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The following material was imported from the Ice Cave, where it was related to the faster-than-light discussion. |
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 15:26:35 -0000
From: "Crossingham, Adam"
Gates are to become a very important of my Cthulhu campaign, but I'm a little puzzled about how to implement as artifacts in the game.
From reviewing the gaming material and mythos literature it seems there are two sorts of gates:
1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation. The portal is two dimensional when viewed. Perhaps the best example of this portal is the 'window' that the sorcerer Eibon used to escape to Saturn from his pursuers.
2. the 'long' gate or wormhole when transport to the destination is perceptible and non-instantaneous. The gate may be 2-d in form or occupy a 3-d space. The traveler or user is conscious of his/her displacement and emergence somewhere else. TV's Stargate might be the most easily accessible example of this form of gate but definitely non-Mythos. My preferred example is 2001's surreal roller coaster ride that Bowman takes.
Gates mostly link two geographical locations together(i.e. Innsmouth-Devil's Reef), but occasionally and very rarely gates may cross time (i.e. the Jurassic era-1920s Arkham, or 1920s Egypt-Pharonic Egypt) and/or planes of existence (i.e. to Dreamlands).
Gates can also transform the traveler so that they can survive having reached the destination. This implies some sort of destruction/recreation or modification of the traveler.
The things I'm pondering:
- are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or forgotten about? I'd like to exclude magical transportation by spell or god's whim. Yes, I know Create Gate is a spell, I'm talking about using a gate after creation and treating it as an artifact or as high-technology-turned-magic.
- I found the concept of 'whitespace' in the excellent Encyclopaedia Cthulhiana, but having never read the stories form where it originates I have no idea how whitespace works or whether it is even a form of gate travel.
- ways of describing gate travel both in the short and long forms. Short is easier because it is like stepping from one room to another, but long is hard to conceive of, let alone describe. I'm wondering whether make long gate travel surreal and close to a near-death-experience especially if destruction/recreation of the self is involved.
- would long gate travellers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like the Hounds of Tindalos?
Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I missed?
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 10:58:16 EST
From: "William Timmins"
The other gate I can recall without looking is the Limbo gate.
Creates a portal, in the form of a mathematical/geometric expression. When the expression is analyzed and understood, one can transport into Limbo space, a foggy white realm. In Limbo space, portals back to 'real' space are seen as glyphs glowing underneath the fog.
The challenge is to actually recognize which glyph corresponds to which gate, and figure out how to walk from one to the other. No mean task.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 13:01:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Daniel M Harms
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Crossingham, Adam wrote:
From reviewing the gaming material and mythos literature it seems there are two sorts of gates:
I think the second type of gate was in fact described in the original gate story, Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch-House".
- are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or forgotten about?
The only other examples I can think of - the Limbo gates Mr. Timmins brought up, Gate boxes, Create Window spells, the Portal spell from the de'Medici Manoscritto from the old TUOs, the Vortex of Far Journeying from Dreamlands - don't qualify for what you're trying to do.
- I found the concept of 'whitespace' in the excellent Encyclopaedia Cthulhiana, but having never read the stories form where it originates I have no idea how whitespace works or whether it is even a form of gate travel.
As Basil Copper postulated it, there's no explicit link between the Great White Space and gate travel.. At some spot in the world, there's a hidden opening to a sacred band of cosmos, which is used by the Great Old Ones and their minions to travel between the worlds. Whether this is the space through which gates or channeled, or something else entirely, is something which is never really explained.
- would long gate travelers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like the Hounds of Tindalos?
Only if you want them to.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:15:37 +0100
From: Davide Mana
Greetings.
Looks like we are all working on similar things.
Adam writes….
1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation.
These seem to come in two main flavour - one way (like the ones through which the GOO could come back to here and now) and the two-way gates. A portable version of the two-way instantaneous gates is also known.
2. the 'long' gate or wormhole when transport to the destination is perceptible and non-instantaneous.
[again]
Another distinction worth remembering is the one between fixed destination gates and open target gates.
Open target gates generally come (in game supplements) with a random table for wrong destinations.
Gates mostly link two geographical locations together(i.e. Innsmouth-Devil's Reef), but occasionally and very rarely gates may cross time (i.e. the Jurassic era-1920s Arkham, or 1920s Egypt-Pharonic Egypt) and/or planes of existence (i.e. to Dreamlands).
Do not forget, also, the well known 'somewhere in Yorkshire to Stonehenge 2000 years ago' gate.
Again, various permutations are possible
- same place, another time
- same time, another place
- another time, another place
- same place, same time (also known as the 'You have been duped' gate spell)
Gates can also transform the traveler so that they can survive having reached the destination. This implies some sort of destruction/recreation or modification of the traveler.
