Pahhu: Shifting Sands of Time 13: Madness

DAY 21
The party was visited by strange visions this night. Each of them saw different Pahhus, in perhaps different timelines. What they chose to share of those visions with each other was particularly interesting…
 
Nyx had a vision of the Pahhu they had all come to know. Nyx chased and raced that Pahhu in a rocky environment, coming to a halt as she began to grow tired. Pahhu continued to run, overstraining herself and showing clear exhaustion. Nyx tried to halt this Pahhu, but as soon as Nyx got in Pahhu’s she was showered in a blast of dust and wind. Pahhu had seemingly vanished, evaporated. Nyx believes it was an allegory of some kind, that Pahhu was running in circles and had become the whirlwind, that trying to stop her might kill her.
 
Marinette shared her vision: Marinette found herself reversing in time from a horrible fiery explosion, her body mending until the moment right before the detonation. She found herself frozen as she watched a much older Pahhu weave heavily gauntleted hands through the air, everything her hands pointed to reversing in time. The older Pahhu bore a grim expression, her hair was stringy and her skin was pale. That Pahhu approached Marinette, genuinely surprised to see her and released her from the halted time. The two spoke briefly on what had brought them both to this moment. Pahhu explains that she is serving her contract to her master so she can undo her mistake, but before the conversation can go too long another Pahhu appears looking as if a slightly older version of the first one. The older Pahhu swings her arm over the two and the vision ended.
 
Ed shared his vision of a Pahhu driven mad by grief. Pahhu was ripping apart the planar fabric of Hyssop Home and reassembling it repeatedly, trying to put it back together in a way in which her dead friends Merric and Thyse were still alive. Every time she did this the fabric of the planes grey more frayed, until at last it shattered entirely, a shockwave blasting forth from a corrupted Pahhu.
 
Theodore shared his vision of a beautiful estate where he held the position of Lord Governor of Undrentide, a long fallen city of the Netherese Empire. He had dinner with the Duchess Pahhu Kilaniu, a woman in her prime. The two were celebrating their ‘unniversary’ together; the day on which they had joined the Netherese restorationists, having betrayed the party, and working together had brought about a temporal cataclysm. They had returned to before the Netherese empire had fallen and somehow prevented the events surrounding the fall. In doing so they had been awarded lavish titles and were recognized as among the elite of high society.
 
Jorah told her vision of the party together fighting against a cadre of Zhentarim riders, fleeing from the group. She saw a white robed Pahhu capture most of them in a powerful well of time magic, and the deliverance of justice upon the remaining Zhent. The Zhent promised vengeance and the inevitability of their master’s wrath, promising that they would never find all of his clones or end all of his lives.
 
Rasheed saw a warm sandy den of hedonism in which he and Pahhu enjoyed music and dance and drink with a number of others. He saw a Pahhu with little value for her own life, as she claimed to have died 31 times already, and even savored the prospect of returning to a younger body. The Pahhu he met had clear signs of substance abuse, and mentioned working for a very specific master…
 
The party discussed these visions. In some of them Pahhu had control of her power, in others she was out of control. In some she had a master, in others she was the master. What did it all mean? A discussion on how to control or guide Pahhu erupted, and the discussion quickly became heated. Were these things that would be or only could be? Was it one timeline or many? That was for the future to decide…
 
DAY 22
 
The group had scattered to their own means and adventures over the past few days. Rasheed and Marinette puzzled over a strange artifact, something that had been given to them by an incarnation of Pahhu in white and silver robes. It was still not clear whether this one had matched their recent visions or not, though the description seemed closest to what Jorah had seen. The artifact was a rod of silver and mithral carved in runes of Sylvan which read “For The Hero Who Will Save The Winter Court.” Marinette used the mirror to look into the past of the rod, and saw that it was crafted by Eladrin laborers and smiths who wore white and blue robes. It was stolen seemingly by Pahhu who appeared through a time portal and departed with it instantly, only to give it to Marinette.
 
DAY 23
 
Marinette grew suspicious of the rod having thought it over more; perhaps Pahhu’s mother was a member of this Winter Court? The group decided to use the mirror to investigate Sariandi Morvyre, Pahhu’s mother. The mirror began producing images.
 
