Time Travel Rules

## Rules of Time-Travel

* *"Time travel should be used very sparingly in order to keep the phenomenon as special as possible. To ensure that future usage of the phenomenon are kept consistent with the majority of past usages, observe the following principles:*

1. *FFOS is part of a multiverse (a system of related universes) which diverge from one another at critical junctures.*
2. *When one encounters the reality of another time period, past or future of the time period set out from, a key point occurs, diverging a new parallel timeline or universe. It generates one scenario in which an extratemporal person or thing appears via time travel, and one 'virgin' history in which that person or element does not appear. In layman's terms, because time travel: now new universe.*
3. *Because travelling to the 'virgin' timeline is impossible, and divergent timelines are dimensionally displaced from one's root timeline, all time travel entails dimensional travel. A time travelling does not travel directly backwards or forwards in time, but rather backwards or forwards and slightly off to the side to a divergent reality now running parallel to one's original timeline. Since this timeline will have been identical to the 'virgin' timeline until the point of divergence, there will be essentially no variations between the two timelines until most time travelers have no reason to be aware that they are not on the 'virgin' timeline.*
4. *If one goes to an era a second time, one will not appear on the 'virgin' timeline or the timeline deviated by one's prior journey, but on a third timeline divergent from one or the other. A time travelling cannot return to the same timeline more than once. Again, because the second and third divergent timelines are identical until the time travelling arrives, they will initially be indistinguishable.*
5. *When one travels back in time to any age in which they already exist, they may encounter a temporal duplicate of themselves. Every time a time traveller visits a timeline where a counterpart already exists, a new counterpart emerges. As a result of several time journeys to the same time period, multiple temporal counterparts might coexist.*
6. *The presence of several versions of the same entity on the same timeline does not result in temporal paradoxes. Time paradoxes are only feasible in worlds with a single timeline.*
7. *Adjusting a previous event will have an effect on the future reality of the timeline deviated by the time traveler's presence. The act of time travel is only one of many major events that might result in a variety of divergences. The ability to return to the present of the timeline where no reality-tampering divergences occurred or one where divergences occurred as a result of one's previous activities is determined by the means of time travel.*
8. *Returning to one's present also creates a divergent reality. If one has been gone any length of time, one may find differences have accumulated in accordance with the length of time one was away.*
9. *There are no selective changes in the present as a result of the time traveler's activities in the past. A change in the past will result in a totally new chronology, with events continuing smoothly from the moment of divergence. The past, according to the denizens of that timeline's 'present,' is a continuous succession of events that always happened as they happened. Selective dematerializations would be induced by something other than the act of time travel itself, or they would be hallucinations.*
10. *There are three possible methods of time travel in the canon: a. Time travel machines. b. Magic. c. Temporal anomalies .*

*\* All methods involve generating 'chronal displacement inertia' or 'Temportal displacement inertia' freeing one's chronological position in the timestream (just as escape velocity frees one from earth's gravitation), skimming through the extra-temporal realm outside the timestream (Limbo), and re-entering the timestream at another chronological position. Because no time exists outside the timestream, the perceived duration of the passage through limbo may be anything from non-existent to an eternity.*

These rules are flexible and not strictly enforced.