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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4581399" data-attributes="member: 54707">The Tesseract and the True Cross – (This is the briefing of the actual adventure. For Background Information on this dungeon see here: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/jack7/1120-time-riddles.html" target="_blank">Time Riddles</a>) The capital city of Kitharia, Samarkand, is under threat of invasion. A large army, moving from the West is already en route to besiege the city. With the Kitharian border force already stretched thin patrolling the frontiers, and with their main force exhausted and in a process of rebuilding after the Second and Third Mastred Wars (in the outer colonies against the Mastred and their giant allies), little lies between the current invading force of Caladeem and the capital city. If the Caladeem reach Samarkand before the border units can respond to try and help blunt the attack, and before word can be sent east to the main army (still in a process of reorganizing with inexperienced units), then the capital itself may be surrounded and cut off from resupply. An effort thereafter to lift an already firmly established siege and rescue the capital could be extremely costly and with insurrection against the Samarl (The Priest King of Samarkand) from within a real possibility due to his support for pursuing Thaumaturgy over Elturgy the entire government could be in danger of collapse. Desperate to save his government and to pursue his overall intention of displacing Elturgy with Thaumaturgy the Samarl seeks help from any source available. According to an ancient prophecy uncovered by his chief historian the city can be saved from the invasion by obtaining a peculiar relic, one that is supposed to have originated in another world and that should not be recoverable for another 600 years. Further researching the bizarre prophecy, and employing the Samarälear (The Seat of Sacred Sight) for guidance, the Samarl decides that the prophecy must refer to the human relic of the True Cross. Furthermore any existing pieces of the Cross are on Earth (Terra) not on Ghantik, yet the Samarl feels it must somehow be possible to obtain possession of it or it would not be prophesied about. (But is the Samarl correct, or is he merely reading into the prophecy what he wants to see?) Since the prophecy gives a clue about the possible location of where to begin looking for a piece of the True Cross, the Samarl immediately readies a secret expeditionary mission and sends the party of the Caerkara to find the relic if possible, and return it to Samarkand as soon as it is retrieved. The party has less than three weeks to reach their destination, locate the site, find the relic (if possible) and return to the capital with the relic. Even then it is unknown how the relic might be employed to turn aside or stave off the invasion. All possible resources are made available to the party of the Caerkara to get them underway and to the first site as soon as possible, including use of the Samarl’s secret Airboat.Arriving at the spot where they are told to start looking for the relic, the Caerkara, finding nothing, decide to dig and see if the relic has been covered, or buried in some manner. They dig their way into a bizarre chamber that then transforms and reseals itself behind them. Exploring further they find an enclosure made of a strange substance, seeming like a cross between metal and marble, but when they try to penetrate it with Elturgy it becomes liquid and they pass through it into what appears to be a long hallway. The passage through which they entered seems to have disappeared and all attempts, both physical and Elturgical, to break out of the trap into which they have fallen utterly fail.The party has actually penetrated into a very peculiar and unique dungeon. Within this dungeon is a device, originally called the Gwǽlķythőrĵ, which routinely patrols the entire area of the dungeon. At any time it discovers any living creature within any area it inhabits it will automatically send that creature either forwards or backwards in time to some other time point in the history of the dungeon. The Gwǽlķythőrĵ is the time device alluded to in the Background Information on this dungeon.The Eladarin Wizard named Curåijộryl had designed it as both a guardian for his established home, and as a device that would allow him to live forever. Because of the events described in the background the device escaped his control and became a sort of renegade automaton, trapping the very Wizard who had created the device, driving many of his incarnations mad, making the rest desperate to escape their endless tesseract and prison. Only twice has anyone ever been believed to have escaped the prison, both were incarnations of Curåijộryl. Once an incarnation of the Wizard escaped outside of the dungeon and into another world (the human world, our World). Unable to return to his native world he began studying the human world and human customs, becoming fascinated with religion and Thaumaturgy, and spent his remaining years as a monk and chief librarian in a monastery and chapel in Syria, hoping to discover anything that might lead him home. He never did find anything of any real use regarding his own world, but through his researches he did discover a peculiar set of references which eventually led him to the city of Jerusalem, where he uncovered several important artifacts, including a piece of the True Cross which he brought back with him to his monastery and secreted in his living quarters at the library. Until his death it remained his prize possession. Several other time incarnations of Curåijộryl became aware of the “hole” in the tesseract that led to Terra (Earth) but none ever pursued it for though they eventually figured out the hole probably led to the human world, they also assumed it was one way. (In this they were correct.)One other incarnation of Curåijộryl eventually escaped the dungeon, this time into the distant past of his own world (Ghantik), through means unknown, but that incarnation was by that time thoroughly insane and ruthless, having been driven utterly mad by the constant time fluctuations. It is that incarnation of the Wizard that Ghantikan history remembers as brutal, vicious, evil, powerful, and cruel. And it is that incarnation of the Wizard Curåijộryl that is spoken about often in legend, lore, and story.Because of the nature of the Gwǽlķythőrĵ it existed in the dungeon at any and every era simultaneously. Players were moved around constantly in time, and sometimes in space, always to another incarnation of the dungeon. Sometimes a more primitive version, sometimes a more advanced version. And each version contained different artifacts, versions of the Gwǽlķythőrĵ and of Curåijộryl, different creatures, etc. For purposes of creating this dungeon I drew seven different maps of the place, which Curåijộryl had originally christened Saŗaouỹl (the place of the Returning), each map showing different stages of construction. The most primitive map contained seven rooms; the most complex had eighty-four areas including rooms, corridors, hallways, secret areas, laboratories, etc. There were fourteen different versions of the Wizard Curåijộryl, and four different versions of the Gwǽlķythőrĵ.The purpose of the dungeon was to escape to a time when the Gwǽlķythőrĵ could be controlled, or to gain control of it by other means, and then locate the Wizard and try to elicit his help to find the piece of the True Cross. Then somehow find a way to escape the dungeon and return the relic to Samarkand. Unknown to the party they keep meeting different incarnations of the Wizard, some in disguise, as they are transferred form one time era to another.It did not matter how long one was in the dungeon because one was constantly being transported through time within the dungeon, so time in relation to the outer world was ordered very differently.</blockquote>

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