The night Ren makes her request, she dreams of a hallway.
It is a hallway that may seem familiar to her, but wholly different. Though moonlight still blinks through cavernous gaps in the walls, the rubble and overgrowth are vanished, as though peeled away by an unseen force. The passage is rather short, it turns out, extending a mere twenty or so feet before opening into a chamber.
Roughly the length and width of a basketball court, with a ceiling that stretches high overhead, the chamber is large and cavernous, such that one's voice will echo if raised loud enough. In the center of the room sits a raised platform with a round divot, ashes from old fires smeared into the stone. No fire burns at present -- the only light in the room comes from glittering ropes of moonlight weaving through square windows carved high in the walls.
Above all, the room seems enormous, but quite empty.
If not for the drawings.
They stretch across the room in all corners: the walls, the ceiling, even the very floor she walks upon. Hundreds upon hundreds of drawings. Smudged and ancient, penned in white streaks of chalk, many of them faded to near-indiscernible ruin. The doodles are richly variant; some are masterful, drawn with thick, confident lines, while others seem childlike and wobbly, but every inch of marked landscape glows bright silver in the moonlight, as if deemed equal. On the eastern wall, a figure with horns and enormous wings soars over a drawing of an animal pawing at the earth. The ceiling high above is scattered with round little shapes with long tails, flocking around a faceless person. A dotted line winds aimlessly around the floor, leading to nowhere in particular, weaving its own path through fields of featureless people wielding swords, sewing clothes, building homes, scaling mountains, diving into waters, drawing bows and arrows, picking fruit, singing with musical notes floating about their heads, knelt in silence at an altar, gathering in droves around campfires with a lumpy rabbit at their center.
It is a room full of stories.
And yet, everywhere Ren might turn, there seems to be room somewhere to draw. Perhaps because each time she looks somewhere different, the drawings seem to have shifted: the round little shapes on the ceiling have vanished, replaced with an enormous, shapeless beast rising from the ocean, gazing expressionless towards land. What was once a warrior slaying a horrific creature now appears to be the same person cradling a child. There seems to be no end to the stories, which sometimes appear to move in the moonlight, putting their tale into motion.
"There is always room," says a bunny with dark, wet eyes from the center of the chamber. They move their tome to one arm and look high above, their ears flopping back. "And always there shall be."
The dream slowly fades out of reality.
The chamber, when Ren awakens, does not.
♆ A few things of note! ♆
♆ The Chamber of Glyphs has been unlocked in the Storyteller's temple! This room is accessible at all times, with no stipulation for use. ♆ The chamber contains a firepit, which must manually be lit by characters, and a waist-high urn of seemingly endless chalk for those without their own writing utsensils. However, attempts to carry the chalk out of the room will result in it crumbling to dust within moments. ♆ The drawings in the Chamber of Glyphs seem to change from hour to hour; consequently, characters who wish to draw there themselves will find that there is always room to do so. Their own doodles may even reappear in the future! ♆ Crude drawings, lamentably, will not reappear. They may also disappear within minutes and be replaced with a rather unflattering portrait of the perpetrator. ♆ Written words, strangely, will not reappear in drawings. The force powering this room does not seem inclined to them. ♆ The Chamber of Glyphs will now be accessible in Mu during each monthly Storytelling. Characters who wish to supplement their story in drawing form need only ask, and the Storyteller will whisk them and their audience temporarily to the chamber, which mirrors itself in reality exactly. Stories depicted here will appear among the drawings in the real world.
REQUEST GRANTED
The night Ren makes her request, she dreams of a hallway.
It is a hallway that may seem familiar to her, but wholly different. Though moonlight still blinks through cavernous gaps in the walls, the rubble and overgrowth are vanished, as though peeled away by an unseen force. The passage is rather short, it turns out, extending a mere twenty or so feet before opening into a chamber.
Roughly the length and width of a basketball court, with a ceiling that stretches high overhead, the chamber is large and cavernous, such that one's voice will echo if raised loud enough. In the center of the room sits a raised platform with a round divot, ashes from old fires smeared into the stone. No fire burns at present -- the only light in the room comes from glittering ropes of moonlight weaving through square windows carved high in the walls.
Above all, the room seems enormous, but quite empty.
If not for the drawings.
They stretch across the room in all corners: the walls, the ceiling, even the very floor she walks upon. Hundreds upon hundreds of drawings. Smudged and ancient, penned in white streaks of chalk, many of them faded to near-indiscernible ruin. The doodles are richly variant; some are masterful, drawn with thick, confident lines, while others seem childlike and wobbly, but every inch of marked landscape glows bright silver in the moonlight, as if deemed equal. On the eastern wall, a figure with horns and enormous wings soars over a drawing of an animal pawing at the earth. The ceiling high above is scattered with round little shapes with long tails, flocking around a faceless person. A dotted line winds aimlessly around the floor, leading to nowhere in particular, weaving its own path through fields of featureless people wielding swords, sewing clothes, building homes, scaling mountains, diving into waters, drawing bows and arrows, picking fruit, singing with musical notes floating about their heads, knelt in silence at an altar, gathering in droves around campfires with a lumpy rabbit at their center.
It is a room full of stories.
And yet, everywhere Ren might turn, there seems to be room somewhere to draw. Perhaps because each time she looks somewhere different, the drawings seem to have shifted: the round little shapes on the ceiling have vanished, replaced with an enormous, shapeless beast rising from the ocean, gazing expressionless towards land. What was once a warrior slaying a horrific creature now appears to be the same person cradling a child. There seems to be no end to the stories, which sometimes appear to move in the moonlight, putting their tale into motion.
"There is always room," says a bunny with dark, wet eyes from the center of the chamber. They move their tome to one arm and look high above, their ears flopping back. "And always there shall be."
The dream slowly fades out of reality.
The chamber, when Ren awakens, does not.