Way: Through the Stag Door

"In my dreams, I've found the way to the Stag Door, sometimes called the Horn Gate or the Adept's Door. I have answered its riddle, and am counted among the Know"

Lore
The Stag Door is the first door by which one may enter the Mansus proper without the restrictions of the White Door. It is guarded by a Name called Ghirbi, a huge disembodied head who bars passage to any who cannot answer his riddles. Ghirbi was originally one of the first human occultists, who broke open the doors of the Mansus, probably as part of the Lithomachy. He now guards the gate as punishment. The Stag and White Doors correspond with the mythical Gates of Horn and Ivory. False dreams pass through the Gate of Ivory, while true dreams pass through the Gate of Horn.

The Ascent of Knives, also known as the Sharp Stair, is the way up from the Stag Door to the higher reaches of the Mansus. Those of the Dead who pass it can become Maids-in-the-Mirror. Underneath it is a nest of empousai.

The Painted River is a river on the border between the Wood and the Mansus. It was painted by the Sight-Thief, before her expulsion from the Mansus. The Witch and Sister entered the Mansus through the Painted River.

Reaching
You can reach the Stag Door by Dreaming with Way: The White Door and your Desire. However, upon reaching the Stag Door, you will be posed with the Stag Door's Riddle. Only once you answer the riddle correctly will you receive Way: Through the Stag Door.

Entering
Dreaming on Way: Through the Stag Door with Reason will bring you to the Mansus where you must choose one of three cards. The card representing The Stag Door will be face up, while the two representing the Ascent of Knives and The Painted River are face-down. You must click and drag a card to the Gate. Only one card can be chosen; the other two will be revealed and then destroyed.

The Stag Door

 * A Forgotten Chronicle ( 6) Last night, Ghirbi was talkative. He spoke in his siege-engine voice of the histories he'd overheard in the waking world. I listened, until his stories tailed off again into weeping.
 * A Trembling Heat ( 6) Ghirbi was weeping again. I scooped up his molten tears in my cupped palm. In the dream, my skin peeled and blistered, but only in the dream.
 * Subtle Rupture ( 10) In sleep, I ran my fingers along the ridged edges of the Stag Door's scars. 'Our company it was that shattered it,' Ghirbi says suddenly. 'Before the Gods-who-were-flesh, the Mansus was forbidden to mortals. We were the first Know.' He begins again to weep his molten tears. 'I wish that we had not. I wish I had died in the world....' I have forgotten what else he said. But I remember the shape of the fissures in the Stag Door, and for all of today, doors will fear my touch.

The Ascent of Knives

 * An Urgency of Appetite ( 6) The Ascent of Knives is called the Sharp Stair, and the Mother of Mirrors, and the Feast of the Grail. If one is to look beneath the stair, as I did last night in my dreams, one understands that last name. It draws a tithe of blood from the feet of those who ascend. Empousai - some shaped like men, many shaped like women - wait beneath the glass of the stairs to satisfy their hunger. I did not approach; I made no sound; I only observed.
 * A Furious Air ( 10) Of the place my dreams took me last night, this has been written: 'The ascent is glass. The walls are knives. Each step is blood.' I did not climb far. The pain was too great. When I woke, that pain remained with me - a pain I could employ to occult purposes, if I hurry.
 * A Bitter Atmosphere ( 10) I visited the Ascent of Knives last night, that harshest of roads through the House. It has been sacred to the Meniscate and the Sun-in-Rags since the Intercalate, when the true Sun was divided. When I woke, my room was freezing. The chill of it had cracked the window-glass.

The Painted River

 * Fascination ''I dreamt of the Mansus behind the White Door, of the great space above the Orchard, the space that overlooks the Bounds, the space where the Vagabond once painted her River. Painted ships passed upon the Painted River. I met the painted eyes of a painted captain. She saluted, and the motion was like the layered movement of clouds. The sail of the ship was amber and the captain's eyes the green of new barley and the river, aquamarine. Now that I'm awake, I see those colours still.
 * Erudition: A lesson learnt The Painted River runs from a great chamber near the White Door, far through the Mansus, to its far edge where it enters a painted delta of far cloud. I voyaged half its length last night with a stern-faced captain beneath a rust-red sail. As the clouds rose before us, the sailors raised a yearning shanty, and close-hauled the sails to best use the painted wind. And all the while the captain and I discoursed on the secrets of the House of the Sun....
 * A Forbidden Epic ( 8) There is a great chamber in the Mansus through which a Painted River flows. The Vagabond, it is claimed, painted it from memory in the years before she left the House. Certainly there are histories concealed in its design. I traced them with my hand last night. There were fragments of aquamarine paint beneath my nails, flecks of gold leaf, when I was done.

Ascending Further
To reach The Spider's Door, Dream with Way: Through the Stag Door and a Lore Fragment with, , or 8 or higher.