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So... you don't want a Contingency spell because "it won't last long enough", but you're seriously talking about using Temporal Stasis for time travel?
Okay, here's a really simple idea: dominoes. You know, the old "domino effect"?
You also don't want it easily disrupted, sooooooooooo...
Create a permanent series of Antipathy* ("Re: to all Evil and/or "not me" - get the heck outa here!") spells coated by powerful Magic Aura* ("why no, there's no magic here") spells with a permanent Mage's Private Sanctum in the middle, and make the entire thing all underground (like, say, ten feet underground - that's more than enough to foil most basic "scan" type divinations, and the rest mostly rely on the magnanimousity and knowledge of outsiders). You can even do this with enough liberal applications of Stone Shape!
After that, it's a really, really really simple thing to create a magic item that has a "timed" trigger (ala the intermittently functioning items (thus creating one or more items that do a particular action automatically (such as stone shape to move down underground) or the like, with just enough charges to go until an attached (like, fused) item activates with, say, a Dispel Magic effect (on an area, with the Widen Spell feat attached). Incidentally these items are totally covered with a Magic Aura to look not magic too, but instead like little rocks or something similarly innocuous enough.
"But!" you say, "That's not nearly enough! And seems easily disrupted!"
True, but that's why you took so many other precautions first, and you make more than one of them (so, you know, 1,000 or so).
You also set up an entire series of "dispel magic (area)" items (specifically, "small stones" about the size of, say, a fingernail clipping, also coated with a Magic Aura to make it not look magical) that are coated in Temporal Stasis themselves but would otherwise be one-fire items (thus dispelling all the other temporal stasis stones in the area** that surrounds the character until) it finally hits them. You can simply make the area** as large as you want until you've got your timer down to a fine science. Also make them only activate at certain default times or something to slow it down further. Added to that is that when the dispel hits the Temporal Stasis stones, they are suppressed for an additional 1d4 rounds. And you could add it as a "contingency" effect (unique to the stone itself) for more time.
Congratulations, you're now the proud owner of a super-advanced variant Waterclock!
Now to get down to the hard part: justifying the costs that this ridiculously expensive endeavor costs! Well, I've got just the thing: don't. I mean, if you need to, sure, okay, but really there's an infinite array of reasons. Perhaps the builders of said thing were for <insert plot reason here> unable to affect <insert plot event/creature/thing here> and so they decided to create a system to "find the worthy" (which could amount to "that which can kill/stop/etc it" or something) and perhaps all they turned up was the player character, for good or ill. Alternatively, someone with the spells Glibness, Eagle's Splendor, and Honeyed Tongue active and presents a gated Solar with a boatload of cash magical and mundane (one of which is a cursed gem with Trap the Soul, Magic Aura, and Temporal Stasis on it with a Contingency: plane shift/teleport "home" to a small underground dungeon) half up-front, half upon completion (incidentally the "half" upon completion is the one with the cursed sealing gem) for a project they both agree is necessary: saving the world; and in exchange the solar uses a combination wish/miracle to set everything up to specifications (and since the Solar is the one doing granting the wish/miracles, no contradiction needed). The soul-trap gem is only to prevent the badguys from ever questioning the solar ever and can be made to auto-shatter at the appropo time (i.e. when "everything's done") or may be skipped entirely if a GM likes.
Anyhoo, I do some of these ideas help?
* Antipathy and Magic Aura: magic aura specifically calls itself out as targeting a specific item, while Antipathy calls itself out as targeting an area. IF you created a (more or less) solid rock that had the antipathy spell cast on it (an area) and then coated the rock with a Magic Aura that looked like it didn't have one, you could rule (as a GM) that it worked.
** The "area" I'm talking about isn't a small, discreet single locale, although ultimately it comes down to that, but rather a long series of lines running across tremendous lengths of space. Imagine like the long wick of a bomb. Now imagine that a bomb has 8,000 viable wicks. Each of which are, at least, ten feet underground. Magically timed wicks. With a propensity to (contingency) teleport back into place, if disrupted. And when dispelled, you're basically just speeding the bomb up... a little. That are (effectively) invisible because you can't tell what's magic and what's not, so you're left looking at every single rock in the daggum area.
EDIT: I know you said "no wishes", but to clarify, I'm not asking about wishes per se, I'm suggesting the Solar use his wish to make all his ninth level spells for the day miracles (and all his seventh and eighth level spells for the day limited wishes even though those aren't normally on his list) and using the heck out of those.
ALSO, there are other options, such as literally making dozens of iterative sets of 8,766,000 or so mundane hourglasses attached to minor intermittent magic items coated in temporal stasis that is dispelled when the "hour" runs out (8,766,000 is approximately the number of hours in a given millennium if I did the simple math correctly). So in other words hour 1 runs out followed by hour 2, etc. The "dozens" are the backups, so that if one chain is destroyed somehow, the others are still running. And "hourglasses" can be substituted for any device.
Heck, that's the most complicated variation. The far, far more simple one? Intermittently functioning device: it only works under X conditions (you specify), the condition being specifically at X time you want it to go off. And if it gets removed? Planeshift, greater Teleport, and then go off. Make it permanently invisible and ethereal and you're pretty much set forever.
Check out the spells list, the magic items (especially the intermittent ones under Cursed Items), and metamagic feats for more ideas and information.
EDIT AGAIN: I forgot! Place some stone golems inside the rock with the antipathy and instructions to "guard this from intruders" so that if someone does dig down, they run into rather impressive guards.
Also, you can artificially boost caster level by ioun stones.
Also, also, you might be able to create a demiplane with the flowing time trait (see the Greater version) but have the guy stuck in a Temporal Stasis and another in Timeless or some such and use creative interpretations to do what you need to.
And then there's the possibility of actually permanently animating the "dispel magic" items...
...or you just use another spell. Like Binding (Minimus Containment), where you can simply sit in your little gemstone until you're good and ready to come out again.
I love it!
(And if you're inflicting this on someone else, then set the "release" moment to the one you're waiting for).
I was kinda hoping to have the chance to have something a little more complicated for the sake of getting the chance to describe how everything worked.Well, Tacticslion seems to have complicated covered. A lower-level and cheap option would be a book filled with Shadow Conjurationed Sepia Snake Sigils.
- read a page
- deliberately fail both saves
- 4 out of 5 times nothing happens, so move to the next page
- otherwise, sleep without aging for 7+1d4 days
- repeat ad nauseam, or until all the Sigils are gone
Well, Tacticslion seems to have complicated covered.
That pretty much sums me up!
Another option would be the Create Demiplane spells, make one where time flows differently. 1 day to 1000 years. A quick jaunt, spend the night, enjoy breakfast, pop back over to the material, and wow, 1000 years later.
Oh, hey, I also wanted to mention the book-reading thing and demiplane+flowing time ideas are pretty cool, too (though I already mentioned the last one, effectively)!
Also, let us know how this goes down/went down!
Another option would be the Create Demiplane spells, make one where time flows differently. 1 day to 1000 years. A quick jaunt, spend the night, enjoy breakfast, pop back over to the material, and wow, 1000 years later.Create demiplane has LIMITED time change. I think it goes at most 2x normal.
Even so. You'd only have to sleep for 500 years. Or if your immortal/a long lived race, just hang out.