Weeping Willow
Trust
Sinking Ship
Beginning of Time
Nobody Special
Unlikely Appointment
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”― Fred Rogers
This is an adventure intended for a modern game with magical themes; I'm writing it with Dresden Files RPG/FATE in mind, but it could just as easily be played with D20 Modern, Savage Worlds, or any number of other systems. It could be adapted to be played in D&D. The adventure requires some good roleplaying and heavy use of social conflict mechanics, so whichever system is chosen should have good tools for those sorts of encounters.
The Hook.
The players are detectives, mercenaries, or in some other way available for hire. One day, an appointment notice appears (in a format appropriate to the setting) but the strange thing is that the appointment is actually scheduled for the day before.
After the announcement appears, time starts to behave oddly. When they aren't looking, it seems to start jumping backwards. First a few minutes, then a few hours. They still experience time heading in the right direction, but every time they look around it's actually earlier.
Eventually, the phenomenon will take the back in time enough to make it time for the appointment that had been scheduled.
The Unlikely Appointment
So, the appointment is with Chris Cringle. Cringle is a heavyset, white-haired man with a pocket watch he is constantly fiddling with.
Cringle explains that he must hire them -- needs their services to take on a monumental task that only they can help with. They are uniquely able bring about the changes he and his masters believe are necessary in the world.
He asks that they follow him through their closet door - which now leads through a shimmering veil into an otherworldly forest.
If the players refuse to follow, time starts to behave normally, but as they go about their day, but everything seems to be going wrong for them -- trusted tools break, simple tasks go wrong, and so on. Every once in a while, Cringle will wind up in a location they're visiting and ask if they've reconsidered.
The Conifer Exposition
The passage from the closet leads through what turns out to be a curtain of weeping willow leaves to the canopy under a large willow tree. Cringle signals for them to be quiet, and leads them out from under the tree an into a grove of pine trees. One of the PCs (whomever is most nature-associated) feels a slight pull to not leave the canopy of the tree, but it passes quickly.
This is no normal forest. The sky above is pitch black -- even without stars -- although there seems to be enough ambient light from unknown sources that the PCs can see clearly.
Cringle begins to explain, showing them his watch, which now has a blank face. He's whispering. "We are at the very beginning. This is the start. In a moment time will begin, and all things will begin again.
"I took you from a version of time -- a possible timeline -- called the Age of Sorrow. Your existence is a series of misfortune and sorrows -- broken up with just enough break between sorrows to make each one a new surprise. Your lives are misery, whether you know it or not -- because that great willow we passed beneath is the elder god who has mastered time.
"Your prophet Lovecraft came closest to the truth -- his visions of distant, dispassionate elder gods were based on visions he had of the Tree of Sorrow. He saw the hanging leaves as tentacles, his visions of the collective sorrows drove him mad.
"There is an opportunity, however. A weakness in the structure of the Age of Sorrows. A moment when the survival of a vitally important person can change everything, and roll back the age of sorrow.
"One thing you need to understand about trees on your world. They're plants, yes, but what they are really is a physical manifestation of a glance from one of the elder gods, the Ur-trees. You ask yourselves, all the time, if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound -- that's actually a pervasion of a terrible truth of the Ur-Trees. If sometime happens away from trees, it is not observed. It is lost in time.
"There are many sorrows that take place in your world, over the eons, but most take place within the purview of the trees. But one important one took place far from the eyes of the trees. The sinking of the Titanic.
"That is where you must go. There is a man there, an incredibly important person who you must ensure survives. A journalist, champion of the people and the power of the press to balance the abuses of the wealthy and powerful.
"His survival will wreak dramatic changes to the timeline -- both forward and backward. So far from land, and the view of the trees, those changes will happen unnoticed for long enough to unmake enough of the Age of Sorrow that this unmaking will be impossible for the UrWillow to stop.
"Your mission is to board the Titanic, find him, and convince him to board one of the lifeboats. He must make the choice to board, not be forced to board, so you must get him to trust you, convince him that he's important enough that the world needs him to survive."
First Trip to the Titanic**
The PC are sent via a Fir Tree Gate (similar to the Willow gate they came through -- a sort of portal outline by branches and leaves) to docks where the Titanic is preparing to disembark. Cringle gives them a pinecone and explains that they can use the pinecone to open a gate back to the beginning once their task is complete.
They have to try to acquire tickets find some other way to get on board.
Once on board, they can make their way around the ship and encounter several key personalities -- The Astors, Maggie Brown, Ben Guggenheim, and many others. There's room for some other encounters here -- perhaps Leo DiCaprio's character is here, and the PCs can make sure he actually survives, too! -- or maybe they will steal that big blue sapphire for themselves.
It's possible, with first class access to the ship, to become acquainted with Stead***, who is a powerful, charismatic man and excellent storyteller.
When the ship strikes the iceberg, things get exciting. Anyone who happens to see the iceberg (on deck, on the bridge, etc) will see a shadowy Willow Tree there one moment, but it will be gone the next (probably just a trick of their eyes, right?)
The ship is taking on water, and the first class passengers (women and children) are being put on life boats. William Stead is there, helps put several people on lifeboats and even gives away his lifejacket.
Then the PCs seem to shift out of phase, and shadowy creatures appear that they must battle on the sloping decks of the sinking ship.
