Infinite Worlds Timeline

[Pesterfield]

bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and had nothing to do with Iraq. Going after Saddam was entirely out of left field.

Infinity controls the technology and charges high license fees, so many poor countries won't have access. On the other hand they can be reverse engineered and some countries do operate off the book conveyors.

Another problem is cargo capacity, a country can be self sufficient but it will take a lot of conveyors and a lot of trips.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

I have difficulty seeing our current Administration being happy with a stronger UN, and would suspect it would try to undermine Infinity Unlimited or rewrite the charter to give the US more control.

Personally, I agree. But the wildcard in this is Van Zandt's secret meeting with the security council, after which they emerged basically willing to give him whatever he asked for.

Frankly, this is a howling scarlet plot device and a quarter, albeit one with campaign potential. But so long as this Big Secret remains secret, one is allowed to assume that somebody was able to explain whatever-it-was to Bush and Cheney in sufficiently simple and impressive terms that they folded and told their supporters - including the Religious Right and the oil companies - to shut up and live with it.

On the other hand, since the resources of an infinite number of worlds would provide such benefit to Corporate America, to the economy and to the country as a whole, I'm sure most conservatives would support parachronic travel, even if it meant concessions to the UN.

At least until they noticed how disruptive of the status quo the Infinity Boom would actually be. But the book specifically assumes that very few people were bright enough to realise just how vast a change this technology represented. (Which I can just about buy. Even smart economists are prone to minimalist assumptions.)

On the third hand, would our current administration even exist in Homeline? The unveiling of such a big scientific discovery in 1998 would definitely make parachronic travel a campaign issue in 2000; it just might give Gore a "Nerd boost" to put him over the top. Or the Republicans might decide to nominate a candidate with a more tech-savvy image.

Historical inertia. The same way that the modern English language is a crosstime constant from Centrum to Yrth...

[Pesterfield]

Iraq (along with North Korea, Libya, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Burma) is still (or again) a rogue state in 2027.

I wonder what they're doing with parachronics? Probable trying to improve alternate versions of themselves. I could see North Korea and Cuba trying to contact alternate USSRs for funding and helping alternate Soviet States endure.

Iraq will probable try to expand in alt MidEast, maybe also attack altIsraels. Often being fought/competed with by Homeline Iran trying to do the same things. Maybe Syria as well.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by thastygliax

The IW book doesn't offer a lot in the way of specific dates for Homeline events, but does mention several ways that parachronics has had an impact on Homeline society (increased influence of the UN; higher standard of living due to increased resources; widespread availability of entertainment media that "never happened" in Homeline; etc.).

The hard and fast dates tend to be scattered through the text a bit--such as when certain timelines were discovered, which can be found in those timelines' profiles. Most of the dates that are important enough to be pinned down involve either 1) the emergence of parachronics or 2) the history of contact with Centrum and Reich-5.

The problem is if you look at GURPS Time Travel many of those dates go wonky real fast resulting in there having to be a Homeline-2 os those "hard and fast" date may not be that hard and fast.

Centrum Beta-2 is a puzzle as neither Homeline makes any mention of there being a war going on making Centrum wonder if it has somehow avoided the devastating 1902-1912 war they had. This has made finding and gaining access to this reality a top priority as the feeling is it is existing on borrowed time.

The Worlds of Infinite Worlds list highlights the four worlds that got wonky dates.

[Kallatari]

Just flagging that I added a few more entries into the main timeline post, adding a few more GM-centric elements I had left out initially.


2021: A Merlin-1 CIA agent secretly infiltrates Homeline, indicating the start of Merlin-1 as a new hidden cross-world power.

2026: The Condor Group of Merlin-1, thanks to the "Perón-Penguin Pact” allowing them to study the Queen Maud Land
Hellstorm, made contact with Reich-5's Armanen Order.

2027: Reich-5's Raven Division, with the help of the Condor Group, establishes a secret based on Merlin-1.

[arcanus]

I've been meaning to post this for a while.

This is my campaigns Homeline timeline, its unashamably kitchen sink (the beauty of The Infinite Worlds setting) and non canon.

Essentially a little Homeline bureaucracy and building on The Secret also being around Homeline seeing outworld threats growing as Infinity discovers more hell, magical or Z worldlines.

Sheldrake has become more prominent in view of The Cabal and the above, however mainstream administration and science communities are still very against the whole concept of magic but tolerate it due to The Cabal and others potentially being able to operate on Homeline.

Plus mixed in with some of the ideas on The Gurps Wiki.

1922 to 2014

Spoiler:  

Homeline - 1922 to 2014
1922: Centrum develops its first conveyor and begins exploring alternate worlds.

