Time Portal

[Tom Kalbfus]

The idea is that a time machine creates a portal to the past, it can only open up existing wormholes by expanding them from the quantum foam of the vacuum. Thus the gates are to a specific world, in this case Earth.. There is a concept I am using here called "Absolute Now" The "Absolute Now" of this time traveling device is the time it exists, it opens up a portal to the past, about 2 meters in diameter, but it itself does not go into the past. The portal is two-way, but the other end is at a random spot in time and space at the Earth's surface, the map and the dice to roll to determine location are listed below. The way time paradoxes are handled is that is something threatens to alter history, the portal threatens to close, so if time travelers don't want to get stranded in the past, they try to avoid changing history.

Latitude
Roll d%
01 Between 80 and 90 degrees north
02-03 Between 70 and 80 degrees north
04-07 Between 60 and 70 degrees north
08-12 Between 50 and 60 degrees north
13-18 Between 40 and 50 degrees north
19-25 Between 30 and 40 degrees north
26-33 Between 20 and 30 degrees north
34-41 Between 10 and 20 degrees north
42-50 Between 0 and 10 degrees north
51-59 Between 0 and 10 degrees south
60-67 Between 10 and 20 degrees south
68-75 Between 20 an 30 degrees south
76-82 Between 30 and 40 degrees south
83-88 Between 40 and 50 degrees south
89-93 Between 50 and 60 degrees south
94-97 Between 60 and 70 degrees south
98-99 Between 70 and 80 degrees south
00 Between 80 and 90 degrees south
Then roll a 1d10 interpreting a '10' as a '0' if necessary, and add the result to the lower limit of the latitude range to get the latitude to the nearest number of degrees.

Roll d66 (means roll 2 6-sided dice but don't at them, order matters!
1,1 Between 170 and 180 degrees west
1,2 Between 160 and 170 degrees west
1,3 Between 150 and 160 degrees west
1,4 Between 140 and 150 degrees west
1,5 Between 130 and 140 degrees west
1,6 Between 120 and 130 degrees west
2,1 Between 110 ad 120 degrees west
2,2 Between 100 and 120 degrees west
2,3 Between 90 and 100 degrees west
2,4 Between 80 and 90 degrees west
2,5 Between 70 and 80 degrees west
2,6 Between 60 and 70 degrees west
3,1 Between 50 and 60 degrees west
3,2 Between 40 and 50 degrees west
3,3 Between 30 and 40 degrees west
3,4 Between 20 and 30 degrees west
3,5 Between 10 and 20 degrees west
3,6 Between 0 and 10 degrees west
4,1 Between 0 and 10 degrees east
4,2 Between 10 and 20 degrees east
4,3 Between 20 and 30 degrees east
4,4 Between 30 and 40 degrees east
4,5 Between 40 and 50 degrees east
4,6 Between 50 and 60 degrees east
5,1 Between 60 and 70 degrees east
5,2 Between 70 and 80 degrees east
5,3 Between 80 and 90 degrees east
5,4 Between 90 and 100 degrees east
5,5 Between 100 and 110 degrees east
5,6 Between 110 and 120 degrees east
6,1 Between 120 and 130 degrees east
6,2 Between 130 and 140 degrees east
6,3 Between 140 and 150 degrees east
6,4 Between 150 and 160 degrees east
6,5 Between 160 and 170 degrees east
6,6 Between 170 and 180 degrees east
roll 1d10 add the number to the lower limit of the range of degrees.

For the amount of time displaced in the past
roll 1d12
1 roll 1d20 for the number of days in the past.
2 roll 1d12 x 30 for the number of days in the past
3 roll 1d10 for the number of years in the past
4 roll 1d10 x 10 for the number of years in the past
5 roll 1d20 x 100 for the number of years in the past
6 roll 1d20 x 1000 for the number of years in the past
7 roll 1d20 x 10,000 for the number of years in the past
8 roll 1d20 x 100,000 for the number of years in the past
9 roll 1d20 x 1,000,000 for the number of years in the past
10 roll 1d20 x 10,000,000 for the number of years in the past
11 roll 1d10 x 100,000,000 for the number of years in the past
12 roll 1d4 x 1,000,000,000 for the number of years in the past

 

[colonelclick]

This is a fascinating idea, though I do worry that most of your end destinations would drop Travellers into the ocean!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is a fascinating idea, though I do worry that most of your end destinations would drop Travellers into the ocean!

