While I'm... there. Anyone can walk up and slit my throat?
"No, Agnes replies. "You will temporarily be pulled into the moment in the image. You won't just be viewing the past, you will actually be back there, as in that is where you will exist."
"Do not worry. It is enjoyable, apart from the physical side-effects. And I'll bring you right back."
I remember a train conductor. All aboard, who's coming aboard.
Taking a seat, my hand reaches for the time machine thing.
Gaston Blackacre throws wide the door to 37 Clank Street. He is soaked with rain. Lightning strikes in the night sky behind him. He gnaws on his cigar and stomps down the hall to join everyone in the lighted room, around the table. He tosses his coat over the back of a chair to dry it off.
"All that back at the bastion of evil...it's taken care of," he says in his usual terse manner. He shoulders his way roughly into the circle.
"Agnes, while I do truly appreciate your unusual recuperative abilities, it caused to lapse certain protections that I have upon myself, my manservant and my familiar. If I reapply these protections, are they likely to lapse during this experiment?"
How far?
"No. The laws of time travel are elastic." Agnes smiles, amused. She covers her mouth and giggles.
The Earl activates several pre-prepared thaumaturgical devices linked to his aura - referred to as spells by the superstitious and uneducated.
"Well, I'm ready." states the Earl, holding hands with his Mechanical Manservant.
"I'm not sure I..." starts the mechanical manservant, before shrugging and holding out his hand towards Ianez.
"For our future to become the world’s past? Interesting, miss Strange."
La Siréene inserts herself in a chair on Sandru’s right and takes his hand in hers.
"Ready."
Quinn sits next to Sandru on the left.
"How do we decide who goes in first? I'm putting my name in the hat for trying it out."
"We hold hands encircling the traveller, yes?"
Agnes nods in reply to Caromarc.
She thumbs through a small stack of images. "Here is a nice one. This picture is from 119 years ago." She waits to see what Quinn and Sandru decide.
Sit down Copper, the lady asked nice..
Quinn takes am arrow from his quiver and a gold coin from his bag. He takes the arrow head and scratches an X on one side of the coin. "Let's be fair and leave it to chance."
The monk tosses the coin up in the air and says "Make your call Sandman....blank or 'X'"
Ianez takes the mechanical manservant's hand and reaches out to La Siréene on his left.
La Siréene weaves enchantments upon herself once more, then takes Ianez's hand and gives him a smile with the biological side of her face.
Phoebe's eyes go from molten fire back to normal. The flames on her body recede, as if sucked back into her skin.
She looks on as your party links hands.
Hergelund's beard twitches. He grumbles to himself, satisfied with how your party and the twins have come together, working in cooperation. "Very good, very good," he mutters. He totters over and stands by the wall, and watches the proceedings.
Quinn moves the stereoscope over to the half-orc. "Ok half-orc. You're driving."
I hold the other's hands gently.
My understanding is simple. But, if we exist there... and not here. Not here to stop... anything. Not be a thorn in anyone's side. Eliminated, erased, gone. How much would someone pay for that?
The perfect trap.
As Sandru holds the stereoscope up to his eyes, Agnes places the card in the holder. The card has two sepia-toned images of a pleasant-looking garden, verdant with trees, hedges, and neatly-trimmed topiary. There is also a greenhouse, benches, low stone walls, and a garden path. At one end of the garden is an immense copper telescope with lots of whimsical gears and dials on its sides, mounted on a dais encircled by a railing, that visitors to the garden can stand at and search for bodies in the heavens. In the center of the garden, there is a large fountain topped by a statue of an athletic-looking young man with a cherubic face ringed in curls, wearing a sash around his waist, with one arm raised cheerily in the air and the other wrapped around a water pitcher.
The two images merge together and become a three-dimensional scene. Everyone closes their eyes briefly, and when you reopen them, you are all in the garden. It is now color, dark green leaves, pink and orange blossoms, and drifting gray clouds in an overcast sky. The telescope reflects the morning light weakly off of its polished surface.
You do not see Agnes, but you hear her voice. "Now, I will tell you a story about this garden..."
"Back in this time, there was a woman named Selena. She was in a love affair..."
Selena sits on a garden bench near the greenhouse. She sits upright with good posture, and petticoats primly tucked around her ankle boots. She is reading a love letter.
A short distance down the path, a man named Kristoph, who runs the garden and the observatory, argues with a man named Gavin, who is an inspector who wants to close the garden and shut the observatory down. Kristoph is accompanied by his beloved invention, a gardening construct, and his favorite helium-filled balloon animal, a bright purple with white polka-dotted octopus named Elsie.
There is a schoolteacher walking down the path with children who are his students. His name is Ivan.
Nearby, there are two gardeners dressed in overalls tending the flora. Their names are Sanders and Finn.
Selena's eyes run down the handwritten page. She is melancholy and distracted. Her lover writes that he can't be with her right now. He is away and can't be at her side. Is he trying to end their dalliance? She frets and frets, and doesn't know.
Gavin speaks cool and measured. That crazy dwarf inventor on your staff...his experiments with seeds...he creates abominations! All sorts of unnatural plant species that ruin the ecology of the area. Kristoph must stop such shenanigans or the whole place will be shut down.
Kristoph yells loudly. He won't be bullied by the inspector! Everything is fine! Everything is under control! The new species growing in the greenhouse are innovative...amazing! He'll permit no one to block the advance of science!
Ivan points out various plants and flowers to his students. They sketch what they see and compare notes amongst themselves.
Sanders and Finn are chums. They chat happily while going about their work.
