Ten days after the disappearance of Lord Doom's keep, I, Delli Freeforge, have arrived to study the phenomenon and being a current foremost authority on discordant energy fields I believe that this situation is a prime example of such things so tomorrow I begin my interviews with the remaining eye witness, the farmer here in Little Veluna.
What brings me here are the tales of completely odd occurrences that have taken place within the last year. This is a typical imprint of positive energy contamination lingering in material space as the sheer number of occurrences suggests that the aperture into the positive energy reality is permanent and for some reason, keeps opening and releasing energy that transforms this reality.
Talking to the farmer of the land confirms this. Among many strange feelings, including a particular joy in working the central western section of the field, the area is continuously struck by lightning, once his corn sprouted as brittle colored glass, and one time on a bright and cloudless day it rained red wine for five minutes. Surely there were more events that simply were not noticed.
Now that we know with a fair amount of certainty that this is the home of a wild mage, I am not opposed to believing that this impotent evildoer is taking potshots into our reality from a window that he opens and closes. I won't even question "why." Such inquiries make no difference in reference to wild wizards. I want to know how this is happening.
I went into the field and did some detections and I confirmed the presence of positive energy in a small confined area of the field.
One thing that really troubles me about this energy field is that it is not behaving as would normal positive energy entering the material realm as usually, positive energy is so dynamic that it enters all other realities in a flash, faster than is capable to be viewed by an unaided eye, and when seen it takes the form of a bolt or ray as was described by Rivestus in his study of divine power used to thwart negative energy creatures noting that the negative energy link would be cut from the creature and it would undergo a dynamic change as the stabilizing effects of the negative energy was cancelled. But positive energy does not linger.
Negative energy leaks form invisible pools that sit and denature matter turning it into what Chikotiyo calls "dark matter." Plants lose their growth potential and exist in a listless state before they eventually die, stone becomes colder, air becomes stale and cold, natural decay and erosion are reduced to virtually nothing and creatures trapped in a negative energy field become tired, depressed, even nihilistic until the point when their bodies accept the total conversion to dark matter wherein unlife is attained and all body functions are stopped and decay is stabilized. Emotional nothingness is replaced when the last bit of opposing positive life energy is excised and a new perspective of hate is usually adopted. We call such a creature a negative energy or undead creature.
In the case of the Doomkeep positive energy leak, there is nothing at all explosive or dynamic about it. It is actually quite inert. Though the farmer admitted experiencing odd phenomenon, a concentration of pure positive energy should make change in the area that it effects constant, untrackable, and unlivable. The only way to describe its behaviour is that it is supercooled, but I don't know why.
Mostly when positive energy is released in a neutral or negative/"hostile" environment it flashes outwardly, invokes change, and returns to its source in the positive realm. Usually a flash is potent enough to create some notable disturbance or alteration to change reality or cut a negative energy link, but a sustained reproducible or overly large source of negative energy will repel a positive flash with little change to it. An exception to the flash is the trace amount of positive energy that exists within flesh giving it regenerative and growth potential when living and causing decay when dead. Trapped within form as "light matter" it is relatively inert and is easily overcome by an influx of dark energy. But as matter we find that dynamic reactions do not occur around it. In the field in Little Veluna the energy is not attached to matter, it is like a pool merely existing in the area, totally unreactive. I must pay close attention to this for a while to form a better idea of what is going on.
The positive energy field is growing. Positive energy is leaking into this world and pooling. Doing some more tests, I've discovered what I think is the entry point because the energy is ever so slightly warmer than other areas, but still way too cool to spark. The growth of the pool over the course of the 24 hour period is approx. an inch all the way round.
This situation has me completely tapped. I cannot follow this vein of happenings. I think I shall investigate possibilities in light matter since it is closest in behaviour to what I have discovered so far.
The energy pool is still growing.
