Copyright ã 1997, 1999 Chris Halliday
All Rights Reserved
“Allow me to introduce myself. Colonel John Temple, First Division. I was born in Minnesota, USA, in 1945. Studied physics at Princeton, and played a lot of football before I got bored and joined the army. Period records will tell you that I bought the farm at Nha Trang, but the stiff they shipped back after the ambush was what the tech boys call a Quantum Echo. Since the Corps recruited me I've completed 150 successful missions downtime, so I reckon I'm qualified to teach you a thing or two. I’ll be your guide through the next few days, helping you adjust to your new world. I know that right now you’re all a little freaked. That’s only natural. After all, most of you were yanked out of time at a point when you thought death was inevitable. I’ve got good news and bad news about that. The bad news is that you did die, according to history. There’s a body in your grave that’s identical down to the last particle, your families have mourned and moved on, your life story is done. But there’s good news too. You aren’t dead, and you have a chance to live on. To become heroes.
“Not one of you is here by chance. Every one of you was picked because you are special. Adaptable, independent, intelligent, courageous and possessed of a unique vision that allows you to see the bigger picture. You care passionately about freedom. You’re an explorer, and you have a touch of the poet. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see these qualities in yourselves. We do, and we’ve been watching you a long time. Your lives and the decisions you have made have told us that you deserve to live, that you deserve the right to contribute to life in a way you never thought possible. That’s why we reached into history, at the point where you were supposed to die, and pulled you out.
“I know that not much of this is sinking in right now, so you’ll be given a transcript of each of these briefings to study later. If you’ve got any queries or problems, let me know and we’ll do what we can.
“But the question you’re asking right now is who
exactly are we?”
Life in the Corps
Living and Working with Aliens
The Time Keepers
The Cryolis
1st Division: Temporal Marine Strike Group
9th, 12th & 22nd Division: Special Operations
7th, 17th, 24th & 31st Divisions: Strange Parallels
Division Omega
Security Division
Temporal Monitoring Division
Paranormal Intelligence Division
Observer Intelligence Division
Genetic Heritage Division
Temporal Physics Division
Parachronal Physics Division
Research and Development Division
Paranormal Research Division
Medical Division
Technical Support
Production
Quartermasters
Engineering
Resource Management
Transport
Provisional Rank
Insignia
Accommodation
General Orders
Special Orders
Directives
Regulations
The Judicial Court
Rules in practise
Counter-Revision
Contact
Clean Up
Emergency
Escort
Event Watch
Period Base
Recovery
Recruitment
Rescue
Research
Tour
Strike
Existing outside and beyond recorded history, the Time Corps is a completely autonomous organisation, owing allegiance to no single parallel, time, world, species or government. It makes no value judgement upon the events of any given history, and takes no sides. The Corps exists and acts because it must, to preserve creation itself. If an individual is in possession of anachronistic information or technology, they have the ability to influence or limit the freely made decisions of others, controlling them and manipulating events to the benefit of the controller. By any standard, this is wrong, and someone has to allow people to live without this kind of control.
That someone is the Corps. Standing guard over history, the Corps opposes those who would risk the existence of everything for a taste of personal power. They protect the right of life to find it’s own way, whatever that way may be. Sometimes it means standing back while murder is committed, while war is raged and people’s lives are destroyed. Sometimes it means pain. Sometimes it means death. Sometimes non-existence. Always it means adventure.
The secret of the Corps’ success lies with the nature of the beings it recruits. Whether they are human or not, all Corps agents share the same qualities of courage, adaptability and mental flexibility. They are the cream of their species. All of them are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may go on, living their lives unaware of the war that wages all around them. The leaders of the Corps - the Hour Council - quietly pride themselves on the way alien beings from thousands of different worlds in hundreds of different universes work together in harmony, and they strive to help those beings find the most fulfilling role they can within the organisation.
While field missions are considered to be the most exciting and fulfilling duties- and the quickest path to promotion - most Corps agents are assigned other duties, such as gathering and collating historical intelligence. Many are assigned to Corps facilities and bases throughout the Omniverse, tasked with performing the duties that keep such assets running. Some have more mobile duties, moving from base to base as the Corps requires them.
