Diorama

Strange physics

A valley built by hand, on a table, in a room. Somebody is still working on it.

At a glance

Kind of world	Strange physics
Serum in the arrival Box	2 ampoules
Native Serum stand-in	None: bring spare Serum
Quests	Yes: see your Traveler's Guide

Screenshot comingdiorama-ceiling

Standing in the felt-grass meadow of the Vale, looking up past plaster hills at a wooden-beamed ceiling, wallpapered walls and a giant desk lamp for a sun

What happens when you arrive

Your Box sets you down in a meadow, and the grass comes off on your boots like felt. Then you look up. There is no sky. There is a ceiling with beams across it, a long way up, and walls with wallpaper and shelves, and the sun is a desk lamp. The whole valley, the Vale, is a scale model on a giant modelmaker's table. Past the edge of the valley lies a pencil as long as a street. Somebody is still working on it.

In the lookout tower in the middle of the Vale lives Ada Fenwick, the Surveyor, and she has built a model of the model.

The rule: it's all a model

What's different	How it behaves
The land is hollow	Hills are Model Plaster over Chicken Wire, and ring hollow when you dig.
The lake is solid	Lake Resin. You can walk on it.
The lamp never goes off	It is always the same time of day. Beds don't work (they explode, as in the Nether).
Dust mites	Half-block bristly crawlers come out of the dark inside the hollow hills and under the model. At your normal size they are a nuisance.
The Maker's hand	Every so often an enormous hand in a cardigan cuff comes down onto the table and leaves a few Giant Biscuit Crumbs. They are good food.

Rabbits hop about the meadow. Nothing else lives here.

Ada's model

In the lookout, Ada keeps her own 1:8 model of the Vale. What you do to her model happens to the Vale:

• Set a block on the model, and a whole cell of that material (8 blocks across) comes down out of the ceiling onto the matching spot in the real valley. It only fills empty space, so nobody's house gets crushed. You can drop a bridge across a chasm this way.
• Lift a block off the model, and the matching piece of land rises away into the sky.

The model takes only plain building stuff: earth, stone, wood, wool, sand. Anything else is handed back. Its landmark pieces are glued down, the spot with your arrival Box can't be touched, and Ada's model won't let you lift the Pips' huts ("Someone lives in that").

Screenshot comingdiorama-model

Ada's 1:8 model of the Vale on its table in the lookout, a player's hand setting a block on it while a giant block falls from the ceiling outside the window

Your quest: Ada's Survey

Step	What to do
1	Talk to Ada Fenwick in the gallery of the lookout. She gives you the Reducing Glass.
2	Find the four Survey Seals in the vaults of the Vale and bring them to Ada.
3	Someone comes down to Ada's gallery. Answer them.

The Reducing Glass

Look through the wrong end and you shrink, over a second and a half, to an eighth of your size, small enough to walk on Ada's model like a valley. Your speed, reach and falls shrink with you. It only works in the Vale, and leaving the Vale by any door undoes it at once. Lost it? Ada will give you another.

The vaults

The vaults are sealed with the Maker's red wax seals on Ada's model. Your fingers are far too big to get under the wax, so shrink first: someone small enough can lift a seal, and with it the Maker's pins, and the matching vault in the Vale opens. Each vault chest holds exactly one Survey Seal, along with a few of the Maker's odds and ends.

Side quest: The Pips' Trouble

Shrunk down, you find little painted people living on the model: the Pips, three of them pottering about their huts, and Elder Thimble, who talks to anyone small enough to hear. At your normal size, a Pip only squeaks.

The Elder wants five dust mites squashed. Here's the catch: to someone shrunk to the model's scale, a dust mite is the size of a pony and hits two and a half times as hard. While you fight them small, more mites creep out onto the model.

Reward: Pip's Pin, a sword that does three times its damage against dust mites.

Tip

Tell Ada about the Pips. It changes what she says, and what the one who comes down to her gallery says back.

