# The Ethereal Trip — Veil Dust Subplot

## Overview

**Veil Dust** is a narcotic that temporarily thins the user's perception of planar boundaries, allowing them to see — and partially interact with — the Ethereal Plane. It's trippy, disorienting, beautiful, terrifying, and addictive. In this oneshot, it serves as the bridge between subplots: the drug that reveals the murder's true nature, Skein's existence, and the thin point's danger.

Vetch is the entry point. He wants a fix and knows where Orenn hid the last packet he confiscated from him. If the players recover the Workroom cache, Vetch offers to guide a shared trip. Taking it is optional but opens doors that nothing else does.

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## Obtaining Veil Dust

| Source | Method | Notes |
|--------|--------|-------|
| **Deep Cellar Workroom** | Follow Vetch's lead through the concealed door; locked drawer, DC 14 | 4 doses: three diagnostic doses and Vetch's confiscated packet. The Workroom is the first chamber below. |
| **Kitchen herb rack** | DC 14 Nature/Herbalism Kit | Identifies dried nightwhisper as a Veil Dust component. Orenn's preparation marks match the bundles in the hidden Workroom. |
| **Vetch** | He has nothing. That's the problem. | He asks for one dose as payment for the lead and offers to guide any PCs who take the remaining doses beside him. |

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## Taking Veil Dust — Mechanics

### Onset
Immediate. The dust is inhaled. Effects begin within 6 seconds (1 round).

### Initial Save
**DC 13 Constitution saving throw.**
- **Failure:** Incapacitated for 1 round as the perception shift overwhelms the user. Vivid, uncontrolled visions — the DM describes what the Ethereal Plane looks like before the user can act.
- **Success:** The transition is smooth. The user sees both planes overlaid on each other and can act normally.

### Duration
- **Standard:** 1 minute (10 rounds). Enough for observation, not exploration.
- **At the thin point (cellar):** 10 minutes. The natural weakness in the boundary amplifies the effect.
- **Double dose:** 10 minutes regardless of location, but requires a DC 15 CON save or suffer 1 level of exhaustion when it ends.

### Effects While Active

**Ethereal Sight.** The user can see into the Ethereal Plane as if under *See Invisibility*, but specifically for ethereal entities and objects. The Material Plane appears washed out and grey; the Ethereal Plane overlays it in faint, translucent detail.

**Ethereal Interaction.** The user can touch, speak to, and be touched by ethereal entities. This is *not* full planar travel — the user is still physically on the Material Plane. But their sensory and tactile connection crosses the boundary. In mechanical terms:
- Can target ethereal creatures with attacks and spells
- Can be targeted by ethereal creatures
- Cannot move through solid objects or fly (still physically present)

**Perception Enhancement.** Advantage on Perception checks while the dust is active. The user notices things at the boundary: cracks in wards, planar residue, ethereal trails.

**Hallucination Risk.** Each round while the dust is active, roll a DC 12 Wisdom save. On a failure, the user experiences a **hallucination** (see table below). Hallucinations are brief (1 round) and don't incapacitate, but they're disorienting and might influence the user's actions.

### Comedown
When the effect ends:
- **WIS save DC 14:** On failure, the user feels the pull of addiction — a deep, aching desire to see the Ethereal Plane again. For the rest of the session, they have disadvantage on Wisdom saves against taking another dose if offered.
- **Side effect:** Disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws for 1 hour after the trip ends (the boundary in the user's mind is still thin).
- **Vetch's warning:** "The flat world comes back. It always does. And every time it's harder to live in."

---

## The Trip — What Players See

### In the Main Hall

The main hall overlaid with its ethereal echo. Everything is grey, translucent, *thin*. Living creatures glow faintly — warm colors for strong life force, dim for weak. The candle flames appear as pale blue phantoms. The stone walls are semi-transparent, and behind them: nothing. The grey void of the deep Ethereal, stretching into infinity.

**Specific observations:**
- **Bren** glows dimly — his life force is being drained. Beside him, **Skein** is clearly visible: a knotted spider-thing with tendrils in his skull. It reacts to being seen — it *notices* that it's being noticed and shrinks back, pulling its tendrils tighter.
- **The bar (where Orenn died):** A dark, acrid stain on the ethereal side. The Brand of Spite left a residue — a scorch mark that exists on both planes. It smells of copper and old fire.
- **The fireplace bell:** Glows faintly with old enchantment. The wards it's connected to are visible as thin lines of light running down through the floor — most of them flickering, cracked, barely holding.
- **The curtained booth:** Nothing supernatural, but its privacy makes it a useful place to compare what the user sees without alerting either faction.
- **The cultist table:** Dalla glows dim. A hair-thin silver filament passes through her chest, bends toward empty space where Nessa is not, then pulls taut against the tavern's lockdown and vanishes into its boundary. DC 15 Arcana recognizes a sympathetic conduit leading to a projected consciousness outside the inn. Essek's wrist brand glows amber — it's ethereal in nature, visible on both planes. Haddon has a faint aura of arcane residue.

### In the Cellar

The cellar is transformed. The stone walls glow with the ghost-light of old wards — thin, silvery lines, the summoners' long-dead work. Most of them are dark now, drained, bleeding shadow instead of light. The old sigils appear as *wounds* in the ethereal fabric, their light bleeding away toward the thin point.

**The thin point** is visible as a **tear** — not metaphorical, a literal rip in the grey fabric of the Ethereal Plane. The Material Plane shows through it in muted color. Standing near it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.