 
Sariandi Morvyre
-Sitting around a campfire with her peers
-She is now hunting, carrying a bow, pursuing something
-Elven woman accompanying dark skinned humans through glacial expense, very cold, all bundled up, there are wounded
-Bundle in a blanket, the familiar swaddling blanket of Pahhu
-Little girl version of her, running with a small leather ball
-Oldest version of this woman standing before a gigantic 50 foot high cliff face, made of ice. She runs towards it
 
Pahhu seems to consider the images and comments that she definitely got her dad’s hair. “Maybe I should try adding some red?” Theodore roundly rejects that idea, seemingly rather against it for some reason. Pahhu considers the oddity that her parents ran towards the ice and then seemingly their story ended. Attempts to scry on them both had not failed instantly for death, but had been deflected as if by some force. She begins to think her parents perhaps went out of time in the ice, going to their own dry place perhaps?
 
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The party resumed their original plans, to head towards the Yuan-Ti worshippers of Sseth. As they approached the mountain top they found oddly fertile and abundant land, almost perfectly circular in a mile radius. As they entered the Yuan-Ti village though they were taken aback by what the saw: hundreds of dead Yuan-Ti littered the sands. The strangely lush grass was littered by piles of white dust and sand, instantly recognized as the remains rendered by Time Elementals. Craters and burns suggested there had been heavy fighting of a magic nature. The group looked for tracks, but found only the solid footsteps of a recently passed humanoid. Tona attempted to scent it, but only found the smell of undeath and a warforged. This was likely the work of one of the construct-like beings that had been encountered at Hillsfar.
 
As the party approached the temple at the heart of the city they saw the whirling of time elementals. Theodore thinking that it would be good to control Pahhu’s powers enhanced her ability, and then thinking to take it one step further tried an experimental spell. Theodore made an attempt at Time Magic of his own, casting a spell of Foresight upon Pahhu. Unfortunately his experience with the unpredictable magic was limited and he lost control of the spell.
 
Pahhu blinked and looked around in shock. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here or who any of these people were. There was a man in weird clothes waving a feather at her. She batted it away and started to make space between herself and the feather wielding assailant. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Pahhu has been disconnected from her past memories, and all of these strangers around her only seemed to want to grab her.
 
A wild chase and a failed attempt to negotiate with the confused and beleaguered resulted in a storm of magic missiles ripping into Theodore as Pahhu fled. Nearly cornered Pahhu simply teleported away, and carved a teleportation circle, certain that she remembered some type of runes.
 
Pahhu arrived by the grace of good fortune in the private teleportation chamber of the King of Adbar Citadel. Initially assailed by a pair of Dwarven Guardsmen they relented as they soon realized the utterly addled state of Pahhu’s mind. They shackled her with dimensional shackles and brought her before King Harnoth of Adbar Citadel. The King listed his many relations to the nearby Dwarven settlements, and Pahhu having heard a lot of bars asked for directions to Gunther’s bar. The dwarves directed her to the fourth level, and then began to guffaw.
 
After many laughs at Pahhu’s expense, the King soon decided the girl was harmless and called for one of his priests of Moradin to try to help Pahhu. In Pahhu’s confused state she became convinced she was seeing Moradin himself, and the dwarves continued to laugh uproariously. Having won the favor of the dwarves for entertaining them Pahhu was mended through the priest’s ministrations, her memory recovering in a flood. Exhausted from her spellcasting, Pahhu was given a room in the citadel and bid return the next day.
 
Pahhu returned to Lerwick the next day to find the party had also returned. They had scryed on Pahhu and seen her in shackles, but had sent her messages and learned she had recovered. Theodore was relieved to see her, and tried to apologize for the spell had cast but Pahhu told him he’d just made a mistake on his time magic. Theodore had cast a spell only using later. He had to use a bothness. By not mixing now and later he had cut Pahhu off from her now, and therefore her then. She explained this with a number of diagrams that left Theodore’s head swimming.
 
Theodore chose to head upstairs to discuss this with Charva, who offered him a chance to learn… All it would cost him is time.