The Temporal Anomaly of the Sea of Dread
by Cab Davidson
From the Journal of Averyx, Inquisitor for the Sphere of Time, finder of lost immortals, Patron of Alphatia In Majesty, Futures, Investigations, Resources and Expansion (AIM FIRE).
i. On the subject of Rivalry
In hardball it is Sundsvaal Freemen vs. Draco Rex. In the Thyatian arena it is the Retarii vs. the Samntites. And who can forget the the fabulous era of annual contests between Strongheart and Warduke for the crown of Ierendi. In sport enduring rivalries captivate and thrill us most. To immortals the greatest sport of all is the quest to join our ranks.. And as an Alphatian, I can say with great pride that, nobody does rivalries like we do.
The greatest, most enduring, longest lasting and (in my view) most important was the centuries long political standoff between Gargantua and Thaneg, of which the Sea of Dread still shows the metaphysical scars. Each was a great Alphatian in the truest expansionist sense - Gargantua claiming rule over new territories in the far north of Norwold with apprentices as obsessed with creating giant creatures as he was, and Thaneg settling on what would become known as the Isle of Dread with a cadre of geologically inclined spellcasters and a lot of clone spells. While it may appear that each should have little to do with the other, they fought over funding, military and economic support from the Imperial crown, and favour among members of the Grand Council, and their political machinations are only rivalled by gross physical intrusions into each others projects.
And it was one such intrusion by Gargantua right into the heart of Thaneg's operation that so changed the nature of the sea that, as a result, it became known as the Sea of Dread. A temporal bomb of such shocking intensity that the denizens thereof are now forever beholden to those changes - residents from the Sunlit Sea in the North to those of the Jungle Coast in the South, from Thanegia to Furmenglaive, their lives are all radically different as a result. The fauna of the ocean is now defined by that event.
ii. The Temporal Lens
Other than the near unsolvable issue of linguistics (how one refers to something one intends to have already done yesterday in one’s own future, is more of a crisis of syntax and grammar than continuity), perhaps the hardest things to understand about time is that it is both linear and, well, not. Mortals frequently refer to the sands of time, as if each grain is an event flowing through the aperture of an hourglass, a perception based on the quite extraordinary stability of Mystaran time enforced by the hierarchs of our sphere. If left unpoliced, being unconstrained by thought, liberated from the ordering of matter, and free of the requirement to dissipate the chaos of energy, time is a very different entity indeed, and the past and future themselves become malleable realities. But this understanding is dangerous, and mortal minds cannot fully assimilate it. Thus the most potent artifacts of time, those that confer such understanding, are also by far the most dangerous.
This brings me to the Temporal Lens, an ancient, pure diamond sphere formed by the collapsing matter of the final stars of a now long dead universe, endowed with the potency of a whole pantheon of immortals of time, created such that their own existence might outlast their own reality. The device itself had to possess an immortals perception of time, thus any mortal who holds it can likewise perceive and manipulate time thus. Thaneg pinned much of his hope on this artifact, making its theft, destruction or even mere subversion a priority for Gargantua.
Thaneg had adventured to the edge of the solar system to find the Lens. With his apprentices and allies he outwitted a self sustaining colony of meks on the outermost planet, Nyx, and had returned with their prize. He could now obtain specimens from any time in Mystaras history for his cloning projects, and thus his quest for immortality (involving the creation of a unique environment with unique inhabitants from vastly different eras) accelerated rapidly, along with his wider influence in the Sea of Dread area. This also drew in more investors from mainland Alphatia, and the rate of speculative trade and colonisation projects therein increased tenfold. For a few short years it appeared as if the future of Alphatia on Mystara would be a civilisation settled around all of the shores of the Sea of Dread – an alternative reality I may visit, one day.
To Gargantua, who had relied on the income from precisely the same settlers and traders to come towards Norwold to support his own project involving super-sized creatures, this was a disaster. At this time, it was unlikely that even the might of Alphatia could support both projects. Thus, the stage was set – a battle for control of the Temporal Lens, with the winner aspiring to claim his place in the ranks of the immortals.
iii. The Battle of Mount Orca
Picture it. The caldera of a sleeping volcano, on an island around 100 miles to the North of the Isle of Dread. Thaneg constructed one of his research facilities there, specifically to allow him to experiment with the Temporal Lens without damaging the still vulnerable ecologies he was nurturing on the main island, and the results of this were already spectacular. He had sent teams into the Cretaceous, obtaining specimens for cloning, and was reporting great success. It was this island that Gargantua attacked, bringing many of his own creations. Massive (Gargantuan, in fact) lizards, amphibians and birds attacking simultaneously from the sea and the sky. The battle raged long, and Gargantuas victory by force of arms alone was far from certain. The factor that handed him a strategic victory was that Thaneg failed to grasp Gargantuas purpose, which was not one of conquest or even one of simple destruction. He required but a few moments with the Lens.
Sacrificing his last mega-frogs and colossal gannets in a distraction assault on Thaneg’s northern flank, Gargantua entered the central complex of the island and gained his few moments alone with the lens. In this short time he merely did one thing – he forced the energy of the lens into accelerating the timeline of the cloning project in the Sea of Dread. The result was magnificent.
Within hours, the ocean was full of creatures from different eras – zones full of monsters from the Cretaceous and Jurassic teamed in the tropical, warm oceans. And further away, as far as distant Hattias, Minrothad and Ierendi, creatures from more ancient and strange eras began to emerge. The volcano itself, made unstable by one of the largest expenditures of artifact power in Mystaran history, erupted, and sank beneath the waves.
Within days, ships started disappearing from the surface of the Sea. Within a month trade had slowed to a near standstill, and planned Alphatian colonies on the Serpent Peninsula and on the continent of Davania were put on hold. Thaneg’s income stream dried up, and the whole focus of the Empires expansion instead looked North and West, rather than to the South.
Thaneg was not yet thwarted – the final events of the glorious but destructive rivalry of the two greatest wizards of their era is one I will return to later. But his plans were for the moment in tatters. And the ecology of the Sea of Dread (as it is known as a result) forever changed.