• Party can discover the [[Weaver’s Journal]], depicting his growing interest in fear and illusion.
  • The Weaver’s abandoned journal charts his path from illusionist prodigy to would-be liberator of Nidhogg.
  • It ends at the cusp of his rebellion against the Seasonal Courts, outlining his belief that unraveling the leyline barrier is the key to freeing the Great Shadow.
  • No mention is made of the Cult of the Eclipse yet — their alliance will form after the Weaver leaves the ancestral home to build his new stronghold elsewhere.

🕸️ 5-Room Dungeon: Weaver’s Abandoned Castle#

[!tip] Summary

Room	Encounter Type	Description
1	Entrance Guardian	Illusory patchwork knight tests them.
2	Puzzle/Roleplay	Mirror that forces them to confront personal fears.
3	Trick/Setback	Frayed Loom triggers unstable Mirage Arcane.
4	Climactic Battle	Battle the Echo of the Weaver + Fearspawn.
5	Reward/Revelation	Find the journal, leyline clues, and last threads.

Room 1: Guardian of Forgotten Threads (Entrance Challenge)#

Scene:

• The players arrive at the cracked, ivy-choked gates of the ancestral castle.
• Crumbling archway and broken iron gates.

• Beyond it, the remains of a once-regal garden now twisted and odd.
• [[Living Echoes of the Weaver’s Garden]]
• Fountains that once danced with crystal water now spill only mist, pooling around the bases like restless ghosts.
• The flowerbeds are the strangest sight:
  • Some flowers still bloom vividly — roses with petals of living flame, ivy that shimmers like silver.
  • Others are fading mid-bloom — blossoms frozen half-open, their colors bleeding into gray.
  • Some patches of garden flicker unnaturally, blinking between vibrant life and skeletal death every few heartbeats
• Above it all, the trees sway softly in a breeze the players cannot feel. Their leaves fall — but rather than drifting downward, they hang for a moment in the air, then dissolve into motes of light, as if the garden itself is slowly forgetting it ever lived.
• At the center of the garden stands an old stone arch, entwined with dead vines. It was once a ceremonial place — weddings, duels of honor, pacts sworn — but now the air around it hums with latent, broken magic.
• The smell is bittersweet: earth after rain… and something like the memory of fire.
• Mist seeps from the stones, clinging low like restless spirits.
• As the party approaches the threshold, something is triggered.

Challenge:

• An Illusory Guardian woven of fading magic and ancestral pride, - assembled from strands of mist and light.
  • Armor resembles tapestry embroidery rather than metal — seams visible, like stitched cloth.
  • Its voice is layered — male and female tones overlapping
• It demands the players “prove they are true heirs of the loom” — a riddle or show of skill is required to pass without violence.
  • “Threads fray. Names fade. If you are worthy of this house, weave them anew.”
  • The Guardian presents three riddles or prompts, each representing a concept important to the family that once lived here — like Duty, Fear, and Ambition.
    • “What binds a house beyond blood?” Duty, Oath, Promise
    • “What weapon wounds deeper than any blade?” Fear, Doubt
    • “What must be abandoned to grasp true power?” Pride, Innocence
• If they succeed, The Guardian bows, stating:
  • “Threads mended. Pass into the halls where memory still walks.”
• If they fail, it attacks as a shifting illusory entity (resistant to physical damage, vulnerable to radiant or dispelling magic).
  • AC/DC 16 | HP 95 (71-119) | Atk/Prof +7 | DPR 35 | # Atks 3 | Dmg 12 (3d6 + 2)
  • Legendary action: “Weave Again” — the Guardian reshapes its form, forcing a DC 15 Wisdom save or one creature sees a fake terrain obstacle.

Room 2: The Mirror of Inner Truth (Puzzle/Roleplay Challenge)#

Scene:

• Beyond the ruined garden and the gatekeeper’s test, the players ascend a cracked marble staircase leading into a dim hallway.
• Dust drifts in the pale light filtering through shattered windows, and along the left wall stretches a series of mirrors — once magnificent, now tarnished and cracked.
• _All but one._At the far end of the hall, a single pristine mirror gleams, untouched by time.
• It is a tall oval, framed in twisted silver that seems almost to move when unobserved. The glass itself has a faint pulse, like the heartbeat of something slumbering within.

