Tag Archives: Chronomancy

Vorgoth, Raiden, Bandesingh, and Shasherak

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The Crimson Calling has arrived at their camp site east of Nodden-Torr, and the rangers are finalizing the details before camp is truly struck. Alexis has wrapped his winter blanket around him. He waits until the four others are near enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice.

“Good job” Nodding at Gustav, Ca’armine, and Rask. “Before we settle in. A thought gnawing at me since the fire lake. At the time when I spoke with Vorgoth, I was just giving you all my best translations, but I was also distracted by listening to him. He said a few things that require reflection.”

A silver piece starts over his knuckles.

“I’d given him the name Bandesingh, and that he means to bring back Ath and put the world in darkness. He’d never heard of the man in his life.”

“He said: ‘Bandesingh. Another one who mistakes certainty for wisdom.'”

The coin walks.

“Then: ‘So. Shasherak has found another road. The dragon believed he would.'”

He lets that stand a moment.

“A few ways I can take ‘another road’.”

“One. Bandesingh is the road. Plain reading. I asked all of you a while back whether Bandesingh learned his trade from Shasherak or whether two men arrived at the same answer on their own. If Vorgoth’s right, that’s answered.” Alexis shugs as-if a mystery could be checked off his list.

“Two. Another road to a Tear, not to this Tear.” Alexis points to his belt pouch “Bandesingh has two. If what Shasherak wanted was one of these and not our particular one, he got it centuries ago, and we never really thwarted Shasherak.”

“Three. Another road to what he actually wanted, which was to be a god. The Tear in the time-vault was one way. He found a different one.”

“Four.” The coin stops. “‘The dragon believed he would.’ He planned for a man to go around him. Whatever he built in there, he built it knowing it would be walked past, and then he left it to five strangers seven hundred years (or longer) later.” A slight shrug, and a nod off to the side. “There’s a possibility that we were the arrangement the Dragon made for losing.”

He pockets the coin.

“But back to Vorgoth.”

“I handed him the name of Bandesingh, which he had never heard and two lines about a man alive right now. He didn’t ask me a single question. He set him beside Shasherak on the spot.”

“Earlier in that conversation I’d said Raiden. He said, ‘You say Raiden, the last true king. I saw him once in the flames.'”

“Vorgoth has stood in that room since at least some time in the 2nd age. Raiden doesn’t rise until a minimum of one hundred and sixty years after that. He cannot have seen him. Not face-to-face.”

“So. He sees forward in that fire. Or standing outside of time he’s able to see time flow outside the time-vault, which would make that fire room a stranger place than we initially gathered.”

Alexis’ tone shifts to light-hearted, almost joking “Or he has simply met enough men like Bandesingh to know one by the smell.”

The coin starts walking his fingers again and Alexis looks at his companions for any possible insights they might have.

Pre-Departure Checklist

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The last morning at the camp, before anything comes down. Alexis has his notebook open on one knee and waits until the four of them are close enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice.

“I’ve made a list. Two halves. The first half is things I need from you.”

He turns the notebook around long enough for them to see there’s a full page of it, then turns it back.

“The three of you. I’ve watched Rask these last weeks and I know what I’m getting. Gus, Carm, Red, I want the same from each of you before we walk. What advancements in your specialties?”

“The shield. We start at the knight’s cairn. Rask’s old shield is the other way to solve this, although it went with the horses, which is its own problem and further down the page.”

“Red’s armor. Rebuilt, replace, or we just move on with a more free-moving Red?.” Alexis moves on, but with a clear expectation that Ethelred will let him know.

“Food. Gus. Going north. How many days around for us to get from here to a place where we can easily get more food? How long do you need to get us the food we need?”

“The nature of Frostpass is an unknown in this when. I’ll put the ring to it after this to assess this.”

Alexis turns the page over.

“That’s what I need. The rest is what I want to know, and it’s in the order we’ll walk past it.”

“The tree that put me to sleep. I want to know if it’s still there, and whether it still has the same nature it had in our other time.”

“The undead knight and his horse. This relates to Red’s need for a shield, but I’m also curious to know the reality of this knight in our new when.”