Quusto has done the most in the area of research in light matter. He hypothesizes that both energies have differing hierarchical states, but his focus is on negative energy. It would seem negative energy is more popular to study. Here is the breakdown.
| Negative | Positive | |
| Cold | Thin, rapidly dispersing, like air | Solid matter, relatively unreactive |
| Warm | Solid matter, infused within pre-existing matter or entirely created from negative energy | Controlled burst, directed beams |
| Hot | Pools | Explosive random effects, thin, existing and not existing simultaneously |
In terms of definition if energy is "cold," it is least reactive. It is inert and does not behave as defined by its nature. "Warm" energy would seem to be on a scale rising toward "hot" in its level of reaction. For negative energy it would seem that it is less reactive as it is actually converting matter to dark matter and often in direct conflict with trace elements of positive energy. In other words, negative energy is cooled by the existence of positive energy elements, such as life, light, heat, joy, etc. It is my experience though that a negative energy influx is degrading to matter and life and will eventually overcome matter and life if in constant contact. In fact, there have been accounts in the oldest parts of the world in ancient tombs and temples devoted to evil also containing high negative energy concentrations, priests have scoured away six inches of stone from the walls when they produced their symbols. The stone itself had been converted to pure dark matter and so when struck by positive energy emanations, it merely dissolved or as some believe experienced rapid decay. So matter and creatures being acted upon by negative energy, but not fully converted, can be considered "warm" whereas the actual pools leaking into the world are considered "hot." Some creatures are actually extremely hot pools of negative energy, such as wraiths and spectres and their presence rapidly deteriorates positive energy, especially when in contact. Negative energy in its cold state is actually a pool that has had its link cut and it is in rapid dispersal. Negative energy does not last long in this reality without a direct link to the negative reality.
Positive energy, according to Quusto, does not seem to fit these characteristics exactly and if you notice above, there is no state for the kind of positive energy that I have encountered. I think his positive energy taxonomy needs to be readjusted. This is my suggestion:
| Negative | Positive | |
| Cold | Thin, rapidly dispersing, like air | Pools |
| Warm | Solid matter, infused within pre-existing matter or entirely created from negative energy | Solid matter, relatively unreactive |
| Hot | Pools | Controlled burst, directed beams, and explosive random effects |
To him, the most non-reactive positive energy comes in the form of solid matter, but this is only moderately stable. This is in part why it is so difficult to make light matter. It is very difficult to control before it can be formed and once formed it slowly sublimates into hotter energy that results in random effects. The positive energy I have discovered is virtually completely static. It is almost like it has so little energy it can't even have a defined shape. Whereas Quusto would say that light matter is as cold as positive energy gets, I think that if light matter gets too cold it melts down into a shapeless puddle. The greatest question, then, is what in creation could get positive energy so cold?
I'll have to think about it.
I've thought for a couple of days, continued my research and continued my examination of the growing positive energy field. The field is still cold. I have my expectations in mind and am excited to witness the final culmination.
I finished my last writing with a question. First of all, what reacts with positive and negative energy at all? Negative energy leaks in our reality are contained by its slow growth and the presence of life energy or matter infused with positive energy. Remember, this is different than light matter. If positive energy did not exist, negative energy would have no difficulty creeping over all existence, converting matter to dark matter, and then to pure negative energy. Nothing else we know of will staunch this negative flow as the unchanging, permanent, and clinging nature of negative energy responds only to a separation from its power source or reversal to its nature.
