The Fountains of Time
The Fountains are no ordinary island peaks, but satellite vents from the main Arnrock volcano that formed volcanic necks of metallic rock, rich in arcane energy. The heat from the satellite vent warms water in the aquifer, bringing it to the surface in the form of hot springs on and around the Fountains. For hundreds of years, island villagers that drank of the Fountains’ waters aged quite slowly and lived extraordinarily long lives.
While the villagers harvested the water to sell in communities around the lake, my father, Lazlo Sotherby, had an inquisitive mind and bigger plans. For decades, he worked to build devices that concentrated and controlled the power of the Fountain. He had a breakthrough one day with a machine that pulsed arcane magic in various frequencies, called the Oscillator. He could use it to make objects bathed in Fountain water disappear. This, by itself wasn't particularly useful, but after trying this so many times in so many ways a change occurred. Other objects started appearing in the Oscillater unprompted, and these were not the same ones that he had made disappear. And soon not just objects, but notes.
He was not simply evaporating things into the Oscillator, but sending them somewhere else; A place where another inquisitive mind lived, which called themselves Professor Agurukk. Through years of mutual study and continuous notes back and forth, they determined that one another were not in different places but rather the very same place in different timelines in distinct realities, happening in tandem. Their worlds were identical except that the Professor Gurukk’s timeline was many, many decades into the future. They worked to scale up what they could send back and forth, hoping to send people some day, but eventually their research plateaued and stalled.
All the while, I had grown up helping my father in his lab however I could; Handing him tools, fetching materials, and studying his notes. When I came of age, I wanted to bring fresh ideas to his project so I left for several years of study in Waterdeep. When, at last I triumphantly returned to Arnrock with new concepts to show my father, I found him missing with his lab devices all running and untouched. From reading his notes it would seem he cracked the secret to send a living being to another timeline, but not how to choose which timeline or how to return.
Since that day, I have pushed the abilities of the Oscillator further than my father could have ever dreamed, reliably sending objects as large as carts of apples, as powerful as wondrous magical items, and as complex as Artificer clockwork devices. I can even send groups of people to timelines that I choose, reliably. Its not a perfect system and I'm always improving it, but it is brimming with potential.
Someday I’ll tighten the control of this device until I can see into the past and pull apart the truth of where my father ended up… Until that day. We have research to do.
-Sotherby
This reality is one of many that exist together in harmony. It is unknown how many realities exist in total, but each one is slightly different from the next. In one reality, hats are called shofs and watermelons were never cultivated and farmed, for they taste quite bitter. In another perhaps your character was raised in one town over than in your timeline, and grew up with different friends and chose a different life path.
All of these realities have their own Timeline which travels forward in parallel to the others, from one year to the next towards the future. In the beginning of existence, all timelines started from the same point.
Beyond the constraint that time travels only forwards, there is one more major constraint on these realities: Power. Each reality contains an amount of power made from the combined power of every individual thing within it, from objects and creatures to planets and supernovae. This level of power can fluctuate slightly without issue, but larger spikes in power that occur during major events like cataclysms, eruptions, and titanic wars push the power out of balance.
When the realities' powers are out of balance their timestreams push slightly further apart until they reach a new equilibrium. The first spike in power was a war between the gods of Day and Night that unleashed immeasurable amounts of fire, shadow, and chaos. When the timelines were pushed apart by this, the wars happened in succession rather than all together at once. Think of this like a group of longboats on river that that is coming to a bottleneck; Before that point, all of the boats can travel side-by-side, but as they reach the bottleneck some must move to the front or back in order to fit through.
These events move the timelines forward and backward from each other, so that same events no longer happen at the same time. Over countless ages and powerful events, the gaps between timelines has increased dramatically. The current Interval is: 17 years, 113 days, 6 hours, 28 minutes, and 3 seconds. So travelling from one adjacent timeline to another feels as if you have travelled more than 17 years into the past or future.
Everything from mundane objects to creatures and events has a unique Power Signature, made up of its power level and structural complexity.
Sending something with a low power level and complexity, like a pebble or a small note, in one direction from one timeline to another is possible because of the realities' ability to tolerate slight fluctuations in power. Sending a cart of apples, a magic sword, or a living being from timeline to another, however, requires Reciprocation. Which is to say that something of similar power signature must be sent in the opposite direction at the same time to maintain the power equilibriums of each side. This is not a matter of risking increasing the interval, but rather that it is simply not possible, it is a limit of this universe. Trying to send a creature in one direction is like trying to scoop gems into a mine cart that is already full of coal, the gems would simply pour off of it onto the ground. In order to move the gems into the cart, coal must be moved out of it to make room. If you’ve read this whole page, then send me a message saying the word reciprocation, and maybe your character will get a little bonus.
Thus, when something more than a note is to be sent to another timeline, a swap of something or someone of relatively equal signature must occur.
-Grant