And so, we come to the end of our full month of rarely-before seen material from Saga of the Chronomancer. It is appropriate that we end with material which has actually *never* been seen by anyone besides me, and furthermore, resolves two of the last great mysteries of my game. Practically from its inception, my game has featured custom feats which were available to players if they could guess what they were based on what NPCs did, and at last, some of those feats will be made known. Second, my game has, from the very first session, had various cheat codes which came and went over time. The codes were there for players to use and abuse as needed, but first they had to 1) guess a code and 2) recognise that they had guessed it. A couple of codes actually got triggered over the course of the game, but no player ever noticed, which was just fine with me. A wise man once observed that the best jokes are sometimes the ones that only one person in the whole world gets. In any case, at long last, these cheat codes will be revealed.

Anti-Magic Blood
Prerequisite: This feat must be taken at character generation and at first level.
Some people are born with innate magical aptitude or ability; conversely, some people are born with so little magical aptitude that they can never be affected by magic. A character with this feat cannot be the target or any spells or effects; they cannot be healed by magic or harmed by magic. This includes immunity to most damaging spells even when the damage is not strictly magical (such as Fireball) but does not protect the character from indirect damage (ex: a disintegration spell can be used to destroy a support and cause a character to fall). The character is invisible to all magical sight and perception and to supernatural abilities. Magical weapons can harm the character, but function only as normal weapons to hit and damage.
Normal: Magic can harm you, but it can also help you.

Big as Life and Twice as Ugly
You are very big and very mean, and when you want to scare someone, you make sure they know it.
Prerequisites: Monstrous Intimidate, strength greater than 12.
Benefit: You add your strength modifier to your intimidate bonus.

Boot to the Head
You have learned the secret of the deadliest kick in the world, and you demonstrate it willingly.
Prerequisites: Wisdom 14, monk, base attack bonus 10
As a full round action, you may make a single strike against one enemy. This strike is a touch attack at your highest base attack with to-hit bonus of +20, modified by the better of either strength or dexterity, and may be used as a vehicle for stunning fist, quivering palm, or other monk abilities. Using this attack draws an attack of opportunity from the target of the strike, and the attack happens at initiative 2. In addition to normal barehanded damage and any monk abilities, an enemy who takes at least 5 points of damage from a sucessful Boot to the Head must make a fortitude save at a DC equal to your level + your wisdom modifier + your strength; failure results in 1d10 points of temporary intelligence and constitution damage. Boot to the Head can only be used against targets with a discernible anatomy (i.e., a head); creatures without constitution scores are still subject to the intelligence damage, and creatures without intelligence scores are still subject to the constitution damage.

Cinematic Warrior
You receive greater combat bonuses the longer it takes you to describe your attacks.
Benefit: You receive a bonus to your actions if they are performed in a stylish or entertaining manner. “Attacking an enemy” gains you no bonuses; “charging with your weapon outstretched, a battle-cry on your lips, with the sun glinting off your blood-soaked armour, leaping around his defenses and thrusting your sword through his breastplate into his foul black heart” brings you a bonus to hit. It is the DM’s prerogative to assign bonuses (or penalties) for attack and other action descriptions; arguing over these bonuses may result in loss of this feat. A normal bonus is +1 or +2; a particularly unique or creative action, the first time it is performed, or a character’s signature action or line used at a perfect moment, may earn a bonus of as much as +4.
Normal: When you take a running start and slide across the flood on your back, with an automatic crossbow in each hand firing quarrels directly into your enemies’ eyes through their armoured sunglasses, you receive a penalty, not a bonus.

Detect Tavern
You’ve visited cities far and wide, and there is one thing true to all cities: there is always a tavern, or some heathen analog.
Prerequisite: Must have visited at least 5 cities and at least ten taverns.
Benefit: When in an unfamiliar city, you can make a gather information check to locate and evaluate the local drinking establishments. At DC 5, you can find 1d3 taverns. At DC 10, you can find 1d6 taverns according to their level of quality, price, and social group to which they cater. At DC 15, you can locate taverns with or without seedy, underworld elements. At DC 20, you can find the tavern in a city which is home to a particular city element, such as the spoiled young nobles, the crime lords, the out of work adventurers, and so forth. At DC 25, you can locate the tavern favoured by a specific individual without knowing the tavern’s name or location. This feat additionally grants you a +4 bonus to gather informaiton checks to find a tavern, search the tavern, and sense motive of people who work in or are regulars at the tavern. For every week you spend in the city, you may add a cumulative +1 circumstance bonus to your various checks.

Distracting Presence
Something about you confuses, befuddles, and generally disrupts others. Your mere presence makes bards sing off-key and thieves fumble their lockpicks. Maybe it’s the way you crack your knuckles and grin insanely or your unbelievable beauty which makes others unable to focus, but people just do things wrong when you’re around.
Prerequisites: Charisma more than 16 or less than 6.
Benefit: You distract others and put them off their tasks. Once per day per four character levels (once at level 1, twice at level 4, three times at level 8...), you may apply a -10 circumstance penalty to any single skill check made within ten feet of you. This is not a deliberate act, and so may be used against skill checks a character is not aware of, such as pickpocket attempts. You may not apply this penalty more than once to a single skill check.

Metamagic feat: Ballistic Summoning
You are a true artist with summoning spells, and have learned to bring your creatures into being where they’ll do the most good (or the most harm).
Prerequisites: Ability to cast 3rd level summoning spells; any other metamagic feat which has been used at least once with a summoning spell; must be non-lawful caster
Benefit: Your summoned creatures do not have to appear on a surface capable of supporting them. You may summon giant octopi and elephants and anything else in the air above your enemies.
Normal: Summoned creatures must appear on a supporting surface and not in mid-air.

Monstrous Intimidation
Your frightening or disturbing appearance serves you well in intimidating others.
Prerequisites: Charisma less than 10, not lawful good, 4 ranks in intimidate
Benefit: For purposes of intimidate checks, your negative charisma modifier is treated as a positive score.
Normal: A lower charisma score gives penalties to intimidate checks.

Share Enlightenment
Your teachings are such that all who listen to you are enriched and, in some cases, even empowered.
Prerequisites: Share Wisdom, Wisdom 20
Benefit: Any characters you designate who have spent at least one full hour in the last week listening to you, either in conversation or while you were speaking publicly, may use your wisdom modifier instead of their own for purposes of skill checks, saves, divine spell DC, and Monk abilities. Having this feat confers a +2 bonus to your leadership score.

Share Wisdom
You often share your life experience and views of the universe with others, and many profit from your wisdom.
Prerequisites: Wisdom greater than 15 or age category of venerable.
Benefit: Any characters you designate may use your wisdom modifier instead of their own, to a maximum of earning a + 4 bonus over their normal modifier, for their own skill checks and saves as long as they remain within 30 feet of you. Characters using your modifier must have spent at least half an hour in the last week making a genuine attempt to listen to you, either in conversation or while you were speaking publicly.

Shriek and Vanish
Cowardice isn’t a personality trait for you, it’s a way of life. Specifically, it’s a way to a long life.
Prerequisite: Constitution less than 14, ability to cast invisibility or otherwise turn invisible magically in less than 1 full round.
Benefit: A character with this feat has finely honed survival instincts and understands the value of not being seen. This character may turn invisible as a free action when threatened – just before combat begins, when targeted by an intimidate check, immediately after a reflex check, and so forth. The character must be aware of danger to turn invisible, and so cannot turn invisible prior to being hit by an unseen assailant or trap. This is a cowardice based ability and is negated by spells or effects which make a character immune to fear.

Too Damn Stubborn to Dodge
You are the immovable object to your enemy’s unstoppable force.
Prerequisite: Fortitude score greater than 14, reflex score less than 11.
Benefit: You are sufficiently tough (and bloody-minded) that you can use your fortitude score to save against reflex attacks. You laugh in the face of explosions and shrug off falling bricks... you’re just too tough and/or stupid to admit defeat. A sucessful save has the same effect it would if you saved with reflex, usually halving damage. If you fail the save versus a damage-dealing effect, you take the full damage plus 1 extra die of damage, because you stood your ground proudly when you really ought to have ducked or something.