Fritz Leiber again.
The Caves of Ningauble in the Newhon stories carry travellers to other times and places and rearrange their brain providing new memories in tune with the destination.
They can be considered permanent (?) long gates.
Refer to 'Adept's gambit' for further detail and multiple syncronicity, 'Gambit' being a story Leiber wrote and submitted to Lovecraft (that offered suggestions, including the one about 'cutting out the Mythos references'), based on chess metaphors and with a lot of nifty stuff for horror gamers and Cthulhu in particular (gates being just the tip of the iceberg).
- are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or forgotten about? I'd like to exclude magical transportation by spell or god's whim.
My take is, there are various ways through which you can manipulate the continuum; some still resemble technology, others are advanced enough to look like magic.
I generally include a lot of gate technology in Yithian cities - after all, why bother with a corridor if you can just put a gate there instead?
- ways of describing gate travel both in the short and long forms. Short is easier because it is like stepping from one room to another, but long is hard to conceive of, let alone describe. I'm wondering whether make long gate travel surreal and close to a near-death-experience especially if destruction/recreation of the self is involved.
In the weirdly sick (or sickly weird) but fun game known as Whispering Vault, long gates are replaced by 'travelers' - that is, huge critters (think Dune) that just come from nowhere and swallow the characters, bringing them to their selected destination. Inside the 'traveler', characters walk a surreal landscape (keeper's option, but possibly obliquely related with past or future adventures), meet with a surreal but dangerous guardian entity and have to proce themselves to pass through.
Once they are about to be delivered to their destination, small insect-like creatures wrap them into silk cocoons and weave the form that the characters will have for the forthcoming session.
[NOTE: in Whispering Vault players play the roles of Cthulhu-style investigators that trascended their material being and grew to become GOO-style critters charged with defending reality. To interact with humans they have to assume a temporary humanoid form (usually with some weirdness to it)]
Complicated, but a granted show stopper - I still remember the faces of my players when we played our first game!
A nice bit I stole from a Japanese anime (the excellent Cowboy Bebop) for gating in CoC is, things going through a gate (especially a 'long gate') cast a shadow in our own regular spacetime - just that, an evanescent afterimage.
This does not help much in describing the gating experience to players, but works great as a shock tool - when the characters will see photographs of themselves, semi-transparent and weirdly fluorescent, on the Psychic Research Society journal or on some disreputable tabloid.
- would long gate travelers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like the Hounds of Tindalos?
Possibly yes.
Instantaneous gates seem to carry this hazard - see the Stonehenge gate already mentioned, which came with a random table and a nifty percentage of Hound intervention.
Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I missed?
The above, off the top of my head.
But considering what I've been doing with British stones and lloigor recently, I'll be back.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 15:23:47 EST
From: LizardRoi
Good stuff. I'm partial to long gates and tend to organize in that vein. To range outside the strictly Mythos, other forms of "gate" include:
My favorite is going walkabout like the royal family of Amber for a change of scenery. I just love the idea of a morphing car, and stopping off at a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Dino on the way to a different POV. Or Random's glider flight.
Ningauble's cave is like a walkabout where you forget the journey and take on a new identity at Customs.
King Mob of The Invisibles seems to do something similar, but apparently uses the walkabout process like hyperspace, emerging in his reference reality but at a different time/space coordinate.
Heinlein had an intriguing observation about hyperspace travel. Every hyperspace "jump" is potentially "time travel" as well. Every calculation of a destination is implicitly a coordinate in space/time. We're just in the habit of treating a variable as a constant.
However, for the classic "step through" doorway gate, I'm partial to the Portable Hole of Felix the Cat and Roger Rabbit, or Wile E. Coyote's ubiquitous black paint.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 21:21:54 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I missed?
Only that any form of instantaneous travel is (in real-world Einsteinian physics) exactly the same sort of thing as travel back or forward in time. (If it's outside the "forward light cone" it just depends on the inertial frame you view it from.)
So the principles that drive any Gate, whether technological, "magical", or magical, that gives instantaneous travel, could also be used to drive a time gate - it only needs to be "rotated" in space-time.
Maybe a really bright scientist could work this out and apply it? (back to my old complaint - we physicists should have a few Mythos points by default, by Cthulhu!)