Map of the garden
(also posted on the campaign info page)
"...and the flower here, with the sadly wilted red petals (it would have been much nicer, had we been able to see it even two days past), is lilium martagon, or Thuvian's-cap lily." They do fine work with such fripperies...why don't they apply themselves to history even half so well?
"....damn hedgehogs was ruining everything. They were huge thanks to the vegatables in the garden. And the boss was blaming me. My last resort was to wait for 'em and ambush the little suckers. All that work and I only got one." Finn continues to trim the rose bush and at times enacting some of his swings against the large hedgehogs. Once in a while he looks at Sanders to see how much he accomplished doing his work.
There are fresh red currants, orangeberries, sunberries, gloomberries, and frostberries growing in the garden. There is also a small pumpkin patch.
...Has he tired of me? Is that it? Have I become uninteresting to him? Oh, I miss him so! What if...
"...Maria? Why are you in control of the body? Weren't you kil- Endbringer! ...Not here? How can..."
...He never wants to meet me again? No! I can't think like that! He's fond of me, he is, he's told me so, whispered gently in my ear...
"...No, this is alright, this feels... familiar, safe. But I remember... different things. Emotions. Names. Who are..."
...But what if he's met someone else? Some light-footed hussy who's got her claws in my dear? No, he wouldn't...
"...They? La Siréene... that feels familiar. Yeah, that must be me. Well, that's that sorted. What are we doing? Fretting over a male? Hey, that's not bad, sounds pretty entertaining actually..."
...the garden. I kneel to take a handful of dirt. It's real. Standing I look around. They're all here, but why wouldn't they be. I didn't get enough sleep. Walking the night is taking its toll.
Stop it Finn, stop being prejudice against everything you don't know. I'll help with what you need to get done.
Don't worry about the boss, blame it on me. They think I'm slow, because I am. But they also think I will break their necks if they ever push me. Which I will not. I am not an animal. If you want to get rid of the gophers...
Kristoph has this metal ball, it vibrates and hums. He doesn't know what to do with it yet. I think it bugs the gophers and insects. Makes them not want to be near it. Maybe we put on in the ground and see what happens.
What's for supper? We have to seed one of the grass patches, and cover it with hay. I bend down to shoulder a bale of hay big enough to need two men. I put my back into it. Garden's looking good. I'm happy.
"Good lord man! What's wrong with you? Can't you see the big picture? Plants like these can improve life for everyone! End world hunger! Cure disease! That modified pumpkin that lures, traps and eats mice has the potential to stop the major agricultural pest in the world today! And you complain because he hasn't managed to stop it growing at three feet? Because it might get loose and might break free?"
"You're a madman!" says Gavin. "Have you no ethics?! These experiments have the potential to run amok! Amok, I say! Think of the children. I am sorry, but no. This garden is out of control."
"By the decree of all that is lawful and orderly, you must cease and desist your arboreal conjecturings!"
The dwarf inventor...his name is Horace...flees from the greenhouse like a bat out of hell. His short legs are pumping. "My experiments with seeds...run amok! The creatures are coming for us all!"
The dainty lady, Selena, is seated on her bench near the greenhouse. An ill wind blows through the air.
Her hair is blown and her letter flutters in the wind.
"Nonsense, Horace. Calm down."
Raising his voice
"Gardeners! To the Greenhouse!"
Finn is startled from his work when hearing Kristoph's call. He pauses for a moment then he goes for his hoe. A strange memory begins to come forth, one of training in a monastary where he is training to fight with a quarterstaff.
He looks to Sanders and Finn begins to run, with some form of martial training bubbling to the top of his conscienceness. His footwork is much faster than he remembers as he speeds to the Greenhouse with gardening hoe in hand.
I put the hay or straw down... There is a difference, but I don't care right now. I try to keep up with Finn.
Wait...what is happening here? A fight? The tutor gets between his charges and the greenhouse, senses keyed to high pitch. "Children! Put away your pads and pencils and stay behind me! There is something terribly amiss here!"
"Why don't you come see how well our greenhouse quarrantine measures are?"
Kristoph turns to the construct and speaks slowly "Go help the gardeners"
"Go help the gardenias"
"Gardeners! Gardeners!"
"Go help the gardenias' gardeners"
"Close enough"
Kristoph turns back to his companion
"It's a prototype. They'll get better."
At the point where it's appropriate for Gavin to respond, he goes still as a statue and turns 'off'.
You all hear the voice of a young girl in your mind. She talks to no one in particular, no one that you can see in the garden. "Please, Mr. Blackacre, do not release hands and break the circle. Quit being fidgety. It causes disturbances in the time travel."
Gavin snaps to and comes back to life. He looks apprehensively at the greenhouse.
Horace runs away from the grounds. The greenhouse writhes with the results of his experiments; carnivorous flowers and angry vines thrash and flail about. They smash through the glass panels of the greenhouse. They grow monstrously large, wrap themselves around the enclosure, and crush it with their verdant strength.
But these plants are stationary and rooted in place.
The real threat appears from across the garden. An enormous tree uproots itself and breaks away from the shrubbery. Thrashing its roots like feet, it makes its way past the fountain and comes straight for all of you!
"Intruders in the gardens! Intruders in the garden!" it bellows in a creaky, oak voice.
"These grounds belong to the plants! You don't belong here!"
Test
Initiative: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (19) + 2 = 21
You all hear the girl speak in your minds again. It's like she is a god, hiding up behind the clouds, somewhere in the air. "Oh dear, this is an unexpected complication."
"Try not to die, adventurers, or else you'll be stuck permanently in the past."