Challenge: As a living creature approaches within 10 feet of the mirror:

The mirror ripples — not like water, but like a curtain stirred by breath.

For a moment, your reflection is yours… and then it is not.

You see yourself still, but marked by something unseen — fear, regret, doubt — woven into the edges of your form, bleeding from your eyes, clinging to your shadow.

• Each party member sees a vision of a personal fear, failure, or regret reflected back at them.
• To proceed, they must either:
  • Confront (roleplay through) their vision. - roleplay and get minor reward or psychic damage
  • Dispel the illusion with magic. - DC 15 dispel magic or arcana
  • Accept their weakness openly - see a scar appear on their reflection, but feel stronger

🛡️ Skreek (Aarakocra Paladin)#

Fear: Failure to protect the people he loves.
Vision:
Skreek stands alone atop a broken battlement.
Around him lie the bodies of his friends — Shad, Slumpet, Toby — their weapons fallen from limp hands.
Above, a dark sun bleeds across the sky, and shadow creatures crawl from the cracks he failed to seal.

🎵 Shadicar (Half-Elf Bard)#

Fear: Becoming irrelevant and forgotten.
Vision:
Shad performs before an endless crowd — but they are silent, faceless, unmoving.
As he plays, his music becomes a hollow echo, thin and broken.
One by one, the audience turns their backs and disappears into mist.

🗡️ Slumpet (Gnome Rogue)#

Fear: Being betrayed or abandoned by his own choices.
Vision:
Slumpet stands before a shattered mirror — each shard showing a different version of himself:

• a thief caught in a snare, a soldier left behind, a shadow fading alone.
• Behind him, unseen, the trusted hands of friends and mentors raise blades against his back.

⚔️ Toby (Half-Elf Blood Hunter)#

Fear: Losing control to the darkness within.
Vision:
Toby sees herself reflected in a black mirror —
her veins pulsing with shadow, her hands monstrous, her eyes vacant and cold.
All around her, the world burns, and she smiles without realizing it.

[!tip] Empty Loom For a moment, the mirror shudders — and beyond your reflection, you see it:

a vast loom, threads snapping in a wind you cannot feel, the world itself beginning to come undone.

Room 3: The Frayed Loom (Trick/Setback)#

Scene:
The party enters a vast circular chamber deep within the castle.

• The walls are engraved with ancient patterns of thread and knotwork, glowing faintly.
• In the center stands a large loom itself — a grand, many-armed device wrought of darkwood and silver, large enough to weave banners the size of sails.
• It leans drunkenly to one side. Threads dangle torn and tangled.
• A sickly pulse travels through the floor — as if the castle’s lifeblood is bleeding into the Loom, and failing.
• Sight: Faint golden threads twitch across the floor like dying veins.
• Sound: An irregular creaking, like ropes straining aboard a sinking ship.
• Smell: Dust, old magic, and a bitter ozone tang of something unraveling

[!tip] Empty Loom Vision The world falls away like torn cloth. You stand in endless white, beneath a sky that has forgotten how to be blue.

Before you looms a colossal frame, ancient beyond reckoning — a loom whose threads once sang with light and life.

Now, you watch as strand by strand, the weave unravels. Names you once knew. Faces you once loved. Places you called home.

They snap, one by one, vanishing into a silence so deep you feel it crushing your heart from the inside out.

There is no malice here. No violence. Only the slow, inevitable undoing of all that ever was.

And somewhere beyond the empty frame… something stirs, reaching through the cracks you cannot yet see.

