[D3 EE, Lady's Library, Expecting] Research Time

[Fyne]

"My occupation, before arriving here, was as a priest of Eilistraee. That role involves outreach to communities, helping people in need, fighting against the oppressive regimes of drow devoted to Lolth to uplift my people from servitude to a tyrannical goddess. But that has been placed on hold due to some personal issues. Now I just make ends meet and do what I can for the community here in Sigil, supporting the church of Eilistraee here in their endeavors," he explains.

"I believe you previously said that you deal with individuals post arrival in Sigil? In what ways do you do so?"

[Dare Shah]

"Custom Offices. Here's my card:"


"The exact details of my tasks change from day to day, but the general idea is that I'm here to make sure people don't enter Sigil with forbidden goods. At my level, it's more paperwork than actively opening crates though. Checking that the numbers add up properly, volume, weight, insurance, recipients, etc, for a supposed cargo of wine to actually be wine for example.

Making ends meet is usually not a long term career objective though. If I may ask, do you have a long term objective? You wouldn't happen to be the prince in exile, bidding his time for the right opportunity to take back his realm, that our story was still lacking?"

[Fyne]

"I can't answer no to that with 100% certainty, but I strongly suspect not. My long term goal is to figure out what happened to me and decide where to go from there. Until then, making ends meet seems to be working."

[Dare Shah]

"Oh, you're also an involuntary citizen, transported into Sigil by a whim of fate?"

[Fyne]

"Oh, nope. Just came here because my familiar told me that's what my patron wanted. And it seems like as good a place as any to find answers dealing with time manipulation issues."

[Dare Shah]

"More than most I would hazard. Spatial manipulation has been a central subject study since forever in Sigil, for obvious reasons, and time manipulation is, in absolute, nothing but the same equation with one more variable.

A variable that makes it immensely more complex to solve of course. Still, we remain in the realm of subjects you should find aplenty books about in this very library."

[Fyne]

Why would space and time be the same equation?" he asks, not really seeing the connection.

[Dare Shah]

"They always are. Movement is position in space at a given time.

You're from a spherical planet orbiting a spherical sun right? You see how, instinctively, when you look at sky, it feels like it's the sun that's turning around and you who is immobile? Most sentient beings, humans included as it's definitely not natural for me to envision it that way, have similar bias toward time. We see it as a special thing, when it's just one part of the equation.

Math and gods however have no such bias."

[Fyne]

"I mean, I don't really understand most of that. I've been to the demiplane of time and have been subconsciously counting seconds from every event in my life for the past few months. I can tell you how much time has passed to the second since you approached me in the temple yesterday. But I don't have that kind of intuition with my hand-eye coordination, so the space part of it doesn't come quite so easily."

[Dare Shah]

"That sounds both like a silly curse and an experimenter's dream: No more need to carry a clock to time precisely your observations, now you're the clock.

That it's a lasting effect is interesting though. Have you tried seeing a psychologist? In essence, the ability to count seconds is nothing magical. So it's possible it's more of a reflex you acquired in the demiplane, where such an ability might be life saving, and that you need to unlearn now you've returned to a more ordinary plane.

For a certain value of ordinary. Everything's relative."