In the city of Varna, the members of the Goodberry Brigade gathered once more. They were KAEL the githzerai wizard, KALHENVASHIR the Kalashtar ranger from the Eldeen Reaches, LUUMI the aasimar ranger and druid of the Icehorn Mountains, and TABRIUS the noble paladin of Aundair. This time, they were joined by two new chrononauts. They were CLADETH the high elf wizard of conjuration and a sage who sought power in knowledge; and GRACK the kobold barbarian who lived in the wilderness and carried an enormous sword.
The voice from the Listening Stone warned the heroes of another plot by BUTLER, the warforged time traveler from the future, to change the course of history and ignite a war between the warforged and humanity. This time, he planned to use the coronation Queen Aurala of Aundair in 980 YK to carry out his conspiracy. He would use the Fairhaven Fashion Show, an event held to celebrate the queen’s ascension to the throne, to popularize the use of warforged entertainers, maids, and butlers among the nobility. In time, the warforged servants would turn against their masters and slaughter them in their sleep in an event that would be called the Warforged Uprising, or the Butlerian Crusade.
The voice asked the heroes to travel back in time to stop this conspiracy. A bright flash of light engulfed them, and moments later they found themselves in the gardens of the royal palace at Fairhaven. They were standing before a catwalk where fashion models were showing off their flamboyant outfits. Bright lights were flashing all around them as the bards of House Phiarlan recorded the scene with their image recording crystals. A great audience was gathered on the lawn, and high upon a stage, the Queen and her entourage watched the Fairhaven Fashion Show.
From among the crowd, Kael recognized a familiar face. It was SHRAAD, a fellow githzerai wizard who had studied wizardry under the same master. Shraad, who was surrounded by a blue aura of chronomancy, had also heard the voice from the Listening Stone. He had traveled through time to help the adventurers on their quest by tracking Butler’s movements through the timeline. Now he told the Goodberry Brigade all the he had learned.
Butler had arranged for House Cannith to enter the Fairhaven Fashion Show with a new line of warforged. These warforged had removed their metal plates and were covered with a bed of flowers. They were favored to win this year’s fashion show, which would lead to the popularization of warforged servants among the nobility. The Goodberry Brigade had to stop the warforged from winning the fashion show!
Shraad suggested joining one of the other factions participating in the event, such as the elves of House Phiarlan, the gnomes of Zilargo, or the “Muppets” from the land of Q’barra led by a grung named Mister Kermit. The heroes decided to enter as their own separate team, calling themselves the Goodberry Fashion Brigade, and worked together to ensure their victory in the Fairhaven Fashion Show.
Grack had spent the better part of his life hiding from adventurers who wanted to kill him and goblins who wanted to enslave him, so he learned to live off the land. Now he put those skills to good use by hunting and gathering all manner of furs, feathers, and animal scales. Luumi stole glammerweave, shiftweave, and whole beds of flowers from the rival factions. Cladeth lured away some of the most beautiful elven models from House Phiarlan with her knowledge of elven songs of beauty. Tabrius obtained the help of the famous Aundairian fashion designer, Hilda Van Damme, who crafted beautiful outfits with Grack and Luumi’s material and fitted them to Cladeth’s models. Meanwhile, Kael provided a spectacular pyrotechnic display that impressed even the gnomes of Zilargo who were experts at elemental magic. And Kalhenvashir added deep religious symbolism to the outfits inspired by the Path of Light, the spiritual faith of the kalashtar.
The audience was dazzled by the models and the outfits of the Goodberry Fashion Brigade, though few caught the religious symbolism. But there was someone who did notice the symbols. It was Seteth von Einzbern, Tabrius’ grandfather, and he remembered the Goodberry Brigade who had schemed against him at the Battle of Marguul Pass. Now he scoffed and called out the religious symbols in their outfits as heathenism and quackery, calling the outfits “distinctly uninspired.” Kalhenvashir sensed a sinister undertone in Seteth’s words and suspected that the noble might be a servant of the Inspired lords of Riedra and the Dreaming Dark – Quori from the Realm of Dreams seeking to conquer the waking world.
Despite Seteth’s attempts to foil them, the Goodberry Fashion Brigade won the grand prize of the Fairhaven Fashion Show. Queen Aurala crowned them with golden wreaths, and they were invited to stay the evening in the luxurious suites at the royal estate of Fairhaven.
That night as the heroes laid down to rest, each of them was visited by a warforged servant offering room service. Unbeknownst to the heroes, these were servants of Butler that were infected by a strange disease, robbing them of their reason and causing them to go on a murderous rampage. Cladeth, Kalhenvashir, and Louis attacked and destroyed their visitors, causing the warforged to explode into a cloud of lethal spores. Kael hid from the warforged and Luumi conjured magical vines to entangle her assailant, while Grack stood and waited for the promised room service.
From the bodies of the surviving warforged, a blue aura of chronomancy became visible but quickly dissipated. It was Butler preparing to leap through time. Having been foiled in his attempt to change history at the Fairhaven Fashion Show, he was traveling to another point in time to carry out a backup plan. The astral docent JIMBE calculated Butler’s trajectory and found that he was headed to the year 990 YK, when the first House Lyrandar airships were launched.
The heroes followed Butler through the branches of time and found themselves upon an airship called the Silver Light. The vessel was on its maiden voyage from Fairhaven to the city of Passage, the largest hub of lightning rail transportation in Aundair. The guest lounge held a crowd of aristocrats whose clothes were clearly inspired by the Goodberry Fashion Brigade. But where was the villain Butler, and what was his scheme?
The heroes split up to explore the airship. Luumi went below to the cargo hold. Grack, Kalhenvashir, and Louis followed a mysterious figure, surrounded by a faint aura of chronomancy, who had been watching them from the shadows. Cladeth and Kael went up to the captain’s helm after hearing an announcement over the loudspeaker stone which suggested that the captain was in distress.
