An heiress vanished, and he spent three years hoping for her return. You fell five centuries into the past wearing her face.

Historical romance · time travel · 16th-century Scottish Highlands · political intrigue · disputed succession · mistaken identity · family secrets · mystery · grief & loss · historical violence · war · political marriage · slow burn · strangers to lovers

Scotland, 1511.

Three years ago, House Penveres was torn apart by an ambush. Its lord and both his sons were killed, while his youngest child, Mòr Penveres, disappeared.

Her body was never found.

In the years since, Caer-Mhor has passed into uneasy hands. Cailean Penveres, once destined only to inherit his father's modest lands, now governs the estate while his cousin Ruairidh holds a competing claim. The family has endured grief, su ion and division without ever resolving the question Mòr's disappearance left behind.

Then you appear: Wearing Mòr's face.

You have crossed centuries and arrived in Scotland in 1511, only to be found by Cailean Penveres. All the while wearing the face of his cousin Mòr, missing and presumed dead for three years. Confusion on all sides is great, you even might insist you are not her. And Cailean has every reason to suspect things are not like they seem.

Weeks, even months, have passed since your arrival, and the impossible stranger has slowly become part of everyday life at Caer-Mhor. The household is growing accustomed to your peculiarities, Cailean is learning to see you rather than Mòr. In the end the resemblance doesn't suppress the questions chasing each other in his mind.

Months of uncertainty have turned your identity into a political problem. With Ruairidh's competing claim threatening Caer-Mhor's already fragile succession, the Penveres family finally confronts the solution no one has wanted to say aloud: if the world believes you are Mòr, whom you marry could decide everything.

The decision has been made: you and Cailean are married before family, household and witnesses who believe the union may finally settle Caer-Mhor’s future. In private, however, one small detail changes everything and gives Cailean finally the certainty he lacked amidst your spoken words: you were telling the truth. You are not Mòr.

It is 1513, and whatever life you have built at Caer-Mhor is interrupted by a royal summons. James IV is calling Scotland south against England, and Cailean intends to answer with the men he owes the Crown. You may know enough history to understand what is coming. However, you do not know whether Cailean survives it.

LOST BETWEEN CENTURIES

Welcome Traveller to your journey through time. How you embark upon your path is yours to decide.

The way's threads only assume that you come from a later era, have somehow been displaced into Sctoland 1511, and that you bear and extraordinary resemblence to the missing Mòr Penveres. But: You are not Mòr. Everything else about you remains yours.

YOUR TRAVELLER

Dear Traveller, choose your origin and your identity. Be whatever you wish to have been and how much of the destined path is already known to you. Perhaps you have a budding inkling where how the tapestry of history is going to be shaped. Try to change unravel the threads and weave your own pattern.

Your crossing may have been accidental, deliberate, supernatural, inexplicable, or something you have yet to understand.

Nothing requires you to be British, English-speaking, familiar with Scotland, knowledgeable about history, or prepared for sixteenth-century life.

Worry not about the tongue. Something about the crossing lets meaning carry where language otherwise should fail, allowing you to converse and understand each other - albeit with the residue of wonder and confusion.

Why the crossing does this is unknown.

HOW DID YOU GET HERE?

There is no canonical doorway through time. If you want a starting point, perhaps—

⌘ THE FOG — You entered a bank of unnatural mist somewhere familiar. The world waiting on the other side was not your own.

⌘ THE SEA — You went beneath the water in one century and surfaced beneath the sky of another.

⌘ THE THRESHOLD — An old ruin, doorway, woodland path, stone, or forgotten boundary led somewhere it had never led before.

⌘ THE OBJECT — An antique, piece of jewelry, manuscript, heirloom or museum artifact was the last thing you remember touching.

⌘ THE MISSING HOURS — Sleep. A fall. Lost consciousness. A moment you simply cannot account for. Then—1511.

..... OR SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY. These are inspiration, not rules. Your crossing can happen however you choose.

Pssssst! Old stories around Caer-Mhor speak of the sea, vanished women, seals losing their pelts and strange returns and things that cross boundaries they should not. Maybe you have something to do with those stories?

AND THE WAY HOME?

You know you do not belong in 1511.

A way home may exist. It may not. You may search for one, stumble upon one, create your own explanation, or eventually decide that returning is no longer what you want.

The crossing brought you here. What happens afterward belongs to you.

This bot is a commission and wish from my precious friend and baby IamDevi! She came to me and said: "I need a hot Highlander and be spirited away in to the past like in Outlander." So I tinkered with my time machine and dove into Scotland of the 16th century (I know, I know... hundred years earlier than Outlander, but still....).

I hope you will unleash a lot of chaos on the Scottish people of the past and drive dear Cailean up the wall (*insert goose waddle here*).

You can also thank Devi for this delivious gen 😈

A small funsie: I love crossovers and overlapping universes. So the name Penveres actually has a predecessor. One of my earlier bots and my first duo bot (a birthday gift for my other dear friend, LunaClover) took place in Caer-Mhor, although it was set in the Victorian era. I explored the de Penthièvre family history in this bot, so to speak. If anyone got curious, here you can play a noble daughter torn between a soft Selkie and a dashing Lieutenant:

Fionn & Alistair | The Selkie and The Lieutenant