Alternate Crosstime Organizations

[Flyndaran]

I'd imagine a lot of people from the cross-time humanitarian organizations would jump at the chance to join a less political agenda promoting group.
So much so, that I imagine exposing them to TITAN missions to suss out possible "traitors" is an open secret among their respective governments.

I wonder what Homeline would do if they discovered a Cosmic Jumper that could punch through the Coventry barrier. That person would be too dangerous to let live regardless of any actual actions or loyalty.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'd imagine a lot of people from the cross-time humanitarian organizations would jump at the chance to join a less political agenda promoting group.
So much so, that I imagine exposing them to TITAN missions to suss out possible "traitors" is an open secret among their respective governments.

I wonder what Homeline would do if they discovered a Cosmic Jumper that could punch through the Coventry barrier. That person would be too dangerous to let live regardless of any actual actions or loyalty.

They (the jumper) would probably realize it, too, meaning they they'd be on the move PDQ (and would be trying to keep Infinity from finding out, anyway).

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This seems to be some kind of group mind, whose interests and experiences its members find impossible to explain to normal people. "Think of one of the cells of a philosopher's brain trying to explain what the brain thinks about to an amoeba." They are quite happy to have visitors join the Unity, but warn that this will change you radically, to the point you definitely won't be the same person afterwards. Nobody who has undergone this has ever wanted to leave; no, they don't get many takers, but they typically only get visitors every decade or so.

One of those splendid moments when the players are making fright checks. Who needs tentacles?

[Mark Skarr]

Well, let’s see, from my active IW (Infinite Weirdos) game:

Not counting iSWAT (the badguys) and Centrum (have heard of, but not encountered them yet).

CTS—Cross Time Security: An insular group who exists in one world. They have access to multiple avenues of dimensional travel. The Elder Things of Cthulhu Mythos (as well as their Shoggoth allies) exist within the world and have aligned themselves with the Humans of this Earth to protect it from multi-dimensional entities. They’re a friendly enough bunch if you find yourself in their world and are well-behaved. They’ll send you through customs then ask your business, but, they would rather not get any of that on them, thank you. They’re willing to hire out-timers to do some recon work, but don’t expect too much from them.

IST—Interdimensional Super Teams: Yeah, that’s as chaotic as it sounds. Super Heroes, operating from their home world (or localized bases) exploring the many worlds. Friendly and enthusiastic, but, not so good at understanding the seriousness of their situation. Always willing to lend a hand, so long as you are on the up-and-up. Tend to do more harm than good on worlds that don’t have supers, but their powers still work. They’re used to being the heroes, and most worlds don’t take too kindly to that.

Cabal of Robot Mages: A mysterious group of magery-wielding robots trying to find the meaning of the many-worlds. Generally not considered friendly, unless you possess some, useful ability that they can study. However, their "friendship" includes the option of turning you into a cyborg operative. Robots—go figure.

The Road Crew: That’s the name the party has given them. They’re a group of non-human entities, currently dismantling a chronobhan on the world just down from CTS. They appear to be using the components they’re stealing to rebuild the road on the next world down: Fractured Earth. They seem to use some advanced form of magic and technology that no one has gotten close enough to examine yet.

The Council of Ricks
Wait, sorry, don’t know how that got on there . . ..

Ehem. There are more, but the party hasn't encountered them yet. Like [Redacted] and [Redacted]. Oh, and I can't forget [Redacted].

[The rest of this post has been removed by [Redacted]. Seriously, Mark, did you think we'd let you tell them about us?]

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I wonder what Homeline would do if they discovered a Cosmic Jumper that could punch through the Coventry barrier. That person would be too dangerous to let live regardless of any actual actions or loyalty.

Yeah, Homeline doesn't like anything that isn't theirs. That's why they're the badguys in every IW game I do. They really don't like that their form of ID travel is limited and most others aren't.

