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| Happy days |
Introduction
Before the events of Session #92 can be told, I need to give you a glimpse into the timestream ahead, this is the story of Bumblebore the Bookish.
In session #82 he stepped into a magical pool and was granted a wish. Keeping the knowledge of this boon to himself, he travelled with the party back to Guarda with his henchman Gilthaniel and familiar O'Malfoy, and thought, and thought—until, finally he was ready. The following story is lifted directly from the Discord chat, slightly edited for readability.
Scratching his Firedrake familiar, O'Malfoy, the magic-user muttered, “Oh my friend, I Wish I was a proper Wizard.”
Time to use some of that "discretionary power"
How to adjudicate this Wish? At the time I had been reading the Elric novels for the first time (you might catch that in some of the writing below). Incidentally, I agree with Jeffro's Appendix N chapter on Elric—available from amazon, and don't forget his latest on kickstarter! Anyway, I seriously considered something like this:
The words leave your lips and the multiverse takes note. Gilthaniel locks eyes with you. Centuries of experience look out from behind those eyes.
"Bumblebore—"
Then the light begins. Cold fire, winter-star white, bleeding from his fingertips, from the silver ends of his hair, drawn across the room toward you by something that cares nothing for your horror and nothing for his loss. You step back. It follows. You raise your hands in warding, but the gesture is a candle against the outer dark.
The light enters you, and God help you, it is magnificent. Three hundred and more years of mastery surging into you—and you receive it, and you cannot stop, and you are monstrous, and both things are true at once.
You watch him diminish. What remains is a shape in a chair that is not longer your henchman, no longer a living being at all.
O'Malfoy presses away against the hearth, horror in his eyes.
You stand at the centre of your room with more power than you have ever possessed.
You are, now, a proper wizard.
You had always wanted to know what that felt like.
 |
| Time to use some of that "discretionary power" |
How to adjudicate this Wish? At the time I had been reading the Elric novels for the first time (you might catch that in some of the writing below). Incidentally, I agree with Jeffro's Appendix N chapter on Elric—available from amazon, and don't forget his latest on kickstarter! Anyway, I seriously considered something like this:
I could have gone with that, I though it was kind of cool. However, I instead chose a direction that I felt was more likely to work towards convergence than diffusion.
DM
A thunderclap shakes the air, though the sky over Guarda remains a pitiless blue, unmarred by storm. The words—"SO BE IT"—burrow into your skull, not as echo but as verdict, a doom pronounced by some vast, indifferent arbiter whose laughter is the grind of spheres in the void. You feel a shift then, a subtle warp in the weft of things, as if the Lords of Law and Chaos themselves pause their eternal game to note your fate.
Your wish granted, you experience a moment of discontinuity—immense new power coursing through you—then you are back in your familiar room in Guarda, a wizard! Yet, not everything here is familiar: symbols of strange gods in place of the crucifix over the fireplace; your henchman Gilthaniel, sitting nearby a moment ago, is nowhere to be seen. Your eyes dart around, and are relieved to land on O'Malfoy curled up, sleeping; but, on inspection, are his red scales a darker hue, the tufts of coarse eye lashes—white?
Bumblebore
I go to my bookshelves and examine my spell books (there are many of them, many more than before).I look outside and ponder the weather and the season (it looks like late Summer, no change)I examine the strange symbols and think on what being(s) they represent (They looked like things he had seen in Guarda before, associated with caravans from Sidon, Byblos and Tyre: A Brass Idol of a bull; Crescent Moon and Trident emblems woven into the room's purple curtains; above the hearth, a stone relief depicted a kraken entwined with a galley, its tentacles framing two onyx eyes that glinted in the lamplight.) I measure O’Malfoy’s length and width. (about what he remembered, although the little firedrake familiar seemed to have an added quiet dignity of age.)
DM
As you step back from looking out the window at the weather, and get ready to start looking around for Gilthaniel, you see, out of the corner of your eye, someone observing you from the opposite side of the room! You turn and see before you an ancient wizard, unknown to you–yet somehow familiar, watching your every move. Heart quickening, hand twitching toward your Wand of Paralysation, you brace for an unknown threat. But as your eyes lock onto the figure, the truth crashes over you like a wave breaking on a rocky shore.
It’s no stranger. The image reflected in a large mirror, is you—or rather, a version of you that seems torn from a tale of fantasy. Your reflection is ancient, weathered, with a long, flowing beard as white as frost, cascading over robes you don’t recall owning. The face staring back is lined with years, eyes deep-set and glimmering with a weary wisdom—and something more. You resemble a sage from legend, like the great wizards of old you once read about in Minas Mandalf’s library, a figure akin to one from those curious tales O’Malfoy once whispered of during late-night chats. Yet, this is no storybook hero—it’s you, transformed.
