Prologue: The Barony of Harkenwold

After wincing, Hunter gives the kid a black look. He starts snapping his fingers at broken objects around the room, starting with the seat of his pants and the chair, maybe the disgusting stuff he sat in will go away.

"Actually, I can hear you just fine," he says when they are done.

Kat:

Ilyanna stops and stares at Carlos in surprise. "Whoa, you are an Ilyanna too! This world is truly strange! Personal bias made me assume I was always human! But how did you account for The Most Brilliant and Puce Curvature Plane when you breached the Mallow-Mallow Wall?"

She doesn't appear to have heard Hunter.

"Hahahaha, i just winged it!" - Carlos keeps snapping his fingers - "C'mon now, my lab needs repairing!"

"...Yeah, let's repair my lab? I still need to make a bomb for the Rangers to kill these nasty willybugs."

She snaps her fingers at a broken chair.

Ilyanna blinks at Carlos' joke and then looks profoundly disappointed. The whole air of the room changes. "I...I need some tea. Be a peach and finish the lab for me, okay?" She plods over to the door again, pulls a key out of her pocket, and taps the door, which causes it to unlock and open. She then plods through it. A few moments later it starts to close...

Kathryn follows Illyana through the door before it closes, a hand on the handle of her sword and looking for possible traps.

Hunter tries to follow Kathryn, pushing on the door to get through.

Carlos follows, a bit disappointed that Alchemists don't ever just wing it.

Zoe and the others stay behind to fix the lab but not before the cleric props open the door with a chair.

Meanwhile, you three follow the alchemist into a tight hallway; it's lit from above by a series of lamps and the walls are decorated with various specimens like bugs, lizards, and animals, all clearly labeled and neat. There's also pictures of flowers, herbs, and monsters, all clearly labeled with a list of alchemical uses. Just the basics, nothing too out there. It's the kind of thing you'd expect someone who teaches alchemy to have, though none of you have heard of her giving lessons before.

If Ilyanna notices you following her, she gives no indication as she makes her way north to the end of the hallway and turns left through an open doorway into what can only be described as her living room. There are two overstuffed chairs and a big couch with blankets piled on top of it. There are three large bookcases full of dusty tomes like Eye of Newt: 100 Uses and Transmutation and You: A Beginner's Primer to Transmutation Magic. Whatever isn't books or seats is instead blackboards filled with calculations and theories. It doesn't make a lot of sense but on the middle and most prominent boards are six circles, each labeled a different name running from left to right: Earth, Uerth, Aerth, Yarth, Arda, and Oerth. The only name that's familiar is the name of your own world--Arda. There's an arrow drawn from Oerth to Arda labeled "How?".

Ilyanna ignores all of this and plods her way through the room and through the open doorway on the other side, into what is clearly the kitchen. She opens up her coat and pull out a small wand, aims it at her stove and says, "Light." A fire starts within. She heads over to her tea kettle and uses a tap in the wall to start filling it with water.

Walking and looking at things gives Hunter time to cool down on the way to her kitchen. When she starts preparing, he asks, "May we have some too?"

Kathryn is impressed by the interior of Illyana's home; it's clear she has never seen any of this before. She walks around the room for a moment and stops in front of the blackboard where the six circles are drawn. She reads the six names carefully and furrows her brows.

Eni:

Carlos looks at the list of worlds, blinks. - "Where's Warble, Garble, Darble and Zarble?"

Kathryn needs a few seconds before she processes Carlos' question. She turns to her dwarven friend and says, "I don't know. I've asked Eni about these names, but she needs some time to think about it."

Carlos looks at Kat. Blinks. - "Kat, i made them up. It's just..." - he points at the list - "One of these is not like the rest."

The young woman screams in surprise and drops the kettle which spills some of its water into the sink. "Gods Hunter, you scared me! Why aren't you back in the lab?"

Kat:

"Oh, I know that," Kat says. "I meant that I asked her about these five names. I thought—"

Suddenly, she hears Illyana yell in surprise.

"Is everything alright!?"

She goes to the kitchen to check on Hunter and the alchemist. Carlos follows.

Hunter almost leaps back when she screams. "Ilyanna, ma'am, we came here to get your help, and you're acting weird, okay? Since we arrived at your house, it's been one odd or scary thing after another. A cube busted out of your house and almost killed my cousin. I now have a blend of testicles and moths on the backside of my pants...that's my own fault. That Mending trick was a little surprising, but pretty cool. But you keep shouting and insisting that you are you and going on about dimensions or something."

"And of course you're you," he adds in, as an afterthought. "On top of that, you appear to be an adolescent again, and I have a worrying idea about how that's possible. So I followed you in part to see if you're all right and to find out what's going on with you."

"I'm not adolescent again, ugh. It's not my fault your weird world is thirty years ahead of mine!" Carlos and Kat both enter the room, intent on seeing if things are okay, "Now there's more of you! Sure, why not sit down and talk? You've already invited yourselves to tea." She turns around and starts grumbling as she picks up and starts refilling the kettle. When she's done grumbling she finally asks, "What are your names again?"

Hunter blinks. "Our" world, "thirty years ahead"? Well, if she is that many behind in hers, she won't meet him in her world for...well, he wasn't even born yet. If there's more than one of himself, and if she's telling the truth and hasn't completely lost it.

"I'm Hunter Thrul," he answers.

Insight 16
Is this a ruse?

Carlos cheerfully raises a hand in greeting - "Carlos Jalapeño de Muerta, the 30 year older version."

Kathryn blinks at Ilyana's revelation and... does the math in her head, which takes her at least a good ten seconds. "Wow, you're like a time traveler! It's very nice to meet you, Illyana! I'm Ser Kathryn! In this world, me and the older ‘you’ have already met. Does that mean that your older self is back in Oerth? You sure mellowed with age."

She vigorously shakes the alchemist's hand.

Hunter:

"Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa," she whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oas with each vigorous handshake. "Wow, you're strong! It's nice to meet you all. I'm Ilyanna, alchemy student. But I'm not really a time traveler, you know? For some reason your world is just ahead, though it looks almost nothing like mine from the maps I've seen. I think something drastically altered the landscape like that Dawn War your gods had." The Dawn War was the war between the gods and primordials for control of creation. Back then they walked the mortal plane freely.

She puts the kettle on top of the stove to start boiling and sits at the kitchen table. There are chairs for everyone and she indicates for you three to join her.

Kathryn lets go of Illyana's hand and rapidly takes a seat. "Oh, so that means your world diverges from ours because of one major event, and you just happen to also have been born in this one! Maybe one of our worlds didn't even exist until that happened. That's amazing! I wonder if I'll also be born in your world? Oh, so that means you're trying to go back there, right? Maybe we could help with that, but I'm not sure. We'll do our best though!"

Hunter takes a seat. Then Kathryn starts talking a mile a minute. And he was just starting to relax.

"Slow down, Kat. We came here for her help, remember?"

"Yeah, but we'll also help her later. Right Carlos?"

She smiles and gives an expectant look at the dwarf.