The Corps has access to a wide variety of sophisticated psychological tools, which it uses to accurately evaluate the best possible posting for each agent, in terms of maximum benefit to the organisation as well as their personal satisfaction. However, field agents are selected very carefully indeed, as they bear a terrible responsibility. The actions of a single field agent could potentially create a tidal wave of disruption that could end in the collapse of the Omniverse, so there is little room for mavericks or wildcards. If an agent is selected for field-work, it is only because they have proven themselves worthy in the eyes of their superiors; and in the Corps, those eyes see all.
Most Corps agents have a number of different postings during their career,
as their skills and abilities change over the years. Postings generally
last a minimum of two subjective years, and a maximum of ten. However,
posting times may vary radically in areas of special concern, or time periods
that produce unusual degrees of stress.
The Time Corps is an unprecedented achievement; hundreds of thousands of different sapient species united in pursuit of a single goal - the preservation of the Omniverse. Human agents are expected to accept that all agents, human or not, are an integral and equal part of the Corps, and should be treated with respect and co-operation. Bigotry, racism and xenophobia are not tolerated within the organisation, and highly effective courses of counselling are available to those who wish to get past their psychological barriers.
However, experience has shown that some agents simply cannot adapt to the reality of alien life. It is one thing to speculate on life existing elsewhere in the cosmos, it is quite another to actually meet something that evolved to sapience under a distant star. Despite their famed mental flexibility, some humans have suffered extreme psychological trauma, even when encountering members of their own race from the far future. With this in mind, agents are recommended to restrict their dealings with alien species to those most like themselves, and to avoid encounters with potentially damaging beings unless they are in an encounter suit.
Species with which humans enjoy good relationships with include the Palathrid, the Vashakti and the Korbentir.
Notable figures in the Assembly are Saabastan of the Palathrid, Twin Moons Falling of the Korbentir, Malasim of the Vashakti, Becker of Humanity, Salathar of the Sarpenthan, Uush-tar of the Gostamid, Yllim of the Krell, Leader 223 (Second Spawning) of the Koranthan and Render/Tearer of the Ssasskad.
The Hour Council has ultimate authority over all aspects of Corps activity, but rarely interferes in the day-to-day routine, preferring instead to act through the Assembly, or QAIN.
Each member of the Assembly controls a protectorate of the Corps, responsible for the preservation of the history of a major race of sapients and associated minor races, with a separate Protectorate responsible for monitoring the Unity, a pan-universal society existing at the end of time. Within each protectorate, responsibility for allocating missions is divided into periods of time, each controlled by a Monitor. All Century Monitors report to a Millennial Monitor, who in turn reports to an Epochal Monitor. Epochal Monitors report directly to their Executive Director.
The Monitors lie outside of the military structure of the Corps, but have supreme authority within their given time period. No mission within any given century can be undertaken without the authorisation of a Monitor with responsibility for that area of time.
Within each division, a loose military style structure is used, which
differs according to the psychological needs and history of each species.
The remainder of this document will refer to the Human Protectorate alone.
Comments by Colonel Temple of First Division are in Italics.
The exact nature of the TimeKeepers is a Corps secret. We tend to keep recruits away from them for a while, ‘cause they can be more than a little weird. They look human, though hairless and pale. They appear sexless, though I’ve never checked, and somehow it would feel rude to ask. They are pretty easy to spot, and dress in long concealing hooded robes, much like the monastic orders of the Middle Ages. While they rarely speak, you can often hear them chanting together as if in prayer, which I’m told is actually some of the eight-dimensional hypermath used to protect the Citadel from temporal incursion. Physically, their strength and endurance borders on the superhuman, and I’ve seen and heard things that indicate their reflexes and intelligence are up there too.
The Keepers can be awful strange to be around. In the Citadel, they
always seem to pop up where you least expect them (usually when you’re
going somewhere you shouldn’t) and they always seem to know what you want.
Currently there are over forty-five million Cryolis living in the Citadel. Their entire civilisation exists within the Omniversal Archive, a dimensionally transcendental spire over a mile high. Within the spire, space is warped into an environment specially tailored to their needs. Though this environment is safe for humans, prolonged exposure to it can cause severe disorientation and psychosis.
Oh yeah, about the Cryolis. Though the Corps protects the history of all life, by and large we try and keep the various races separate. This isn't bigotry on our part; it's just that most sapients aren't well equipped to face the reality of a living, thinking alien being. Though most recruits can eventually adapt, it's a distraction we'd prefer they do without. The exceptions to this are the Cryolis.
