Are you ready for a mixture of sci-fi, history, romance, comedy and time travel? Well carry on young wanderer and join us on this journey

There is a single day in annals of time that all men and women dread; their ten-year high school reunion. On that day, all the old faces return to town, old flames, old bullies, that guy who used to pick his nose and eat what he found, yeah you remember him? He owns Microsoft now.

Unfortunately for some, that day has now arrived in nowheresville, Philadelphia. The night of the reunion, a group come together and talk of old memories and the past and it isn’t as bad as they thought it would be. Until they come across a memory they wished they didn’t have; the disappearance of Tess Adamson ten years prior. Tess was an A-Student, smart, beautiful and everyone loved her. She was to be the valedictorian of their class. A few nights before graduation, Tess was dared to venture to an old mansion just outside of town where a once world renowned scientist, Dr Quint lived and steal one of his inventions. She never came back. Police investigated the house and though a body was never found, Dr Quint was arrested and convicted of murder.

This topic of conversation was not an easy one for this group to discuss. Maybe it was a feeling of guilt they all shared or maybe it was one too many beers but the entirety of the class decided to honour their lost friend and head up to the mansion to pay their respects.
The mansion had been left abandoned and untouched since the arrest, rooms filled with dust and cobwebs, windows broken and graffiti sprayed on the outside walls from years of vandalism. As the class split up into smaller groups, once such crew find themselves in the attack and inside a hidden room where they find Dr Quint’s final invention; a time machine…

In Summary:
The basic premise of the story is a group of people who have returned to their home town for their school reunion, decide to investigate an old house after a friend disappeared there years earlier. The uncover a machine which then sends them hurdling through time and space. What follows is a series of adventures in both the past and the future as they try find their way home, solve the mystery of their friends vanishing and come up against some of histories most interesting characters.

As all this goes on, our characters must deal with each other, not all of these people were friends in high school, they were in different circles and now that they are thrown into close quarters together, what will happen?! Once all character sheets have been posted, we will sort out prior relationships before the IC starts. They must also deal with the realisation of what they have left behind. Maybe some of them had children who are now alone and parentless? Did they have very big responsibilities which they can now no longer fulfil because they are trapped somewhere in time?

The story itself will be almost episodic, with our intrepid travellers heading (unwillingly) into another time, solving a problem there and then moving on. I’ve been toying with the idea that our heroes could also serve as inspirations for famous literary characters (or maybe they even become them).

In this universe, science is not the only thing that exists, as our travellers will find out, magic and evil lurk everywhere, hidden from those who don’t know where to look.

Characters:
At the start of the adventure our travellers are a group of twenty somethings that are home for their ten-year high school reunion. Some are successful, some are not. Some might have children; others might have a serious illness. The point of this is to show the real changes that can occur in a person after high school, not the fantasy ones where they’re all rich and famous like we see in the movies. Keep that in mind when developing your character.

To avoid certain tropes, be aware that our characters should not have all been in the same friendship group in high school but as said earlier, we’ll delve deeper into relationships before the IC starts.

As stated above, as our characters travel through time and go on wild adventures, they will discover that many things that they thought didn’t exist, do I,e magic and the supernatural, extreme science and the like. Imagine if you will, our characters are in the far future and one of the group is offered the chance to receive an implant that would enhance brain function, would they take it? Or if one friend’s bad temper and a rogue scientist’s formula created the real Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? The possibilities are endless.



The Time Machine:

The Time Machine is not a machine per say but a sentient being living inside a system that Dr Quint created. Upon entering the chamber, the “time machine” loaded itself into the traveller’s smart phones as an app called “Roxy”. When activated, Roxy uses a female voice and acts not to dissimilar to SIRI. Roxy tracks the traveller’s movements through time, advises them where and when they are and has a built in index of historical moments which the travellers can use to identify people and situations.

The actual science of the time machine is unknown to the travellers.
When a countdown begins on the “Roxy Clock” all of the active travellers must access the app within the allotted time. If the app is not accessed within the countdown, then whomever did not open it, will be left behind when the next temporal shift occurs. Once the clock reaches zero, those whom have activated it must be within a six-foot radius of each other, as a sphere of energy generates from the phones and encloses the travellers within it as the world around them shifts. Those not in the sphere will be left behind.

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