At the heart of Firehurler and the Twinborn Trilogy is the mystery of the twinborn. What are they? They are the ones who are aware of other worlds. They are the ones who live separate lives that they can see while sleeping and it works both ways – their twins see their world in their own slumber. Who are they? They could be anyone, a teacher, a blacksmith, a computer programmer or a sorcerer (and the latter two likely hold the discipline of the other in similar regard, magically).

Knowledge is power and the ones who are fully aware of their twinborn connection learn things that an inhabitant of their world should have no way of knowing. That privileged knowledge often gives a twinborn advantages that they can use to gain power and prestige, sometimes in both worlds but often in the less developed world. If you want to unlock these hidden powers, you first need to discover whether or not you are actually twinborn.

This simple quiz will help you find out:

1. Do you have recurring dreams? (5 Points)

Recurring dreaming is a key element of being twinborn. Once you fully realize your connection, it will stop seeming like dreaming at all. At that point, it will be like changing channels on a TV… “Time to see what my twin is up to.”

2. Are you an unusually sound sleeper? (1 Point)

Sleep is generally fairly boring. You’re just lying there, maybe snoring a little, maybe shifting positions, but that’s all you’re doing for hours at a stretch. In the other world, you might be battling ogres, practicing magic, navigating a space cruiser – all things infinitely more worthy of your attention. Your sleeping body’s signals have a hard time competing with the interesting things your mind is witnessing in the other world.

3. Do you get deja vu? (3 Points)

Familiar people you meet for the fist time, familiar places you’ve never been before. Your memories of another life may hold glimpses of parts of world so similar to your own that you might recognize elements of it in your own. Imagine arriving at the Grand Canyon only to get the feeling that you’d been there before and … something about an eight-legged lizard that you rode down the trails.

4. Have you ever seen aether? (10 Points)

Aether is the by-product of life. Aether-vision – the ability to see it – is a separate sense from traditional eyesight but a related one. The aether appears as a bluish-white gaseous substance, flowing out of living Sources which resemble the creatures they reside within. This is a very obvious clue from the Earth side of things, since this is a low-magic world, but from another world’s perspective it would just mean you are a sorcerer.

5. Do you ever learn something new and find that you have a natural talent for it? (5 Points)

You jumped into the pool and started swimming like a fish. Ever consider that you already learned how in your twin’s world? If everything comes easily to you, you’re probably some sort of prodigy, not twinborn. If it’s just an odd assortment of skills, consider what sort of person your twinborn might be.

6. Do you wake suddenly in the night due to fear or pain that fades away with no lingering symptoms? (3 Points)

Ever get a really strong desire to be somewhere else? Maybe it was a car crash or a gunshot. Maybe it was a mugging or something even more sinister. If it happened to your twin, it may have awakened you.

7. Are any of your hobbies uncommon for people in your area or the area you are originally from? (1 Point)

There’s no accounting for taste, but sometimes people buck the trend to an unusual degree. It can be enough to make you wonder where you even developed such an interest in the first place; certainly not from local exposure. Urban professionals who make chain mail in their spare time are an example. People who adopt sports from climates they don’t live in or which are unpopular in their hometown are another. Personally, I suspect the US Olympic soccer team, the Jamaican bobsledders, and about half the people on Etsy of being twinborn.

8. Do you have memories that you know could not possibly be true? (5 Points)

Remember how your dad taught you to use a sword? Your dad is a claims adjuster with back problems.
Remember your pet dragon who used to follow you everywhere? You had a golden retriever, and dragons don’t exist in this world (as pets at least).
Remember the princess you rescued from goblin raiders? She looks just like that girl who works at the Starbucks who’s always giving you a second look. Go ahead and mention the princess thing; she might remember it too.

9. Have you ever heard someone speak a language you never learned, but you understood them anyway? (5 Points)

This is also one of the surest ways to spot someone else as a twinborn. Off-world languages are also a very safe code on a world like Earth. Who’s to know whether a strange, indecipherable language is actually from another world, just an obscure language from a country you’ve never heard or, or teenagers speaking English? Also, just double-check that you aren’t hearing a language you took a year of in high school and forgot about. This can save embarrassment.
“Aha! I found you out, twinborn agents of Alaria!” … “Pourquoi cet idiot de parler de nous?”

10. Have you ever tried anything from your dreams and had it work? (10 Points)

Did how to build a quantum computer just sort of seem to make sense to you? Do you have a little collection of statues that you molded from liquid steel by means of aether? Did your crazy, slapped-together theory on subatomic particles revolutionize physics? You’re probably making use of knowledge of another world, whether you realized it or not. The downside is that you’re not the prodigy you thought you were. The cool thing is that you’re very likely twinborn, which is a lot more interesting.

Scoring

0-5   You’ve just got a few quirks. The odds of you being twinborn are slim to none.
6-12 Ok, maybe there’s something going on here. Buckle down and start paying some serious attention to your dreams.
13-25 This is a strong indicator. You may be on the verge of awakening to full awareness of the connection to your twin. Be on guard for others like you.
26+ Touch your right index finger lightly to your thumb, leaving the other fingers loose (playing the world’s tiniest violin, minus the movement). Traces a circle in the air and repeat after me: “aleph kalai abdu” (If the light from the spell ends up stuck to the tip of your finger, just wait it out. Don’t try to put it in your mouth to hide it; you’ll just look like an idiot. You’ll get better with practice.)

Share your scores below in the comments. If you have already awakened as a twinborn, please share your story. “Who Else Are You?“