Personal Log

I am now living a Chinese curse. Times have gotten interesting.

I had just stepped through a Door, as I had done dozens, hundreds, of times before. The stunning visual display told me all I needed to know about which world I had entered and how it had come to be given the name Shatterlight. Then everything went red.  

Red. A deep blood red. Not anger. Not a precursor to an uncontrollable outburst of violence, although as it turned out there had been violence involved and would be still more. I was literally encased in red light, and the accompanying sensation was of reality being ripped and torn. I have some feel for the manipulation of reality, as I often work through Falmorath to effect subtle changes in the world around me. This felt more like a fist being driven into the fabric of the universe, grabbing hold, and ripping me out. The thought came to be that if our Dwimmerlaik friend back in Fierce were to have gotten free this might be her way of inviting me, and possibly all of us, to join her in Shadow. It was not a happy thought.  

The feeling passed. Our vision cleared. And I was not in Shadow.  

We, meaning Sturm, Cyra, William, Jane, Mena, and myself were in a wide section of the Grand Stair with Doors to either hand, one of the propped open. We were standing in a circle around the body of a badly mauled woman, blood pooling beneath her; missing an arm and with chunks of flesh gouged out of her body. She was a stranger to me, golden skinned, russet haired, and alien to the extent that her surviving hand had only three fingers. Next to her, apparently drawn by her in her own blood were the words “One of them a traitor” along with a glyph. The glyph was steaming and contained six small objects. There was a small wooden box next to the message.  

William and I both had the thought to see if by any chance she still breathed, and I again found myself in a situation where medical training more extensive than the Legion’s front line first aid class might be valuable. As it turned out, no amount of medical training would have helped. Cyra and Jane soon determined that while her physical injuries would have killed her, she had actually expended the last of her life energies creating and activating the glyph to summon the six of us, using a combination of Sorcery, Wrighting, and Invocation. The objects I saw in the glyph had been icons of us, in the form of chess pieces, apparently used in place of our True Names as part of the Invocation. They had been burned out during the summoning and now existed solely as somewhat over-baked artwork. Clutched in her dead hand was another, still functional, chess piece Icon in the form if Baudemagus, while the box contained six more chess piece Icons, presumably those to whom the message applied. Icons of the Gossamer Lords: Vala, Bastiano, Lucien, Drake, Dale, and our good friend Cal.  

There was one last curiosity on the body, a bracelet which was only apparent to those with skill in Wrighting. Mena made the determination that it was a charm bracelet holding a collection of Icons, some of which were common those we had found in Morholt’s glasses. Mena also made the determination that this bracelet had been made by Baudemagus.  

Apart from these mysteries we had an open door to a Gossamer world. An extensive open-air market could be seen and heard beyond. Neither Mena nor Jane had been able to close the Door. This couldn’t be a coincidence.  

So much for the tangibles. Before we could seriously begin to ponder the intangibles of the situation we had company arrive; company in the form of black forms of unreality emerging from tears in reality. Erebi, if the rumors were true. Creatures from Shadow and occasional tools of Dwimmerlaik sorcerers. Dangerous, and something nothing in my arsenal was likely to touch.  

I tried anyway. My identification might be wrong, and rumors often are. I backpedaled, firing several plasma rounds into the nearest creature while cloaking myself in Namural’s protective embrace. None of these efforts were effective and I quickly found myself with an inkling of what had rent our summoner’s flesh.  

Machismo be damned, I ran; bolting through the door to Gossamer, leaving William and Cyra to work their own special Mojo. This was out of my league. Apparently it was out of their league as well, as William emerged from the stair not long after me dragging an unconscious convulsing Cyra with blood spurting from her nose and eyes. Before I could do anything useful to help Cyra William’s Eidolon had managed to stop the convulsions and bleeding.  

While all this had been happening, Mena, Jane, and Sturm had managed to shut down the tear in the fabric of reality portal which had appeared on the other side of the Door simultaneously with the one appearing on the Grand Stair. It was the Agora, as it turned out, though not a section I was readily familiar with. Both Umbra and Eidolon are stronger by far in Gossamer than on the Grand Stair, and the results were gratifying. The Erebi disappeared once our regularly scheduled reality was restored.

That still left the Erebi on the Grand Stair, busy ripping through it’s physical structure since they had nothing more interesting to play with. Through a process of logic which I still don’t understand Jane, Mena, and Sturm grabbed a normal physical door (not quite normal, it was small and round, but still a door), energized it, carried it onto the Grand Stair, and threw it (with Jane sitting atop it although she did not wave around a cowboy hat and yell “Yahoo!”) into the rent in reality, whereupon Jane somehow managed to treat a tear in the fabric of reality on the Grand Stair as a Door, close it (more like implode it), and sever the link. At least I think that’s what they thought they were doing. I was merely playing the part labeled ‘strong back simple mind’ in this little drama. In any case, it worked and the Grand Stair and the Agora were once again Erebi free leaving us with simply a mess and a mystery to deal with.  