**Xarrul's nest:** Shadows coiled in a corner of the ethereal cellar. Claw marks on the ethereal stone. The faint, acrid smell of the Brand of Spite. If Xarrul is present, it's visible: a gaunt, angular figure with charred-paper skin and burning amber eyes. It sees the users immediately. It *smiles*.

**The binding circle:** Blazes with silver light in the Ethereal Plane. It's intact and potent — a beacon of old, careful craftsmanship (the summoners', not Orenn's). Anything bound within it on the Material Plane is also constrained on the Ethereal Plane. Xarrul avoids it.

---

## Hallucination Table

Roll d8 each round on a failed WIS save:

| d8 | Hallucination |
|----|---------------|
| 1 | **Echoes of the Dead.** You see a translucent figure that might be Orenn, standing behind the bar, polishing a glass. He looks at you, opens his mouth, and says nothing. He's gone when you blink. |
| 2 | **The Walls Breathe.** The stone walls pulse slowly, like a sleeping creature's ribcage. You feel the building's age — centuries of secrets soaked into the stone. |
| 3 | **Thread Everywhere.** For a moment, everyone in the room is connected by thin, knotted threads — like Skein's tendrils, but linking every person to every other. The threads vibrate with tension. Then they're gone. |
| 4 | **The Floor is Glass.** The floor becomes transparent. Beneath it, the cellar — and beneath the cellar, the deep Ethereal, grey and infinite. You feel vertigo even though you're standing on solid ground. |
| 5 | **Wrong Reflection.** If near any reflective surface (a glass, a puddle, a blade), your reflection doesn't match. It moves a beat behind you. It looks scared. |
| 6 | **Orenn's Voice.** You hear Orenn's voice, calm and clear: "Check the cellar. The walls are down." When you turn, no one is there. (This may or may not be a hallucination. The DM decides.) |
| 7 | **Something Watched.** The certainty that something very large, very old, and very patient just looked at you. Not Xarrul — something beyond even the fiend. A pressure on the back of your skull. Then it's gone. (This is flavor. It's the deep Ethereal. It's nothing. Probably.) |
| 8 | **Beautiful.** For one round, the Ethereal Plane is breathtaking. The void isn't empty — it's full of light, faint and distant, like stars seen from underwater. You understand, for a moment, why Vetch can't stop coming back. |

---

## The Shared Trip — Dramatic Beats

If players trip with Vetch, the following beats play out:

### Beat 1: The Wonder
Vetch guides them through the initial perception shift. He's calm, experienced, almost gentle. "Don't fight it. Let it settle. There — see? The world has another layer." This is the only time Vetch is the most competent person in the room.

### Beat 2: The Discovery
Players see Skein attached to Bren. If they didn't know about the possession, this is the reveal. If they did, they can now see the full extent of it — the tendrils, the way Skein pulses as it feeds, the way Bren's life force dims where the threads connect.

### Beat 3: The Trail
Near the bar, the ethereal residue of the Brand of Spite leads downward. A trail of dark, acrid energy, like smoke frozen in air. It leads to the cellar stairs. The murder left a scar on both planes.

### Beat 4: The Threat
If players follow the trail to the cellar, they see the thin point and (if Xarrul is there) the fiend. This is the moment the murder mystery becomes something else entirely. Xarrul is aware of them. It doesn't attack immediately — it watches, amused. Voice Thief activates: a whisper in someone's head. "You see me. How interesting. Do your friends know what you've found?"

If they noticed Dalla's silver filament, Xarrul looks directly along it before adding: „To dítě není v tomhle domě. Udělali z matky cestu a pak se divili, že krvácejí oba její konce.” It will not yet explain further; the stolen conduit extract is the proof.

### Beat 5: The Comedown
The dust wears off. The Ethereal Plane fades. The grey, translucent world collapses back into the flat, mundane tavern. It feels like going deaf after hearing music. Vetch shudders. "Every time," he mutters. "Every time it's worse."

---

## Read-Aloud: The Trip Begins

> *Prášek chutná jako mrazivý vzduch a měď. Vdechnete ho a na okamžik — jeden krátký, tichý okamžik — se nic nestane.*
>
> *Pak se svět rozpůlí.*
>
> *Ne rozpadne. Rozpůlí — jako byste celý život dívali na obraz a teď vám někdo ukázal, že ten obraz je namalovaný na skle a za sklem je další místnost. Všechno, co vidíte, je pořád tady — stoly, židle, tváře — ale je to najednou průsvitné, vybledlé, jako vyrudlá fotografie přeložená přes realitu. A za tím — za tím šedým, průsvitným stínem světa, který znáte — je něco jiného. Éterická rovina.*
>
> *Je šedá. Rozlehlá. Nekonečná. A není prázdná.*

## Read-Aloud: The Comedown

> *Skončí to bez varování. Svět za sklem zmizí. Šedá hloubka, průsvitné stíny, éterický opar — všechno se stáhne jako odliv a zpátky zůstane jen hospoda. Jen kameny, dřevo, svíčky a tvrdá realita bez druhé vrstvy.*
>
> *Cítíte se, jako byste ohluchli po koncertě. Svět je plochý. Obyčejný. Nedostatečný.*
>
> *Vetch vedle vás tiše zasténá. "Víte," řekne potichu, "jednou jsem četl, že slepí lidé nevidí tmu. Nevidí nic. Nemají čím vidět. Přesně tak se teď cítím. Jako bych neměl čím vidět to, co jsem právě viděl."*
>
> *Odmlčí se. Podívá se na své ruce.*
>
> *"Půjčil byste mi na ještě jednu dávku?"*
