(SPOILERS) Number of Methods of Time Travel

The new DA arcs are discussed. Warning.

Remember back when we first got the flashback system? Time travel was going to be more heavily featured in City of Heroes lore. I was all excited. Then they released that trailer just to tease my metaphorical taste buds even more.

I still remember Silos saying "...of the 11 methods of time travel..."

Hey, wait a second! In the new DA arcs Dream Doctor mentions 13 methods of time travel!

Now, presumably Silos isn't aware of all the methods of time travel. In fact, I'm almost certain he doesn't know about Dream Doctors particular method of time travel. That accounts for a difference of 1. What's the other one, Silos doesn't know about? Hmm.

I guess we'd have to count and see if the player base even knows about the original 11 before we start trying to guess what the mysterious 13th method is. I seem to remember when issue 11 was still all shiny and new someone far smarter then me put together a list of all the time travel methods we had encountered already but my search-fu is weak and I can't seem to find it.

So, here's the amount of methods I can think of/look up on paragon wiki.

1. The Pillar of Ice and Flame used by Mender Silos and Ouroboros.

2. Dreamspace, used by Dream Doctor.

3. The Destiny Portal tech, used by Lord Recluse to allow access to Recluse's Victory.

4. Nazi tech, used by Ubelmann in Ubelmann the Unknown arc.

5. The Devil's Timepiece, used by The Magic Man in Mercedes Sheldon's arc.

6. However Doctor Echo does it.

7? The PsychoChronoMetron arc gives a time travel badge even though you don't exactly travel through time... Hmmm. Putting this down as a maybe.

That's all I can think of.

And, of course, a disclaimer. This is all for fun. It's a game, we don't NEED to know about all the methods of time travel but it seemed like something worth discussing.

However Time Manipulation works.

Many of those methods may be the same way repeated.
The different tech ways, for example, could all be based on the same fundamental principle.

I believe the numbers given are intended to be low enough to be interesting, but high enough to allow players to include time-travel in their backstories without being limited by the lore.

Don't forget use of Long Range Teleport, departing from Cimerora or Recluse's Victory.


Oh, and Echo goes by Professor, not Doctor, btw.


Also:

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkGob However Time Manipulation works.

Doesn't apply to everyone... MY time manipulator doesn't move through time, he just moves it between entities. He wins fights by having more of it than his enemies.

There's also the method of travelling into the future one second at a time.

It's not updated for the Dream Doctor yet, but this is something I put together a couple issues ago. Assuming only the Menders and the Midnighter's pillars are the same, there are, I think, 9 different methods used in game so far.

Groups with Time Travel


Arachnos - Capable of traveling backwards at least as far as Cimerora (1st century BCE?) and traveling into the future as well. (Every Patron Arc; Recluse's Victory; Stolen Power from Daedalus)

Daedalus - Capable of monitoring the time stream at least 2000 years into his future and tracking travelers across that span. Easily able to not only read blueprints for experimental 21st century time travel technology, but to modify and improve upon them as well. He may not have an actual working time travel device, however, despite clearly knowing how to build one. (Stolen Power and Future Threat arcs)

DATA - Coordinating the heroes in Recluse's Victory.

Dr. Aeon - Capable of time travel into the future and (later on?) into his own past. His seems to be independent of Arachnos' time travel but it's likely that one of them is based off the other. Presumably has full access to all of Arachnos time tech as well. (Every Patron Arc; Echo Down the Aeons from Marshal Brass)

Crey Industries - Currently running experiments on the space-time continuum. Might not have time travel and may not even know how close they are to developing it. It's possible to modify their equipment to create limited duration temporal rifts which allow people from the future to travel to the time/location of the device. (My Future Selves - Alignment Mission)

The 5th Column - Travels as far back as Cimerora, claims other temporal strongholds as well. (Imperious Task Force)

The Letter Writer - Has planted messages for specific individuals throughout time, from Cimerora to the 21st century. (Ouroboros Arcs; ITF; Dean MacArthur's arc, Special Agent Jenni Adair's arc)

Malta Group - Formerly capable of traveling to Cimerora. Their technology is experimental and clearly inferior to the methods of other groups. It's apparently possible to "shield" portions of the time stream from them, preventing access to that period in time. (Future Threat from Daedalus)

