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Please, no green. That is painful to read.

I am looking forward to hearing things from Regis' perspective. 

Okay, posted. Way longer than I expected.

It's basically a quarter century of history from one person's perspective. Essentially the Kingpriest Ascendent timeline in the Legends sourcebook as the Burning Robes would perceive it.

I'll try to write a compact form of it for easy reference when I get a chance. That'll be put in the Background info thread.

(I generally highlight stuff as I read it, so the color is pretty irrelevant to me.)

Well, I should say the color is mostly irrelevant. I use it to find where the speech is, but highlight as I actually read.

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Now that you have the backstory (or at least most of it even if Lutgar's being smart about being skeptical about what Regis says  ), I can reveal the backstory of what I had originally planned.

The original time travel plot was going to be set in the 'modern' Dragonlance era (when the last novels came out). It was going to be a cabal of Black Robes who came back in time to change a future new Dragon War where the minotaurs joined with the dragons and the elves were important. A war with elves remains in the plot, as do the renegades but they're now a mix of robes not just black.

I didn't find that backstory compelling. Dragonlance suffers from too many earthshaking events in a short period so adding another seemed like it was pushing things. Plus I'd have to figure out why they wanted to change some detail. Plus not many people like that era of Dragonlance so all in all it just didn't seem compelling.

The game was going to be centered near the Khalkist mountains. For some reason the cabal was hiding out in Estwilde but I never figured out why.

Another early idea was they wanted to change the War of Souls so that Takhisis didn't die.

Then I went back to the Legends sourcebook and saw the Kingpriest Ascendent timeline. Pre-written and there's good reason for mages to want to change history.

If I was going to run a game in another one of the alternate timelines it'd probably be War of the Darklance. Supposedly that was a home campaign by one of the authors. It's about the Chaos War where the Irda don't break open the Greygem (so no Chaos or minions) and Ariakan leads the evil knights to near victory over good. The world gets really cold that year (instead of really hot like the novels) and good faces a near impossible war.

They also have the one mentioned in the War of Souls trilogy by Tasslehoff and the one in Legends where Raistlin becomes a god. There's one where mages take over Ansalon after the Cataclysm. They even have one where Sturm lived at the High Clerist's Tower and things went badly because of that. I think they must've included it to say "See? We killed him off for a reason! Now stop being upset over it."

As a metagame aside, I find it curious on Arlan's motivations for killing the kingpriest.  I can certainly understand his reasoning.  What I do find interesting is that he is ignorant of the fact of the "true" timeline in which the kingpriest causes the Cataclysm and millions are killed then.  So the question is, can you really change that millions of people will die.  The basic time travelling rules in the Dragonlance setting suggest that no, you can't.  The course of the river is set, all that you can do is make some splashes.  So, though you may change how it happens, we're all screwed no matter what we do!

Seraphi is going to have a lot of trouble dealing with the issue of Fate in the near future would be my guess.

From what I remember of the short story, Lord Soth was indeed told of the impending Cataclysm.  Although a decent knight, he was incredibly jealous and over protective when it came to his wife.  I believe she was a Silvinesti elf??  Anyway, Lord Soth rode off for Istar to inform the kingpriest that his hubris in demanding of the gods would result in the fire mountain raining down on the city.  But he was waylaid and was told that his wife was using the opportunity to be unfaithful or to leave him.  So he turned around and rode home.  So I wouldn't say he turned tail so much as he succumbed to his own selfish desires.

The Cataclysm is a funny one.  The gods of good chief desire is to allow mortals to pave their own road and to make their own decisions.  The gods of evil aren't so much focused on evil as they are in subjugating mortals to the whims of the gods.  So if you think of it as the gods of good being in charge you can understand why they didn't interfere overtly.  Plus, they were the ones who told Lord Soth how to prevent the cataclysm. 

In the end, they boil it down to a need to return things back to a more neutral balance.  All that 'good' in Istar was actually causing a lot of bad behaviour.  The novels all maintain that the gods wanted a return to neutrality so that the boat wasn't being rocked so much.

I just found the alternate storyline in Nightdrifter's campaign book as very interesting.