#chronomancy

[godbirdart]

「 EXPANSE OF TIME 」 ⏳

portrait commission for @radiocabel

[dailyadventureprompts]

Settlement: Kaelvalon, Throne of the Once and Never King

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Despite it’s dusty summers, muddy winters, and reputation for being a brutish backwater among other inhabitants of the kingdom, the rugged province of Drigveria holds a beauty and dignity all its own. This is no better exemplified by the province’s capital of Kaelvalon, which presides over the surrounding wilderness like a gemstone emerging from course rock.

Built as a safehold during an age of monsters and warlords by the hero Kaelrik, this sturdy bastion and the town that surrounds it is the best place in the badlands for a group of adventurers to find work, shelter, and a few homey comforts before setting out on their next expedition.

Who’s Hiring: 

Increasing dangers on the road lead a pair of ambitious merchants to hire the party as escorts, bringing them into conflict with the corrupt soldiers who’re supposed to be in charge of keeping the roads safe. 

Early in their travels the party will meet a royal surveyor looking to explore the rugged terrain of the province’s wilds. A good friend to have, if you don’t mind the espionage he’s doing on the side. 

An ambitious noble wants the party to search the skeleton of a titanic dragon to find the fabled weapon that killed it. He’ll pay well, and absolutely won’t betray them. 

While visiting the market the party see an acolyte of the goddess Istus telling fortunes, when she divines for them, she demands they make pilgrimage to a temple in the mountains, a temple it’s rumoured to be impossible to reach. 

Rumours of arcane artifacts lead the party to an isolated orcish village built in a crumbled wizard’s tower. To win their favour, the party must investigate why one of their traders has gone missing in human lands. 

The ruler of Kaelvalon, the Marquess Talmis Younge, has a problem. Or rather, three problems that are going to make eachother infinitely worse. The first is that she’s trapped in a loveless marriage to a man named Selvin who she dare not divorce for fear of angering some of her most vital bannermen. The second is that she’s having an affair with an orc named Irgyr, who happens to be one of the clan leaders of her people’s traditional enemies. The third is that after years of “diplomatic meetings” with the clan leader, she’s fallen pregnant with her lover’s child, and the due date is approaching. She doesn’t want to give up the child, but giving birth to a halforc out of wedlock will be all the fodder Selvin needs to raise support and oust her from power.   Perhaps the party could be convinced to look into her husband’s dealings, if they can expose or fabricate his involvement in some kind of treason or illegality, she’ll be able to break from him before shit hits the fan.  

From the statue in the town square to the toasts still raised in his name, the legacy of the hero  Kaelrik’s looms large in the heart of Drigveria’s people even centuries after his death. Once merely a wandering adventuer, Kaelrik’s dauntless defence of the innocent in an age of war saw him hailed as a hero and later crowned as king of a fledgeling realm. 

All legends must end though, and after defeating warlords, wizards, and the challenges of the wilderness itself, Kaelrik gave his life plunging into an ancient dragon’s maw to impale its heart upon his blade. 

Or at least, this time he did. 

Beyond his own bravery and skill, one of the keys to Kaelrik’s success was his relationship with a woman named Nyramie, an oracle of Istus: goddess of fate. What began with duty and fellowship blossomed into love, and each time Kaelrik went into battle he would act upon Nyramie’s divinations, however impossible they might seem, to seek the best outcome for the people they protected. 

The last time he came to her, Nyramie wept. The goddess had revealed to her Kaelrik’s ultimate fate and the oracle broke, at once faithful to her patron’s plan and raging at the betrayal, the years of hardship and sacrifice and the future they had hoped to share all snatched away by divine edict. Contradiciton met miraculous power and Nyramie’s heartbreak fractured time; one outcome where she stayed silent and left Kaelrik to his fate, and another where she forged a destiny defying artifact in the form of a jagged red crystal. While holding it Kaelrik would be able to see all possibilities that led toward his victory, and would be able to survive his clash with the otherwise invincible wyrm. 

What Nyramine could have never predicted was what would happen to Kaelrik once untethered from his fate and given a tool that would provide such easy answers. His victories mounted and his kingdom spread, as he became a warlord to rival and then exceed any of those he’d fought. A desperate fight for survival turned into a quest for supremacy, and when the borders of his dominion were secure, Kaelrik’s ambitions turned intward. He was as fearsome a king as he was a hero, and he ruled for centuries thanks to his elven blood and Nyramie’s gift, becoming crueler as time and necessity hardened his heart. 

