A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
~ G. K. Chesterton
~ G. K. Chesterton
P R E M I S E
If you could travel time, wouldn't the massive injustices of history you witnessed, piling on year after year, century on century, millennia long, wouldn't they start to trouble you? Even reaching into your sleep?
How could you possibly ignore the suffering, the screams, and live with yourself? Could you shrug these blood-drenched humans away, and still claim to be one yourself?
Our collective foe has all the power and force and organization. They enjoy the fruits of the civilizations they tend, as many times as they can stand enjoying its sameness. They do nothing to better the eternal horrors of history, claiming it to be impossible to even try to alter events. They dispose of their souls in the process, killing and eating and birthing as their fixed destinies demand. They often lose their sanity in the process, too.
Sometimes we have nothing left but our wits. But when we go insane, at least it's not from obscene quantities of boredom or angst or ennui.
When we die, we know we fought for something . And when we do survive, and when we do save people from the sword and the flame, we go to worlds and lands unsuspected since man was born, and we can live forever .
But we begin life as nothing more than ants.
To become something bigger it takes one big mistake. Maybe it would be more correct to call it an accident. You saw something you weren't supposed to see. You suddenly became aware of the Waltz, and that makes you a threat.
So they kidnapped you. You woke in a strange place, surrounded by strange people. Some other folks like you that don't know other better, others are your Initiators, the ones that took you in the first place, the ones that make you. So they give you a whole talk about the sanctity of time and who billions of lives depend on its continued linearity. And if you just do a few things for them you can join their little society, and it's best not to say no, you wouldn't want to know what happens to those that say no.
But you my friend, you are a smart one. Somehow you escape their clutches before their damn mantra can get rooted into your head. And soon you get picked up by some like-minded individuals intent on changing things, making things better for everybody. Fuck that sounds better than preserving the status quo right?
But this isn't a game nor is it some graceful Waltz as they call it. This is war. Every time you Traverse you are putting your neck out there. Every mistake you make brings them closer and closer. And when they do find you, you won't be able to escape, they will be behind you, they will be ahead of you, they will push you, they will destroy everything you hold dear and then they will devour you.
So get a move on Breaker, time’s running out.
How could you possibly ignore the suffering, the screams, and live with yourself? Could you shrug these blood-drenched humans away, and still claim to be one yourself?
Our collective foe has all the power and force and organization. They enjoy the fruits of the civilizations they tend, as many times as they can stand enjoying its sameness. They do nothing to better the eternal horrors of history, claiming it to be impossible to even try to alter events. They dispose of their souls in the process, killing and eating and birthing as their fixed destinies demand. They often lose their sanity in the process, too.
Sometimes we have nothing left but our wits. But when we go insane, at least it's not from obscene quantities of boredom or angst or ennui.
When we die, we know we fought for something . And when we do survive, and when we do save people from the sword and the flame, we go to worlds and lands unsuspected since man was born, and we can live forever .
But we begin life as nothing more than ants.
To become something bigger it takes one big mistake. Maybe it would be more correct to call it an accident. You saw something you weren't supposed to see. You suddenly became aware of the Waltz, and that makes you a threat.
So they kidnapped you. You woke in a strange place, surrounded by strange people. Some other folks like you that don't know other better, others are your Initiators, the ones that took you in the first place, the ones that make you. So they give you a whole talk about the sanctity of time and who billions of lives depend on its continued linearity. And if you just do a few things for them you can join their little society, and it's best not to say no, you wouldn't want to know what happens to those that say no.
But you my friend, you are a smart one. Somehow you escape their clutches before their damn mantra can get rooted into your head. And soon you get picked up by some like-minded individuals intent on changing things, making things better for everybody. Fuck that sounds better than preserving the status quo right?
But this isn't a game nor is it some graceful Waltz as they call it. This is war. Every time you Traverse you are putting your neck out there. Every mistake you make brings them closer and closer. And when they do find you, you won't be able to escape, they will be behind you, they will be ahead of you, they will push you, they will destroy everything you hold dear and then they will devour you.
So get a move on Breaker, time’s running out.
A G E N T LE M A N ' S G U I D E T O T I M E T R A V E L
The ability to jump through time is what the Enemy refer to as Traversal. Traversal comes in three distinct forms. Static Traversal which occurs when you travel within the same plane of time your just moving yourself and not say the entire universe. This allows for teleportation and while useful isn't that powerful in comparison to its elder siblings - Descension Traversal and Ascension Traversal. In short when one descends, they descend from their plane of time going into the past, when they ascend they head into a future.
As Breakers are reliant upon antique technology the range of their traversal is limited to decades at the highest level where the Enemy can span full millennia at will with seemingly no ill effects.
