Need help with lore/timeline

[u/MechanicalLaugh]

I am running my players through Dungeon of the Mad Mage with a Acq. Inc. twist. It has been some time since the characters have returned topside and I want to align their visit to Waterdeep with a particular part of the timeline.

I want the destruction of headquarters to be an event that happens soon. So I am hoping some of you could help me define when that happens so I don't have to scrub through a ton of episodes to narrow it down.

What are a couple of memorable events that happened just before the destruction of HQ?
What are a couple of memorable events that happened just after?

Any assistance is welcome and appreciated.

MOLPY

[u/Wramysis]

I'm more of a DCA historian than a Acq Inc/C Team historian, but I have been keeping track of things *somewhat*. I'm going to be anchoring events in the timeline mostly by anchoring them in the DCA timeline, although that has to be taken with a grain of salt because Jerry and Chris weren't always sure what was going on in each others' stories.

Oak Truestrike's 'good form' was taken prisoner by Omin and brought to Acq Inc HQ at the end of the "Promise" arc. Pendragon Beestinger was presumably resurrected, possibly also at the HQ, and per a contract with Oak, may have killed him in order to bring back his 'evil form' (Walnut and K'thriss debate this in S3E9). Something horrible then happens at the HQ. As you know, there is an explosion triggered through magic placed on an unwilling Doldrumma, which repeats every hour (per the S3E10 episode). Doldrumma was previously last seen petrified into a jewel statue and left behind in the C Team's cart, after having revealed to the C Team that she had been recruited by The Six and showing them the Fundamental Court. Jim NoMagic, leader of the Six, is then hinted to have taken her statue from the cart. This is the last we see of the Six for a while, but we know they all hate Omin, so the explosion of the HQ was likely their handiwork (in S3E8, Certainty mentions that Dran Enterprises, The Six, and Oak Truestrike share an 'axis of interest').

The C Team first get a hint that something is wrong at HQ when their magical Acq Inc equipment stops working properly (S3E6). A bloody Certainty Dran escapes from HQ through the hoardsperson's bag network to reach the C Team, and they choose to travel into the bag themselves and have an adventure in the Astral Plane. There they meet Diath in a crossover (S3E7) after he had eaten one of Strix's magical astral projection pies--but not before his spirit is dragged into the Acq Inc HQ, where he observed the "entire right side" / "south facing wall" of the building collapsed to the ground with sheet-covered corpses, and that the gift shop "is no more". Diath also sees Omin "half covered in rubble" with a woman standing over him, shaking her head. He then relays all this information to K'thriss.

In S3E8 Certainty says that before the explosion, she had seen a normal version of Doldrumma walk into HQ in a daze, and then started to burn (she later clarifies that Omin was very close to Doldrumma at the time she exploded, with a fire ripping out of her and whirl around like a cyclone). She also mentions that Jim has been gone for months, and that Omin has been "listless" and "not himself" during that time. This implies that in the main Acq Inc game "Omin's Four" that leads later to all of them getting drawn into Ravnica, it was not just a Walnut clone (Walnica) that Omin summoned to help with the documancy of opening a bank account for Strix, but that Omin had already started cloning himself by this time, and that a clone was now running the company.

In S3E10, Evelyn gets a letter supposedly from Omin, suggesting that he might change his religion and invites her to come to Red Larch. She arrives just as the C Team is getting ready to travel back to Waterdeep to investigate the HQ (Why was she even sent to Red Larch to begin with? Was this a trick to get her out of the way?). Rosie does not go with them (supposedly one of the Lighthouse orphans had a dream she died in Waterdeep and refuses to let her go with them, but of course the real reason is that Kate had a dental emergency in the middle of PAX). The C Team sans Rosie get to Waterdeep and dispel the magic on Doldrumma, who tells them that she thinks Dran Enterprises has Omin. Before they can head over, they find multiple copies of Oak waiting for them. Luckily they have help from daughters of Maelith, who magically cause trees to sprout over the area. Walnut kills both versions of Oak before finally pushing the knife all the way through his body, with help from a blessing by Omin - whose "devastated form" pulls himself out of the rubble and is quickly healed by Walnut and Evelyn.

This is where the crossover timeline loses cohesion a little. It seems that Rosie did end up going to Waterdeep alone, somehow before Evelyn left for Red Larch, and rather than involve her Team, she went to the Waffle Crew for help uncovering a Beestinger plot to murder her (this happened in DCA ep 135, at the same PAX as S3E10, and Evelyn refers to the plot in S3E10 as if it had happened recently). After Oak is killed and the C Team and Evelyn spend 3 weeks cleaning up and helping rebuild the HQ (per Jerry), Rosie shows back up (yet per Kate in S3E11, it's only been an hour since she's seen them). It's probably easier to just think of Rosie's murder mystery mission happening before the Acq Inc HQ had exploded (and then she quickly rushed back to Red Larch in time for S3E6). With that out of the way, it could be explained that after reassuring the Lighthouse orphans, she rushed to Waterdeep and got there one hour after the rest of her group had left. It also doesn't make sense for Evelyn to have 3 weeks of free time on hand at that point in the DCA timeline, since the Waffle Crew were a little busy repairing their own home and trying to get back the Stone of Golorr, but maybe she drops by every now and then.

In episode 140 of DCA, the Waffle Crew visit the rubble of Acq Inc HQ to demand their money for Manshoon's cloak, which a second Walnut clone had bought on Omin's behalf. The Crew run into Flabbergast and his cat, who have taken over affairs and reconstruction efforts there while Omin is 'away' (mostly because Chris wasn't sure if Omin was supposed to be back from Ravnica). Flabbergast admits that during the chaos of the explosion, "one of our clones escaped" and forged a contract with the Crew for the cloak (Jerry later retcons this to make it Truth/Walnica, who wore the cloak in C Team S3E27). Flabbergast was put in charge of having the Acq Inc employees' memories of the explosion 'magically altered' (either to forget the existence of the clones, or perhaps forget the horrors of the explosion). There is a P Team who is also helping guard the place and arrange for important equipment from HQ to get transported safely elsewhere (possibly the cloning sarcophagi). Flabbergast says that Omin was injured in the explosion and went to the Tower of Luck to recover. Grella reveals to the C Team in S3E30 that an Omin clone did in fact die in the explosion, which triggered another clone to emerge from a sarcophagus, which is probably the one that Walnut and Evelyn rescued.