History of the Neovictorian Era and the Chrononautilus

"It was 1906, but we screwed the timeline up.
It wasn't just for kicks but I'm afraid that the jig is up.
I tramped through time at the count of jump
Smashed the past and messed the whole thing up,
Now there's nothing left but Post-Apocalypse Punk."


The Apocalypse didn't happen overnight, and it certainly didn't happen quickly. There was no global war that wiped out civilization, no great cataclysm. It began as all the worst man-made catastrophes do - with nothing but the best intentions.

TIMELINE

The timeline that we know, the timeline that leads to the 21st century in which we live, has been lost. Someone meddled with the past in an apparent attempt to make the world a better place, and it resulted in a completely different history, leading to an unexpected future.

People like to talk about the "Apocalypse" of 1906. For them, the invention of the Chrononautilus was the beginning of the end for the world they knew. For the people of 2150, the world has always been the way it is, and if they talk about the Great Apocalypse, it begins the day Victor Hypocrates I took power at the end of the 20th century.

1650-1700: The Rise of Knowledge and Reason

In the west, this was an age of increasing knowledge, of the beginnings of science. In England, the Royal Society was founded and great figures such as Isaac Newton were laying the foundations of our modern understanding of the world. Meanwhile, wars over religion were still being fought across Europe and people being burned as witches from Scotland to Massachusetts. Explorers were making new geographical discoveries, by land and sea. In America, Jamestown was founded and colonization of the Americas continued. In Paris this was the age of swashbuckling, of Cardinal Richelieu and the Musketeers. In the Caribbean, it was the beginning of the "Golden Age of Piracy", with pirates attacking Spanish treasure ships, and the Buccaneers of Tortuga being given letters of marque by the English.

1701-1750: Piracy and Colonization

Piracy continued in this era as European nations spread across the world, seeking new lands to conquer. The French founded New Orleans in North America. For much of this period the English and Spanish were great rivals, and frequently at war. It was the beginning of the industrial revolution, as the first steam engine designed by Thomas Newcomen, was installed in a coal mine in England. The slave trade was at its peak, shipping thousands of Africans to the New World to work on plantations.

1751-1800: Lost Empires

This was an era of continued attempts at imperial expansion, when the British East India Company tried to take over the Indian subcontinent. However, Robert Clive's attempt to conquer the city of Arcot was a failure. There were eyewitness reports of a mysterious flying machine seen over the site of the battle that joined in against the British. The Imperial forces were routed, and the failure was taken as a sign that European colonial armies were not as all-powerful as previously thought. Over the next century, people throughout the far east threw off their colonial shackles and sought independence from western rule, with great success; and Great Britain's attempts to hold onto North America also failed completely, leading to the creation of the United States of America (USA), a vast country stretching from the North Pole to the Equator. Meanwhile, remote areas such as Australia and New Zealand remained untouched by western imperialism.

1801-1850: The Rise of Africa

The attack on a slave ship off the coast of Africa by a mysterious airship led to the freed slaves acquiring the beginnings of their own navy. Over the next few years, African sea power grew, and the slave trade was halted. The Europeans, their overseas colonies lost, were busy fighting in Europe, as Napoleon conquered one country after the other, in what later became known as the Last Great War. The Africans, meanwhile, spurred by their successes at sea against slavery and imperialism, formed the United African States (UAS), and an age of peace and plenty descended on the continent. Political pressure on the USA by the UAS led to the emancipation of slaves in the southern states and headed off what could have been a costly civil war.

By the end of this period, most of the world was at peace, with turmoil only continuing in Europe. Wars, revolutions and invasions continued from France to Russia. When Britain asked the UAS for help in fighting off a French invasion force, the appearance of an African airship fleet over Paris was enough to cause the octogenarian Napoleon to surrender. He died shortly afterwards and his Empire, stretching right across Europe and Russia, quickly became the Eurasian Confederation (EC), built on the American and African models.