The Cryolis were an experiment in altered evolution created by the Architects. We were set to correct the disruption, but got hung up when we realised it meant wiping out an extremely advanced, peaceful alien culture. In the end, we asked the Cryolis themselves what we should do. When they told us to delete them to avoid putting others at risk, we knew we couldn't do it. Their evacuation to the Cage was the largest ever operation of its kind. Even after we moved them all, we still lost about two million of them to temporal deletion.
When the Cryolis realised we were having trouble managing our archives, they volunteered their services. Every Cryolis knows everything that the others know, and they have an eidetic race memory that gives them access to the sum of the experience of every single Cryolis that ever lived. That adds up to one hell of a card index.
So, get used to the idea of aliens, because the Cryolis are almost as omnipresent as the TimeKeepers and a damn sight stranger. The average Cryolis vaguely resembles a man-sized blue mantis with tentacular appendages instead of arms. They're polite, gentle and generous to a fault. They're also utterly dedicated to the Corps and our mission.
One last thing. Recruits have a habit of calling the Cryolis names like "bug" and "roach". I guess it helps them adapt to the idea of a real live alien being.
Don't do it.
You see, we owe the Cryolis big time. Most experienced agents consider
them family. They were willing to give up their right to exist so that
we could do our job, then they turned around and helped us do it better.
So if any of you get the urge to use the "B" word, think again, or you
could find yourself on the rough end of an ass-kicking you'll never forget.
All of the Human Protectorate’s 500,000 active field agents belong to this section, and are sub-grouped into divisions for ease of management. While the majority of the divisions do not specialise in period or function, a small number do. These are listed below.
It took me a while to figure out why there are no Keepers in the
OpSec. After all, they are stronger, faster and smarter than us. Okay,
they’re weird, but in some eras that’s a positive advantage. Then I saw
a whole bunch of them arrive at the Triassic Academy to relieve the current
staff. As soon as they got off the shuttle, the whole damn bunch just folded
up with time sickness. Some of them passed clean out, while the others
just wandered ‘round in a daze, looking like they were trying to puke.
Worst damn time travellers I ever saw.
My division. We don’t get up for anything less than a timequake,
and we ALWAYS get the job done. Best division in the whole damn Corps and
don’t let anyone tell you different. Maybe one day, if you’re good little
boys and girls and work very, very hard, you can wear the black too. There
ain’t a feeling like it.
We don’t talk about these divisions unless we have to. So I won’t.
Other divisions refer to this crowd as the ‘Odd Squad’, and it’s
easy to see why. These agents are specially trained to think sideways,
accepting and adapting to the craziest of worlds without going crazy themselves.
It tends to warp their perceptions a little, making them a little unstable,
but they’re still some of the best agents the Corps has to offer.
And they throw the best parties.
The Warp Divers are a sight to behold, though if you see them in
action, you’re either just about to come apart at the seams, or you’re
one of them. Encased in power assisted armour, they wade into sections
of space-time so badly shredded that normal matter no longer exists within
them, where time has snapped like an over-stretched elastic band. The suits
have powerful temporal shielding, which protects the agents within while
they use their array of tools to literally stitch reality back together.
Among the toughest men and women I’ve ever met, the Warp Divers stare into
the abyss as a matter of course.
The Security Divisions of each Arm are the ones who watch the watchmen, to borrow a phrase. Their profession is vigilance and suspicion, so I guess it’s no surprise they don’t win many medals for popularity in the Corps. Still, without them, our enemies would have wiped us (and probably themselves) out a long time ago.
Technically, Security have ultimate override authority and access
to all areas within the Citadel, there are some areas where the TimeKeepers
just won’t let them go. Security won’t admit it, but the reason they won’t
push the access issue is that the Keepers give them the willies too.
If Operations is the strong arm of the Corps, then IntelSec is its brain. Information gathering and collation may not seem glamorous compared to some of the rough and tumble of OpSec, but these people are yanking vital data right out of living history, often at a heavy price.
Boring it ain’t.
I don’t have much to say about the TMDiv, mainly because I’ve never
gotten past the Keepers to take a peek.
