The Moon Hall is one of the strongest but also the most dangerous of Halls. It is the Hall that draws from the lunar power, thus simultaneously depending on it. To enter it during the New Moon is extremely demanding; on the other hand, at the Full Moon, it willingly opens to many pilgrims. With the New Moon, its shimmering beauty dims, its mosaic floor filling with cracks and wide fissures, while the Full Moon sees it glimmer with silvery beauty – it is more spacious and easier to pass. Unfortunately, few manage to leave it during the Full Moon as its self-centred power is immense. The Moon Hall focuses mainly on visual sensations; the sense of touch and hearing are both dulled here, and taste and smell do not work at all.
The Scent – The first thing a perceptive individual will notice is the Hall’s “scent”: a sort of a vague feeling of the Hall drawing near. The air pulsates with more abundant lunar energy while the surroundings in the direction of the Hall begin to display barely perceptible changes. However, both of the phenomena are nothing more than manifestations of Hall’s proximity. Some perceive neither the energy nor the changes but sense the Hall being “just around the corner”. They can walk on for hours, smelling the scent, yet never reaching anything else. After all, on a bright night, the scent comes entirely automatically, but the Hall is sometimes active and sometimes inactive, which is when the scent does not spread further into the Antechamber.
The Antechamber – Once you feel the trees and the forest floor stop in their movement, once they stiffen and adopt a silver shimmer, it is the sign of the Antechamber drawing near. The trees keep on transforming until they become slim pillars, their branches resembling a rib vault, while the forest floor covered in leaves turns into a mosaic of silver, and all the animals disappear. The pillars then gradually lose the vault until only low stumps remain – like in a ruined temple of ancient gods. In this space, the eye distinguishes only two colours: silver, which glows and blinds, and black, which is an eye-crushing, absolute darkness. For he who glances into the dark beyond the pillars of the Hall, feels as though he has gone blind, seeing darkness deeper than the one in the world of mortal men. The Antechamber, too, has its snares. Every glimmering cobweb sparkled with crystals of moon-metal, every dark veil, every falsely cast shadow and every irregularity in the mosaic can be a deadly trap, which devours a man like the mow of a monster. The end of the Antechamber reveals the first moons, or moon-runes.
The Threshold – Where the pillars are nothing more but ornate bases, where the Hall is but a moon-illuminated plain, a grand ascending staircase appear. Its steps are long and low, resembling the auditorium of a long-abandoned amphitheatre. The stairs climb up hundreds of steps until the Moon draws near, twice as big as before, its cool face taking up one-eighth of the sky. Where the staircase ends, the Hall begins.
The Hall – Whoever reaches the top of the Great Steps sets eyes on the Hall’s noble beauty. In great heights above stretch the ribs of the vault with wide spaces between them, letting in the moonlight. The massive ornate pillars tower majestically into the unexplorable shadows just below the vault. The Hall is not a monolithic changeless space; there are multiple places located at a distance from one another: palaces, fountains, ponds, crypts, quiet squares, magic obelisks, statues and much more.
The Inner Sanctum – The holy of holies, a shrine at the very centre of each Hall, hides the Hall’s innermost secret. In it, lie the knot of the lunar forces and the dwelling place of the Mistress of the Hall. It is perhaps the Hall’s only vulnerable place. The Sanctuary embodies the deepest of secrets, and no living man has seen in and returned to tell the tale.
The Dwellers – Little is know about the Dwellers, or beings inhabiting the Moon Hall. The Antechamber, together with space without the Hall, swarms with death’s-head moths and spiders while the depths of the Hall are home to Guardians and Medusas, though little is know about the latter two. No one can say, for instance, if there is only one Medusa, or many, no one knows, whether the Guardians are endowed with their own consciousness, or merely possess some sort of a collective mind. The beings of the Hall often have far greater command of the moon-runes (the moons) than a common wizard, which is why it is wise to avoid them since their intentions tend to be treacherous and merciless.
The Moon-runes – or the lunes, are special strongly charged symbols that strike resonance in the human soul. If one beholds a lune, the rune absorbs itself in him, filling the corresponding part of that person’s aura and mind with energy. If the person masters the lune, he gains access to all the phenomena relevant to it. The lunes can be found in both the Antechamber and the Hall itself; while the former is home to lunes and antelunes, the latter will sometime hide the so-called arkenlunes. In the Hall, the moon-runes often show in the form of shining symbols writ on the pillars or the floor, but they can manifest differently as flowers, ornaments, beings and in many other ways.
