The Patient Knob is a palm-sized doorknob of tarnished brass, mounted on a square plate of dark walnut that has no visible keyhole or screws. Fine engraved lines depict two identical doors facing one another across a starless void; one door has been carefully scratched away. The brass is always faintly warm, and when held near a doorway it gives a soft, expectant click. Its handle is polished smooth by countless unseen hands.
The Waiting Room
As an action, you can press the Patient Knob against any solid door, hatch, gate, or similar portal and turn it. The portal opens onto the same small, windowless room: a quiet chamber of pale plaster, blue tile, four wooden chairs, and a brass clock that never moves. The original portal remains in place, but its other side is replaced by the room for as long as the door is open. The effect lasts until you close the portal or use this property again.
Unchanging Refuge
The room is extradimensional and remains in the same condition each time it is accessed. It is large enough for eight Medium creatures, has breathable air, dim light, and no food or water. Time passes normally inside. Spells and magical effects function normally, but teleportation and planar travel originating in the room require a successful DC 20 spellcasting ability check.
The Patient Door
While you are attuned to the Patient Knob, you always know the direction and approximate distance to the last portal through which you entered the room, provided you are on the same plane of existence. You can close that portal from inside the room by touching its frame as an action.
A Place for One More
Once per long rest, when a creature you can see within 30 feet would be reduced to 0 hit points, you can use your reaction to open a portal beneath or beside it. The creature is transported into the waiting room instead, falls unconscious, and is stable. The portal closes immediately, and the creature remains in the room for up to 1 hour before returning to the space it occupied or the nearest unoccupied space.
Missing Sibling
The Patient Knob is one half of a matched pair. If the other knob, called the Absent Knob, is within 1 mile, the Patient Knob grows warm and softly clicks toward it. While both knobs are on the same plane, each attuned bearer can sense the direction of the other knob and communicate with its bearer through the room by speaking into the brass clock. The room becomes a two-way connection between the knobs, allowing creatures at either end to hear one another.
The Room Remembers
Once per dawn, you can ask the room one question about a creature that has entered it, or about the location from which that creature entered. The room answers through a change in the clock's hands, a sound, or a brief visual impression, but its answer is limited to information the room itself observed and may be cryptic.
Lore
The Patient Knob and its sibling were made by a locksmith who believed every separation was merely a door waiting to be opened. He built a room between places so that parted people could always find one another. The room proved more patient than its creator, who vanished before the second knob was finished. Some say the room is waiting for the pair to be reunited; others say it has been waiting for someone else entirely.
History
The Patient Knob has appeared in abandoned inns, sealed tombs, royal panic rooms, and once on the door of a prison cell whose occupant had disappeared centuries earlier. Several owners used it to rescue fugitives or hide from armies, but each eventually began hearing a second set of footsteps in the waiting room. The last known bearer left the knob embedded in the door of a lighthouse and sailed into a storm while searching for the Absent Knob.
