New Reality Seeds

[David Johnston2]

Reset-1: The local year is 1978, and the Cold War is noticeably hotter than it was in OTL. In fact at one point the missiles were actually flying and the scout team bugged out. When they sent a cautious follow-up team in to assess the damage...there wasn't any. The nuclear exchange had never happened, and the calendar date now lagged behind Homeline by an extra 9 days. Over the course of next year comparison of time passing between Reset and Homeline showed that repeated discontinuities were happening that that ranged from 2 to 12 days long and the conclusion was reached that someone or something was rewinding the entire universe. Most of the time it was impossible to determine what triggered the resets but on several occasions events that could have killed many people were averted by person or persons unknown.

[PTTG]

Oh, I like that. I like that a lot.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Over the course of next year comparison of time passing between Reset and Homeline showed that repeated discontinuities were happening that that ranged from 2 to 12 days long and the conclusion was reached that someone or something was rewinding the entire universe. Most of the time it was impossible to determine what triggered the resets but on several occasions events that could have killed many people were averted by person or persons unknown.

Sounds like a definite don't go there flag to me. What after all would happen if you went there and the timeline rewound to before you arrived? Do you cease to exist anywhere? Less scary but still interesting, what if you go home and the timeline rewinds to a moment you were still there? Does a second copy of you return to Homeline a few days after you did? Some careful testing that sort of stuff out with robot probes before sending in anybody else seems in order here.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Sounds like a definite don't go there flag to me. What after all would happen if you went there and the timeline rewound to before you arrived? Do you cease to exist anywhere? Less scary but still interesting, what if you go home and the timeline rewinds to a moment you were still there? Does a second copy of you return to Homeline a few days after you did? Some careful testing that sort of stuff out with robot probes before sending in anybody else seems in order here.

I see two options for a reset that takes the world back before your arrival. Either you and everything you brought with you gets bounced to a random world like a conveyor malfunction or you see the world rewind and get the Perk "Temporally Anchored" allowing you to resist historical changes from then on. (Temporally Anchored is an Advantage in settings where actual historical changes are a normal thing, but they're extremely rare in the Infinity setting.

[PTTG]

It's quite simple. Matter from other timelines is still out of perfect resonance with spacetime, or specifically, this brane. As the retrocausal propagation is emitted from the locus of the temporal reversal effect -- or more accurately, as it converges towards that locus from all directions -- extrachronal matter is excluded, at least according to the Hogarth-Lee equations. In other models such as the Extended String model, the extrachronal matter instead produces a counteracting force which can be modeled as a higher-dimentional manifold of branes capable of producing what has been described as a "holographic" force. Regardless, the end effect is that non-native matter is not reset, but does interact with the resetting matter, which can result in physical displacement. Air is of course dealt with as is the air that is displaced by the conveyor. Other matter is a far more difficult problem, resulting in travelers caught up in, say, a wall that is un-deconstructed in their space will end up shoved fairly violently to one side or the other. Luckily for us, forced subatomic interactions aren't allowed by the Hogarth-Lee equations or you'd basically turn into a thermonuclear bomb. So if you're in that situation, hope that the Extended String model isn't correct.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

(SNIP)

Most of the time it was impossible to determine what triggered the resets but on several occasions events that could have killed many people were averted by person or persons unknown.

So, who is the first to find the Lathe of Heaven?
Infinity, Centrum, or the Cabal?

And does the Lathe even know what he, or she, or they, is?

[Phil Masters]

A global-scale reality warper may be considered marginally less plausible than some kind of short-range time travel being used for benevolent ends, with an odd interaction with quantum level interactions. (Depending which philosophers and physicists you talk to, of course, and modulo those who consider the two mathematically equivalent.) The changes don't seem to be global Lathe of Heaven-reality changes, just localised problem fixes.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

A global-scale reality warper may be considered marginally less plausible than some kind of short-range time travel being used for benevolent ends, with an odd interaction with quantum level interactions. (Depending which philosophers and physicists you talk to, of course, and modulo those who consider the two mathematically equivalent.) The changes don't seem to be global Lathe of Heaven-reality changes, just localised problem fixes.

I'll admit that what I was thinking was a mix of "Seven Days" and "time stone"

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I see two options for a reset that takes the world back before your arrival. Either you and everything you brought with you gets bounced to a random world like a conveyor malfunction or you see the world rewind and get the Perk "Temporally Anchored" allowing you to resist historical changes from then on. (Temporally Anchored is an Advantage in settings where actual historical changes are a normal thing, but they're extremely rare in the Infinity setting.

There's another option - if you're there when a reset occurs, you end up in a The Langoliers type of situation - you exist in a "dead" branch of time, and a bunch of something shows up to devour this aborted reality. You've got to figure out a way to get the conveyor working (being in a non-existent Quanta makes this difficult to say the least, but you may be able to figure out a way to link back to Reset-1) before you get unmade as well.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I'll admit that what I was thinking was a mix of "Seven Days" and "time stone"

Yeah, Seven Days was what immediately jumped to my mind when reading your post.

[Astromancer]

This unnamed parallel has only recently diverged from Homeline history. Field Marshall Montgomery was killed in August of 1943 just as the Sicily campaign was being finished. Homeline has yet to ascertain whether or not this was an accidental death or a local variation, or an out time attack. In the two months since Montgomery's death progress in the Italian campaign has been faster. Homeline assumes that removing either Patton or Montgomery would have reduced infighting.

Basically, this is a low Mana world known to have an unusually high number of paranormal beings. The PCs are going to be investigating a mysterious death and trying to prevent further murders in a war zone. At the same time they'll need to deal with the goblins and monsters of Italian folklore and myth. All without exposing the Secret or creating bigger changes than they are investigating.

Note: The local magic is Path/Book. There are known to be witches on this parallel. But beyond that little is known. Orchi (one of the Italian goblins that inspired Tolkien's Orcs) are known to be present as well.

Orchi are larger than humans (eight to nine feet tall), seem to be able to turn into mist, and stink far worse than skunks. They are known to be violent and hostile. They show few signs of high intelligence but a fair amount of low cunning.