Screenshot comingdiorama-pips

Shrunk to model scale among the Pips' tiny huts, a dust mite the size of a pony bearing down

Who comes down (spoilers)

When Ada has all four seals, she knocks on the ceiling. The lookout's roof lifts away into the sky, the Maker's hand comes down through the open top and rests beside you, and the Maker talks to you. When he has said his piece he presses a gift into your hands, the hand goes back up, and the roof is put back as it was.

His gift is the Bottled Room: uncork the empty bottle against the ground and it takes in a 5x5x5 cube of the world (the block you clicked is the middle of its floor). Uncork the full bottle against another surface and the room is let out there again. Blocks are moved, never copied; chests, furnaces, unbreakable blocks and the arrival Box stay where they are, and the room only comes out where every block of it fits. It works in any world.

What to bring home

Find	Where	Why it's worth it
Bottled Room	The Maker's gift.	Move a whole 5x5x5 build anywhere.
Pip's Pin	Elder Thimble.	A mite-killer.
Model blocks	Everywhere.	Static Grass Flock, Model Plaster, foam board, Balsa Planks, Painted Card Brick, Acetate Window, Grain-of-Wheat Bulbs: a whole model railway's worth of building blocks.
Giant Biscuit Crumb	Left by the Maker's hand on the table, and in chests there.	Food.

Serum and getting home

• The arrival Box's cache holds 2 Serum Ampoules.
• The Vale has no native Serum ingredient. Chests sometimes hold a Serum Ampoule, so a traveller who lost theirs has somewhere to look.

Tips

• Grow back to full size before you fight mites off the model: at full size they are only a nuisance.
• Take Pip's Pin before you go vault-hunting on the model.
• Use Ada's model to build: a few blocks on the model become a bridge, a ramp or a wall in the Vale.
• Leaving through the Box undoes the Reducing Glass, so don't worry about going home small.

Birds

Birds you can photograph for your bird log here. Open one to turn it round, watch it move and hear its call.

• Fishing-Line Martin: common
• The Maker's Magpie: rare, dangerous

Everything this world adds

43 blocks and items (click to open)

Static Grass Flock

Model Plaster

Chicken Wire

Pink Foam Board

Blue Foam Board

Painted Plaster Rock

Lake Resin

Model Ballast

Twig Trunk

Foam Clump Foliage

Walnut Plinth

Oak Tabletop

Workshop Floorboard

Maker's Stone

Vault Board

Bell Jar Glass

Glued Model Piece

Maker's Wax Seal

Painted Card Brick

Balsa Planks

Balsa Stairs

Acetate Window

Grain-of-Wheat Bulb

Pip's Hut

Pencil Lacquer

Pencil Cedar

Graphite

Ferrule

Eraser Rubber

Ruler

Ruler Marking

Mug Glaze

Mug Band

Cold Coffee

Drafting Paper

Red Paint

Blue Paint

Paint Tin

Reducing Glass

Survey Seal

Bottled Room

Pip's Pin

Giant Biscuit Crumb

The traveler's tape

Every arrival Box has a chest by its door holding a cassette: the last traveler reading their journal of this world aloud. This is what they say. It gives a lot away.

Read the journal (spoilers)

The Box set me down in a meadow, and the grass came off on my boots like felt. Then I looked up. There is no sky here. There is a ceiling with beams across it, a long way up, and walls with wallpaper and shelves, and the sun is a desk lamp. The whole valley is a model on somebody's table. The hills are plaster over chicken wire and they ring hollow when you dig. The lake is solid. Past the edge of the valley there is a pencil as long as a street. In the tower in the middle lives Ada Fenwick, who surveys the place, and she has built a model of the model. Put a pebble on her model and a boulder falls out of the ceiling onto the real hill. I did it. I dropped a bridge across a chasm. She gave me a glass that makes you small, and when you are small enough there are people on her model too, little painted people who think she is God. Once, while I was crossing the meadow, the light went dim and I looked up and an enormous face was looking down at me through a jeweller's glass. It looked kind. I am trying to decide whether that helps.