Candace had enjoyed herself all day. She's spent 4 hours in class today, learning about muscles and how to make people's blood circulation better! She'll want to make people in hospitals happier, just like her gene-mom. She thought she looked so cute in the school's official skirt, and had climbed around in trees and had fun all day! She was going to have fun in one of the escape rooms at the outskirts of town now. She was supposed to go in near-blind. She opened the door, and walked in, seeing a cute and cool bar. There's a screen showing exploding stars in the distance! This place is awesome. She looked around, hoping to find something puzzle-like so she could have fun solving the escape room. Can she find any hints or notes or anything suspiciously puzzle-like in the room?

Well, there's no shelves of glasses or bottles, or any space for a bartender to stand, behind the bar.

The exploding stars don't look like they're on a screen, if she looks from different angles.

The tables have varying levels of dampness, like someone was cleaning with a wet cleaner and did the tables in some order.

The floor has some lines of non-smooth texture, which seems promising at first, but the lines lead to areas with visible signage ('Backyard', 'Infirmary', 'Security', 'Bathroom', 'Rental Rooms'), so they're probably an accessibility feature or emulating one, not a clue.

Does Candace want to follow up on any of these, or look for more clues?

"Security" makes her curious. It's just a bar, right? Why would it need proper security? Couldn't they just call the police? She's not even sure what it would mean. Security for what? She tries finding out whatever is going on in Security.

There's a skeleton in a dressy hooded robe with flowing sleeves sitting at a desk, facing a computer of some kind.

There's a large paper sign in front of it saying "Non-urgent queries accepted via EMAIL ONLY."

She nodded, keeping in mind the skeleton with an email account. The one asking about non-urgent queries via email. Wow, this is such a cool escape room! Where might a good starting point be. Maybe try the infirmary? Bathrooms tend to be "out of order" in escape rooms, so she's sure that the next step can't be that. And "Rental Rooms" would also probably be locked to gate progression. She'll try the "Infirmary" next, probably better odds than the "Backyard".

There's some kind of hovering and rotating armillary sphere. Which talks.

"How can I help you?"

"Are you, like, responsible for hints? I've just gotten started here, and I was just trying to look for a good starting point for the escape room. I'm really not stuck on anything, I just want some help for finding a starting point or leading puzzle? Could you tell me what the first puzzle was meant to be?" She nervously rubs her hand against the fake rubber gecko coiled around her left arm, its snout looking down at her left hand.

"I'm responsible for providing medical care for injured Milliways guests. That includes you – if you get injured, come to this office and someone will heal you. If you want to leave here, you can go back the same way you came in. If you want a starting point, I'd start by talking to Bar. She could probably lend you a puzzle toy if you want? I'm not quite sure what you're asking about, here."

"I'm sorry, I don't know who Bar is. I just came in here, kind of blind. Was I supposed get an introduction? I thought escape rooms that needed that kind of knowledge tended to have appointments? You're free to go out-of-character, because I think I'm really confused."

"I'm not an actor. This is the interdimensional bar Milliways. It temporarily hijacks other doors, so people who weren't planning to go here show up here instead of where they were planning to go, but it's friendly. Time's probably paused in your home world while you're here. Bar is … the bar. She looks like furniture if you're new here, I suppose, but if you sit down at a barstool she'll greet you with a napkin."

"Wait..."

Candace is incredibly confused. She explicitly requested them being out-of-character, but they're still talking about magic and interdimensional bars? So this is an actual magic interdimensional bar? Then she'd be able to see the magic, wouldn't she? Candace chooses to check for herself, walking to the bar and sitting down at a barstool to see if she's "greeted with a napkin." She nods at the armillary sphere before walking off and checking if the bar really is magical.

There really is a suddenly appearing napkin!

"Hello and welcome to Milliways! First drink is free."

She's not sure what the first drink would even be. Maybe a cup of her favorite soup?

"I'd like to order a bone-broth chicken soup with extra fine croutons, please?"

And there appears a bowl of soup with tiny specks of crouton.

"This spectacularly convenient!" She starts lifting the bowl to her mouth, savoring the flavor. After getting a few sips, she starts looking around. Her curiosity gets the best of her, so she decides to leave the soup for a while to take a look at the bathrooms. She bets that they're not as good as the ones that were recently installed by the city council in her hometown!

There's one large bathroom. There's a toilet section and a shower section and some sinks, with the toilets and showers in enclosed stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors. It's very clean. The stall doors for the showers and toilets have pictures and descriptions of the relevant devices on them. While many of these may seem primitive to Candace, there is some hygiene tech she may think is advanced, such as a sonic shower and a toilet operating on similar principles.

Huh, sonic cleaning tech? That's kind of awesome. What's the backyard like, for comparison? Does it have any cool ponds with artificial corals for diving in, like a few places have back at home?

The backyard has a cobblestone patio with some metal tables and metal-and-upholstery chairs. There are umbrellas in the centers of the tables, but it's cloudy and they're closed. The ground around it is covered with a mix of lowish-growing plants, including some which are in bloom, and some which sprout up between the cobbles. Further out is a lake, partially surrounded by forest, which a cobblestone path leads into. A portion of the forest has holes blasted through it, but is healing rapidly enough that someone closely watching the holes would be able to see them shrink. Some butterflies are present. There may or may not be some waterfall sounds in the distance, it's hard to tell.

Huh. It's really nice and charming, especially the flowers between the cobbles. Is there a pier of some kind? Candace loves the water, and she can just put on a wetsuit or something whenever it gets cold. She probably expected a magical place to be awesome-er in some way, but how could it, really? Hopefully she isn't the first person to ever discover this; it wouldn't be very cool if it was just like, a kind of normal bar. She looks around the rental rooms briefly, hoping to see someone else who isn't a weird floating ball with lots of rings around it. It'd be almost sad if a magical place like this was basically just a reasonably nice bar.

There is not a pier.

The rental rooms area is very, very large. The numbers on the rooms closest to the main bar area are very long and occasionally change. The hallway goes on further than Candace's eyes can follow. Unfortunately, nobody's exiting a room within Candace's viewing range right now.

But there is someone exiting the bathroom. She must have been in a stall when Candace was there. She looks sort of like an adult shrunk to Candace's height, but with large, pointed ears, unusually large irises and pupils, and yellow-orange hair that's far too vivid to be a natural color, down to the root and fully present in her bushy eyebrows. She's also wearing what looks like some kind of historic armor, and a large backpack.

Candace waves at the mysterious individual. "You look so cool! Who are you?"

"Thanks? I'm Karasauriu, what's your name?"

"I'm Candace! I'm new here, and I'm hoping to help people in a hospital one day! What about you?"

"I've been here a bit over a day. I'm looking to follow someone else home somewhere safe, or get more prepared for facing the situation I was dealing with when I got here. I was actually recently healed at the infirmary, which is like a hospital."