“The Monastery site. An hour on the ‘old’ site. Notes, not digging.”

“When we are. The garden is less than a day past it, and further from Frostpass. We can look at Red’s bomba tree and see how tall it’s got. Carm, if a prayer gets us the same answer faster, I’m open to that.”

“The horses. Everything we didn’t carry in was on them, and we left them in the ‘old’ place. Rask’s shield. The glaive. So: are they here at all? If they are, then the road we took to Nodden-Torr got walked in this world too, and most of what happened to us happened. If there were never any horses, we’re standing somewhere I understand a lot less than I thought this morning.”

“Felsby. We’ve never been, but there’s a lot there.” He counts it off on his fingers. “Ingvar founded it. Bandesingh raided the town to end Torr’s line, because the sword had been Torr’s grandfather’s. Torr-van mended Dauntless there after the place had already fallen. There were gnolls under it digging for that sword, and when Bandesingh learned it was out of his reach he spent them on his working.” Alexis gives a shrug and a nod off to the side. “That’s a great deal of Bandesingh in one town.”

Alexis closes the notebook on his finger and looks between them.

“Anything to add?”

Still in There

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The Crimson Calling walks east through the snow, away from what’s left of Nodden-Torr. The Tear sits in Alexis’s belt pouch and throws no shadow, and the light it gives is enough to walk by. Nobody has gotten used to it.

He turns the Collegium ring on his finger.

“Red.” He waits until Ethelred looks over. “I’ve been thinking about something.”

A few steps.

“Vorgoth held that bridge for centuries. Nobody crossed since the sky broke. I believe him.” He watches his breath in the cold air. “Six to eight people went in two years ago after the Tear. Never came out. No trace. Vorgoth never saw them enter and never saw them leave.” A beat. “Both true at the same time, in one place.”

Snow crunches for a while.

“Unless they weren’t in the same when.”

He lets that sit.

“The Dragon built that vault to last. And it did last, for hundreds of years, maybe more than a thousand. That’s an extraordinary working. Impossible to imagine it holding that long from just the power of the Dragon, even how powerful he clearly was.” He glances at Ethelred. “But the Tear was sitting at the center of it the whole time. A greater artifact of a very old god. That’s a different kind of engine entirely. The vault wasn’t running on what the Dragon put into it. It was running on the Tear.”

A few more steps.

“And the dungeon below, that was different. We saw a working down there that had gone wrong, maybe from the group that came through two years before us. Something they touched that they shouldn’t have. But up in the tower, no two parties ever overlapped. No interference.” He turns the ring once.

He looks over at Ethelred.

“Which means we didn’t take the Tear out of a vault. We took it out of history. Right now, as we’re walking, Nodden-Torr behind us has always been a place where the Tear was removed at the end of the second age.” A pause. “The world we’re walking back into is not quite the world we left.”

He thinks briefly of Sutheron. Keeps walking.

“And the Dragon. He wasn’t fading because the vault was losing him. He was fading because we were taking the Tear. Every step we made toward it, the engine was winding down. By the time we claimed it, the vault had already started becoming a place where the Tear had never been.” He nods, mostly to himself. “He knew. He was pushing us toward it and out at the same time.”

A dozen steps.

“But here’s what I keep turning over.” He reaches up, touches the brim of his hat briefly. “Hadonis is back in our timeline right now, and to him the Tear is still in that vault. The six to eight who went in before us, Hadonis said they made it to the Tear. Vorgoth said nobody passed him. Both true.” He pauses. “Which means they’re not in the vault and they’re not in our when either. They’re somewhere else entirely, holding a Tear of their own.”

He looks down at his belt pouch.

“The vault still exists. It will keep existing until someone unwinds what the Dragon built and puts the timeline back in order. Whether that’s a problem or a gift, I genuinely don’t know. The Tear is doing its work in more than one when at the same time.” He shakes his head slightly. “That’s above my pay. Nardor Threpp could sort it. We have other work.”

He looks at Ethelred.

“Is there more I’m not seeing?”

About to get Shafted

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The group has been awake for a little while, moving through the quiet routines of breaking a camp that was never quite a camp. Eight plush chairs in a room that has no business existing where it does. Everyone present.

