*Season 1, Module 10* -- “Crossroads of Time” (Eleint 22, 1358 DR)

[Featuring: Clamus, Elron, Fury, Kaliban, Kohira, Napftor & Maxolt]

 

            The seven prisoners are led to a blue tent outside the South Gate.  A tall Oriental steps out, flanked by guards.  He is dressed in white and gold-trimmed finery and his eyes shine with intense blue.  An impressive looking katana hangs at his left side.

 

            “Emperor Tirij-kol,” announces a red-garbed guard.  “Ruler of the Sword Coast and Master of a Thousand Destinies.”  The self-proclaimed Emperor looks over the party and lists their professions- “Well, well, so we’ve finally let out the jolly elven duo and the poor priest.  Now they’ve got some troublesome company.  A thief who thinks he’s a wizard, a misled priest of Hoar and, well, one of our own.  No doubt part of the ambitious resistance.  So who sent you?  Twelyn?  Gorshek?  Ah, I know- Pang.  You’ve got the appropriate weapon.  When I trained under Pang, I thought he was the greatest warrior in the land.  Now he is just an old fool and I am the greatest.”  (DM’s Note: Kohira was indeed taught by Grandmaster Pang and his signature weapon is a katana.  It was Pang who sent the ninja westward to help stop the Krie’lat.)

 

            Before Tirij-kol continues, a brown robed figure appears in the air above them.  His transparent form is unmistakable to Maxolt’s group as Ardrist- “Azoun’s Dragons, besides our vigilance for Krie’lat statuettes, the problem of Thayan organization has peaked.  The Red Wizards have begun an invasion that is headed west.  We estimate that their forces will reach our area in four weeks.  If you can stop the Krie’lat’s chalcedony supply, return to Cormyr as quickly as possible.  Your experience against the Runts and the githyanki could prove invaluable to the war effort.”  The image then fades to nothing.

 

            Tirij-kol is pleased by the news.  “Well, that was inspiring!  Now it is time for your richly deserved rewards.  You will enter Waterdeep, City of the Damned, and will be given a ten-minute head start before I send my guards in after you.  Fair enough?  It is a big city.  You might even survive for a while.  But one thing is certain: It is the last city you will ever be in.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the Realms to conquer.”

 

            The party is shoved through the gates and begins their gauntlet.  The city itself looks like it’s been through a war.  The last time Kaliban and Elron saw it, the races were congregating among their own in different sections of the city.  Most of the buildings are damaged in some way and more than one dead body lies in the street.  The occasional dragon glides menacingly far overhead as the two groups compare their notes on the chalcedony caves, their position, and what they have to do to stop the Krie’lat’s hold on the land.

 

            It doesn’t take long for the Emperor’s guards (six warriors and a wu-jen) to find the group.  Battle is briefly joined, as the Orientals are more than a match for the weakened adventurers.  They manage to evade the forces and hide in the Brokengulf villa.  Three charred corpses lie on the front steps and the left side of the villa is burnt.  Two more burnt bodies lie in the main foyer.  The secret wall-door is open, but the inner door with the handprint mold remains closed.

 

            Napftor laments, “We’re never going to escape and we can’t beat them.  In the first encounter we’ve had we were sorely outmatched and half of our party [Cyric and Antinoa] was killed.  The only reason we’re still alive is so they can crush the hope from us before bringing a slow painful death.”

 

            The party then encounters a ragged Morus Brokengulf hiding in the study.  After an abortive attack, he recognizes the three Waterdhavian adventurers and says, “Thank Tymora!  Am I happy to see someone sane.”  He has survived for weeks without knowing what’s really going on.  When the party brings him up to speed, he says he may have something that can help- “What I am about to show you can never be revealed, for it makes too tempting a treasure for even the most honest of men.”  Taking them to the secret door, Morus places his hand in the mold and the brick door swivels open.  A large chamber, taking up most of the east ground floor of the villa, is within.  The walls glow softly with magical blue light.

