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View Full Version : Need Help With a Time-Traveling Villain



Leliel
2008-07-06, 02:09 PM
Basically, one of the villain ideas I have for a 4E science fantasy game-Normal D&D, but with WEIRD PHYSICS!-is Narez the Astromancer, who seems like an alien at first, but is later revealed to be a descendant of the human race from over a billion years in the future, his strange apperance due to the couple million years worth of evolution.

Now, apart from his basic modus operandi and goals, I have no idea what to do beyond that.

I mean it's fairly obvious that I want some abilities relating to him being a time traveler (stopping time, anyone?), and he should barely look like a human (Dinos evolved from the same species, and they didn't look like each other), just not the whole "energy being" cliche. But other than that...bupkus.

So what's your ideas for this guy's appearance and abilities?

Oracle_Hunter
2008-07-06, 02:24 PM
Ah, time-travelers.

For appearance, I'd go with the hairless humanoid, perhaps with some nice biosculpting to give him superior eyes (like a hawk and able to see through the infrared/ultraviolet), ears, and health (some sort of regeneration factor). That'll allow you to make him look like a Grey Alien or perhaps something similar.

For plots, there are the classics (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravel).

For an antagonist, you can go two ways: the Well Intentioned Extremist (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist) who is trying to do good for the future without regard to the terror it results in the past, or a Booster Gold type who wants to do some This is my Boomstick (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisIsMyBoomstick) action on the primatives.

Once you've settled down with those broad objectives, the adventures write themselves.

Well Intentioned Extremists may either be Time Assassins, trying to kill the world leaders that bring about World War III (rather than convince them of the peril), a fellow who believes that Utopia Justifies the Means (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans) and is using his future knowledge to provoke a cataclysm that will allow his Perfect Society to form.

Booster Golds can go on rampages with their future tech, amassing wealth and power along the way, or they can use a Grays Sports Almanac (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GraysSportsAlmanac) to start subtly manipulating events to gain that same sort of wealth and power.

How's that for a start?

Kurald Galain
2008-07-06, 02:32 PM
over a billion years in the future
Okay, that's overdoing it by quite a lot. Humans have only been around for a couple thousand years, and 1,000,000,000 years seems to break suspension of disbelief.


I mean it's fairly obvious that I want some abilities relating to him being a time traveler (stopping time, anyone?)
A cool trick is a temporal fugue power, by which he (through loops of time traveling) creates duplicates of himself to assist him in combat.


(Dinos evolved from the same species, and they didn't look like each other)
Just so we're clear on the facts, everything evolved from the same species if you go back far enough to amoebas and so forth. Humans certainly did not evolve from dinosaurs.

Jothki
2008-07-06, 02:41 PM
Bit of a side note, but how are you handling time travel? Can you change the past, or have all of the changes already been made and part of the normal timeline?

As far as abilities go, how about something that throws the target a few turns into the future?

Leliel
2008-07-06, 09:06 PM
Okay, that's overdoing it by quite a lot. Humans have only been around for a couple thousand years, and 1,000,000,000 years seems to break suspension of disbelief.

Well, it's a fantasy game. It's not supposed to be realistic.

But, yeah, you're probably right about exaggerating it. Time to hack off a couple digits...say, two zeros?

A cool trick is a temporal fugue power, by which he (through loops of time traveling) creates duplicates of himself to assist him in combat.

Oh, nice. I quite like that idea.


Just so we're clear on the facts, everything evolved from the same species if you go back far enough to amoebas and so forth. Humans certainly did not evolve from dinosaurs.

Yeah, I know. By same species, I meant Marasuchus
and the like.


Also, for handling time travel, I go with the "many worlds" interpretation: Attempting to alter the flow of time creates different a different universe where the timeline was changed, but the main one remains unaltered. Since this would otherwise allow time travelers to run around willy-nilly, this game has the offending traveler sucked into the alternate universe, and it attempts to correct itself by altering events so that it reintegrates with the main universe. Doing something that prevents that (killing your father before you were born, for example) creates an entirely new universe open to all sorts of nasty interdimensional invaders, since it shouldn't even exist.

Indeed, the main goal of Narez is to gain enough control over time so that he is able to reintegrate some of these "Glitch Chronoverses" so that he can change the past. He himself thinks of this as a noble goal, seeing as how he wants to change history for the better, and it will save the inhabitants from the various cosmic horrors that invade them. Never mind the various GCs that he views as "unideal"...Which include those he himself creates by interfering with the flow of time, such as the one the PCs get sucked into.

Leewei
2008-07-06, 10:30 PM
Okay, that's overdoing it by quite a lot. Humans have only been around for a couple thousand years, and 1,000,000,000 years seems to break suspension of disbelief.

