What has gone before....

I am Shandar, the Ashen One.

I reside in a tower inside a region of the Forgotten Realms known as Dagger Hills.

This shall be a repository of information dealing with the exploits of an adventuring company currently in my employ.

I welcome comments, corrections, and additions.

This story begins with a curious wrinkle in time, the effect of which is what brought the players to my attention. Great efforts by great magic users are often felt far from the expression of power, and so it was here.

Elminster, Sage of Shadowdale, did something few but he would dare to do, and only in the most dire of circumstances. He reversed the flow of time.

What caused him to do make this move and so dramatically alter the course of events which would follow I have no idea. But I will find out, which is why I am following so closely the exploits of these adventurers who were at the center of Elminster's spell.

Let me explain, if I can, what has gone before and yet is now no more.

In the month of Flammerule, in the year of 1368, a small group of adventurers came together and in the course of their efforts made a series of mistakes which I can only presume would eventually lead to a disaster of calamitous proportions.

Each had completed the most basic levels of training in their chosen fields and had come together more out of greed than any heroic tendencies. This dominating tendency toward evil is likely the fly in the ointment which would lead to their downfall.

I will not describe in detail the backgrounds of these characters here, instead I will discuss each at length as they enter the story for the second time.

In the first time line Paschya, a cleric of Sharess, and her dearest friend Selina (defrocked priestess of Sharess now turned thief), had formed an adventuring company with a mysterious magic user who called himself the The Green Rajah, an elven ranger named Elessaria, and a Vistani herbalist named Gafar.

They tested their mettle in various ways, including fighting in the ring at the Fighter's Own, and even descending into the Undertavern Dungeon....to somewhat disappointing results.

Ada Janko, pupil of Alzador in Bug Tussle, approached them with offer of employment. That in itself was a sign of how desperate the poor young woman was. She begged them to come to Dagger Falls to help avert a plague which was causing the entire town--including her own brother--to fall asleep and waste away. She was in the company of a stalwart and silent dwarf who, for lack of anything better, was known only as The Dwarf with No Name.

The company joined her and her silent dwarven companion, crossing the Dagger Hills and actually had some progress in sorting out the mystery of the Sleeping Sickness. Unfortunately for them, they had more troubles than successes.

In a very short time they had promised Randal Morn they would liberate the Dale from Tren's control, but contracted with the evil Constable Tren to murder Randal Morn--though they believed they only meant to stall Tren and take his money without doing the rightful heir to the Daggerdale throne in.

During their investigations, they followed some strange creatures which resembled dwarves made of wood into the ruined temple of Lathander. In the lower level crypts they discovered a hidden altar set and promptly stole it. After discovering a tunnel they descended into the caverns below the crypt, encountering a nixie and discovering a large room filled with magical mushrooms and more of the peculiar wooden dwarves. After a struggle, they examined the mushroom ring and discovered that one of the mushrooms had magical healing properties and there were 13 examples of fungus which looked like horrible plant versions of humanoid infants.

The group promptly destroyed them all by stomping them under their boots, and then set to the task of removing a giant wall of thorns which blocked their path.

It was decided to burn their way through it, and the fire resulted in an explosive blast which killed the Dwarf with No Name and filled the entire cavern with an acrid, choking smoke.

The smoke forced them down another tunnel that descended sharply more than 50 feet. This allowed the party to reach not only clean air, but a swift underground river. While they waited for the air above to clear, they determined to explore the catacombs on the other side of the river. It wasn't long before they lost Gafar to the corrosive acid spittle of a giant slug. What remained of the party returned to the mushroom cavern. They explored a short way up the cavern, finding the badly burned and dead body of another of the wooden dwarves.

They couldn't go much further up the passage way, because it was blocked some distance ahead by a heavy iron door behind which could be heard the barking and growling of some horrible beast. Off to one side was an offal pit which contained a black pudding.

Unable to determine how best to proceed, the party collected the the dwarf’s corpse and returned it to Ada where they were surprised to discover that nearly 20 of the townspeople afflicted with the Sleeping Sickness had recovered while they were in the tunnels. The group took full credit although they had no idea how they might have accomplished this feat. Ada paid them and gave them more money to return to Bug Tussle with the dwarf's body to have him raised from the dead by the priest Too Bad Jim.

