The sun grows cold and stars faded, and I have wound my children for the last time. The long Tenebrean night has come, and I will not survive it. My last act will be to send my various creations out into the aether between realities and hope that they find a friendly shore, and that the natives are capable of deciphering my code. The sages have long claimed that math and logic are a universal language, but experience has made me a skeptic in all things but the joy of a cup of hot tea, and the comforting purr of a clockwork cat.

The Pentomino Permutator is a machine of great power. Powerful enough to aid you in your fight against the Twenty Three. Placing the Pentominos in certain configurations will unleash powers ranging from the whimsical to the truly terrifying. Scattered throughout your world and all the planes are Pentomino Puzzle Boxes. These can be acquired in various ways, unknown even to me, some being easy and others far more challenging.

The Pentominos of the Permutator were given names many eons ago and although this was in a language and alphabet long since forgotten the magic of the Permutator has renamed and rewritten these names over and over throughout the eons to keep them relevant. The twelve names today are as follows. Fow- aah, Agah-go, Bap-bap, N-oh, Ow-t, Turr-turr, Cu- mumer, Ray-boo, Mah-man, Ka-koo, Yo-git and Saw- suss. The positions on the Permutator itself have all been given numerical values, as have the rows and columns. The rows are numbered from 0 to 5 and the columns 0 to 9. So the first cell would be 00 and the last 59. The individual cells were numbered counting down the columns and then across the rows, each described in 2 digits starting with 01 and ending with 60. It doesn’t make a difference which orientation you use so long as the broadsides make up the top and bottom.

This leads to three main ways that the permutations can be described and that is the discovery I want to pass on in these tomes. There are certainly others, but those wishing to learn them will need to seek out like minded scholars of the Permutator to aid in their search.

The first and some say most common method of describing a permutation is to take the first letter of each Pentomino name and lay them out in six groups of ten, each group representing a row on the Permutator. So for example AOOORRRNNY AOOFRNNNYY AFFFRMMSSY ATFKCCMMSY ATKKKCBMSS TTTKCCBBBB. To obfuscate matters further these groups are often split into random groupings of letters, so the above could become AOO OR RRNN YAOOF RNN NYYAF FFRM MSSYA TFK CC MMSYATK KKC BMSST TTKC CB BBB.

The other two methods are similar and they identify the location of the five cells of each Pentomino by either listing their row and column or the value of the cell. So the Fow-ahh Pentomino in the top left position could be described as 00 01 11 12 21 using the row column values or 01 07 08 14 09 using the cell values. Again these numbers can be grouped in confusing ways or in different orders. It is also supposed that the row column method could appear with the column listed first but so far none have been discovered in this format.

In all cases I urge caution when using the Permutator. Not all outcomes are desirable, many are traps I have embedded within its functioning to bring misery and doom to the Twenty Three enemies of my world. I have tried to align the doom to the permutations they are most likely to choose, while embedding the many boons within a matrix they are most likely to overlook. I will not have my own creations used against me again!

May the Pentomino Permutator bring you fortune and victory against the enemies of life, and may your cosmos burn brightly for all its allotted days.

For victory over the Twenty Three,

Professor Tok