Skylanders: Time Twisters Story Activity Book

Skylanders: Time Twisters Story Activity Book
Author:	Onk Beakman
Publisher:	Puffin Books
Release Date:	October 2, 2014
Pages:	176
Art:	*Dani Geremia (Black and white illustrations) Gergana Hristova (Comic illustrations)
Category:	Activity Book
Based on:	Skylanders franchise

Skylanders: Time Twisters Story Activity Book, also called just Time Twisters, is an activity book for the [[Skylanders series. It is promoted as a dual story and activity book, and in keeping with this, its story is told through a mixture of written prose, comics, and activities for the reader to solve.

Story Summary

Comic, story and activity come together to form one incredible adventure for the Skylanders in Time Twisters. Join Chill, Hot Head, Wash Buckler and other Skylanders heroes as they embark upon a quest through time itself to defeat the wicked Kaos. This brand new story allows readers to immerse themselves even further into the world of the Skylanders, by completing fun puzzles to discover hidden elements of the plot.

Plot

The story begins with a brief introduction to the world of Skylands, the Skylanders, and Kaos for the reader. After the introduction is complete, the story moves to the Ruins, where Chill, Hot Head, Wind-Up, Zoo Lou and Wash Buckler have all gathered to train. Master Eon arrives shortly after and, despite everyone's eagerness, announces that only two Skylanders that he chooses will train today. He picks Chill and Hot Head, and the two of them are placed in a magic circle where the winner must push their opponent out of the circle. After an intense battle, Chill wins by knocking Hot Head out of the circle and into a tree, but her victory is cut short when the impact causes the tree’s trunk to split, and the tree itself attempts to fall over her.

Chill and Hot Head work together to reduce the fallen tree to ash before it can harm anybody, while the others are baffled by the occurrence, as while the tree was old, it was not old enough to fall the way it did. As they mull in confusion, a bell rings through the Ruins and directs the Skylanders’ attention to an apparition of an elderly Glumshanks holding a baby. The apparition attempts to say something, but its words are too quiet and garbled. So, Master Eon casts a spell to physically bring the letters out of Glumshanks’ mouth, and unscrambles them to reveal Glumshanks’ message:

“It is a trap… End of everything… Lord Kaos… Do not trust him!”

The apparition disappears and leaves the Skylanders and Master Eon baffled by its message. As the heroes wonder just why Glumshanks would say this, however, their concerns are pushed aside when the ropes of a hot air balloon holding a trio of Mabu suddenly snap all at once, and the balloon plummets towards the Ruins. Zoo Lou uses his birds to rescue the balloon, and one of its occupants, Snuckles, stumbles out and thanks him while expressing confusion at how this happened, as he had just rigged up the balloon that morning.

All three incidents lead the Skylanders to believe that something is messing with the flow of time, which is confirmed when Master Eon reveals that he heard cries for help all across Skylands as the land begins to rapidly age and deteriorate. The Skylanders ration that Kaos is behind these incidents, but are unsure where to find him as he has been uncharacteristically quiet. So, Zoo Lou calls upon the help of Skylands' wildlife, and learns from a spy squirrel’s encrypted message that Kaos is currently at the Evil Maniacs’ Bizarre Bazaar, a place where the villains of Skylands stock up on material for their nefarious schemes. This poses a problem for the Skylanders, as the Bazaar never appears in the same place twice, and only villains receive invitations to it. So, the Skylanders pay a visit to the Chompy Mage, who is currently preparing to leave for his trip to the Bazaar, and corner him using an illusion of a Lesser-Spotted Glowing Chompy created by Chill and Hot Head. He attempts to stop them by transforming into his Giant Chompy form and attacking, but is quickly stopped and trapped by the Skylanders. The Skylanders ask him where the bazaar is located, but he only leaves them a puzzle and disappears.

The Skylanders solve the puzzle to find that the bazaar is located in Rumbletown this year, and head there as quickly as they can. Upon arrival, Hot Head quickly spots Glumshanks in the crowds, but his shout of surprise upon seeing Glumshanks results in him alerting the entire bazaar to the Skylanders’ presence. Glumshanks flees into the crowds while the other villains attending the bazaar immediately jump to attack the Skylanders. The Skylanders make short work of these villains and head in pursuit of Glumshanks, but are impeded when Dishonest Joe of Dishonest Joe’s Monster Menagerie unleashes a swarm of spiders in their path.