Menders of Ouroboros - Claims to be founded roughly around 7700-7800 CE, so they have a pretty far reach. Nobody else has exhibited the ability to travel as far back. Introduces the "Carbon Law". Travels through the Pillar of Fire and Ice and is capable of creating Aspects of the Pillar to serve as additional travel spots. The big flaw with this method seems to be Temporal Scaling, which does not seem to affect anyone else. (Ouroboros)

Midnight Squad - Has an Aspect of the Pillar that sends people to Cimerora. It's not clear if they could retune this to another time/place or if it's permanently set to that time and location. Interestingly they seem to have somehow avoided the Temporal Scaling problem with using the Pillar of Ice and Flame for time travel.

They also have The Devil's Timepiece, which allows time travel in exchange for a small portion of your soul. What kind of range the Timepiece has isn't clear because the guy who used it wasn't too bright. It also carries the risk of paradox backlash if you revist a time and place where you already existed. This is a bit odd since we've directly witnessed others doing the same thing without any problems. (The Midnighter's Club; The Magic Man from Mercedes Sheldon)

You! - At least one possible future version of you is capable of sending small items through time but not physically traveling into the past. This appears to be entirely independent of any other group's methods, but may have been stolen/learned from someone else. (My Other Selves - alignment mission)

Groups that might have Time Travel

The Council - Requiem has it. Did he share it with them or keep it to himself?

Knives of Artemis - They work closely with Malta, to the extent that they are sometimes seen as little more than a subset of that group despite being technically independent. Did Malta share their time travel technology?

Portal Corp - It seems a little odd that they don't, but it looks like they're focused on traveling to alternate dimensions rather than different times.

And just to be complete:

Time Travel Concepts and Rules

The timeline is not static. - This should be obvious. The Menders are clearly out to adjust the past based on their observations of the future. If the timeline was static then they would know it's impossible to prevent The Coming Storm and are just doing a pointless Dr. Manhattan impersonation. Fortunately Recluse's Victory and multiple story arcs provide a clear answer that the timeline is not set. Amazingly I think all of CoX lore manages to remain consistent on this, with nobody acting as if events are unchangeable. This prevents closed time loops (the Predestination Paradox) from forming but leaves the Grandfather Paradox unresolved. And yes, your character should be able to do the nasty in the pasty and remove their delta brainwaves before they're ever born.

It may be possible to experience the the Bootstrap Paradox, but I don't think any examples exist.

The Devil's Timepiece of the Midnghters is odd in that it seems to prevent you from visting a time and place where you existed a second time around. Since the we've seen Aeon/Echo have conversations with himself, participated in events we've already experience through the Pillar of Ice and Flame, and talked to ourselves in the My Other Selves mission, it would seem that this is a property of the Timepiece and not something that can be applied to time travel in general.

Temporal Scaling - This isn't, as commonly stated, a result of going into the past. There's no reason you can't experience it going into the future as well (And you do in Mender Silos' mission). According to Mender Tesseract it's more like your body going into shock when you jumped through time. ("It was basically your body adjusting to a different time stream. We call this Temporal Scaling. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it can come as a shock.") The Menders never give a good answer for what causes it or how to avoid it. I'd say they don't know, but Tesseract says she deliberately picked a time to send you where you would be hit hard. So they do know how to predict when it will happen even if they can't do anything about it. It seems to be tied to using the Pillar of Ice and Flame for travel, since nobody else ever mentions finding themselves weakened after transit. (Most notably your godlike self in My Other Selves does not attribute any weakness to Temporal Scaling and that's likely the farthest jump we've seen)

The Midnighters seem to have dodged Temporal Scaling with their Aspect of the Pillar. This could be because of it's fixed destination rather then the more flexible ones used by the Menders or it could be just sheer luck on their part where they managed to hit a pocket of time without it. Alternately, of course, some or all of the Menders are lying about what causes Temporal Scaling. I'd go with them lying except Mender Tesseract is specifically stated to be suffering very badly from it in our present time. There's no reason at this point to suspect her of deliberately weakening herself just to maintain a charade.