Too Damn Stubborn to Drop
Your strong will means you don't die until you're ready to.
Prerequisite: Will score greater than 14, Fortitude score less than 11.
Benefit: Where pain and fear send others to their knees, you resist through sheer force of will and thus can use your will score to save against fortitude attacks. You stand resolute and strong as blows rain upon you or poison courses through your veins. A sucessful save has the same effect it would if you saved with fortitude, usually halving damage or negating a spell effect. If you fail the save versus a damage-dealing effect, you take the full damage plus 1 extra die of damage, because you refused to give in and get out of the way of the pain when you really ought to have.

Boba Fett? Where?: The action being performed by target creature becomes a botch.

Did I miss something? When did we get to Disneyland?: Set target character’s intelligence to 50.

Exterminate! Exterminate!: Kill target creature.

Fnord: Target character becomes invisible as if having been the caster and target of Improved Invisibility.

Goalpost Head: Target character’s charisma drops to 1.

Hulk Smash!: Set target character’s strength to 50.

I drank what?: Set target character’s constitution to 50.

In Blackest Night: While enabled, this character perpetually gains the effects of bless, desecrate, detect good, protection from good, smite good, and unholy aura, and rebukes undead as per a cleric of character level.

In Brightest Day: While enabled, this character perpetually gains the effects of bless, consecrate, detect evil, protection from evil, smite evil, and holy aura, and turns undead as per a cleric of character level.

(insert item name here)? IT MUST BE MINE!: Spawn item.

I know (Insert feat here): target character gains the chosen feat.

I’ll be back: Target character is fully healed of all damage and other negative effects.

It shoots through schools: Target character now kills enemies in one hit.

It’s good to be the king: Target character is invulnerable and cannot be affected by any spells or effects unless they want to be.

Miracle worker (insert skill name here): Boost target character’s ranks in this skill by 50; taking 20 takes 10 instead.

More than meets the eye: While enabled, this character may Shapechange at will, gaining all extraordinary and supernatural abilities of the new form.

This is my BOOMstick!: While enabled, this character may make one extra ranged touch attack each round at their highest base attack +20. This attack deals 1d100 X 100 damage to a single target.

Use the Force: While enabled, this character may use Force skills as a Jedi of their character level.

Wanna see it again?: Set target character’s dexterity to 50.

Warp 10: Target character Teleports Without Error or Planeshifts to any desired location regardless of spell protections.

What do you want?: Set target character’s charisma to 50.

Who are you?: Set target character’s wisdom to 50.

XP in a Can: Target character gains enough experience to advance one level.

And that's it for Saga of the Chronomancer. Thank you all for bearing with me while I spent 30 days ranting about it all. If you enjoyed, remember to support your local storytellers and dungeonmasters, because they work hard to make you happy every week. If you didn't enjoy this past month, take heart, because the Journal goes back to its usual nonsense in just 3 days.

When Saga of the Chronomancer was first conceived, there was one problem to overcome. The challenge facing the storyteller in any game is, how do you get your players set into a single storyline without forcing them into it, or at least, without them feeling forced. Good players will try to go along with their storyteller, but I didn't know yet if I was going to have good players, and anyway, it's not fair to the players to have everything mapped out before they even start.

The solution was to create more than just one storyline. This was before I had ever cereated the Chronomancer, and I didn't have my heart particularly set on that story versus any other. I therefore came up with two metaplots, and let my players pick the one they ended up in. As fate had it, they chose to pursue the Koths, which led them to the Church, which in turn led them to the Chronomancer. But the first storylines led equally in two directions. Their first few adventures hinted at two worl powers: the Koths, who had orchestrated several nasty events, and a mysterious artifact-builder who had constructed several items of nearly inconceivable power and ingenuity. The players pursued the Koths, and so the Artificer's story was never developped... I never even wrote it, and don't know what it woud have been. However, the Artificer did become a minor character in SotC, and between that and his place as the other potential Big Bad of my game, he deserves his own space here. I salute the storyline which never had the chance to live, and I can only hope that his saga would have made as nifty a game as the Chronomancer's.

“Georie the Cursed” is not an auspicious name to be given at birth, but such was the name given to the human who would be the Artificer. Cursed, he was named by the shamans, for a hundred ill omens hung over him that day. Cursed he was to be born in a small village in the dry season in a harsh drought, when no newborn survived the first tenweek save him. Cursed he was to be born to outcast parents on the village’s edge, who died in fire when their dry hut burned one summer’s night. Cursed he was to be taken in by the village tanner, a harsh and cruel master who raised Georie as a slave. Cursed he was to be the only one in the village when all others had left for a festival, when raisers razed the village and took him for a slave. Cursed he was to be deemed unprofitable, and left to rot in the desert as they rode on. Cursed indeed was Georie.

But he was born, and lived through the summer. His parents burned, but he was outside and escaped the flame. He was raised cruelly but he grew strong and skilled. Alone and prisoner he was, and left to die on the sands, but he reached civilization and found haven at a university. And he was taken in by mechanists and tinkers, and welcomed as a student when they saw his skills.

“The Artificer” is a most auspicious name to be given by one’s colleagues when one’s life is dedicated to building. He refused to give them his own cursed name when they found him, and they called him boy until they watched him build, and then they called him Artificer. Never had the professors of mechanism seen so talented a builder. Though never before had he touched a gear or cog, his constructs were built faster and better than any other. His first works showed promsie; his practiced works showed genius. His advanced works showed mastery. His masterpieces showed life. Standing before his greatest works and surrounded by thunderous applause, he boasted that even the gods could not build as he could.

The gods heard, and they were not amused, and they cursed him once more.

Cursed he was, with an insatiable desire to create, and cursed he was, with the power to build nearly anything he could conceive of. Cursed he was to never find happiness save in creation. And most horrific, cursed he was to never again have an idea of his own or to envision a new creation. Finally, cursed he was not to die yet never to heal, that his wounds would fill with steel until he was himself a mindless construct, and that no hand save that of a god could destroy him.

And so, the Artificer lived. And lived. And lived. And he built, and built, and built, but with each new creation became more bitter, more filled with hate, as his hands put together the same childish devices again and again, as his brow knotted with effort and beaded with sweat but no new image would come to his mind, and no new creation would come forth on his desk. In desperation for inspiration he turned to his fellow students, but each one gave suggestions more banal than the last, and compelled as he was to build each, the Artificer was truly cursed.

He fled the university. He fled out to the wilderness, where though he might never again build something new, he would at least be spared building that which bored him. He knew no joy or happiness, not even contentment, as he fled civilization into the forests, but he did know grim satisfaction that cursed as he was, still was he lord of his own fate. Here though, his curse became terrible anew, as the trees scratched his flesh and the animals bit and snapped at him, and the smallest wounds would not heal save by his own hands, as he sealed his wounds with metal. He was a patchwork of iron and brass when he reached a cliff and leaped in despair, seeking to end his life, but though his body was crushed, he still lived, and with broken hands had to build himself anew, each moment torture and each turn of a gear and screw a new frustration. At last, more metal than flesh, the Artificer found a small cave underground, and made his home there.

The Artificer had built homes before, and cursed as he was, it was within his power to build a workshop. He built furniture, and a forge, and a room to work in, though building gave him no pleasure, merely relief from the need to build. He had built traps for a prince, and so he built them anew to protect his cave. He hid, and built, and lived.

But then, the unforseen. A visitor came to the Artificer’s hidden lair. The visitor made camp above, and refused to leave until the Artificer saw him. The Artificer had come to hide, and refused, but after the stranger had stayed a month the Artificer went out and met him and asked why he was there. The stranger had followed tales of the Artificer, which they told at his university, because he wanted something built which no one else could build. The Artificer refused, but the stranger unrolled plans for a device, and the Artificer’s eyes lit up and he looked upon a design he had never seen before. Here were the plans for a machine he had never tried to build, had never even conceived of, and the Artificer threw himself into the work and made the device. When he was finished, the grateful stranger asked how he could pay, but the Artificer could imagine no fair price; understanding the Artificer’s plight, the stranger drew plans for a suit of armor the Artificer could build and wear, to cover, repair, and even enhance his much damaged body. Thus did the Artificer find a measure of peace in his solitude and find two new devices he could build. From then on, from time to time, people who had heard the legend of the Artificer would come to find him, and he would listen to them and judge their requests, and the plans which fired his imagination he would build, but those he found dull he would send away and refuse to aid. Some grew angry with him, and some tried to destroy him, but the Artificer could die only by the hands of a god, and so their threats, and even their attacks, meant nothing to him.

