At Polkdots Chatter/RPG

The days at the clearing start to blur into one another. It becomes easy to forget there is a world out there. Polkdot frowns on all the technology but slowly seems to let it go. He is not much of a fan though of making trips to the main road.
He generally leaves you to it and makes little comment on progress.
In the early evenings he shows up and often just starts right into things leaving you to scramble to start taking notes. That being said, he doesn't let one of you get too far ahead of the other and doesn't seem to advance until he sure everyone is on the same page.
The evenings usually start with him once again making you go over the alphabet. He then jumps into some topic, sometimes meandering into a story, other times speaking academically.

The area around the stone clearing.

A few hundred feet to the east through the woods is an area filled with old dumped clocks. Some have been propped against the trees for so long the trees have started to lift and grow around them.

To the SW there is a bone pile. Or rather a bone scattering, and nearby it there is a burn area that doesn't look like it has been used in quite awhile. There is a metal burn drum filled with ash soaked to nearly being mud and the remnants of paper strewn around all burned beyond recognition.

Deep into the woods to the west there is the remnants of a cabin. Nothing seems to have grown or encroached on it leaving a dark decomposing ground around it.

Percival only uses his phone that one time, wether it takes him an hour or ten to complete his tasks, that is the last time he uses the phone, until he leaves that is.

Percivals notebook will be immaculately filled with notes. A few pages in the back of it will be used for practicing his penmanship with the runes. He will also spend his time drawing them in the dirt.when he isn’t weeding, digging, turning stones, and meditating starting at a candle on a box

Lucien will take general notes, but then dives into very regimented, concentrated practice of writing the runes. He seems to be using drilling to try to get to the point he can write them without thinking about them much.

He will take up whittling in his off time.
For fun, he will run (basically patroling the area) and lift rocks (gathering ones good for runes).

1. Why should I not swear allegiance to the demonic lords?
Because you are free and need to stay that way, or do you want to be the possession of one of those things? The Demonic Lords are deceitful and apathetic by nature.
...The Mourn...The Mourn were a human race. Nine feet tall, pale, winged, and held great power. Every moment they devoted to Kor Ma Ca. Their priests practiced day and night and performed endless rituals in their devotion. Every waking moment. In the end, when they were at war, Kor Ma Ca came to them. They had tried to summon him before but he seldom gave them even a whimper or glimpse. They perfected his pleasure pits, a perpetual cycle of birth, death, and feeding. But during the war, as they held the pass on their border, as the bodies piled so high that no creature stood on the ground ten feet below them to fight but instead marched across the corpses, he came to their main temple, and devoured them. There is not one Mourn in his hell. He divided them and spread their spirits. And not because they had lost the book, but because he could. Because for a moment their surprise pleasured him.
Your allegiance is meaningless.

2. "What is the caravan?
A mythical group of escapees. The hells have an infinite amount of distance between them. Maybe they didn't believe it, maybe they thought it would be better to endlessly roam the sands.
Of course there is speculation that they hold the sands together. That their presence is required like a cannon pinion in a clock. Or they are part of a monkey wrench in the hell machinery. Regardless they endlessly roam, as they must.


3. "Is there a way to keep abreast of current happenings in hell? Are there newspapers or someway to know important events?
Polkdot laughs. "No, there is no newspaper. You talk to them, you get rumors, you research. When I'm done with you...well you'll look back at your question and laugh too."

4. "But what you are saying is that the Lords can tire of us, and basically hit the reset button.  Delete this plane, and start creating a new one, or recreating this one, but differently.  If they have their hells, why do they want this plane? Can they not generate spirit energy from there?"
No, no, they can not reset this world, only the They can...though maybe now even they can not do that. Darconoff's most clever trick was how he knotted and tied hell together, bound it. If this world goes, so do that sands. "

---Inconsistency Freebie--- This would seem to contradict some of his history stories as he has said The Hells were made while this flat world supposedly existed but was then destroyed. But here he makes it sound like The Hells are bound to this world. It is possible he means "this world" as in this plane, or is confused, or has things wrong.

“What’s on my mind, is that if magic is only summoning and creation, but creation isn’t really viable, then how are things like the witch’s spell that makes you turn two dimensional, or the magic Joseph Gavin had that allowed him to walk through walls possible? Isn’t that more manipulation, then say, creation and summoning? Seems like magic is broader than just these two schools of thought.”