At the captain’s helm, Cladeth and Kael were startled to find a hostage situation. A group of druidic extremists calling themselves the Ashbound had taken the captain hostage. These druids abhorred magic that defiled the natural world – and all magic that was not druidic in nature was tainted in their eyes. They had stowed aboard the airship to free its bound elemental whose captivity was an affront to nature.
Meanwhile, Grack, Kalhenvashir, and Louis followed the tracks to the medical bay. To their horror, they found their fellow chrononaut Shraad, and he was infected by a strange disease that was transforming him into a fungus-covered warforged!
Shraad had been tracking Butler’s movements through time and learned the details of his conspiracy. Butler had developed a nanite spore which he used to infect the warforged of the past. These warforged would go on to infect others, and in time, the infected warforged would rise up against their masters, fulfilling Butler’s grand design to orchestrate a war between man and machine.
Butler planned to use an air show that was part of the maiden voyage of the Silver Light to spread his spores. Shraad implored the heroes to descend to the cargo hold where Butler’s agents were located – and where Luumi had gone alone. Having no time to help Shraad, the heroes regrouped with Cladeth and Kael. The wizards had returned from the captain’s helm after seeing that the leader of the Ashbound would be occupied for some time extolling the virtues of all natural organic magic to his captive audience.
In the cargo hold, the heroes found Luumi fighting alone against a pair of Butler’s warforged spies. The spies had stabbed a half elf Lyrandar agent who was in charge of the air show and were preparing to lower sacks full of colorful powder and nanite spores into the airship’s elemental ring using a pulley mechanism. While her companions fought the spies, Luumi used her druidic magic to entangle and jam up the gears of the pulley. The heroes defeated the warforged, rescued the half elf, and recovered the sacks full of spores.
Yet their victory was short lived. The Ashbound druids, being left to their own devices, had carried out their mission and freed the Silver Light’s bound elemental. The airship shuddered and shook, then began to plummet. And in that moment, Butler leapt once again, this time four years into the future – to the Day of Mourning.
The heroes were faced with a hard choice: follow Butler through time and escape from the falling airship, or remain behind to save the passengers and crew. The heroes chose to remain behind and safely evacuated those aboard. But now they were stranded in this time period until Butler emerged once again.
For the next four years, the heroes went their separate ways. Grack went on an adventure and explored a haunted building. Tabrius returned to his life as an aristocrat and lived among the nobility of this era. Luumi gained the favor of Queen Aurala and, for a brief time, had an illicit affair with the monarch of Aundair. Kalhenvashir and Cladeth were framed for crimes they did not commit. Although Kalhenvashir was acquitted, Cladeth was sentenced to a year of hard labor by the court of Fairhaven.
The heroes had almost forgotten about Butler and their mission as they became accustomed to their new lives in the past. But then one day in 994 YK, a middle-aged kobold visited each of the heroes. Grack had returned from his adventures and was gathering together the members of the Goodberry Brigade. The long years of adventuring had not been kind to him, for kobolds are a short lived people and his delves into dangerous and haunted places had aged him beyond his years.
But Grack remembered the reason for which he had traveled back in time and sacrificed his youth. Now he reminded his old friends of their mission, and together they journeyed to the kingdom of Cyre. Moreover, the heroes had not been wholly idle in the years since the crash of the Silver Light, for each of them had found some rumors about Butler’s conspiracy. By piecing together the scraps of information they had gathered, they learned that Butler planned to infect a new warforged army built in the Cyran city of Making.
On the eve of the Day of Mourning, the heroes boarded a train carrying thousands of warforged soldiers from Making to the battlefield. Once aboard the train, they confronted the conductor and told him the truth of all that they knew – about time travel, the visions of the far future, the warforged uprising, and Butler’s conspiracy. The conductor was shocked by what he heard. Yet beyond all reason and doubt, he believed their words. Perhaps it was Kalhenvashir’s telepathic mind link showing visions of things to come that swayed him in the end. Whatever the reason, the conductor agreed to help the heroes prevent this terrible future.
But how would they stop it? Would they bring the train to a halt and allow the warforged to be destroyed by the Mourning? Or would they destroy the warforged themselves by driving the train off a cliff? Could they even trust the conductor after the deed was done? Would it be better to kill him as well so as to completely eradicate all traces of Butler’s conspiracy from history?
In the end, the Goodberry Brigade told the conductor to keep the train moving forward, past the field of battle which in after years would be known as the Field of Ruin, past the Cyran forts and cities which would become ruins filled with untold secrets, and beyond the borders of Cyre which would be utterly destroyed by the awesome powers unleashed in the arcane cataclysm of the Mourning. The warforged soldiers aboard the train watched in confusion as the war-torn nation that they were created to defend vanished behind them in a blinding flash of light, leaving only a barren waste surrounded by a dead gray mist.
The Goodberry Brigade had saved the warforged army from becoming an army of rebels in Butler’s scheme. These warforged would go on to be emancipated by the Treaty of Thronehold and carve out new lives for themselves in an era of peace.
The House Cannith conductor, having defied an order from his superiors, was expelled from his dragonmarked house. Therefore, Tabrius invited him to serve as a retainer in his own noble household. The conductor went on to have many children and a long line of descendants whose lineage would remain strong for thousands of years.
In time, one of the conductor’s descendants in the far future would be summoned by the druid artificers of House Lorien and the caretakers of the D’Lorien Tree. They would tell him of the rogue time traveler’s conspiracy and ask him, “Who would you call upon to protect the timeline?” He knew the answer to this question, for it had been foretold and known to his family for countless generations: “Call the Goodberry Brigade.”