~Entry 50~
Castor found something of note while searching the archives: a dossier containing research acquired from a rebel group in Connlaoth. Said group was attempting to engineer a mage who could cast in the presence of Adhara. The initial tests were promising, but their research subject was driven insane before the results could be properly analyzed.
If an Adhara's power is to shut off magic within a certain range, then can a power that bypasses this accurately be called "magic"? Some of the notes they took are advanced to the point where they're nearly incomprehensible. It will take time to decipher them all.
~Entry 54~
After spending weeks pouring over the dossier, I think we've finally pieced together what the Connlaothian group actually did. If we're reading this correctly, the researchers apparently believed in some sort of "mirror world". An alternate dimension of sorts, adjacent to our own. Supposedly it's a world of darkness, devoid of light or color. Our shadows are all we can see of the mirror world, and in the mirror world
we are the shadows. I'm having trouble visualizing what they're describing, and trying to makes my head hurt.
With this in mind, it's now apparent that what the Connlaothians did involved splicing a man with his mirror world counterpart. Their hope was that he'd be able to traverse both realities freely, and manipulate things in our world by moving them in the other. From what I understand the experiment
did work, but fusing the man with his own shadow broke something inside his head. If we were to attempt to replicate this, we'd need to overcome that roadblock first and foremost.
The Connlaothians had their own word for the mirror world:
Eigengrou. That's part of why the dossier was so hard to figure out, we couldn't figure out what they were talking about when they used the term. Castor has taken to using the word himself, and I will admit it has a nice ring to it.
~Entry 60~
Upon rereading, the wording the researchers used to describe the test subject's decent into madness was peculiar. It would seem to suggest that merging two sufficiently alien consciouses together caused the memories of both to get tangled somehow. If that's indeed the case, then would a subject with less memories provide better results? An amnesiac, or an infant perhaps?
[Redacted] commented on the amount of time Castor and I have been spending in the temple archives. He didn't seem particularly suspicious, but I could tell he'd likely be watching us from here on out. Castor is leaving on a mission to Featherfall tomorrow, so I'll keep my head down while he's away.
~Entry 73~
The more I think about it, the more I think that we could get that experiment to work. If we used an infant in place of an adult, that
should work to counter any memory displacement. Additionally, a child growing up with an unusual condition would learn to cope with it more easily than an adult would. It's the most logical solution.
It took time to convince Castor that it was a good idea, but we finally came to an agreement. In order to avoid undue suspicion, we will make the test subject ourselves. Kidnapping would be too risky, and the ethics of such a act would be dubious. We shouldn't have to worry about any nearby parents loosing sleep over never seeing their child again, should our experiment not work as intended. If this child is only brought into existance for the
explicit purpose of testing my theory, then we can avoid any unneccisary pain. I only want what's best.