Remember back there when I said IntelSec wasn’t boring? I could have
been bending the truth a little. Shortly after my first mission I had a
little accident that made me a borderline Chronopath, so I got assigned
to PsiInt for a short while. PsiInt is impressive enough; a huge spherical
chamber ringed with hypersleep capsules containing Chronopaths hooked into
PsiAmps, and a vast central Eternity Room displaying the current status
of the Omniverse. But believe me, being kept in low level suspended animation
while the part of your brain that is sensitive to time is artificially
stimulated can get real old, real fast.
Observers are the agents we put on event watch, to guard potentially
sensitive areas of history. Because of the historical significance of the
areas they are in, Observers are trained like no other agent to blend in
and become part of the time they are protecting. As a consequence of their
strategic importance, Observers are trained never to break their cover,
no matter what may occur. It’s a cold truth, but the Observer who saves
your ass in the field, rather than just reporting your death, has just
failed to make the grade.
The Omniversal Archive is the heart of the Historical Intelligence Section, and boasts the single largest collection of historical information ever recorded. Over six hundred billion documents and sources have been collected, evaluated and filed, any of which can be accessed in seconds by the section’s quantum AI, ORACLE. The main collection is located in Archive Central, a dimensionally transcendental spire over a mile high, and the home of the Cryolis. Copies of portions of the Archive, along with some Historical Intelligence Section personnel, are assigned to archives maintained by the various divisions of the Operations Section.
The Historical Intelligence Section will perform research on request for any other section of the Time Corps, with requests from the Operations Section having the highest priority. Frequently, the staff of the Historical Intelligence Section will conduct extensive debriefs of agents on their return from the field, or request specific research missions.
It’s pretty tough getting your head around the size of the Archive,
especially when most of it doesn’t exist in real space anyway. The first
time I went there I got told that almost every piece of information generated
by sapients was recorded and filed somewhere within the Archive. I had
this figured for BS, so I went digging. Twenty minutes later I was handed
my birth certificate, my enlistment papers, my tax returns, and a photo
of my infant son that my wife had posted to me in ‘Nam when I was in country.
The postal chopper got firebombed on the way out of Saigon, so I never
knew the kid existed until then.
You'd be surprised how much work these guys get. A remarkable amount
of temporal crime is genetic in nature; there are plenty of yo-yo's out
there who want to clone famous people, or want Marilyn Monroe to be their
grandma, or who fall in love in the wrong time and decide to breed when
they shouldn't. Harder to spot are the folks who think it's smart to genegineer
their enemies. They're the kind who like to use a retrovirus to seed a
target population with a fatal allergy, then watch as people on a battlefield
sneeze themselves to death.
Considered the mad scientists of the Corps, SciSec are often laughed
at by the unaware, with OpSec being the guiltiest. My advice? Don’t laugh.
These people keep us ahead of the opposition, no matter how thin that lead
may be. They work closely with HistInt, gathering and analysing technical
and scientific data from different parallels, scanning it for relevance
to our own needs and work. Often they alert us to parallels that are getting
close to the secret of time travel, enabling us to keep a watchful eye
out.
I wouldn’t trade with these people for anything. They’re easy to
spot; they are the ones with the nervous tics and the dark patches under
their eyes from too many sleepless nights. Seeing these guys makes me wonder
if I should be worried more or just stay happy that I’m ignorant.
In contrast with the Temporal Physics Division, the staff of this
division are almost constantly in a whirl of excitement, busily processing
telemetry from the unmanned parachronal probes we send out to map the Omniverse.
It pays to talk to these guys; a lengthy conversation with a parachronal
physicist can open your mind to what is really going down out there.
It can also get you invited to some of the shows they frequently put on
in the holocentres, where they demo holo footage from the weirder parallels.
R&D is a gadgets lover’s dream come true, a wire and fibre-optic
strewn nest of creative energy, where the only rules are there to be broken.
These are the visionaries and half-crazed tinkerers who keep the guys in
the field alive, and every agent I know wants to either buy them a drink
or shoot them. Or both.
Often referred to as the ‘Spook Squad’, this division is one of the
least popular, if most fascinating, in the Corps. Many of you may question
the validity of their field of research. Don’t. Difficult as it may be
to take on board, the supernatural is real and cannot be ignored. It hides
in the underside of history, out of the light, and sooner or later you
and it will cross paths. When ParaDiv send someone to your mission briefing,
listen to them. It could save more than your life. It could save your soul.
