The chrononauts arrived in Korth, the capital of the Karrnathi Empire. In the undead metropolis, they encountered a changeling spy named Jane on a mission to save a warforged emissary from the Silver Flame Alliance. Deeming that their quests were intertwined, the chrononauts join forces with her. Together, they boarded the elemental galleon Red Shadow where the fate of both missions would be decided.
Player Characters: Calvin, Gzrom, Phann
Korth (1093 YK, Sypheros)
The chrononauts were adrift on a vessel in the mists of time. The lanterns held by Gzrom and Calvin had grown dim. Vvaraak the newly born black dragon wyrmling snored softly in the corner of the boat. Gzrom and Calvin had noticed that the black dragon was acting differently now. He seemed to be taking on parts of the lantern bearers’ personalities. This made them wonder if their influence might somehow impact the dragon’s actions in history.
Jackie had vanished into the mists, intent on uncovering the nature of his mysterious origins. The remaining chrononauts bid farewell to their companion and wondered when, if ever, they would see him again. In Jackie’s place, Phann had appeared, rejoining with the party after his own mission to find the reason behind the disappearance of the forest of the fey. He had learned that the realm of Thelanis and the material plane were connected. If the fairy tales of the material world disappeared, the forests of the fey would vanish as well. In the far future ruled by dark machines and alien aberrations, there were few people left to tell the tales of their ancestors, so the forests of the fey had all but vanished from the world.
Gzrom, Calvin, Phann, Blackfire, and Saladin now arrived in the city of Korth, the capital of the undead empire of Karrnath, in the year 1093. Since the Day of Mourning, Karrnath was ruled by the lich lords and vampire nobles who had survived the Mourning. They sent forth their legions of zombies and skeletons to conquer the eastern half of the continent of Khorvaire. To the west, the remaining nations united under the banners of the Silver Flame Alliance. The war between the living and the dead raged for another century.
Saladin was on a mission to find Gray’s War Alliance, a tome of history that was due to be published this very year in this very city. He suspected that the rogue time traveler, a shapeshifter, that chrononauts were hunting would acquire this book as part of a conspiracy to change history. The chrononauts had to find the book before the shapeshifter did.
As the mist cleared, the chrononauts passed by an immense vessel. It was an elemental galleon of House Lyrandar. Calvin recognized it as the famous warship, the Red Shadow, named after Sypheros the tenth moon which was nicknamed the Shadow. Its captain, Ramius d’Lyrandar, was a renowned half-elf scion of his house. Now, he would be one of the few people in this city who was not an undead creature, since the scions of the dragonmarked houses needed to be alive in order to use the powers of their dragonmarks to operate the devices created by their houses such as elemental galleons and airships.
The chrononauts found a place in the harbor to discreetly dock their small boat. They found that the air was thick and filled with dust. It burned their lungs to breathe in the grey mist engulfing the city. They soon realized that the air was filled with the poison of the Mourning, and they grew alarmed at the changes that they were undergoing.
Gzrom’s hair turned a jet black hue that was unnaturally dark for any living creature, and he grew a long, thick tail that ended in a spade like the tail of some fiendish monster. His own reflection filled him with dread, and Gzrom shuddered constantly as if gripped by an otherworldly fear. Meanwhile, Phann’s eyes turned a bright crimson red, and from his arm there extended a barbed stinger like that of a scorpion, dripping with venom at the tip, and his coughed up blood as if the venom newly flowing through his veins was poisoning him. The others managed to withstand the effects of the Mourning through their fortitude, but they knew that staying here for a prolonged period would be risky.
It was early in the morning, but the sun could hardly be seen through the dark clouds. A distant bell rang from the top of a cathedral. The citizens of Korth filed out of their homes in the Community Ward. The chrononauts looked more closely and saw that the citizens were all zombies and skeletons. This was all that remained of the once proud people of Karrnath. The undead people of Korth headed to their various occupations, marching in lock step like cogs in a great machine.
However, Calvin noticed much to his surprise that one of the people in the crowd was not undead, but a living person pretending to be a zombie. He was dressed in the drab robes of a cleric and headed to the Temple Ward. The curiosity of the heroes was piqued. They followed the zombie pretender to a great cathedral of the Sovereign Host. It looked like a temple dedicated that was once to Dol Dorn, the sovereign of war, but it was now in disrepair. The heroes entered the temple to investigate.
