Merlin and Chaosians arrive, formally acknowledging Isabelle. ONE female stays back a bit Clarissa, Isabelle's grandmother like to meet Isabelle BUT IS NOT ALLOWED (normally)]. Clarissa hands Isabelle a trump of herself and gives the party a blessing. Clarissa leaves through trump gate that was prepared beforehand.
After the party, with the matter of the doors being closed to the Grand Staircase from Amber due to the potential thread of the Dwimmerlaik, Silas and Jericho decide to try to gain more information to assess the situation by venturing into the Void Sea and from there into Void to seek them out. The plan is to set out from Dragonsport, as it borders the Void Sea, and Silas gets Netherwing's permission to set forth from there, albeit with a caution that if they are being pursued when they return he cannot account for their safety when he acts to destroy the thread. Silas approaches Isabelle for a trump to Dragonsport, which she has. She prepares to activate the trump….
The city of Dragonsport, when attempting to use the handmade trump, somehow works oddly, making it so people are rerouted to the center of the city. Possibly Netherwing decided to filter control in and out of the city. Lowen, Brigid, Isabelle, Gerhardt, Jericho, Isabelle, Natasha and Silas all go via the trump to just outside Dragonsport, where a crewman from The Envoy is waiting, the ship is already docked at the port.
Elodie initially declined to go, but then changes her mind after being prompted by her father, Netherwing to spy on the mission in lieu of him sending other spies. She manages to board The Envoy right before the it disembarks. The Envoy heads out a short distance to test the ship and equipment among other aspects, there seems to be a shadow under the void sea whose border matches the coast of Dragons Port. This phenomenon that is turning the void sea into shadow seems to be expanding at a slow pace. Discussions take place on the implications of how this will impact Amber, the Sorcerer Kings and the Dwimmerlaik. Comparing logs, it is noted that at the current rate of advance, this phenomenon must have began right about the time when Jericho and Lowen found and walked the Dark Pattern located in Arden.
During this time, Jericho notices a miniature (a few inches tall) Dworkin is trying to stab his foot. He captures it easily and tries to find out what it wants. It claims that it needs Jericho’s blood but does not remember why. “You aren’t Dworkin.” “I am.. like Dworkin.”
Jericho uses trump to contact the real Dworkin, who explains that he does indeed want Jericho’s blood which he will use to complete a ritual which will fully activate the Dark Pattern that Jericho and Lowen earlier (apparently only partly) activated. Jericho's role as the primary activator when he walked it makes his blood the key. Jericho wants to exchange his blood to make our mission easier and capture a singular Dwimmerlaik. Dworkin claims that he will not do so because that is one thing he doesn’t feel comfortable doing. When asked why they came through, supposedly the issue was that Amber was a bit broken after Patternfall and repaired improperly. Jericho eventually gives Dworkin the blood he wanted (2 pints), after which Isobelle enhances his health so he can be less weary on the journey ahead.
After this the Envoy finally goes out further into the actual void (past the "shadow" void). Brigid normally hears music throughout shadow, but here there is no music or melody. Also, there is no pattern or power, just a silent void. Suddenly, Brigid hears rushing melody similar to that of the Flight of the Valkyrie comes from behind the ship, dramatically faster as the shadow approaches. Silas in a split decision, decides to attempt to ride the wave, this will allow it to push the ship ahead of the coming shadow and remain in the true void. Isabelle covers her ears to drown out some of the melodies as they reach fortississimo. Isabel secured the members on the ship, Gerhardt reinforces the reality of the ship, and Jericho is able to buffer against the massive hit given that it came from his activation of the dark pattern, and Silas is at the helm. As a result of the group efforts, Silas is able to make it through with minor damages to the ship itself and gets pushed deeper and deeper into the void sea… silence again. Falcor speeds up to catch up the the group but failed to reach them and gets absorbed by the shadow just like Elodie who was flying from above. Elodie attempted to use an icon of Isabel from the shadowy-void, but it does not work at all.
A dragonoid creature with translucent skin approaches the ship, slowly gliding near us and doesn’t seem to notice the party. Silas directs the ship to be near an island to get out of the way and it glides past without a problem, leaving quiet atonal, random notes as it passes. Somehow, this is deemed worse than the fortississimo Flight of the Valkyrie from earlier and the silence of the void. All of the creatures which fly around all seem to be flying in the same direction, back towards the shadow that pushed us away. We slowly follow behind them.
