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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davies" data-source="post: 8771734" data-attributes="member: 30538">The full story of what eventually became known as the Anachronic Calamity may never be known. Even its starting point is debated, with some assigning primacy to the journey of the Purple Haze through the Pillars of Eternity, and others to the manipulations of Jessica Drummond that resulted in the birth of the Warpwitch. While time was not broken until the Purple Haze murdered Dancer, it was already fracturing before that point. Ironically, its shattering, and thus the end of causality, slowed what followed it down to the point where it could be, to a degree, rectified.None of this was known to the four founders of the Anachronic Argonauts, who soon found themselves the leaders of a much larger organization, numbering some three hundred members*, ranging from the Albadine aristocrat sometimes called Princess Kaguya to a digital recreation of the man called Captain Nemo, and including heroes and villains from the World More Grim, the World Closer to Death, the World More Sorcerous, the Sprawl and Tanelorn. Their stated goal was to determine what was happening, to determine the whereabouts of Bruce Rutherford and Weena and rescue them if necessary, and then to restore reality to what it had been. They would succeed only in the first two of those goals.Meanwhile, unaware of what had begun on the World Less Magical, Billie Zane and Cerebron departed on a journey to obtain the Cosmic Gems of interstellar legend, less because of their power than because Billie planned to use them to buy access to Ananke. They were successful in obtaining four of the gems and determining how they could be used in combination, and then traveled to Daath to claim the fifth from its guardian. Having done this, Billie -- now travelling alone -- was ushered into the presence of Ananke by Abraxas himself. The whereabouts and fate of Cerebron become something of a mystery at this point.The Anachronic Argonauts managed to free the Rutherfords from their captivity in Pandiomon, and learned that their friends had been kidnapped by Khoronous, the Hierarch of Time -- and a dimensional counterpart to Exelion -- as bait for a trap for Exelion, whom their captor believed to be the only individual in all of reality who could assist him in preventing what was to come. The success of the Argonauts made Khoronous reconsider his notions, and he now offered his assistance ... but almost too late.For even as he did so, Billie Zane faced Ananke and offered to solve the Final Problem, which took the form of a riddle game ... which Billie won. Doing so undid the lock that the Old Ones had created, and all of reality began to dissolve into the entity known as Azathoth. But because time had been broken, that dissolution was not instantaneous. Because time was no longer real, there was still a chance.Four of the five Hierarchs, each the heir of one of the Old Ones who had created the lock, agreed to try and restore it. But the fifth, Nyx, who had helped to create it, found the destruction amusing and refused to assist them ... until he came under attack by an alliance of villains, notably including Nephren-Ka, the Saffron King and the Shadow Dragon, who sought vengeance on him. In exchange for the assistance of the Argonauts in defeating these villains, Nyx agreed to assist.The five Hierarchs of the World More Sorcerous then joined forces with the Immortals of the World More Grim and also the Guardians of Tanelorn, and challenged Abraxas, draining his accumulated power and shaping part of it into a new lock for Azathoth. In the process, the realities containing the World Less Magical, the World More Grim, the World Closer to Death and the World More Sorcerous were merged into a single reality, with the Sprawl and Tanelorn coming to occupy parts of the World In The Aftermath as well. It was no longer a World Less Magical, for the extradimensional energies that Abraxas had once monopolized were now available to anyone able to learn to use them. Magic was loose in the world.The Anachronic Argonauts disbanded, but the Rutherfords have promised that they will gather them again if the situation ever becomes this dire again. Just which of the four might become Lord Carnifex remains unclear, but Weena pointed out that there was a time when none of them could have become Lord Carnifex -- as the future no longer existed -- and yet Lord Carnifex still exists. The mystery remains.And what of Ananke? What can change the nature of an entity? Especially an entity who is immune to all things. The answer lies in the definition of "immunity" -- the ability to successfully resist anything. But what such an entity does not choose to resist -- or chooses to embrace -- can still affect them. And so, the truth that once was spoken remains the truth: anything that an entity believes can change them, can.And so, when the Final Problem was solved, and its solution spoken, and all that is and was and ever could be began to dissolve into its original nature -- the process slowed by the breakage of Time -- some part of Ananke that had changed over the billions of years of her existence remained separate from that part of her which ceased to exist with the opening of the lock. And when what had gone wrong was once more set right, though different, that being remained and took up a new office in the new establishment.<img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/My-First-Gallery/i-bF3Mv5H/0/e2f29358/M/max-tivik-pharasma2-M.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Teleute, Hierarch of Entropy* Before you ask, this is not a reference to any Spartan propaganda. This is a reference to the number of equites -- cavalry -- in the legions fielded by the Roman Republic.</blockquote>

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