Make them “disintegrate” into the past where they train and become stronger until they meet back up with the main characters for revenge.
If you make them go far enough back, they could start a whole historical faction that has a cult about a coming apocalypse started by those who can send people back in time. The cult’s main objective would be to destroy the gun by allying with some time shift immune entity.
The players won’t know what is going on until they find a temple with “A symbol of the apocalypse” which is just an image of the disintegration gun. Bonus points if they discover this after the gun has been destroyed and the cult celebrates for a seemingly minor victory.
Only works if they somehow reappear where the PCs are though, the enemy reappearing in the future in the same location wouldn’t change a thing and it is locked to the gun then it’s useless if they lose it/get rid of it…
In order to function it essentially ties them to the location of the gun, say the players figured it out and left it in a field at the right time? Chaos. All the mobs would probably fight and then party can pick off the last ones standing
But does it warps them ahead a certain amount of time or it warps all of them ahead to a specific point in time? 🤔 Not sure if I would prefer to have them reappear after a set amount of time or all at once…
Could be tied to the shooter as well so no matter what happens with the gun doesn’t matter…
Not all at once, have them start coming back one at a time as time goes on
(A) with items and powers they gained in the meantime wherever they got sent to
(B) and team up to fuck up the party, in squads of increasing power level since the party has been meeting increasingly powerful enemies of course
© the same, but changed a little bit in unsettling subtle ways that get less and less subtle and more and more wild and empowering as the story continues, like Pet Semetary
Pick one. Start the first little challenge they run into right after they disintegrate some massively powerful BBEG, so the realization of what they are in for now and the anticipation of what horror is in store at the end of the arc can build and build and build
Caution, they may say “fuck it” and still keep disintegrating stuff, or experiment with disintegrating each other once they know there are strengthening effects, things like that, so be prepared for that
I think that’s exactly what would happen. It would be renamed to the “time travel/make it a later problem” gun
“Dude this gun is awesome, I liked fighting that boss, I can’t wait for the turbo version”
You can make it so the length of time until they come back drops by half with every use, while they still get stronger… until it’s a boss sort of appearing in strobe light fashion while growing interminably up towards the sky, until one massive strobing hand slams down and squashes the whole party like a bunch of bugs. Fitting cap + end to the campaign
Crawl: Stone Soup sort of has this with Banishment. If the target doesn’t resist it’s sent to the abyss. Cool. Not s problem anymore. Unless you later go (or are sent) to the abyss yourself, in which case everything you’ve sent could be there waiting for you.
I should do that with banishment, my players used it to trivialise every combat encounter with multiple enemies. Instead of banishing to another plane, it could temporarily send that enemy into the future, would make for an interesting fight!
