Overview: In the coastal city of Lyravale, a venerable Time Engine in the Clocktower begins to falter. Time slips, bells ring at odd hours, and citizens drift between moments. The four-session arc tasks the party with locating four legendary components to recalibrate the engine before the city unravels. Designed for 4 players of level 3–5, each session aims for roughly 40 minutes of play, with a brief wrap-up in the fourth to resolve the plot.

Hook and stakes: Time anomalies surface in daily life—markets skip an hour, tides rush in twice, and memories flicker like faulty projectors. A Clockwork Guild apprentice named Aethra pleads for help in recovering her master’s long-lost notes and a missing component. The party discovers the anomalies are synchronized with a hidden cadence in the Engine. If the components are not recovered and installed, the city risks a permanent dawn-to-dusk cycle that erases the past and future alike.

Main quest: Retrieve four components to restore the Time Engine and seal the rifts preventing time from breaking apart. Each session centers on one component, guarded by environmental puzzles, hostile time-warp creatures, and NPCs whose loyalties shift with the ticking clock. As the engine nears full recalibration, the party confronts a temporal antagonist—the Temporal Warden—who desires to reset time to erase a painful memory of loss. The final choice tests the party’s priorities: restore the city’s timeline or preserve a single moment at a great cost to the many.

Session structure (approx. 40 minutes each):
- Session 1 — The Crowngear of the Dawn: In the Clockwork District, players navigate a shifting gallery and defeat or outwit sentry automata to claim the Crowngear, learning a clue about the remaining locations. Aethra’s loyalty hints the gears are waking up in sympathy with the city’s distress.
- Session 2 — Pendulum of Echoes: The Drowned Archives lie beneath the river. Puzzles involve timing, pressure plates, and echoing memories. Retrieve the Pendulum while facing kelp-wraiths and a clock-touched archivist who may misdirect the party.
- Session 3 — Ember Core: The Forge District houses a chamber where a dormant furnace breathes life into the Ember Core. A shielded forge-warden tests the party; a side quest involves rescuing a trapped apprentice and learning a hidden history of the engine’s last re-calibration.
- Session 4 — The Tower’s Final Gears: The four components are installed in a chamber of temporal wards. The Temporal Warden appears, offering a grim bargain. The party must decide whether to restore time as it was or alter one moment at a cost to the many, while racing against a collapsing hourglass of real time.

Setting, challenges, and rewards: Puzzles reward clever timing and collaboration; combat emphasizes opportunistic tactics rather than brute force. Rewards include clockwork artifacts (Tempo Ring granting a small initiative bonus, Hourglass of Harrow for one-time rewind, Boots of Quiet Steps for reduced noise and stealth), temporary visions of possible futures, and renown within the Clockwork Guild. Ending consequences ripple into future campaigns with altered time flow or remembered names altered by the engine’s re-syncing.