Positive energy is entirely different. It tends to be a more omnipresent kind of energy fluxing in and out in short bursts through our reality. The only place where it remains frequently consistent is in the life force found in living creatures. Popular thought on this though is that even the energy contained within beings tends to be in circulation. Like negative energy beings, there is a spectral link from the being to the energy source, i.e., the positive energy plane, but unlike negative energy beings, the positive energy flows through the creature, from the energy source into the creature and back out to the energy source. Negative energy beings have links much more like puppets with a long "lifeline" of energy connected to the original source of their power. One, with the right devices, could follow an undead creature's link back to the source of its unlife according to Rivestus usually a sire creature or a location of trauma or strife which opened the negative energy leak in the first place. But negative energy doesn't flow back out through the creature it infects. Instead it radiates out and continues to spread its negative aura, attacking positive energy fluxes and converting matter to dark matter. Nevertheless, positive energy moves about quickly not staying around long enough to create havoc. A world without negative energy might not look that different. But still, the only thing that shapes the path of positive energy at all is negative energy. Places of overwhelming negative saturation will slowly strangle positive links and some negative energy pools are so hot they could easily snuff out most life forces. A strong burst of positive energy can generally lash out in a negative energy environment but because of the transient nature of positive energy it makes a splash in the negative pool, which is then quickly filled. If the positive energy takes a less active form, such as light matter or this non-reactive pool I've discovered, then I am significantly sure it is not sufficiently heated to withstand a hot negative energy link and will eventually be dissolved.
So it seems that positive and negative energies are only reactive to each other. Upon a scale wherein the particular strength and stamina of each type is weighed, two opposing links in close proximity will cool each other down until one surpasses the other and slow dissolution of the weaker will begin as one gets hotter and the other grows colder. So if the only factor that will cool down each energy is the other that must mean that the supercooled pool of positive energy I am studying is near an extremely potent negative energy field that not only cools the positive energy, but also contains it. It must be contained somehow or the positive energy would have flitted away long ago before it became too cold.
I am not daft. I have done the required tests for the presence of negative energy. There is no negative energy in, near, or around this cold positive energy field. Thus, I have no bloody idea why this positive energy is behaving like it does.
Glory be! Some new clue has arisen. On the extreme eastern side of the growing pool the energy pool has developed a straight edge. It is almost as if the pool has expanded to the hard edge of its container and as such has increased its rate of expansion to either side closest to this non-corporeal barrier. All other edges of the pool have maintained a constant rate of growth. I have also detected a slight increase in its activity. It is getting warmer.
Before things start getting freaky I decided to bring in a crew to dig down and use ladders to do some measurements up high. Up until now I've been doing a standard flat measurement at ground level. Commonly pools of energy issuing from a leak develop a globular shape with the point of entry, of course, being at the center. Now that I see that it is contained within a shape I want to try to create a three dimensional model that will indicate these unexpected variances.
The measurements up high have indicated a seamless dome in the shape that would be expected to create the dome shape and it too appears to be expanding at an equivalent rate with the rest of the field. I've used some of my engineering skills to design a tower, not unlike a moveable siege tower, that we can move around and take measurements as the globe expands upwards. Materials will be shipped tomorrow and construction will begin the following day.
Excavations will be slow but growth of the field is at such a slow rate we will be able to catch up to it and keep digging to match its speed below ground. Just breaking ground and taking readings of but two feet I realized that the energy does penetrate below ground. The hard work has begun (along with the major expenses).
We have surpassed the energy field's growth and we are working like Yecha tomb sappers to keep up with its expansion. Every day it expands equally in all directions so we have more to dig and measure each day. The energy is increasing its growth rate so it is getting warmer as time progresses and we have to work harder to keep up with it.
There have been a few setbacks. Initially we dug the pit to match the general shape of the globe, so it was more or less bowl shaped, but the moveable tower, once built could not be stabilized in the pit and would tip if it was occupied at all, so we had to dig out the floor of the pit flat to move the tower around safely, but then something I had not thought of to think about before was that once the tower was in the bottom of the pit it would have to be twice as high to get to the edge of the globe to do the measurements, so we had to build further additions and make the base more stable than before, and then to keep up with the growth below ground we would have to dig the earth out from under the tower every day and carefully lower it down without toppling it.
