Moving through the past

 Sir Blanque - swordsman and handsome, dashing noble half mer-person

Marion - stabby stabby dagger specialist; Nihrain who currently carries the Runestaff

Destiny - Menastrai sorceress covertly raised on Melnibone

Bomilcar - Weeping Waste nomad from a chieftain's family

The four friends are now 1,000 years in their own past, having gone back in time to the period of the Melnibonean attacks on Menastree and the onset of the Great Dharzi War. They are currently located on the north-western side of the great mountain chain that separates Menastree from the rest of the continent that will become the Young Kingdoms, having freed a great tunneling basilisk thing that promptly celebrated by boring its way through the entire mountain chain. Which is how the great canal tunnel the characters found in their future came to be - in effect, they caused it to be constructed.

While the basilisk, sacred to Grome, is off doing its thing with highly powerful ultrasonics, the characters settle down for the night. Again, though, their rest is disturbed as a great booming sound breaks in the night sky over their heads. Two meteorites seem to be emanating from the same point of origin and streak overhead. One is going pretty much directly eastwards, while the other veers off more to the northeast. Flashes of light and more bangs ensue as whatever those things are hit the ground. The players reckon the landing points are in the general area of what they know as the Great Lakes region of Menastree and further northeast near the city of Anakheera. They visited this city in the future, and know from firsthand experience that the citadel is built on Menastree foundations, so presumably the second meteorite fragment has landed somewhere near there.

The next morning they take their leave of Zotaquaan of the Balance, aka Martek the Architect. He is quite happily making plans for how he is going to use major elementals and other things to build the various pyramids, temples and other such places the characters have described to him from their future wanderings in this region. "I'm going to build them according to your exact instructions so that every detail is perfect for you to have encountered again later," he chortles.

The players move through the canal tunnel, which is exactly how they remember it from the future. They know that when Zotaquaan establishes his link with the elemental plane of water a great river will flow through here, debouching into Menastree. It is then destined to dry up when the great doom of sand comes to the area where Zotaquaan is happily working, a final world-changing result of Melnibonean expansion when the elder race comes up against the northeastern Empire of Quarzhasaat. And the characters are right in the middle of all of this.

Emerging some days later on the Menastree side of the continent, the adventurers camp for the night. They know that ancient ruins they found the first time around suggest a town of some sort should be within a day's travel, so they decide to go and visit that as their first foray into Menastree of the past.

The next morning, they sight large numbers of figures moving on the horizon, together with dust clouds that suggest army manoeuvres; the vantage point in the hills is really helping. Destiny thinks the Melniboneans are on the march and the characters spur their steeds toward the location of the town. They arrive just in time as the Menastrai defenders and their human allies are shoring up to the defences of a really nice little settlement sited on a small river that emerges from further northwards in the mountains. The group naturally bolsters the defence against what they suspect will be a substantial Melnibonean incursion. Probably not the main army, since this is too far from anywhere of great strategic value, but some units will be scouting, even if just for forage. The defenders needs to buy time to evacuate their town. They are planning to retreat to Anakheera (that is its name in the past too), while the party wants to move eastwards. The locals naturally think the characters are normal, since they include a Menastrai (Destiny) as well as three more human-looking folks, although they aren't quite sure about Marion. In any case, the addition of four obviously powerful warriors with advanced equipment is welcomed, and the characters are each assigned commands at various points around the town; the local lord will co-ordinate from the town centre itself.