Alexis sits forward, elbows on knees, and tilts his hat brim up toward the shaft in the ceiling.

“Before we move, I want to talk about that hole.” He looks up at it for a moment. “There’s light up there. And this room is clean. No debris, no dust, nothing that should have fallen down from wherever that shaft goes.” A pause. “That’s worth understanding before we decide what to do with it.”

He looks around the group.

“Carm, I want to ask you something that might be a long shot. Your connection with Raiden,” he chooses his words carefully, “is there any chance he could tell us when we are? Not where. When.”

He looks back at the shaft.

“And does anyone have a way to learn more about what’s up there before we commit to anything? I’d rather know more than less before we start climbing.”

The Anchor we don’t have

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After the conversations have died down in the room with many fine chairs Ethelred waits for everyone to settle down to sleep. Red nudges Alexis to make sure he is awake. In a low tone he speaks.

“So a lot of words were said about Hedonis and his possible plans. And while we know little there is one part of his story the rings true. For what ever other reasons he wanted us to fight the Giants, the one reason he did state I believe. The part about needing an anchor.

It is just such a specific claim. He could of said anything as justify to killing the giants, why that one very clear goal?

I have gone over all my inventory in my mind trying to piece together what ‘anchors’ we might have. When we passed through that strange metal door things changed. This room feels out of place, different than where we were just before.

When we find the Tear how will we escape? Hedonis said little but made it clear that there was something different about where the Tear is. That an ‘anchor’ was needed to get ‘back home’.

We should have some solutions to this riddle before we are faced with a rushed decision.”

Hadonis’ Inevitable Betrayal

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Rask settles into the comfortable chair, having scraped his battle-weary battered body off the floor. He slows his breathing and closes his eyes and seems to be on very of sleep when he mutters, “Hadonis… giants…”

His eyes open and he sits up.

“Hadonis was in league with the giants from the beginning! It was a win-win for him,: if we survived great, we are more powerful allies, if we died, potential rivals were neutralized and he would gain our treasures.”

He pauses, clearly tired to his very bones.

“His hearts-anchor thing must have been ruse…” Rask trails off, tired and deeply body weary.

He looks around for a moment to see if anyone registers that he has shared what he, in his exhaustion clearly believes is an important revelation, and collapses back into the chair. The warrior begins to snore softly.

The Missed Beaded Treasure

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After the group has finished fighting the Ogres and moved back the way they’ve come.

“At the end of this series of monsters there could be some amazing treasure!” Alexis looks back the way towards the Ogres and beyond noticeably wistful. “With that protection, the working would surely be amazing.”

Alexis keeps walking but looks back a couple more times.

When the Plans Make Contact With the Enemy

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After the group has left the room where four of the group had to deal with their doubles. Ca’armine addresses Alexis. Alexis is clearly emotionally wrapped up with both watching himself die and losing the possibility of having two Alexis’ to plumb the secrets of the universe.

“Boss, in that room, remember that we had a plan.” Alexis nods, and Ca’armine continues. “And I would be such a disloyal team member if I didn’t keep reminding you that you had a plan and we needed to follow the plan and I’m going to keep doing that. Changing the plan in the middle is not—”

“We changed the plan in the middle, in the bead room, because there was an opportunity there. And Red followed through on that opportunity.” Red agrees with Alexis as he says this.

“There is no universe in which both of those Alexis’ could have survived.”

Alexis and Ethelred enthusiastically agree, with Ethelred adding, “but they might have been able to fold them back into one.”

“They did by walking through the door.”

Alexis and Red both disagree, and Alexis adds, with just enough self-awareness to take the edge off, “But five minutes could have gained so much for the world.”

“From studying that trap?!” Rask stares at him.

“Yes,” Alexis and Ethelred exclaim together, with Ethelred adding, “It was a working much like the other workings we’ve discovered.”

“Sleep on this, but think about how dangerous that could end up being.”

Alexis looks at Red, then back at Rask. “We’ve thought about it.”

After a second Alexis turns back to Ca’armine “A plan is where you start, Carm. But when something changes on the ground, that’s a conversation you bring to me. Not a reason to hold the line by yourself.”