Cuckoos and Chalk Marks

Spoiler

Awesome!

Before I could respond, a door magically appeared in front of us. It had appeared out of thin air; just moments before, there had only been empty hallway. Tired of walking through this conversation and tired of trying to have a conversation with Sorenson, I opened the door.

Like every other time, the door frame pushed past us until Sorenson and I were both standing in the room. It was more of a cavern than an actual room. Pale, blue crystals jutted out of the ground at various angles. I tried looking for a door, but none appeared. Even the door we had come from had unsurprisingly vanished into the cave.

"Well," I said, "this isn't ominous."

The ground rumbled. The crystals shook, but the cavern shaking wasn't enough to make me lose my balance.

Spoiler

When they tell the truth, the crystals can light up. If they lie, the room could shake like it's a mini-earthquake. Even though Skull wasn't trying to lie there, the cavern interpreted his sarcasm as a lie because it wasn't true.

The OG truth telling area in the campaign just had different colored crystals glow when the truth or a lie was spoken, but I thought it would be fun to up the stakes a bit more with the shaking.

(Being ominous is subjective, I would point out)
(But yes I love this aesthetic!)

Sorenson grimaced and looked around. "Blast. I'd been hoping for something a little more....wide open. I suppose this will do."

Spoiler

Thanks! And that's a good point. I'll just pretend that it registered as a lie because Skull doesn't actually think it's ominous.

At Sorenson's comment, the crystals glowed a pale, dull blue.

I stared at the crystals. What had made them start glowing? Was it something Sorenson said? When I opened my mouth, it made the room shake. When he opened his mouth, he got a nice light show.

"...Are you using magic?" I asked.

"Certainly not! Well. I didn't make them glow."

The crystals glowed again when Sorenson denied using his magic, but stopped glowing the moment he said he had nothing to do with it. Instead, the ground shook once more.

"Are you sure you didn't make them glow?" I asked. "Because they've only glowed when you've talked so far-"

As the words left my mouth, the crystals glowed again.

I blinked and stared at them.

"...Never mind," I said.

"How fascinating!" Sorenson looked up at the crystals in interest. "What do you suppose causes that?"

I gave him a look.

"I don't know," I said, and to that the crystals glowed again. "If I did know, I wouldn't have asked if you had done it."

The crystals glowed again. There had to be some kind of pattern to when they glowed and when they didn't, but I wasn't sure what it was. It couldn't be who was talking. Maybe it was something we had said while we were talking?

Sorenson paced around the room. "They don't glow or shake when we ask questions," he mused. The crystals glowed. "So it's a statement." Another glow. "Hm..."

"But they don't glow every time we make a statement," I argued. As if to go against my point, the crystals decided to glow again. "When I said this place was ominous when we first stepped in, the ground shook instead. It shook when you said you didn't have anything to do with this, too."

The crystals glowed just a bit brighter.

"So is there a connection to us making a statement about the place itself?"

I shrugged. The crystals, apparently, only wanted to glow when statements were made verbally. A shrug didn't result in anything. No shaking of the ground, and no glowing of the crystals.

"What if it's just statements in general?"

"Let's try this: I want to go home!"

The crystals glowed.

"I also want to go home," I tentatively said, though I wasn't really sure where home was at this point. The crystals glowed once more.

I glanced over at Sorenson.

"It doesn't just have to be about this room," I said. The crystals, in response, glowed for a third time in a row.

Sorenson's brow furrowed, and he paced. Then his eyes lit up. "Oh, let me try something! I am a human."

The ground shook.

I crossed my eyes and eyed the nearest crystals. I got what Sorenson was trying to test now. To test it myself, I said, "I'm a demon."

The ground shook again.