------------------------------
1999 #81
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:23:39 -0600 (CST)
From: Jason Kemp
Subject: Divergent Timelines Adventure Seed
Greetings, All,
Joe Webb's earlier post surprises me, as I was thinking of something very similar this morning. With the recent discussion of Heinlein's works, Time Travel has been mentioned several times. Then I read about someone's question as to the direction of the Canonical Timeline after 1116. And thus, the thought was born.
<bizarre adventure seed>
Two divergent timelines have been created, based on Strephon's apparent discovery of the assassination attempt. Now, the Regency is in trouble of never existing at all, because the messenger made it to the Emperor.
Meanwhile, back in the Regency's future....
Psionics have recently determined that the Empress Wave is not the results of a gravitic or EM phenomenon, but is instead a collapsing Time Front, destroying a divergent timeline and rewriting the milieu as the PCs understand it.
The powers-that-be have to make a choice: Explore the realms beyond the incoming Time Front, where history has taken a different direction, and the last eighty five years never happened. OR, Use a very rare psionic special ability to send a group of adventurers back into the past, to correct the problem and shape the future. (This psionic ability is the only canonical reference to Time Travel I've found.)
Option One: Referees have an opportunity to explore the 3I of 1200, and the Age of the Grand Imperium sans Virus. Hmmm, what will the future hold without the Virus's interference? More TL 16 (GTL 13) worlds popping up? The return of Grandfather? Another Zhodani-Imperial clash or two? The Rebellion of the Rim (AKA The Free Terra Movement)? Speculations, anyone?
Option Two: Referees have an opportunity to explore PC motivations. Do they save the Emperor and stop the Shattered Imperium, thus stopping the Virus released as a result of the Second Civil War? Do they kill the messenger, insuring that the 3I goes down in a blaze of turmoil and destruction? What will be the ramifications of their intervention? Of course, they have to run afowl with the military, media, or law enforcement of the current time period, and must deal with the ramifications of that. Unless, of course, they're very, very careful...
</bizarre adventure seed>
Thoughts? Ideas?
BTW, Joe, good luck with the Interstellar Roman Polity idea. I'd like to hear more about it as it develops. (It may not be canon, but it's sure to be interesting.)
In Service,
Jason
============================
Jason Kemp, ADS Programmer I
(512)458-7111 ext. 3375
Internet Address: jason.kemp@tdh.state.tx.us
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#86
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 20:48:01 -0800
From: Joe Webb
Subject: Re: timetravel
Doug Berry wrote:
>>>>>>>>
I believe Marc has said that timetravel was beyond even the Ancients, since
if Granddaddy could travel through time, whyt didn't he go back and warn
himself not to have children? Or that the Vargr were a bad idea?
>>>>>>>>>
Bummer, but not quite logical in view of the coyns. I can believe that Grandfather may have manipulated genes of certain races allowing them to understand jump drive. Something along the lines of the obelisk in 2001. I hate to overuse the Ancients that way though. If He only put in a likely understanding, there should be more races on the coynes. Races that did not end up developing the jump, but could have. He may have come back time and again (which He did), editing the coynes as it became clear that race X wasn't going to make it. But He would have had to ake changes pretty close to the present day, which He didn't. If He put in guaranteed understanding of jump (jumpn' genes!), then he only had to picture the races that would definitely have the drive. The problem, again, is with Aslan. In case someone on the list doesn't know the secret, stop reading now.
Humans are the easy ones for the coynes. Scattered so far one subrace was bound to come up with the drive. The others aren't so clear cut. How likely was it, 75 kiloyears ago, to see that the k'kree and hivers would not only develop an advanced technology, but survive to become starfareing, and then survive contact with other races? For vargr its even worse, by all rights they should have gone extinct a week after coming up with fusion theory. The aslan totally break this idea down. It was total chance they got the drive. Even if it was likely they survived technology (not likely in the face of their world wars) to meet a starfaring race, how likely was it that they would be free to exploit the drive the way they did? They had jump for centuries before they actually had to deal with their neighbors. Not too likely, especially from -75Kyrs.