1851-1900: The Age of Steam

The world was at peace. Populations grew, international commerce thrived. Great Britain, now a part of the EC, became the workshop of the world, and a model for others to emulate in fashion and technology. Because members of the EC were allowed to keep their own rulers, as long as they obeyed the laws formulated in the Senate in Brussels, Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain during this period, and Victorian style took over the world. Steam power, airships, the bustle and the top hat, were seen from Moscow to the Mississippi. People saw themselves living in a golden age of peace and prosperity. Whole landscapes were reorganized for the benefit of mankind; rivers straightened for the use of steamships, dams built to generate power, marshes drained to provide new land. But already the seeds of future destruction were being sown. The world's population was growing at a phenomenal rate, and without the checks of disease and war, had already reached 5 billion by the end of this era.

1901-1950: The Diesel Age

The invention of the internal combustion engine at the beginning of this period led to a great leap forward in transport technology. Slowly, the automobile spread throughout the world, and air transport moved away from airships toward aircraft. In a world with no conflict, and with increasing crowding of the cities, people sought other forms of excitement. For some it was travel, but the world was becoming increasingly homogenous with global tourism and communications. In the Middle East, some advocated a return to traditional ways, and many gave up their homes to join the growing Neobedouin movement. Young people from across the world flocked to join the tribes, or create tribes of their own, and soon similar groups were setting themselves up on other continents, wandering through the increasingly constrained countryside and living off the land, much to the dismay of their parents and the disgust of local landowners.

Meanwhile, others embraced the new technologies, seeking their thrills in increasingly dangerous auto-racing, airplane stunts and the like; the sometimes bloody competitions were watched by avid crowds on the big "Televisor" screens which had become popular in urban areas.

1951-2000: Rise of the Tyrant

As industry and population continued to grow, pollution increased - rivers choked with dead fish, birds and animals died of strange birth defects, acid rain decimated the forests. Scientists tried to warn of dire consequences to come - that the climate itself might be thrown out of kilter by the ever-increasing industrialization. But their calls for a change of life were compared to the "eccentric" exhortations of the young Neobedouin movement and dismissed as groundless by those in power.

And then, it seemed, a savior came along. A young man by the name of Victor Hypocrates, who had spent his early years traveling with one of the more extreme Neobedouin tribes in the American midwest, ran for President of the United States of America. Handsome and charismatic, he ran on a platform of Hope and Change. His speeches were attended by the young and watched by millions across the world on televisors set up at public rallies. He spoke of the need for a world united against the threats of pollution and overpopulation. He advocated a move away from polluting technologies, a return to simpler times, the creation of a "new wilderness". Soon his supporters were wearing his distinctive green armband and doing his work throughout the world - it began with cleaning up rivers and tidying littered streets, but soon moved on to smashing up the racing cars and airplanes of famous stunt-men and -women and throwing bricks through the windows of neighbors who left lights on unnecessarily, and vicious assaults on people whose carbon footprints were bigger than their actual footprints.

Hypocrates came to power in a massive landslide, and immediately opened negotiations with the other continental powers to create a world government with himself as its first head. His fanatical followers, not calling themselves Neovictorians (partly because of their leader's name, partly because they called for a return to the "golden age" of the Victorian period), marched through the world's capitals demanding that Hypocrates be made World President. The other governments, either fearing for their lives or equally caught up in the Neovic hysteria, gathered in Washington and agreed.

On 1 January, 2001, Victor Hypocrates was inaugurated as ruler of the world.

2001-2050: The Slow Apocalypse

In the long centuries of peace, the world had lost its immunity to charismatic dictators. Sometimes it seemed as if everyone on the planet was carried away on a wave of adulation for their new leader and his increasingly draconian policies. In truth, those who stood against him did so quietly in the background, for fear of the inevitable knock on the door in the middle of the night.

Victor Hypocrates' open policies were simple enough to understand. Technology had created the mess the world was in, therefore it must be stopped. There was to be a freeze on any new innovations, and a slow program of winding back technology to the Victorian era. Populations were to be cut back (quite how, he didn't say) and smaller towns and cities "rationalized" and returned to the wilderness. Massive new mega-cities were to be built to house the people of the disbanded towns, and much of the agricultural land returned to its natural state as the need for food decreased. At the center of each of the new cities a Change Cage was to be built - a massive tower symbolic of the changes that must be made for the good of the planet - and into it would be thrown any innovations, and anyone seeking to encourage innovation.