Quibbling on this a bit, I'm pretty sure our species has been around over 100 thousand years. Most online sources place us at around 150 to 200 thousand years old. "Standard" evolutionary process may or may not apply. Bio-engineered enhancements both practical and aesthetic in nature seem more likely.

monty
2008-07-06, 10:35 PM
I think the Homo genus has been around for several million years, and they're close enough. Also, dinosaurs existed for well over 100 million years, only dying out because of a massive natural disaster. A billion isn't too much of a stretch from that.

Worira
2008-07-06, 10:49 PM
Mind flayer.

Hal
2008-07-06, 10:57 PM
Another interesting plot device (as used in a JLU episode that I recently watched) is that he's a collector. He goes to the past to pick up artifacts of relative importance, but nothing so critical that time will be changed unalterably.

(The character in question was trying to swipe Batman's utility belt . . . cool to have, but it's not like he didn't have 100 of those lying around).

Waspinator
2008-07-06, 11:57 PM
Here's some ideas for powers of his:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeHop.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeRegression.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/temporalAcceleration.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/temporalStasis.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/timestop.htm

Aquillion
2008-07-07, 12:14 AM
I think the Homo genus has been around for several million years, and they're close enough. Also, dinosaurs existed for well over 100 million years, only dying out because of a massive natural disaster. A billion isn't too much of a stretch from that.
The problem is less evolutionary and more social; evolutionary timescales can be quite large and can stall for extended periods of time if the environment doesn't change. Things can also change relatively quickly if there is a sudden environmental change that requires it, of course.

But if you look at how much humanity has changed socially and scientifically in the past few thousand years, it seems absurd to try and predict anything even a few hundred years in the future... the speed of those changes vastly outpaces biological evolution, to the point where (if you assume we do any genetic research at all) biological evolution ceases to be an important factor for our race, since the rapid-fire things we do deliberately will vastly overshadow the relatively slow impact of mutations and natural selection.

Regardless of how he looks physically, it's probably safe to say that the guy from a billion years in the future would be so different that you can't really represent him credibly in your game.

Go with a few thousand (or even a few hundred) years, and have him look different because of genetic engineering or disease/radiation-related mutations.

random11
2008-07-07, 12:26 AM
Okay, that's overdoing it by quite a lot. Humans have only been around for a couple thousand years, and 1,000,000,000 years seems to break suspension of disbelief.


It worked for Doctor Who...

mikeejimbo
2008-07-07, 12:28 AM
Make him The Master. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: OK, I was totally ninja'd. :smallfrown: I wanted the first Dr. Who reference on the thread! :smallfrown::smallfrown:

Randel
2008-07-07, 02:11 AM
A few ideas:

1. In the future, humans are really used to having machines help them. Notably really fast-calculating ones. Years and years of making robots has made them very distrustful of actual sentiant machines, but they have easy to use machines that they use.

So, a future human is almost always seen with lots of gadgets nearby and is constantly in communication with some smart-but-unimaginative robots. He's constantly reading and writing information to his machines and therefore might have a somewhat limited memory, forgetting peoples names and details until a robot assistant reminds him. If his machines fail... he just might forget how to operate his things or even forget his plan.

Appearance-wise he's alot like a regular human but has very little hair, a bit rounder, and is very fond of elaborate clothing. Future humans generally have blandish faces and appearance and prefer using clothing and mannerisms to tell eachother apart. They look fatter than present day humans, but most of this extra mass includes a more efficient blood-cleaning system so they are resistant to poisons from air, water, food, or from high cholesterol.

More padding in their joints and better neurochemistry lets them live quite long without suffering from aches in their bones or brain troubles. If they maintain good physical excercise and mental disipline, they can remain standing and walking indefinatly and even while asleep (they are able to slip easily in and out of sleep at will, catching a few minutes of REM sleep while waiting for their robots to do some task).


Motivations:

Coming from a race of multitaskers, he could have mutiple reasons for traveling to the past and has at least three things running at once in case one plan falls he still profits from the others.

1. poaching- since many creatures went extinct during the time from now to the future, he decides to collect many creatures from the present day to bring to the future. Since some scientists would like to start breeding these beasts, he would like to get enough to form a stable gene pool. But he doesn't want to grab anything that could cause trouble down the line. So he mostly targets creatures that would have died from natural causes or pets who wouldn't go on to sire packs of wolves or something.

2. time looting- he grabs up valuables from this century like art works or fine wines or other stuff to sell to collectors.

3. Time caching- he brings things from the future to store somewhere to possibly retrieve later. Like brining in barrels of green wine from the future, letting it age for a long time and then picking it up when it gets good.

4. garbage dumping- he dumps radioactive waste somewhere so that it breaks down to lead by his time. Would choose a remote spot out of the way that people don't go anyway. Could be that the dreaded valley of death or other cursed place might actually just be deadly because future humans sent their junk back in time to rot there.

5. spying on history- historians are looking to see what happened in the past and he is there to find out. He sends out little spy robots to check on people.