Once that battle is complete, they phase back in, and must convince Stead to board a lifeboat voluntarily. Doing so via violent means (hitting him over the head and dumping him into the boat) will not result in his survival -- if he's not convinced to survive at the expense of others, he'll regain consciousness shortly after the PCs dump him into a boat and give up his seat for someone pulled out of the water. He'll cling to the side of the boat, then, until his feet freeze into blocks of ice, and he must allow himself to sink. The PCs will discover that they've failed when they try to return, and will have to find a way to go to the life boat and convince him to get himself aboard again.
Once he's float and safe, the PCs may have one last phased-out battle, then can use the pinecone to return.
Back at the Beginning
Once back in the Elder UrTree forest, the PCs are able to see the unraveling of time, a process that starts slowly in one leaf of the UrWillow, then spreading like an unraveling sweater. It goes faster and faster until the tree is reduced to a sapling, at which point an elderly Chinese woman appears*.
"What have you done?"
The Willow Exposition
The PC can explain themselves as they like, then the UrWillow Woman shakes her head sadly. The tree begins to grow again, behind her, and they are aware of time going forward. The branches of the tree no longer droop, but stretch out to the stars that blink into existence above.
The UrWoman beckons the PCs forward, and they are treated to a vision of a new world, a future without sorrow. An eden of sorts, but humanity quickly becomes a lumpy, obese slugs that do nothing but eat and procreate and sleep. Time passes, and nothing happens. Nothing advances. Nothing changes. The time-tree doesn't branch.
"What the rebellious Firs called the Age of Sorrow is the Age of Man. It is only in overcoming challenges, facing adversity, standing up to evil, in which mankind reaches it's full potential. The Firs have used you to put a stop to all of that.
"When there are sorrows, your people --ordinary people -- rise to the occasion and become heroes. Whether the sorrows are manmade or natural, always there are the helpers, the heroes. Without sorrow, your people have no divinity. No grace.
"You must go back and restore the Age of Man."
Back to the Titanic
This time, the PCs are delivered to the Iceberg. When the ship strikes the Iceberg, they bound across and enter the ship, out of phase with the people on board. They remain out of phase (for the time being).
They must travel through the ship, while the people are being put on lifeboats, etc, and find their former selves, just after convincing Stead to board the lifeboat.
This time, in the out-of-phase battle, they must face themselves (the DM runs the characters from the previous timeline, using their own stats) and defeat themselves to return to "reality" and be able to interact with the people on the ship.
Then, they must convince Stead to give up his seat in the lifeboat to nobody special -- a mother from second class, a nurse from Albany, NY, anyone who is not an important person and who is handy. They're actually arguing in this case against the arguments they made to Stead to get him on board the lifeboat in the first place, but have a slight advantage in that it was his natural inclination to give up his seat. Still they're asking that he accept that he die at sea.
Once he's convinced, and steps back off the lifeboat, the players shift back out of phase, and Cringle appears before them, backed up with a squad of anthropomorphic pine trees.
Cringle's appearance becomes less and less human each round of this final battle -- becoming more and more demonic and tree-like. He monologues about the players ruining everything, and it becomes clear that his plot was not to save humanity, but to denude it, ensuring that the world would remain safe for trees for all time.
Return to the Beginning, One Last Time
After defeating Cringle, the PCs can return to the Beginning of Time to have one last meeting with the UrWillow.
They find the elderly Chinese woman sitting beneath the tree, crying. She greets them with a weak smile, and they turn and see the grove of pine trees is dead. Nearby, the grove of pine trees is a charred, dead wreck. There are signs of the wounds given to Cringle and his allies on the trees there. All of the trees there are clearly dead, and as the players watch they turn to ash and blow away.
She explains that Cringle and his partisans were trying to change time and eliminate the threat that Man represents to trees.
"Your time is the beginning of the end for my race, they believe. And it is truly a time of suffering. This is why I weep.
"The trees are being cut back, many more places are cut off from our purview. We can no longer see into the hearts of many of your cities. You live further and further from us, and spurn our influence. Cringle sought to reverse that through deception and trickery. Now he and his kind are lost forever.
"Go back and protect the trees in your time, and know that we are watching over you as well."
The PCs should be, at this point, still in possession of the pinecone. If they turn it over to the UrWillow Woman, she will weep with joy. "A seed survives, the can be restored).
If they don't give her the pinecone, they return to their own time with it. Everything will be basically back to normal, but there are no evergreen trees. And have never been. Cheap wood products are made out of other materials. They can plan the pinecone at some point, and that effort will restore it to the timeline as if it had always been there -- but if they don't think to do so, they'll live in a world without cheap wood furniture and christmas trees.
Ingredient Use:
Weeping Willow - The UrWillow, the anchor of the Age of Sorrows, and the anchor of the timeline
Trust - The PCs must win William Stead's Trust twice during the adventure -- the second time arguing against themselves.
Sinking Ship - The Titanic.
Beginning of Time - The beginning of time, the time/place where the PCs talk to Cringle about the mission, and the UrWillow about undoing the damage they've done.
Nobody Special - the person who, in the end, takes the place William Stead could have had in the lifeboat.
Unlikely Appointment - The hook, an appointment with Cringle set for yesterday.
Notes:
*Willow trees are chinese, originally, so I made the UrWillow a chinese woman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salix_babylonica#Horticultural_selections_and_related_hybrids
** More info on the Titanic to flesh out the adventure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
***Stead is a real personality, and he really did die on the Titanic. He was possibly slated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. He had been an advocate for changes to child labor laws, journalistic oversight over government, and so on. He was the father of Tabloids, for better or worse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead