The Chronomancer's Tower

[Credit to Andrew Harshman, DM extraordinaire... this is an adaptation of his D and D adventure by the same name]

The Chronomancer's Tower

Backstory 8 DY, with the Eye Demon from The War of the Rift now terrorizing the good folk of the seas and shores, the learned and less learned folk of the realm began to work together to find a way to put an end to the Demon. Through conversations with scholars much more studied than he, Farmer Rube learned several strange and potentially useful pieces of information:

1. Those who bravely faced the eye demon at the Rift described a monster bearing a strong resemblance to a beast that terrorized the lands of Dargarth in accounts from more than 1200 years prior.

2. A notable person of that age, now known only as "the Chronomancer" was said to have been involved in defeating that demon. The Chronomancer spent his later years in a pocket-dimensional tower of his own creation, toiling away to uncover the secrets of time magic until the day that the entrace to the tower vanished from the land.

3. 400 years after the tower's disappearance, the tower returned, but only for one day. On the 800th anniversary, the tower returned again for another day. The 1200th anniversary was in early 8 DY, and so a plan was hatched to enter the tower to see what could be learned from the Chronomancer or his notes. Rube issued a call to arms, and some hearty 20 adventurers heeded his request for aid.

Adventure description The adventurers were warned that the tower was experiencing an iterative calamity of some sort that caused time to loop upon itself within the tower. What they would later learn is that the tower was destroyed when the Chronomancer, in the middle of an experiment in time dilation, was robbed and murdered by some Rogue from the same bygone era. The Chronomancer unleashed the energies of the experiment, ripping his and the Rogue's shades from their bodies, destroying the tower, and starting the time loop. The Chronomancer's specter was forced to watch himself die a million deaths over the centuries, while the Rogue was cursed (or maybe blessed) to remember nothing, and thereby repeat his ill-fated deeds ad infinitum.

The adventurers were braced by magic from gathered scholars who had studied the tower's energies, and these magics allowed them to remember their deaths. Armed with these memories, the adventureres were able to learn from their mishaps, and eventually brave their way through numerous deadly traps and hazards. They formed up into 3 teams in a race to the top of the tower where the Chronomancer and his treasures were rumored to be:

1. the first floor featured an automated defense network of clockwork golems teleporting into a guardhouse to defend the tower. The adventurers had to destroy many of these golems while positioning themselves and the bodies of the golems on pressure plates to close the portals.

2. the second floor was a storehouse with only a single poison arrow trap. However, damage from the explosions rocking the upper floors of the tower caused parts of the hallway to collapse. This created an additional pit hazard and also knocked down a wall that had previously restrained a gelatinous cube that the Chronomancer's caretaker had kept in a side storage room for garbage disposal purposes. The adventurers had to make sense of this insidious, slow, and virulently poisonous monstrosity as it subsumed the caretaker's body and inched toward them.

3. there was no 3rd floor... or 5th, 6th, or 7th floors. These floors were left as empty extra-dimensional vacuum as traps for unwelcome guests using the tower's clock-based teleportation network.

4. the fourth floor had a single powerful and swift iron golem defending it, but the true hazard came from this floor being adjacent to the center of the explosive calamity happening on the top floor. The electric energy from that calamity would rejuvinate the golem if the adventureres failed to completely destroy it in short order. It also set a barrel of volatile arcane reagents aflame that would detonate if not extinguished. The teams took myriad of approaches from rushing through everything before the hazards defeated them, to systematically dealing with each hazard and then puzzling through the contents of the room.

5. ultimately the teams converged on the top floor of the tower where they witnessed the confrontation between the Chronomancer and the Rogue. Fortunately for them, they were still only partially done teleporting into the room when the experiment was disrupted, so they were spared from the direct impact of the blasts. However, the shade of the Chronomancer, maddened from having watched himself die repeatedly for a millineum, immediately moved to engage the adventurers. The Chronomancer was hasted and moved at a blinding pace relative to the slowed adventurers, making them sitting ducks for his volleys of lightning bolts and fireballs. When struck, the Chronomancer would freeze time, move to a more advantageous position, and then strike down his assailants before they could be sure where he had gone. Ultimately, it took some teamwork from both the first team to the top (composed largely of Highlanders) and the second team to the top (with many Mardurians) before the Chronomancer's arcane energies could be depleted enough to cut down his shade. In the end, only a single Highlander was left standing (as seems strangely appropriate for some reason), as the third and final team finally arrived, completely intact, just in time to loot.

Things became confused at that point, and there were many treasures discovered and shared among the living. Eventually Conrich discovered a procedure for shutting down the tower's pocket dimension hidden within the Chronomancer's notes. He did so, the tower collapsed, and all present were deposited on the grassy field outside. Scholars, medics, and clerics descended on the wounded and slain, restoring them to life, only to have some of them immediately turn their weapons upon one another. The treasures were redistributed through this process yet again, and it is unclear today where relics from that bygone age may have ended up.

Aftermath Two items of importance were immediately discovered, and Conrich and Morigan shared the discoveries with the leaders of the nations and those present:

1. there was a great mural seeming to show an assembly of heroes using a collection of radiant artifacts to thwart a floating eye demon. From this it was inferred that these same relics, if found, could be used to banish the demon back to its realm for another millennium.

2. there were notes on how a seemingly similar collection of artifacts were hidden in the ancient era.

... what was missing (at least after all of the looting was done) was an indication of where the artifacts may today be found, or how they might be used.

The scroll recovered from the tower...