Hypocrates' secret policies (known only to a few top level advisors) were frightening indeed. When the world president said he wanted to save the planet, he said nothing of saving humanity. In fact, he saw humanity as a blight on the face of the Earth, to be kept alive only in a few overcrowded settlements while the land was given back to the beasts.

In remote areas, he built research stations, where genetic manipulation was used to recreate the mighty creatures of the time before humanity became dominant; from out of his labs came sabre-tooths and hyaenadons, mammoths and giant lions, all the carnivores genetically "programmed" with a taste for human flesh.

When his son (also called Victor) was born, the World President declared himself Emperor, and proclaimed that his son would follow him as ruler of the world; the Neovics cheered his announcement and held massive rallies in his support.

2051-2100: Cities in Flight

When Victor II came to power, he continued the policies of his father. He stocked special areas of wilderness with carnivorous beasts, and the people rounded up from the "rationalized" towns, far from being sent to the new cities that were being built, were dumped into these "national parks" to be eaten by his beloved animals. By this time, the telephone networks had been disabled as part of the drive to reduce technology, and without a reliable way of contacting friends and relatives in distant towns it was impossible for anyone to figure out quite how many were being slaughtered by the new "uber-beasts" that increasingly roamed the wild.

The new beasts had begun wandering into existing towns and cities, increasing the desire of people to leave and be assigned a place in one of the Change Cage cities, which were depicted by the Emperor as being safe havens. But he was careful only to pick those who would be most tractable to live in one of these cities - the rest were fed to the beasts. Things were going well for the Hypocrates dynasty's mad plan.

But there was one thorn in the Emperor's side - the Neobedouin. When his father first came to power, they had supported him in his desire to protect nature and return to a simpler life; but when he began rounding up their tribes and either feeding them to the beasts or cramming them into his new Change Cage cities, they turned against him. But what were they to do?

A lot of the Neobedouin had been hunted to extinction, either by the new beasts or by the Chuno Ggun (named after an ancient Chinese slave-hunting band the Emperor had taken a fancy to), an elite force created especially for that purpose. But they were being joined by new people from the cities - people looking for an escape from the population roundups and the knock on the door in the middle of the night. While they wished to escape the Emperor's draconian rule, not all of them wished for the primitive life of a wandering nomad - they had enjoyed technological city life.

Finally someone came up with a bright idea - take to the skies. The world had no need of an air force for centuries, so Victor II had nothing with which to take out a flying city. The wilderness-loving Neobedouin agreed to help their more urban-minded fellows and soon the first cities were beginning to drift over the landscape, or nestle down on mountain-tops in remote areas, and their aircraft flew protection patrols for their Neobedouin allies.

Victor II realized he needed his own flying machines to protect his troops, but most people with technical know-how had been purged from his organization long ago. The Imperial Air Navy was never a match for the fleets of the sky cities and though an intermittent war in the air was fought for many years, the Skyloft always had the upper hand.

Toward the end of the century when the vast majority of the world's population had been slaughtered, and the remainder were mostly huddled into the Change Cage cities, Victor II (now living a life of luxury in Yellowstone Palace) passed a decree that anyone still living in the outside world was an outlaw, and could expect nothing but swift death from his forces; to the Neobedouin and the Skyfolk, this mattered little, as that had been the reality on the ground for some time.

2101-2150: The Wilderness Years

By now, what remained of the human population were mostly huddled in the Change Cage cities - in the former USA, there consisted of only three massive metropolises - the first one to be built, Old Borealis, in the north of the continent; Desolation in the deserts of former Nevada; and Everglade, in the swamps of Florida. Their populations, brought up on a hundred years of misinformation and propaganda, accepted the story that the wilderness was empty of human life, and accepted their grim lot as a necessity to save the Earth from the terrible fate that had loomed over it in the 20th century. The grandson of the first emperor, Victor Hypocrates III, was a distant figure, cut off from all contact with the lives of his remaining people. The ruling classes, descendants of those who had supported Victor I in his bid for world domination, lived a life of luxury. Meanwhile, outside the Change Cage cities, the beasts still prowled, the Neobedouin still roamed the wilderness and the Skyfolk still looked down from their high eyries on the land below.

