- This is almost the end of Grant’s quest to find the stolen memories, but he has operated very much as a ‘lone wolf’ and has not thought through what he will do when he finally finds them. This is perfectly in character - he may be a Master of Warfare but he is still a young man in his early twenties. So what will he do when he inevitably runs into Mowbray - after all it has been long foreshadowed that the Dwimmerlaik Lord behind the “Breath of Eden” is Mowbray, the Lords of Gossamer equivalent of Dworkin (those of you who have read Zelazny’s Amber and played Amber Diceless know what I’m referring to).
- Of course Grant is no match for Mowbray, but this is where we haven’t seen ‘on camera’ what a number of other Lords of Gossamer have been doing. Grant has been ‘Wolverine’ doing sneaky-stabby secret stuff, and Ethan has been almost a polar opposite, mostly isolated from the Dwimmerlaik War plot thread that has been doing on. The others have of course been very busy, and just like the End Game of the Patternfall War (Book 5), we’ll shortly see Vala, Drake and all of the others in a battle royale. After all, it isn’t going to end in a whimper. We’re getting close to Session 100 after all.
- Meanwhile, Ethan getting to know Abbie was no flight of fancy on the part of the player. It was also a deliberate way to get Ethan to spend more time on Earth where so many of David’s plotlines have been lying undisturbed for dozens and dozens of sessions.
- We are moving swiftly towards a new major plot arc and a new era for Grant/Ethan. Who knows, maybe we’ll even give them a bit of a time compress and give them some more points - I don’t think they’ve been awarded any experience points in a very long time. Grant is now a Master of the Stair, and Ethan has a large white wolf named Stolvir - but neither has actually spent 'points' to acquire these.
Part 1 - Behind the Boot
- In shadow-form, Grant hides deep in the shadow of an elite Dwimmerlaik guard, just behind the guard’s heel. He tries to listen and learn as much as he can about this place. It does not appear to be a long section of Stair but it is well guarded. Despite his concealment and the darkness of the corridor, Grant isn’t sure that he can move very far in shadow form without being detected. So he watches, and waits.
- Five minutes pass, then ten, then fifteen. He hopes that Greywalker doesn’t open the Door behind him and come looking for him. Then one of the Doors open and a Dwimmerlaik with braided hair who wears no armour on his muscled arms comes into view. Grant’s view of this individual is cut off for a moment and he repositions himself. The Dwimmerlaik with the braided hair talks to some of the guards with sign-language, but it’s only a fragment and not enough for a Warden of the Stair to determine the meaning behind the gestures.
- Then Grant feels the touch of an Icon contact. He has no idea who it is, but he steels himself and ignores, burying his presence as deep as he can. Meanwhile, the Dwimmerlaik with the braided hair and bare muscled arms takes a good look up and down the corridor, and then approaches the guard standing beside Shadow-Grant. Grant practically ‘closes his eyes’ hoping not to get detected, and then suddenly the Dwimmerlaik opens the Door and steps through.
- Breathing a sigh of relief, he wonders what will happen back in the Ice Castle. Will Greywalker still be there and will this Dwimmerlaik find him? Grant pushes the thought to one side as he tries to figure out how to reach the target Door without being detected. After studying for a few minutes, he begins slowly slowly moving towards the Door, using the walls and roof. The corridor itself is only about 80 metres long, with twelve Doors in it.
- When he is about half-way down the corridor, the Door to the Ice Fortress reopens and the Dwimmerlaik with the braided hair returns. He again converses with some of the guards using sign language – this time Grant is able to pick out that he is making inquiries, and they are stating that they have seen no one. The Dwimmerlaik lingers in the corridor, listening and thinking. Grant is used to shapeshifting but this form is uncomfortable to use for long periods.
- Then, almost without Grant noticing, the Dwimmerlaik has produced an Icon, and he knows that trouble is coming. While the Dwimmerlaik with the braided hair is distracted, Grant drops from the ceiling onto another guard and hides again, a shadow within a shadow. He exposes only a fragment of himself to see what happens, but is prepared to pull himself in at the slightest sign of danger.
Part 2 - The Eidolon Master
- Suddenly, there is another Dwimmerlaik there. This one is wizened, almost skeletal in appearance. He wears a fine robe of red and silver, and his antlers are old and chipped in places. His hair is bone-white, and he carries a white staff. Grant doesn’t like the look of this individual. He doesn’t like him even more when the first thing he does is establish an Eidolon-charged lightning shield which glitters around him. Grant decides to hide – hide deep. It is increasingly uncomfortable being so close to an Eidolon Master. Grant can tell that he is just waiting there in the corridor, listening and watching. He dare not move.