When they opened the rotting doors of the cathedral, great clouds of dust blew up and choked their lungs. Inside, the hall of the once splendid was now a dark ruin. A handful of parishioners sat in the crumbling pews, and still fewer clerics tended to the building. They were all undead creatures in varying states of decay, each repeating the last actions that they were performing in life. The jaws of the skeletal parishioners clattered in vain, wordless prayers. The zombie bishop at the altar moaned aloud, but no intelligible words came from his mouth. His tongue had long ago fallen off, and his eyes lolled in their sagging sockets as if they too were ready to fall out at any moment.
The chrononauts noticed that one of the zombie clerics, who was cleaning the same spot on a stained glass window repeatedly, seemed to take notice of them when they had entered and not acted a big nervously. The heroes quietly approached the cleric and escorted him outside. Meanwhile, Gzrom became curious about the doors that could be seen beside the altar and approached one of them. Suddenly, the undead creatures in the room all took notice of him. The zombie bishop pulled out a bell from his pocket and shook it. The bell rang with a magical note, and the great bell of the cathedral rang loudly in response. Suddenly, the doors of the cathedral were shut and barred. Gzrom was trapped inside, separated from his companions.
Calvin drank a potion of hill giant’s strength and pressed his hands against the doors with all his might, forcing them open. The chrononauts saw Gzrom surrounded on all sides by undead creatures. A terrific battle ensued, and the heroes swiftly dispatched the monsters with spell and sword. But the bell of the church continued to ring. Outside, a legion of zombie soldiers, wearing the white sashes of the city guard, marched upon the cathedral. The chrononauts hastily tried the doors at the back of the cathedral.
One of the doors led to the office of the bishop. Upon the dust covered desk, there was a letter that looked like it had been recently placed there. Gzrom picked up the letter and pocketed it immediately. The other door led to a similar room with an old bookcase. But the bookcase was placed at an odd angle. The chrononauts investigated it and found that it was a secret entrance to an underground tunnel system that presumably led to other parts of the city. They passed through the entrance, jammed it shut from the other side, and traveled for a distance through the tunnels. Once they felt that they had thrown off their would-be pursuer, they stopped to catch their breath.
At last, Calvin asked what was most pressing on his mind. Before they could continue with their mission, they needed to find a way to prevent the effects of the Mourning from affect them any further.
“I know that you are an imposter posing as one of these undead creatures,” Calvin told the cleric.
“Tell us, how is it that you are not poisoned by the grey mist?”
“If you don’t tell us, you’ll regret it,” Gzrom said insistently, trying to terrify the cleric. Vvaraak perched upon his shoulder and screeched, spewing a thin wisp of acidic smoke from her tiny mouth.
“I will tell you nothing before I know who you are and what your intention is,” said the cleric, undaunted by the halfling and the wyrmling.
“Very well,” said Phann. “We shall tell you truthfully of our mission, though you may find it hard to believe. We are from the future…”
Then Phann spoke plainly about the Dr. Morris, the rogue shapeshifter, the disappearance forest of the future, and the dark world that was doomed to be if the chrononauts did not find a way to change history. Much to their surprise, the cleric seemed unmoved by the strangeness of their tale, and replied with a story as strange as their own.
“I believe you, because I know it to be true. For I have also seen the future that should be. I am no cleric of the sovereign host. Indeed, I am not even a human disguised as a zombie. This human form is my disguise. I shall show you who I really am. I am a changeling.”
Then the cleric transformed before their very eyes into a grey skinned creature with a face-like face, but it was nearly without features. And they could see that it was not a man standing before them but a woman.
“Hello, my name is Jane. Pleased to meet you.”
Jane had seen the true future in which the Last War had ended, and the world enjoyed a century of peace. But even in this future, something terrible had happened. In 1094 YK, the warforged butlers, maids, and servants would turn against humanity and slay their fleshborn masters in a single night, igniting a conflict between mankind and the machines that would be called the Butlerian Crusade.
There were three warforged leaders who had tried to avert this deadly conflict by trying to create peace and equality between the warforged and humanity. One of them was a warforged named Builder. However, Builder would be assassinated a year before the Butlerian Crusade. His death sparked greater discontent among the warforged population and turned many more against humanity. Jane had seen glimpses of the future after Builder’s death, and she was convinced that Builder needed to be saved in order to avert this tragic history from unfolding.
Builder would be assassinated aboard the Red Shadow on this very night. That was why Jane had come here in disguise. She was at the cathedral in the Temple Ward because she wanted to acquire the contents of the letter that was now in Gzrom’s possession. Gzrom opened the envelope and found an invitation to a great ball titled The Enchantment Under the Sea. It was a great gathering held by the vampires and lich lords of Korth. All of the sentient undead aristocrats of the city and their few living serfs and servants would be invited. The highlight of the event was the Danse Macabre, in which all of the guests, both living and dead, would join hands in a great dance.
