#chronomancy

From the statue in the town square to the toasts still raised in his name, the legacy of the hero  Kaelrik’s looms large in the heart of Drigveria’s people even centuries after his death. Once merely a wandering adventuer, Kaelrik’s dauntless defence of the innocent in an age of war saw him hailed as a hero and later crowned as king of a fledgeling realm. 

All legends must end though, and after defeating warlords, wizards, and the challenges of the wilderness itself, Kaelrik gave his life plunging into an ancient dragon’s maw to impale its heart upon his blade. 

Or at least, this time he did. 

Beyond his own bravery and skill, one of the keys to Kaelrik’s success was his relationship with a woman named Nyramie, an oracle of Istus: goddess of fate. What began with duty and fellowship blossomed into love, and each time Kaelrik went into battle he would act upon Nyramie’s divinations, however impossible they might seem, to seek the best outcome for the people they protected. 

The last time he came to her, Nyramie wept. The goddess had revealed to her Kaelrik’s ultimate fate and the oracle broke, at once faithful to her patron’s plan and raging at the betrayal, the years of hardship and sacrifice and the future they had hoped to share all snatched away by divine edict. Contradiciton met miraculous power and Nyramie’s heartbreak fractured time; one outcome where she stayed silent and left Kaelrik to his fate, and another where she forged a destiny defying artifact in the form of a jagged red crystal. While holding it Kaelrik would be able to see all possibilities that led toward his victory, and would be able to survive his clash with the otherwise invincible wyrm. 

What Nyramine could have never predicted was what would happen to Kaelrik once untethered from his fate and given a tool that would provide such easy answers. His victories mounted and his kingdom spread, as he became a warlord to rival and then exceed any of those he’d fought. A desperate fight for survival turned into a quest for supremacy, and when the borders of his dominion were secure, Kaelrik’s ambitions turned intward. He was as fearsome a king as he was a hero, and he ruled for centuries thanks to his elven blood and Nyramie’s gift, becoming crueler as time and necessity hardened his heart. 

Eventually his subjects had enough, the outer reaches of his kingdom rising in rebelion and descending upon his capital of Kaelvalon with such force that there was no possibility for Kaelrik or his loyalists could fight his way out. No possibility, save the one the crystal showed him where he used its power to pass across the divide of time, to the fork where he had never established his kingdom. It required great and terrible sacrifice, but he managed it… and at some pivotal moment, Kaelrik the once and never king will emerge into the province of Drigveria through a crimson gate along with his legion, and will set about building his kingdom anew. 

Future Adventures: 

Chronal anomalies will begin popping up in the prelude to Kaelrik’s arrival. Strange red lighting storms, artifacts from the other timeline drifting through, to say nothing of the various extraplanear entities that might be attracted by such disturbances. 

Kaelrik’s emergence happens shortly after Talmis has given birth to her child, posing a direct threat to her legitimacy as a ruler and giving her detractors one HELL of a symbol to rally around. The once and never king is all too happy to embrace these new supporters, overjoyed to find a populace that adores him the same way they adored his younger self. Add to this his distrust of the orcs of Felstar’s Faultering, who turned out to be one of the factions that rebelled against him first. 

To defeat Kaelrik, the party will need to lay their hands on the presentworld mirror of his objects of power: his crown ( in Talmis’s possession), his sword (lost in the dragon’s skeleton), and his crystal (buried in the heart of the impossible to reach temple of Istus). When these items are assembled not only will they give the party an edge in combat against him, but they will also (at the right hour, we’re in full prophecy territory here) summon the ghost of Sydagul, the dragon that was to be Kaelrik’s doom in the first place. Queue the party fighting on top of a castle against an extratemporal tyrant while a skeletal dragon the size of a mountain bears down on them.