It doesn’t matter when or where you’re from, the idea remains the
same; make friends with your medic. I was raised a good Catholic boy, so
I won’t tell you that these people can work miracles. But since they can
raise the dead, cause the blind to see and the lame to walk, they come
close enough to make it a tough call.
All auxiliary services are provided by the Citadel’s internal systems or the TimeKeepers, who run the laundries, gymnasiums, holocentres, bars, housing, shops, comm systems, and other facilities necessary to keep the Corps happy and productive. The TimeKeepers also maintain and operate QAIN.
Apart from the services outlined above, the TimeKeepers also provide
the following specialist services.
The observant among you will have noticed that I haven’t said much
about the auxiliary services provided by the TimeKeepers. That’s because
the services are provided in such a way as to be almost invisible. The
Keepers glide from place to place, all part of the big machine that lets
us, the Corps, do our job. And that’s the way it should be.
The Hour Council: - The ultimate authority in the Corps.Executive Director: - The Executive Directors each control a Protectorate of the Corps, responsible for safeguarding the history of a major sapient species and its associated races across the Omniverse.
Section Director: - The Section Directors each command a Section of the Corps.Colonel: - An agent with the rank of Colonel is usually in command of a division within the Corps.
Commander: - Agents with this rank are normally assigned several majors and their associated installations.
Major: - Typically, a Major will have as many as fifty different Corps installations under his command. At this rank, an agent is no longer expected to go into the field, though many continue to do so.
Captain: - A Captain is normally an agent in command of a Corps installation (such as a Period Base) or vessel. Depending on the size of the installation or vessel, a Captain may be in command of as many as twenty agents. Agents with the rank of captain or above may be granted the coveted status of Free Agent, giving them a high degree of autonomy in their missions and a wider area of operations.
Lieutenant: - In a typical mission team, the Lieutenant is the senior ranking agent. He is responsible for all tactical decisions, but is expected to listen to the council of his fellow agents. Ultimate responsibility for all decisions made in the field lies with the Lieutenant, unless a senior agent is present.
Sergeant: - The rank of Sergeant is typically that of second-in-command of a mission team. The Sergeant is expected to control the personnel resources of the team, by assigning duties and managing lower ranking agents.
Corporal: - Agents with the rank of Corporal are generally expected to manage the material resources of a team, such as securing weapons and equipment.
Private: - The lowest active rank of agent. Private is considered to be a probationary rank, held during the agents first four or five missions. Agents with the rank of Private are generally expected to observe only, while more experienced agents do the work.
Cadet: - The rank given to attendees at the Time Corps Triassic Academy. Cadets are ranked in grades, with each grade corresponding to a three month term. There are 12 grades of cadet.
Recruit: - This is less a rank and more a designation. From the time agents are recruited to the point they choose to enter the Academy, they are given the title of Recruit. Recruits are given considerable leeway, and various forms of counselling are made available to them in order to aid their transition into their new world. Should a Recruit decide not to join the Corps, they become civilians and are respectfully addressed with their culturally appropriate title.
It is possible for the Divisional Commander’s office to bestow promotions
without a request. QAIN keeps track of the performance logs of each agent,
and flags those who have provided exceptional service without receiving
the recognition they deserve. However, Corps personnel are conscientious
about rewarding good service, so these unprompted promotions are rare.
Senior agents often use provisional promotion as a way of testing a
promising junior agent, or as a way of giving them a degree of required
authority in the field.
Grey: - OperationsDivisions that do not have a colour coded uniform are distinguished by division insignia, worn beneath their Corps commlink badge. Off-duty, Corps agents are encouraged to wear whatever they like, with consideration for the morale and social restrictions of their fellow agents.
Black: - Operations - First Division
Blue: - Operations - Security Division
Green: - Intelligence
Orange: - Historical Intelligence
White: - Scientific Support
In the field, the uniform of the Corps agent is the mission suit, a one-piece suit of programmable material, capable of assuming any shape, texture and colour coded into it. Corps agents are also assigned a dress uniform, though these are rarely worn. Dress uniform is normally restricted to ceremonial occasions such as funerals, medal presentations or other such gatherings.
