The party arrived in a world without druids, where the artificers of House Cannith were harvesting trees even in the deep regions of the Eldeen Reaches to fuel their endless production. The heroes implored Mari the young elves druid artificer to fulfill her destiny and plant the seeds of the future.

Player Characters: Mouly, Rolf, Teromil, Vaelen

The Eldeen Reaches (1045 YK, Dravago)

Mist opened his eyes and found himself strapped to a rack, deep in the bowels of a House Cannith creation forge. He felt the heat of a magical laser beam slowly inching its way up toward him. He looked to the side and saw the halfling warlock Ivel on an operating table. A tall alchemical golem holding a cup of tea stood over Ivel and examined the body of the halfling.

“Roland, my old friend, you’re late as always,” said a familiar voice. It was Richmond Valentine, the drow weaponsdealer and Mist’s personal nemesis.

“You always seem to arrive after the fact. Behold my greatest masterpiece, the Moon Breaker. It is an eldritch machine built from the schema of the ancient giants of Xendrick. Why am I revealing all this, you ask? Because I know that there is no way you can stop me. I already activated the device, fifteen minutes before your arrival, muthaf*****!”

A trail of light streaked across night sky toward the fifth moon, Dravago. With a flash of blinding light, the moon was destroyed. Where the moon had once been, a shower of meteors fell toward the earth.

Mist watched the scene helplessly. Suddenly, a portal in time opened beside him and another Mist from the future stepped into the room and cut loose the prisoner upon the rack.

“I’m getting myself out of here!” Mist shouted as both versions of him vanished through time.

Outside the creation forge, the shards of Dravago fell to the earth upon the Eldeen Reaches, not far from where Mist’s companions were standing shortly after their arrival in this time period. They were startled to discover that the druid Mossmantle was nowhere to be found, and became even more alarmed when they saw that there were only eleven moons in the night sky.

“Where is the herdsman? Where is the moon Dravago?” cried Mari, pointing to the place in the sky where Dravago should have been.

The heroes followed the trail of falling meteorites. They landed upon a tall mound not far from where the party stood. As they walked towards it, they realized that what they saw was not a hill but the top of a gigantic pine tree whose trunk was as wide as a great cathedral. Around the tree, a large company of people were gathered together. They had chained themselves in a ring around the mighty tree. Their leaders, an elderly human woman and a tall goliath barbarian, shouted at the party to come no further.

“You devils of House Cannith had better go back to your forge, or you’ll have Granny Smith and Muthak the Mighty to deal with! You will not harm this ancient tree!”

“That is the great pine Oalian!” cried Mari. Oalian was a powerful treant that had been awakened thousands of years ago in the original history. But in this alternate timeline, Oalian had never been awakened and was just a very big tree.

“You have nothing to fear from us. We’re not members of House Cannith,” said the heroes, trying to assure the guardians of the tree of their good intentions.

“Oh yeah? Then what’s that behind you?”

The ground began to shake. The heroes turned their heads and saw a very tall construct with a vaguely humanoid shape lumbering through the woods. In one armlike appendage, it had a very big axe, and in the other appendage a very big hammer. It looked like a lumbering machine but also resembled a prototype for the warforged titans invented by House Cannith.

This was not the kind of artifice that the time travelers would have expected from the creation forges of House Cannith, as least in their own timeline. In this alternate history, there were no druids to protect the woods against the incursions of civilization and industry. House Cannith was stripmining the continent and cutting down the precious woods. But rather than helping to advance their technology more quickly, the overabundance of natural resources at their disposal made the artificers of House Cannith lazier and less inventive. They had no need to make the most efficient constructs or means of production when they had so much many raw materials and so few checks and regulations. The result was the monstrous machine that now tore through the woods, spewing black columns of smoke in its wake.

A dragonmarked artificer with the Mark of Making held the controls for the machine. He shouted at the party to stand aside. Vaelen tried to reason with him, but Rolf, angered by House Cannith’s depredations upon these woods, stood against the terrifying machine and its handler.

A fierce battle ensued. Teromil struck with his radiant fists and Mouly let fly her bolts of magical flame. The elderly woman named Granny Smith and the goliath Muthak also joined the fray. Vaelen summoned magical thorns that strangled the handler. With the handler lying dead, there was no one who could control the construct which was out of control. Rolf and Granny Smith were crushed beneath the construct’s fearsome axe and hanged on by a thread. The others might have fallen were it not for Teromil whose shining fists dealt the final blow that brought down the mechanical monster.

The machine was destroyed, but the danger had not passed. A dozen more pillars of smoke appeared over the canopy, signaling the approach of more of the deadly machines. The heroes could not stand against so many.

Suddenly, Mari spoke up in a soft voice.

“What is the point?” she said. “Why plant a forest if people simply wish to cut it down?”

Mari seemed to be falling into a deep depression. After she had spoke, the scion of the Delorean Tree looked I’ll and began to fade. The time travelers were alarmed and knew they had to act quickly.