He was cursed, and he built, and he lived. Such was his life.

He built armor for warriors incorporating fantastic weapons. He built flying weapon platforms and technomagical whips. He built a mobile wheelchair for an elf and a massive illusion generating device for a young mage and a simple anti-magic field generator for a decadent retired assassin. He built, and he lived, and he was cursed.

When the carrot invasion came, there was a market for weapons such as the world had never seen. Some came to him and asked him to deduce the workings of the carrot weapons, and he sent them away. A young human came to him with nearly complete plans for an explosive device such as the world had never seen, and he completed it. A city promised to give him a new device to build each day if he came to protect them from the carrots, and he left his cave to return to civilization.

Some months passed. Adventurers came seeking him to help them destroy the carrots, and he agreed to help on the condition they killed him, for he had grown tired of life, and even building new inventions had begun to bore him. The adventurers gave him two items, a replica of the great explosive he had built and a virus crafed by the gods themselves. Taking both, the Artificer boarded the massive sky-city of the carrots and fought his way to its core. There, he programmed the bomb to explode and swallowed the virus himself.

Joyously did his curse end, with his cursed existence.

Once I've given space to the Chronomancer and the Koths, of course, the other villains of SotC are certain to clamour for their own fair share of the spotlight. The Spostles were the primary enemy of the first year of SotC; at the time I had no reason to think it would be a long-term campaign, and I thought that for a shorter game, they would make a better story than the Chronomancer. The Apostles did indeed make for a compelling story, and I dare say that my players developped genuine animosity towards the Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness in that year. Brining them back for the third year was actually something of an afterthought... I needed a secondary enemy for the players, and I had the Church lying around, unresolved.

We present now the full background of the Apostles, but first, from deep within my slush pile, the very first composition I ever composed in my attempts to come up with a character concept for the Church. The basic premises are all there, but this would have been a very different sort of Church; I think it evolved into a better form with time, but I still think it's very interesting to see what the first idea-roots were for the organization and their goal.

   And standing before the altar, the cleric spoke.
   My children, hear me.
   Hear my words.
   Hear the history of our world.
   Three thousand years ago, the gods came down to our world.
   And they did make war!
   The gods descended from their palaces in the heaves, ascended from their burrows in the earth. They rose from Hell and they rose from the ocean paradise. They came from the Abyss and from Mount Celestia. They came from the divine planes and from the diabolical planes. They came with hosts of celestials and demons and devils and planeswalkers. They came, and they made war upon our world, for the prize was our world.
   The races joined in the war. City fought city. Cleric fought cleric. Wizard fought sorcerer. The gods split along ideological lines, and their worshippers followed suit. Strength fought weakness. Mercy fought cruelty. Suffering fought pleasure. Love fought hate. Despair fought joy. Lies fought truth. Good fought evil. And the war did rage!
   Such was the devastation wrought by this war that no race was unchanged. In the human kingdoms, the destruction was so total that their old calendars were entirely abolished, and they began counting the years anew. In the halls of the elves and undead alike, where some yet live who fought in that battle, tales are still told of gods walking alongside dwarfs and goblins as they fought side by side against their brothers. The old world ended and the new world began.
   We know what the outcome was of this war, my children. The war was fought not for the sake of good versus evil, of right versus wrong. The war was fought to determine what good and evil themselves would be! The gods made war, not to defeat their enemies, but to learn who their enemies were. All that separated our world from becoming a plane of total light or darkness was which gods were still alive when the last blows fell. My children, our kinds, our faiths, have been persecuted for millennia because the gods of good won. They won, and thus, the causes for which their enemies fought were labeled as evil, as wrong, and so too were the gods who lost the war and lived. Imagine, my children, for the fall of a single blade could have made what now is holy to instead be known as terrible, for the obscene to be commonplace. If the army of Garm had been routed by that of Hessek, lies and treachery would today not be a sin, but a noble talent. There are no universals of right and wrong. There is only one victorious army declaring to their enemies how the world would henceforth be known.
   My children, time exists as ages. Age follows age. As our ancestors before the war lived in one world, we live in another, just as those who preceded them lived in another world still. My children, we are here because we have all acknowledged one truth. Ages change.

And it is time, my children, for this age to end and for a new age to begin!
   We do not need the gods to battle upon our world to determine what is right and wrong. We shall determine what is just and unjust as the gods themselves did three thousand years ago. My children, we are ready for a new war to sweep the world, and when it ends, we shall not be the forces of evil, but the forces of good, and when the war ends, the gods of sun and health, the gods of truth and justice, the new gods of evil, shall bow down before our forces, and the world will begin a new age.
   Let the new age begin!

Each Apostle represented a concept or ideal; whether this was a title they chose based on their talents or whether they were incarnations of these ideals is unknown. Just prior to the fall of the Church, there were seven known Apostles: Magic, War, Bureaucracy, Madness, Plague, Profit and Conquest. Each ruled a territory of either the Church’s throneworld plane or another conquered world. Just prior to the fall of the Church, a group of adventurers had stumbled upon the throneworld and destabilized the region ruled by the Apostle of Bureaucracy; this in turn led to massive destabilizations in the other regions of the throneworld. In this moment of weakness, the Apostle of Conquest, who ruled a separate plane, attacked the other Apostles, backed by an army of conscripts and mercenaries which outnumbered the forces of the other Apostles put together. The Apostles had been in conflict with each other for the whole of their existences, but never before had one actually attempted to destroy the others, and backed by its armies, the Apostle of Conquest crushed all defenders and either slew or executed its fellows, taking on the rulership of the Church and titling itself merely the Apostle. When the Apostle fell in turn weeks later, there were no leaders left to take over the Church, and it collapsed.

Each Apostle was essentially identical in appearance. Standing four meters tall and two meters wide at the shoulders, the Apostles appeared to be carved of solid stone. Generally humanoid, the Apostles had two legs and two arms, with a skull-like head filled with sharp-pointed teeth. From the top of the forehead emerged a three-foot long stone spike, and an additional spike grew from each side of the head where the ear should have been. The most disconcerting aspect of each Apostle was its hands. As an Apostle’s hands moved, they would constantly and momentarily fill with images of items relevant to the Apostle’s office; the Apostle of War would swing wide its hands and they would be filled with images of axes and swords, for example, while the Apostle of Magic’s hands would be encompassed by power signatures or wands.

The origin of the Apostles can be traced to a prime material world whose name has been lost to time. The dominant race of that world was a human species known and the Qurians, an inherently lawful neutral species with strong magical affinity. The world had a long and varied history which came to an abrupt end when their mythological apocalypse, a war between good and evil, came to pass and ended in a draw which left nearly all life on the world extinguished. All plant and lower animal life was destroyed in a conflict which turned the seas to boiling blood and the skies to ash. Even the gods themselves were destroyed; so evenly matched were the two sides that both were utterly wiped out. Among the Qurians, who had played only a relatively small part in a war they had not considered relevant to them, the near extinction of their species was seen more than anything else as their being cheated. The world’s survivors, numbering barely a thousand, gathered together under the leadership of nine powerful wizards, who transported the entire group to a new world, which they named Qur. Upon this world, the surviving Qurians came to a conclusion.

The gods, decided the Qurians, were fools. Good and evil were inherently flawed. Good is dominant, they suggested, but it is ordered and stagnant, and does not grow. Evil is chaotic and strong, they further reasoned, but it is disorganized and self-consuming, and can never assume dominance over good. Thus, when good and evil conflict, they are perfectly opposite and perfectly matched, and neither one can possibly overcome the other, no matter how tall the mountain of bodies grows. This weakness is the fault of the gods, who by their existence define what is good, and what is evil, and create the natural laws which bind both.

So, put forth one of the Qurian wizards, why not just kill the gods?

The suggestion was met with some reluctance among the survivors but was accepted enthusiastically by the wizards, and after the first round of summary executions, the remaining Qurians joined the cause. They would eliminate the gods, they decided, and take their place as new gods, and in so doing, they would be able to reverse the balance. They would make evil strong and dominant and force good to become chaotic and evolving, and in conflict, both would grow and thrive. In a few thousand years, they would reverse the balance again, and again, and again, so that the cosmic forces were eternally growing through conflict and not wasting away in it. But first, before any of that, they reasoned, they would need to become powerful enough to challenge gods.