Chill forges ahead despite the difficulties, and manages to find Kaos, who is soliciting business with a shopkeeper named Hooto. Hooto provides Kaos with a golden clock hand, much to Kaos’s glee, but remarks on the possibility of the Skylanders interfering with Kaos’s plans. Kaos dismisses the notion right as Chill prepares to ambush him, but she loses the element of surprise as Glumshanks comes to warn Kaos of the Skylanders’ arrival. Chill goes to attack, but is ensnared by a Fat Belly Spider before she can strike. Chill freezes the Fat Belly Spider and its webs with her javelin, but the momentary distraction allows Kaos, Glumshanks and Hooto to escape. The other Skylanders reunite with Chill, all showing the wear of age as they do, and with no other options as well as a growing concern over Kaos’s ploy, they return back to the Ruins.

Back at the Ruins, Chill shows Master Eon a recreation of the clock hand Kaos had bought, which alarms the elderly portal master. He calls for Hugo, who comes in with a copy of “1001 Magical Artefacts and Other Weird Thingy-ma-bobs” by Professor P. Grungally. After cracking the puzzle needed to find the book’s password, it opens to show them an article detailing the story of “The Golden Hand of Chronobones.” As the story explains, Chronobones was one of the first portal masters and the Master of Time, who built an entire fortress out of time itself and used the Master Clock within to keep all time in Skylands running. As he neared the end of his life, however, he realized that the Master Clock could easily be exploited by evildoers, and thus ripped out the Clock’s hand and hid it. The Skylanders ration that Kaos intends to use it to control time, but right as they begin discussing the issue, the Core of Light suddenly starts to rapidly age, as does the rest of the Ruins. With the Core of Light losing its power by the minute, the Skylanders vow to stop Kaos by heading to Chronobones’ Time Fortress, which they access using a secret pathway that only the Portal of Power can access.

After chanting a special incantation and solving a riddle, Master Eon quickly whisks the Skylanders away to the entrance to the Sands of Time where the Time Fortress is located, though Zoo Lou ends up having to go back to the Ruins due to the effects of Skylands’ rapid aging hitting him harder due to his affiliation with the Life Element, and Master Eon wanting someone to help guard the weakening Core of Light. With their party of five reduced to four, Chill, Hot Head, Wind-Up and Wash Buckler head into the Sands of Time, but are ambushed by Cactus Golems sent by Kaos who attack them with spines that rapidly age whatever they prick. The Skylanders struggle at first to defeat them, but ultimately win when Wash Buckler blinds the Golems with his ink, allowing the Skylanders to launch a mass attack which confuses the Golems so much that they end up attacking each other with their spines and withering away.

With the Cactus Golems no longer an issue, the Skylanders head to a trio of sinkholes, one of which is said to lead to the Time Fortress according to a riddle provided with them. They manage to find the correct sink hole and arrive at the Time Fortress’s front door, but their celebration is cut short when they find that Wind-Up had been pricked by one of the Cactus Golems’ spines and is now rapidly aging. This development further proves to the Skylanders that they need to hurry, so they rush to the front door and are greeted by a trio of talking hats, who initially refuse entry, but present them with a riddle they have to solve to gain entrance following a threat from Hot Head.

Wind-Up solves the puzzle, and the Skylanders make their way into the Time Fortress after the hats affirm that Kaos has indeed already arrived there. The Skylanders try to traverse the corridor, but find that it continually stretches the more they walk, and to make matters worse, Kaos arrives to mock them and impedes them by sending an Arkeyan Crackler to attack them. The Crackler immediately splits into many duplicates of itself, with more filling the spots of the ones defeated. Chill reasons that they need to find the original to defeat them, and manages to find it after noticing that it has three eyes unlike the rest. Hot Head makes quick work of the real Arkeyan Crackler, and with the real and fake Cracklers alike gone, the Skylanders rush for the door. Upon exiting the room, they find themselves in a hallway filled with armored suits (with Hot Head attacking the suits just to be safe). Before they can proceed, the hallway splits open before them and slowly recedes. Wash Buckler sticks his suckers to the walls and takes on the other Skylanders so they do not fall, but the extra strength he has to exert to carry everyone wears him out and prevents him from moving further. While he struggles, a spiky ceiling descends on them, and Wash Buckler ends up losing his grip, with them all tumbling into the dark.

