Scrying into the Past

[Jerenda]

I'm running a 3.5 game and I can't find what I'm looking for, so I turn to you guys. For purposes of plot, I would like a NPC (and the party) to be able to scry a scene that occurred 2,000 years in the past.

My NPC can be any level under 20 that she needs to be to gain access to this spell, and I don't care what class she is. I think my task would be a lot easier if I hadn't banned Psionics. I'm willing to use a Psionic if that's absolutely the only option. I think Chronomancer is probably my best bet, but due to the lovely school Internets that block "gaming" sites, I can't figure out what book it's in.

I found some portal spells that allow the party to travel back in time (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030402x), but I don't want them to interfere. They just need the information. A long-lost journal won't work, because the person who'd have written the journal died before he could write the salient points, and anyway I have very specifically destroyed written records from that time.

If I can't find anything, I think I'll just homebrew what I need, but I would be a lot happier if I could find an actual basis for it in the rules.

I know, it's crazy. Probably unnecessarily complex as well. But do you guys have any ideas as to how I can make this happen?

[Piggy Knowles]

Hindsight (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20030103a) would work, but is limited to how far it can go back.

[hymer]

You can have it be a long lost journal of someone who scryed on it at the time instead.

To that end: Ever heard of Tycho Brahe? He was a 16th century astronomer who made observations all night every night he could for a long while, and took notes of it all. Sifting through all this data revealed or confirmed a whole lot of important stuff at the time once people got around to it. The lost journal could be lost in that same fashion, buried in a mountain of material just waiting to be found.
Just a thought.

[Piggy Knowles]

Also, the Medani Prophet prestige class from Dragonmarked has some DM-dependant "visions" that can be of pretty much any time. It also has the ability to answer questions about the past, but like the Hindsight spell, nothing that goes back two millenia. However, the visions don't have any such restriction.

[Palanan]

This sounds very much like the Pastwatch stories from Orson Scott Card. Any influence there?

Does the NPC need to be part of the scenario? I really like hymer's idea of this being discovered through PC research. Maybe a crystal of some sort that plays some illusionary analogue of a holorecording? Call it ancient lost magic and run with it. :smalltongue:



Also, +1 to the mention of Tycho Brahe, one of my favorite larger-than-life characters from the history of astronomy. Just to expand on what hymer said: Tycho Brahe and his assistants gathered a tremendous amount of observational data at Uraniborg, which was his personal astronomical campus on an island claimed by Denmark at the time.

Part of what prevented the data from being used to best effect, however, was the fact that Tycho Brahe was committed to the theory of epicycles for the explanation of all celestial motion, from stars and comets to planets and moons. As he improved the quality of his observations, the results were more and more difficult to fit into the epicyclic paradigm--but rather than developing a new theory, Tycho simply added epicycles to his epicycles as needed, ad infinitum, creating such a cumbersome cosmological mess that the entire theory became patently unworkable.

It was only when fresh eyes went through his observations, without the insistence on adhering to the theory of epicycles, that the data came into their own. It's a great story of science in its own right, and might be adapted to the PCs' own research.

[Jack_Simth]

I'm running a 3.5 game and I can't find what I'm looking for, so I turn to you guys. For purposes of plot, I would like a NPC (and the party) to be able to scry a scene that occurred 2,000 years in the past.

My NPC can be any level under 20 that she needs to be to gain access to this spell, and I don't care what class she is. I think my task would be a lot easier if I hadn't banned Psionics. I'm willing to use a Psionic if that's absolutely the only option. I think Chronomancer is probably my best bet, but due to the lovely school Internets that block "gaming" sites, I can't figure out what book it's in.

I found some portal spells that allow the party to travel back in time (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030402x), but I don't want them to interfere. They just need the information. A long-lost journal won't work, because the person who'd have written the journal died before he could write the salient points, and anyway I have very specifically destroyed written records from that time.

If I can't find anything, I think I'll just homebrew what I need, but I would be a lot happier if I could find an actual basis for it in the rules.

I know, it's crazy. Probably unnecessarily complex as well. But do you guys have any ideas as to how I can make this happen?

Try Legend Lore (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/legendLore.htm) on for size. They go to the place where legendary events happened (or have an artefact from the event), have a short casting time, and then the NPC can tell them all about it. 4th level Bard spell, 6th level Sor/Wiz spell, 7th level Knowledge Domain spell. Bard-10 is an easy way to do it. It doesn't show the players, but it gives the NPC fairly arbitrary info (use the "or even information that has never been generally known" clause) and lets the NPC tell the players.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What you're probably looking for is the sensetivity to psychic impressions power. It's a level 6 seer power, IIRC, and lets you look back at significant events in the target area up rather a long time ago, depending on ML.

[Jerenda]

Wow, you guys are fast.


You can have it be a long lost journal of someone who scryed on it at the time instead.

I'm loving this idea. It breaks down my ridiculously huge span of time into manageable chucks. I'd never heard of Tycho Brache, but that's pretty cool. It totally validates the journal idea.

So far the ideas I really like are Hindsight and Legend Lore. I'm trying to avoid dragons as much as possible, although I have decided the Medani Prophet class is sweet.

I haven't read the Pastwatch stories, either, but it sounds like I probably should. :)

I've never heard of the "sensitivity to psychic impressions power". Can you give me a little bit more information about it? Is it a psionic ability? What book is it in?

[Jack_Simth]

I've never heard of the "sensitivity to psychic impressions power". Can you give me a little bit more information about it? Is it a psionic ability? What book is it in?
It's in the Expanded Psionics Handbook and the SRD. It's called Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/sensitivitytoPsychicImpressions.htm), oddly enough.


You gain historical vision in a given location. Rooms, streets, tunnels, and other discrete locations accumulate psychic impressions left by powerful emotions experienced in a given area. These impressions offer you a picture of the location’s past.

The types of events most likely to leave psychic impressions are those that elicited strong emotions: battles and betrayals, marriages and murders, births and great pain, or any other event where one emotion dominates. Everyday occurrences leave no residue for a manifester to detect.

The vision of the event is dreamlike and shadowy. You do not gain special knowledge of those involved in the vision, though you might be able to read large banners or other writing if they are in your language.

Beginning with the most recent significant event at a location and working backward in time, you can sense one distinct event for every 10 minutes you maintain concentration, if any such events exist to be sensed. Your sensitivity extends into the past a maximum number of years equal to 100 × your manifester level.

- Manifester level 20 puts 2000 years ago at the edge of range. Oh yes, and Overchannel (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#overchannel) can increase your manifester level by up to 3, and a Wilder-20 with Expanded Knowledge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#expandedKnowledge) to get the power can Wild Surge up to manifester level 26.

[Jerenda]

Haha, should have checked the SRD. Thanks! I think I can put together a sequence of events from what y'all have given me. This is a lot more information than I hoped for. ^_^

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Jerenda
This is a lot more information than I hoped for.

Welcome to the Playground.

:smallbiggrin: