Chronal devices used by time travellers (including Time Vehicles)

 

Chronal Equipment
The tech level of the equipment listed here varies greatly. It is up to the GM what would be available.
Chronal Anchor This device allows a character to anchor to his current time period and prevent being forced to another time. It also protects the wearer from any alterations to history.
Chronal Beacon This lantern-sized device acts as a navigational buoy in the river of time, making it simple for a time traveller to reach the exact time and location where the beacon was triggered. They’re often used as rescue alerts for a team in trouble, although they’ve been known to attract hostile attention as well. When time travelling to the chrono-location of a time beacon, no test is required. If the time travellers are being projected from a base, rather than carrying their time machine with them, perhaps each timetravelling party carries (must carry) a beacon which lets Base fix on them to pull them back. If the party is broken up, only those with the beacon will be able to communicate with Base (if that is possible in the campaign) or to call for return, or to be returned at all.
Chronal Blink A blink device gives a person the ability to flash in and out in combat, sliding forwards and backwards quickly in time to make himself a more effective combatant. Blinking Agents gain +4 to their Thac0 and AC, and suffer no penalties for closing to Point-Blank range with a gun-wielding foe.
Chronal Communicator The standard communicator is a metallic disc that measures 3 centimetres in diameter. Its colour resembles that of copper. Both sides of the disc contain hundreds of fine, tiny grooves, something like the surface of a phonograph record. At the PC's option, the communicator can have a hole drilled near one edge, enabling the agent to wear the disc on a chain or leather thong, like a necklace or an amulet. The communicator responds to touch commands. It can put the user in verbal communication with any character who also has a communicator provided the user knows the touch code for the device he wants to contact. All PCs on a mission know the code for one another's communicators. During communication, the device functions just like a radio. It is extremely sensitive, and can pick up and transmit the voice of the user even if that voice is barely audible. The communicator signals an incoming message in one of two ways (the receiver decides which one): it can beep to announce a message coming in, or it can radiate a gentle heat, sufficient to be noticeable to the touch. A character receiving a message must “ touch in” a reception code. If this code is not touched, the communicator automatically stores all messages and replays them when the code is touched. The receiver can specify the volume at which the communicator relays its messages. The communicator has a range of 10,000 kilometres. It cannot be used to communicate backwards or forwards in time or across Parallels.
Chronal Cyclopedia The Cyclopedia is a dynamic and temporally centred guide to all of known history (more or less), making it an invaluable tool when dealing with altered time. It is dynamic because it is constantly updated wherever or whenever you are. The practical upshot of this is that the guide details your local changed history for you (unlike your tether, which always recalls true history).
Chronal Grenade Targets caught within the 2 metre blast radius are flung D4 rounds into the future, appearing in the exact same spot with no idea that intervening time has passed.
Chronal Interdictor Interdiction devices block time travel in both three dimensions (a given physical area) and four dimensions (a given period of time, radiating both forwards and backwards from activation). A small device the size of a pocket watch may block travel within 100 metres and a day; the largest (and rarest), most powerful spaceship-sized devices may function for thousands of kilometres and last for centuries. Time travelling into an era shielded by an interdiction device feels like airplane turbulence. The Agent can choose whether to arrive just before the start of the device’s effect, or after the effect ends. Some interdiction devices are coded to allow passage to anyone with an encrypted code. Some crystalline devices only allow psychic time travel and stop technological time travel. Some allow anyone to time travel in but prevent exit. Others might block incoming travellers but allow anyone to leave.
Chronal Medikit The medikit contains a diagnostic micro-computer, antibiotics and drugs which halt the progress of known infectious diseases, and antidotes for all known poisons. Also included are emergency surgical tools. The kit contains medical devices common to the time period being visited, too. enabling the owner to attempt to pose as a physician or healer of that period. The medical kit is usually packed in a disguised container that resembles a sack, bag, or small briefcase— whatever best conceals the kit.
Chronal Phone Normally, it’s impossible for people in one era to speak or communicate with someone in a different time period. The one exception is the difficult to acquire, highly praised chronal phone. This allows you to speak across time to someone else (or to yourself), assuming they also have a phone. The reception isn’t always perfect, but it’s better than any other alternative for cross-time communication. The reason that these aren’t commonly used by agents is that they’re notoriously easy to tap, and at the GM’s whim they occasionally connect to the wrong potential reality when calling into the future.
