Help planting clues to nature of campaign

[target]

So, first, a bit of brief background.

In my campaign, a great wizard had sensed an invading force coming into the multiverse. It's not really important what it was about, but he decided that it posed a great danger, and that something had to be done.

So he set up traps throughout time to harvest the best and most powerful people from the history of the land, freezing them in stasis until the time when he was ready to take his army of people from across time off to battle.

The PCs are accidentally swept up in his net. When he realizes that they aren't great or powerful, he lets them go, into the world.

The expected effect of his actions, though, is that he has in fact taken all the great leaders and forces of good out of history at the moment they reach true power. This means that the scale is unbalanced, and all those supoer powerful liches, evil warlords, and so on, who would have been destroyed by the heroes actually lived.

So the world is not a happy place. Eventually, I want the PCs to figure all this out, and take steps to put all those people back into their proper times. In the meantime, I need to plant clues to tell them why all the cities they visit are either totally oppressive (LE or LN), anarchic and dissolute (CE), or simply nonexistant, since people won't be able to build large societies without cooperation. Further, more people than usual would prefer to live alone.

So what are some clues I can leave to tell them this is happening? I'm not sure that they'll figure out to wonder why cities seem such awful places without a pointer or two. Also, are there other ramifications of having a history where evil won, pretty much?

Thanks,
target

 

[Crothian]

Tales of great heros suddenly disapearing. Stories like that would be huge if everyone vanished right as they achieved true power.

Have the PCs know of one of these up and coming heros and then have him suddenly vanish.

Other then that I'm really not sure. Maybe have some psychics vaguely see this evil coming and give hints of what is going on.

How did the Wizard learn of this? Give clues that lead the PCs down the same road he took.

 

[target]

Well, they already know that he recruited all those people. The question is, how best to get them to see the effects of heroes pulled out of the time stream?

Perhaps a crystal ball that shows them a thriving city, but when they get there, it's not at all what they were expecting. A crystal ball that shows what the time *should* be like, rather than what it's actually like.

I wonder what mechanism could cause that?

Hm....

- target

 

[Darklone]

Easy

Enter a time machine or switch. The wizard brought them into the future. They see several heros in stasis. Later, when they are sent back where they belong, they meet the heros when those are still young.

Probably the wizard catches the heros later when they ARE powerful and his first attempt was simply a mistake when he took them too early. Let them discover a rather common book of history on his table. That book will be written in 5 years or so to come and the PCs will actually contribute to the gathering of the stories for the author. They could even try to fake some heros in the book and set a trap for the timetraveling wizard.