Percival thinks a moment, then continues, “I can see how silence could be summoning, and you could I guess push away the air that allows for sound to travel, or summon the vacuum of space, but I see issues with those approach’s as well such as sure it’s quiet, but there’s also no air so people suffocate. How do you make silence that rids an area of sound without other side effects.”

Polkdot:
"You don't walk through walls, you summon your way to the other side. As for two dimensional travel...there are various methods....air? You are bringing silence in, or sending the sound somewhere else. Silence is a quality, dimension is a quality...and you...I'm sorry, I'm old and forgetful, how long have you been studying this? Would you like to do the instructing professor, is it professor? Doctor? or used book shelver?"

“Yes yes, I’m just a student with questions, using my limited experience to understand what’s being taught. Since we were discussing, I figured I’d ask for clarifications. Maybe I should just sit and take notes and never try to understand.” Percival goes back to taking notes, practicing his runic calligraphy.

It is hard to tell if Polkdot exhales an inner growl, or is clearing his throat of indigestion.

Lucien: "...For fun, he will run...."
As he runs and slowly adopts a normal path he follows he begins to realize there is a spot of 4 trees that he just very naturally runs around.
The trees are slightly misaligned as 2 columns.
X......X
....X......X
He doesn't start to really notice until one day when he is feeling particularly energized and playful and thinks to run between them, maybe jumping and tapping a branch on one, but then just doesn't but rather jogs around them once again. In a way it makes complete sense to not pass between them, and the path of least resistance would be to go around them but it does create this odd nagging feeling that he just always goes around them.

Percival will slowly restart his routine of waking early to meditate, which will involve meditating upon the rune, on the box with the candle, doing as PolkDot says, thinking back and back to before he even existed, to the drone of tortoise. Once he’s done his morning mediations, he will spend an hour doing a mix of yoga and Pilates, then he will go for morning time run.

Then he will get to work working on the circle, weeding, digging, and turning stones.

After dinner and taking notes during PolkDots lectures, he will spend two hours drawing the runes, with pen and paper, then in dirt, he’ll collect any large pieces of bark he can find, and practice etching them on the smooth interior of the bark with a sharp rock. Before returning to meditation on the box an finally sleep.

If Percival is still practicing boxing,Lucien will show him military hand to hand.

Percival will gladly learn hand to hand fighting skills.

"What is The Bowl?

Polk: The Bowl is another fragment. It is referred to as The Bowl because, well nobody knows its shape but walking in a straight line leads you back to where you started, and it seems to increase slightly in elevation...at least somewhat. It is a forested fragment with a village in the middle and a cliff at the edge of the village. Like the clock, things don't grow, the trees stay the same height, same condition, never drop branches, grass doesn't grow, you can't chop the trees down....well with some exceptions. But there is...air...and breathing. There is fire, but nothing quite burns, and there were people there. Clay pots can break, you can't dig except in a few places, and there is a well with water but the level never changes, and water only extinguishes some fires. There is smithing...sort of...but it never seems to produce excess. So to smith something there, it exists but only long enough to be put somewhere. Astroth, in a sense, ruled here. You can jump there by the way, "physics" as we know it generally works there....with some exceptions. Items fall based on their weights...or perceived weight. Everything actually seems to weigh the same amount, but a perception of something being heavy prevents it from being moved. And oddly, there seems to be a limit in how high something can go, except for Astroth. I suspect Astroth was in part, an experiment in flight and up."

Congruity Problem Freebie: Polk mentions people having been there but he has said people/humans(or something humanoid-ish) were created by the Demonic Lords to populate the land they tried to originally create, where here he seems to suggest the They made The Bowl before the demons, and populated it with people.

“Wait… so Astroth was made in the bowl? So doesn’t that mean the Bowl was made by, what do you call them, the They? Or by Darkonofv? Or Nosphender?”

Polk sighs, "Of course They made The Bowl. And They made Astroth, and put him in The Bowl, and every other Tom, Dick, and Harry in there."

"just looking for a clarification because you first made it appear that the demon lords were the ones that populated the worlds. just looking to clarify."

"Are you saying 'They' made people, and put them in the Bowl, or did people find their way into the Bowl themselves?