1934: Centrum adopts a "hands off" approach to inhabited alternate Earths and a policy to only exploit worlds without any humans.

1958: Centrum policies for other worlds begins shifting, with a desire to re-educate the other worlds to match their philosophy. There is much debate on this topic, and changes are only small.

1995: Dr. Paul Van Zandt, a physics professor, built the first working parachronic projector and used it to visit Earth-Beta. He concealed his observations and continued his experiments. Six months later, following a mysterious fire that destroyed his Darthmouth laboratory, he resigned from teaching to set up a "consulting" firm.

1995-1998: Dr. Van Zandt refined his theories and contacted 23 more universes, and personally visited six alternates himself. He also founded White Star Trading, a then-secret interworld trading corporation to finance his experiments.

1998: Dr. Van Zandt made headlines by publishing his results - and formally incorporating Infinity Unlimited, with subsidiaries including White Star Trading, Parachronic Laboratories, and Infinity Development. Furthermore, Van Zandt offered to license his designs to any government or corporation interested in crosstime travel. After a closed session with the U.N. Security Council, Infinity Unlimited was formally placed under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Interworld Council (UNIC).

2001: All contact is lost with an "echo" world, that appears to be an exact duplicate of Homeline's history, but at some point in the past.

2001: Discovery of the worldline Attila.

2001: The Interworld Treaty is ratified by UN member states.

2002: Homeline makes the startling discovery of the weird worldline they call the United States of Lizardia. On this strange world the dominant species, called neo-troodons, evolved from dinosaurs and a civilized species of intelligent lizards inhabit the Earth. What makes this a weird parallel, however, is the fact that this history of civilization is almost identical; e.g., the speak the same languages such as English and French, their countries have the same names such as the United States and France, etc. Despite playing out the same history, the individuals were different; e.g. they had WWII with Nazi from Germany, but there was no Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt.

2003: Orichalcum Worldline is discovered.

2003: Contact is lost with two more "echoes." Scientists begin to speculate that these worlds are actually the past of Homeline, and that anyone attempting to change that past - thus creating a paradox - effectively causes the echo to vanish, destroying it. Infinity limits further travel to echoes and begins debating closing down all access as being too dangerous.

2004: The mystery of the vanishing echoes is solved as one group of patrol men from a vanished echo report back. As the future of the world change, it shifted from Q6 to Q5, becoming an alternate world. Infinity scientist therefore learn that they can, in theory, cause deliberate shifts to the echo worlds in Q6 by changing the timeline. Infinity, however, bans any experiments to do so. Travel to echoes remain restricted and carefully watched.

2006: The Transworld Chronicle Media Group is granted Transworld license to covertly cover and record major sporting, historical and items of interest on Echoes and Parallels. Infinity purchases a 30% share in the group as part of its IPO.

2007: Infinity has its first encounters with ‘Other travellers’, parachronic travellers who seem to inhabit Worldline inhabitants bodies.

2008: Homeline has now discovered 633 worlds, finding all of the most mathematically easily predictable coordinates for alternate world. The rate of further discovery of new worlds settles down to about 10 per year after this point.

2009: The Transworld Sports Corporation enters into partnership with The Chronicle providing multimedia coverage of Transworld sports in return for Worldline access under The Chronicles interworld license.

2010: The UNIC Homeline Accords are ratified to prevent over-acceleration of global financial & technological areas and safeguard native cultural, political, and social trends from being adversely influenced by out time influences. It proves difficult to comply with the Accords from day 1.

2011: Infinity discovers the worldline of Reich-5.

2011: First samples of Cliodynamically Active Regeants or Clio-Materials are discovered. Materials are mineral or plant matter based and exhibit traits such as Mana Enhancer properties when transported to other Worldlines.

2012: Infinity discovers the world of Enigma, on which the entire population of the planet seems to have simply disappeared. After six months of investigating, no obvious cause of method was discovered. Infinity closed the worldline from further visits as a precaution.

2012: Having developed a cure for the Ariana Flu, Infinity opened Ariane up for full colonization.

2013: Further incidents of Mind Worldjumpers are reported by Infinity Scouts and patrol. Rumours of these Mind Travellers belong to an organisation called The Order of Hourglass.

2014: Time Tours nearly goes bankrupt when bad word of mouth depressed ticket sales to the overhyped Camelot-2.

