CM6: Where Chaos Reigns

CM6: Where Chaos Reigns is a TSR UK, Companion Set adventure by Graeme "Fire Mountain" Morris, May or October 1985. The title is crap and doesn't tell you, so we will: it's a time-travel caper.

As such this module is about as good as Dungeons and Dragons got up to the 1980s. Epic rarely gets bigger than this; BXCMI players won't see the like again until M5: Talons of Night and the Known World Gazetteers. We remain unsold on its overall message, which is that science is bad.

In it, the nefarious oards are out to do what the Borg will do in Star Trek: First Contact - conquer the world (Aelos) in their own present, by mucking about with its past. This world ends up pretty well-detailed so it's probably not the PCs' world, but - like DA1: Adventures in Blackmoor - it can become so if you want it to be.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

The party enters Aelos through the Nexus (no not that one). First up is the moment after the awakening of elves and men. There are other humanoids here - the garls. These are something between an australopithecus and a yeti; they're big and dumb, and much more promising as oard cannon-fodder than the aforementioned elves and (this timeline of) men.

Having solved that little problem, the next step 3000 years later is the rising of dwarves. Here, the hephaeston are at issue - actually, just the one, Diemlak. He's a robot, basically, with iron skin. No dwarves will stop this world's development just as sure as no elves would. The Nexus misses the mark, this time, so a naval Odyssey type adventure is necessary to get there. Although this is done a sight better than M1: Into the Maelstrom is doing it.

Third up 500 years after that is the late Bronze Age. The garls and hephaeston(es) aren't around anymore so the oards are reduced to teaching iron-smelting to the local Assyrian Empire (of the humans), the Kolmedes. Should this empire conquer Arqwen, the elf/dwarf/human druidia (with hobbits); the oards rule through the Kolmedes. So - War Machine. This time it's actually relevant to the plot!

Thousands more years later, all the Free Folk have created a magical realm with a wondrous Bibliotheca on the isle of Talah. The oards have now teleported in and taken over the Luminence, the MAGIC throne artifact. D'OH.

After the party foils all these plots, the oards are (finally) on the back foot, so it is time to hit them where they live - the Entropy Bubble. The oards are of course fully stocked with laser guns, electromagnetic shields, and the rest of the DA2: Temple of the Frog panoply.

The oards' origin is left a mystery but it's debatable they might even be Aelos humans in an alternative timeline.