Timeships: Time Colony

[Tom Kalbfus]

The Earth 65700000 BC

At around 1104 Imperial, a merchant shows up on Regina, selling dinosaur eggs, and dinosaur hatchlings. A startling thing is that his ship appears in a low orbit around Regina. The local military and a nearby scout base got some strange readings when a modified ANNIC NOVA starship appeared too close to Regina for a starship to have jumped using a Jump drive., the signature radiation of a jump ship appearing in normal space from Jump space was not indicated. the merchant ship docked at a local starport and starked hawking strange creatures from an unknown planet, and he posted some job openings for expert big game hunters, he explains that he lost a few crew members recently and is looking to hire a few replacements, he lowers his voice and explains to the PCs that he recently acquired a timeship from the future, and he wants to hire a few scouts to survey the planet for a suitable site to establish a colony. Eventually he wants to construct a hotel and wildlife reserve on this planet for tourists to visit. When pressed, the merchant doesn't seem to know quite how the timeship works, he just knows how to operate it. It just so happens that he knows of a location of a black hole in the Spinward Marches, it is a lone black hole with no companion stars, and its current path brings it close to the Solar System in the year 65700000 BC, and when the timeship is set on aa course which takes it close to the black hole's event horizon, the gravitational time dialation effect greatly boosts the timeship's ability to go back in time, and a successful astrogation check will bring the ship right in the Solar System in that year.

 

[Linwood]

Interesting....

They might want to leave quickly before the Imperial Navy takes an interest!

A thought - will Ancients be around?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Interesting....

They might want to leave quickly before the Imperial Navy takes an interest!

A thought - will Ancients be around?

According to the Solomani Rim sourcebook, the Ancients visited the Earth around -300,000 Imperial, the Dinosaurs were around in -65,700,000 Imperial or BC, with these large numbers it doesn't matter which of the two dating systems you use, a difference of about 3000 years doesn't matter that much when discussiong geologic prehistory, but it appears the Dinosaurs according to this timeline are more Ancient than the Ancients, but if the Ancients are the ones that built this time machine, they could literally appear in any time. Below is the ANNIC NOVA Timeship, it is a tech level 18 Starship except for its Timedrive, it also requires a much larger fusion reactor that the original to activate its time drive, so it loses most of its cargo space. As a passenger ship, it works fine, the cargo space shown, does not include the cargo space of the pinnaces, one of which is designed to carry cargo the other passengers, aside from that it can carry in itself an additional 30 tons of cargo. This version of the ANNIC NOVA has a Conscious Intelligence in its computer named Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanoff.

. The computer program has the memories and personality of the Russian princess. Some time agents managed to retrieve her body and upload her mind, they did not want to do it with a living person as the chance of success was not 100%. Anastasia seems to have made the transition successfully and now she is the ship's computer. She is a bit of a temperamental and somewhat spoiled princess, she witnessed the execution of her family, herself included. She lives in a computer generated simulation of the ship's interior, and often makes appearances in various computer screens and holographic mirrors. By manipulating the controls of her simulation she can also fly the ship, she is trained as both an astrogator and a pilot, though her appearance is that of a 17 year old girl, she has been around as a conscious intelligence for several years of subjective time.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Why Regina? wouldn't the ship have appeared in the Solomani Rim?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Why Regina? wouldn't the ship have appeared in the Solomani Rim?

Its a convenient spot, and of course when we are talking about 65 million years, stars that are far apart now may have been close together then and vice versa.