In the last few decades there has been something of a thawing of relations between the Free Peoples and the Neovictorians in certain areas. Helium City, built around the largest helium mines in North America, has become a focus for detente, as both sides need helium for their airships and neither side has the resources to be sure of winning a war over the issue. Victor III seems to care little for what goes on in the world - but he is, like his father and grandfather before him, a fickle ruler, and could decide tomorrow that a purge of "outlaws" is necessary. While the Empire remains in place, the Free Peoples can never rest easy.


A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL

It all began in 1906, with the invention of the Chrononautilus by a certain Doctor Leguminous Calgori. This could be said to be the beginning of the Great Apocalypse, though of course no one knew it at the time. Fitting his time travel device to an airship, the HMS Ophelia, designed especially by Britain's Royal Navy, he was to set off on the winds of time with a crew of hardened sailors. Their mission: to promote the interests of the British Empire by meddling with the timeline.

That was the theory, anyway. Doctor Calgori and the Ophelia vanished with all hands aboard, never to be seen in the existing timeline again. And it is at this point where the timeline began to twist to give birth to the post-apocalyptic Neovictorian wasteland the world would become in the time of the Airship Pirates RP.

No one knows exactly what became of Dr. Calgori and the Ophelia, but what IS known is that throughout history, a mysterious dirigible no one had ever laid eyes on before was always reported by eyewitnesses to appear in the sky during various historical events, interfering with history. A battle here, a kidnapped dictator there, an atrocity prevented somewhere else. Whatever Dr. Calgori's true intentions were, whether it be Temporal Imperialism for Queen and Country or a more sinister ulterior motive, whatever happened to the Ophelia afterward led to a world of peace and tranquility. A world ripe for conquest by a ruthless and charismatic dictator named Victor Hypocrates (the first of that name) whose mad schemes for world domination and promises of a better tomorrow fell upon the welcoming ears of a population with no safeguards against such insane charm.

Victor's legacy would be a world whose population had been decimated, people huddled in grim cities walled off against the savage beasts of the wilderness, and the world ruled by Emperor Victor Joseph Hypocrates III, who cared nothing for people as long as nature thrived.

THE SIX GOLDEN RULES OF TIME TRAVEL

The first and most important things to remember about time travel are:

Time travel is Uncommon: There is no time patrol, no Temporal Prime Directive and no other time-traveling airship pirates. Chances are you'll probably never even run into the Ophelia on your travels, but you might see the results of their meddling, unless they decide to settle down and leave well alone in the future.

Time travel is Difficult: For those experiencing it, time travel is NO FUN. This cannot be emphasized enough. Anyone who has time-jumped once will think twice before doing it again. Sane individuals would never dream of putting themselves through such an ordeal. Thankfully, airship pirates can't really be considered 'sane'. To explain briefly: The Chrononautilus warms up preparatory to the time jump, those close by are overcome by an unreasonable and unreasoning dread, which during testing of the prototype, Dr. Calgori had come to call "The Fear". This is not an understandable fear of the unknown but a strange physiological effect of the chronomorphic field given off by the device. The best protection against this effect found so far is to get very, very drunk beforehand - rum, of course, being the medicine of choice for the discerning pirate. Unfortunately, inebriation is not the best way of dealing with the second part of the time travel process; arrival. When the airship pops into existence in its destination time period, the displacement of air causes the vehicle to be surrounded by a small but very violent thunderstorm - not a very tenable situation for an airship crewed by drunkards. It can all go horribly wrong quite quickly.

There's also the problem of limits. The Chrononautilus was invented in 1906. For some reason, probably related to its date of manufacture, it is impossible to travel more than about 250 years in either direction from that date. The backward limit appears to be 1650 and the forward limit is about 2150. It is possible that a Chrononautilus created in 2150 would be able to jump as far as 2400, but there doesn't appear to be anyone in 2150 who understands the principles of temporal physics well enough to create a new time travel device.