Thus were born the Apostles.

The wizards agreed that their plan would unquestionably be an evil act, and that they would have to become evil to proceed. As their first evil act, each absorbed the life force of a hundred of the other survivors, increasing their individual power greatly. Next, they used their magic to grant themselves immortality and durability, taking on bodies of living stone and making themselves stronger physically and mentally. Finally, each wizard bound himself to the ideal which they believed would be the key to shifting the universal balance. To prove their uniformity of vision, each took on the same body, with only small alterations to indicate their ideal allegiance. As they began what they saw as their holy crusade, they officially proclaimed Qur as their throneworld, and each claimed a segment of it for their own. As the decades passed, they went forth to other worlds, taking slaves and prisoners to populate Qur, and feeding off their growing population to maintain their own magical power. The Qurian wizards stopped qualifying as human quickly... they were the Apostles of the Church.

In the years that followed, two of the Apostles died at the hands of enemies but six planes fell to the ever expanding Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness. Three of these planes were ruled directly by Apostles, and three were ruled by the still human descendents of the original Qurians. The throneworld was divided up among Apostles such as the Apostle of Magic, who had yet to conquer its own world, and the Apostle of Bureaucracy, who was content with its existing holdings. One Apostle grew hungry to rule alone, however, and the Apostle of Conquest began to scheme to remove the other Apostles and take their place. A group of adventurers finally provided the opportunity the Apostle had been waiting for, and its action was swift and vicious; the Church was united under a single Apostle.

With the fall of the Apostle of Conquest, however, no single individual could control the vast Church. The Qurian lieutenants held what they could, but their power broke soon under outside attacks and interior strife. The Apostles were no more and their Church and its ideals quickly followed them into oblivion.

From Koth Valkoth and the werebeast invasion of the town of Coke to Rakakoth's unholy rituals to awaken the Dark God, the Koths were practicaly the first and last enemies ever seen in SotC. The Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness planned their plots and the Chronomancer manipulated all the factions against each other, but it was the Koths on behalf of both who recruited the pawns, found the targets, and in many cases, cast the spells and fought the foes. Over the course of SotC, eight Koths came and went, six of whom died and two of whom lived, perhaps to appear in some sequel or merely to show up in the nightmares of the players.

An order of powerful wizards, the Koths were a gathering of mages from each of the eight primary alignments. Naglfr ordered Rakakoth to form an order of powerful but pliable servants, and based on observations of the timeline, suggested possible candidates. Each of the Koths was an individual with the potential to become one of those destined to thwart the Carrots, and as such, they were uniquely capable of disrupting the timelines themselves. Candidates were observed by Rakakoth for a period of several years, during which time their alignments were magically determined and their personalities gauged. If a candidate proved him or herself to have sufficient power and to be of the appropriate type for the organization, they were brought before a council of the other Koths and inducted. Upon joining, each member ritualistically added the word Koth to their name. The order’s symbol, created by Naglfr, consisted of two concentric circles, each with four dots in it, and an hourglass in the center.

In exchange for their service, Naglfr boosted the Koths’ power and gave them limited time-jumping ability, enabling them to, among other things, slip from the timeline at the instant of their deaths and bring them safely to another moment later in time. This enabled several of the Koths to escape their first disastrous cointacts with the adevnturers and return to plague them again.

The Koths were divided into the Superior and the Inferior council. The Superior council comprised the four more powerful members, the Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Neutral Evil, and Lawful Evil members. The inferior council was composed of the four weaker members and performed most of the actual work required by the organization. Over the course of SotC, the Koths were as follows:
The Superior Council:
    Neutral Good: Koth the Librarian
    Chaotic Good: Kothar Karius
    Lawful Evil: Xijeronkthishta
    Neutral Evil: Rakakoth
The Inferior Council:
    Lawful Good: Prince Heironius Koth
    Lawful neutral: Lord Vucoval Koth
    Chaotic Neutral: Koth Valkoth
    Chaotic Evil: Koth the Vampire

Rakakoth: The neutral evil wizard-thief sometimes known as Rake Koth was the first of the Koths and leader of that order. A native of the same plane as Naglfr, Rakakoth and Rufshaad were bitter enemies, Rakakoth serving the Dark God and Rufshaad serving the Protector. When the carrot invasion destroyed their world and Rufshaad became Naglfr, he knew Rakakoth was the second most powerful living spellcaster of his world as well as an individual with neither morals nor loyalties to impede his actions, and so Naglfr recruited Rakakoth into his plan to save their world at the cost of another. Rakakoth studied chronomancy for eight hundred years and served the Chronomancer well, and when their home plane was saved, Rakakoth returned home to use his heightened power to awaken his dark master. Rakakoth’s plans were shattered by Naglfr and his pawns, who slew the other servants of the Dark God and the Dark God itself. Rakakoth himself was nearly slain in the battle, but escaped while his enemies’ attention was on his master. Injured and weakened, with his power base destroyed and both of his previous patrons either dead or turned against him, Rakakoth fled deep into the wilderness to regain his strength and his lost limbs. After only a few weeks, however, the newly-deified Rufshaad once more visited his former apprentice, and offered renewed power and purpose in exchange for a life dedicated to serving good rather than evil. Reluctantly, Rakakoth accepted, and with time became an earnest servant of the Protector.

Koth the Vampire: The chaotic evil member of the Koths and by far their most vicious member, the powerful necromancer and vampire was the Koth most often sent into the field, because of his willingness to do anything without hesitation and because the other Koths considered him expendable. Koth was the direct supervisor of the ill-fated funding of the werebeast invasion which first brought Naglfr’s pawns together, and was pursued by the adventurers for months before they finally tracked him to the palace of Heironius Koth. On a whim, the vampire refrained from aiding Heironius in battle as they had planned and only engaged the adventurers after Heironius Koth had fallen. As a result, both Koths were slain.

Heironius Koth: The lawful good member of the Koths and the strongest voice of moderation in their activieis, Heironius Koth ruled an immense city and moonlighted as one of the most devout servants of Naglfr. Believing that his own homeworld was flawed and chaotic because of the excess of magic and magical beasts, Heironius believed that sacrificing his own world to save that of Naglfr was the highest good he could hope to achieve in his existence, and dedicated himself to it religiously. When a group of adventurers began to threaten Naglfr’s plans, Heironius concocted a plan to ambush them in his palace along with his vampiric counterpart. Heironius was betrayed, however; Koth the Vampire took the opportunity to betray Heironius and allowed the adventurers to slay him.

Xijeronkthishta: The lawful evil Koth and the one specializing in the strangest form of magic, the elf Xijeronkthishta (“Jeron” to his friends, "Jeron Koth" to his fellow Koths) was a master of magics relating to every day life: cooking, cleaning, household repairs, and other simple tasks essential to a home or business. None of the other Koths understood how exactly Jeron had learned to turn such innocuous magic into a lethal arsenal of spells, but his combat abilities were as formidable as his abilities outside of combat, where he would enter the service of powerful lords, posing as a domestic hedge-wizard, and either gather information long-term or assassinate. When a group of adventurers who had been a thorn in the side of the Koths aquired a large keep/hotel and went looking for someone to manage it for them, Jeron applied, and thus was able to subtly sabotage the adventurers from the inside for months, dropping misinformation, draining their coffers, damaging their building and equipment and ruining the reputation of their hotel. Jeron was eventually forced to reveal his true colours and was slain in the ensuing fight, although not before he set a large bomb which destroyed the keep and nearly slew all those in it.

Vucoval Koth: The lawful neutral Koth was a lord of the city of Obson who specialized to in fulmomancy, lightning magic, to deadly effect. Such was Vucoval’s genius that he had mastered the use of electricity magic for everything from attack and defense to healing and household chores. His greatest achievement was experimentation which led to proof that human bodies and brains operate based on tiny amounts of electricity, and from this, to devise a method of magically recording and transfering a humanoid’s mind into a new body. Vucoval Koth’s expertise extended into the realm of torture as well, and he fulfilled the role of interrogater for the Koths, as many prisoners found to their horror. Vucoval was finally slain when a group of adventurers escaped his custody and slew him and his supply of mind-copied clones.