In this timeline, Builder would arrive aboard the Red Shadow as an emissary from the Silver Flame Alliance, on a mission to negotiate a ceasefire. As a symbol of their good faith, the Alliance would send an ancient druidic tome called the Book of the Blackroot. This was a synthetic duplicate created by the master artificers of House Cannith whose powers of artifice had grown so create that even a living druidic tome could be perfectly duplicated. In exchange, the Karrnathi Empire would give a limited edition copy of Grey’s War Almanac as a gift. It was during the exchange of books that Builder would be assassinated.
Jane’s precise knowledge of the events to come suggested that she knew far more than she was letting on, but the chrononauts did not press her any further. They knew enough to achieve their own goals, and suspected that Jane’s mission was somehow connected to their own. The shapeshifter that they were pursuing would surely be on the Red Shadow this evening. They had to stop the rogue from acquiring Grey’s War Almanac at the event.
The heroes had an invitation to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, but they needed additional documents in order to carry out their plan. They would infiltrate the dance, not as VIP guests, but as a musical band and servants. With such a disguise, they would not need to participate in the dangerous Danse Macabre, and they would be able to move more freely about the vessel. Jane informed the party that there was only one person in Korth who was capable of providing such forgeries – an elderly Halfling woman whom people called the Midwife.
The Midwife lived in a small, nondescript building in the Low District Ward, the gathering place for the criminal underbelly of Korth. Even in the realm of the dead, intelligent undead creatures and vampire spawns on the run from their masters congregated in this dark district. In the midst of these foul creatures, the Midwife was one of the few living being remaining in the city. When the Jane arrived with the chrononauts in tow, the Midwife greeted them as a grandmother might greet her beloved grandchildren.
“Welcome, my sweets! Come in, come in. A pleasure to see you as always, Jane. And who are these fine gentlemen you have brought me today? What can I do for you, lads?”
“We are in need of forgeries to gain entry to the Red Shadow for this evening’s event.”
“Ah, then you have come to the right place. But forgeries do not come cheap in Korth. What can you offer me?”
The chrononauts presented all of the gold and silver in their possession, but the Midwife did not look impressed. Instead, she seemed far more interested in Gzrom and Calvin’s lanterns.
“I’m afraid you’ll need far more gold than that. Those lanterns, on the other hand, look quite fascinating. I would be happy to provide you with all the forgeries you need if you would let me spend just a day with one of your lanterns.”
“How can we be sure you’ll return it to us?” the Chrononauts asked suspiciously.
“I’ll tell you what. I will place the lantern inside a Kundarak dimensional vault and give you the only key. I’ll have the lantern placed in the vault, but you’ll be the only ones who can open the vault and retrieve its contents. How does that sound?”
The chrononauts thought that the Midwife’s deal was worthwhile and accepted her offer. She presented them with a written contract, though the legal writing was far too complex for any of them to decipher. The heroes even thought of a bold use for their newly acquired dimensional vault. Their future selves would travel back to the past and place items inside the safe that would be of use to them in the present!
In the safety of the Midwife’s lair, the chrononauts rested for the day. As evening fell and the sky darkened into night, they emerged, refreshed and reinvigorated. Jane offered them each a small pill, a powerful medicine that could prevent the effects of the Mourning.
“This was what you were after when you captured me. I now offer it to you freely, for I believe that our destinies are intertwined, chrononauts.”
A few hours remained before the boarding of the Red Shadow, so the party stopped by the House Kundarak enclave in Korth. The dragonmarked scion of the enclave was an old dwarf, perhaps the last living person they would see in this city. He took their key and opened their safe for them without caring to see what was inside.
“I must respect the client’s confidentiality, as per the code of the Kundarak Bank of Korth.”
Having retrieved the items left for them by their future selves, the chrononauts headed for the harbor and boarded the Red Shadow. Filled with ghouls and ghasts, specters and wights, vampires nobles and powerful lich lords, the Red Shadow set off from the harbor and passed through the gateway to the King’s Bay. In the distance, the bell of the great cathedral tolled midnight. The chrononauts had arrived on the last day of Sypheros, the tenth month of the year. Now, at the toll of midnight, they could see that a new moon was full in the sky. It was Aryth, the orange-red moon that marked the eleventh month of the year and bore the nickname “the Gateway.”
Treasure:
Kundarak Vault