| Requirements | Entering Exile | Operating the Guderian Tau-Field Generator | Translation | The Guardians of the Time Portal |
Players arrive at the Auberge on August 20th 2110 AD and will leave five days later. It is located in the hills west of Lyon in the Rhone Valley in France. L'Auberge consists of the cottage originally owned by the Guderians and a small country inn: L'Auberge Du Portail, built some years after. It is here that future Exiles will stay for five days before going through the time portal, six million years into the past.
Usually applicants must wait up to six months of counselling and last the process of the application. Requirements are as follows:
On the fifth day at dawn (at about 5.30 am) the group is led from the Inn to the Guderian residence itself. It has a simple key lock and inside is kept as Madame Guderian left it.
The group is led by their counsellor into the cellar, which is closed by a metal door secured by a complex electronic locking device. Inside is the converted wine cellar. It has a flag-stoned floor except for three square meters of bare earth and upon this stands the Guderian device.
This appears to be similar in appearance to an old-fashioned lattice work pergola or gazebo draped in vines. The frame is made from a transparent vitreous material, except for peculiar modular components of dead black. The vines are cables of colourful alloys which appear to grow from the cellar floor, creep in and out of the lattice in an disconcerting fashion and disappear at a point just short of the ceiling.
The cellar is musty and has a faint over-scent of ozone. If players want to take with them diagrams of the device, book plaques are available being kept in an oaken cabinet also in the cellar.
The players are translated in groups of four, followed by their baggage. They step into the device and the others can see: "There was no sound. The gazebo shimmered momentarily; then it seemed as if mirror panels sprang into existence, hiding the interior of the apparatus completely from view."
The translation itself is theoretically instantaneous and the field is kept on for two minutes to give time for people to get clear. Once everybody is through, baggage follows at five-minute intervals.
You stand looking out of the device. Counsellor Mishma looks at you, smiles and throws the switch. The agony of translation (tenfold worse than hyperspatial translation you have experienced . . .) and you are snapped into a grey limbo. You hang unbreathing, heart unbeating, each of you screaming at the nothingness.
There is a sudden feeling of warmth and of light on your eyelids. You open your eyes to a blinding dazzle of green and blue. You have entered Exile.
Hands pull at you and voices urge you to step forward out of the shimmering area that had been the gazebo, quickly before the field reverses.
The aides are dressed in white tunics and pants with blue cords about their waists. They will reassure the players - telling them to relax and come with them to Castle Gateway. There they can rest and ask all the questions they want. The players wonít be able to do anything (any pilots will recover quickly) except comply. All guardians wear a dark circlet of twisted metal about their necks. Those making a Holdout roll at -6 roll may notice a vacuum cleaner like device being run over their clothes.
A path marked by white stones leads through lush grass away from the stone area of the time portal area. It leads some 200 meters to a castle. This is an English castle design surrounded by a wall of rough thick masonry about 12 feet high. The entrance is through a passage to the barbican of the four-sided bailey inside. This has towers at the corners and over the gateway is the effigy of a bearded human face crafted in yellow metal.