Challenge:

• Interacting with the loom triggers a partial Mirage Arcane.
• The castle transforms around them: walls vanish, floors fall away into endless mist, the room rotates. You look down and see you are no longer on the ground but standing on a wooden disk floating in the mist.
• They must navigate shifting terrain and avoid “falling” into the false void until they stabilize the loom’s magic (skill challenge: Arcana, Perception, Athletics).
• Skill Challenge: 3 successes before 3 failures at Insight, Perception, Investigation, Arcana to “stabilize” their perceptions enough to find the real exit.
  • A player can attempt to calm the Loom (Arcana or Religion check DC 17) by weaving a minor illusion of stability — or by burning away frayed threads with radiant magic.

Setback:

• Minor exhaustion or psychic damage if they fall into the illusions too often.

Room 4: The Echo of the Weaver (Climactic Battle or Challenge)#

Scene:
At the heart of the crumbling castle lies the throne room — and it still clings to a kind of broken majesty.

• Great stained-glass windows line the far wall — but the colors are drained, flickering like old memories.
• The tapestries that once depicted the lineage of the family that lived here hang inverted, their threads pulling away from their forms like unraveling ghosts.
• The blackstone throne itself sits atop a dais of cracked marble. As you step into the room, a figure materialized on the throne. Seated there, motionless, a young regal elven man, but the form is semi-transparent, woven of smoke, memory, and sorrow. It blinks slowly, as if struggling to remember why it was placed here.

[!tip] Echo Monologue “You come among broken threads, seeking a tapestry already torn beyond mending.

This house —” (his hand stirs faintly) “— once wove oaths and dreams alike… a loom strong enough to bind seasons to stone, stars to memory.”

“I tended it once. I who was called…”_ (he pauses) “Weaver.”

(The name falls from his lips like ash. Around you, the stained glass trembles, a high keening almost too soft to hear. Tapestries twitch as if stirred by an unseen wind. The whole castle seems to draw a breath — not of life, but of memory, pulling taut around you.)

“I wove light and shadow into a single thread, believing I might master both. But light frays. Shadow hungers. And now, only hollow threads remain…
And you, little sparks, dancing in the ruins of memory.”

(His head tilts, eyes settling on Shadicar.)

“It was you, wasn’t it? The note that struck first. The hand that called fire to the weave. The melody behind the final unraveling.”

(He stands, expression unreadable — not fury, but something colder. A sorrow that forgot how to weep.)

“That act cannot be overlooked. Willingly or not, your soul is now entwined in the pattern — the price required to rebuild what you destroyed.”

(Then, turning to the others, voice sharpening to a thread’s edge)

“Tell me: will you mend what you cannot even see? Or will you cut the weave, and call the unmaking mercy?”

Challenge:

• The Weaver’s echo offers the players a deal: “Swear yourselves to truth unbound, and pass freely.”
• If they refuse (likely), he attacks, commanding fearspawn creatures born of their own nightmares.
• The echo uses illusory duplicates, fear effects, and battlefield control (hallways twist, doors vanish mid-combat).

The Echo of the Weaver#

[!tip] One line stat block AC/DC 16 | HP 145 (109-181) | Atk/Prof +8 | DPR 53 | # Atks 3 | Dmg 18 (3d10 + 2)

• Resistance to nonmagical damage, psychic damage.
• Immune to Charmed, Frightened, Grappled, Restrained
• Vulnerability: Radiant damage, spells that reveal truth (like True Seeing or See Invisibility grants advantage against its effects).

Abilities:#

• Threads of Dread. (Multiattack)
  • The Echo fires three psychic threads at targets he can see within 120 feet.
  • Ranged Spell Attack: +8 to hit
  • Hit: 18 (3d10+2) psychic damage per thread.
  • (Visual: thin, needle-like threads of dark energy spiral outward, targeting the minds of enemies.)
• Fracture Reality: (Recharge 6) — The Echo fractures the terrain. Players must succeed on a Dexterity save (DC 15) or become Restrained by ghostly threads for 1 round.
• Legendary Action (3 per round):
  • Shift Form (1/round): Teleport 30 feet to an unoccupied space he can see.
  • Summon Shadow Wolf (Costs 2 Actions): Summon a Shadow Wolf in dim light or shadow within 30 feet. Max 4 wolves active at once.
• Tethered Fear - Creatures who are Frightened by any effect take double psychic damage from Threads of Dread.
• Shadow Anchor - When reduced to half HP, the room becomes lightly obscured. The Echo gains half cover while standing still.

