Friends & Foes: The Chronastic Assembly
Pushing back the end of the world, one day at a time.
The Chronastic Assembly is a secret society comprising some of the most powerful individuals in the world. They possess an artifact, a book from the end of time itself, which details how the world ends, and what lead up to it.
Armed with this knowledge, the Chronastic Assembly has worked to shape world events to avoid the fate written of. In fact, they’ve even met with some limited success.
The book was discovered ninety-seven years ago by the founder of the Assembly, Lord Daerak Blaiken, on an expedition to the jungle. At the time, it appeared that the end would come a mere thirty years later. Through his extensive network of contacts and with his great personal wealth, Lord Blaiken was able to avert the disaster detailed in the tome.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story; the tome changed. Now, instead of a magical plague, it would be a rogue summoner’s hellgate which unleashed the demons of hell, a mere seventeen years later.
And so the pattern has continued; for nearly a century the members of the assembly have worked diligently to put off the current disaster. Usually they’ve gotten a decade or two, sometimes just a few years. In recent times, it’s gotten even worse; after the most recent prophecy was averted (zombie mosquitoes), they only bought themselves a scant eight months.
Needless to say, this is a desperate time for the Chronastic Assembly. No longer can they sit back in their courts and subtly guide the course of the world through elaborate plans. There is a growing faction within the Assembly calling for them to go public, but there are still many traditionalists who fear that would be unwise. In particular, the current leader of the Assembly, and keeper of the tome, is dead-set against going public.
In the end, many are choosing a middle ground: widening the conspiracy, letting in new people who lack the influence usually required but make up for it with experience and skill sets needed in these dire times.
Twists: One twist you might consider is that the tome is not actually an artifact sent through time; perhaps, instead, it is a hoax. Maybe a powerful lich has planted it and is using it to guide the course of history– maybe the Chronastic Assembly isn’t even the first group to use it!
Alternatively, there could be a faction within the assembly secretly working against the organization to bring about the very events the book warns about. Demons and worshipers of chaos who desire the end of all life, working like a cancer to stymie the efforts of the conspiracy. That would certainly explain why they’ve been gaining less and less time!
This really is a genius scenario. It has so many possible variations that one could tailor up. For example, if you were a lazy/unimaginative DM, you have the PCs working for the Chronastic Assembly, but the fate they are avoiding takes place hundreds, perhaps thousands of years in the future. You’d do this for two reasons: it doesn’t put an immediate pressure on the party, and since doom is so far in the future, whatever the PCs are doing may only have small ripple effects, so that while they ARE saving the world, it also doesn’t have to make much sense, and the C.A. can just claim they know what they’re doing.
Also, you can edit the first line of the sixth paragraph if you like.
“Needless to say, the Assembly this is a desperate time for the Chronastic Assembly.”
Thanks for catching that, it’s fixed.
This idea was taken from a comic book called Hunter-Killer. In it, there’s this dude who’s visited by a time traveler who tells him how the world’s going to end, and so he works to prevent it… and the future changes, so that he’s only bought himself a few years. And this cycle repeats over and over, with diminishing returns, to the point where he’s only buying the world a few months at a time.
Kunter-Killer? Sounds cool.
I’m also officially using this in my upcoming 4E campaign, thanks for providing it
Np, glad to be of service!