Koth Valkoth: The weakest member of the Koths, Valkoth was a mage second and a rogue first, who had built a career out of understanding traps better than anyone else – how to disarm them, and how to build them. A brilliant architect but not particularly bright in any other areas, Valkoth was recruited by the Koths to help construct keeps, towers, fortresses, and places of power. Valkoth was also recruited so that he could build his own refuge, the Maze of Death. Deliberatly misnamed to frighten prisoners, the Maze of Death was a series of tunnels, catacombs, and puzzles built by Valkoth to test individuals the Koths suspected might someday become problems. The Maze was designed to test prisoners physically, psychically, and mentally, to determine the risk they posed, and only rarely did death ever come into play within its walls. Valkoth died within his own maze when a group of adventurers escaped from it before he had time to leave the premises, and he attempted to subdue them on his own.

Koth the Librarian: The neutral good archivist of the Koths, Koth the Librarian maintained a tower hidden within a pocket plane. The tower was home to all records kept by the Koths dating back to their founding, and several whole rooms were filled with scrolls, books, texts, poetry, and discourses on the nature of time and magic. A total non-combatant, Koth did not keep a single offensive spell memorized, so dedicated was he to his books and so secure was he in his tower. When the majority of the Koths had fallen to a group of adventurers and it came time for them to begin being guided along the path Naglfr had chosen for them, it was the Librarian who welcomed them into his sanctum and offered them access to his resources and answers to any questions they had in exchange for a cessation of hostilities between themselves and the Koths. The only Koth to never come into conflict with the adventurers, Koth was slain by the carrots during their invasion, and Naglfr had descended too far into madness to make any effort to defend or ressurect him.

Kothar Karius: If ever there was a mortal who epitomized the phrase “the ends justify the means” it was the chaotic good member of the Koths. The second most powerful member of the order and the personal attendant/leg-breaker of the Chronomancer, Kothar Karius lived by the credo that for good to triumph over evil, evil must be, not just defeated, but broken, shredded, cremated, and scattered to the four winds. Convinced that his own birthworld was doomed by the evil forces which already ruled so much of it, Kothar joined Naglfr on the promise that the Chronomancer’s own home plane was a better, more good world, and that if only one could survive the carrot invasion, it ought to be the one which had a better chance at purity. Originally recruited by Naglfr to act as the Chronomancer’s conscience and a balance against Rakakoth’s less discriminating problem-solving techniques, Naglfr’s increasing madness with each re-living of the century leading up to the carrot invasion resulted in less and less attention being paid to Kothar’s counsel, and Kothar himself became more and more corrupt in his pursuit of the greater good. Finally, at the climax of the invasion and the battle at the carrot staging plane, Kothar fought alongside Rakakoth and Naglfr himself against the adventurers at the critical nexus moment, and was slain in battle, not by an enemy’s strike, but by a lethal fall due to a misstep at the top of a staircase.

Just as, in any long-term game, many characters meet the players whose stories are never fully told, so too are there characters whose existences are rumoured or hinted at but, for one reason or another, they never so much as show up in the game. Sometimes their storyline gets cut because of time constraints, other times the players just don't follow up on potential story directions. A number of things may be happening at once in a game, and the players are forced to follow up some characters and never see another. Today, we look at some of the characters who were created for the game but, for one reason or another, they just never quite made it.

Bladeskin: The only one of the Tattoos never to directly encounter the adventurers, Bladeskin was the Tattoos’ all-in-one bill collector, repo-man, and assassin. Bladeskin was tattooed head to toe to images of weapons – daggers adorned his fingers, halbreds ran along his long-bones, swords were drawn upon his forearms – and his magic was to draw forth magically enhanced versions of each of these as needed. Bladeskin’s primary role for the Tattoos was to cause damage where damage needed to be caused, but his secondary role was to hunt down any members of the order who received their tattoo magic and then fled the order, and as such, Bladeskin was the one charged with hunting down and slaying the rogue member, Wyvern. Bladeskin stalked the adventurers for several weeks, knowing that they would either lead him to Wyvern or that Wyvern, soon enough, come after them, and he was quite correct... When Wyvern came to torment the adventurers just prior to the carrot invasion, Bladeskin intercepted him. While Bladeskin had been prepared for Wyvern’s Tattoo-given shapeshifting and for his demonic strength and cunning, none of the Tattoos had known that no weapon shaped by human hand or mind could slay the Tiefling. Bladeskin’s magic proved useless against the near-indestructible Wyvern, and Wyvern finally disarmed and defeated Bladeskin before brutally slaying him barehanded.

The Dracoritter: An ancient order of warrior-mages, the Dracoritter were knights sworn into the service of the dragon gods of the upper planes to seek out evil interplanar organizations, investigate them, and thwart their activities if necessary. For centuries, the Dracoritter had been actively at war with the Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness; neither group had the power to go forth and smite the other, but both had the resources to disrupt each other and conduct a quiet, subtle war. The balance of power began to sway towards the Church in the weeks after the carrot invasion, with the loss of most of the agents of the Dracoritter who had infiltrated the Church being slain in the space of a few days, but the destruction of the Apostle led to the Church being destabalized and the Dracoritter seized the opportunity to smash the Church to splinters in a single coordinated multi-planar assault. With the fall of the Church, the Dracoritter dedicated themselves to wiping up the last remains of the Church before moving on to another evil organization.

Pandemonium: A demonologist who uncovered the existence of the Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness in his researches into the netherworld, Pandemonium was a dilute tiefling living on an unremarkable prime material who actively solicited the Church to recruit him. A talented summoner reluctant to make the necessary demonic pacts to advance in his chosen field, Pandemonium instead bound himself to the Church, keeping his soul but forsaking his chance at demonhood. In return for years of good service, the Church gifted Pandemonium with the Demonspawning robe, a magical robe which could spontaneously generate small, implike demons with frightening speed, allowing Pandemonium to live up to his name. Pandemonium was the agent sent by the Church to find and bring back the divine essences from Naglfr’s homeworld, and while he had hoped to engage the adventurers he had heard about in combat, he chose discretion after watching them dispose of the servants of the Dark God. While the adventurers then went off to find a way to attack the Church Throneworld, Pandemonium captured the essences which the adventurers left behind in Rakakoth's cavern and returned to the Church with them. After the fall of the Apostle, Pandemonium was hunted down by the Dracoritter and summarily executed.

Diatomamus: Another of the Church’s enforcers, Diatomamus was a talented geomancer/enchanter, who combined the strength of stone with the diversity of the enchantment school. A human who had converted himself into a glass-like stone golem to prove his value to the Church, Diatomamus was one of the Church’s chief agents on Naglfr’s homeworld and had personally slain four of the protector’s most powerful servants with his bare (albeit razor sharp) hands. Deprived of the Church’s support, Diatomamus was forced to run and hide after the Apostle’s death, and he was eventually personally hunted down and destroyed by the new Protector.

Tanaris Tanarrim: The half-brother of Wyvern, Tanaris Tanarrim (whose name translated roughly as “he may not be a real demon, but we like him anyway”) shared the same demonic father as Wyvern but had a full-demon mother, and the blood of the outsiders ran far thicker in his veins; where Wyvern was diluted Tiefling, Tanaris Tanarrim qualified as full-blooded demon himself. Following the death of Wyvern at the very hour in which Wyvern would have created a new layer of the Abyss and at last proven himself worthy of the respect of his abyssal family, their mutual father sent Tanaris Tanarrim to slay the adventurers in vengeance. Regrettably, Tanaris Tanarrim missed the adventurers by a few short days, arriving on Naglfr’s homeworld while the adventurers were defeating the carrots one dimension over. Rather than return home a failure, Tanaris Tanarrim went in search of the adventurers’ base of operations to lie in wait for them, and, happening upon the Rat Empire in Nodahl, was destroyed by rat forces who did not take kindly to demonic incursion in their territory.

Claton: As the most powerful drug lord, the most powerful information broker, and the most powerful undead left on his adopted plane after the fall of the Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness, Claton P’Lo found himself in an enviable position. Knowing that the arrival of the new gods to the world would complicate his ventures at the very least, he began to shift away from the drug trade and towards less blatantly illegal resources. As the church of the new God of Death and Drugs grew in power, Claton’s organization left their markets and within a few months had become the primary method of trade between the humans and the increasingly powerful non-human races, such as the Rat Empire and the Elves. In little enough time, Claton’s wealth grew sufficiently to fund the creation of several permanent gates back to his homeworld, where Claton’s ability to bring in much needed supplies to those living on that devastated world in exchange for their ample but useless precious metals and raw materials led to the Armoured Ghost’s firmly taking hold of the title of interplanar merchant. Ageless, deathless, and having outlasted his every foe, Claton settled back to allow his profits to accumulate.