6. Quantum state collapser- due to how reality works, things in genrealy exist in a quantum state until observed. These 'hidden zones' actually form a really weird resource that can be used by those with the knowledge. A hidden temple that was never found and nobody knows whats inside? A future human with the right tools could approch the area and psionically 'choose' what is inside the temple. Few unknown areas exist in the future so they must go to the past to places that nobody knows about.

7. Future invasion- the universe will eventually end, to allow their civilization to survive the future humans try traveling back in time to now so that they can set up camp here and have another billion years more. But traveling to the past requires care to keep from destroying your own past 9and yourself). However, the villain thinks he has found a way make a time traveler fuse right into the time stream in the past.

Essentially. when you travel to the past, you are still connected to the future. If too many people connected to the future exist in one time, there is the risk of destroying the future and the time traveler, having it replaced with the now-changed present. He plans to find a way to bring and entire civilizations worth of future humans to the present, and then cut their ties to the future. Therebye destroying the future but leaving all the people from the future safe in the younger world. They could then wipe out the present-day people and have their powerful civilization start up anew.

The villain is pretty much alone out of necessity, but once he finds a way to sever a time-travelers link to their true time then he could call in lots of reinforcements. If the hero's think this one guy is crazy and tough, they better fear what happens when untold Trillions come in to fight.



Powers:

1. he receives a bonus to reflex and will due to seeing ahead into the future

2. when attacked, he may be able to force the damage to be rerolled.

3. Duplication: as an immediate action, He performs one standard action and then teleports to a point within his move distance. Then he can take his turn over again at this new position but cannot use this power on this turn.

Effectivly, he takes two turns but on the first turn he must use a move action to teleport to a spot withing 30 ft or so and then travels to the beginning of this turn.

4. As a future human, he is skilled with using his robots or technology along with quite a few magic powers that work about like spell-like abilities for him. He can also see magic auras.

Dervag
2008-07-07, 02:58 AM
I think the Homo genus has been around for several million years, and they're close enough. Also, dinosaurs existed for well over 100 million years, only dying out because of a massive natural disaster. A billion isn't too much of a stretch from that.Thing is, no individual dinosaur species lasted more than a tiny fraction of that 100 million year span.

If we're still around in a billion years, despite all the many, many things that could quite easily destroy us at any time, we won't be recognizable. The 'humans' of a billion years into the future in a D&D setting are probably going to be energy beings or mind flayers or something equally weird.

Seriously, a billion years is just overboard. It creates the feeling that you slapped a big number down without thinking about what it really meant. If you want your guy to be more or less recognizable as a future human (maybe with a little trouble), don't put them farther in the future than the australopithecine apes are in the past.


It worked for Doctor Who...That's because the creators of Doctor Who are good enough artists to cover up the fact that they have no sense of scale (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale).

Skyserpent
2008-07-07, 03:37 AM
Dresden Codak had something pretty cool with the Time Colonists...

Coke_Can64
2008-07-07, 03:45 AM
Erm, Final Fantasy 1's Chaos/Garland's stunt (spoilered for those who care)
where he gets killed by the party, talks to the 4 fiends to rez him 400 years back as long as he gets the 4 fiends to appear in his time to utterly screw up the world. Henceforth he is invincible (as he gets killed +/- 0 time, goes back 400 years and rezzes to wreak havoc on the world through the 4 fiends at +/- 0 time) and is constanly rezzed back (but the party doesn't notice) and then at the end to kill him:
the Light Warriors go back in time, kill Chaos, and stops the entire thing happening

But then that would totally mess up the flow of time, yada yada, and cause several extra universes that the entire game board melts to the sheer divide-by-zeroness of it all. :smallwink:

Xuincherguixe
2008-07-07, 04:20 AM
Minor nitpick to the above spoiler

I thought it was 2,000 years? Not that it matters. It's also very confusing :P That part of the game wasn't explained too well.

Kami2awa
2008-07-07, 06:32 AM
Make him a Yithian from Call of Cthulhu (inspired by HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time. They are a race of beings who exist only as disembodied consciousnesses. They can possess physical beings across time and space, doing so mainly to learn about other times and places but also en masse to take over whole civilisations. They are totally alien, ruthless, and detached, seeking only to gain more and more knowledge - basically the ultimate scientists. Usually the possessed mind is swapped into the Yithian's current body, which is not necessarily anything like the target...

Individual Yithians know a LOT; arriving in a given time they can create high technology from what's available, resulting in things like teleporters built of vacuum tubes or clockwork robots. In D&D you could see them using a lot of the bizarre exploitations of magic items, e.g. using a Decanter of Endless Water as a rocket thruster, or a Wand of Lightning Bolt as a power supply. Generally in order to swap bodies Yithians need to build a machine once they arrive.

Inyssius Tor
2008-07-07, 08:10 AM
Personally, I love the Ethergaunts (http://www.superunicorn.com/erik/2005/06/my-gith-candidate.html). They're awesome. Go look at that link.

(The treatise he's talking about isn't incredibly well written; I'm not sure I'd recommend it (http://www.geocities.com/ripvanwormer/ethergaunts.html).)