Interplanetary Infinite Worlds jumps...where's "here" ?

[IrishRover]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It's safe to assume the travellers won't generally find themselves in interstellar space because that would be boring.

Well, the assumption is that the conveyor IS airtight, so interstellar space isn't instantly fatal.

Since the PC's will know what they're doing with the conveyor, I need to know what might PUT them in interstellar space, so they should know not to do it.

One thing that crossed my mind as I was writing this...if there's no gravity anchor, they could become unstuck in location, and and up anywhere.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by IrishRover

Well, the assumption is that the conveyor IS airtight, so interstellar space isn't instantly fatal.
.

I didn't say "fatal". I said "boring"

Since the PC's will know what they're doing with the conveyor, I need to know what might PUT them in interstellar space, so they should know not to do it.

Doubtless they will. My point is, you should go with what is more interesting. Can you think of an interesting reason to shift between lines in interplanetary space? If you can, then they won't shift into interstellar space because that wouldn't be interesting. If you can't then they probably won't do it anyway.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Can you think of an interesting reason to shift between lines in interplanetary space?

Possibility 1: A conveyor gets bonuses for parachronic travel away from a gravity well. Perhaps being able to ignore quantum seperations?

Possibility 2: Using a conveyor away from a gravity well alllows time travel.

Possibility 3: Making a quantum jump in interplanetary space causes a reaction (Ecstasy). The people who do this are addicts - or want to create addicts.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by William

Try this for pseudotechnobabble:

The divergence point between any two timelines isn't just a point in time, it's a point in space-time -- a place and time where some event first resolved differently between the conveyor's current and target timelines. In the conveyor's current reference frame in its starting timeline, there is a historical path from that event to the conveyor. It will arrive in the target timeline at the endpoint of a similar path, the image path being the one with the least possible distortion; usually, in Earthlike timelines, so near to the same apparent spatial point relative to the Earth's gravity well as to be nigh indistiguishable.

The difference is significant mainly when dealing with timelines where the time flow rate is significantly different, or where space has different definition (such as the moon running around the Earth in a crystal sphere, or the plane bending under the weight of too much poetry).

Yeah, timelines that don't *have* a logical divergence point are the problem, if Infinite Worlds stuck strictly to historical divergences played out logically there would be lots of good physics related approaches (personally I like you lock onto a particular subatomic particle, and emerge in a position with the closest to the same spacial and energy relationships to the equivalent of that particle, which would make the "quantum" levels actually measure something quantitized for individual particles). But given the sorts of worlds that exist in the IW setting, I suspect your best justification is going to be you move to a place with a corresponding magical association - usually through the law of sympathy, but some world jumpers can jump through the law of contagion. Conveyers as magical items, not technological ones, may also make sense of a lot of other setting issues - Infinity's control on the process for example - Van Zant is the only person who has made the necessary trade of his soul to Satan to be able to designate a conveyer as functional or something. Magic items are after all not nearly as constrained by logic as technological ones.