Senior agents in the Corps often allow their subordinates a degree of
leeway in their uniforms, as a reflection of the less restrictive nature
of the Corps. However, the Corps does insist that each agent present himself
smartly whenever possible, and maintain acceptable standards of cleanliness
and good hygiene.
Rank is designated on the Corps uniform by the pattern of gold, silver
and black bars on the rank strip worn on the right of an agent’s collar.
While on a mission, the Corps assigns whatever funds might be required. While standard equipment can duplicate the currency of any period, the Corps is keen not to disrupt historical economies by the introduction of too much “counterfeit” money. Thus, Corps personnel are encouraged to barter goods for local currency whenever possible.
All this is not to say that rank does not have its privileges. The Corps
allows each rank a specific amount of leave and recreational time, and
grants its senior officers the option of more spacious living spaces than
the junior members as an incentive to excel. Suprisingly few agents take
up this option however, preferring the less opulent (though no less comfortable)
standard rooms.
1. No Agent shall ever wilfully or by carelessness impose a change upon the natural flow of history, or by inaction allow such a change to be imposed.The Corps takes the Code very seriously, but it recognises that its rules may sometimes need to be broken during the course of a mission. Each case is judged carefully on its merits, by a panel of experienced field agents and by the Judicial Court. Unnecessary infractions, once proven beyond doubt, are enforced by a range of penalties from demotion to banishment to the Cage.2. No Agent shall ever needlessly or recklessly interfere with potentially significant beings existing in the past, or by inaction allow such interference to take place.
3. No Agent shall ever engage in transtemporal or parachronal travel without the authorisation of a senior officer, except in execution of mission objectives.
4. No Agent shall ever wilfully or by carelessness reveal, or allow to be revealed, any concept, information or data, which is alien to the time or parallel at hand. This regulation is not held to apply when engaged in the recruitment of Time Corps personnel.
5. No Agent shall ever wilfully or by carelessness allow any item, information or being to remain in a time or parallel in which it does not originate.
6. No Agent shall ever attempt to directly or indirectly influence their own history, or that of any other Agent.
7. No Agent shall ever attempt to interact with their past or future self, or that of any other Time Corps personnel without the authorisation of a senior officer, except in execution of mission objectives.
8. No Agent shall ever attempt time travel into the future of the Corps.
Aside from the Code there are other rules and regulations, governing
things from health and safety at Corps facilities, to making first contact
with other time travellers. It is beyond the scope of this sourcebook to
detail every regulation in the Corps. However, certain types of rules are
particularly important, and are detailed below.
Infractions are dealt with by disciplinary action from the agent’s superior
officer, based on the severity of the breach. Punishments can be a verbal
warning, a negative remark in the agent’s permanent record, temporary restrictions
on leave or recreation time, temporary demotion, or a full court martial.
A breach in regulations is generally handled in the same manner as violating
a directive.
The Judicial Court has no permanent staff. Instead, all court officers are drawn from the body of the Corps, serving for a short period of time before being returned to their normal duties. In this way, the Corps ensures that each agent is judged fairly by his peers, in the manner that they themselves would wish to be judged. Appeals against court decisions are handled directly by the Hour Council.
Penalties handed down by the Court can range from a verbal warning to
banishment to the Cage.
Though no two missions have ever been the same in either execution or
planning, most of them can be grouped into basic classifications. The following
is a list of the most common mission types.
Counter-Revision: - The majority of missions engaged by the Corps are counter-revisions; missions designed to correct an historical disruption. Counter-revisions are the most dangerous of missions, as the agents are going face-to-face with an unknown enemy and have only a short time to correct the disruption before the altered events become part of the historical baseline and can no longer be return to their original pattern.Contact: - These missions are a combination of diplomatic effort and scientific observation. The Corps is aware of a number of other parachronal societies (e.g. the Chronarchs of Ramatheya), and works hard to maintain good working relations with them. A contact mission is organised when the Corps detects signs of new parachronal activity in an unexplored area of the Omniverse. As most races with parachronal technology are extremely paranoid about attacks from other parallels, contact missions can often be highly dangerous.
Clean Up: - These missions are always mounted upon the conclusion of a counter-revision mission. Agents assigned to clean up are fully briefed on the events of the Revision mission and are sent in on either side of the events to ensure that there are no dangerous anachronisms or potential disruptions left behind.
