Encounter-a-Day

Something odd happened in the city of Ling’hurak one day: reapers started dying. The hive never reacted to the metatons’ destructions, at least not in any way visible to the squatters living there, but a reaper’s unmoving shell is a bizarre and unforgettable sight in the city.

The culprit is a peculiar reaper designated 12-8-x, though he prefers Marek. Marek is unusual in that he doesn’t actually belong to the hive– at least, not this hive. Cut off from the hive, he must steal other reapers’ power sources to sustain himself.

Marek is stuck– voluntarily– in a time loop. Even he’s not sure how many times he’s been through it; part of the loop involves overwriting his memory. He could have been through dozens of times or billions. He’s not even sure where he’s originally from; by all logic, he simply shouldn’t even exist. But exist he does, and it is his goal to make his existence count.

His ultimate goal is simple: to help protect, arm, and inform those who can destroy the motori when the time portal reopens and they return to Ling’hurak. He hasn’t yet been successful, but each time he gets a bit closer. He carries with him a spare core, into which he programs specific information and instructions to help guide him in his next loop.

Only the most important information is stored in the core. As a sentient being, if he were to maintain the same continuous memory throughout all of his time loops he’d quite literally go insane. Much of his knowledge is based on triggering events. For example, a particular chance encounter introduces him to his charges (the PCs, of course).

Shortly after meeting the PCs, Marek believes the housewarming protocol is about to be enacted. He hurriedly rushes them out of the city so that they might escape the reapers’ slaughter.

Eventually, when the city re-opens, Marek helps smuggle the PCs inside. He informs them of how to destroy the time portal and stop any further motori reinforcements; however, before they can do that, they must help him jump back in time. This will require resetting the portal to just a few weeks prior and swapping out Marek’s core with the spare he’s been programming from this time loop. Heading back in time at the last possible moment, he’ll never know if the PCs were able to defeat the motori or not.