3. Yesterday's Narfell

Yesterday's Narfell


  • Time.
    The passing of days. From the cradle to the grave, it is inescapable. Time bests even the Gods, eventually. Among the wealthy, fortunes have been wasted staving off the strangehold of mortality. Archmages turn to lichdom to eke out the clock a little more.

    It is so fundamental that the legions of Modrons in the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus will marshal themselves against anyone with the hubris to interfere with it.

    Mystra herself, the Mother of All Magic, forbids arcane interference with the regular flow of Time.

    And yet.

    In the cold, ravaged land of Narfell, the "proper" use of magic has never been a priority. The Old Empires wielded the fell powers of the planes with the impunity of children marching wooden soldiers.

    In the Year of Doubt, anomalies began to upend the Nars Pass and its surrounds. Adventurers investigating these strange phenomena found that in entering them they were transported backward, into the days of history, a time of old heroes and villains from storybooks.

    After several sojourns to the past, they discovered the anomalies were no accident. They were the terrible works of an Eastlander Archmage, desperate to undo the fall of her people in the Eastlander War of yesteryears.

    With every attempt to change history, the arcanist's brilliant mind undergoes more and more strain as she seeks to do the impossible. Once calculating and selective, making only deft alterations to history, now the risks she takes are greater and more desperate. Indeed, as other powerful entities take notice of her activities, it may well be too late to close the Pandora's Box she has unleashed.

    Can you stop her before she succeeds in creating her perfect timeline, restoring the Eastlanders and potentially damning their foes?

    Can you stop her before she fails, and unravels time itself?

    Can you resist that same temptation to take the opportunity to erase the mistakes of your own past, and seize the future for yourself?


  • The War that Never Was

    For some time now, the brave fools risking it all to try and preserve the past have noticed one figure absent from their recent hikes through history; the Eastlander Archmage at the center of all this. Her terse, at times frantic, at times self-assured person was missing from the past and present alike, and in her absence the group had also noticed certain unwholesome developments in their present.

    Goblings, an horrific cross of Goblins and Halflings created in the darkest days of the Defiler Wars in ages past, were seen again, and in growing numbers, their cannibalistic fervour as unsettling as their presence in a time far removed from when they and their corrupting Master were defeated and destroyed. The strange arcane anomalies that hinted at temporal disturbances which previously had snapped themselves back to normality were now more inclined to linger.

    Finally, the group uncovered where the reckless arcanist had been sequestered; a particularly virulent timeline in which the servants of that ancient menace, the Defiler, had learned of the Archmage's strange powers, and were seeking to use them to defy their own historical fates - after all if some mere Eastlander could do so, why not the great Vinessa Redoran?

    The great adventurers of Narfell's past have perished in the Battle of Norwick, and now the Dark Enchantress Vinessa and her greatest ally Selron the Deceiver command the terrible forces of a corrupted Rawlinswood, and conduct gruesome and catastrophic experiments upon their prisoners and the Wild Magic of Norwick's Well.

    Norwick itself lies besieged by the Eastland Maurader Chief Garrick, as the Archmage is forced to fight a long and costly war to destroy Vinessa and the Defiler, lest their corruption escape to the future anew or worse yet, corrupt Time itself and potentially force the most severe of interventions from the Powers who protect such things.


  • For those who have yet to get involved with this one, this is a story hook specifically intended to delve into the past events of Narfell's history (specifically actual IG events that have gone down at some point over the last 20 years) - so if you're interested in the heroes, villains & even maps of yore, then come join the historical hijinks! I have generally been running these as relatively ad hoc events whenever I notice a party-sized group in game, but if you haven't been to many yet and want in just let me know and I can schedule something properly!