Temporal Shielding - Daedalus does this so Malta can never use time travel to reach the Cimerora era. How big a range it shields isn't clear. Nor is it ever mentioned whether this is a specific block to the tech Malta uses or if it could be used more generally. It clearly doesn't work on Arachnos' technology, The 5th Column's or the Pillar of Ice and Flame. As it's only use is by a Marty Stu character in a poorly written arc I find it much easier to just pretend this doesn't exist. Frankly, it doesn't fit with the way time travel is portrayed in the rest of the game.

Carbon Law - As explained by Mender Lazurus this mean no traveling more than 5,730 years in either direction from your "native time", which is a maddeningly vague term. Go farther and you disolve into the timestream, never to be heard from again. He may mean from your departure point or your birth or your natural lifespan. This doesn't raise as many questions as Temporal Scaling since nobody but the Menders is seen to have traveled that far, with the possible exception of your godlike self in My Other Selves. Mender Silos openly claims to be violating this law and is all smug about it. Whether he actually is, however, is open to debate depending on who he really is and how the law really works. Likewise, depending on how "native time" is judged your godlike self may never have been in any danger from the Carbon Law.

Time Travel is not dimension specific! - This is probably the the most interesting thing as far as I'm concerned. Time travel that works in one dimension seems to work in multiple dimensions as well. It should be entirely possible to take one of the known time travel methods to Praetoria, hop into the past and either prevent the rise of Hamidon as a world destroying entity or kill Marcus Cole before he becomes Tyrant. You could alter Praetoria so that Stefan Richter becomes the new Tyrant (and, in fact, always was). You could travel to the Rikti dimension and screw with their civilization. If there's an infinite number of dimensions accessible via Portal Corp or through Arachnos you could simply give every villain on Earth Prime their own dimension to be god-king in, as long as you don't mind screwing over the entire multiverse for the sake of your goals on Earth Prime. Of course there's also no reason another dimension couldn't do this to Earth Prime. The biggest downside of all this is that it is entirely possible to tie the Highlander 2 movie to the CoX universe and make the events from that movie The Coming Storm without any contradictions. And that's terrible.

There's two proofs for this one. First, Ouroboros is accessible from Praetoria. I'd consider this a game play consideration and not count it except for the second proof: Ouroboros is capable of traveling through time in the Shadow Shard. Yep, it's been possible since I11. Mender Silos is indeed in position to potentially master every dimension. Makes the Letter Writer a bit less paranoid sounding, doesn't it?

This leaves Earth Prime in a very interesting position. As the only (known) dimension to have access to both time travel and alternate dimensional travel, it should be possible to end any dimensional threat before they ever occur. Although if the dimensional threat really orginates on Earth Prime (like the Rikti War) this will likely involve multiple attempts as both sides hop back and forth and a large number of deaths. This may be why Paragon City is more often the focus of dimensional attacks than the Rogue Isles. The Freedom Phalanx is not going to sanction large scale killings. Meanwhile Lord Recluse probably has no problems with sending Mako, Black Scorpion, and a legion of troops 600 years into an alternate past and telling them to go nuts.

Methods 12 and 13: BLUE STEEL.

Blue Steel does not travel through time. Blue Steel remains constant while the universe reconfigures itself into his desired time period.

8. Dress in old timey clothes and wish real hard.

My thought is that 11 is just a random number, but limited/small enough to make it appear difficult or uncommon. Adding in the ones shown in-game so far, that still leaves avenues for players to make up their own.

It's narrative handwavium/foreshadowing.

The big question is, is the Battalion or the whatever Storm using time travel? Or is it something else?

The Psychochronometron was a device made by a mad scientist in a gamble to "alter the past" utilizing psychic power to energize the device. Nobody actually "travelled," but Psycurse (or "Kurse" as we call him nowadays) was able to force his "vision" of specific events on history.

Since he didn't have direct control, nor did he have a true understanding of his opponent, he kind of messed things up for Overbrook when he threw the switch and altered the history of Faultine in a second.

So, that's what it did. It altered history, but it didn't provide for actual "travel."

I believe that time travel is one of the twelve uses of Dragon Blood.