Emergency: - On the rare occasion that a disruption or event occurs that poses a direct threat to the Time Corps itself, an emergency mission is assigned. Agents on an emergency mission are granted greater leeway than normal; tasked with the preservation of the Corps, they are authorised to take whatever actions may be necessary to complete their mission, even if it means violating the Code. Agents who take advantage of this leeway to create unnecessary damage to the timelines can expect to be severely disciplined once the crisis is over.
Examples of events that could trigger an emergency mission are a timestorm, a direct attack on the Citadel, or the terminal disruption of a parallel.Escort: - When a researcher or historical specialist needs to enter the field, they are assigned a mission team as escorts and assistants. Since historical analysts rarely leave the Citadel, the main duty of the mission team is to protect them and keep them as far out of trouble as possible. This is often much harder than it seems, as the “boffins” have a habit of regarding history as a scholarly exercise, rather than real and potentially deadly events.
Event Watch: - This is a mission to protect a specific historically significant event. Corps agents on event watch observe their assigned occurrence and act to prevent any disruption of it.
Event watch missions are usually solo affairs, though entire mission teams can be devoted to short term event watch if Intelligence believes there is a high chance of an attempted disruption. To maximise the effectiveness of an agent on event watch, they are normally looped over the period to be observed. That is, the agent observes the period once, then jumps back to the start of the observation period and merges with is past self, experiencing the period again. In this way, the agent can protect the observed event from disruption by using paramemory to recall exactly how the event is supposed to occur. An agent on event watch can loop himself a maximum of ten times before being relieved by another agent, who replaces him at the start of the loop.
Event watch missions are normally kept as short as possible, but if a specific location or individual has historical significance for a prolonged time, agents can be assigned to long term event watch, often lasting many years.Period Base: - A lifeline to agents in the field, period bases are an integral part of the Time Corps intelligence web. Agents assigned to period base duty can be one of two things; field agent or base staff. Base staff rarely leave the period base, instead they man the temporal monitors and keep the base running smoothly. Field agents spend their time immersed in the local culture, keeping an ear to the ground for unusual events and gathering historical intelligence for processing back at the Citadel.
Period bases provide invaluable data for the Corps, ensuring that when an agent enters the field, he is fully equipped with all the contemporary knowledge he will need to fit perfectly into his chosen time.
Period base assignments usually last for five subjective years before the staff is relieved.Recovery: - When a mission team fails in a revision mission, a recovery mission is launched. The aim of the mission, if the disrupted event has not yet become part of the historical baseline, is to intercept the failed team and send them back to the Citadel and to restore events to their correct order. By intercepting the failed team, the recovery team eliminates any historical disruption cause by the missions failure (note however that agents killed in the original mission will still die when their time comes. See The Rule of Death).
Recovery missions, like rescue assignments, often have little in the way of planning or preparation, and agents are held to a very strict timetable. If they cannot restore events to their undisrupted state before the historical baseline is irrevocably altered, they are to abandon the mission and return to the Citadel, rather than risk disrupting history further.Recruitment: - When an individual is recommended for recruitment, a series of missions is launched. Observers are seeded throughout the subject’s history, on order to ascertain the candidate’s suitability. Great scrutiny is given to the subject’s character and ability to adapt, and their behaviour under a wide variety of conditions is recorded and analyses using sophisticated psychological techniques. If the subject is deemed to be Corps material, the retrieval stage of the recruitment mission begins. Observers ascertain the exact moment and nature of the subject’s death.
At the exact moment of the subject’s death, a Corps time shuttle phases in and sets up a stasis around the subject, effectively stopping time. The subject is replaced with a quantum echo, an inert duplicate generated by an unshielded probability shift, then is invited to join the Corps. If the subject chooses to join the Corps, he is transferred to the Triassic Academy for processing and training. If he chooses not to join the Corps, he is given the choice of either returning to the moment of his death, to experience what fate originally had in store, or starting a new lease of life on a Corps sponsored colony world within the Cage. Though many candidates do choose to return to the moment of their death or move to the Cage, the majority chooses to join the Corps.Rescue: - Though the Time Corps is composed of the best people in history with highly advance equipment and training, there are times when something goes wrong. When a mission team fails to report back, or a major temporal disturbance is detected in the area of the Omniverse where they are located, a rescue mission is launched.
