[!quote] First Sparks Today, I cast an illusion no one could see through. Father called it child’s play — a trick for fairs and fools. But when I showed him the wolf at the window and watched the blood drain from his face, I knew: there is power in belief.

Even without substance, fear is real.

[!quote] The Dance of Triggers Why rely on an audience’s gaze? Why perform for them when I can weave cause and effect into the very fabric of a place? I have found a method to bind illusions to events — a sound, a footstep, a heartbeat. They spring to life when I command them, like faithful servants awaiting their cue. I call it a “programmed illusion.”

The thrill of setting a trap no blade can cut… intoxicating.

[!quote] Living Echoes The illusions can be more than simple images. I shape their movements, their words, their reactions. I build performances so convincing that even I forget they are false until I will them gone. Emotion deepens the weave. Anger strengthens it. Fear makes it linger.

The house listens. The house remembers.

[!quote] Beyond the Curtain I glimpsed it today — a vast tapestry, not of image but of reality itself. A landscape reshaped, a castle dissolved and rebuilt in the span of a breath. The spell is called Mirage Arcane. It requires not only will but dominion over truth and lie alike.

When I master this, my enemies will not simply see what is false—they will live in it, until they forget what was ever real.

[!quote] The Last Thread There is no truth but what I weave. Their minds, their senses, their hearts — all are threads for my loom. Let them come. Let them wander halls of sorrow, fields of ash, towers built on screams.

In this place, even hope is but an illusion.

[!quote] Fate-touched Paper Silmirien — I have named it thus, a tether of light woven through ink and intention.

Should this book ever slip from my hands—or worse, from my mind—it will call to me. Not loudly. Not always clearly. But surely, like dawn through mist.

The spell is delicate. It requires a piece of the whole—no mere duplicate, but a splinter drawn from the pages themselves, thinned with care and treated with moon-milk and shadowroot. Then, it is bound with a name I no longer speak.

A name written in invisible ink. A name that sleeps… until the light of a true moon wakes it.

I carry the tether with me always—stitched into my sleeve, close to my skin, where I can feel it thrum with my heartbeat. As long as I live, it will guide me back to this book. But if I am lost… burn the page. Its smoke will find me. Its flame will call me home.

[!quote] The First Thread Pulled The Courts are blind in their rituals. They tend the barrier like farmers tending a crumbling dam — repairing cracks without ever questioning why the waters rise.

The leyline anchors… they are not invincible. They are woven constructs, made by mortal hands long ago, when fear drove them to bind the world in false light. I have walked the temples. I have touched the crystals. I have seen the strands of magic binding them to this plane. Weaken one, and the others strain. Break one, and the whole weave begins to unravel.

The Elders would call it heresy. Treason. Madness. They would be wrong.

In the unraveling, truth waits. In the loosening of bonds, Nidhogg stirs. The path is clear. I need only find the correct threads to pull.

When the time is right, I shall leave this hollow house behind. My true work must be done elsewhere — far from prying eyes, where the new weave can begin.

[!tip] If His True Name is Revealed and Spoken Under the moonlight, the ink on the page shimmers and reveals a name that almost sings itself into the night air—soft, melodic, but unmistakably elven. When spoken aloud, something in the room tightens. The journal snaps closed. All light dims for a breath.

Then, every remaining page flutters, and from their shifting surfaces, a voice—his voice—emerges. Calm. Hollow. Prepared.

“If you’ve come this far, then you already know too much. Or perhaps… you know enough. Enough to stop me. Or to join me.”

A final illusion takes form. Not a memory this time, but a message. A standing echo of the Weaver, still masked, but weary.

He explains just enough: his location is hidden behind a veiled fold in the Feywild, reachable only when three conditions are met—something like “a thread severed, a name spoken, and a light uncast.” These become the party’s next puzzle.

Optional twist: As the name is spoken, the Silmirien page regrows itself from the ashes, forming anew, and now points unwaveringly in a specific direction. The tether is reformed—but now the party holds the other end.

[!tip] True Name The name is elvish and beautiful—perhaps Aelthirion. Or Valesarin. Or a soft syllabled secret that carries melancholy in its phonemes.

[!info] Silmirien Silmirien – “silmi” (gleam/light) + “rien” (woven) — a woven gleam or tether of memory

  • The page bound with his true name is subtly different—thicker, slightly glossy, odorless.
  • It radiates faint warmth when held at night.
  • The name is written in ink made of moon-milk and shadowroot—visible only under moonlight.
  • The name is elvish and beautiful—perhaps Aelthirion.