Time Arcanum and people travelling back

[lbeaumanior]

Greetings,

I have some questions regarding some time travel spells (Shifting Sands mainly but also Corridors of Time):

What happens to your physical body when traveling back? Lets say I got

1. It is 8 am now, I am formally dressed for work and just eaten breakfast, 8 hours ago I was on my bed, asleep; assuming I got enough successes to travel back 8 hours: if I go back, do I appear as I physically was 8 hours ago (pajama-dressed, no food in my body) or with my current attire and physical status on my bed?
2. Assuming I get enough successes, can I travel to a point in my personal timeline when I was not awakened? If so, do I keep my powers?
3. Which Arcana and at what level, is needed to return to the time I was a child, still being a child, but retaining all my powers and memories?

Thanks,

[KaiserAfini]

Greetings,

I have some questions regarding some time travel spells (Shifting Sands mainly but also Corridors of Time):

What happens to your physical body when traveling back? Lets say I got

1. It is 8 am now, I am formally dressed for work and just eaten breakfast, 8 hours ago I was on my bed, asleep; assuming I got enough successes to travel back 8 hours: if I go back, do I appear as I physically was 12 hours ago (pajama-dressed, no food in my body) or with my current attire and physical status on my bed?
2. Assuming I get enough successes, can I travel to a point in my personal timeline when I was not awakened? If so, do I keep my powers?
3. Which Arcana and at what level, is needed to return to the time I was a child, still being a child, but retaining all my powers and memories?

Thanks,

1- Yes, you inhabit the body you had at the time
2- Yes, since Awakening time magic defies causality, as stated on page 185
3- Unmaking of Time

[Teatime]

I have a caveat concerning question 1. Although the time traveller would find themselves wearing pajamas in their bed, all injuries and Conditions travel with them, their Willpower and Mana reserves remain the same, and any spells they cast on themselves go with them. The description of Shifting Sands explicitly states that. To give an example:

On your way to work you're ambushed by enemies. In the ensuing battle, your eyes are injured by shrapnel and you're affected by a Stamina-reducing spell. In response, you cast a spell to see despite of missing eyes. Deciding that you have no chances of survival, you cast Shifting Sands to rewind several hours. You are now back in your bed. For all external witnesses, your eyes are suddenly replaced by a bloody mess. The Stamina-reducing spell is gone, but the one you cast to regain vision is still there.

An additional note concerning mechanics. In Awakening, the number of successes does not change the strength of the spell. During spellcasting, you can choose to make your spell stronger by accepting dice penalties for every increase. After that, it's all or nothing. The spell either takes place exactly as intended, or not at all (barring Paradox and Exceptional Success).

[Isator Levi]

I have a caveat concerning question 1. Although the time traveller would find themselves wearing pajamas in their bed, all injuries and Conditions travel with them, their Willpower and Mana reserves remain the same, and any spells they cast on themselves go with them. The description of Shifting Sands explicitly states that. To give an example:

I wonder about applying that reasoning to Corridors of Time. On the one hand, it does use a phrasing of your present self inhabiting your past body. On the other, I feel as though the underlying flavour for Shifting Sands making anything wrong with you goes back as well doesn't quite fit intuitively to the feel for Corridors of Time and the narratives that it entails.

Assuming I get enough successes, can I travel to a point in my personal timeline when I was not awakened?

Time travel is not a matter of how many successes you get, but what the temporal sympathy to the targeted time is. Mages tend to have the weakest sympathy to times from before they were Awakened, but that doesn't matter so much for a Master; it's a spell pitted against a Withstand so Potency is the primary factor, so it always has Potency 5. The spell will automatically overcome any temporal sympathy. The caster just needs to spend the Reach to make it sensory range and have a yantra symbolising the time to be targeted.

There might be complications on occasions with a mage with no sympathy to the period in question, although even that might be overcome with other spells (although I think creating sympathy wholecloth to the past should be a slightly more tricky proposition than doing it for spatial sympathy).

Your main thing for time travel is duration. You probably want time in the past that will be measured in more than seconds, so in addition to the extra Reach (which in addition to the range one means that this spell will risk Paradox, so that's at least three dice), you might want to take penalties to extend the time (and one of your Yantra slots is going to the temporal sympathy Attainment).

Keep in mind that when going back in time, the present still exists and the space where you departed retains a signature where the spell can be dispelled, preventing any changes to the past from taking hold. True, it's a spell withstanding being dispelled with either 5 or 7 (although giving it that Advanced Potency is adding to the Paradox of the initial casting), but depending on what one goes to do people may be motivated enough, especially if you don't have anything to guard your time travel spell. Travelling back with the intention of doing something with widespread changes will create a lot of ripples to warn mages, who may be very motivated to find out where this person travelled back from.