Time Travel

Time travel, also referred to as timeshifting and more colloquially as timefuckery, is possible in Eon. There are a few cases where time travel has been confirmed or virtually confirmed to have taken place, and a lot more where nothing is certain but the party speculates that timeshifting happened. "Time-Shifted" is sometimes used to describe a version of a person who has appeared from another time.
The most dramatic form of time travel the party has encountered is going directly from one time to another on the same plane. Interplanar travel can cause a form of timeshifting in which the dramatically different speeds by which time passes on different planes cause a person to age for and experience significantly more or less time than others on the Prime Material Plane. The party has also lost days at least once.
Controlling time through means of Time Stop could technically be considered manipulation of time, but is generally not considered time travel by the party. (It's not nearly as interesting, either, since Claire, Ethan, and Ashra have all done it. Definitely fun, though.)
Given the possibilities involved both for figuring out what has happened and for fixing things in the future, many party members are very interested in it. 
==Mechanism==
At the moment, Talnec Franko is the only person the party has confirmed can time travel voluntarily and with complete control. Many, but not all, instances of timeshifting have been linked to travel to the Negative Energy Plane. The Hall of Many Things has also been related to several time travel incidents. 
Talnec Franco has discovered the secrets of time travel and lives outside of time, doing very very advanced research. He is capable of reentering time at certain points, can send others back in time, and developed perfect dichotomy.
Eon Walkers learn to manipulate time through their abilities and a unique set of time magic spells, though usually for a matter of seconds. Ashra, Talnec Franko, and Xoth have shown access to some of these spells. Both Talnec Franko and Xoth (probably via Xenteroth) have cast perfect dichotomy, which takes a version of oneself from the future into the present, allowing a person to duplicate themself for a period of time ranging from rounds to years. The person then ceases to exist for an equal period of time before reappearing. 
Xenteroth appears to have some level of time powers himself, though Franco asserted that he probably does not control his own movements through time. 
Valera Oak III's timeshifting is sometimes caused by (or at least correlated with) his drunken binges.
Time manipulation spells known in some way to the party are:
*Offensive Prescience -- one person sees slightly into the future to allow them to hit enemies more accurately
*Temporal Blink -- caster tosses himself into the future to avoid a bad situation in the present
*Time Hop -- as Temporal Blink, but someone else
*Exiled Temporal Stasis -- creature that would have died is instead planeshifted, then returns later when it's safe
*Time Regression -- undo time by up to 12 seconds
*Time Stop -- caster experiences 12 to 30 seconds of time where everyone else is frozen in time (actually moving too slowly to react)
*Perfect Dichotomy -- caster duplicates himself, then both disappear for an equal amount of time
==Known Cases==
===High Regent Xenteroth===
Xenteroth's relics and creations follow a different timeline than the linear. In 400 SA, the time of the Ille Draconum, Xenteroth appeared as a mortal illithid who learned of his ascension from Heckle in a bar in the City of Brass. This ascension happened in 300 SA. According to Barron Ganth, the first evidence (by linear time) of Xenteroth was in The Deep Tower, which depicted his ascension even before it happened, but the official age of the Deep Tower puts its construction at approximately 450, well after Xenteroth's ascension.
In about 500 SA, Xenteroth took over the Ruins of Eldergrin. A demilich in his service encountered in the Ruins claimed to be over 900 years old in 1442, which would put his creation at 542 or earlier; however, this was probably a lie. This demilich was also stunned that Eldergrin was a ruin, when Xenteroth only took over after the city was ruined in 480 SA. This might say more about the demilich's credibility than Xenteroth's time travel.
Xenteroth was defeated in 1400 SA by the crew of the Rusted Feather, an event commemorated in The Nautilus. The Nautilus bears many signs of a building of Xenteroth's own design, and the tapestries within show his downfall with the equipment of the paladin involved about 60 years older than it should have been. Then he showed up as an ascended alhoon on Mechanus in 1443 and fucked the party's shit up. 
