Revision as of 14:35, 29 January 2022

The face of the world has been changed irrevocably by the Omega Event, when Azalor Maltheridas finally emerged from his millenia-long slumber within his three towers and threatened to undo all of creation. Six adventurers took up arms against him and his minions, and stepped through the rift he opened to an impossible place to do battle with an impossible foe. It is apparent that they succeeded, else the world - and perhaps all of existence - would have ceased to be.

However, in the wake of the Omega, the world faces new challenges. Ancient ruins, once buried beneath the sands and waves, have risen, bearing the promise of treasure for those bold enough to brave their depths - and the monsters that have also awoken with them. A reshaped, scarred landscape causes political turmoil as boundaries are redrawn, and conflict inevitably rises when diplomacy fails. Meanwhile, the nine Forces - the very fabric from which the reality of Trinity is woven - have begun to unravel, losing their strength, and societies reliant upon them begin to sense that, while the end Omega sought has been averted, perhaps it has only been replaced by another.

The echoes of what has come linger in time maybe lost. The future of the shattered reality of Trinity is uncertain. The very nature of existence seems to be changing, and as the old guard slowly passes into memory, new individuals must step forward if the truth is to be found and the future saved. Can the decline of civilization be stopped? Can the Forces be revived? Or is all of existence doomed to become a pale shadow, a mere echo of what it once was?

The Book of Mina

During the adventures of the Crypt Creepers (see Season 1, below), a moogle by the name of Mina suddenly appeared while the group was in Maringolmo. Apparently the young epochent had blundered into a temporal anomaly several decades prior to the Omega Event, and had been hurled into the present time. Upon her arrival, she spoke words of prophecy, yet unknown to those of the worlds of Trinity: here, then, was begun what is now known as the Book of Mina.

Over the course of their adventures, the group encountered a great oddity: a sphinx, entrapped in a temporal eddy of some sort. While the other carried on in their quest to strike down the Sky Pharaoh, Mina stayed behind, and - with many weeks of study and concentration - managed to find a way to free the sphinx, but in so doing trapped them both in a temporal current tangential to the keystone timeline.

Trapped in a place that operated solely on time-error, the sphinx and Mina spoke, with the sphinx offering to unlock the prophecies hidden within Mina's tangled temporal string. The moogle agreed, and thus were the remaining verses of the Book of Mina spoken. Upon their utterance, the sphinx observed that - unlike other prophecies - each of the sets of quatrains, while seeming to indicate future events, did not seem to have any preordained order in which they would occur, with one exception: the final set Mina spoke was intertwined with all the others, and the sphinx ascertained that it must necessarily come last.

Because the order in which these events would take place is unknown, each set of quatrains is known by a simple name. Of these, it is known that Echoes is last; while Mina traveled through time during the events of Sands, it is unknown if the events of its quatrains were necessarily first, or simply happened to occur first.

Seasons

What follows are descriptions of each season of the Echoes metaplot, in their chronological order.

Season 1: Sands

CR 496 / AO 30

It has been thirty years since the Omega ravaged the land.

The face of the world has changed, molded into its new shape by the will of the Omega, the three towers that once were scattered across the world brought to a single point, without care for the geographies that once stood between them. Ancient cities, once buried beneath mountains or desert sands, have come to the fore, and remnants of ancient civilizations tell the tales of their struggles.

Even as the world heals, however, there is a strangeness in the air. Powerful magics dissipate; systems on space stations malfunction; the Blue stutters when returning ancient memories. The Forces themselves, it seems, are fraying. Some believe they were tied to the Omega, and with his death, the Forces have nothing to stand upon; others, that this was his last trick, a gambit to punish the world for destroying him; still others, that the sacrifice of artifacts key to each Force by the Wanderer Thron to gain entry into the Omega's domain was enough to reduce the powers of the Forces.

Of perhaps greater concern is the return of the vilekin, ancient monsters whose nests were roused when the Omega shattered the world. Finding themselves once more with access to the surface, these beasts have returned to their ancient haunts with terrible force, and while most can hold their own against them, they are rapidly becoming a scourge upon the face of the world, threatening trade and communication between lands. Even distant worlds are not safe, as some creatures manage to smuggle themselves aboard starcraft and infest the worlds of Ganymede and Arcturas; while yet others seem capable of existing in the deadly vacuum of space, lying in wait behind moons and asteroids, preying upon the chance vessel that wanders too close to their territory.

Some rumors persist that the sundering of the world and the weakening of the Forces were not the only changes brought on by the Omega's death: others whisper that Wanderers are no longer able to come and go as they please, and that those Wanderers who were present on the worlds of Trinity - including Lilith, the Dark Wanderer - are trapped here, unable to invoke the power of the Wandering. What strange power it is that prevents them from leaving seems, for the time being, unknowable.

...

In the lands of Zalpher, an ancient city has awoken, shifting sands falling from its ancient streets and lost tombs to stand proudly beneath the sun once more. Seeking to bolster the economy of their lands, the rulers of Zalpher have decided to throw open the gates of this city to would-be adventurers, in exchange for records of what they find, so that the modern world may better understand the Kiltian history of the region. But something more sinister awakens with the undead that still loiter beneath the sands: an ancient pharaoh trapped between life and death, who put to use strange and ancient technologies to better situate his final resting place on one of the moons of Adnez. A small band of adventurers become caught up in the Sky Pharaoh's plot, and eventually find themselves traveling into the depths of space to do battle with this ancient evil.