Rescue missions usually have little or no preparation time, and the mission team runs the risk of encountering the same difficulties as the original team. However, these missions are normally of a very short duration indeed, becoming known as “Jump’n’grab” missions by experienced agents.Research: - These missions usually involve to direct observation of a period of history or unusual phenomena by a team of agents. Agents are frequently required to acquire copies of local records that might otherwise have been destroyed, to use drones and holocams to record obscured events, or even participate in events directly, before returning to the Citadel with their data.
Research can prove quite hazardous, as researchers can order agents into situations without fully understanding or communicating the dangers. Research missions are of varying duration; though typically they only last between one and two weeks, they have been known to last several months.Tour: - Like event watch missions, tours involve long periods of “under cover” work in the field. Unlike Observers on event watch, agents assigned to a tour are usually mobile in some way. Marching across the Alps with Hannibal, crossing the Atlantic in the Titanic, following the Bear Folk across the land bridge, all these missions are tours.
Tours are usually performed by a small team or a single, highly trained individual, whose mission is the prevent disruption of any of the events in their mission horizon. Because tours are frequently lengthy and harsh, agents are never looped back to the start as they are with event watch missions. Whenever a tour is complete, agents are assigned counselling to ensure that there is no risk of them “going native”.Strike: - When the Corps has finally tracked down a hostile base of operations, a military strike is called. Agents may be required to infiltrate a location before calling a strike, or may be part of the troops readied to clock in and attack the enemy before they can escape into history. When engaged in a strike mission, the Corps has a simple policy with regard to the enemy; all efforts must be made to capture sapient beings alive, unless doing so puts Corps agents at risk.
Depending on the urgency of the mission, the agents may have some time left for personal research into the period they will be visiting. Though the memory implants provided by QAIN are always thorough, QAIN’s alien nature occasionally leads to gaps in the information provided, which can prove awkward.
Most missions have little chance for research however, and agents usually go directly from the briefing to the Quartermasters, where TimeKeepers outfit them with the necessary equipment and any special costuming that may needed. Here local fashions are programmed into the memory of each agent’s mission suit, period-specific disguised weapons are generated by replicon and any required surgical alteration’s performed.
From the Quartermasters, agents move to the Vaults, where their timegliders are stored. The Vaults also house the briefing couches, where agents download memory implants that will allow them to interact with local natives in a fashion unlikely to draw attention.
Up to this point, the senior agent still has the option to scrub the mission if he feels the team is unprepared or unlikely to succeed, though an agent will need a very good reason to scrub an emergency or counter-revision mission.
In any location where the terrain is unknown, it is standard procedure to rotate back into normal space-time at a relative height of ten thousand feet above sea level. Once long range sensors have confirmed the safety of the selected landing site, the team can descend. Once the team has arrived in their target time and place, it is imperative that they ensure their timegliders are safe. To this end agents should activate Cloak Mode as soon as they can, setting the timegliders out of phase with the present moment, rendering them invisible and unreachable by any except the agents themselves.
In counter-revision or failure recovery missions, agents should set about tracing any disruption back to the point where it occurred. It is no use wiping out a band of renegades if all their actions up until that point are allowed to stand. To this end, agents are encouraged to take prisoners for interrogation. Once the immediate threat has been identified and neutralised, the team should identify the earliest point at which the threat forces entered the current time period and also their point of origin if possible. Once this is done they can jump back to that point and intercept the enemy as soon as they arrive, thereby minimising the amount of damage done to history. Note that a second team often performs this “wrapping up” action, acting on information gathered by the first.
Once the mission is complete, agents “tidy up”, by ensuring that they cancel out as much of their presence in the time period as possible. Normally this is accomplished by travelling back to the point where they originally arrived and deliberately looping with their younger selves. When paramemory informs them the mission is over, the agents can then return to the Citadel. While tidying up erases any trace of the agent’s actions in the past, there is always the chance that it may not be possible to do this. For this reason, it is imperative that agents make every effort to reduce their impact on the past, reducing the chances of creating a disruption should they be unable to complete their mission.
At the Citadel, agents arrive in a sealed section of the Vault, and are subjected to decontamination procedures. These take no more than a minute and are usually unnoticeable. From there the agents move to the debriefing area, unless any require immediate medical attention. In the debriefing area, the agents’ memories of their mission are uploaded into QAIN for evaluation and analysis.