Chronal Regenerator This device is packed with microcircuitry and looks like a black plastic pearl the size of a grape. It’s activated by swallowing, whereupon the regenerator anchors itself harmlessly in the stomach. Should the user’s HPs drop to 0 while the device is active, it automatically restores all his health as if nothing had happened. This includes regenerating any lost limbs and organs. Once its done its job it disintegrates with no harm to the person.
Chronal Repeater This rare device uses a quantum matrix that can be entangled with a single sentience to create a self perpetuating temporal loop. Once per mission, this traps one person in a loop where they must constantly repeat the last 24 hours of their life, retaining full memory of past cycles until they acquire the skill or personality trait determined by the activating Agent. Within the dominant time stream, the character appears physically unchanged to all observers, but will retain all memories of the time loop.
Chronal Restorer An emergency device for when the character is out of other options, this device taps into his childhood memories to restore his sense of self and help stabilize him. It uses psychic technology to replace any lost memories and remove amnesia.
Chronal Scanner The scanner is a device which can be used to see into the past; it is useful for archaeologists, detectives and genealogists. When activated, it provides a holographic image of whatever is occurring within a two-yard radius centred around the scanner, at some point in the past. Nothing outside that area can be seen - it can't be used as a "window" to scan the surrounding landscape. The place being scanned is relative to the nearest mass of continental size. Thus, a scanner can only be used to scan planetary surfaces. In a background where history can be changed, you might see something different the next time you scan the same period. A scanner must be set for an arbitrary point in time in the past, e.g. 31 years, 84 days, 11 hours and 50 minutes ago. After the scanner is ready, it will project the visual image of the area occupied by the scanner, and continue in "real time" until deactivated. This can be unhelpful if, in the time being scanned, the area presently occupied by the scanner is filled with solid material.
Chronal Stopwatch Quantum time-tunnelling microcircuitry crammed into a wristwatch far too small to actually accept it, this watch does exactly what you’d hope a stopwatch might do. It stops time. There are some conditions, though. It only stops time for you, and you can only slip between the seconds for a scant period before you put yourself in danger. Your actions are slightly limited by the fact that you’re the only one stopped, however, as any vehicle you’re travelling in will be frozen in time as well.
Chronal Tether No one expects your character — or you — to remember all the intricate details of recorded history. That’s what your tether is for. This is a ring-sized personal digital assistant on overdrive. Your tether serves as your camera, your encyclopaedia, your journal, your holographic research assistant, and your personal historian for any information you don’t already know. It can observe and record your surroundings, talk directly and secretly into your ear through a subdermal implant, feed information directly into linked contact lenses, holographically display and rotate 3-D maps, translate any known language instantaneously, interface with your weapons, manifest a holographic screen, and help you run technical tests if you need to investigate a crime scene. The AI in your tether is even capable of having its own personality, although not all agents enable this. Tethers access records of true history, the correct recorded history as known by it. When history changes around you, your tether won’t know anything about the newly created history, but it will tell you what originally should have happened instead. Your tether is chronomorphic; that means that it adjusts its appearance to your current time period. If you’re in the 20th century, its holographic readouts might look like a newspaper; in the 15th century, like a woodcut. You usually get to choose.


 

Time Machines
A Time Machine is the main prerequisite for time travel and all the other fun that goes along with it.  The type of machine can combine with any of the different ways of experiencing the process of time travel and with the various degrees to which the past can be changed. With the Back To The Future-type machine, one simply gets into a vehicle of some sort, and the vehicle is transported to a certain time. When a traveller wants to go back, they use the machine again. This is pretty much the most common type, possibly having to do with the fact that one of the earliest time travel stories (The Time Machine) used this type. A TARDIS-type machine works like a Back To The Future-type one except not only can you program it to go anywhere in time, but also anywhere in space. Basically it's a vehicle that can go anywhere in 4 dimensions. Terminator-type machines usually involve some sort of big device that projects a traveller back, but does not come with them. Once back in time, the person has no way back to the future besides The Slow Path, unless they can somehow build another device, or if they were able to bring an entire additional time machine with them to leave behind on that trip also. (And this is sometimes precluded by time machines being too big, or the rules not allowing you to take things, or just time machines, with you.) Sometimes these only allow backwards trips to start with. Timecop-type machines are a cross between the Back To The Future-type and the Terminator-type; the traveller is sent back by a machine that does not come with him, but has some sort of way (such as a remote or prearranged time portal) to make a trip back, utilizing the future time machine. Can also being used as a "time scoop" to bring things from the past into the present without going there. Losing the signaller or missing the prearranged portal can require past travellers Writing Back To The Future to get home. A Time Portal provides a direct gateway between two points in space and time is another variation. These can be random, appear and disappear in a predictable way, or be permanent. A pre-existing Time Portal is a way to introduce Time Travel to a series without opening the Pandora's Box of "why didn't they just go back in time and stop the bad guy". A Time Dilation Field is a device that causes time inside a certain area to either go faster or slower. While not a time machine in the classical sense, a field with time set to go slower is a good way to travel forward in time. In Real Life, Time Dilation is an actual effect that occurs when bodies are moving at different relative velocities, or at different depths in a gravity well. This is generally too tame and prosaic for all but the hardest Science Fiction, though.