- After some time, the wizened Dwimmerlaik begins to move down the corridor, waving his wand as he does, searching back and forth, high and low. As the Eidolon scan passes through him, Grant feels his body on fire, but he manages to hold his form. This happens not just once, but twice. The second time is even more painful.
- Singed by Eidolon, Grant is almost afraid to poke out of hiding, but at last he does. The Eidolon Master is still there, sitting cross-legged in the corridor, floating about two feet off the floor. In pain, Grant bundles himself up tightly and tries to maintain his form.
- Time passes, and then suddenly Grant is aware of more soldiers entering the Stair. The Eidolon Master is gone – Grant didn’t hear him leave. The Dwimmerlaik with the braided hair is still there, and he gathers the troops and opens the Door back to the Ice Fortress. They go through, leaving guards on every Door but some of the guards have been relieved.
- Despite feeling most uncomfortable, Grant begins making for the target Door again. Moving slowly is painful, but he soldiers on. As he does, he feels a strange faraway sensation, and he realises that something is happening on Marindar. He can feel the tug of the realm that he has connected himself to. (GM’s note – what could be happening on Marindar? Ah, you’ll have to wait until Session 100 to find that out!) He knows that he should deal with the problem, but he knows how far he has come and that all of his trials would have been for nothing if he leaves now. So he remains.
- An indeterminate time later, he receive another Icon contact, but he shrugs it off. He is on the roof again now, inching slowly towards the target Door. It is not far now.
Part 3 - A Way In
- Then suddenly another Door opens and a Dwimmerlaik officer dressed in red and black armour with a craggy face enters the corridor. He demands a report in sign language from one of the guards and they again report ‘no contact’. Then the Dwimmerlaik speaks, and asks for confirmation that ‘Tovarg’ has left in pursuit. (GM’s note – Grant assumes that they think that he has doubled back) The guards nod, and he tells them to remain vigilant, and check that when Tovarg returns that it is truly him. The Dwimmerlaik officer then heads for the target Door that Grant has been trying to reach and produces an amulet in order to open it. The Dwimmerlaik concentrates on the device and it glows.
- While his attention is distracted, Grant glides towards the Door, then when the Door is opened, he slips through the crack at the top and then rushes to catch up with the Dwimmerlaik. He is through.
Part 4 - Into the Void
- On the other side, they have emerged from a great golden step-pyramid, around which is coiled a mighty golden dragon. But it appears to be the only structure here. The world here is bathed in a strange purple twilight and there are patches of stars above. The ground is a flat plane and it is eerily quiet. Grant can tell that this is a broken world – his Umbral Mastery tells him this.
- As the Dwimmerlaik moves on, with Grant now attached to him in shadow-form, the ground below becomes paper thin, and begins falling away like rain. The edge of the land is disintegrating here and there is only a great abyss beneath. Then the Dwimmerlaik officer is falling but Grant senses no anxiety in his host as they falls into the darkness. Grant can tell that this is the way to the damaged memory canister – it definitely came this way.
- But darkness does not mean emptiness. Here darkness has a tactile feeling – it feels oppressive, smothering.
- Suddenly, they have stopped. The Dwimmerlaik is standing once more on a platform of darkness but there are tiny lights nearby, providing some contrast and definition to this odd place. Grant has been into the void before (GM’s note – see Session 86) and he knows that he is in Shadow.
- He tries Wayfinding here, and it works but there is no obvious way out of this place. The Dwimmerlaik officer leaves the platform and begins a descent. When the way evens out, Grant realises that there is another Lord of Gossamer here and he sneaks out for a peek. He finds that it is Jessamyn – she is chained to a stake made of void-stuff, and her face has been branded. She looks like she has been badly treated and her face shows the strain of incarceration. Privately Grant is enraged by this, but he forces himself to remain composed, thinking it likely that she is ‘bait for a trap’. Wondering how many other Lords of Gossamer are here, he also manages to locate Cal – but he is somewhere below.