A more leisurely investigation now revealed that our mystery lady had emerged, bleeding, from a portal similar to the one the Erebi had used, opened a Door to the Grand Stair, and disappeared through it. A nearby merchant recognized her as someone with whom he had done business in the past, a seeker of secrets who would sell him treasures once they no longer held any secrets for her. She had not done any recent business with him.  

Calais now appeared on the scene. He had noticed our abrupt disappearance from Shatterlight and sought us out with Wayfinding. It had taken him roughly an hour to reach us. We summarized recent events, leaving out any mention of the box, bracelet, Buademagus’ Icon, and the message scrawled in blood. We had already recovered the body from the Grand Stair and, despite her unique appearance she went unnoted by Calais. He did think that Vala and Lucien needed to be informed. He left us to bring word to Vala, since we had already been intent on talking with her, and after giving us directions on the best way to Shatterlight he took off through a different Door.  

We found a nearby merchant who specialized in the storage of bodies (dead), arranged for it’s long term storage and preservation, then headed off to meet Vala.  

Vala met with us in private. In the conversation which followed Vala confirmed that the woman was a thief who liked to steal secrets, and surmised that since Baudemagus, with whom she was close, could not be reached by Icon that she summoned his associates. This begged the question how she had known we were working for him. Vala also wondered why she herself not been summoned when Baudemagus was unavailable and asked what message she had passed on to us. I told her that the woman had been dead when we arrived and never said a thing to us. Vala persisted in her belief that we had been given a message and told us she assumed we had good reason for withholding it from her.  

Vala expressed her concern that the Erebi had moved against her in the Agora, and raised the possibility of Dwimmerlaik involvement as the Dwimmerlaik had been know to use the Erebi in the past and said she would need to convene an inquest. None of us could offer any useful comment at that.  

Vala then asked us what had prompted us to seek her out in the first place. I summarized our actions on Fierce, leaving out any mention of Morholt’s Domain and back Door but including our hope that she might help us convince Drake that the world need no longer be kept sealed. William added mention of the Dwimmerlaik connection and offered the (former) Cyber-Lady’s Icon as proof. Vala examined the proffered Icon but said it predated the Dwimmerlaik war and therefore presented no proof of current Dwimmerlaik activity. It would not be enough to convince the Gossamer Lords to go to war.  

Jane then brought up the topic of Baudemagus, and our hope that her intervention might help win his release from exile. Vala left it to us to bring that up with Drake and also to tell her of the dead woman. Again I wondered who this woman really was and why she was significant enough to Drake that we were specifically told to tell him about her. Vala did tell us that the dead woman had stolen Lucien’s chess set, her last known theft of note, although that had been a few years ago.  

Finally, we were instructed to retrieve Baudemagus and return with him for the dead woman’s funeral. She would decide how to proceed with the inquest while we were away. She asked what had become of the body. We told her what we had done with it, and on a whim I offered that she would have the receipt. Knowing what I know now about who the dead woman was I wouldn’t have done that, but I had been starting to get a bad feeling about being dragged into the morass of Gossamer Lord politics, and, having been given a warning in blood that Vala herself was to be counted among the possible traitors I didn’t feel a need to get all warm and fuzzy over her. Vala then told us she would arrange passage through Nexopolis to speed our journey and said she would arrange to retrieve the body. We were then dismissed.  

Having been to Ionius before, and having found a Door close to there with a world safe to teleport from, Cyra was able to get us back there in short order. Vala hadn’t specifically instructed us to speak with Drake before bringing Baudemagus back, and the dead woman’s possession of Baudemagus’ Icon and the Icon charm bracelet she had been wearing, it seemed prudent to see what he could tell us first. Now we learned that the dead woman had been his wife, and I regretted that I had passed on responsibility for her body. We did now understand, however, why she had chosen to summon us when Baudemagus himself was unavailable.  

The matter of the Erebi and the warning of a traitor concerned him greatly. He believed the Dwimmerlaik were involved somehow, and the traitor was likely in cahoots with them. The Erebi have been used as tools by the Dwimmerlaik, but any of the Gossamer Lords would have the knowledge and resources to summon them. Baudemagus believed we should be the ones handling the inquest, and I felt my feeling of dread grow. If we did this, regardless of the outcome, we would have become far too visible to all the Gossamer Lords for my own personal comfort. We would also be very visible targets if the wrong one caught wind that we had been warned of a traitor among them.  

Baudemagus told us of a ritual, called the Last Walk, which could be performed as part of the funeral and which offered a way to speak with his wife. This could offer us some insight into who the traitor might be. In the meantime, there was the need to offer convincing proof to the Gossamer Lords that the Dwimmerlaik were once again active without bringing up the concept of a traitor among them. It was suggested that the best way to do this was to present them with a live Dwimmerlaik. Finally, we still needed to talk with Drake.  

I think it’s time I have a chat with my uncle.  

Written by Dave Nebiker