Aberrant RPG - A Trip Across Time

[metaphysician]

Lets say that, amidst the normal activities, your nova PC is subjected to some weird temporal effect. Suddenly, he finds himself in another era entirely, if in the location equivalent of his normal haunts.

What would he do?

1. Trinity era, right after the Process 418 sets off the Venezuela Phenomenon

2. Adventure era, a few months after Hammersmith.

[Sprocket]

In both cases, he'd go underground ASAP & acquire some local color for camouflage before scoping out the general "state of the world". He'd basically consider himself to have been dropped into hostile (until proven otherwise) territory. To be fair though, that's also how he'd react if he was dropped into an alternate version (from his perspective) of the Nova Age or into some other supers setting.

Finding a way home would be his second priority.

[Alex Green]

2. Adventure era, a few months after Hammersmith.

I'm playing in that game. We the PCs decided to totally reshape the world.

[BcAugust]

Well, if Artemis is alone... Well, for any era, that immediately means she's going to go quiet and try to find out what's going on. And given that both eras still have domesticated animals, and her general stealth/Quantum Invisibility, means she likely has a fair while to find out.

1) This is likely going to hurt, though thank goodness none of her usual haunts are in Tainted lands. Even so, the paucity of animal and plant life(compared to the Bronze Age, to note), is going to make her queasy. And cautious. She'd try sneaking into a city to try and find out what's going on, taking time to try and learn the language. Once she sees the Psi order symbols...well, she'd likely figure out she's in the "far future" and head to England, to wait for the Summer King to wake up. Besides, when Hermes comes looking for her, that's probably where he'd look to.

2) Huh, it depends where she ends up. China...would be bad for several reasons at this time, perhaps leading to Artemis to become a terror to the invading forces, simply because of how they're acting. If it's closer to Thera, then it's likely she'd just take her time and look around...though any "Great White Hunters" are going to get spooked, or slaughtered(Goddess of Nature. She doesn't mind hunting for food. Trophies, on the other hand....) After she did get a somewhat handle on the era, she'd likely go looking for her "friends" (In order of preference, David Dragos, the Silver Templar, Will or maybe even this "Micheal" that David knows) In the meantime, she'll likely cause a fair bit of trouble socially, if she becomes well known or runs into something that requires her to use her powers of Healing or obvious Shapeshifting. Worship she can handle, modern society she couldn't navigate.

[SkyLion]

I'm playing in that game. We the PCs decided to totally reshape the world.

Actually we showed up before Hammersmith's, attended the event, and our presence there as Nova poured fuel on the fire that was Hammersmith's Machine.

[metaphysician]

In the sense that it caused Hammersmith ( as in canon ), or in the sense that it made the event more potent, a full blown Nova Age in the 20s?

[Alex Green]

In the sense that it caused Hammersmith ( as in canon ), or in the sense that it made the event more potent, a full blown Nova Age in the 20s?

Both maybe. We suspect there are a lot more novas than originally because of our presence, but as we weren't Q8 (or Q6) the effect was a lot lower key than what Divis did. So not many novas compared to the number of A! types.

Historical knowlege is really nasty. Knowing who the good and bad guys were going to be we got them to join us (Max & Divis) or made sure they wouldn't come into power (Hitler and Stalin). Ub.Dragon hasn't come up so I assume the plan to take him out of play before he became a problem worked.

[metaphysician]

Depends on the nature of the historical knowledge, and how much inertia history has, though.

Btw, how are you managing to keep both Mercer and Donighal on your side? Their general ideals are, at least ultimately, diametrically opposite. I'd tend to think that eventually, either one or the other would find whatever compromise to be unacceptable.

( granted, thats speaking from someone whose first response on meeting a young Max would be "I roll initiative. . ." )

[Alex Green]

Depends on the nature of the historical knowledge, and how much inertia history has, though.

Lots and little.

Btw, how are you managing to keep both Mercer and Donighal on your side? Their general ideals are, at least ultimately, diametrically opposite. I'd tend to think that eventually, either one or the other would find whatever compromise to be unacceptable.

Neither of them was in favor of the extermination of humanity or becoming a mutated god.