 

            In the center stands a device that looks very much like a full-length mirror, except that no glass is inside it.  The base of the object bears odd dials capable of spinning.  There are 4 number rolls on the left and a word with 2 other number rolls on the right side.  “This,” says Morus, “is a time traveling device.  Those left numbers indicate the year and the right dials are for which month and day you want to travel to.  By setting them and saying the command word, anyone passing through the frame is transported to the set date at whatever time of day they left.  At least, that is what I was told.  My father showed it to me when I was younger and I have never known anyone to use it.  Too many horrible things could happen.  Or, again, so I was told.”

 

            Some healing potions are also found in this chamber and the PC’s decide to go back in time to a time after the mage battle that supposedly created psionics (and thus the statuette stones’ power).  They set the device for late summer, 1308, for the battle occurred in late spring of that year.  This jump brings them into the home of Morus’ father, whom imparts the appropriate date of the battle (a big occurrence at the time).  He eagerly helps the party, believing that anyone coming out of the time device must have the family’s blessing.  While here, a squad of githyanki strikes at the PC’s, having followed them unseen from the future.  The monsters are dealt with and the party reenters the device.

 

            Arriving on the morning of Mirtul 3, 1308, the party discovers the time of the battle is high noon.  Many noble families are packing lunches to eat while they watch the battle.  The reigning Brokengulf, Heiron, agrees to let the party return after their mission so long as they disturb nothing and speak to no one in the villa.  Napftor is utterly amazed at the device and its applications and shares the following un-Lathander-like words with the rest of the group:

 

            “This device is so incredible.  The infinite ways to use this beneficially are mind-boggling.  We can travel to dungeons we’ve already been in and bypass the traps we didn’t know about before.  We can defeat our foes before they become powerful.  As adventurers, this device brings us to a crossroads.  Immediate wealth and power are literally at our fingertips.  And, really, aren’t those the dream of every man?”

 

            The party arrives at the designated battleground south of the city to find a disappointed crowd.  It seems the mages, Gluchesse and Narlek, have gone into some nearby caves and prohibited the citizens from following for their own safety.  As the crowds disperse, the party enters the caves.  Descending through familiar territory, Kaliban recognizes the cubicle he had been held captive in for the last 3 months.  On the wall had been written the words “NEVER GIVE UP” in elvish, but they were not here now.  Kaliban guessed it was probably he, now in the past, that carved those words, so he carved them again.

 

            Entering an underground junction of caverns, the party finds two men with luminescent globes on their shoulders.  “So much for warnings, Narleck,” says the tall hairless man to his stout companion.  Both men wear lavish robes with dark blue sashes.  They are down here studying some old inscriptions and the mage battle was just a ruse to keep out others while they worked.  Narlek says to the PC’s, “Don’t you know there’s about to be an epic struggle of magickry down here?  Get out while you still can.”

 

            These words prove prophetic as a mind flayer group attacks them all, subduing them and taking everyone to their lair.  The flayers’ stuns wear off before the procession enters a huge cavern filled with more of the octopus-headed humanoids and their many slaves.  The group is led up a staircase and around a briny pool of fluid and brains.  On the outskirts of the plateau holding the pool are many hollows wherein illithids lie unmoving.  Numerous waiting cages stand on the other side and the party and mages are thrown into one, their weapons into another.

 

            Other disgusting prisoners are in their cage, one a human (the last chalcedony miner) waiting to have his brain eaten, another a black furred creature with deep green eyes, leathery skin and large pointed ears.  This creature tells them that they are in a food pen.  He also describes what the mind flayers are doing climbing into stone cubicles:

 

            “They are preparing for the most important rite in the mind flayer community- the Convergence.  That pool of brains you passed is collectively known as the elder brain of this community.  The brains are all that’s left of dead illithid bodies but these minds continue to function as one.  Illithid young are also raised in that pool.  But this elder brain is dying and the Convergence will pass its knowledge and mental powers to the brains of one hundred of the most worthy illithids, which will greatly enhance them.”

