so okay. we're playing 5e reskinned to gw2 bc that's an mmo we all play, for the most part it's not that relevant bc we're still using 5e mechanics, but a couple of things:
game waypoints are present as they exist in the lore of the game, but so people can't just teleport whenever, you have to be at one to jump to another
everything extra-planar in this world exists in one weird dimension that no one can fully explain, the afterlife, the god realms, it's all mixed up in there, including gw2's most interesting dungeon system, the fractals of the mists, which are echoes of various real world events scattered throughout that dimension. there exists a group of space pirates in lore that frequently travel to the fractals to scavenge things. at one point we were working for them while undercover but this has been the furthest from anyone's mind lately
ukki - my asura (small bat-like gnome people) artificer. she is a botanist, she is elderly, she wants nothing to do with all this bullshit, but someone's gotta keep these fuckers alive
hiraeth - sylvari (plant person) sorcerer. sylvari are born as adult bodies with brains developed enough to walk and talk, but you know, immaturity still can show in other ways. hiraeth is one year old, extremely bizarre, just sort of wanders into places and does fucked up magic and somehow everyone wants to adopt him
versira - charr (big cat person) rogue. professional scout. not a spy, no matter how much people mistake her for one. adrenaline junkie. Extremely Fastā¢ļø
the situation we are in! an already extremely powerful dragon has gained some control over time. the person he has chosen as his herald, and the one helping him take over the whole world, is an existing game villain, who normally you kill at one point in the story. however, in this version of canon, whenever she dies, he just resets everything back to the moment she became his herald (about 7 years ago)
we have known this for quite a few sessions now, but we've been in a very careful balance of trying to stop her from furthering his plans without killing her (or, you know, i am. the other two have pre-existing grudges making this harder), or doing anything else that would make the dragon reset time, because a) the time loops are slowly degrading reality, and b) if we fail, we gotta start over with no knowledge this is happening
asura are a very technologically advanced species, so i had a plan in place in case we fail: make a digital copy of all my notes on the situation so far, including reasons for a past version of me to trust that i wrote this. if i suspected we were about to lose this loop, i would send it to a different set of extra-planar sailors we'd encountered before, so they could send it back to me
spoiler alert: outside of my lab way out in the middle of the jungle, i fail to keep these two from doing a murder.
our dm gives us a couple of rounds of bullet time, describing the time loop resetting as waves of time erasing radiating out from the body
i send off my email and hope that i can keep that line of information open
we are level 12, the highest he has is a 6th level slot, and our dm rules this as a 9th level spell
he rolls exactly the 19 he needed! obviously not enough to break the effect entirely, it's too powerful for that, but our dm lets it create a barrier around him, so when the loop resets he and he alone will stay put, and end up in this spot 7 years ago exactly as he is now (which is helpful bc he's still 6 years from being born and none of us were sure how to keep his player able to keep playing if he hadn't managed to do that)
takes the description of the time waves as a "if i move quick enough, that can't touch me"
and with her various existing attributes, the mobile feat, i think she's got something else bringing her up to 60ft, her existence as a rogue, and the haste i cast on her a few rounds before time reset, just runs.
we are in the middle of nowhere bc ukki is a hermit, we are not close to a waypoint, but she has 480ft a round and nothing can stop her!
even with the round of daze from the haste wearing off, makes it to the nearest waypoint. buys herself some time in waypointing as close as she can to the space pirate base. she's a scout, she's never gone anywhere without surveying the whole thing, so she knows exactly the quickest way through to where she wants to get. she also has spider climb boots, so fuck it, if there's people in your way, run on the ceiling!
makes it to one of their ships. people try to stop her. she pulls a gun on them and goes "if you value your lives, and most of all, your paycheck, come with me right now"
rolls a 22 on the intimidation check.
and flies the ship out of this dimension
(her player: now, normally, when people say don't split the party, they mean spatially
me: we're splitting the party temporally?
her player: we are splitting the party temporally!)
waits it out for a day, then flies back to reality, in the new reset timeline
i am somehow the only person who didn't just show up again
there are now two versiras
nothing could possibly go wrong
(also pay no attention to the now temporally displaced pirate crew they'll be fiiiiine)
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