Immediate Aftermath

As the final blow is delivered, the Weaver’s expression shifts from rage, to confusion, to acceptance. The magic of his ritual slowly vanishes like dust in the wind, leaving behind an echoing silence. The tear in reality stitches itself closed, the wound in fate healing.

Summer’s Edge burns bright in Skreek’s hands, laying bare the truth of what he and his friends have accomplished. Slumpet reaches up to his shoulder, feeling for the warmth of the Arbiter’s mark, and catching his breath as he finds it is still there. Toby pats the dust from her jacket and smiles in triumph at her unlikely flameskull ally. Shad collapses to his knees, exhausted and relieved, a sense of closure wrapping around him like a warm blanket as a tear rolls down his cheek. With his friends and family avenged at long last, the weight of the loss, hopes, and dreams feeling easier to carry.

Weaver chooses Option B to advance ritual

On the Weaver’s turn, even as he weaves spells and commands, part of his attention is always tethered to the portal. As he concentrates, a second ring of runes blooms around the portal—about five feet wider in every direction. It’s hazy, unstable, like heat shimmer over a fire. The air screams with strain. You get the sense that this ‘new edge’ of the portal is unfinished… and vulnerable.

The ancient battlefield offers no welcome.

You smell it before you see it — cold ash and something older, something that has no name in any living tongue. The trees thin at the edge of the field and then stop entirely, as if even they refuse to go further. Before you stretches a place where the ground remembers war. Shattered stone. Bones half-swallowed by earth. The ruins of walls that once meant something, now standing only out of habit.

Welcome to the Tempus Campaign

You’re joining the final session of a campaign that has been running since November 2022. The party of four heroes has spent 44 in-game days (and 45+ real-life sessions) tracking down and dismantling a cult that wants to unleash an ancient shadow dragon upon the world. Tonight, they confront the cult’s leader in a battle to save reality itself.

You’ll be playing Trius, a paladin ally who fought alongside the party earlier in the campaign. Below is everything you need to know to step into her boots.

ℹ Overview

I did quite a bit of brainstorming with ChatGPT and Claude throughout the campaign. As the campaign was winding down, I asked each LLM to describe our collaboration. Their responses are found below.

ChatGPT

Your “Tempus + ChatGPT” workflow has a really recognizable shape: you treat the campaign like a living software project, and you use me less like an oracle and more like a co-designer who can rapidly prototype options, then refactor them into something you can actually run at the table (and later, reuse for novelization).