Ash: "He's probably run back to his home. Let's try him there."

Badger nods and leads the way.

You pass destruction on the way. You hear crying and the occasional scream from villagers. Halfway to Derbrun's home, you find him on the side of the road, dead.

An unexpected storm starts to roll in.

Kristofferson, looking quietly at the destruction and the body of Derbrun: "Is there anything we can do for him?"

Badger shakes his head. "No." He looks up at the sky, at the storm rolling in. "I don't like this feeling of failure."

"How will we leave this place without Derbrun?" Ash asks, unable to hide the shaking fear in his voice.

Badger sighs heavily. "We hope. We hope the time loop will bring him back." Badger will kneel respectfully by Derbrun's body until the time loop is triggered.

K meditates.

Ash stands by, watching for other threats.

Eventually, lightning strikes and strikes again. Everything fades quickly to white and you feel briefly like you are in some stasis, as if you are outside of yourself and the world, and then you snap back and feel yourselves falling faster and faster.

The carriage crashes into something and you come to a stop, checking yourselves over to make sure you are feeling okay. You leave the carriage to find yourselves inside a familiar old barn. A familiar male and female gnome and child gnome stand shocked in front of you.

The young gnome says: "Look, pa. Foreigners!"

The gnome male raises a hand crossbow and fires a single shot at you, missing badly.

Mechanically, you all get a long rest. Any inventory you consumed in the previous time loop is restored, so the healing potions you used are again in your possession.

Badger holds his hands up in a nonthreatening way. "We've made a mistake and mean to correct it! We'll pay for the damages and go tell Guldark about the accident. He'll come help with the trees, okay?" He starts to leave the property in a nonthreatening way.

Ash leads the way quickly off the property.

K follows. "This time, we actually deliver the message to Guldark."

Ash nods.

K continues, "If we hurry, we can deliver the message to Guldark, get Joramir to leave to avoid the bullies, and intercept Derbrun at the library." He starts jogging.

You successfully send Guldark to stop the animated pines with his antidote, and you successfully get Joramir to leave the cafe before the bullies cause trouble. Consider this a restore point, unless you want to change things in a future iteration.

You also intercept Derbrun at the library. You explain the meeting from the previous iteration, the flash of white light, and the return to that morning.

"Just as I feared. The Crystal is diverting time. It sounds like the loop is quite small, thankfully. Only part of a single day. To end the loop, we'll need to know exactly when the Crystal is engaged and somehow disrupt that engagement."

Badger: "In previous iterations, there were three cracks of lightning. On the third, we looped back to the beginning."

Kristofferson: "Derbrun, it seems you do not remember our previous interactions, and neither do others in this town. Yet we remember. Why might that be?"

Ash keeps watching for any interruptions or danger as his friends discuss.

Badger: "How might we 'disrupt the engagement' of the Crystal, whatever that means?"

Derbrun: "Excellent! We should be able to time our disruption with the lightning strike. And God's be praised that your three are here and retain your memories or we'd have never known to do so! My guess is you are not, in fact, entering the loop at the beginning. Perhaps your vaulting into our village came after the time loop had started, and so your memories aren't wiped. Perhaps I had initiated the Crystals hours or moments before you arrive. Based on your retelling of events, it is likely you entered the loop shortly after I initiated it. In any event, we know how to divert the Crystal. The lightning! The lightning must be striking the Crystal! We should make effort to divert the lightning power from the Crystal, thereby averting the time loop."

Badger: "And how do we divert lightning? Move the Crystal? Put something big and metal around the Crystal?"

Derbrun considers. "We can't move the Crystal once it is initiated. The big metal idea might work, but that isn't a certainty. The magic aura of the Crystal may react to the lightning striking anything in its vicinity. No, we need a sort of magic lightning swallowing thing. I'm not aware of such a thing, but there is a villager who might help. He is a half-elf musical fella who goes by Joramir."