Weirdness
By Anders SandbergThe Chantry is filled with odd nooks and crannies and mages who have lived there for some time get used to strange noises or half-seen movements in the corner of their eye. At day, the place is quite calm but at night strange presences appear and walking in the dark hallways becomes a quite eerie experience.
The Night People lives in the cellar. At night they roam the hallways, whispering secrets and hiding in the shadows. It is a custom that people who walk around in the chantry by night should have a candle or a lamp and either walk loudly or talk to himself in order to warn the Night People of his approach. Nobody knows what would happen if someone actually met them but everyone who has heard their whisperings during dark nights agree that it's certainly best not to find out. However, there is a story that if someone places a gift on a certain stone in the cellar on the midsummer night, they will give a gift in return. However, if the gift doesn't appeal to them their return gift will be subtly cursed.
The geometry of the Chantry is confusing and directly contradictory in places thanks to the Correspondence magick of previous Forcemasters. Some rooms have subtly different paradigms, while other rooms change their size or location sometimes. At certain times of the year, when Quintessence surges, parts of the building which have long since vanished return to existence. An unwary person may walk down a hallway only to find himself in rooms which have not existed for centuries. Some contain traces that someone has been there recently...
The third floor doesn't exist. However, it can be seen from the Umbra and sometimes from the courtyard (this is usually seen as a bad sign). Sometimes people can be seen through the windows, usually believed to be the mages or servants who died in the great fire of 1777. At certain times, especially the 5th of March or at dangerous times for the chantry, the fire is recreated. The ages mix together: the chantry is filled with the smell of smoke, flickering flames, mages rushing through the hallways trying to save their books, the screams of wounded and incantations against the fire. It's impossible to tell what is real and what is just illusion.
Beside this, there are other temporal quirks. The windows on the back side of the building sometimes show people in medieval clothes in the street or buildings demolished long ago. It has happened (at least according to rumor) that mages have met other people in the chantry who clearly don't belong in the 20th century. There is even a story about a servant who left the chantry and walked halfway down Priests Street before he noticed that the people he met all were clothed in old clothes and talked medieval German.
