Send a DM to begin your time travel adventure!
Ever since the TMI was founded, we've tried to use our technology responsibly. Visiting other times for scholarly and academic purposes, gathering information without making waves, that sort of thing. Now, for some reason, history is starting to change despite our best efforts, and we're not sure why. Maybe something we're doing is causing history to go off the rails, or maybe someone else is using time travel with nefarious motives. Frankly, I don't know, and neither did our board of directors, before they all started disappearing. We need to find out what's happening, and prevent history from changing so much we're all wiped out of existence. Luckily, the Institute still has all of its incredibly sensitive timestream-monitoring equipment, and it still has one nerd who's qualified to use that equipment. That's me, by the way. In case it wasn't obvious. I've identified the three most critical hotspots where time is going all weird, and once you're ready I need you to jump to those hotspots to investigate and fix the problems there. Due to the mysterious way time travel works, it seems as though whenever the past changes radically, it takes some time for the changes to propagate forward to our time, which means that whatever's going on in the past, we have some time to fix it before it affects our era.
Now, as a temporal agent you've received some extremely cyberpunk modifications. Your brain is now wired to quickly learn new languages and communication styles, your immune system has been boosted to make you immune to most diseases, and your metabolism now supports what the nerds in R&D have dubbed a "mutant healing factor." Despite all this, you shouldn't try to change history all by yourself. It's safer and more reliable to recruit local help to aid you in carrying out your missions. You can recruit your assistants however you want, although personally I've found that the language of love is one that transcends time and culture, so you might want to try that.
(To play, choose one of the three hotspots listed below and send me a DM to arrange a match. You'll be given a selection of three potential assistants you can recruit to help you carry out your mission, and you'll play a match against your chosen character. If you win, or lose with enough style, you recruit your target and complete the next stage of your mission. Completing a mission moves you one step closer to resolving the hotspot's crisis, and resolving the crisis will win you points and bragging rights that set you apart from your fellow agents.)
Here are the three hotspots we have to deal with right now:
1. Egypt, ~300 BCE
This temporal anomaly is located in the era of King Ptolemy I, in the city of Alexandria. While this era is perhaps best known for the construction of the Great Library of Alexandria, our surveillance of the era shows that some dark force is beginning to arise in this era. A plague of madness is spreading through the city's streets, and a cult has suddenly arisen, seemingly fully-formed, whose members claim that they can speak to the gods of the old kingdom. The authorities are powerless against the plague and the cult, and cracking down on the fanatics isn't an option, unless they want to risk a full-scale revolt throughout the city, or even the entire kingdom. When brute force is unsafe, investigation and intelligence are called for. Someone needs to figure out what's going on here and put a stop to it.
2. Iberia, ~3900 BCE
In the Neolithic era, the Iberian Peninsula cloaked in dense, untamed forests and desolate mountains. The people are nomadic hunters, living in caves and temporary settlements. A great drought has struck, drying up the rivers and driving the local wildlife away. Starvation looms, and the tribes are beginning to turn on one another for control over the few remaining fertile valleys. The conflict is being further spurred by the emergence of a new tribe which has emerged from the mountains, led by a shaman who claims he can control the rain, and uses this claimed power to exert control over other tribes. In this world where strength is the only war, you can't rely on diplomacy; success here will require a mastery of the arts of manipulation and raw power. But before you worry about that, focus on observing the situation and making sure things don't get worse.
3. Toltec Empire, ~930 CE
The Toltec Empire of Central America is a place of architectural wonder and political instability, and something is happening to cause Toltec society to collapse on an accelerated scale, relative to our own history. The ruling class has seemingly grown decadent, obsessed with elaborate sacrifices to their silent gods. A rift between the priest-kings and the common laborers who toil in the fields, a rift which is poised to end in violence. To make matters worse, a series of volcanic eruptions in the distant highlands has choked the sky with ash, poisoning the crops and casting a shadow over the sun. Rumors are spreading through society that the old rituals are insufficient to placate the gods, and that the angry gods are sending a cloud of endless darkness to destroy civilization. Once again, at this early stage we need somebody to travel to this period to infiltrate and observe so we can plan our next course of action.
You can keep some notes on this character. You'll be the only one to be able to see this:
