The Necessity of Travel

The fact that the trees are growing denser and the way the land rises soon means that the smoke is lost from sight. You continue in the way you think you were going originally, but then the trees suddenly part and you come out onto a narrow strip of grassland, about 100 feet wide. At the other end of the grass is a high, sharp cliff that drops off precipitously into the sea.

On a normal day, that view of the water so far below and the sea that stretches to the horizon would command your attention for a good while. But today is not a normal day, for just a few feet from the edge of the cliff is a black stone gateway. The stone is so black you can barely even see it in the full light of day. It's clearly been there for quite some time. Some of the stonework that surrounds it has fallen off into the sea as the ground was eroded away from under it. It was definitely of some import once upon a time, though, because someone took the time to carve intricate inscriptions across every face of it's surface - and inlay it with silver.

Oxana checks around the gate as it lays dormant, and everything appears to be safe - as long as you, you know, don't step off the edge of the cliff. I'm not sure I can be 100% helpful here, Oxana, but I'll give you some info anyway. One of the reasons the village resisted having the abbey at first was because of a deep-seated belief that writing things down locked them in and didn't let them change. ((OOC: There's a similar thing in real life, which I'm only mentioning as a touchstone for understanding the depth of this. Some cultures do NOT want their photograph taken, believing it steals their soul.)) It's much the same with writing here. If you write THINGS down, they are locked in whatever state you wrote about them. If you wanted to be free, you couldn't have written records. That was several generations ago, and the abbey doesn't write about local people anyway, so people stopped caring so much. But they still remembered and passed it down. But perhaps that belief didn't come from nowhere. Because as you can see here, the ONLY thing that hasn't withered away or eroded or broken down is this gate with ALL THE WORDS. How is this useful? Perhaps it's not immediately. Perhaps it's just a piece of information to hold on to. But you do know now that because if all the words, it won't fall off the cliff. In fact, it might not even fall when the cliff finally does.

@Ysolde,@GameMaster - Are you sure it's safe to let them just wander around the cliff and the gate like that?

Irwin, that would be the right move, if it got that far, but your fingers brush against the etchings and the silver flares to life like the edge of a cloud after a summer rainshower. The effect spreads from where you touch it until every letter around the entire gate is glowing softly. As the last rune begins to glow, the seascape that you could see through the gate is replaced by land. And what land. Green as far as you can see, tall lush grass, a flowery meadow, and a thick forest that borders it on both sides.