“Fair enough.” is all Ursas says. “I shall escort you all out where you can discuss my offer freely. Return tomorrow should you accept.”

Kitsune all of a sudden appears out of nowhere, stepping out of the shadows, and announces "Hold up....before, you offered 5000 gold pieces to each of us (post #243), and now you're saying 4000 gold each (post #258)....which one is it?  Can't keep your stories straight, hmmmm?"

"You're right, I can't. Now it's 3000."

You find yourself back on the street on the outskirts of Waterdeep. You have one day to decide what to do.

Whispering to the group, "Banrion mentioned two people were previously at the ruins...a human and a tiefling.  I don't trust that Ursas dude....he's bad mojo.  If he's supposedly this legendary and powerful paladin wanting to fight Zariel, why in the nine hells is he so weak that he can't go get the other gems himself?  And he's dripping in gold, so why hasn't he hired better agents in the past to find them?  This stinks more than a drow's bottom side."

Seldor takes the party to an inn and rents rooms for them. Before they take the day off, he gathers them in his room. "So here's the offer; Sir Ursas will give us 3,000 gold, down from 5,000, for each gem we have, as well as the other two. Now many of us have doubts about this Sir Ursas, which cause us to have some trepidation about whether we should give him a time travel device. So let's discuss what we all think about this and the course we should take next."

Eris curses Cherri for being busy with work and 4950283 other threads to respond to this one!

Once they find themselves outside, Eris could be seen with her arms folded in front of her chest, quietly muttering curses to herself. "It's because we're expendable, Kitsune," She would seethe, taking out her fan. "And the only way to get the other gems would be working for him. Unbelievable." Eris huffs, fanning herself. "Do we really even have a choice here?"

 In Seldor's room ;)

The sorceress would sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose to assuage an incoming headache. "Do we really even have a choice here? As I said before, what we have now is useless without those other gems, and the only 'safe' way to obtain them is by going back in time, which is possible with what he has." She leans back. "If we agree to work with him, then I would like to run this by you all. I'm going to forfeit my cut of the money in hopes he would allow me to travel back in time to... to stop something from happening to me. It's selfish, I know, but I-I would greatly appreciate if you all could just... back me up on it." She would look up to the others, once hardened eyes now soft, nearly pleading.

"Of course. We've fought together for years, if you need me to support you with something, I will."

Eris gives Seldor an appreciative smile, nervously waiting for the others reply. "Thank you, Seldor."

Alta frowns. "This is gonna be dangerous. I had a...friend who told me stories about both those places. They'll be deadly even when they're first being built. So we'll have to be careful." She gives Eris a smile. "But dangerous is nothing new to us. And we'll definitely give you a hand with your thing."

Kitsune: "I've seen many souls pass through the Shadowfell, newly departed from adventurers in those two areas....sounds like fun times!  However, I suggest we seek out the other adventurer who was looking for the gems as well (the tiefling that Banrion mentioned), before accepting loser Ursas' offer."

Hamdel stews for much of the evening over the diminishing returns from the magic gems. He feels... argumentative.

"Look, I get that some of you don't trust him, but what difference does it make in the meantime? I mean, now, if we decide to help him, he's paying us significantly less, and is a bit angered with us to boot. If, somehow, a renowned hero of the ages is in fact a closeted villain waiting for his chance to spring from the shadows, well, then there really isn't very much you or I are going to be able to do about it. I am intrigued by the possibility of negotiating with him to secure use of the machine in exchange for our assistance with "the dirty work," as he puts it, but I am very much interested as well in some cold, hard cash."

"The money isn't the most important part of this. What matters is the safety of the device. If this Sir Ursas is a secret villain, then we can't let him have the completed panel and I expect that we'd have to do battle with him to keep him from getting his hands on it."

"If Ursas is secretly a villain, what makes you think we could win in a straight up fight against him? At least if we work with him, we have a better chance of uncovering his full intentions, since clearly magic and a suspicious attitude didn't get too far. And while you are technically right that gold isn't everything, being ten thousand gold pieces richer would certainly not hurt the situation! And we don't even know for certain if he isn't in fact completely honest, as he seemed to be during our conversation! We're taking his deal, I think, but we will request something reasonable in addition to or as a replacement of the proffered gold reimbursement. We won't know unless we ask, either way."

"I'm not saying that we should fight him now, but if we find out over the course of this mission that he is a villain, then we would take him on later, or find some other way of dealing with him. And yes, we can request something to go along with the gold, Eris requested that we help her in negotiating with Sir Ursas, so we can ask him about that."

Coughing an interruption, Kitsune brings up again "As I suggested earlier, how about we seek out the other adventurer who was looking for the gems as well (the tiefling that Banrion mentioned), before accepting Ursas' offer?"

Eris considers Kitsune's words, rubbing her chin in thought. "Hm... Options would be nice... But how would we go about finding them?"

"That is the question. We don't have a way of finding this individual, unless you want to run around and ask every Tiefling if they're looking for a magic time machine. It looks like we'll have to go with our plan of meeting with Ursus, see if he can't be reasoned with, and if he turns out to be evil or unreasonable, we deal with him once we have retrieved the other two gems."

"Could well be that those two earlier adventurers were actually working with Ursas, or perhaps against him. Clearly, there's a larger struggle going on, and between team Ursas and team Who knows what/who, I think I'd rather choose the known option. Besides, think of what we could learn from seeing our two gems actually in use! I'd say that information alone is nearly worth the risk of the adventure (but I wouldn't say no to a few thousand more gold, no I wouldn't.)"

The next day, Sir Ursas pays you all 10,000 gold for the gems, and you all now work for him. As terms of employment, you are allowed to use the services of Lucas, the time traveling automaton. Lucas is programmed to travel through space and time. The gems Sir Ursas bought from you is installed securely inside Lucas. Lucas will transport you to each destination and back. You have a choice of one of two destinations to choose to go to first.

The Tomb of Horrors or the Temple of Moloch. Decide now.

What else can Lucas do? Mechanically speaking, Lucas comes with 20 charges. You can spend 1 charge to:

- Alter time within an individual small area to alter the flow of time forward or backwards a "short amount". I'm sure you can imagine how to use this to your advantage. Use your imagination. Spending more points increases the time bounce.
- Transport you to the present time to Waterdeep.
- Transport you to either the Tomb of Horror or Temple of Moloch in the past when it was being built.

Eris makes the meeting quick after having explained just what Sir Ursas wanted to do with the machine and what he offered them in return, Alexi merely ending it with a "And what is it that you're waiting for?"

When she rejoins the others, she tries to mask her irritation at the matter at hand. Nothing mattered. There was no point in asking the man if she could use the machine, there was no point in her begging. She had another job to do and she hoped it was her last.

If asked her opinion on what they should do first, she would simply say, "If we're going to do this, then we should go to Waterdeep and prepare. I'm sure a few magic items would help our cause. Otherwise, I'm fine with whatever you all decide.