[arcanus]

2015 to 2023

Spoiler:  

Homeline - 2015 to 2023
2015: Centrum's discovery of Homeline (which they call Secondus) places a fear that a world in near-anarchy that is on the verge of parachronic discovery, could threaten their world and bring back the wars that nearly destroyed them. Combined with the reality that "infinite worlds" is not as infinite as they believed, Centrum officially changes it policy about other worlds, starting a process to secretly change them to be more like them (without otherwise revealing parachronic technology)

2015: Infinity discovers the world of Merlin-1.

2016: Due to increasing reports of Parachronic and Parachronozoid incursions on Homeline Infinity creates a specialised sub-team within the Scouts division called X-squad. The unit is designed to track and trace incursions particularly Parachronozoids. The squad becomes known for housing misfits and cryptid quacks.

2017: Discovery of Camelot-3.

2017: Infinity patrolman Ted Gruberman, a scout with the ability to jump between worlds on his own, performs a blind jump to an alternate world, but doesn't come back. Unknown to Infinity, he discovered and became trapped in the world of Yrth.

2018: Infinity develops the various theories of Reality Quakes through its study of the various Camelot worlds. In particular, the discovery of the 535 A.D. quantaclysm causes Infinity to abandon the Camelot designation for any further worlds in which a King Arthur is discovered since "Arthur" might not be a natural native of those worlds.

2018: An intruder captured in one of Infinity's most secrets labs turns out to be from another world-spanning Earth now referred to as Centrum. Infinity released that agent with an offer of friendship. Centrum immediately accepted, with apologies for their earlier penetration of Infinity's territory.

2018: Infinity patrolman Ted Gruberman finally manages to escape the world of Yrth on a magical raft which brought him to another worldline. Now able to jump between worlds again, but not sure exactly where he is, he begins jumping around to find his way back to Homeline.

2019: Discovery of Sherlock-2, which led to the development of the Williams-Khor Hypothesis for explaining the physics of the infinite worlds, which postulates the worlds are created based on the expectations of the travelers, which is why they can find "myth" worlds like Sherlock-2. The theory is rejected by Paralabs, who prefer Van Zandt's original Many Worlds Interpretation.

2019: Four timelines disappear from Q6. They are later re-discovered in Q7, and it was determined that Centrum "stole" them by altering their timeline. Centrum seems to be able to successfully calculate what changes are required to shift world closed to their own quantum. Relations with Centrum are ended, and the "infinity war" begins.

2019: A scout team exploring Rustic via a nexus portal wound up involved in a prison break from a Hessian concentration camp in South Africa. Among the escapees was that worldline's Cecil Rhodes, interned for illegal mining activity. Infinity offered him a job running outtime mining operations through Consolidated Mines, Unltd.

2020: Infinity diverts more resources to fight the ever-increasing amount of crossworld organized crime. It still isn't enough.

2020: Worldjumping Scout Ted Gruberman finally makes it back to Homeline and reports back on the world of Yrth. His description of the immense banestorms that struck Yrth a millennium ago causes an uproar at Paralabs as they try to understand it. Many wonder if the humans that populated Yrth came from Homeline's past.

2020: The Stokeham Incident, the Intercor Mall in Stokeham, Utah is attacked by Out Time radicals capable of Transworld travel. Local law enforcement are quickly overwhelmed, and the siege finally ended by Patrol Security and FBI forces.

Subsequent Patrol investigation reveals the breach of the Secret and conveyer transport onto Homeline may have been provided by swagmen or Homeline organised crime syndicates.

2020: Infinity notices that 6 more echoes have shifted out of Q6. Three end up on Q7, one moved to Q5, and the other two have not yet been rediscovered by Infinity. Although Infinity suspects Centrum is involved in these shifts, there is no evidence to confirm this, and echoes have disappeared before for other reasons.

2021: Three more echoes disappear from Q6. One of these was not rediscovered. Of the other two, one ended up in Q4, and the other in Q7. Examination of the worlds found evidence of deliberate outside tampering with the history, confirming Centrum's involvement, making them the 5th and 6th confirmed Centrum interventions. However, since one of the worlds ended up in Q4, which is outside of the reach of Centrum, scientists are somewhat relieved that Centrums science in shifting worlds hasn't been perfected yet.

2021: Infinity sends a group of scouts to Yrth. This time prepared for the dimensional Sargasso, it only took them 5 months to get back. The successful missions convinced Infinity to allow more carefully planned missions into the world.

2021: Supported by the confirmed discovery of Yrth, Rupert Sheldrake establishes the Sheldrake Foundation as a division of Paralabs to study Transworld Magic in all its forms.

2021: Discovery of Homeline 2 (current year 2000) engaged in war with Centrum 2, despite both Worldlines existing on Quanta 5 neither is able to access the other via Conveyer or Projector.
Homeline 2 is more aggressive in its Worldline approach and both Infinities occasionally encounter each other on other Worldlines.