“Not all people wish that ,” they assured her, pointing to Granny Smith, Muthak and their companions. “Can’t you see? Those people are risking their lives to protect that tree and these woods. Mari, you too have a role to play. You will plant the seeds of a forest that will cover this entire continent. We have seen such a future, but whether this comes to pass is up to you.”

Mouly presented her crystal ball and showed Mari a vision of a future where a great forest encompassed the whole continent of Khorvaire. All the lands from the Shadow Marches to the Mror Holds were filled with endless woods as far as the eye could see. This was the fruit that would be yielded from Mari’s choice, but in this vision Mari was not alive to see it because she had given her life to sow the seeds of the forest. In her research, Mari will discover the rituals of Aeren, the elven prophet of ancient Xendrik whose sacrifice paved the way for the exodus of the elven slaves.

Aeren had seen the power of the blood rituals of her cruel masters, the giants, who used sacrifices living creatures to fuel their ancient magic. But Aeren unlocked a much greater power when she willingly gave her own life for a greater cause. The power unleashed by her act of self-sacrifice was unlike anything that had been seen before, and the giants could not withstand it. In time, Mari would learn of this and sacrifice her own life energy to power an eldritch machine of her own making that sows the seeds of the World Forest.

Mari was speechless after she saw the vision, but John was furious. The party noticed that he had taken the cloak from the fallen artificer and was wearing it now. He grabbed Mari’s hand, pulled her toward him by force, and shrieked.

“No! You want Mari to give up her life. I will not stand by and let that happen. You will not take her away from me! Come on, Mari. I’ll keep you safe.”

The cloak billowed up and released a puff of smoke that engulfed the two young elves. When the smoke cleared, they had disappeared.

“That looked like a cloak of the mountebank,” said Rolf. “It allows the wearer to vanish and reappear a few hundred feet away. They couldn’t have gone far.”

They party picked up John and Mari’s trail and chased them through the woods. The elves ran in a winding path, avoiding waterways and ravines that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Just as the forest was about to give way to a clearing, a murder if hooked horrors descended upon the heroes. Vaelen parlayed with the monsters as if persuading a group of bandits, promising them all that they could wish to eat if they helped him catch the two fleeing elves.

The creatures obliged and brought the elves who were caught in their beaks. The heroes rejoiced and directed to creatures to the squad of plump artificers of House Cannith that were approaching the great tree Oalian. The murder of hooked horrors rushed in that direction, squawking with a gleeful appetite.

Having been caught by the heroes, John crumpled to the ground in tears. Wanting to take no more chances, the party bound him and kept a close watch upon him. Mari tried to comfort him, but she seemed strangely at peace. When she finally spoke to the heroes, she seemed to have made up her mind.

“What must I do? And will you help me?”

Even as he had bound the young elf, Rolf felt pity up in him. Now, hearing Mari’s decision, he made another bold proposal.

“Mari does not need to plant the forest until the present day (998 YK). What if we sent them Mari and her friend back to the past where they could live out their days together before she fulfills her destiny? Mari is a druid, isn’t she? Maybe we could teach the Gatekeepers and bring restore the druids in history.”

The time travelers agreed to the proposal. But Mari was still a young druid with little experience. Using some of the remaining power of Ultron, they obtained a druidic tome called the Book of the Blackroot which Mari could use to teach the druids of the past. Mari still needed a way to return to the future from the distant past, and it was at this point that John redeemed himself. He revealed that he had been given a Crystal of Imprisonment, a magic gem with the power to trap the soul of an individual indefinitely. It was given to him by an unknown benefactor who convinced him that it was the only way to keep Mari safe. He now proposed using it to allow Mari to sleep in stasis until the right moment.

The heroes then bid farewell to the young elves and parted ways in the river of Time. Mari and John traveled to the Age of Monsters. In a dark cave, Mari met the ancient ancestors of the orcs to whom she taught druidic magic. They became the Gatekeepers, the first order of druids to be established on the continent. They would go on to teach the younger druid orders which would branch off into numerous factions. Most importantly, the Gatekeepers created the seals upon the plane of Xoriat, keeping the aberrations from the plane of madness at bay.

When Mari had finished teaching the Gatekeepers, she spent many years studying the river of time and exploring the outer planes. Filled with a boundless curiosity, she traveled through Lamannia the Twilight Forest, Thelanis the Realm of the Fey, Dal Quor the Region of Dreams, all of the elemental planes, and even Dolurrh the Realm of the Dead. When she returned, she was no longer a creature of flesh. She had been changed into the likeness of an elemental creature of great wisdom and power. By then, John had also become a powerful archmage in his own right. At last, the time came for Mari to go to sleep. John said his last farewell to her and used the Crystal of Imprisonment to put Mari into stasis.

“Goodbye, my dear Mari. You have a greater part to play in the future of the world than I, and I shall remember your bright light until the end of my days. May you awaken when the Last War ends and the continent of Khorvaire is at peace. Then you can fulfill your destiny and plant the seeds for the forest of the future.”