- This place is eerie. There is very little sound here – there are no echoes of footfalls. Even the structures here are things of darkness, defined only by occasional pin-pricks of light at the edges. And worst of all is a terrible bad feeling of being watched here by something, or someone powerful. As the Dwimmerlaik makes his way through the alien maze of platforms and structures and their odd faerie lights, Grant feels his sense of dread growing. He decides to slip away in the darkness, but follow the officer from a distance. (GM's note - this was a case of a first warning to the player that they felt something bad was coming, then a second warning. If Grant had not detached then he would have faced Mowbray directly at close range)
Part 5 - Mowbray’s Sanctum
- Once separated from the Dwimmerlaik officer he gets a sense as to how big this world is – it is relatively small – like a small city – and beyond, there is only darkness. He follows the Dwimmerlaik officer and sees him from a distance meeting a cloaked figure with bone-white skin and ancient antlers. It is Mowbray. Grant is sure that it is Mowbray. The ancient Dwimmerlaik pauses, listening to the officer’s report and then ponders. Grant draws back, thinking that this far too dangerous for him. If Mowbray is as powerful as the other Lords of Gossamer have said, he’s in serious trouble here. He can’t get out, nor can he call for help. An Icon would almost certainly be detected here.
- Drawing back, Grant sees a large spherical structure which has many lights defining its perimeter. He knows that this is where the missing memories are kept – he can sense that there are about 30 sets of memories within it. He can also tell that many of Mowbray’s Ailsiliar are here too – Mowbray’s elite cadre of warlocks. Slow and steady, he withdraws further. This place is quiet disorienting, but he keeps moving away from where the Dwimmerlaik have gathered.
- The further away Grant moves, the more the plane seems to lose its coherency. It is a disorienting and chaotic place. He tries to use Umbra in a subtle way and he finds that he can affect the void-stuff here, but he's reticient to do much manipulation lest he be discovered. He tries Wayfinding to locate any Doors here, but there are none. He also searches to see if there are any other Lords of Gossamer here but there are not. He looks specifically for Turadok, Mordecai and Ben, but can't locate any of them.
- Grant ponders the next steps.
Part 6 - Frozen in Time
- Ethan and Abbie are still holding hands when they see the Door to Realm 0 and the cracks through it. It looks as though the Door itself is straining against something on the other side. Abbie asks if this is normal and Ethan admits that he's never seen anything like it.
- After inspecting the Door for a few minutes and then asking Abbie to stand back, Ethan opens the Door. With the Door open, he can see into the interior of the house. A cat is in the process of leaping down to the floor but is frozen in midair. Beyond, he can see the windows of the house. A blinding light fills them, and the glass in the warded windows has just shattered. All of the fragments are frozen in midair. The runes and wards along the edges of the windows are glowing brightly.
- Ethan comments that he thinks something bad has happened in Clockworld, the pocket realm that regulates the flow of time in Realm 0. He tests this theory by flicking a coin through the Door into the corridor - as soon as it is beyond the protective 'bubble' of the Door, the coin stops in midair. There is no way that they can go through the Door without being halted like everything else. Ethan explains there is another way into Clockworld, and it'll take an hour or two to get there. They have to go via Nexopolis. Abbie is a bit surprised by this but she can see that nothing is moving - she won't miss anything - and another 'adventure' is calling.
- As they start ditching their unnecessary gear, Ethan explains that he never found the saboteur who attacked Clockworld in the first place and he always thought that the perpetrator would try again. At first Ethan is very serious about the matter - he explains that if Clockworld is destroyed, it could destroy the entire planet. Abbie, however, finds humour in the situation. Even as begin running along the Stair to Nexopolis, she points out that as the time on Earth has stopped, they technically have an even longer weekend than before. Ethan can tell that she's joking, but she teases him about all of the fun they could get up to without missing anything on Earth if everything is truly stopped. Ethan goes along with the joke, ignoring the fact that even if Earth is frozen that the perpetrator could still be in Clockworld doing damage as time there would still be moving. As they run along, she even asks if he could 'stop time' in the future if they wanted to get away. By the time they've passed through Nexopolis and are on their way to the Clockworld Door, both of them are cracking jokes about what they'd do next if the Earth really was destroyed (Ethan would have to get a new cat, for starters). When they finally reach the Door, Abbie asks Ethan if he brought any weapons with him, and he admits that he should have thought of that - maybe even picked up some sort of steampunk-styled disrupter in Nexopolis. Abbie is astonished by this - Ethan knows that there is probably a madman in Clockworld who has probably managed to overpower Jacob, and yet they’ve come to deal with the situation, unarmed.
Part 7 - Rescuing Jacob
- The Door to Clockworld blends into the wall, which is a mass of interconnected cogs. Only a Warden of the Stair would know that it is there, and only Ethan and a few others know how to align the cogs in order to reach the Door. This takes a few minutes, and then the Door is accessible to them. Stepping through the Door into Clockworld, they are first aware of how quiet it is here. Normally Clockworld makes a lot of noise when it is active. The mechanism has completely stopped.
