic tone.

"I'm more interested in broader questions. You seem quite nonchalant about encountering a new type of people are there a lot of those in your world? Oh and which exhibit would you like to start with?"

"<Well that's fortunate!>" He pauses for a moment as the party convenes briefly, then continues. "<The uncertain stones exhibit would probably be the better place to start. As for whether there are lot of types of people, I suppose it depends on what exactly you mean. Tallfolk like Wrinkle and smallfolk like Mischief are the only kinds that have any appreciable quantity to them, but unique entities like myself, or isolated small populations, are quite numerous collectively and vary even more than you do from us.>"

Hornfels leads the way into the building and takes an immediate turn to the museum portion of the building. The entrance hall is a gallery featuring pictures of the founding members of the space program and many more pictures from early work and missions. Hornfels will pause if they show interest but otherwise keep walking.

"Unique entities you say, that suggests to me that there's paths other than evolution towards people coming to exist in your world."

"<I think we've encountered a point of linguistic disconnect. Evolution in the sense of...an unrolling of people, or forms? I suppose the way the original tallfolk diverged into the orcs, humans, and elves, and the goblins separated from the lower smallfolk, might be an example, but I'm struggling to think of others. Is this something that's commonplace here?>"

"As far as we understand, all of the life on our planet is part of an enormous family. That includes everything from insects to plants to us. It's not something that happened quickly, the process that led to all this diversity took millions of years and perhaps even billions."

"<Millions or billions of years?>" Sandy boggles for a moment, before seeming have his thoughts clarified by Wrinkle explaining that roughly matches with how much larger this world is as well. "<I can scarcely imagine how much history there must-- though, I suppose if people only started existing after the first however many million years, that would limit how far back history could be. Given how long ago it was, and that there weren't any people around initially, I don't imagine you know what the primordial who created-->" he pauses again, as Wrinkle seems to communicate to him once more. "<Do you know whether there was primordial who created life here at all, or if it arose some other way?>"

"We don't have any evidence of a person starting the process but we can't rule it out especially if you take the Nomai's beliefs about the Eyes of the Universe seriously. There's enough similarity between us and the little bits of life we've found on other planets and what we've been able to learn of the Nomai that we believe there's a common origin."

"<Fascinating...It all rather gives me the impression of a creator that's rather gone derelict, but I suppose what our own did might not have been all that much better, so I suppose I'm in no place to judge.>"

"The Nomai actually believed that the Eye of the Universe is in our solar system just in a very distant orbit. We have extensive evidence that they were planning to use a time loop to search for it but one of the pieces of their plan didn't work and within the next couple years they all died or vanished. We're still not sure why, though we do have suspicions it's related to what we call ghost matter because there's no Nomai records of the substance and it's quite dangerous."

"<I can tell already that Wrinkle will want to look into that. What do you know about it other than that it's dangerous? I'd assume there's something ephemeral or spiritual to it, going from the name, but that could just be a metaphor.>"

"It's an old name, we called it ghost matter because it's usually invisible and it's very dangerous, some early explorers died before we came up with ways of noticing it. It's also very confusing even to this day. It's one of the few things that seems to behave differently with creatures like us and things like trees and insects."

Huh. "<It's rare for things to respond differently to intelligent beings than unintelligent ones here?>" That would explain part of why the texture of the world here is so different from home. "<And, what is that difference in behavior?>"

"Ghost matter condenses into crystals, usually it happens very slowly but it accelerates dramatically when it's in contact with intelligent beings and they grow into people's bodies. If it happens in the wrong place there's nothing we can do for them."

Hm. Sandy idly extrudes a small pseudopod of dreamflesh from the palm of his hand and morphs it around, bringing into and out of a vaguely crystalline shape. He wonders how this ghost matter will interact with him and Ounu?

"<Well, we'll see how it goes, I suppose. Do you have any other questions for us?>"

Also, are they to the uncertain stones exhibit yet?

"Oh I have more than I could count but choosing which ones to ask is a challenge. Oh, how does that language tool you're using work? It took us a long time to translate the Nomai's writing."

They've gotten through the entrance hall and now they're walking down a hallway with various symbols and pictures marking the entrances to other exhibits. "Ah, here we are. Uncertain stones."

