The Waiting Room
As an action, you can touch the Patient Knob to any closed, unlocked door and turn it. The door opens onto the same extradimensional room: a small, quiet chamber with pale walls, a wooden chair, a ticking clock, and no visible exits except the door through which a creature entered. The room is clean, dry, and comfortable, regardless of conditions outside. The door retains its original appearance and destination when closed, and the room vanishes from that doorway until the knob is used again.
Patient Space
The room is 15 feet square and can safely contain up to 12 Medium creatures and their equipment. Time passes normally inside it, but the room requires no food, water, air, or light; creatures inside can breathe normally and do not age while present. The room cannot be damaged, reshaped, or affected by spells or effects originating outside it.
One Door, Many Thresholds
The Patient Knob can be attached to or removed from any ordinary door as an action. When attached, it functions regardless of the door's material, location, magical construction, or size, provided the door can physically accommodate the knob. It cannot open a portal, gate, or other opening that is not part of a door.
The Count
The knob records every use. Each time a creature turns it to open a door onto the room, a new tally mark appears in its brass face. The count includes the current use and has no known maximum. A creature attuned to the knob can always know the total count, the number of distinct creatures that have used it, and the number of distinct doors through which it has been opened. The knob also remembers the name, appearance, and location of every creature and door it has recorded, though it communicates this information only through tally marks, shifting numerals, and faint whispered numbers.
A Room That Remembers
While inside the room, an attuned creature can spend 1 minute asking the room about a recorded use. The room produces a hazy sensory impression lasting up to 1 minute, showing what the room could perceive during that use. The impression cannot reveal events that occurred outside the room or provide information the room could not have perceived.
The Unhurried Exit
A creature inside the room can open the door to return to the exact side and location from which that creature most recently entered. If multiple creatures entered through different doors, each creature can choose its own remembered exit when it opens the door. The choice is fixed when the door is opened, and all creatures passing through during that opening use the chosen exit.
Beyond the Count
Once per 7 days, when the attuned creature turns the knob, it can name a specific closed door it has previously used. The door opens onto that door's current destination rather than the waiting room, allowing travel to that door as though standing before it. If the named door no longer exists, the feature fails and the use is still recorded.
The Room's Patience
No creature can be unwillingly forced into the room by the Patient Knob. A creature can voluntarily enter, or can be moved through the doorway while incapacitated, unconscious, or restrained. Once inside, a creature can leave freely unless it is prevented from opening the door by another creature or by an effect that specifically suppresses magic.
Indestructible Tally
The Patient Knob is immune to all damage and cannot be destroyed except by an artifact, a deity, or a wish spell. If removed from a door, it reappears in the hand of its attuned creature at the next dawn, unless that creature is dead or on another plane.
History
The knob has appeared in the hands of fugitives, monarchs, explorers, and at least three people who claimed never to have touched it. A vanished monastery used it as a sanctuary during a hundred-year siege; when the doors finally opened, the room's tally exceeded ten thousand. Centuries later, an archmage attempted to dismantle the room's magic and was trapped inside with a copy of every spell he had ever cast. The knob was last recovered from an abandoned lighthouse, where its tally marks continued increasing despite the lighthouse having no doors.