Though they suspected they had left much unfinished in Dagger Falls, the group decided to take the altar set they had discovered to Shadowdale in order to return it to a functioning temple of Lathander. While in Shadowdale they decided to take on a new mission and abandon their old one.

They hired out to clear the tunnels below the Twisted Tower.

While “clearing out the tunnels” the Green Rajah used a fire hands spell on what he thought was an ochre jelly...but was really two young lovers under a yellow blanket doing what young lovers do under blankets. The pair were horribly burned by the spell and fled in terror.

Pressing on, the adventurers came to a chasm filled with giant flies and frogs. One of Selina’s cats was killed by the flies in the terrible battle. During the fierce fighting with flies above and frogs below, with the adventurers knocking on death's door, a blast of bright light burst forth and Elminster stood before them.

"Oh, the folly of those who seek to help but don’t even know enough to be able to help themselves.

Begone and beback with ye!

Many are those who have said if I knew then what I know now...well, that won’t be you. The sands of time flow in reverse, and with this reversal comes the knowledge that nothing you did worked in rehearsal!"

And with a mighty burst of magic, Elminster sent each member of the company back in time to before they met. Each retained their skills, wealth, and items as well as most of the memories of their adventure and all the mistakes they had made...I presume with the hope that they would not make them again.

Was it all a dream?

It has taken considerable effort and scrying with unique artifacts to make all of this known to me, since after Elminster's spell it was a past which didn't exist and a future which might not happen.

The individual members of the group have reacted differently to the experience. All believe it was a strange dream, and none discuss it openly. Only two of the original group have chosen to take a path even remotely similar to the one they took before. I must assume that these two have the makings of true heroes.

Paschya remains a priestess of Sharess, rarely venturing from the temple now and has ended her friendship with Selina abruptly. The memories of that “vision” give her no pleasure and so she has turned from it completely. She does not understand how she has overnight gained levels which would otherwise take many weeks to achieve, and explains it to herself as a miracle bestowed by her goddess for her exemplary efforts as a priestess of pleasure.

Selina awoke from the "dream" to find herself safely in her room at Hairfoot’s Barefoot Inn. Groot was quite surprised to see the remarkable progress in his student after only one night, but he simply put it down to his own good instruction. The agreement they had was for him to tutor her to 3rd level, but she is there already and he was forced to graduate her. To celebrate and to cloud the memory of her dreams, Selina drifted into the Fighter’s Own to have a drink and practice picking pockets. This is where I found her and where the new thread begins.

Gafar's memory of being dissolved in spittle has left him reluctant to take on anything more adventurous than running a small tea shop out of his home. He even pays others to collect the ingredients he needs for his teas.

The Green Rajah is pleased to have, in the space of one night's dreaming, gained impressive magical abilities. His memory of accidentally using that power to harm innocents, however, has kept him from actually using his magical gifts for fear of inadvertently causing more harm. In his dreams he is still haunted by seeing the entwined and charred bodies of the young lovers screaming in agony. He currently runs a used tome business, collecting the stories of others rather than creating his own. A regular customer, Stago the gnome, has been pestering him for mentoring in magical arts, and has shown some promise of value as a future mage, though he is strongly drawn to the arts of the thief as well.

Elissaria had before, as she has now again, set off from Elventree to form an adventuring band after the departure of her father west. This time, however, something different has happened which brings her into the story from the south road rather than the north.

She has been following a strange pair on the road through the Elven Court to temples of Gond in the cities of the Dale Lands. One is a man, wearing an exceedingly strange outfit with a large yellow sun hat. The other is not a man at all, but some form of golem-like fighting machine.

Several times she was certain she might have to aid the man and reveal herself as she watched them from a distance, but his machine managed to drive off any trouble which popped up. Their path eventually took them to the Fighter’s Own Tavern, and she followed them inside to wash the dust of the road from her throat and to see what her elven hearing might pick up.

She has little memory of the previous time line, with only flashes of images triggered by parallel events. In the tavern she notices a woman in black catsuit whom she feels is familiar and yet she is equally certain she has never before met.