The Event
Date: 339 AC Location: Westguard, Eastguard, Great Bay Primary Figures: Aemon Cobb and an unidentified group of off-world adventurers
Overview
Twelve years before the present day, an incident occurred along the shores of Great Bay that nearly consumed both Westguard and Eastguard.
The people of Westguard were unknowingly placed under the control of a hidden colony of Mind Flayers. Through powerful psychic influence, the inhabitants were locked into a carefully constructed mental illusion. Life appeared calm, safe, and prosperous. The weather was always pleasant. The markets were full. Work was easy and peaceful.
The people believed they were living in the best days their town had ever seen.
None of it was real.
Beneath the streets of Westguard, the Mind Flayers had established a subterranean complex where the townsfolk were kept in a sustained psychic state. Their thoughts, memories, and emotional responses were quietly harvested over time.
To the people of Westguard, nothing was wrong.
To everyone else, something was very wrong.
Discovery
The situation might have continued indefinitely if not for a planar anomaly that appeared just south of the southern gate of Eastguard.
Through this anomaly, a small group of adventurers from another world arrived on Krynn. Among them was a young rogue named Aemon Cobb.
While investigating the region, the group encountered signs that something unnatural was happening across the bay in Westguard. The town behaved strangely. Its citizens appeared peaceful but distant, their routines repeating with uncanny consistency.
Travelers who stayed too long reported a subtle mental pressure, as though the town itself resisted questions.
The adventurers soon discovered the truth.
The Tunnel Beneath Great Bay
The Mind Flayers had constructed a massive tunnel beneath Great Bay connecting their lair beneath Westguard to the eastern shore near Eastguard.
The purpose of the tunnel was expansion.
Once their control over Westguard was fully stabilized, the colony intended to spread its psychic influence across the bay and absorb the population of Eastguard into the same illusion.
The two towns would become a stable psychic reservoir hidden beneath the surface of an ordinary coastal region.
No one beyond the bay would have noticed.
The Confrontation
After uncovering the existence of the tunnel, the adventuring party descended into the underground passage.
The battle that followed is poorly documented. Much of the subterranean complex collapsed during the fighting, and the surviving tunnels were sealed or flooded.
What is known is simple:
The Mind Flayer colony was destroyed before its influence could spread to Eastguard.
The psychic control over Westguard collapsed soon after.
The people of the town awoke to find that weeks—or perhaps months—of their lives had passed without memory.
Aftermath
Most of the tunnels beneath Great Bay were destroyed during the confrontation, though rumors persist among sailors and fishermen that hollow caverns still exist beneath the bay floor.
The adventurers who ended the threat eventually departed Krynn through the same anomaly that brought them.
One of them did not leave.
The young rogue Aemon Cobb chose to remain in Eastguard.
Over the years that followed, he became a permanent part of the town’s history.
Few people know the full truth of what happened beneath the bay.
But those who do remember it simply as:
The Event.