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In which yours truly presents her current favorite "What a twist!" and asks for you fine folk to provide yours.
After several months on hiatus, my homebrew game is starting back up. The crew of the spelljamming vessel Bright Star are once again in play, and we pick up with them on approach to Oerth. Upon arriving they set down for resupply in a large clearing in a sylvan part of the Flanaess, and as they are all tired of being cooped up in an enclosed ship after 60 days aboard, it's decided that the entire crew will camp out under the stars.
Guards are posted, yet they sleep. And to sleep, dream. In dreaming, the captain finds himself awake in the foyer of Castle Amber - a place which he has visited on two previous occasions. The game freezes.
My Beloved Spouse (Kobold Chorus: "We love you!") calls a time-out, as I had caught her completely off guard with this one. (This being quite intentional) And she remarks that:
a) Castle Amber is on Glantri, which is on Mystara. Not Oerth. *facepalm*
b) She had run Castle Amber for my characters several months previous, and thus it is fresh in her mind. This would be no fun for her.
We adjourn for a moment and I scramble to try and come up with another plan as I'm really in the zone to game. We agree that the party did actually dream about Castle Amber, and I make a large show of shuffling my notes. Specifically, the original copy of Beyond the Magic Mirror by E. Gary Gygax. I sigh, she smiles and we undertake a trip to a dreamworld of magic.
In secret, what I actually shuffled was my copy of For Duty & Deity. The party cuts to full wakefulness as a High Priest of my homebrew world Tinris Gates in with a flash and a loud chime of planar transit. He'd been trying to find them for about 10 days, but been able to do so as scrying into the Phlogiston doesn't work. One of the world pantheon of Tinris had been abducted by the Demon Prince, Graz'zt and the High Priest was in a tizzy.
The party amps up for a trip to the Abyss on the Infinite Staircase and as they're finishing prep, the captain of the ship takes a moment to invoke his magic mirror. In theory, the mirror (a homebrew magic item called the Intrigue Mirror) would make a temporary clone of the captain so that he could properly administer his duties in two places simultaneously. In actuality, the mirror flashes and he finds himself Beyond the Magic Mirror. This is another place the good captain has been before, one time not escaping with his life.
The party followed and thus, instead of Castle Amber, instead of For Deity & Duty, we're running Classic Grognardian Gygax! Mwa ha ha!