Your breath catches as you step closer. The mirror reflects a man aged far beyond the 31 winters you remember. You note that his hands—your hands, clutching a scroll of parchment–tremble slightly as you raise them to touch your face, half-expecting the reflection to diverge. It doesn’t. The white beard, the ancient and pointed floppy hat, the eyes with something strange about the pupils—all real. O’Malfoy, curled by the hearth, stirs and lets out a low, rumbling purr, his darker scales catching the fire light.
Bumblebore
What have I done? What have I become? I nudge O’Malfoy awake with one toe. "Are you okay my friend?"He stirs lazily, "Bumblebore, you look funny, what's that scroll in your hand?"I hold up the scroll as if just noticing it and read it silently.
DM
It reads:
"If thou gazest upon this scroll and marvel at thine own visage, then my work has borne fruit, old friend. I, thy future self, sensing a rift in the weave of time crafted over long years the spell Bumblebore’s Ameliorate Temporal Anomaly. This enchantment, now active, reveals a wrongness that should not be. Peer into thine eyes: thy pupils bear interlocking circles, etched with the visage of Minas Mandalf’s Astronomical Clock–Horologium, now long gone. To preserve thy sanity, the spell veils the memories of these other timelines–though in dire need thou may yet reveal them. Seek the cause of this temporal fracture and mend it, lest many souls—thine own among them—fall to ruin. Begin at the Tomb of Kistomerces, that accursed vault we left unfinished in our youth, swayed by fleeting diversions. I feel that our fate was somehow altered back then."
DM (the following morning)
You wake slowly, morning light spilling through the narrow window. As you open your eyes, your look right at the mirror—and freeze; it was no dream.
Your pupils are no longer those of a simple human. Instead, they are intricate miniature versions of an astronomical clock: concentric rings and delicate hands silently spinning, marking not just hours but entire ages and mysteries beyond.
Then it strikes you: the wheels have moved! Your consciousness is no longer adrift in some distant future but fully anchored back in Guarda, on the morning of September 18th, 2025 AD. Yet, even as the world around you is the present that you know, your altered eyes remind you that time’s river still flows through you—an endless clockwork turning in the depths of your soul.
As subsequent days pass, you find that each time you go to sleep, you do not dream, but rather awake as either "Future Bumblebore" or "Past Bumblebore".
Bumblebore
Past Bumblebore immediately resolves to start keeping a detailed journal.Future Bumblebore reads back through his journal trying to locate the entry for... (details available upon request)
DM
You crack open your spell books, not sure what to expect. Along with your other spells, you find entire pages covered in "fuzzy, indistinct writing"—lines of script that shimmer and blur, as if viewed through morning mist or a warped pane of glass. Some runes drift slowly as you watch, never fully settling into focus.
When you squint or tilt the page under the lamp light, the symbols appear to ripple and briefly sharpen into fragments of meaning—a snatch of a spell formula here, the ghost of a diagram there—before blurring again the moment you look away. The ink feels both ancient and not yet dry, the handwriting teasingly familiar, like a note you left for yourself in a dream.
Every attempt to concentrate on these entries seems to tug gently at the back of your mind, threading half-remembered moments from another time and place. You realise these spells must be echoes from your future self: their details are out of reach until you consciously write, define, and claim them for your present. Only then will the letters anchor themselves on the page, resolving into crisp, usable arcana—unique magic, born from the loops and tangles of your own mysterious journey.
You may choose 1 spell for each spell level you know (1,2,3,4) to invent.Use the normal DMG method but you don't need funds or a library.
Epilogue
These were the new spells Bumblebore used in session #84. After this, unfortunately Dundermoose found that he had some issues that would take him away from the game for a while. In an elite move, he allowed Bumblebore to become what you might call a Campaign Character, holding him with an open hand and allowing me to fit his actions to the campaign. And so I did.
By the time of session #92, Future Bumblebore had researched the history of the Sidonian party that had cleared the Tomb of Kistomerces—who they were, how they survived the horrors of the Gygaxian tomb, and when they set out. For Past Bumblebore, that departure was imminent. Giving up on accompanying the heroes he knew, and after taking certain precautions, he instead used his future-gained knowledge of them to insinuate himself into the Sidonian party—and went with them to the tomb. Little did he know that the party of heroes was only days behind.
A thunderclap shakes the air, though the sky over Guarda remains a pitiless blue, unmarred by storm. The words—"SO BE IT"—burrow into your skull, not as echo but as verdict, a doom pronounced by some vast, indifferent arbiter whose laughter is the grind of spheres in the void. You feel a shift then, a subtle warp in the weft of things, as if the Lords of Law and Chaos themselves pause their eternal game to note your fate.
Your wish granted, you experience a moment of discontinuity—immense new power coursing through you—then you are back in your familiar room in Guarda, a wizard! Yet, not everything here is familiar: symbols of strange gods in place of the crucifix over the fireplace; your henchman Gilthaniel, sitting nearby a moment ago, is nowhere to be seen. Your eyes dart around, and are relieved to land on O'Malfoy curled up, sleeping; but, on inspection, are his red scales a darker hue, the tufts of coarse eye lashes—white?