Two possibilities. One, psionic precognition. Just in game terms I don't like it, unless you weigh it down with all kind of caveats it totally ruins game balance. If you weigh it down ("are these shadows of what will be, or what might be, spirit?") you get the lucky aslan problem again. Two, time travel tech limitations. During the Final War, nobody had time travel yet. During the Droyne Renaissance, Yaskodray could see about 75kiloyears into the future/past. He couldn't warn himself in -300K about his mistakes, he could only reach -150K. Maybe about now he can reach the Era of the Grandchildren...Empress Wave Jason? Two A: Alternate Reality check. Would Yaskodray, who has kept himself alive by sheer force of will for 300+ kiloyears want to risk changing the past? He knows he won in THIS timeline, but what if he went back and warns himself not to have children, what else could change? Sure, he would continue to live, but tech advance won't be nearly so fast, and what dangers has he overcome in the last 300K because of that high tech?. Did he know ALL the dangers his offspring overcame that could effect him? And what are the chances of another Mule appearing among the droyne? It happened once, and if they continue the way they where, why not again? Wouldn't it be safer for him to keep everything they way it is? If he stopped himself from having children, would he be the same being today?
If the PCs come across a timemachine, say from -75K, today's Grandfather might not like them mucking about with the past, not to mention having to deal with Renaissance Grandfather, or even a Grandchild who stole timemachine from todays, or even tomorrows, Grandfather.
I have to lay down now, I've boggled my own mind...
Joe.
------------------------------
#86
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 05:41:34 +0100 (MET)
From: Hans Rancke-Madsen
Subject: Re: timetravel
Joe Webb writes:
>How did Grandfather know, in -75,000 to put humaniti, aslan, kkree, and
>hivers on the coynes?
There's no reason to assume he did. While he did introduce the coyns in c. -75,000 (as aids to casting -- they were known back in Ancient times), Secret of the Ancients mentions that he came back from time to time and revised them. No specific revisions are mentioned, but since his last visit to our universe was around -1000 (also per SotA), he could have added the Aslans at that time.
(Is anybody maintaining the FAQ at the moment? This one may warrant a mention; it crops up fairly regularily).
>Timetravel of course! How do we know the minor human
>races were from Earth after all? Yaskodray may have just kidnapped them
>from the Third Imperium, or the Rule, or 1999...
Note that I'm not dissing your idea, just trying to squelch the notion that Grandpop MUST have known about the aslans in -75,000.
>If you have G:Alternate Earths you have a whole slate of different
>campeigns, and its a natural with the G:T timeline vs. the Rebellion
>timeline.
When G:T was first announced I tried to come up with an idea that involved a crossover between the Main Traveller timeline and the GT timeline, but I couldn't come up with anything where the difference between the two universes was a crucial part of the plot.
| Hans Rancke |
| University of Copenhagen |
| rancke@diku.dk |
"Could you not begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, and then, if you are able to, stop?"
"I'll try," said his lordship, "but I always find the stopping business so difficult."
--- "Murder must advertise" by Dorothy Sayers
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1999 #102
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 14:46:36 +0100 (MET)
On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Douglas E. Berry wrote:
I read that article and thought about it finding a way around it. In my campaign there IS a time machine, although still no one knows of it. (as my pcs don't read this I can tell you). But there are some restrictions to use it, as it is the type designed as a tipler-machine:
I liked the idea to get my players into the two alternate universes at one and the same campaign, so I made this kind of an artifact. The original idea came from Frank Tipler, after whom it is named. It's a giant cylinder made of superdense material, rotating by half light velocity. This makes an artificial black hole, time travel being done by crossing between the event horizons either with or against the rotation.
If this cylinder is stopped, there is no possibility to travel into the past over this point in time.
Now consider a virus-infected ship or robot sent from the new era into the time before the fifth frontier war to kill Norris, preventing him getting Archduke and establishing the Regency - the last bastion against Virus and also a puffer between virus space and the Zhodani Imperium ...
btw, has anybody heard something from the set of T3?
L.A.
From: Lars Adler
Subject: Re: timetravel
> At 06:46 AM 2/3/99 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >How did Grandfather know, in -75,000 to put humaniti, aslan, kkree, and
> >hivers on the coynes? Timetravel of course! How do we know the minor human
> >races were from Earth after all? Yaskodray may have just kidnapped them
> >from the Third Imperium, or the Rule, or 1999...
>
> I believe Marc has said that timetravel was beyond even the Ancients, since
> if Granddaddy could travel through time, whyt didn't he go back and warn
> himself not to have children? Or that the Vargr were a bad idea?
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