2021: Centrum infiltrates the world of Kaiserreich-4

2021: Homeline France attempts to overthrow the South Carolina government on Britannica-1

2021: A Merlin-1 CIA agent secretly infiltrates Homeline, indicating the start of Merlin-1 as a new hidden cross-world power.

2021: The Qeqertarsuag Incident (more commonly known as The Greenland Incident), a small town in Greenland is invaded by what are reported to be transdimensional barbarians arriving in flying ships. The town suffers massive damage and death toll (442 of its 1000 population) before the barbarians are countered by Greenlander, Danish and US military forces.

Over two thirds of the invading force retreats, Paralab Investigations indicate the ships travelled through ‘The Spaces between’ and do not conform to recognised Projector or Conveyer Technologies or utilise Nexas gates.

2022: An unauthorized attack by Homeline Russian Spetsnaz on Reich-5 results in the Russians being killed, and the Infinity Patrol sent to stop them having members and a conveyor captured. Infinity closes the worldline from all further access, fearing that they were now aware of interworld travel and didn't want the Reich to gain any more technology or knowledge. UNIC prepares the plans for Operation Firefall - a full scale invasion by Homeline - but the plans are shelved, fearing that it was too likely to end up with the world obtaining parachronic technology and becoming Homeline's enemy.

2022: Consolidated Mines, Unltd., became independent from Infinity Unlimited, with Rhodes as its new head.

2022: Infinity Inc builds on its Super national status within the Interworld Treaty establishing its own Quantum 4 Galileo Colony Worldline and applying for UN membership. Whilst a number of global nations are broadly in agreement or neutral on the proposal, an equal number of nations and business interests globally are vehemently opposed. Infinity refers the matter to UNIC to resolve under the basis of its corporate and human rights being as equally valid as existing Colony Worldline applications. Anti-trust suits and vast political lobbying ensue for the next 6 years.

2022: The United States of Homeline, under the order of President McConnell, sends Ranger Force Tau on Gallatin for a pre-emptive attack on that world's Algerian government before it could deploy its nuclear missiles, which would have send the entire Middle East into turmoil.

2022: A Patrol investigation on the Q3 1920s Worldline of Lindeberg 2 uncovers activities of The Order of The Hourglass, the Order is unrelated to the investigation.

Infinity denotes the Order as being persons of interest and a threat to the Secret, actively searching for Order Mind Travellers and possible incursion on Homeline.

2023: ISWAT travels to the world of Iskander-2 to retrieve ancient Buddhist texts that, while mundane on that world, they believe will help them power a ritual on another world to banish a demon. There, they encounter C31R07 ("C-31"), who they eventually recruit as one of their agents. The demon is successfully banished.

2023: Infinity discovers the world Taft-7.

2023: In response to The Stokeham and Greenland Incidents the US government forms the Homeline Internal Defence Agency (HID) a governmental alternative to the Patrols Security division. After a period of inter-department politics they agree to joint oversight in most Homeline defence matters.

2023: Infinity investigates what appears to be outworld manipulation of the stock markets of a world, and meet Baron Janos Telkozep. The vampire offers his expertise in finances, vampires, and the cabal in exchange for protection against the cabal. Janos Telkozep is quickly recruited by ISWAT.

[WineShark]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

The campaign is set in the early 21st Century. I'm not finding the exact date in the IW chapter of the Basic Campaigns book, but the old GURPS Time Travels suppliment it originally appeared in set Homeline in 2015.

2027 is the nominal year on Homeline, but I'm not finding where I picked that number up... It's in IW or Campaigns. I just can't seem to find the page ref.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by WineShark

2027 is the nominal year on Homeline, but I'm not finding where I picked that number up... It's in IW or Campaigns. I just can't seem to find the page ref.

2027 is in the book, which I don't have at hand alas so no page reference.

I specifically remember it because it's anomalous. In 1991's Time Travel, the Infinity setting takes place in 2015. 24 year difference. In 2005's IW, it's 2027 a 22 year delta.

Are we catching up?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

2027 is in the book, which I don't have at hand alas so no page reference.

I specifically remember it because it's anomalous. In 1991's Time Travel, the Infinity setting takes place in 2015. 24 year difference. In 2005's IW, it's 2027 a 22 year delta.

Are we catching up?

Comparing Time Travel and Infinate Worlds is tricky because several worlds changed quanta between the two with no reason given or even a note as this happening, some have kept the same year while others have different years then the delta between the two books would suggest.