Also, yesterday we had our first wild magic phenomenon. A group of diggers in one section of the pit kept hearing voices, so after realizing that none of them had said anything to each other (and with a kind of panic) called for me to investigate. I heard nothing, so I asked them to continue doing what they were doing, but I stayed to witness. After a few tests and paying careful attention I surmised that every time a particular digger poured a scoop of dirt into the cart a low voice would speak in hushed but even tones. I amplified the voice and we heard a monotonous male voice reciting one line per shovel-full a recipe for raisin bread (with plum icing). This elicited a laugh and everyone stopped to watch the worker dig and listen to the recitation. Two more recipes followed: baked ham stuffed with pecan dressing coated with plum glaze and pigs feet in plum wine. Then the voice simply stopped and work continued though everyone wore a silly grin for the rest of the day and listened carefully to their shovels. I did not tell them that wild magic is not always so benign. But everything is going quite well.
What has been discovered has been invaluable. The skyward expansion continues evenly up though the flat side I discovered earlier maintains all the way to the height I have determined. The digging down also continues with one flat side. I have also learned that the source of the leak actually originated beneath the ground so there is a section of the pit that is a bit hotter. The model I am making of the field looks like a squashed ball.
The "box" containing the field has a corner. The field showed us an internal corner at 90 degrees today—I'm assuming the southeastern corner—though it still has not revealed a ceiling or floor. The field is getting hotter, but still not too reactive.
By Moradin's hammer, we have found the floor. A great cheer rose up from the workers. The pit is 70 ft. deep, but we still must continue digging out the walls as the field grows, but now our work has been greatly diminished, and as the tower needs to be constantly increased in size and it must be moved around farther with each passing day we still have plenty to do.
As the field grows bigger movement patterns of energy are more discernible. I'm starting to map out cold and warmer rivers of energy and their directional flows. Ideas are coming to me.
A witness to the magically appearing keep came by and shared a thought with me that the "box" limiting the shape of the energy field is the keep itself. He said that the edges we have found, as he recalls, match the dimensions of Doomkeep's external walls. The pit would be the basement or dungeon levels of the keep, and so the origin of the positive energy leak is in the basement level of the structure; I so wish I had a map of Doom's home because then I could determine, possibly, the origin of the leak. Doom was secretive; nobody knows what is inside.
Today we had another positive energy surge, with tragic results. One of the laborers had his skin transmuted entirely to yarn. He looked at us with pleading eyes as he bled through, unravelled and fell apart into a mass of blood, organs and bones before our eyes. Many workers will not return tomorrow. As the energy grows hotter, many more occurrences will happen.
There are currents of energy within the energy globe. I have noticed that energy emerges from the leaking point extremely cold and sluggish. It travels in a slow circuit around the globe heating up and speeding up as it goes, though it still remains "liquid." Eventually it comes back around to the coldest point in the field, which is the energy point of entry, and flows back through the rift. It acts as a two way portal for cold energy to leak out and warmer energy to flow back in simultaneously.
This behaviour is not unlike that of positive energy as life energy flowing through a creature. The creature is a conduit that the energy flows into and out of, but in a creature it is hard to measure and identify and most specialists in energy motion and transference would say it was more like a spark or flash of lightning passing through a being, into and out of rapidly. But then that would be the hottest positive energy constantly present in everyday life. If life energy is hot, why don't wild magic fluxes occur more often?
Could it be that life energy is cold and unreactive? Remember, at its coldest, I believe positive energy may be liquid, as it heats up, it may become a solid, and finally it explodes into a highly reactive pure energy. Could this explain the powers of some creatures and magics to petrify living creatures, or even to disintegrate them? It is merely stoking the fires of the energy contained within them to a hotter state causing dramatic results.
But then what is the keep if it contains a life energy flow? Is it alive?
What is on the other side of the rift that is making the positive energy so cold? It has to be negative energy, but where and how?
The globe has extended nearly to its furthest extent. Most of the edges and the ceiling to the "box" have been discovered. I've sent most of the workers home. The wild magic fluxes have become menacing and I believe the life energies are sparking them. I have been utilizing anti-magics to suppress the wild magic to me directly, but I am still in danger of secondary and tertiary results. The other day a gargoyle materialized suddenly near me and I had to fight for my life. I'm a researcher, not a fighter.