The new exhibit is filled with pictures of strange dark purple and blue rocks with swirling patterns covering their surface. There's also a doorway to the outside where a similar rock sits on one of the three tree stumps in a little courtyard.

"If you're going to inspect the rock it works best for one person at a time. After all, they only move when nobody is watching."

Sandy and Wrinkle nod, with the former moving to just inside the door while the latter heads out, getting as close as he can manage without leaving the aura, then begins doing his best to invent some basic divinations that might give him deeper insight in to what this stone is doing. He'll check back in later.

"<Wrinkle will be careful to not do anything that might damage the stone. As for how the translation is being performed, my symbiote Ounu exists in a way which places them closer to minds and concepts than to physical matter, and with some training we've learned there's a fairly reliable way to circumnavigate the need for language by finding the particular informational structure within the recipient's mind that encodes and decodes language into and out of the internal meanings as they're embedded in the broader structure of their mind and transmitting my own meaning, with a bit of extra context to enable the recipient's cognition to remap my concepts into their concepts. Essentially, rather than translating my thoughts into my language, my language into your language, then your language into your thoughts, I'm directly translating my thoughts into your thoughts. It's not an easy trick, but Ounu and I are quite skilled, if I do say so myself.>"

"Incredible. I don't think the Nomai's technology can do anything like that, it does seem like it can notice people's attention and we've found text suggesting they developed the ability to record and restore memories but I don't think we have any evidence of them being able to decode them and their memory technology is still beyond our understanding."

Wrinkle makes as many as several curious, surprised, fascinated, awed, confused, and other emotive sounds, occasionally loud enough to be heard from the other side of the door.

"<Attention is often one of the easier things to pick up on initially, when looking at the world from a perspective like Ounu's, and memory not too many steps of further elaboration from that, so it makes sense that if they were developing a science of the mind only to suddenly be overtaken by the ghost matter or something related to it. If we encounter some of that technology, I'll see what we can make of it, maybe we can help you make a breakthrough on that front before we make our way back home.>"

"That would be incredible. We've never been able to activate the Nomai memory statues and we're not sure if that's because they were designed to be used in the time loop or because they only work for the Nomai."

He smiles, nods, and continues answering questions (and occasionally asking, when one occurs to him).

Finally, after a decent while, Wrinkle is able conclude...that the uncertain stone is beyond his ability to properly test without risking damage to it (and its surroundings!), but he's still learned something.

<It's elemental, or close enough to it that I should be able to jury-rig further tests, if we can some samples that are a bit more expendable, and that we can take somewhere isolated.>

Then (with some reluctance) he peels himself away from the fascinating object and returns through the door.

"<Ah! Wrinkle's finished his analysis. It was a bit inconclusive, but we at least know now that once we wave a less valuable sample to experiment we should be able to learn more. I suppose the Brittle Hollow exhibit is our next stop?>"

"Some of the other stones are pretty big but we've generally not taken many samples. And other things lose the effect pretty quickly if they're taken away from the stones. But yes, on to the next exhibit."

The museum isn't that big so it's quick walk. As with every exhibit they've seen so far the walls are covered with pictures. There's photos of a planet with a few gaps in it's rocky surface visible from orbit looking down into a massive hollow interior. Some of the other pictures show a massive hanging city with parts covered in an intricate purple pattern and others with various painted artworks and spirals of purple text. Large crystals of ice frame the hanging city in all the images. There's also a few pictures of other landmarks including a massive conical loosely woven basket of a structure a weird structure with no clear analog and of course the massive light warping blackness of the black hole at its center.

On one wall with a number of ramps and railing nearby there's a glowing purple crystal mounted to the wall.

Huh. "<Is it known how the surface of the sphere avoids collapse into the center? Intuitively I'd expect it'd be resting on an ether pressure differential like the Shadowfell, but that seems unlikely given the broader context.>"

Wrinkle gestures at the center, presumably the 'black hole' that was mentioned previously. Sandy makes a curious sound again and nods. "<And, that black hole, purely on a visual level, seems quite similar to what appears when an agent of Torog suppresses a Dungeon incursus. Is it just that way continuously or does it...pulse, somehow?>"