Eventually his subjects had enough, the outer reaches of his kingdom rising in rebelion and descending upon his capital of Kaelvalon with such force that there was no possibility for Kaelrik or his loyalists could fight his way out. No possibility, save the one the crystal showed him where he used its power to pass across the divide of time, to the fork where he had never established his kingdom. It required great and terrible sacrifice, but he managed it… and at some pivotal moment, Kaelrik the once and never king will emerge into the province of Drigveria through a crimson gate along with his legion, and will set about building his kingdom anew. 

Future Adventures: 

Chronal anomalies will begin popping up in the prelude to Kaelrik’s arrival. Strange red lighting storms, artifacts from the other timeline drifting through, to say nothing of the various extraplanear entities that might be attracted by such disturbances. 

Kaelrik’s emergence happens shortly after Talmis has given birth to her child, posing a direct threat to her legitimacy as a ruler and giving her detractors one HELL of a symbol to rally around. The once and never king is all too happy to embrace these new supporters, overjoyed to find a populace that adores him the same way they adored his younger self. Add to this his distrust of the orcs of Felstar’s Faultering, who turned out to be one of the factions that rebelled against him first. 

To defeat Kaelrik, the party will need to lay their hands on the presentworld mirror of his objects of power: his crown ( in Talmis’s possession), his sword (lost in the dragon’s skeleton), and his crystal (buried in the heart of the impossible to reach temple of Istus). When these items are assembled not only will they give the party an edge in combat against him, but they will also (at the right hour, we’re in full prophecy territory here) summon the ghost of Sydagul, the dragon that was to be Kaelrik’s doom in the first place. Queue the party fighting on top of a castle against an extratemporal tyrant while a skeletal dragon the size of a mountain bears down on them. 

If you’re considering what to do for your next adventure arc, consider having all the temporal shenanigans unleashed by Kaelrik’s meddling attract the cannibalistic god of entropy, who’s cult is liable to start popping up in those continuity-orphaned soldiers who’ll flee to the hinterlands when their boss bites the dust. 

[gingermarshmallow]

*trying so hard to fall asleep*

My brain: yeah but what if a Fantasy High/Back to the Future AU where Ayda invents a chronomancy bass guitar and Fig accidentally uses it to go back in time and now she has to convince Professor Aguefort to help her fix it so she can return to the future while also trying to help Gilear hook up with Sandra Lynn but also while keeping him lame enough that SL will still cheat on him with Gorthalax so Fig can remain a tiefling

Me: yeah, ok, you may be into something

[elfie4306]

You know what the greatest magic of all is according to Brennan Lee Mulligan? FUCK love, and FUCK friendship, it’s Chronomancy, and I don’t think we should be fucking with it.

Put the clock down.

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

[DMing Curse of Strahd, my least-experienced player was trying to introduce more than just wine to Barovia's alcohol ecosystem:] Player 1: Yeah, we tell them how to make vodka or something. And now they have other options. Me: You can certainly tell them, but it'll take a while to get everything set up, and then time to ferment... Player 1: No, we can just… Player 1: [wink!] Player 1: ...We tell them, and then they just do it. Player 3: ...Huh? Player 1: No, see, in this fiction we're doing... It only takes like an hour to make alcohol! Player 1: [WINK!] Player 2: I... I don't think you can just decide that... Me: I think you're taking some big liberties with how time works. Player 1: Hey! You said that in Dungeons and Dragons, I could do anything I wanted! And I want booze to take an hour to make!! Me: AT HIGHER LEVELS YOU CAN LEARN TIME MAGIC. Me: THEN WE CAN TALK.

[gavamont]

A wizard that gets aid in battle by summoning his own self from moments before his death.

It started when he was young and brought forth a grey bearded version of himself that was far more skillful and finished the battle he faced. Going forward though, the future summoned self would have to be from days before his final day so the wizard would still have energy to battle alongside the mage.

Rumor has it that he’s going to eventually summon himself from the very next day and then have to live his life as a servant to a younger mirror of himself.

[brewerssupplies]

Been throwing around the idea for a chronomancer class for a while now, and so here we are. I've seen chronomancer classes done a lot, but none have really done it for me. So I finally made my own, and will be adding a few more subclasses in the future. Hope you enjoy!

[PDF]

[ubemari]

a not-canon scene our chronomancer Elizabeth Whitlock reminds our wet cat artificer silas what the greatest magic of all is