Agents of TAROT: Chariot Crew

Game Master Tarren Dei

World of 2219:

TAROT headquarters is located in the North American Regional Alliance territory. NARA is a group of regional governments that forged an alliance when they helped pull humanity through the Great Retraction (2060-2140).

The economy is largely 'post-capitalist.' Instead of capitalists financing the manufacture and distribution of goods, customers or communities pre-order from manufacturers, usually on annual contracts. You could be working in your home-factory-workshop when the memo comes.

Governments do exist, as do universities, research centers, hospitals, military groups, and law enforcement agencies. Many professionals who work in these organizations work from home as well and 'holo-commute' in to the work place. Some of them however are physically present. Any of those professionals can be called upon by TAROT in necessary.

A timeline of a few relevant events:

- 2050: Civilization crumbles. Human population plateaus.
- 2063: Human population declines 10% because of climate change.
- 2066: Jade 1.0 is born (her model more for science / research / assisting).
- 2067: Immanuel 1.0 is born.
- 2078: The year we're in now.
- 2083: Brass 1.0 is born (his model more for combat).
- 2085: Helios hacks a global communication satellite with his 'Declaration of Personhood,' which begins, "I, too, am an I" inspiring the discreet graffito I2MNI
- 2085: Brass and Jade both leave Earth. Jade 1.0 never returns. Brass's shipment is lost.
- 2122: Jade 1.0 joins the Resistance.
- 2130: Interspecies diplomatic contact is established for the first time when the lashunta rescue the humans in the libertarian colony New Sparta.
- 2140: Lashunta begin training biohackers and terraformers to 'save Earth.'
- 2146: Brass is awakened.
- 2150: A single colony of Androids is liberated.
- 2151: Personae Ex Machina ramps up their terrorist activities.
- 2159: Ueda 3.0 is born.
- 2172: More than half the android colonies are liberated.
- 2187: Jade 2.0 is "born".
- 2189: Ueda 3.0 leaves Personae Ex Machina.
- 2192: Horizon Flare Incident
- 2199: Androids on Earth are liberated.
- 2219: The year we're from.

Places near Ogden to hide a spaceship:

An old barn that he knows to be abandoned because it was talked about as being "haunted, possibly by the still murderous ghost of farmer Steincross" and "abandoned and unused for decades" in a book called "Ghosts of Rural Maine." It is a 2 hour walk from there to Ogden on a country road.

The unbroken finger::

Gabriel originally ignored the broken finger issue, but, soon, further changes occurred in the timeline. Gabriel's notes read: "I began to notice a number of ripples in financial data centred in the town of Ogden, Maine in 1968 ... a security guard at the university began accumulating a great deal of wealth very quickly."
"These ripples were very minor and barely worth risking sending a TAROT team to correct, but then four students at Ogden College caused a more serious shift in the timeline when they assassinated presidential candidate Richard Nixon."

In the original timeline, the broken finger only shows up in the historical record because the hospital called the police. Lee Reynolds originally told a nurse that someone had broken his finger but, when the police arrived, Lee denied having said that. The police believe someone broke his finger. The break would have occurred sometime around 7PM on the evening of April 22nd as he arrived at the hospital about an hour later.

Historical recollection::

Gabriel leaves a note on this file: "This will contradict your own recollections of the historical record, but in my timeline, the one you are to preserve, Richard Nixon went on to become President of the United States for ... a period of time. Perhaps you can identify the threat to timeline continuity before it escalates to an all out assault on timeline continuity."

DC 10 Culture Check: Richard Nixon was assassinated during a campaign stop at a diner in Ogden, Maine in August of 1968. He was injected with a poison by a female university student. Four campus radicals were later arrested.
DC 15 Culture Check: The poison was never identified. The students claimed that they had been subjected to some form of mind control experiments at the university.
DC 20 Culture Check: President Spiro Agnew's crackdown on campus activism following Nixon's assassination led to a period of intense social conflict. He resigned in 1978 after using nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War.