* Image by Shortgreenpigg on DeviantART
- Ethan and Abbie hurry to the control centre, with Ethan wayfinding the way to Jacob. On the way he picks up a large spanner from a toolbox to improvise a weapon. There is a spattering of blood around - it’s clear there has been a fight here, and he spots a large non-human footprint on the gantry. Jacob himself is lying on the floor in a pool of blood, his innards hanging out. He has been badly wounded but he is still alive thanks to his mastery of Eidolon.
* Image by Nicolas Kole on DeviantArt
- Quickly handing the spanner to Abbie, Ethan assesses his condition and begins to heal the wound as best he can. He can tell that there is a strong toxin in Jacob’s system which just isn’t clearing, and is inhibiting Jacob’s capability to regenerate. After quickly looking around to make sure the control centre is clear, Abbie puts down the spanner and finds a medical kit in a brass locker. Between them, they manage to stabilise Jacob’s condition and get him out of danger, but they are all covered in his blood by the end of it. At last, Jacob relaxes and falls unconscious and Ethan steers him into a deep slumber.
- Now what? asks Abbie, pointing out that he can’t stay here. Ethan agrees and he quickly looks for Jacob’s assailant - but he/she/it has gone, which tells him that whoever did this came in through a Door and was able to leave through the Door back to Realm 0 - which means that they have a device that enables them to move through frozen time. Ethan makes the decision to take Jacob directly to Marindar to recuperate - it is the only place that Ethan knows that he will be safe.
- Covered in blood, Ethan carries Jacob gently along the Stair back through Nexopolis and then onto Marindar. It takes him more than an hour to do so. Abbie points out that they’re leaving Earth unprotected, and Ethan acknowledges this. At last they reach Marindar, and Ethan hands Jacob over to the Marindan guards there. A hospital vehicle is called, and when it is safely away, they decide to leave, pausing only to borrow some weapons from the guards (which they promise to return). (GM’s note - again, Ethan is blissfully ignorant of events going on in Marindar - he has avoided this twice now)
Part 8 - Repairing Clockworld
- Quickly returning to Clockworld, Ethan and Abbie find the place just as they left it. Ethan hurries to inspect the damage, and finds three enormous cogs, each the size of a football field, have been melted such that the gears will no longer turn. The damage is extensive and Ethan knows that replacing the cogs will take time. He explains to Abbie that he’ll use sorcery and Eidolon to repair the damage, but it’s going to take a lot of effort. He asks her to watch over him while he repairs the mechanism. She agrees and he starts work. To un-melt the mechanism takes a great deal of his strength, and leaves him very tired, but he manages it. The gears start moving again, but then suddenly a bell starts ringing loudly. They rush back to the control centre, where the display tells him that the tower in Fiveways has detonated and that an “emergency rollback” is required.
- Ethan knows that it is possible to wind back time using the machinery in Clockworld - he’s taken advantage of this before, but he has no idea how to perform an “emergency rollback”. He quickly locates Gearwing, Jacob’s assistant - the poor creature is inactive, having been thrown to the floor and broken. With a gentle use of Eidolon, Ethan repairs the bird-machine and plugs it into the console so that it can speak.
* Image by Dreamspirit on DeviantART
- Gearwing babbles that he didn’t see the saboteur, but he was struck down early in the fight, and he doesn’t know what is going on. Ethan presses for an explanation of the “emergency rollback” and Gearwing explains that it’s necessary when a “Priority 1 Event” has occurred, but it can only be authorised by Lucien or Jacob, and neither of them are here. Ethan insists that he’s authorised, and Gearwing agrees given that the alternative is destruction of Realm 0 and Clockworld. Ethan asks how much time will be rewound, and Gearwing tells him that it will be about 5 minutes, but that will certainly reverse the events of how the saboteur got in, making it difficult to trace the individual. Ethan tells him not to be so silly and tells him to ‘do it’.
- The great cogs in Clockworld stop and begin winding backwards. After about a minute, they then stop, a chime sounds and the cogs begin winding forwards again. Ethan asks Gearwing to confirm that this procedure has worked, and Gearwing confirms that it has. The destruction of the towers (which Ethan and Abbie saw from the Realm 0 Door as a brilliant light) has been reversed, but the saboteur is still at large.
- Abbie realises that the adventure isn’t over yet. Ethan wonders if the saboteur might try again given that his attempt to destroy Clockworld had failed - either way, Jacob’s assailant needs to be found and stopped.
…. and that’s where we left Session 97. (I'm running Session 99 tomorrow - woo! big battle in the Void)
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