...and at the same time, discover the secret behind his seeming-immortality: deep within the bowels of his pyramid, fueling its magic and the pharaoh's strange existence, is the Cryst of Magic. Upon making a wish upon this enormous mox, they accidentally summon forth Viraxis, the Goddess of Magic. With her return, the Force of Magic is made whole once again.

Season 2: Towers

CR 514 / AO 48

Eighteen years ago, a small band of adventurers who had joined together to plumb the depths of crypts in Zalpher found themselves inextricably involved in a nefarious plot by the Sky Pharaoh Hakotep, a Kiltian ruler from a bygone age long since dead. As the mad mummy's pyramids - which had somehow found themselves on one of the moons of Adnez - were launched using technology previously thought impossible in those ancient times, they invaded the pharaoh's personal pyramid and put him down, saving the worlds of Trinity from whatever mad schemes he had in mind.

Since that time, however, something else strange has happened: magic has felt a resurgence. Where once all the Forces seemed to dwindle in power equally, now Magic alone stands supreme, a light in the darkness for the future in which all else seems destined to fail. Yet while some mages crow about the superiority of their discipline, others wonder: was the relationship between Hakotep and the decline of magic coincidence? And if not, what was the nature of that relationship? Was this pharaoh from an ancient time somehow siphoning power from the force of Magic itself? - and if so, could there be others like him?...

Meanwhile, on Ganymede, the Coldlands Weaponry corporation and her sister corporations of the Corporate Congress have found traces of an incredible find: evidence of an alien spacecraft having once crashed itself into the depths of the planet, seemingly in a time now long forgotten. Together with knowledge gleaned from the future thanks to the Omega Event, the corporations send their soldiers and their scientists deep within the radioactive planet, hoping to find something to stave off the presumed eventual end of Technology.

Amidst the turmoil of the day, a small band of adventurers comes together in a sleepy town on the outskirts of civilization to find a missing councilman, but find themselves up against the machinations of an artilect capable of channeling divine power. What strangeness could this be, that a soulless machine is able to call upon a divine patron? What other secrets lie lurking beneath the surface of the tormented planet of Ganymede?

Season 3: Bells

CR 539 / AO 73

After a scuffle with the law, a small group of adventurers are forced together as they flee the city of Wati, heading south to eastern Valendia. There, in the Lanayru Highlands, they are ambushed by goblin bandits amidst burned-out homes and farms. In the shadow of the mountains they come across the town of Winterhaven, beset by these same goblins: yet while darker forces linger in the shadow, conspiring against the light, a larger threat looms, threatening to echo the devastation of the not-so-distant past...

...

The Bells storyline follows the Legacy of Bells "adventure path," something I've cobbled together from a few different adventures to try to tell an interesting story. Unlike the other seasons, this one is being treated as a story: that is, I am writing the story of this particular part of the Book of Mina, rather than it being played out.

The party is as follows:

• Casthor Mendavious, a male tiefling einhander, who dual-wields hammers
• Yaxchacl, a male gerudo defender, using a mace and a shield
• Raks'tolari, a male halfling lancer, using a greatsword
• Iavloodo, a female coure adventurer (thief/unfettered)

Their antiparty is as follows:

• Medli, a female rito berserker, using a sword
• Bar'til, a male adu'ja learner (defender), using a whip
• Honotu Boulderwalker, a male minotaur warlord, notable for having an eye patch and a broken horn, using a sword and crossbow
• Jolo Otulan, a male zora archer, who dual-wields boomerangs

Season 4: King

CR 552 / AO 86

It is the year 86 by the After Omega calendar, and the Forces of Trinity continue to dwindle in power. While Magic continues to reign ascendant after its resurgence over fifty years ago, rumors persist that Technology and the Primal Forces have seen similar halts in the waning of the power... but perhaps it is too little, too late. The world has moved on, and continues its seemingly-unstoppable slide into the oblivion of a reality in which the Forces have no sway.

However, life carries on. In western Loar, the remnant city-states of the Ronkan Empire continue to vie for territory and supremacy against one another, their squabbles unabated by the vast changes in geography wrought by the Omega Event. The waters of the Bugross Sea have grown turbulent, as of late, and some claim that one town in particular lies at the center of these uncertain eddies: Caerrag. Some fear that these strange omens portend that the city will fall to a jagd, as nearby-Mullonde already has; while others claim that the town was once the site of an ancient grove of myrrh trees. Regardless, the taxes out of Caerrag have ceased to flow, and so investigators from Gariland have been sent to ascertain the status of the town and its people.

In an asylum off the southern coast, something wicked has awoken, a dream made manifest, and what was once a place of respite and calm has been shattered. Surrounded by an impenetrable yellow fog, a small band awakens in the basement, with no recollection of who or where they are. Confronted with strange creatures, disturbing dreams, and an extreme form of amnesia, can they ascertain what happened here and escape, without succumbing to the all-consuming madness around them?