Bumblebore
I go to my bookshelves and examine my spell books (there are many of them, many more than before).
I look outside and ponder the weather and the season (it looks like late Summer, no change)
I examine the strange symbols and think on what being(s) they represent (They looked like things he had seen in Guarda before, associated with caravans from Sidon, Byblos and Tyre: A Brass Idol of a bull; Crescent Moon and Trident emblems woven into the room's purple curtains; above the hearth, a stone relief depicted a kraken entwined with a galley, its tentacles framing two onyx eyes that glinted in the lamplight.)
I measure O’Malfoy’s length and width. (about what he remembered, although the little firedrake familiar seemed to have an added quiet dignity of age.)
DM
As you step back from looking out the window at the weather, and get ready to start looking around for Gilthaniel, you see, out of the corner of your eye, someone observing you from the opposite side of the room! You turn and see before you an ancient wizard, unknown to you–yet somehow familiar, watching your every move. Heart quickening, hand twitching toward your Wand of Paralysation, you brace for an unknown threat. But as your eyes lock onto the figure, the truth crashes over you like a wave breaking on a rocky shore.
Your breath catches as you step closer. The mirror reflects a man aged far beyond the 31 winters you remember. You note that his hands—your hands, clutching a scroll of parchment–tremble slightly as you raise them to touch your face, half-expecting the reflection to diverge. It doesn’t. The white beard, the ancient and pointed floppy hat, the eyes with something strange about the pupils—all real. O’Malfoy, curled by the hearth, stirs and lets out a low, rumbling purr, his darker scales catching the fire light.
Bumblebore
What have I done? What have I become?
I nudge O’Malfoy awake with one toe. "Are you okay my friend?"
He stirs lazily, "Bumblebore, you look funny, what's that scroll in your hand?"
I hold up the scroll as if just noticing it and read it silently.
DM
It reads:
DM (the following morning)
You wake slowly, morning light spilling through the narrow window. As you open your eyes, your look right at the mirror—and freeze; it was no dream.
Your pupils are no longer those of a simple human. Instead, they are intricate miniature versions of an astronomical clock: concentric rings and delicate hands silently spinning, marking not just hours but entire ages and mysteries beyond.
Then it strikes you: the wheels have moved! Your consciousness is no longer adrift in some distant future but fully anchored back in Guarda, on the morning of September 18th, 2025 AD. Yet, even as the world around you is the present that you know, your altered eyes remind you that time’s river still flows through you—an endless clockwork turning in the depths of your soul.
As subsequent days pass, you find that each time you go to sleep, you do not dream, but rather awake as either "Future Bumblebore" or "Past Bumblebore".
Bumblebore
Past Bumblebore immediately resolves to start keeping a detailed journal.
Future Bumblebore reads back through his journal trying to locate the entry for... (details available upon request)
DM
You crack open your spell books, not sure what to expect. Along with your other spells, you find entire pages covered in "fuzzy, indistinct writing"—lines of script that shimmer and blur, as if viewed through morning mist or a warped pane of glass. Some runes drift slowly as you watch, never fully settling into focus.
When you squint or tilt the page under the lamp light, the symbols appear to ripple and briefly sharpen into fragments of meaning—a snatch of a spell formula here, the ghost of a diagram there—before blurring again the moment you look away. The ink feels both ancient and not yet dry, the handwriting teasingly familiar, like a note you left for yourself in a dream.
Every attempt to concentrate on these entries seems to tug gently at the back of your mind, threading half-remembered moments from another time and place. You realise these spells must be echoes from your future self: their details are out of reach until you consciously write, define, and claim them for your present. Only then will the letters anchor themselves on the page, resolving into crisp, usable arcana—unique magic, born from the loops and tangles of your own mysterious journey.
You may choose 1 spell for each spell level you know (1,2,3,4) to invent.
Use the normal DMG method but you don't need funds or a library.
Epilogue
These were the new spells Bumblebore used in session #84. After this, unfortunately Dundermoose found that he had some issues that would take him away from the game for a while. In an elite move, he allowed Bumblebore to become what you might call a Campaign Character, holding him with an open hand and allowing me to fit his actions to the campaign. And so I did.
By the time of session #92, Future Bumblebore had researched the history of the Sidonian party that had cleared the Tomb of Kistomerces—who they were, how they survived the horrors of the Gygaxian tomb, and when they set out. For Past Bumblebore, that departure was imminent. Giving up on accompanying the heroes he knew, and after taking certain precautions, he instead used his future-gained knowledge of them to insinuate himself into the Sidonian party—and went with them to the tomb. Little did he know that the party of heroes was only days behind.