Shadow Wolf#

[!tip] one line stat block AC/DC 13 | HP 45 (34-56) | Atk/Prof +5 | DPR 17 | # Atks 2 | Dmg 9 (2d6 + 2)

• Illusory Form - When a Shadow Wolf takes damage for the first time on a turn, it can use its reaction to gain advantage on its next attack roll or saving throw before the end of its next turn.
• Pack Fright - If an ally Shadow Wolf is within 5 ft. of the target, the target must make a DC 12 Wisdom save or become Frightened until the end of its next turn.

Room 5: The Journal and the Last Thread (Reward/Revelation)#

Scene:
Beyond the throne, hidden in a simple study (still intact amid the ruin), they find the [[Weaver’s Journal]] tucked among abandoned papers and unfinished spells.

Reward:

• Full access to the journal entries we wrote together.
• A blank page with the ominous phrase: “Only the last thread remains.”
• A damaged map showing the leyline anchor points — hinting at the Hollow Thresholds.
• Perhaps a minor magic item — something humble, like an Illusionist’s Needle (lets a player sew minor illusions into clothes or fabric).

🌑 Final Echo of the Weaver’s Castle#

As you leave the broken halls behind,
the air stirs once more — not with life, but with memory.
And you hear it:
a voice almost lost to the crumbling stone,
whispering as if only to itself —

“We are all threads in the end…
and all threads must fray.”

Secret Standing Stone Chamber#

[!info] Summary

• A hidden tapestry conceals a narrow spiral stair descending beneath the castle.
• The stairway walls shift from elegant illusions to rough ancient stone.
• The chamber is a natural dome of untouched bedrock with faint quartz veins.
• A tall obsidian standing stone stands at the center with a needle-eye hole near its top.
• A traditional teleportation circle is inscribed around the stone’s base, dusty but intact.
• The air feels unnaturally still, heavy with ancient leyline energy.
• The chamber feels older than the castle, as if the castle was built to guard it.

The hidden passageway revealed itself with a quiet sigh, stone grinding softly against stone as an archway folded open behind a faded tapestry. Cold air breathed out to greet them, carrying with it the scent of old earth, untouched for centuries.

The stairs were narrow and wound downward like a coiled serpent. As they descended, the walls retained the elegant touch of the castle above—woven tapestries depicting shifting illusions of forest scenes and silver-threaded runes glowing faintly under their torchlight. But with each step, those decorations became sparser, and the walls roughened, stone losing its chiseled perfection for something older and truer.

Finally, the spiral ended in a small antechamber. Ahead lay an arched doorway, its keystone carved with the same delicate sigils the Weaver had used throughout the castle. Beyond the arch was the chamber itself.

It felt like stepping into a place forgotten by time. The walls here were untouched bedrock, curving naturally into an uneven dome. Veins of quartz and mineral glimmered faintly, catching the torchlight like trapped stars. The air carried a stillness that pressed against their ears, as if sound itself hesitated to intrude.

At the chamber’s heart stood a tall obsidian standing stone, its surface smooth but bearing the faint whorls and grooves of natural formation. Near its top, a small oval hole had been carved through, like the eye of a needle. Around its base was a circle inscribed into the floor: precise, geometric sigils interlocking into a traditional teleportation circle. The ring of runes was filled with dust and flecks of moss now, but the engravings remained sharp, undimmed by the centuries.

The chamber felt different from the castle above. Older. Unclaimed. As though the castle itself had been built here for the sole purpose of guarding this place, like a shell protecting a pearl hidden in the earth. The leyline energy was palpable, humming beneath their feet, vibrating up through bone and sinew in a way that made the hairs on their arms stand on end.

Uncertainty tightened in their chests at the silent, watching presence of the stone. Yet curiosity pulled them forward, hearts pounding with the understanding that this place was not built for them, but was now offering itself to them. The echoes of its long slumber seemed to whisper through the dim, “You may yet find your way.”