Two creatures seem to be squabbling or fighting in the air and Silas directs us to it. It turns out to be a weird creature with “tentacles, eyes and stuff”, assuming some Lovecraftian creature, is being attacked by 20 Dwimmerlaik. Jericho assesses their prowess, and sees there are two leaders who are more than a match in combat for anyone but himself and thinks even he could not take both of them. The rest are at least a match for most of the group, Natasha could probably take any one of them but not two. Thus, even with our best fighters, we could probably only take on half that number at best. However, one of the Dwimmerlaik was injured in the battle with the creature and has fallen behind as the battle continues to move. Jericho takes a net from the ship and uses his sword to become the perfect capture weapon and goes with Isabelle to the falllen creatures, who is with his eldritch horror of a mount. Jericho snares the Dwimmerlaik with his weapon, now a kind of energy net gauntlet, and Isabelle snags the mount to mentally connect and understand it. The horror was mentally restrained and enslaved and Isabelle, in her overwhelming sympathy, releases the Dwimmerlaik control over the creature. In doing so, it looks lost, angry and bloodthirsty. Isabelle sends it away from the party and the Dwimmerlaik to avoid being exposed or damaged. They return to the ship with their captive, by which time Silas has turned the ship to move away from the Dwimmerlaik and the battle. He gives them a wide berth but realizes that the creature, and indeed all the large creatures of the void, seem to be headed back in the direction they came from, where the wave came from, which is where we also need to go. There is a kind of shadow wall now that they are all up against, which reflects actions on the other side.
Innumerable amounts of these horrors approach the wall but don’t move any closer. Isabelle attempts to psychically connect to the Dwimmerlaik and does so, locking up the psyche of the Dwimmerlaik but it somehow leaves small traces of her own, meaning that should someone probe the mind of this Dwimmerlaik , they may find information about her. To Brigid, the melodies from the Dwimmerlaik sound harmonic, but have a few odd notes throughout. It is almost as if something once altered the melody or altered some notes, but became organic over time through the generations.
Silas tries to find a gap in the hordes of creatures up agains the wall. He sees a small eldritch horror and summons it over and asks it about what is going on. “The food.. Its right over there.. I can taste it.. But I can’t reach it.” He gives it a little bit of food but cannot get anything else useful from it.
Silas tries to shoot a harpoon through the wall but it is just a reflection. Attempting to move through the shadow wall results in us still being on the other side, still in the void. During these attempts, Lowen, Jericho and Brigid all attempt to interrogate the Dwimmerlaik. At one point Jericho severs the creature's foot. As a form of torture, Lowen keeps a life-force connection so the Dwimmerlaik can still feel his disconnected foot, even the rotting process. Brigid attempts to "fix" the melody of the creature, and playing his melody back to it without the altered notes which seemed to HIGHLY agitate the Dwimmerlaik, and long hours of various tortures, the Dwimmerlaik claims that they can sometimes go through the ‘barriers’ but he has no control of it, only some do. He also says they were hiding in the pyramid, the maze and the Great Amalgam (note - placeholder name). Brigid attempt to revise the melody but unlocked Isabel’s mental hold on him. Refocusing, I attempt to revise the melody again, focusing on the deeper problems. Brigid had not enough time to completely ‘revise’ the melody, but accented particular aspects of his nature, somehow making him prone and weaker. This made it easier to interrogate. He blamed the fall of the Dwimmerlaik on one particular Gossamer Lord, but does not recall the name. They plan to re-invade Gossamer and other worlds with their approximate million strong army, but do not have a secure opening in which to do so. In the end, the ‘poor’ Dwimmerlaik was set to be handed over to Drake or some other to be further interrogated. We also learn that their number is roughly a million, and they have a city out in the void.
The party managed to get through a portal through to Dragonsport thanks to Natasha’s blade and Netherwing and Celandre’s blood magic with Diedre’s blood as a component. The ship suffered minor damage, mainly aspects that were sticking out from the sides, and Netherwing was pained by aiding this maneuver.