The Great Dragons: The ancient dragons who had been the last of their kind for millennia upon Naglfr’s homeworld were forced to either hide from or join with the servants of the Dark God during the seven year war between the servants of the Protector and the Dark God. The Red Dragon, former guardian of the Godshredders, was slain by the Stonemason and Rakakoth’s other followers as an example to the other dragons. The Black Dragon’s support of Rakakoth vanished when the Dark God did, and the Black Dragon took news of the fall of Rakakoth to the other dragons. Returning to their millennia of hiding, the remaining Great Dragons distanced themselves even further from the world of mortals and returned to sleep.

Stegros: A cursed dwarf who found himself the adopted king of a race of lizard men, Stegros possessed potent magical tattoos which enabled him to take on the form on numerous dinosaurs, ranging in size from the comically small to the nightmarishly large. After coming into conflict with the pawns of Naglfr several times, Stegros was eventually found and recruited by Claton to send his reptilian armies into the final battle against the Carrot invaders. Hundreds of demons fell to Stegros’ immense fangs and claws, but such a large target was too tempting for the carrots to pass up, and Stegros did not live to see his people destroyed by Claton’s nuclear bomb.

The Aelves: The majority of the Aelves fled the wrath of the prophesized doom-gods to the glamour-rich pocket dimension from which they had come, and never again attempted to return to the prime material. The small number who chose to relinquish their vast power in exchange for staying on the prime material found safe, secluded places to live, and slowly reopened contact with the humans who had taken over the world. It was the efforts of the newly mortal Aelves – who were now, once more, the elves – which spread the teachings of the new gods to the humans, and the first high priests of many of the six new gods were creatures who had been Aelves only a few short months ago. The influence of the returned elves slowly turned humanity away from its xenophobic, witchbreed-hunting tendencies, and in a few brief centuries the Elven race flourished once more in the forests and cities.

The Rats: With the return of their god and emperor following the death of That Which Must Not Be Named, the departure of the Aelves with whom they had been at war, and the end of humanity’s obsessive hunt for the Witchbreed, a renaissance of culture and growth came to the Rat Empire. The rats began experimenting with ever more advanced polymorphs and within a few years had perfected rats who possessed the qualities of humans, elves, birds, tigers, and even dragons. Torn and Scratch eventually passed beyond their mortal shells, and the Rat Empire was truly ruled by the rats. Over the next century, the Rats dedicated themselves to rebuilding Nodahl to a city greater than it ever had been and succeeded in creating a city of wonders, built to accommodate creatures of any size from mouse to giant. Through all this, the rats continued their experimentation, eventually settling on a humanoid form as the ideal blending of intelligence, physical ability, and ability to interact with other races. Rattus Sapiens eventually grew to rival humanity in breadth of territory and richness of culture.

The Carrots: Many hundreds of thousands of demon carrots survived the war with the Chronomancer’s pawns, solely by virtue of not having been near the areas which were attacked, but the devastation of their bases, the destruction of their god-brain generals, the nuclear winter and the spread of Crawling Doom across their species laid waste to most of the demons who were not felled by spell or sword. Leaderless and lacking the resources to either rebuild their forces or escape back to the Abyss, all but a few dozen carrots were killed by human war-parties. The handful who survived merged together in an attempt to form a new god-brain, but could not maintain the cohesiveness and also protect themselves properly, and so buried themselves deep in the earth to absorb what nutrients they could and bide their time.

The Servants of the Protector: The few servants of the Protector who survived both the conflict with Rakakoth and their encounter with Naglfr’s pawns found themselves existing in an unusual peace following the apotheosis of Rufshaad and the five. The Grand Druid left the world of men entirely, joining Torn among the Rat Empire, and remained there until his spirit rejoined the great spirit. Pale the Necromancer and his apprentice, Key, returned from their place of hiding to civilization, where they found new acceptance in the service of the new God of Death, and formed a peaceful link between that church and the church of the new Protector. The other surviving champions of the old Protector were at first wary of the successor of their master but eventually resumed their duties as a force for peace in the world under the guidance of the God of Good.

Koilos: A powerful construct built by the Artificer to act as emmissary and destroyer, Koilos was built only in the last weeks prior to the carrot invasion. Koilos' name was derived from an ancient tongue and meant "empty place," a joke based on Koilos' hollow chest, in which blue and white lights flashed at seeming random. These lights were caused by Koilos' power source; a tiny demon and a tiny celestial were imprisoned within Koilos, and the power they generated in their battle charged the construct. Not technically indextructible but certainly built to last, Koilos survived the invasion, the nuclear strikes upon the carrot bases not far from where Koilos hunted carrot warbands, and the death of Koilos' own creator at the hands of the artificial plague, Crawling Doom. As the nuclear winter spread across the face of the plane and the scattered human survivors prepared to try to rebuild their world, Koilos became the first of the new age's adventurers and set forth to bring some of the order which the Artificer strove to create to the broken plane.

Mountaine the Planeswalker: A planeswalker, Mountaine was a prime material mage who ammased sufficient power that he no longer truly qualified as "human" but had ascended to a higher state of being. Nearly godlike in power but requiring decades of sleep to recharge himself after any significant exenditure, was deep in hibernation when the carrot invasion reached its peak and slept through the years of warfare which followed. When Hugun the Fell was summoned back to the plane, however, the mighty demon chose to stop for a regenerating snack before once more confronting the adventurers who had summoned him; Hugun dropped by the mountain of the sleeping planeswalker and devoured him in his sleep.

Khalid/Paambiltimigbal: The Khalid of Naglfr’s timeline remained happily imprisoned within the dagger of the new God of Magic; Paambiltimigbal’s image became a holy symbol of the god, and his existence was spent happily experiencing. The still-mortal Khalid of the corrected timeline found himself alone and without a master but also the inheritor of Rufshaad’s books, artifacts, and vault of magical items. Although first fearful that the new Protector was more Naglfr than Rufshaad, Khalid was soon persuaded that it was his master who was now god of Good and not the insane creature who had held and forsaken his master’s name. Putting on the Skin of Bronze and the Gemstone Eyes and taking up the Windblade, Khalid assumed the name he had been training for years to take up, becoming the new Chronomancer and first servant of the Protector.

Over the course of any game, characters come and go, and rarely does every character's storyline get resolved during a game. Saga of the Chronomancer was an NPC heavy game and nearly every supporting character had a lengthy back-story and, usually, a few quests related to them. The game was totally open-direction, though, which meant that while the players had absolute freedom (during the first year and a half, at least) in terms of how to drive the story, there were also a lot of characters whose fates were left unknown. Many of these characters were former PCs, no less, since SotC was infamous for its player turnover, particularly over the course of the chaotic second year. Here, then, is part one of a list of some of these characters who final destinies were, up to now, unknown to the players.

Kellion: A powerful mage with cursed to continually and accidentally kill bystanders when he used his magic on any grand scale, Kellion was left behind by the adventurers when they traveled off plane and he needed to take care of personal business. Trapped on-plane when the carrots invaded, Kellion slew many carrots but also many of the humans he tried to defend, and he was eventually caught and killed by an enraged mob of commoners.

Jenalas: The werebear cleric of war who became a mighty lich split with his companions when he refused to give up his oath of vengeance on Claton P’Lo, and nearly slew his companions trying to get at the drug dealer. His body destroyed in that combat, Jenalas reconstituted himself far away in a new body and made plans to return for his prey but was ambushed before he could. The Kaleshi Duke of Public Order, the lich who passed immortality on to Jenalas, captured his spawn and, using their telepathic link, immobilized and psychically devoured the younger lich. Jenalas’ soul returned to his god and his body was host to the Duke until Jenalas’ old companions destroyed the Duke weeks later.

