>> "NOW what's going on?" Chance wondered.

> "Nothing... Nothing at all."

"Indeed," Rennyb chimed in, moving towards the curiously frozen
energy-storm on the dance-floor. The black-robed magician reached out
his hand to touch what seemed to be the edge of the globe within
which Rhio, the Ravenlord, Fusion, and the Stygian Ambassador (static
in mid-twirl) were stopped. The edge of the phenomenon shimmered and
gave slightly as Rennyb pressed, then sprang back to shape. He moved
back towards the woman in the velvet and the man in the booth.

"It's a Continuity Disjunction," Rennyb explained, though he hardly
needed to. "I've seen them often enough in these virtual realities.
The active layer of this plane is moving out of alignment with the
context of those events. Either the dramatic gravity, for lack of a
better term," he chuckled, "will draw them back and it will all start
up again rather abruptly... or otherwise..." he cast a glance over
his shoulder at the colorful tableau, "it'll just fade into
insubstantiality... as far as we're concerned in this plane anyways."

Rennyb did his usual trick of flopping down into a chair which
coalesced to catch him, a tribal-looking thing built from Mammoth
tusks and stretched leather. He drew his legs up, and sat back to eye
the others.

"So..." he began, conjuring a long-stemmed pipe from the air and
looking at it curiously like he couldn't quite remember if that was
what he'd wanted or not, "What news from the far-flung corners of the
Empire, eh? Any traveler's tales to share? There's beer, and more
refined spirits besides, if that will ease anyone into the telling..."