That's what an inflatable rubber raft with plastic oars is for. The portal appears 2 meters above the surface, you drop the rubber raft in and inflate. You might also want to lower an outboard motor and attach to the rear of your rubber inflatable raft, and then you will have to take some measurements with an astrolabe, you would have to hang around in the vicinity or the portal for 24 hours to time when the sun rises and sets, so you can establish latitude and longitude, and of course, you have to figure out when you arrived, you may have to watch out for dinosaurs! The portal generator doesn't know the when you've arrived, some measurements on site will have to be made to figure out the time period. For certain time periods, you may just have to look around and see what animals you encounter. Perhaps dropping a radio buoy would be a good idea, depending on whether there is civilization around or not, you can at least home in on the radio buoy so you can get back to your time. Someone on the other end of the portal would then lower a rope so you can climb back up.

 

[locarno24]

When is "now" - traveller era?

Probably rather fire a UAV through it - it can look around, and get high up enough to accurately date and locate you, and move fast enough that you can cover enough ground to be useful.

Working out longitude requires you to know when noon is at the prime meridian, if I'm remembering right? So - not knowing where you are relative to it, you can't really figure it out using just "sextant-and-stopwatch"; you'd have to declare the portal as 0' until you found enough recognisable geography to slide it east or west as appropriate.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

When is "now" - traveller era?

Probably rather fire a UAV through it - it can look around, and get high up enough to accurately date and locate you, and move fast enough that you can cover enough ground to be useful.

Working out longitude requires you to know when noon is at the prime meridian, if I'm remembering right? So - not knowing where you are relative to it, you can't really figure it out using just "sextant-and-stopwatch"; you'd have to declare the portal as 0' until you found enough recognisable geography to slide it east or west as appropriate.

Date Conversion Source (x) to Solomani to Imperial to Vilani to Zhodani to Aslan to K'Kree to Hiver from Solomani n/a (x - 4518) / 1.0006644 from Imperial.
To convert the other way (x + 4518) * 1.0006644
I would convert from 1103 Imperial in the Terra System, so applying the math we get
(1103 +4518) * 1.0006644 = September 24, 5624 AD That is the Absolute now at the beginning of the Imperial year 1103. It would be interesting to recruit some locals from our time period, as they might know the history prior to that better than some Futurians from 5624, they could serve as local guides. Due to the mechanics of time travel, those recruits might have some difficulty getting back to what they consider being their present. Now in 1103 Imperial the Terra System is under the control of the imperium. Any recruits from our time period might not necessarily have any loyalty to the Imperium, that sets up an interesting possible conflict. The Imperium might have the resources to build this time machine, they question is are all the scientists working on the project loyal to the Imperium, there will be some historians after all specializing in Terran History, they will be working with the recruited locals, where do their sympathies lie? There is a certain temptation to having a time machine especially if one has disagreements with the way history went. If you were a Solomani agent for example, you might want to change history in certain locations, a frusterating thing for you would be the random nature in which this time machine operates. Our time period for example would be too early for the Solomani agent to attempt history change, so he'll just have to bid his time until the right historical time period is reached. He wouldn't, for example, want to affect history in such a way as to cause the First Imperium to win the Interstellar War!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here are my results after using these tables:

I'll eventually have 100 portals open at the same time, one of which leads to our own time and date. the PCs come in through one and so long as that portal is held open, they can return home, if it is closed, that portal is lost, another one can be opened, but as they're random, you can' t quite get back to the same time and place as the previous portal, only 100 portals can be maintained at the same time, if you want to open another one after that, you have to close one of them that are open in order to make room.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I've ordered the list and added some more: