The Plot

[Rye]

. . . TIME IS RELEVANT . . .

The time is set a handful of years into the future, at a time when tensions have only escalated following today’s current events. The governments have collectively agreed to complete a series of research studies on their personified nations, some of which had extended into experiments, some more intrusive than they had originally intended. These studies targeted the connection and influence that these nations have over their land, their people, along with the history and future that encompasses. An unintended side effects of these research endeavors was that their personal histories, their pasts, have become loosened and opened for the unintended intrusion of others.

These slips in time can happen at any given moment, triggered by interactions with another nation or even within certain areas that hold a lot of meaning and residual energy from past events. To the nation experiencing this misplacement in time, it can feel like they’re being pulled along a current, powerless to do anything to stop it from occurring. Once they’re in someone else’s timeline, the nation may be stuck there for an indeterminant amount of time. It can last for as little as an hour or as long as a few weeks. When they do return to their original time, it’s just as unexpected and it’s as if nothing had happened. As irritating as this new aspect of their lives has become, the nations have started to learn to adapt to this new pattern of living. And while the research entities within each nation’s government have been notified of these strange side effects, there has been no effort on their part to attempt to correct whatever seems to be happening to the personified nations. There are some suspicions that the researchers anticipated this kind of side effects and are studying the nations accordingly as they traverse this new reality.

As you may understand by this point, this is a very open sandbox concept of plotting opportunities for these characters. This plot will develop with time, as there is new information presented about what these nations are going through and what it will mean for this future. The nations are not sure what’s going on and why they’re evolving this way, but they’re steadily learning what this means as they gather new experiences. As of now, I will be leaving behind some rules/laws for how this misplacement in time works as well as the information that these nations are now aware of as they’ve experimented with the limits of this unsettling new ability.

. . . LAWS OF TIME TRAVEL . . .

1. When this started occurring, there was some obvious concern about their actions in the past having ramifications for their future. However, every time a nation returns from being trapped in another nation’s timeline, there has been no changes in the present time when they return. It seems as if there is absolutely no cause and effect in these unique time travel events. The past will always remain the past.
2. Going off the first rule, there is also no change in the other nations that the time traveler might interact with in the past. That ultimately means the other nations have no memory and no evidence of these intrusions ever happening in their personal timeline.
3. If a nation ever goes back to a time that they were present in, then they will be the only ones in that timeframe for the amount of time that they’re there. A nation can never be somewhere with their past selves, and as such they will never encounter their past selves.
4. When stuck in another time, they will be exactly as they were when they became misplaced in time. That means wearing the same clothes, holding the same things they were holding at the time that it happened, and in the same condition they were during the travel. Whenever they’re pulled into another time, it’s very unexpected without any warning as to when it will happen, so they have no time to prepare themselves. They go exactly as they are. Some nations may simply stay in the misplaced time with their modern clothes and whatever else happened to be on their person or they may try to blend into the time that they’ve been placed in until they return. It depends on how easy they want to make it for themselves to adapt.
5. It has also been recently discovered that there are ways to escape the past once they’ve been pulled in if they’re not leaving anytime soon. In the event that a nation is killed while they’re in the past, then that will automatically force their body to restart in the present time in their own country.
6. It’s also been recently discovered that nations may slip into the timeline of a long-dead nation/empire if they’re in contact with an area or ruins that still hold quite a bit of residual energy from past events. For this reason, ancients are allowable characters on this site. It’s questionable if these ancients can ever traverse similarly forward in time. This will warrant further research if the nations asking the questions are curious enough.
7. Although it’s relatively rare as far as researchers are aware, two nations may slip into the same timeline of a third person, allowing them to explore the timeline together. The reason why it’s rare is because two nations will need to be together and physically close to each other in the exact moment that a slip in time happens to at least one of them, incidentally pulling the other person along.
8. From what's been documented so far, the exact time that a nation has slipped into another's timeline will have the exact amount of time passing in the present world. If they spend seven days in another nation's past, for example, when they return to the present day, exactly seven days will have passed.
9. This probably is already apparent, but it should be noted that once a nation goes into a time slip, they will be missing from their present time. They will suddenly disappear, leaving whoever is with them to typically guess that whoever is missing is currently somewhere in their personal timeline, since the trigger happens with whoever they're with.

Further “laws” for time travel will be added as the plot develops and as the nations continue to discover the limits and how far they can take this unique form of time travel into each other’s pasts, tragedies, and intimate memories. In the meantime, this is a time to explore creative roleplay with multiple timelines and histories.