===Valera Oak III===
Valera Oak III is famous for time traveling to the point where there are often multiple copies of him adventuring at any given time. Two instances of his timeshifting are linked to his travel to the Negative Energy Plane with Sadzuko Udina. Versions of him with knowledge of the Red Plague and Revolution of 1441 arrived before either of these events and attempted to warn others. He may also have avenged his own death.
===Kruglor the Reviled/Redeemed===
Kruglor has time traveled twice: once in a minor way and once in a major way. While exploring The Hall of Many Things in late 1441, he saw himself through The Dimension Door and threw a femur at himself. This femur struck him in late 1442 in the Ruins of Eldergrin while he and the party were arguing over how best to handle the illithid despair stone in the adjacent room.
Kruglor died at the battle of Syscian's Tower in early 1443; he was an adult dwarf. Two hours later, an aged version of Kruglor fell into the Chamber of the Mother Brain in the illithid city below Baldur. He was 56 years older (placing him firmly into his old age), retired, and had spent the preceding decades making up for his reputation. He was confused as to how he ended up back in 1443, but as there was no way to send him back, he took up residence on the Jade Kracken III, where he currently spends all of his time napping.
===Luke Fenn===
Luke looked through The Dimension Door in late 1441 and saw Ashra in late 1442 throwing a rainbow flask at an emotion stone in the Ruins of Eldergrin. A couple of opens and shuts of the door later, he also saw a statue of Xenteroth powering up the Vengeful Eye of God, an event which took place within the same month as the destruction of the stone. He did not interact with these places, but did accurately see the future through a portal.
===The Illithid Species===
The entire species of Illithids, together with their Elder Brains, timeshifted from "the end of the world" to an earlier time and settled in. This event reportedly happened in about 1340 and was linked to Xenteroth's Tower. Xenteroth at the very least appears to have existed in Eon well before his species arrived. Whether or not the party encountering him recognized his species is unclear from Ille Draconum. Ashra E claimed that it was not the destiny of the illithid species to go back in time. 
===Ashra Puzzlesolver===
There were at least two versions of Ashra on this Prime Material Plane before Ashra met Talnec Franco. We know this because Ashra was able to send a letter to herself. The Ashra who runs the party signs her letters AP; the one who wrote the letter signs AE. 
===The Company===
The group which would become The Company left The Hall of Many Things having spent two days less inside than passed in the outside world.
Ashra, Leilah Maloch, Cicero Tiberius Shadolan, Prince Avimeus, Aether, and Semna Ashtad were sent by Talnec Franco from late June, 1444 to November 13th, 1443 in order to prevent the Awakening from happening.
==Strongly Speculated Cases==
===Baudin Dommilan===
Baudin Dommilan appeared on the docks in the fall of 1441, shortly after his departure from the Prime Material Plane. He asked for the current year, then claimed to have been stuck in "Pyotar Umarov's palace on the Negative Energy Plane" for the past seven years, while only a few weeks at most had passed since he was last seen on the Prime. Rumors in Fall 1442 of plots in Nyasa to bring about the "Awakening" were speculated to be Baudin, but were technically about "the first leader of the Toggenburg Corporation", a name invented by Yolanda after Baudin's departure. Baudin also appeared in early 1443 during the battle of Syscian's Tower. In contrast to his attempt to steal back his piece of The Amulet by mind-controlling Ethan, this Baudin was friendly and more interested in establishing that the illithid pretending to be him on the top of the tower was not him.
Baudin definitely planeshifted when he walked through The Dimension Door in a fit of rage, but there is the possibility that some or all of the instances of Baudin which appeared later were lying, for example about the seven years on the NEP. Anahita confirmed that there are not currently multiple instances of Baudin on the Prime, but that clearly hasn't stopped people from pretending to be him, so one or more of the others could also have been impostors.