RE: Donighal

It helped a LOT that we have multiple mega-int types amoung the PCs. Add to that historical knowlege on how to not become tainted, and the long term problems of taint, and proof on what he became, and it was easy. We fully included him (and he's darn useful) in our efforts to smooth out histories errors.

RE: Max

Pointing out that Humanity wasn't really going to learn anything from the various wars for longer than a generation and that we had a lot more historical knowlege was pretty key here. Or at least it would have been if he hadn't been 7 steps ahead of us. When we approached him he already knew who we were, what we were up to, and considering the alternatives he didn't have a problem with most of what we did.

Our central goal is to try to integrate meta-human with human into society. I'd argue that we re-created project pro, but that's a different conversation. IMHO it also helped that we've run into an alien race or two who we know will try to play exterminator in the future.

[metaphysician]

Ah, true. I suppose if you can get to Donighal early enough, it averts the whole "horrible letter of horrible horribleness" and the eventual deciding that humanity is not something he wants to be a part of.

Max. . . eh, gotta be at least some non-sucky Max alternates out there.

[metaphysician]

Hmm, Hermes. . .

1. Most likely would land in either China or the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean region would probably be slightly better, in terms of "not getting noticed as a nova and hunted down by military force", though given Hermes' lack of natural subtlety. . . its probably happening at some point, anyway.

Once he does see enough of the era to get oriented ( and after he makes several, unsupervised, runs on whatever libraries he can find *cough* ), he'd head to Britain. The Summer King is a friend, and once he wakes up, Albion should be relatively safe territory.

( not that Hermes doesn't know about nuclear weapons yet, though that *probably* wouldn't change his mind, as the idea of people trying to nuke the guy does not fit in his mental space )

2. Same arrival points, which means he's probably going to get drawn into some native era heroes stupid pulp adventure post haste. Once oriented, well, he'd find the world reasonably likable. I mean, its a bit dirty and chaotic, but hell, so's life outside Thera. Once again, the libraries get an unsupervised raiding.

Eventually he'd try tracking down some of the heroes of the era he knows of, or perhaps head towards the Temple of Ra. His knowledge and opinion of David Dragos is too complicated to really have any response but "He's a hero now, leave it at that." If he ever meets Maxwell Mercer, though. . .

[Alex Green]

Max is an OK guy, he's just not up to the task with the tools he's got.

[metaphysician]

That heinously hypocritical letter he sent Donighal permanently disqualifies him from any status better than "Good intentions, horribly botched efforts" in my book, but thats another argument.

Its more that, while I can see Mercer wanting to avert the Aberrant War, I have a really hard time seeing him supporting an effort to integrate meta-humanity. His entire philosophy, circa pre-WWII, seems to be "metahumanity should have as little effect on humanity as possible ( except for me )." That, combined with the fact that in this situation, he *wouldn't* be the controlling influence over the project. . .

That said, there's an out in the idea "Mercer wasn't as big an ass in 1922 as he was in 1940", which could be exploited for all its worth.

[Alex Green]

That heinously hypocritical letter he sent Donighal permanently disqualifies him from any status better than "Good intentions, horribly botched efforts" in my book, but thats another argument.

People change over the years, we don't know which version of Max we're dealing with there.

Its more that, while I can see Mercer wanting to avert the Aberrant War, I have a really hard time seeing him supporting an effort to integrate meta-humanity. His entire philosophy, circa pre-WWII, seems to be "metahumanity should have as little effect on humanity as possible ( except for me )."

That philosophy led to the abby war. We integrate or we self exterminate.

Worse, there are aliens that will try the later if we're weak enough.

That said, there's an out in the idea "Mercer wasn't as big an ass in 1922 as he was in 1940"...

Oh he is. ::laugh

[metaphysician]

Huh, something just occured to me. . .

In your modified timeline, the PCs convinced Donighal to not go all taint and chrysalis happy.

This does not, necessarily, mean that his inherent quantum potential is any less than before, however.

Thus, its entirely possible the 'end' result of the timeline is "Taint Free Q8 Michael Donighal", some decades down the road. Probably not quite as powerful, very likely with less total understanding of esoteric quantum science. . . but also *not insane*.

[Alex Green]

We're already seeing something like that. AFAICT he's Q6 and not showing aberrations. This is year 2000 or so, thus he is by definition 'weaker' than he was before... but so is everyone else.