Time travel is Infrequent: The Chrononautilus appears to have a mind of its own, prone to malfunction and maladjustment. It doesn't always get you to your requested temporal and physical destination and occasionally doesn't work at all! On top of that is the fact that you can't just jump to exactly when you'd like. It's not a Flux Capacitor or a TARDIS (whatever those things are ) Due to strange spacio-temporal effects which are, as yet, unexplained, the Chrononautilus is tied into the gravity well of the sun, but not that of the Earth. You have to jump in multiples of exactly a year. If you try to jump (for instance) six months, you'll find yourself in the depths of space, because the Earth will be on the other side of its orbit around the sun at the time (this is one of the reasons time travel is best done in an airship - to minimize the risk of materializing in the middle of a mountain or a building that wasn't there at the start point.

Should you miscalculate and find yourself floating in the vacuum of space where you expected the Earth to be, take comfort in the fact that you will not have to deal with the problem for very long, as you and your crew will in a very brief moment, be dead. Take this moment to consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your present circumstances seems more likely, consider yourself lucky that it won't be troubling you much longer.

On top of that, once you jump, you're going to be stuck in your destination time, usually for at least a week, because it takes that long to do the calculations for another jump, even with access to a Difference Engine; without one, it's going to take twice as long. There are no electronic computers in 2150.

Screwing up the Timeline is Difficult: Contrary to popular fiction, it really isn't all that easy to screw the timeline up. Stepping on a butterfly will probably result in a dead butterfly, but it is unlikely to have much of an effect on the future. Likewise, convincing your father's younger self to stand up for himself and punch out the school bully at the dance where your parents fell in love is always a stand-up-and-cheer moment, but it will most likely just end up with a bully with a sore jaw, a bad mood and creative (not to mention painful) ideas for payback on his mind in the morning.

The timeline is remarkably resilient, and will resist all but the most major changes. Most changes to the past will only have a minor effect on the future, and will smooth themselves out within a relatively short period. Prevent a famous inventor from doing his work, and the chances are someone else will come along and invent things that are similar; the details will be a bit different, but there won't be any major changes in the timeline. If you kill the Wright Brothers, it's likely that Alberto Santos-Dumont will create the first working Airplane instead; the history books will be a little different, but by 1915 the fighter planes of the Great War will be pretty much the same. But there are some things - which we call Change Points which WILL have a major effect on the timeline. A change point might be a particularly significant battle, an important world leader, an invention that no one else had thought of, etc. Interfere with a change point and the repercussions down the timeline can be catastrophic. The trouble is, it's not always easy to recognize a change point until it's already been changed.

There's Only One Timeline, So Look After It: Once you've changed the timeline, that's it. It's changed. If you like the future you came from and find you've screwed it up, the only way you can get it back is to try and undo your own mess. You can't just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, flip your airship to an alternate reality where you didn't make a mess and put your mistakes behind you. You have to undo what you did, or make another significant change that will get things back on track. But there's one problem - it's not easy to get back to the place where you made the mess. If there's already an active Chrononautilus in the time you're jumping to, this sets up the theory of what Doctor Calgori called a "Standing Chronomorphological Wave Interference Effect" or (SCWIE), which makes the time jump calculation extremely difficult; get it wrong and you're likely to end up in a different time entirely. So meeting yourself is going to be an extremely rare occurance, and teaming up with whole crowds of yourself virtually impossible.

A Time Traveler's Personal Past Cannot be Changed: Except in exceptional circumstances, changing the timeline doesn't alter a character's own past. A character's personal timeline is unchangeable. Once you are "outside the timeline", your past and memory remain the same, only the world around you changes. When you travel in time, you in effect create a whole new timeline, separate from the one you left; your old timeline becomes inaccessible. So a character who has screwed up the timeline and changed the present world to an overcrowded hellhole will still remember the wilderness of his youth, even though it never existed in the timeline in which he currently exists.

THE SECRET OF THE CHRONONAUTILUS

The Chrononautilus aboard the HMS Ophelia was merely the prototype. Dr. Calgori created one other as a backup. When he failed to return from his initial mission, it was assumed that the device didn't work and the second one was put into storage. Since then it has been passed from place to place to and from people who had absolutely no idea what it is they had in their possession, and it eventually ended up lost to history. No one knows its ultimate fate or whether or not it even exists anymore.

Now the second Chrononautilus exists as rumor, myth and legend...but some believe it's still out there somewhere waiting to be discovered by the intrepid adventurer seeking to do some timeline-meddling of his or her own.