Adzgar Monitor's Journal - Meridian Tass

I'm in the library, yes, *the* library, the Great Library of Adzgar. We actually found it, and it looks like it was just built yesterday. Strangely enough it wasn't hard to find once we really started looking, simple enough to trace back the migration patterns of the early Adzgar settlers and lock down a fairly small area. We had dubious help in the form of some sort of "vision" Landorff had, but even without such ephemeral assistance it was just a matter of time.

It's kind of strange when you think about it, why wasn't it ever found before? I think people just assumed, as I did, that "lost" meant destroyed. I mean, as young Peter says, "How do you misplace a Library?" I suspect we'll never know how or why it was abandoned in the first place. Sigh, yet another thing to research, should the time ever present itself.

But it won't. The Slowing has left the Glade, and in a precise ring too perfect for anything as mundane as wind-borne infection. My earlier suspicion was correct, I'm sure of it, this is an environmental effect and I'm starting, just starting, to see perhaps how.

It turns out the story teller Darwin was a man of many Talents, and if the records here are any indication, roughly six or seven thousand years old. A number hard to take seriously, and the dating we have found is nothing if not vague, but given the other things I've seen, I can't discount the possibility that he may, at the very least, have lived far longer than a normal human.

And he spend a great deal of that writing, maddeningly vague, but treaties on philosophy and space and time that make me feel like a child learning his letters all over again. But it's all maddeningly possible, and it explains so much.

Look at the things I've seen recently, the Slowing of course, Landorff's strange "magical" abilities, my sudden psychic manifestations, Syrone's sudden ability to shift her shape against all the laws of biology. Maddening, impossible, they violate the laws of our universe. But Darwin has another explanation, hidden in his tendency for metaphor and alliteration. What if the laws of our world are not constants, but variables in a far larger equation, a solving for a zero sum total between the principles of Entropy and Creation, Chaos and Order? Then these strange effects are possible, the application of Force from either side of the equation allowing for the alteration of the base sum of the section variable we see as a constant.

F = (UC/sym) * f

Where sym is the intrinsic value of the area defined as a balance between the two polar forces, sort of like a "surface tension" surrounding a group of reality set factors that are naturally grouped by the symmetry of their base divisors.

The math... the math is almost impossible at anything other than summary levels, I could spend a life time trying to work out the actual equations, but I can see it, on the edge of my vision, an incredible symmetry that allows everything and constrains it at the same time. And it explains the Slowing! Subtracting the Entropic or Creative force creates a debt that will naturally attempt to balance itself. In the case of the reduction of a force, the median point shifts towards the reduced pole, changing the base divisors of the grouped reality set factors for the point on the line an individual finds themselves. That may be what happened here, somehow Darwin created a void in either the Creative or Entropic forces when he died, I suspect the Creative or "Order" given the effects we've observed.

If this is the case, a new balance should be found and it might just be a matter of waiting, the slower rate of expansion could be indicative of that balance coming about. The other alternative, that Darwin somehow removed the Creative force altogether is far more dire. Things wouldn't end immediately; the "surface tension" of reality for lack of a better term would sustain things for a time.

T = sym /|(F/f)|

But without the application of Force the base divisors eventually equalize and reality "falls apart" for lack of a better term. I know too little, I can make either set of equations fit the current effects. I need to work out the math more, Darwin's writings gave me the concepts but the man avoids logic and proofs like the flagrant storyteller he is. I will get no help from his writing on that.

I will take what novels I think may help and work on the proofs as we travel. Perhaps if I can figure it out, I can come up with a practical application that will help us. Darwin's writings speak of the two poles like locations, and the math would support a Node or Focal for the opposing poles. I don't know if that would be a location as such, I don't know how you would "incarnate" something that abstract, but working with either force clearly becomes easier as you come closer to the Node. We have found maps that talk about a place called Amber, and other less direct references in related texts. I think this may be our next point of investigation. Darwin's effect seems to have disrupted the Creative force and if this Amber is it's Node, then it is there we will find our answers.