 

            When asked how it knows all this, it explains that it was an illithid until it went against the elder brain’s dictums and they graced another ancient rite upon its form.  Both Gluchesse and Narlek agree that this Convergence has to be stopped.  And they think they have a way to do it.  “If we can get to our staves,” says Narlek, “we can stop these a**holes cold.  But we need someone to decoy the flayers while we’re performing what we have in mind.  The outcome will more than likely kill us and the decoys but the resulting cave in will surely destroy the elder brain.”

 

            Maxolt knows that the mages’ staves are actually staves of power and he thinks they’re going to break them and cause a massive magical explosion.  Through some discussion, the PC’s decide that they can’t allow that to happen because who knows what residual effects would come from two retributive strikes among so much mental energies.  They agree that this is what they’ve come back in time to stop.  A breakout is planned with everyone in the cage.  The drow guard is grappled through the bars, his keys taken, and the escape is made.

 

            The other prisoners rush toward the mind flayers tending the elder brain as the mages and PC’s go for the cage with their equipment.  When the party moves to stop the mages from breaking their staves, Napftor says, “It’s foolhardy to allow these independent, mobile mind flayers gain so much mental power.  We don’t know for sure that the staff energy is the cause of the psionic statuettes or not!  I say we just save ourselves and let the past be the past.”  When the party ignores him, Napftor lunges at his nearest friend at begins to strike him barehanded.

 

            Meanwhile, the slaves are being overpowered by the mind flayers and a few of the monsters head toward the cage area.  Maxolt assumes his true draconic form and one of the mages is knocked out.  Kaliban retrieves this one’s staff while the rest of the group slays Napftor (actually a doppleganger sent by the Krie’lat) and climbs aboard Furnok/Max.  The remaining mage performs a retributive strike as the party soars across the great cavern and escapes to the surface.

 

            Hoping they’ve done what needed to be done, the party returns through the time device to the present.  Emerging from the time device room, they find Morus being arrested by the Watch and their missing and dead friends returned- Connor Blackthorn, Cyric, Antinoa (now only a fighter) and Napftor.  An angry Morus says, “Well, I hope you’re satisfied.  Our family’s most prized secret revealed because of the Lord’s decree.  You won’t hear the last of this.  This villa is mine and I don’t care what Piergeiron says about it.”

 

            Their fellow adventurers bring them up to speed on the changed timeline:

* it’s been 3 months since the group ousted the Krie’lat and their plot to smuggle monsters into Waterdeep for a surprise attack.

* Morus Brokengulf, already a procurer of odd beasts, was unknowingly harboring the oriental group’s forces.  Unfortunately for him, he is still liable under the “monster contraband” laws.  In the course of the party’s official acceptance of the property, Morus had to reveal the time device chamber to them (exiting the chamber is where they entered the current timeline)

* wild magic is still around but everything is returning to normal following the battle with Myrkul’s avatar last week.

 

            The time traveling group brings their restored companions up to date on what has transpired and the group finally has a chance to relax.

 

DM’s Note: This was my best module to date (at least in my mind).  Time traveling, joining the old PC’s with the new, everything that I wanted to accomplish had been done.  Previous modules that involved psionics or the Krie’lat were easily explained: In “No Regrets”, the dart that caused the party to enter Napftor’s mind was caused by magical means, “Sightseeing” was the same except the party had to walk back to Waterdeep because Trinaso was not there to teleport them.

 

The reason that the new party did not return to their own locales when the timeline was changed will be investigated in the next season.  (Kohira is really the only one to be fully reasoned.)  It was a joy to weave time travel into a D&D module and it would not be the last time.  But now, the party had a base to work from and, as Drew and Ryan would return soon to school, I could account for their absence in play by saying their characters were either at the villa or out on the town.

 

            As my Dm-ing skills grew, I wanted to reward each player by investing a module or two in their backgrounds.  In Season 2, more focus would be given to the individuals and the grandiose plot would wait until the end of the season.  But first the group needed unification (i.e. a name) and this was at the top of my agenda.

Module Rating:  ****