Perrin: A stone mason turned geomancer, Perrin was a simple man with power greater than his ambition who found himself drawn, time and again, into events greater than he. After parting ways with his companions due to their increasing corruption, Perrin retired from the adventuring life and settled down in a small town, working stone physically and magically for the good of the townspeople while he grimly awaited the carrot invasion. When at last the invasion came, Perrin never had the chance to combat the demons, as his village was wiped out in an orbital strike targeted at the major city not far away, ending all life in the vicinity before they even knew what was happening.

The Nameless Dragon-Disciple: An amnesiac wizard on the road to becoming a dragon himself, the wizard who could not recall his own name traveled only briefly with the adventurers before being separated from them during a crisis. Lost, alone, and hounded by agents of the Church, the dragon disciple fled off plane and, seemingly by chance, stumbled upon an organization known as the Dracoritter, planar knights in service of the dragon gods of the upper planes and sworn enemies of the Church. There, the disciple learned he had been one of these knights sent to gather information about the Church’s prime material activities before being caught, interrogated, and mindwiped. His identity restored and with a small army at his back, the dragon disciple led many of the Dracoritter’s strikes against the Church after the fall of the Apostle and was one of the key warriors in the Church’s final destruction.

Billy and the Pangandren: A little boy with a powerful extraplanar entity stuck in his head, Billy and the Pagandren joined the adventurers when the fled the Church’s service, knowing that the Church’s retirement policy typically involved mindwipping and best and the loss of one’s soul at worst. After seeing the state of those they joined, however, the Pangandren decided the better odds were with the Church, and returned to its former employers, offering tactical information about Naglfr’s homeworld in exchange for forgiveness. Billy and the Pangandren were taken back by the Church with a promotion, a promotion which led to the two being off-plane when the Apostle was slain and hunted by the Church’s enemies. Sacrificing their squad to escape, Billy and the Pangandren fled to a backwater prime material to lay low and build a new power base, but still hunted by both the surviving agents of the Church and the vigilant and vengeful Dracoritter, the boy and the demon could do little but hide for many years.

The Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness: Founded with the original intent of creating a power base by which the beings known as the Apostles could reverse the balance between good and evil and, in the resulting power vacuum, become the gods of a new multiverse, the Church had not been designed with smooth-running in the hands of underlings in mind. With the death of the last Apostle, no-one remained capable of controlling the vast, unwieldy organization which the Church had become, and without the Apostles’ magic to control the populace, the Church’s conquered planes quickly fell to revolt. Within a few months, no single organized body existed which could justly claim to be the Church anymore, and what few powerful lieutenants remained quickly fell prey to the Church’s remaining enemies, such as the Dracoritter and the vengeful servants of the six gods who had crushed the Apostle. Within a year, the last vestiges of the Church had been swept from the multiverse and the Church was, by and large, forgotten.

Torn and Scratch: After curing Torn’s madness, Scratch and his former master confronted the Giant Rat deep beneath Nodahl and persuaded him that destroying the multiverse might be a bad idea. While there, they were attacked by Rakakoth’s servants who slew the Giant Rat and took Scratch and the still-weak Torn prisoner. Prisoners they remained for some few hours until Dark God was slain and Rakakoth’s power was broken, after which the remaining servants of the Protector found and freed them. With nowhere else to go and feeling unable to return to their deified former companions, Torn and Scratch travelled to Nodahl and were enthusiastically welcomed into the Rat Empire. There they remained for years, aiding the rats in their experimentation and guiding the Rat Empire towards a path of living beside humanity rather than apart, beneath, or opposed to it. After many years, Scratch grew old and returned to the wild, while Torn eventually completed his metamorphosis into a pure animal form. Thus was he brought into the heart of the Rats’ most sacred temple-grove and placed reverently into a gilded fishbowl, there to spend the rest of his immortal life spreading his teachings to the Rat druids and priests.

Phaarun of Vaughn: Phaarun, the extra-planar creature who came to the prime material to use his information-gathering powers in opposition of the Church of the Evolving Light and Darkness, was attacked and apparently slain by the Chronomancer shortly after aiding a group of adventurers in their hunt for the Chronomancer’s servants, the Koths. Phaarun’s brain and body existed independently of each other, and when the brain was destroyed by Naglfr, the body survived; the brain began to slowly regenerate. In his weakened state, however, Phaarun was unable to defend himself against his enemies and competitors, among them Claton P’Lo, whose assassins tracked Phaarun to his lair and finished the job Naglfr had left incomplete.

The Netherhells: The Netherhells weathered the carrot invasion with little to no damage. The carrot armies remained largely unaware of the demons living beneath the planet’s surface, and what few carrots stumbled upon the Netherhells failed to return to the surface alive. In the months following the final defeat of the carrot forces, the rulership of the Netherhells was forcibly taken back by the deposed demon leader, Guxx, who promptly organized a mass invasion of the surface but cancelled plans when his scouts reported to him what little remained of the surface between the actions of the carrots and those who opposed the carrots. An uneasy peace settled over the Netherhells, destined to last for centuries.

Mrashas the Cold: Once a brave and noble adventurer, the wizard Mrashas the Bold was corrupted into a servant of evil by the demon lord Raazik. After being twice defeated by adventurers in his efforts to awaken his sleeping master, Mrashas was eventually stripped of his spellbook and magical staff and sent off into the wilderness, wounded and powerless. Raazik intended to restore his favoured servant when the opportunity arose, but the demon lord was itself slain by the more powerful demon, Hugun the Fell, before this could happen. Forgotten by his enemies and allies alike, Mrashas the Cold made his stumbling way across the countryside for a few weeks before being slain during the Carrot invasion.

Crawling Doom: The living, magical virus created by Skalley, the dead god of Thieves, was set free upon the plane by the Artificer, who programmed the virus to consume his own and carrot tissue. While no carrots survived the nuclear blast which the Artificer set off in the center of the carrot skycity, the Artificer's curse manifested one last time, and even as nuclear fire swept across him, the Artificer's body was rebuilding itself with metal. Even as Crawling Doom extinguished the Artificer's life, the disease was adapting to consume what it considered to be his flesh -- the suit of powered armor which made up most of the Artificer's body. Mere hours after the blast had swept the area clean of all life, the broken remains of the Artificer's armour sat up again and began to reknit themelves, animated by the virus which was eating the metal almost but not quite as quickly as it was rebuilding itself. Crawling Doom continued to adapt, eventually settling into a perfect equilibrium of consumption and regeneration, becoming one with the armour. With the virus' intelligence and hunger animating the armoured shell, the newly humanoid Crawling Doom rose from the ashes, dusted itself off, and set off in seach of the carrots it had been programmed to devour.

