So You Want to Play a Dimension Hopping Trickster God for Some Reason, Part 2: We Got Your Timelines Right Here

Last time on SYWtPaDHTGfSR, I chose an article series title that did not lend itself to a catchy acronym. I also explained how you could, if you were somehow moved by some unlikely situation that made the idea of a dimension hopping trickster god exploring timelines —such as Loki, say, if we were to look at Norse mythology and I assure you, nothing else—part of the zeitgeist, how to make such a character for the Modern AGE roleplaying game, using the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook, the Modern AGE Companion, and the Threefold campaign setting.

I didn’t just pick Threefold because of the character options, however. I chose it because if you want a dimension-hopping setting with an overarching theme to bind the infinite smorgasbord of varied realities, this is the setting to do it with. Threefold binds alternate worlds, fantasy realms, and hellish dimensions together in a common storyline. It’s so big, one of the main questions people have is, “How do I get started with so many options to choose from?”

Now we created the Five and Infinity adventure series to help answer this, but we also set it up in the setting book itself, by presenting two organizations that regularly travel the Metacosm—that’s Threefold’s term for the set of all universes. And I think one of them would be especially appropriate for those of you interested in the SYWtPaDHTGfSR play style: Aethon, the guardians of Earths various timelines and branches.

Aethon works out of a secret, super-scientific installation in Invindara, an obscure island nation between southern India and Madagascar, in the “primeline,” which is its term for the universe it prefers to cultivate. Parallel standard universes are typically defined by the presence of Earth. In the generally accepted tracking code use for other dimensions, it’s listed as EU-00004. E is “Earth.” U is “Uninitiated,” meaning most of its inhabitants don’t know about the existence of other universes. The number is the order in which it was logged compared to other dimensions. Yes, it’s a 4. Yes, you should get the book to find out why.

Things You Might Recognize from Somewhere

• Aethon explores parallel worlds with the help of highly trained agents called operants in its missions in various timelines. Aethon maintains a higher technological base than the current present; operants have access to improved body armor and weapons. Of course, they also have access to powered armor, cybernetic augmentations, and canisters of cloned human neurons psychically attuned to stabilize natural laws on site, but if you want to stick with a SWAT outfit and a pointy stick that sends people to an undisclosed location, that’s fine too!
• Aethon teams, called sections, possess devices allowing them to travel from world to world, these aren’t just portals hanging in the air—though in some cases those can exist. They use quantum arks: metal boxes that travel from one timeline to another. If you’re into retro interfaces, I’m afraid there’s no brass or wood paneling (though I guess you could decorate one that way), but you do throw a lever!
• Aethon does “prune” timelines it deems undesirable. This is called deletion. Sometimes the reasons for this are obvious, such as when another timeline—an “Alt” in Aethon parlance, bases its technology on summoning demons and/or eating souls, something that has come up in the Modern AGE/Threefold game I play in, in fact. But other reasons are mysterious.
• Many people have parallel universe counterparts called alters. Sometimes they can become problems. The culminating adventures in the Five and Infinity series deal with a series of alters who can be friends, enemies, and in one case, might destroy a universe after having become a kind of god.
• Aethon is led by the Machinors, beings who have been described as both gods and transcendental artificial intelligences, but nobody ever meets them—well, not directly, anyway.
• Yes, there is a “dumping ground at the end of the universe, it’s not a parallel Earth, but a hell-plane named Blattarum (NI-00099 in the standard index), described in the Threefold setting book and the final Five and Infinity adventure, On the Threshold of Apocalypse.

All that, from a setting released in 2019! Curious….

Things That Might Be New

• Deleting an undesirable universe is…messy. The standard protocol involved eradicating all intelligent life and making the remaining world uninhabitable: a “Z class plane” in standard parlance. This isn’t that big a deal when a world has become totally corrupted—zombie apocalypses and insane supercomputers with nukes don’t inspire much second thought—but when Aethon decides an Earth needs to go for less explicable reasons, you might be tempted to rebel.
• Aethon does not exist outside conventional time and space. This means, among other things, there absolutely are parallel Aethons. Many of these work in harmony with the primeline Aethon but others can be neutral or even belligerent. In the case of the last outcome, this often happens when an Aethon on an alternate Earth asks itself why it gets to be the “alternate” one, at risk of manipulation and deletion.
• The Machinors—those mysterious machine gods that run Aethon—don’t always agree. Some of them work for those renegade parallel Aethons. Some of them manipulate timelines for their own ineffable amusements.
• Remember what I said about fantasy worlds and hells? Threefold has planes of existence where the world is the scaly back of a dragon swimming through space, where people are exiled via catapult. It has a hell consisting of an infinite coiled ribbon of rock whose edges grind against each other, that was liberated from a demon prince.
• The vast scope of the Metacosm means Aethon doesn’t work alone. These stranger planes beyond Earth are studied by the Sodality, who work with Aethon for stability across countless universes. The Sodality is a little nicer, too.

This gives your rebellious, adventure-prone trickster god a huge set of possibilities indeed, and that’s before you, say, make them a rhy-alligator by hacking in the rules for Blue Rose. When the GM goes that route, it’s better if you don’t question it.