Yet smart and cunning as they are Breakers have devised ways around this. The Enemy calls this system Breaking upon which the Breakers names are derived. A Break occurs when a time traveler induces a paradox. By carefully observation and understanding of an event you can alter the events to create a small parallel universe. A flux of distorted time and space. Breaks are small and unstable things that are either closed by the Enemy or collapse in upon themselves after some period of time, you don't want to be even near one of those when that happens. Luckily for you, your just using them as a short cut. For when you ascend or descend within a Break, the effect is amplified launching you up or down through across much longer ranges.
The main goal of the Breakers is to create a Break big enough that they can traverse with enough power to escape our current Universe all together.
Looking at the diagram above it goes something like this. You have a breaker currently stuck in the Ascendancy prescribed universe this is (Point A). This of course sucks a lot so they want to escape so they create a paradox. (Point B) At that point a break occurs allowing them to jump into another paraverse for a limited period of time (Point C). At the same time members of the Ascendency are sent out and fix that Break (Point D). This causes the break to collapse back in upon itself reconciling itself with the timeline of our universe. The goal of a breaker is to create a break stable enough and large enough so that a hole can be punched into another paraverse and it won’t collapse allowing for them to effectively live in another Universe away from the Ascendancy's rule hopefully. (Point E)
Breakers are trying to change things, the Enemy is trying to change things as well but they want to put back to way that they were. Either way you are damning an infinite number of other universes to a similar fate. In the end nobody can save everybody. But you can save those that you can.
Lastly any traversal event creates presence. Presence are noticeable fluctuations that others can pick up on and use to find you. Generally the bigger the traversal the larger the presence, and the higher the presence the higher the chance that the Enemy finds you. Presence can be mitigated in some regards by performing traversal events in secluded areas where such disturbances can go unnoticed but there is always the danger that the forest in the last is a city in the future and vice versa. Remember the more you know, the safer you are.
As Breakers are reliant upon antique technology the range of their traversal is limited to decades at the highest level where the Enemy can span full millennia at will with seemingly no ill effects.
Yet smart and cunning as they are Breakers have devised ways around this. The Enemy calls this system Breaking upon which the Breakers names are derived. A Break occurs when a time traveler induces a paradox. By carefully observation and understanding of an event you can alter the events to create a small parallel universe. A flux of distorted time and space. Breaks are small and unstable things that are either closed by the Enemy or collapse in upon themselves after some period of time, you don't want to be even near one of those when that happens. Luckily for you, your just using them as a short cut. For when you ascend or descend within a Break, the effect is amplified launching you up or down through across much longer ranges.
The main goal of the Breakers is to create a Break big enough that they can traverse with enough power to escape our current Universe all together.
Looking at the diagram above it goes something like this. You have a breaker currently stuck in the Ascendancy prescribed universe this is (Point A). This of course sucks a lot so they want to escape so they create a paradox. (Point B) At that point a break occurs allowing them to jump into another paraverse for a limited period of time (Point C). At the same time members of the Ascendency are sent out and fix that Break (Point D). This causes the break to collapse back in upon itself reconciling itself with the timeline of our universe. The goal of a breaker is to create a break stable enough and large enough so that a hole can be punched into another paraverse and it won’t collapse allowing for them to effectively live in another Universe away from the Ascendancy's rule hopefully. (Point E)
Breakers are trying to change things, the Enemy is trying to change things as well but they want to put back to way that they were. Either way you are damning an infinite number of other universes to a similar fate. In the end nobody can save everybody. But you can save those that you can.
Lastly any traversal event creates presence. Presence are noticeable fluctuations that others can pick up on and use to find you. Generally the bigger the traversal the larger the presence, and the higher the presence the higher the chance that the Enemy finds you. Presence can be mitigated in some regards by performing traversal events in secluded areas where such disturbances can go unnoticed but there is always the danger that the forest in the last is a city in the future and vice versa. Remember the more you know, the safer you are.
C H A N G E O R P R E S E R V E
C O D E X
H E L L O
Do you enjoy high concept RPs about time travel, espionage, and reality-warping? Well if so you are in the right place. If you want sales pitch Perturbation is basically what happens when Demon: The Descent and Looper get down and dirty in the back of Doc Brown's DeLorean. A small group RP focused on a Circuit of Breakers, a bunch of Time Travelers fighting against a mixture between the Time Police and Illuminati on crack. It's about fighting against the odds for all you have are your wits and some accumulation of gadgets and objects to fight against a force that can conjure fireballs at wall and reserve gravity on you. Don't go quietly into that good night and all. With a heavy focus on character interaction as while the plot is linear for the most part the subplots and various outcomes are all dependent on you. A world of alternate universes, eldritch abominations, and Issac Newton crying in his grave is waiting for you.