         At the outer edge of the multiverse are the prime material worlds so far from the major worlds that they rarely have names. One such world was an ancient and thriving plane, lower in magic than many but still populated with all the wonders of the great planes. Hundreds of gods occupied the plane; dragons soared the skies; mages and clerics brought light and darkness to the places around them. But time marched, and a rare occurrence came to pass. A planar storm came to cover the plane, cutting it off from the multiverse and imprisoning all within it. In the months before the storm covered the plane, those with the power to do so fled rather than be stuck upon a single world. The dragons left, the great mages planeshifted, and the gods pulled up their high priests and moved on to more profitable worlds. In each case, only a tiny handful of those able to leave chose to stay. Seven of the eldest and mightiest dragons of the world refused to abandon their territories. Fewer than twenty mages powerful enough to planeshift chose not to do so. And fewer than 10 gods remained behind, either because they were too weak to have followers on other worlds or because they had invested themselves so heavily in the plane that there was nothing for them elsewhere.
         Two such deities were the most powerful on the plane. The god of Good, known as the Protector, had chosen the world as his own, and refused to leave. His counterpart, the god of Evil, whose name would drive mortals mad and was known simply as the Dark God or That Which Must Not Be Named, remained behind because it had entered a deep slumber centuries before and could not be awakened by its servants. The servants of the Dark God saw that the balance of power had shifted in their favour – most of the wizards were gone, most of the clerics had lost their power, and most of the forces capable of opposing their god were no more. They would begin taking power and lives, and in thirty or forty years, when the few champions remaining to the world were old or dead, they would begin the steps to awaken the Dark God, and it would feast upon the life of the world. But the Protector knew that these would be the thoughts of the Dark God’s servants, and had servants of his own. The Protector went to the most powerful living wizard of the world, an ancient mage who had mastered the difficult magic of chronomancy. The Chronomancer had remained on the world because he was a duty-bound servant of the Protector, and the Protector bade the Chronomancer to seek out those with power and goodness and teach them to protect the world from darkness.
         Years passed. Without magic, the average human lifespan fell to less than fifty years, and within a few generations magic was already the stuff of legend and fearful stories. The elves, deprived of their gods and facing persecution by the humans, opened a portal to a side dimension and fled the world entirely. The dwarves cast their own magics to become one with the stone and retreated deep into the earth, forgetting they were ever flesh. The dragons still on the world hoarded their power and hid far from the eyes of humans, becoming larger and more powerful with each passing year. The clerics grew old and died, as did the mages, and most of those who picked up those magical arts were hunted and killed by unmagical humans, who were becoming increasingly fearful of the mythical witchbreed, humans who made pacts with pure evil and came to the world with horrible goals. Sorcerers continued to be born, but few survived their first year. Gods continued to choose clerics, but as the memory of the gods faded, so too did belief in them, and fewer had the faith to be clerics each generation.
         Two thousand years passed.
         The mantle of Chronomancer had been passed down unbroken generation to generation. No memory remained even among those magically inclined that other planes existed. The feud had quietly continued between the Protector and the Dark God, but the forces of light had long had the advantage of an active and awake patron, and kept the Dark forces in check. As the Chronomancer grew old, it became necessary to begin passing the role on to a new student, and the Chronomancer set sight on the desert lands, where a youth with tremendous potential had been growing.
         Rufshaad, of the nomadic Vaa’ga’ari people, was young and strong. The desert people had grown to fear magic as other peoples had, but had maintained a strong shamanistic tradition, and their shaman had taken Rufshaad as a student. Rufshaad had equalled and surpassed his teacher in months and had begun to delve into what few records his people had to learn more about magic. Where his teacher was a hedge magician who cast bones and read entrails, Rufshaad conjured angels and threw fireballs before his twentieth year. More significantly, Rufshaad had begun to experiment with spells affecting time, and this drew the Chronomancer’s notice. When Rufshaad was given the opportunity to study with a true mage, and to dedicate his life to the service of the Protector, he did not hesitate.
         Rufshaad took to his studies with enthusiasm, and in a few short years, the title of Chronomancer passed to him. In the two thousand years previous, it had been the role of the Chronomancer to seek out and secure the magical items and artifacts which remained on the plane, and many powerful items were given to Rufshaad. A robe known as the Skin of Bronze gave him the form and durability of magical metal, and enlarged him to seven feet in height. A pair of magical stones replaced his normal eyes, giving him the ability to see through illusions, perceive invisible foes, and spot and understand magical objects. Finally, a powerful sword known as the Windblade was given to him, which cut steel as easily as it cut water and which made a terrifying sound as it slashed through the air. Rufshaad steadfastly opposed the servants of the Dark God for over one hundred years, and became the oldest and most powerful mortal of his world.
         Time passed, as none understood as deeply as Rufshaad the Chronomancer. The leadership of the Dark God’s servants fell to the rakish Rakakoth, the second most powerful mage of the world and a dedicated servant only of himself. Rufshaad took an apprentice, Khalid, a youth of Rufshaad’s own tribe who had demonstrated considerable magical aptitude. Then came to pass a catastrophe neither servant of light nor dark had foreseen: the planar storm at last moved beyond the world and, mere moments after it became possible to travel to the plane, a full invasion force fell upon the world.
         The demonic carrots, a race of powerful creatures from the depths of the Abyss, were planar marauders, who jumped from world to world consuming all resources, slaying all life, and leaving behind a barren orb while they struck their next target. Their depredations had brought them to this rich world, which lacked the defenders most prime material planes would have. The carrots numbered in the millions and their weapons were unlike anything the plane had ever seen, and they crushed all opposition to their power in months. The light and dark warriors alike were shattered. Armies of zombies, which the carrots used to collect organic matter, wandered the countryside. Cities were wiped from the map with orbital weapons. Heroes, attempting to wield the carrots’ ectoplasma cannons, were corrupted within minutes into evil reflections of themselves. Entire continents were swept clean of life.
         Desperate to stop the onslaught, Rufshaad opened his vault of artifacts and brought forth the most powerful devices. Dozes of carrots fell to his blade; hundreds fell to his spells; thousands fell to his weapons of destruction. But what damage he did was nothing to a force such as the carrots possessed. In the end, it was Khalid who found the key to ending the war. just prior to the invasion, Rufshaad’s research had isolated a species of creature he had named chronoflaggelates, which appeared to exist outside of time and move backwards and forwards in time as other species move in space. With no other ideas, Khalid ingested a large sample, and nearly immediately found his magic had increased more than a thousandfold. Khalid named himself Biltimigbal, which in his native tongue meant “I am limitless.” With his heightened power, Khalid went forth and assaulted one of the carrots’ main staging areas, slaughtering thousands of the demons in minutes. The power was too much, however; Khalid began to exist outside of the timestream, able to perceive his entire life simultaneously. His sanity eroded quickly and he was captured by the carrots when he ceased being able to defend himself. Rufshaad, however, believed he knew what his apprentice had done wrong, and with careful preparation and calculation, exposed himself to the chronoflaggelates. The effect on Rufshaad was more controlled and far more powerful; Rufshaad was mutated into a chronal aberration, no longer bound by the laws of time and space as mortals were, and his already formidable magical skills were magnified. Taking up his artifacts once more, Rufshaad brought the war to the carrots as his apprentice had done. It took the carrots months to take the world; it took Rufshaad days to reclaim it. In the wake of his wrath, not one carrot remained alive on his world. It was a pyrrhic victory, however... the entire plane had been rendered all but uninhabitable, the survivors numbered too few to ever rebuild, the ecosystems had been destroyed beyond repair and the power needed to destroy the carrots had itself broken the plane itself.
         Initially, Rufshaad believed that all hope was lost, but soon, his newfound perceptions of time showed him a solution. He stepped into the past as a human might cross a room and watched as the carrots arrived, and unleashed his power against them. A dozen times he tried to destroy the invasion force before it began its assault, and each time he failed. As his understanding of time expanded, Rufshaad found that, existing outside of time, he himself was unable to directly alter it. Using pawns, he found that he could indirectly affect the time stream, but not at will; at certain critical moments, temporal nexi, changes he made could result in changing the overall course of time. He was displeased to find that the nexus point he would have to reach to save his world predated the invasion itself, and would require him to travel to another world entirely to exploit it.
         In the normal flow of time, Rufshaad found, events had followed a certain path. The carrots had not intended to invade Rufshaad’s world, but rather the world “next door” in cosmic terms. According to the manner in which time was meant to flow, the carrots had attacked that plane first but been repulsed by the plane’s natives. The defeated carrots had fallen upon the closest plane, which just happened to be his, at almost the precise moment that the planar storm had passed. Rufshaad therefore went to that plane, found the adventurers fated to defeat the carrots, and killed them, only to see a new group rise and defeat the carrots instead. Rufshaad tried again, slaying the adventurers, and the adventurers who followed them, and the adventurers who followed them.
         At last Rufshaad determined he could not succeed in this manner. He would have to work within the limits of the nexus points, and he would need pawns who could change events at the right moments. Rufshaad returned to his home world, to a point after he had crushed the carrots, and sought out the next most powerful spellcaster: his old foe, Rakakoth. The Chronomancer appeared before Rakakoth and explained to him the situation, and Rakakoth, having nothing left to lose on the blasted world he had at last conquered, readily swore allegiance to Rufshaad in exchange for the opportunity to study Rufshaad’s chronomancy.
         And so, Rufshaad left his world again, coming rest upon the world next to his, one century before the critical moment of the carrot invasion. With him be brought Rakakoth, his former apprentice who, having lost his sanity, had come to call himself Paambiltimigbal, which meant, “Once I was limitless,” and an array of powerful artifacts which would aid him in his quest to rescue his world. Rufshaad left behind his tower, what few mortals he cared for that were still alive, and his very identity. Rufshaad, he reasoned, had failed to save his world. To change that, he would become someone knew. He took the name of the monster of an ancient folktale among his people: Naglfr, the ageless beast which hunts through time, emerging into the world at midnight to hunt and kill before vanishing from the world again minutes later. Naglfr, the Chronomancer swore, would not fail as Rufshaad had.