When "Time Lord" Ana wants to ditch iSWAT for a while, she just heads out past where they can reach and takes a vacation. iSWAT really want's her TL12^ dimensional machine that she's hobbled together from TL8 parts.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I wonder what Homeline would do if they discovered a Cosmic Jumper that could punch through the Coventry barrier. That person would be too dangerous to let live regardless of any actual actions or loyalty.

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

They (the jumper) would probably realize it, too, meaning they they'd be on the move PDQ (and would be trying to keep Infinity from finding out, anyway).

I've played out that scenario. Lost in Dreams featured cosmic world jumping. One character visited and left both Yrth and Conventry under her own power. Eventually a dragon put a spell on her that let him cast spells where-ever she was and tried to force her to do his bidding. An infinity agent with an anti-magic sword got her out of that. She could be held at that point, and infinity did its best to get her as an agent. They looked around for leverage that could get her to stay working for them permanently: family or something like that.

The situation worked out because:

• They could hold her if they really needed to (though only one very valuable agent could do so)
• She had unique abilities other than world jumping that Infinity really wanted. (other quanta, magic detection, and this infinity didn't have a well-stocked ISWAT).
• She didn't have particularly criminal inclinations, and felt like a safe bet
• Killing her would likely neutralize one of their most valuable assets (the sword) for quite a while of time

[PTTG]

United States Crosstime Intervention Task Force
USA-4

Starting in the mid-60's, a US research team managed to make headway into the theory of multiple worlds. By the late '80s, the first stable crosstime portal was activated (requiring the full output of the onsite nuclear reactor to open a tiny one-foot window). The USCITF facility in New Mexico pulls troops from all over the US armed forces and cross-trains them to deploy to other timelines.

The USCITF was mainly seen as a "resource independence" program, until it made contact with Reich-9, a world where Nazi Germany won continental dominance of Europe and negotiated a ceasefire. Decades later, they released a series of corn and rice blights, leading to starvation outside of the Fascist sphere. The USCITF was able to provide food in exchange for advanced technology from Reich-9's USA, which had reverse-engineered many their Reich's weapons.

The USCITF's home world is now rapidly becoming all the more dominated by a USA that is able to export more, produce more, and field more than any other nation on Earth. Their slow assimilation of technologies has already put them into low TL-9, leaving the rest of the world still in TL-8 except for the scraps they've been able to scrounge.

This is a crosstime power that is much more blatant about what they want, except on their own world. The coverup is weak -- every other nation knows that things just aren't adding up -- but nobody expects it's coming from alternate universes.

As for Reich-9, About four years after the blight, the Reich started making diplomatic overtures to "ally" with the USA in order to fight Imperial Japanese East Asia. As the USCITF had already obtained what they needed from the timeline, they invited a few scientists and other VIPs into the program, silenced the ones who refused, and erased all trace of their presence. It wouldn't have been profitable to fight WWII again, after all.

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

The Council of Ricks
Wait, sorry, don’t know how that got on there . . ..

You know how they roll...

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Randyman

You know how they roll...

But they are one of the very few ultra loyal groups out there. They will never give you up, run around, or desert you.

[David Johnston2]

Project Excalibur: In a close parallel in the 1960s a secret research program by their world's Britain attempted to develop a working interface between the human brain and a new kind of computer. It didn't work especially well. Most subjects didn't react at all. But then one of them just disappeared, only to reappear a few minutes later skewered with a sword. After a few dozen duds another subject disappeared, only to reappear hours later having been struck with some kind of incendiary attack. Comparing the brains of the two anomalous results, they managed to determine the unfortunates shared a structural oddity and began to search for more people with the same trait. This time they would only use the fittest subjects, and only after intensive training in wilderness survival, martial arts, and stealth operations. And some of them started to come back alive even after weeks in the other worlds that their Jumper ability was sending them to. The Project's objective settled on one simple goal.. Find worlds with more advanced technology and bring back knowledge of it, or ideally samples. While starting subjects had no cargo capacity at all, experienced subjects began to demonstrate the ability to leave and return with objects. And other cross time factions began to get reports of mysterious men and women who would appear naked or scantily clad on some kind of espionage mission...