Khoronus and the Fourth Planet
by Andrew Tyrus WielandHere is my take on Khoronus and his path to immorality. Quotations for the Book of the Immortals are in italics. All other text pertains only to my own campaign, of course.
In life Khoronus was one of the early founders of Blackmoor city and councilor to the city's first rulers. Concerned because his countrymen rarely considered the consequences of their actions, he invented a time machine to see how his descendants and their city would fare. He traveled forward in time only to witness Blackmoor's total and complete destruction. Realizing that he would never be able to change his countrymen's attitude enough to prevent the disaster, he decided to take steps that would preserve his family and culture without altering the future.
He traveled a century in the future, assumed a new identity, and persuaded a number of his descendants to travel with him to a world that was far away in the Prime Plane (the Planet Damocles in Mystara's Solar System, which to the technologies of that era took more than four years to reach). There they built a new culture inspired by Blackmoor. Khoronus, ever the engineer, designed the capital city himself. He then used his time machine to make further excursion into the future to help the colony survive the changes to come. In the course of his adventures, he discovered an artifact which did everything his time machine did but was far more reliable, so he used it to complete his tasks. He sent his time machines far into the future so no one could abuse them or undo his work. He died after a long and fruitful life, or so he thought.
He awoke as an Immortal. Though no Immortals from the Sphere of Time were known to the men of Blackmoor, Khoronus had accidentally stepped upon the Path of the Dynast and accomplished it without ever realizing this fact. He awoke without knowing who his Immortal sponsor was.
The gap between the foundation of Blackmoor and the Great Rain of Fire was 1250 years. Khoronus went further. His time machine was unreliable and he wasn't sure he would make it back from the first trip. His second trip to 1001.001 years later was brief and he had no problem going back. He considered going ahead 100.1 years to start a colony. If he waited too long the deposits of strange black rock that he would need to propel the vehicle might be exhausted.
Khoronus was impressed by the new tools that would be available in the future. He took a third trip to 1111.111 years later to study them. He spent a long time in the future and was careful that he never crossed his own path. He used some technology that came from the City of the Gods to build his colony.
The official story is that Khoronus the Immortal built a time machine and improved on the design of his original work. He accidentally sent in to the past and it returned moments later with his original time machine. He wondered if he was his own sponsor.
Khoronus joined Sphere Time in BC 4050. If he found the second time machine in future Blackmoor. If no one else had used it before the Immortal sent it away he was his own sponsor. If there were intermediate stops it's more complex.
The culture Khoronus created on the Planet Damocles evolved into a highly technological civilization. The Mind-flayers were one of the sentient races on this world. Other races (and more human-like) were more dominant. The origins of the Mind-flayers are lost in time but it is rumored they originate from the Dimension of Nightmares.
The Planet Damocles blew itself up in 1000 AC. Mystara was hit by an asteroid fragment in 1005 AC, a near-miss cataclysm if you can call a collision that leaves a crater a near-miss.