===Ashra the Puzzlesolver===
On March 1, 1431, a young Ashra and his traveling companions encountered the wreckage of a caravan which had been damaged by acid. They found a shield bearing the sign of Lady Elan, but no bodies. They followed tracks to The Dark Tower and explored it, but it had been untouched for some time. Inside they found an altar of filth and a black dragon which could not have left the room it was in on its own and which had no memories in its brain. Ashra's memories of the incident are contradictory (they involve leaving Landover to go to Landover) and were therefore probably modified, possibly by the Mother Brain.
On March 1, 1436, Lady Elan and her son, Ethan Elan of Baldur, were killed when their caravan was attacked by a black dragon. The wreckage was found by "an adventuring party" one day later and recovered two days later. Ethan's body was the only one not to be found. While Ethan's memories begin in Baldur, Marcus Fairlan's corpse claimed that he was found at "... the Dark Tower ... make six...", displaying knowledge of the main puzzle of the Dark Tower. This may have been a lie, however.
It is possible that the caravan recovered by Ashra and the others was unrelated to the one in which Lady Elan was assassinated. Given her high rank, many people would have been wearing her symbol, and black dragon attacks were common along the road. It is also possible that this was a trial run five years early, as the dragon attack was coordinated by the Scarlet Brotherhood. This would explain the matching dates. There has been confirmation that at least some of this adventure occurred and was not a wholesale lie implanted in Ashra's memory by the Mother Brain: Prince Avimeus VI responded to a Sending from Ashra in 1443 asking about the status of the illithids in Malvont.
The timeshifting theory is that Ashra encountered the wreckage of Ethan's caravan. The discrepancies between his memories and the facts of the recovered caravan can be explained as a result of memory modification by the Mother Brain: if he were sent with a hidden Geas from the Mother to find Ethan or to retrieve the memories of the dragon, "there were no survivors so we went looking and found this strange tower" would be a much less suspicious memory than "we ran into a caravan and found bodies, but I was inexplicably compelled to look for the corpse of someone I've never heard of." He and his party would have to have slipped back into their own time some time between leaving The Dark Tower (and possibly telling stories about the discovery afterwards -- Ashra does not remember anyone in the party reporting the caravan, but they were probably the "adventuring party" that discovered them if this theory is correct) and returning to the illithid city below Baldur.
Ashra also thinks Grax is a perfect dichotomy of him cast by Xenteroth when he was very young. This would explain why the two look so similar and have similar interests, why Grax seems to know everything that's going to happen, and why Grax seems to have no problem with aging (if Ashra advances sufficiently as an Eon Walker, he will eventually become effectively immortal as Talnec Franco is.) It does not explain why Ashra would be willing to act against himself for his enemy, however. Ashra thinks a lot of things. 
===Ethan of Malvont===
Ethan died in 1436, and his body was never recovered. Six days back by Prime Material Plane standards, he returned to the PMP. During this time he had learned two languages and his hair had gone completely white. The memories of his time on the Negative Energy Plane are traumatic enough that he cannot think of them for long enough to evaluate how long he felt he was there.
In late 1442, while attempting to free Claire and Herr Doctor from the Entropic Reaper's Curse, Ethan rolled Kruglor's Dimension Die and ended up on the Negative Energy Plane. He collapsed in front of a living Sadzuko Udina, who had been killed by Ethan's companions less than a month before in the Ruins of Eldergrin and is, as far as the party knows, still dead. Sadzuko did not make any attempt to harm Ethan, which is surprising given how recently Ethan had been involved with his death. Even if he didn't want to kill Ethan, Sadzuko had also shown up with Baudin, and thus would have at least recognized Ethan; he left him entirely alone. As Sadzuko is known to have gone to the Negative Energy Plane earlier in the Revolution of 1441 as an attempt to disrupt it, the party has theorized that Ethan met a version of Sadzuko from that time who had yet to meet him.
Category:Eon Mythos