Timeless Lore

Introduction

In order to answer deep philosophical questions about Timeless, I’ve put together some answers to questions nobody has yet asked.

The Classic Enigmas

What Are The Timeless?

We do not know. Some regard them as little more than psychic bundles of memories and emotional scars, misfiled memoirs in the Akashic Records. Others regard them as entities of the Psychic or even Causal Plane, able to meld with the minds of mere mortals for a time.

The Timeless are creatures of the abstract, without any physical corpus that anyone has ever been able to find. No test known to science or sorcery can tell a being guided by the Timeless from a being relying on their own knowledge, intuition, and passion. Even self-styled “Discarnators” who vow to “exterminate” the Timeless – how can one kill what cannot die? – rely only on superstition and guesswork.

Those who study the Timeless have no concrete data on them, only hypotheses. In the end Timeless have only their own subjective experiences to go by.

What is Psyche?

A force or energy that transcends time binds each Timeless into a coherent whole, a being with personality and power transgressing space and time in every world they have encountered.¹ That is Psyche.

Short answer: we do not know that either.

Psyche obeys a few rules, at least:

1. The Timeless must relate a Psyche effect to one or more of their previous selves. Many Timeless Incarnations lead similar lives, which can compound the effect.
2. The Timeless can use the attachments of their own Karma, and sometimes that of another being outside Time, to boost the effect.
3. A Sanctum enhances the effect. No one knows whether the energies of the Timeless permeate a space where they take refuge, or familiar surroundings help their minds focus.
4. Timeless draw even more power from Power Spot or Portal, perhaps because their energies resonate with the Timeless’s own nature.
5. Despite all the paranormal energy available to the Timeless, consensus reality fights back, hard. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, according to classical physics. A Timeless who uses too much force finds it rebounding back on their physical, emotional, and spiritual existence.

What is Karma?

Just as every physical being has experiences that shape their behavior and motives, so does every Timeless who has lived more than a few lives have Karma.

If Timeless truly are beings of the abstract, every emotional bond, traumatic experience, and relationship has as much reality to them as physical limits to us. These Karmic Fetters, as some call them, provide both a source of strength and a vulnerability. While, like Buddhist monks, some Timeless prefer to avoid “attachments”, most prefer a life of passion and purpose, despite the pain.

Are Timeless Immortal?

No known force can kill a Timeless. What is there to kill? An idea? A soul?

Nevertheless, some known Timeless have resurfaced less and less over “time”, to the extent we can speak of time among the Timeless. Experts have identified three different causes.

The Discorporated

Despite their fumbling, “Discarnators” have found a few techniques that temporarily evict a Timeless from their Incarnation. The Incarnation loses all the memories and power of the Timeless, while the Timeless abruptly and arbitrarily shunts to another of their Incarnations.

Needless to say, both parties find the experience disconcerting. Some Timeless, therefore, may simply elect to keep a low profile lest another “Discarnator” come after them again.

The Dispersed

Sometimes the Discarnators’ powers not only evict the Timeless but “disperse” them. Dispersal sends a Timeless reeling to a place called Timeless City, which seems to be a dream state within which the Timeless slowly recover.

Such “Dispersed” Timeless grow both more wary of outsiders and, anecdotally, more warlike. The “Timeless City” state involves psychic battles with other recovering Timeless and beings who seem native to this realm, if realm there be. Formerly Dispersed Timeless range from mildly distrustful to full-blown survivalist paranoia.

The Lost

Finally we come to the most puzzling and tragic cases, the so-called “Lost”. Timeless tend to be drawn to each other through time and space. Former lovers or enemies incarnate in each others lives so often it passes from drama and tragedy to face. Yet throughout Timeless “history”, to the extent we can speak of such things, sometimes one of such a tragic pair fails to appear for Incarnation after Incarnation. Were they mortal, they would be presumed dead.

Have the Lost truly lost themselves? Have the died of “old age”? Or have they merely tired of repeating the same patterns life after life after life? Until one of these “Lost” is found again, we may never know.

Can Timeless Change The Past?

In the sense of changing their own past, no. The cardinal rule of Timeless time travel is that what happened in the past stays happened. This rule has some notable exceptions, however.

1. Parallel Worlds: Some worlds echo each other’s history up to a specific point, when they diverge. A Timeless who ends up in a parallel of a world they know well can find the decision point from the history they know or experienced and nudge things on another path.

2. Blind Spots: Sometimes the history we know is merely what someone wrote down. If a Timeless didn’t experience an event, it very well may have happened differently. A conspiracy of historians, however, hushed up the truths. In some sense, those who are ignorant of history are empowered to change it.

3. The Predestination Trap: A Timeless may cause the very event they seek to correct. Their plan goes awry, or goes perfectly but for one factor they did not know about or account for.

How Does Incarnation Work?

Once again, we do not know. An Incarnation has all the memories of a Timeless, the Psyche of a Timeless, and the Karmic Fetters of a Timeless. To all appearances, however, the Incarnation existed before they joined(?) with the Timeless, and except in tragic cases exists after the Timeless leaves them.

Those who were Incarnations report that they felt no second consciousness, no feeling of “possession” or takeover. One moment they were ordinary mortals, the next they knew instantly they had lived other lives and could bend reality with their will. They were still themselves, just more.

When the Timeless-Nature left them they retained some of the memories like a dream or a story they once heard. The other powers, and even the compulsions and passions of Karmic Fetters had simply disappeared.

What Is The Timeless City?

Between Incarnations, especially when a Timeless is dispersed, they experience a sort of dreamlike half-life in what all Timeless call the Timeless City. Apart from the Handlers and a number of apparently native residents, only Timeless may go there.

The Timeless City has little to do: conversations in the Diner, making contacts at the Hotel, doing research in the Library, walking in the Park or along the streets.

Those who crave violence will find violence: a fight club in the park, bouncers and cops to curb unruly behavior, and a labyrinth of kill-able monsters in the Underground.

See Timeless City Lore for more information.