10-player raids
The history of Telara has been forged by the choices of its denizens. Yet there exist alternate realities born of every Telaran’s suppressed whims, unmade decisions, and chances left untaken. Though many, these alternate timestreams were discrete—at least until the sundering of the Ward. Now they threaten to break down, spilling their battles into the true Telara, playing out key moments in the war of the rifts.
Accessible pockets of alternate timestreams are called Slivers, and the Ascended are particularly interested in those containing the Dragon Cults’ terrible victories. Both Guardians and Defiant seek to use these Slivers to investigate alternate Blood Storm successes, and to prevent them from repeating their triumphs in the true Telara.
Naturally, faction scholars disagree over Slivers’ nature and origins. While the Guardians see the Slivers as interactive visions granted by the Vigil, the Defiant believe they are chaotic temporal anomalies. Though Slivers are neither gifts from the gods nor blind planar reactions, they are an important source of information and resources, and places of very real peril for intrepid Ascended to explore.
In order to detect the Slivers, the Vigil has granted their Guardians Omen Sight, while Defiant researchers have developed Quantum Sight. Using different techniques to achieve the same ends, these augmentations allow an Ascended to see alternate realities where the Blood Storm reigns supreme, as well as time-shifted items that have slipped into Telara for the looting. Any Ascended who purchases Quantum or Omen Sight can lead his fellows into the Slivers to battle the victorious cultists.
To achieve their successes, the cultists within these pockets of time must be fearsome indeed, so each major Sliver requires a full raid of ten battle-ready Ascended. Though belonging to a different place and another time, the beings and objects in a Sliver are quite real: the Ascended will leave with all their loot—and all their wounds—intact. Even more important to Guardian and Defiant leadership is the vital insight Sliver raids provide into events that could still transpire within their own timestream: learning how the Dragon Cults achieved their hideous goals in alternate realities will help the Ascended prevent similar tragedies in the Telara they call home.
Jump through the eons to the Eth Empire. In Stonefield, Eth priests prepare to summon Titan slaves through a massive gate, but a Dragonian force corrupts the ritual, opening the gate to the Plane of Fire. Flame sweeps across Stonefield, warping the sorcerer-priests and turning High Priest Arakhurn into a raging phoenix. Stop his devastation before ancient, otherworldly calamity spills into the present. The first Tier-2 Sliver, Rise of the Phoenix offers a whole new level of challenge.
In another timestream, agents of the Golden Maw have captured a powerful artifact they will use to revive Laethys. The Ascended must step across time and stop the Queen of Greed’s agents, thus learning where this relic can be found and keeping it out of the cult’s clutches in our Telara.
Telara is doomed, having fallen to mad Akylios. Now Hydriss, the profane dragon’s sorceress-lieutenant, masses her most vicious and sadistic servants to invade our time. These would-be conquerers, armed with the best gear Akylios’s mad genius could devise, threaten to drown us in misery. Gather your allies and turn back their tide!