Chronal Belt The chronal belt contains a submicroscopic sliver of a fragment of dark star, suspended in a powerful magnetic field. By adjusting the field strength with a dial, the wearer can increase the resonance between this sliver and the dark star. The wearer once in the past must “snap back” to the present before travelling elsewhen. The belt weighs 15 lbs., and is usually worn with a harness and a battery pack (good for 24 hours of continuous use) on the back to power the magnetic containment field. Should the field be breached or shut down, the belt becomes too heavy to lift or wear (doing 8D6 crushing damage to the wearer, if any), snaps back to the present, and cannot be used for time travel until repaired or recharged. Time travel using the belt is instantaneous.
Chronal Bubble Each Time Bubble has the capacity to hold up to six individuals in reasonable comfort. To use a Time Bubble, the occupants of the Bubble enter a set of time and destination coordinates into the craft’s computer and activate the time travel mechanism. Originally, the trip through time was a relatively smooth process, with the only risk being the possibility that returning travelers might somehow fail to lock onto the signal of the Time Beacon, and thus return to an alternate reality. Note that a bubble’s occupants must successfully establish the day, month and year of the time they have entered before they can accurately reset the controls for a new destination and re- enter the time stream.
Chronal Coils In 1940, the U.S. government established Project Rainbow to study the military potential of Nikola Tesla’s power field theories. By July of 1943, the prototype “Rainbow Effect” device, a large series of Tesla coils nested in a complex geometrical series, attached to a complex antenna array along the ship’s mast and superstructure, had been installed on the destroyer escort USS Eldridge in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. In theory, the device would make the Eldridge invisible; what it actually did (on August 12 or October 28, 1943, depending on which report one believes) was rotate
it out of conventional space-time and into a hyperdimension. Witnesses saw the Eldridge disappear from Philadelphia – and reappear 15 minutes later in Norfolk, Virginia, a distance of 300 miles. Also during that 15 minutes, some members of the Eldridge crew travelled up to 50 years into the future. Others, unfortunately, “phased” into the deck and died horribly, or went mad from the stress. The Rainbow Effect coils on the Eldridge weighed one ton, and required a 500 KW generator; the “Philadelphia Experiment” seems to have generated speeds of 1,200 miles, and 200 years, per hour. Further testing would no doubt improve this performance, and reduce the hazards of hyperdimensional travel. Project Rainbow scientists reportedly conducted a series of land-based tests of the Rainbow Effect at Camp Hero (later the Montauk Air Force Station) in Long Island until 1984, and the Navy may have used the Eldridge to project American power throughout the time stream during the secret war against Nazi time travellers. The Rainbow Effect apparatus weighs 2,000 lbs. ; the antenna array weighs 200 lbs.
Chronal Cube The Time Cube uses the same principles as the Time Bubble to penetrate the time barrier. Unlike the Bubble, however, the Time Cube does not travel through time itself. Instead it projects its contents to the preset destination. To return to one’s original time, the transported party or object must be in the same spot where they/it arrived. The Time Cube has a maximum capacity of 6 people, and a maximum duration of 24 hours; it is also equipped with a viewer that allows the progress of those transported to be monitored.
Chronal Flux Drive This device simply channels an energy discharge into a point, opening an instantaneous time gate to a preset destination, at the same relative point on the Earth’s surface. The initial version of the flux drive uses two magnetic plutonium slugs to force a subcritical reaction, which opens the gate; the plutonium instantly decays to lead during a time shift. The flux drive is normally mounted in a vehicle, especially since it requires a high rate of local speed to activate. A vehicle with a steel or steel-alloy construction is best, since it prevents outside objects from being sucked into the vehicle’s temporal wake.
Chronal Nanites Nano-machines are injected into every cell in a character's body, disguised among the ordinary mitochondria. Each is a miniature time machine, and when working in concert can allow a person to walk through time and space.
Chronal Portal Chronal portals are doorways in time, employed in various fiction genres, especially science fiction and fantasy, to transport characters to the past or future. They differ from time machines in being a permanent or semi-permanent fixture linking specific points in time, and thus are an especially useful plot device when the plot involves characters moving many times back and forth.