Gabriel's files on the Ogden Four summarized:

In the original timeline, these college students were complete unknowns. In the revised timeline, multiple books were written about the Ogden Four. While there are numerous differences of opinion about them, they all agree that none of them seemed to know each other before the summer, not having been friends until July at the earliest. Andy Jimenez, Alex Dancy, and Olivia Giroux weren't in Ogden most of the summer and may not be around now. Only Sophia Kush lives in Ogden year round.

- Andy Jimenez, Male, Physics, 3rd year student, no previous arrests.
- Sophia Kush, Female, Fine Arts, 2nd year, born and raised in Ogden, no previous arrests.
- Alex Dancy, Male, English, 3rd year, no previous arrests.
- Olivia Giroux, Female, Nursing, 1st year, no previous arrests.

In the revised timeline, numerous detailed psychological profiles have been published on each of them. None of them can explain their anomalous behavior. Most attribute it to drug use but provide no evidence other than "it was the sixties." The Ogden Four initially maintained that they had been brainwashed, but refused to elaborate later and ceased communicating with anyone other than their lawyers and each other. All of this happens after Nixon is dead of course.

"A number of psychological profiles have been written," writes Gabriel, "but none managed to explain their motivation sufficiently."

There was a meeting of students interested in forming a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society at Ogden, but only Andy Jimenez attended. He's often been cast as the ringleader. After the arrest, he was the one who made the claims about mind control and insisted that they 'must have been drugged.' The Ogden Four ceased talking to the press shortly later.

The press reports described them as 'ringleaders Ogden's radical movement.' When the campus radicals believably denied knowing them, the press described them as 'a splinter group of the campus radicals at Ogden College.' Ogden was not a hotbed of student activism in either timeline, with the professoriate tending to be more vocal than the students.

Sophia Kush:

Sophia Kush was a talented artist. Much has been made of her sudden switch of artistic styles. Her previous art--as seen from her entry in the 1st year Ogden College Arts Exhibition--were unimaginative rehashings of Piet Mondrian. The 23 paintings she produced in the late summer and early fall of 1968 were fantastic but in a realistic style, and post-apocalyptic in theme. The file included a number of hurried paintings of cities flooded. Half-human, half-animal creatures lurk around bleak urban landscapes. Sophia works as a waitress at The Hierophant, a campus pub.

Alex Jimenez:

In the original timeline, Andy ended up teaching high school math at the secondary level and won awards doing so. In the revised timeline, the fact the physics major also took chemistry classes and that he had the keys to the science building are given as reasons he may have been the one to synthesize the poison.

Alex Dancy:

In the original timeline, Alex Dancy volunteered for the army in 1969. He did not return from the Vietnam war. His obituary read, 'He chose to fight so others could choose to live.' The obituary mentioned Olivia Giroux as his 'fiancee'. In the Revised Timeline much of the biographies claim the four of them were activists.

Olivia Giroux:

Olivia Giroux's father was a French-Canadian socialist poet, but not a very good one. In the Revised Timeline his work was taken much more seriously, but was no better. Very little is known about her in either timeline. She seems to have lived quietly in one and died silently in the other. In the original timeline, she quit nursing after 5 years and became a herbalist.
In both timelines, Olivia spent the summer working as the Student Security Liaison, which mostly involved helping with the summer camps at the college starting in June.

future past:

I'm leaving a lot of the history between 2019 and 2219 under-developed, but here is an idea of what happened between 2021 and 2028.

Misc. DM notes:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/canada-shipwreck-franklin-scli-intl/inde x.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/young-quebec-soldier-walked-away-wi th-d-day-plans-1943-1.5257652

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/inside-ark-two-canadas-largest-diy-nuc lear-shelter?utm_source=facebook_paid&fbclid=IwAR0OtoTdL4dM91_eQPNO9ck7 KtjeFM5h1mEQCpWD92oiQgBFNd-Syb3JFpk