What exactly is the Great Modron March?

[Tzarevitch]

Uhm, the whole point is that the March has started more than a century too early. Everyone knows that the march comes through every 289 years and everyone takes precautions every 289 years. That doesn't help much when the modrons knock at your door only 120 years after the last time.

Yes, but it has been every 289 years like clockwork since the dawn of time. Everyone knows this. Why would people build a town in the way when you know this happens? Yes you have a reason to be surprised that they came early, but you know that they WILL come. Why would you then have built houses there in the first place?

I can see humans with a 100 year lifespan making that mistake once, but why would the immoral lords of Mt. Celestia build a town on the route that the modrons were granted by treaty (if I remember correctly). That implies that either the lords of Mt. Celestia are content to let the population of the towns and cities in their path get killed and their property destroyed every 289 years or they have such poor memory that they can't remember that the modrons come every cycle. That is just stupid. The fact that the modrons arrived early that time was irrelevant.

If you live by the banks of a river and every 100 years (exactly) for the last 10,000 years, the river has flooded on the same day at the same time and to the same high water mark; after a generation or two, your society will learn not to build their houses below the water mark. It doesn't matter that the 10,000th time the flood arrived early. Unless it is a society of idiots, they'll pick up the pattern after the first five or so times and simply not build homes or anything else intended to be permanent below the watermark.

Tzarevitch

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I'm fairly removed from canon, though; recently the last of the modrons made it back to Mechanus, and the entire race -- all 330 + million of them -- keeled over and died simultaneously. The PCs were in the middle of the capitol of Regulus at the time, and it was something of a shock. Now there's a rumor around that they caused the mass deaths. As you can imagine, they're wanted for questioning.

If they had killed 330+ million of modrons, I wouldn't seek them out. I would run away. Can you imagine how many XP that will bring them? They'll hit the far reaches of epic levels with that one, and then some ;-)