Chronal Scooter The chronal scooter can take a character to any time and place, and return him after he gets there. Each scooter contains a security scanner that prohibits any- one but the owner from operating it. If someone removes the scanner, the vehicle explodes immediately, inflicting 9D6 damage in a radius of 30 metres. The standard scooter carries one human and his or her equipment It also features a collapsible storage compartment for hauling extra gear. The occupant is protected from travel in the chronoverse by a time field which surrounds the scooter.
Chronal Sphere This time apparatus, uses a fixed time projector to lower a converted bathysphere into the time stream. The 5’ sphere is suspended from a thick cable (350’ long) above the projector platform. When the zero-point energy source in the apparatus power plant is engaged, the platform opens, and a winch lowers the sphere through the yawning vortex below. The gravity fields of the Earth and sun interact with the zero-point field, and the controller (who remains in the present) homes in on the desired location in space-time. During this period, the raw energies of the time stream buffet the sphere; anyone outside the sphere is chronally disincarnated. The sphere can only travel to locations within the inner solar system before solar gravity becomes too attenuated to power the vortex. The crew of the sphere can use a telephone hookup braided through the cable to speak with the controller or anyone else at the control station. The sphere has one very thick porthole, and a hatch set into the side next to it. While in the past, it rests on four thick, stubby legs; the cable stretches away into a twisty nothingness. The winch in the present can haul up the sphere at any time, but the sphere dangles suspended from its cable in midair in the past for D6 minutes before returning to the projector. Any number of “landings” are possible without a return to the present, as long as there is sufficient oxygen for the crew to breathe.
Chronal Tunnel Time travel is facilitated by time being portrayed as a static continuum, accessible at any point through the Time Tunnel as a corridor spanning its infinite reaches. The Tunnel is also a portal connecting the Chronal Tunnel "complex" with the same time periods in which time travellers visit. Other people can also be relocated by the Time Tunnel from their time.
Chronal Vehicle Chronal vehicles draw their power from several sources, but primarily from the nucleus of a black hole; a singularity. The power source is beneath the central column of the console. Other elements needed for the proper functioning of the vehicle and requiring occasional replenishment include mercury (used in its fluid links), the rare ore neutronium, and a time crystal. Before a vehicle becomes fully functional, it must be primed with the biological imprint of its owner, normally done by simply having the person operate the vehicle for the first time. This gives them both a symbiotic link to their vehicle and the ability to withstand the physical stresses of time travel. The vehicle usually travels by dematerializing in one spot, traversing the chronoverse, and then rematerializing at its destination. Apart from the ability to travel in space and time (and, on occasion, to other dimensions), the most remarkable characteristic of a chronal vehicle is that its interior is much larger than it appears from the outside. The explanation is that the vehicle is "dimensionally transcendental", meaning that its exterior and interior exist in separate dimensions. The vehicle also grants its passengers the ability to understand and speak other languages via a telepathic connection with the vehicle.
Chronal Watch The chronal watch may resemble either a wrist watch or pocket watch. Once activated, the time and destination are set and the device extends a brilliant purple sphere around the operator (and up to one adult-sized passenger, if neither mind close quarters). It spends 1 round calculating coordinates and charging its chronal field. One round after activation, the watch and anything within its chronal field clocks out and disappears. Time traveling mid-combat can be an extremely dangerous proposition. When the chronal field first activates, the watch and the operator are both quite vulnerable. Any attack during that round that hits the time traveler, regardless of damage, collapses the chronal field and causes the watch to stop working until repaired. After the one round of vulnerability watch chronal fields act as cover for the pilots inside them. After a jump a watch requires D4 rounds, rolled randomly as needed, before it recharges and can time travel or teleport again. Broken watches can be repaired with several hours of work by someone who knows how to fix them. Watches are usually set to adjust their arrival location to somewhere private where their distinctive sound and vibrant purple glow will not be seen. This can easily be turned off by an operator more interested in accuracy than secrecy. A watch can safely materialize underwater or in outer space and will protect the operator from atmosphere-based environmental hazards so long as the device remains active. Although operators can specify a spatial arrival coordinate, the watch’s physical arrival accuracy is somewhat dependent on the distance traveled in time. Travel within a year, and it’s usually exact; within a decade, and it lands in the same room as the intended spot; within a century, and it arrives in the same building, up to an error of perhaps twenty kilometers after traveling hundreds of millions of years.



 

The Chronoverse Main Index