Using what little power he has, Wind-Up creates a bed of springs for the Skylanders to land on, and once they hit solid ground, they find themselves in a prison with Glumshanks as its sole prisoner. The Skylanders free him from his prison, and Glumshanks reveals to them that Hooto had convinced Kaos to kick Glumshanks to the curb by blaming Kaos’s past failures on the troll butler. The Skylanders convince Glumshanks to take them to the Master Clock by taking advantage of Glumshanks’ desire to get rid of Hooto, and upon arrival, they find that Hooto had trapped Kaos inside of a giant hourglass and has taken control of the Master Clock himself. Using the Master Clock, Hooto sends a message all throughout Skylands’ past, present and future wherein he tells the residents of Skylands to deliver all their treasure to him, or he will age everything in Skylands to dust.

As Hooto finishes his message, the Skylanders immediately jump out of hiding to fight him, but Hooto just sends a quartet of Geargolems to fight them instead. As the other Skylanders fight, Wash Buckler frees Kaos from his hourglass prison. Kaos immediately goes to fight Hooto, but Hooto uses the Master Clock’s powers to de-age Kaos to a teenager before he can strike. Wind-Up attempts to attack Hooto, but in his aged and weakened state, cannot make even a single blow. Hooto mocks Wind-Up, then once again uses the Master Clock’s power to further age Wind-Up and turn Glumshanks into an old man. Hooto believes he’s won, but Wind-Up reveals that his attack was only a diversion so that Chill could freeze the Master Clock’s hands in place. Hooto attempts to de-age her with the Master Clock’s power, but before his attack can land, Chill casts out an ice block that reflect the blow into three beams. One hits Wind-Up and restores him to normal, one hits Hooto and regresses him back to an egg, and another hits Kaos and further de-ages him into a baby.

The others Skylanders are elated to see Wind-Up back to normal, but find that even though the Master Clock has stopped, they still need to reverse its effects. Wind-Up takes control of the Master Clock, but struggles to figure out which lever to pull to reverse the effects. With a helpful hint from the ghost of Chronobones, however, he manages to find the right lever and restores Skylands back to its proper age. With that taken care of, Glumshanks sends his message to the Skylanders of the past (though as noted, many of the words were lost in the trip to the past), and Hot Head destroys the Master Clock after being reassured that doing so would not disrupt the flow of Skylands’ time by Chronobones. With the Master Clock destroyed, Kaos and Glumshanks return back to their proper ages, and the two leave while Kaos vows revenge. Chronobones then sends the Skylanders and Hooto’s egg back to the Ruins while telling the Skylanders to give Master Eon his regards, and Master Eon gives them his congratulations upon arrival. Zoo Lou, meanwhile, notices Hooto’s egg and picks it up right as it hatches, and initially vows to raise Hooto himself to ensure he’ll grow up right, but Hooto merely pecks him and flies off. The Skylanders all watch Hooto fly off, while Wind-Up remarks that some things never change.

Featured Characters

Skylanders

• Chill
• Hot Head
• Wash Buckler
• Zoo Lou
• Wind-Up
• Spyro (cameo)

Characters

• Master Eon
• Glumshanks
• Kaos
• Snuckles
• Chompy Mage
• Old Mother Witchwart (cameo)
• Boom Brothers (cameo)
• Dishonest Joe (cameo)
• Hooto
• Hugo
• Professor P. Grungally (mentioned only)
• Chronobones

Trivia

• The Chompy Mage’s puppet is given the name Mr. Chompy Glove Puppet in this book.
• Spyro makes a brief cameo in the opening narration, where he is shown flying across Skylands, but otherwise does not appear in the book.
• The Boom Brothers from Terrafin Battles the Boom Brothers make a written cameo as one of the sellers at the Bizarre Bazaar.
• The back of the book contains character biographies for Chill, Hot Head, Wind-Up, Wash Buckler, Zoo Lou, Master Eon, Kaos, and Glumshanks, as well as solutions for each of the activities presented in the book.
• When he is turned back into a teenager, Kaos sports an afro similar to the one he is depicted with in the portraits at Kaos’s Kastle.