We are keeping clear of the pit. I don't want anyone near the site when the keep appears for I don't know what will happen to anyone caught in the space it will occupy. I am assuming that the keep is entirely composed of light matter in its solid form, in other words, the cold positive energy will have gained sufficient heat to actually go into its solid state thus forming Doomkeep.
From what I have surmised through my observations and research this I believe is the unfolding of events. There is a permanent hole in reality that links this world with an extremely hot negative energy realm. Within this realm is a pool of trapped positive energy that is overwhelmed by the presence of the negative energy. The only thing keeping this pool of positive energy from being completely dissolved is the hole connecting our reality with the positive energy pool. The positive energy can slowly leak out and heat up ever so slightly, but even in its coldest state the nature of positive energy is to move and react, so it moves back through the hole, giving some of its heat to the trapped pool, which keeps the pool warm enough to even exist. Though the heat from the surrounding negative environment is extremely potent the supercooled positive energy gets a little warmer by the constant flow of warming energy making its circuit through our reality. As it gets warmer it moves faster and allows more of the energy to flow out creating a need for the field on the outside to expand, so the positive energy pool grows slowly as the energy warms up. Because the pool on the other side is of limited quantity, exactly enough to form a keep, it grows smaller as the other becomes bigger and so is easier to heat and allows expansion rate of the field to increase also. This positive energy pool, I believe, once was Doomkeep, either originally composed of light matter, as the history of its creation and disappearance suggests, or later transformed into light matter. Somehow trapped in an extremely hot negative realm it quickly cooled and melted down to its liquid state, but I assume Doom actually had something in mind and created the hole that penetrated into Little Veluna and attached a Tag of Contingency to the site. This Tag should have contained all of the Natures to the keep for the successful transference, but something must have failed, but one fact is certain and that is that he was successful in attaching the Nature of Form to the Tag as evident by the shape the field takes as it expands. We have yet to determine if any other Natures including Nature of Purpose were successfully attached. When it forms it may look like a keep, but it may not function like one.
I still do not know how or why the keep disappeared five days after it appeared. I am expecting the same events to repeat themselves.
I have stayed clear of the pit for two days now. The positive energy is heating up now. We know that the energy heat index of light matter to pure reactive energy occurs around 4,820,005.52 gygs. Unreactive liquid energy has never before been identified so we don't know the heat index of liquid energy to light matter.
It's here and it occurred at 592,005.27 gygs and I am so tired.
Negative energy is spilling into the area surrounding the keep and it's liquid and extremely hot and filling the area relatively fast. I believe the presence of the light matter is cooling the negative energy thus causing it to flow into the area quicker than usual, but then it heats up once it pools around the keep. I assume the leak is occurring from the same rift that the positive energy leaked through so it must not have been capped and now negative energy is leaking into our reality and surrounding the light matter keep.
A troupe of adventurers arrived this afternoon having heard that the keep had popped back into existence and they wanted to do a little exploring. I told them I thought it was too dangerous, but for a fee (to cover the cost of damages that might be done to the site) I allowed them to enter, but given the nature of the keep I don't expect to see them again.
I've been working like mad trying to take all of the readings and do all of the measurements before the keep disappeared again which it did this morning. I saw it coming.
The negative energy pool completely surrounded the keep and continued to heat up. The light matter began to cool as it once again cannot escape the negative energy to continue the heating process and after five days being submerged in the negative energy field the heat dropped the light matter back into its liquid state which was quickly overwhelmed and forced back into the negative energy realm most likely through another Tag of Contingency which most likely contained its Nature of Space which in this circumstance superseded the hot negative energy around it. The positive energy bubble was rapidly relocated in the negative energy realm and so once again effectively covered the hole between the realities. The negative energy that had pooled in our reality was now cut off from its energy source, as the hole was sealed by the positive energy bubble, and so the negative energy began to cool and rapidly disperse. Once again the supercooled positive energy has begun to leak into our reality.
There are still questions I have that I need to explore further and so will continue my research in preparation for five years from now.
~*~