[Spoilers] PFS and Time Travel

[TheDisturbed1]

I feel like even mentioning the name of the scenarios in which Time Travel takes place already is a big spoiler, but its likely unavoidable if I want to post this topic at all.

That said...

***This thread will contain spoilers about time travel in PFS scenarios, including

Spoiler:

Legacy of the Stonelords, The Sky Key Solution (and maybe other scenarios, if its done in any others and Im just overlooking them).

If you do not wish to have information for those scenarios spoiled for you, DO NOT READ THIS THREAD!***

[Disturbed1]

So time travel is possible. Interesting.

The real question is whether PFS will follow along with Back to the Future type time travel or more like the ever increasinly-convuluted Terminator type of time travel.

Examples of differences as far as I understand them:

Back to the Future time travel allows for changes in the timeline by altering the past, and these events directly affect the future. Example: Marty partially disappearing in BttF1 while playing the guitar.
Also, this is likely the first example of time travel in that universe. Nothing else points to the fact that it is the way it is because of time travel shenanigans, except for the events directly shown on the screen.

Terminator time travel basically sets up alternate timelines each time the timeline is altered. Taking all of the movies into consideration (Ive not seen the Sara Connor chronicles), there are like 4 different timelines, most easily represented by the fact that the date for Judgement Day keeps moving forward in time cause the good guys keep winning. This also seems to allow for time loops, or at the very least its possible that Terminator 1 was not the first time time travel happened. (John Connor sending back Kyle Reese in time to father John Connor).

So, which do you think PFS will take, if either? Do you think it'll be something different from either one?

Do you think anything in the scenarios that do it so far have hinted at it being one way or another?

This came to me because Kreighton tells the Pathfinders that they are going back to observe the lizardfolk, and then the first thing we do is fight and kill some lizardfolk.

Have the Society always been going back in time and killing those guys, or were they supposed to live to see or do something else? What about all the innocent bystander type people who get veporized by the green forcefield surrounding the town?

[Flutter]

Fun with time travel:

The party wound up back in the ancient serpent empire. Apparently the Azlanti didn't exterminate them, Flutter did. Having both a lavish ceremony where you sacrifice cute cuddly animals AND a giant T rex in the basement is a bad combination when PETA knocks on your door, wild empathies the T rex and sicks it on you.

Towards the end, she knows she can't take the Fiendish T rex with her outside of the time bubble, so she casts carry companion on it, puts it in an easy to remember spot, and since there's no time limit on the spell, Digs up the site in the present to recover her toothy friend

[Disturbed1]

Flutter wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

As cool as that is, the Rex would likely die as soon as Flutter removed it from the item, like Shane's flowers did at the beginning of Siege of Serpents.

That said, if you told me you had that T-Rex as a pet, either as flavor or an animal companion), I probably wouldnt argue it with you. :P
.

[Flutter]

Spoiler:

Right, which is why flutter left it IN the time bubble in stasis, and let it take the slow way back back to the present in fossil carry companion form, time traveled home, and then Dug it up in the present day. So instead of trying to take the brand new Micky mantel baseball card with you until the present day, you put it in a safety deposit box in 1951 and then pick it up i 2015

She tried the same thing with some brandy in the halls of dwarven lore, but a dwarven king left her a note saying they found the bottle under the throne and owed the king a drink

[Disturbed1]

Flutter wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Sounds legit. Enjoy your pet T-Rex. :P

[OsirionInfiltrator]

Flutter wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Or you could go back in time and buy an entire lot of them before they are thrown in the ocean.

[Juniperkitsu]

umm I'm not sure you've got it right. There's actually been very little/ no time travel. Or at least, none that could have the sort of impacts you're referring to.

Spoiler:

in day of the stone lords, there's a temporal anomaly where an image of the past was superimposed on the present.

This anomaly is then discovered to be a function of the sky key (which is actually a miss-configured worm hole generator) which the society uses to superimpose the past of the reign of serpents into the present for exploration in the sky key solution. The harbingers of fate then overloaded the device, superimposing the present on the past, which the pathfinder then stopped by providing an anchor point to the present.

It remains unclear if the sky key is actually capable of bringing things across time, or if it in its broken state only brings quasi real (or more like, contingently existent) things into existence. If it is the latter, the past remains immutable. If it's the former, the only time it would have made a change would have been right before earthfall, and the whole island got pretty much destroyed anyway.

[Sebastian Hirsch]

Sky Key Solution spoiler:

I guess we will find out if we actually changed the past, when we get to visit the ruins of a certain villa ^^

[Tarma]

Seth Gipson wrote:

Terminator time travel basically sets up alternate timelines each time the timeline is altered. Taking all of the movies into consideration (Ive not seen the Sara Connor chronicles), there are like 4 different timelines, most easily represented by the fact that the date for Judgement Day keeps moving forward in time cause the good guys keep winning. This also seems to allow for time loops, or at the very least its possible that Terminator 1 was not the first time time travel happened. (John Connor sending back Kyle Reese in time to father John Connor).

The Terminator timelines eventually wound up adopting the concept that certain events would always happen, just altered. Hence why Judgement Day always occurs, it's fated to happen. Skynet will survive just as much as John Connor will.

This could be an interesting route that PFS takes.

[Rosc]

Honestly, I consider the likelihood of season hopping during a typical Pathfinder PC's leveling career to be more than enough fodder for time travel in your backstory. I'm toying with the idea of a Tengu Time Oracle who's 'cursed' to get yanked around the timeline, and works for the Society to help find a means to stabilize his chronological position while giving them as few spoilers for the future as possible.

Such eccentricities includes: meeting to fellow PCs and talking to them as though they were old friends, trying to cash in on a favor the Shadow Lodge owes him, and randomly advising party members against seemingly inane or harmless actions. "Trust me on this one. It turns out to be a mistake. Something about butterflies."

MAJOR Siege of Serpents/Serpent's Rise spoiler:

He'd tear up a little bit every time he gets a mission from Aram Zey.

[BigNorseWolf]

Rosc wrote:

I'm toying with the idea of a Tengu Time Oracle who's 'cursed' to get yanked around the timeline, and works for the Society to help find a means to stabilize his chronological position while giving them as few spoilers for the future as possible.

** spoiler omitted **

.. Someone want to explain why there's a giant egg sitting in the mission briefing room?

[Sebastian Hirsch]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Rosc wrote:

I'm toying with the idea of a Tengu Time Oracle who's 'cursed' to get yanked around the timeline, and works for the Society to help find a means to stabilize his chronological position while giving them as few spoilers for the future as possible.

** spoiler omitted **

.. Someone want to explain why there's a giant egg sitting in the mission briefing room?

Pathfinder Rule #68745-2: Don't antagonize the giant egg.