Story Time: The Nearly Helpful Time Traveller

Hi all, this is Zubie, and this week I’ll be sharing with you the story of the Nearly Helpful Time Traveller; where I spent half of a War and Aether campaign setting up a really dumb joke at my player’s expense. In this story, we’ll also go a little bit into how Time Travel works in the Zubiverse of stories and games. Read on to learn about a really dumb Time Traveller joke I made that nearly party-wiped my players!

[Out of options, the wounded party prepares to descend the icy cliffs - Art generated using Adobe Firefly]

To start out, this was a campaign where I had my players facing off against the White Dragon of the Heroic Age 一 so magic is far more prevalent, and it is a more traditional high-fantasy setting. In this campaign the White Dragon was devastating the Grahtian Empire of the Western Reaches, and our party was caught in the middle. After several sessions of survival, work, and careful planning - the party joined a roused militia to fight the Veyvorrin terrorists and slay the White Dragon. However, during their march into the mountains, the party was suddenly approached by a madman.

This complete stranger was in shock, awe, and tears to see the party - and especially clung to one of the players in a deep and discomforting embrace. He claimed the militia needed to get off the mountain now, as they were about to be ambushed. Sure enough, they quickly were, and while most of the militia was still lost, this stranger saved the lives of the party and a couple militiamen who followed.

After some discussion, this stranger claimed to be from the future. He had been battling the Veyvorrin for weeks, him and one of the player’s characters had fallen in love, and they located the Veyvorrin’s base of operations. They attacked during the night of a Dance of Koel, an alignment of the two moons of Zale that only happens once every 7 years, where this time traveller’s Time Magic would be at its most powerful. However, the battle went horribly wrong, he watched everyone die before him, and in a moment of panic he cast a time-reversal spell on himself - expecting only to go back a few seconds, but empowered by the Dance of Koel instead sent him back weeks. He was going to right as many wrongs as he could and take out the Veyvorrin with all of the knowledge of their hideouts, layouts, and defenses - as well as save the party and his newfound love along the way.

And so the party began taking out Veyvorrin warehouses, weakening the defenses of the main stronghold with great haste and ease, and then preparing with extra time, resources, and allies for a new fight against the Veyvorrin’s leader, Thanadis Vile - with full knowledge of what they could expect to encounter when attacking his stronghold. Sure enough they came to the final fight, and instead of being wiped out instantly as the Time Traveller had experienced, they were holding off against Thanadis Vile and his goons. Unfortunately, Thanadis had other tricks up his sleeve, and called for defenses and additional support that the Time Traveller had never seen. The party was overwhelmed and forced to retreat into the mountainside where they came across a cliff’s edge and were pinned against a dead-end.

Out of options and with the Veyvorrin swiftly approaching, the players had a suggestion to get them out of this situation. The Time Traveller had used the Dance of Koel to travel backwards in time by many weeks, by accident. If he focused, he could reset time to any point in those few weeks. They could all go backwards in time by a number of hours, or days- maintain the majority of their memories and progress, and go back into the fight with the new knowledge of Thanadis’ forces. With no other options left, the party was glad to lose a few days of memory and reattempt the fight. So the Time Traveller gathered his magical energies, synchronized his movements, and cast a great and powerful Time Magic spell that would send everyone back to a couple days before the fight. And with the casting of that spell, the Time Traveller vanished…. Alone. The party was still standing on that cliff side, severely wounded, with the Veyvorrin rushing in to finish them off.

To me, the game master, this was hilarious. From the moment I introduced the time traveller, I knew he would lead them into the final fight, the party would get overwhelmed, and they would ask the Time Traveller to reset time, only for him to inadvertently abandon them at the most critical moment. After the Time Traveller’s disappearance, the players scaled down the icy cliffs while under Veyvorrin attack. Despite being severely wounded, under threat, and nearly failing their checks to climb down the cliffs, the party managed to narrowly escape the encounter and continue on with the campaign.

When my players asked what happened, they realized they had never considered how time travel may or may not work. In my worlds and stories, there are an infinite number of universes. Every universe’s timeline is set in stone and plays out exactly as it’s meant to. To go backwards in time and kill your own grandfather will instead drop you into the nearest connecting universe wherein you killed your own grandfather at that time. Your original universe was left behind, continuing without you as it were; the universe you’re in now will continue as your grandfather is killed by a semi-related time traveller, as was always meant to happen. The Time Traveller in this campaign used Time Magic, but had no perspective outside of his own of how time magic actually worked. Every time he went back in time to change events, he wasn’t changing the outcome of the universe he was in, but was in-fact transporting to a different universe where he would then appear with all of his previous knowledge of upcoming encounters - and due to the spell he cast, then taking the place of the version of himself that existed there before his arrival.

Without his or the party’s knowledge, the moment he travelled back in time he would simply vanish alone into another adjacent universe. But to the players, they suddenly realized that their emergency backup plan worked for one person, and one person only. The Time Traveller would go on to fight the Veyvorrin again and continually loop for a perfect ending; but our party of players was stuck figuring out a new solution on their own.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s story time! Do you have a time when you set up (or got set up with) an encounter that was months in the making? Tell us about it below, we would love to read about your own tabletop adventures!