“I don’t understand, so we can just time travel whatever we want?” asked Anne.

“Well, yeah, but only within your own timeline, basically back to an earlier point in your adventures,” Gary replied.

“Doesn’t that make things too easy? If we can’t die?” she continued.

“Maybe. You were tasked with preventing an ascension to godhood and the destruction of reality so maybe that isn’t so easy. If it makes it easy for you to solve that problem, then great! Chronos chose wisely in creating you!”

“If we can only go back in our own timeline to an early point in the adventure, I don’t think it makes things too easy,” said Margaret, thinking out loud. “It just lets us continue instead of ending the game like when the spiders killed us”.

“Is this really how the game works?” asked Anne.

“The time sprites and all of that is just for our game, it isn’t standard C&C,” explained Gary. “All of the combat and magic with the game *IS* how it works, pretty standard.”

“I don’t see any way we can use time travel to immediately fix the problem,” said Dave. “It doesn’t tell us where Venma is or how to stop her.”

“But, if we find out later, we could always come back to this moment then use that information, right?” asked Frank.

“Sure,” agreed Gary, “but if you’d become more powerful and accumulated magic items then you came back to this moment, you’d no longer have those things. So you’d have the knowledge, but not how you’d build up your characters.”

“So we lose all our experience if we go back in time?” ask Anne in a panic.

“Just the experience that you gained after the moment you went back to. And, since your time sprites will have had those experiences and can help guide and train your characters, I’ll double any experience you gain when you start playing again until you get back to your previous experience total.”

“And, we could always go and reclaim any magic items we’d found that we liked, right?” asked Kate.

“Sure! You’ll know where it is and how you got it the first time,” agreed Gary.

“So what are we supposed to do now?” asked Anne.

“Anything you want!” Gary answered. “If you have an idea how to use your power to fix the problem right now you can. If you want to go back through Hope and travel back to the new world and try to enlist help from the Queen and the authorities there you can. If you want to go to one of the non human settlements - you know of the elven, halfing and dwarven settlements closest to the keep, you can. If you want to go back to Hope and try to get help from people there, you can. It’s a much bigger community than the fort. If you want to go on adventures and build up your characters to have more options when you go to deal with Venma, you can. If you want to continue on the mission you were given to help the fort as Blue Company, you can. If you can all agree on doing something else, that’s ok too. Whatever you want.”

“So, we could head off to the halfling settlement and see Yenser’s people?” asked Laura.

“Sure! You’d be travelling through dangerous country; the whole reason why the fort hired you was because caravans were being attacked. You might get attacked on the way by whatever has been causing them problems. Blue Company might be upset at you for abandoning your mission, but they’re a LONG way away so it’d probably be a while before they figured out you’d gone AWOL - they’d probably assume you’d been killed first.”

“What about if we went back to the new world?” asked Frank. “They’d get angry at us there, right?”

“Well, they’d probably want to know why you gave up and returned, but it’s not like you’d be executed or anything. The terms of your contract with them is that when you return to the new world you’re expected to give them all treasure that you found except that you can keep 200 gold pieces and 1 magic item of your choice. If you give them what you’ve agreed to, they’d probably let you go your own way. If you didn’t want to fulfill your contract, you could sneak back to the new world and not pay them. They’d probably be pretty angry if they caught you after you did that…” Gary explained.

“I don’t think there’s an obvious way to handle Venma right now,” Dave suggested, “I think we should develop our characters and keep looking for any rumours about her. Continuing to try to deal with the issues for the Fort seems like a good next step.”

Looking at the map, Dave asked where the road that ran past the Fort led.

“To the west it goes back to Hope, where you came from. In the North-East it leads to the halfling settlement of Welton. Beyond Welton are the elven settlements of Amhil and the Dwarven fortress of Korbur.”

“If caravans have been getting attacked, maybe travelling along the road towards the halfings is our best bet. Maybe whatever has been attacking them will attack us. If it’s bigger than we can handle, then we just time travel back before the attack and avoid it,” Dave said, as he got up from the table. After another few minutes of discussion, the group decided to take Dave’s recommendation.

“As you travel along the road to the north east” Gary began his narration, “you catch occasional glimpses of movement in the forest. Small creatures seem to be following you along the road.”

Margaret replied that the party keeps moving along the road, keeping awareness of the creatures in the underbrush.

“A small group of 4 foot tall, bipedal reptilian creatures begin forming into a group of roughly a dozen individuals. They have primitive spears and clothing - nothing much more than loincloths. They begin following you along the road, chittering at one another in their own language.”

“Aww, cute!” said Laura, “They’re little creatures with their own spears.”

“We walk back and greet them!” Margaret enthusiastically decided.

“They get excited as you approach, and all but one of them lowers their spears ready to attack. The largest member moves forward and begins barking and gesturing at you. They all have enormous eyes.” Gary continued.

Holding up her hand, Margaret announced as Beler, “We mean you know harm and come in peace.”

“The kobolds… errr, small reptilian creatures,” Gary began and was immediately cut off.

“Those are kobolds! They were on one of the random monster tables,” said Laura.

“I didn’t know they were reptilian,” said Frank.

“Ha! The Dragon Master makes mistakes and now we know what they are,” said Anne.

“Yes, they’re kobolds.” Gary sighed. “Anyways, the leader begins shaking his spear at Beler, gesturing at Lady Grace’s necklace that she’s wearing.”

“I very slowly take it off and offer it to them,” Margaret said with a smile “I think we’re making friends with them!”

Gary continued, “As a group they excitedly examine the necklace and begin backing away from you. They depart back into the forest.”

“What just happened?” asked Dave, returning from the washroom. “Who went back into the forest?”

“We met kobolds!” announced Laura “And we gave them Lady Graces necklace to become friends!”

“Is it too late to attack them?” asked Dave “Are they all gone?”

“Yes, they’ve departed,” responded Gary.

“Dammit!” said Dave, annoyed. “I can’t believe we were mugged by KOBOLDS!”

Margaret laughed and said “I guess that was more of a mugging than making contact with an indigenous people.”

“If you see kobolds or goblins you kill them,” instructed Dave. “Actually, killing anything is a good default move. Especially with the time travel power, we can always go back in time if we don’t want something to be dead.”

After the party made camp, the kobolds return in the night and attack them. The sleeping party members fail their intelligence checks to wake up and a kobold slits Laura’s throat while she sleeps. After the end of the fight, the players decide to travel back in time to their first meeting with the kobolds and handle them differently.