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 16:59:43 -0500
From: Steven
Davide wrote:
My take is, there are various ways through which you can manipulate the continuum; some still resemble technology, others are advanced enough to look like magic. I generally include a lot of gate technology in Yithian cities - after all, why bother with a corridor if you can just put a gate there instead?>
Which could lead to interesting problems when the polyps run amok, if the Yithians are foolish enough to have rooms that can only be entered or exited via gates. Mind, I doubt they would be, but I could see an overconfident race with a tendency to high POW individuals making this mistake. Imagine a worldwide (galaxy-wide, even) 'city' with each room being hundreds if not thousands of miles/light-years apart. Dan Simmons' HYPERION series addressed the problems of a civilization based on distance-shortening technology.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 17:16:21 EST
From: "William Timmins"
Short explanation of space-time and why instantaneous travel is time travel:
The flow of events of a given observer is tied to a lightcone. If you plotted space and time on a map, events can be plotted as lines on this map. If time is in seconds and space in lightseconds, lightspeed is a 45 degree angle going in positive time, positive space and positive time, negative space (negative space just meaning 'the opposite direction')
Events can look simultaneous OR non simultaneous, depending on reference frame. Draw a map… vertical line, horizontal line, two diagonals left and right. Vertical is time, horizontal is space, diagonals represent light speed.
If another observer is going (say) right at 50% speed of light, you can draw another line, between vertical and diagonal right. Now, to that observer, light speed is still diagonal right and left.
If you draw a horizontal line across, all events on that line would appear simultaneous to the vertical line (the first observer). However, to the other observer, events further right will appear to occur later than the ones to the left.
Proof would require a lot of math and graphs (I suggest Eintein's book on Special Relativity… a lot lighter than it sounds)
Essentially, 'simultaneous' is perpendicular to the vector (line of the observer). Bits that are angled ahead of this line will appear later than bits that are angled below.
All that being said, reality doesn't care. Observers see events occurring in different order with no problem. However, so long as all events and observers are going at light speed or lower, no propagation of other events and observers, limited to light speed or lower, will appear to go back in time.
IF that horizontal line represents ONE event (say, teleporting from the right to the left), it will appear simultaneous to one observer but it wil appear to be going BACK IN TIME to any observer travelling toward the endpoint of the teleport.
In other words, 'instantaneous teleportation is a move forward in time, if the other observer is travelling (very very fast) away from the target location, or move backward in time if the observer travels toward the target location.
Very bad (to physics)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:29:41 +0100
From: Davide Mana
Will writes
[highly informative post snipped]
Very bad (to physics)
Who cares about physics?
As long as it's fine with the Great Old Ones, it's fine with me ;>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:02:09 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
Short explanation of space-time and why instantaneous travel is time travel:
(Just in case it was my " scientist work it out" post that provoked this) What I meant was that a _player_ with a background in Physics should be able to work out _in the game_ that this equivalence is active & apply it.
Even if you couldn't rejig the Gate to be a genuine Tardis with your sonic screwdriver, you maybe could load the Gate on a truck and drive it away from its target and step thru it while the truck was moving, and you would arrive at that target slightly earlier in local time.
If the gate traversed light years this might add up to hours of target-local time. Could be a crucial advantage, and actually worth doing.
I reckon knowing that is worth one point Mythos anyway.
(But how does it all fit with the relative motion of the Earth and the target, orbits etc? It doesn't. No wonder Gates are tricky things. I'm not sure I believe in them).
((Or do you drive toward the target? Grrrrrr. 1 am local time here, Spawn noisy and demanding, Time and Space warping.)))
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:41:22 EST
From: LizardRoi
(But how does it all fit with the relative motion of the Earth and the target, orbits etc? It doesn't. No wonder Gates are tricky things. I'm not sure I believe in them).
This is the probably why I cop out and go for the Amber \ walkabout method.
I tend to think that a gate that doesn't have to take relative motion and orbits and such into account would have to be magickal. And a technologically based (as we presently define technology) gate would be fraught with peril in the prototype stages because of these considerations.
I remember an old Isaac Asimov mystery that involved these points, in relation to the quest for "antigravity". A scientist achieved "antigravity" with a null field that completely negated any and all effects of gravity/acceleration. When a billiard ball was rolled into the field, it apparently shot off at a healthy percentage of the speed of light. But what actually happened was that it came to a complete and utter stop as *we* shot along at a high "speed".
Oh yeah, more instantaneous travel: "jaunting" in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:55:08 EST
From: Appelion
- would long gate travellers be vulnerable to other dimension entities like the Hounds of Tindalos?
Make two kinds: Unsealed (vulnerable), and sealed (perhaps with Pnakotic Pentagrams around each end). Or sic the hound-dogs on 'em if the gate goes through time, but not otherwise. Or keep it open as a potential plot twist, but don't use it yet.
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 20:02:06 EST
From: Appelion
1. the portal or doorway to another place where movement is as easy as walking from one place to another with no perceptible sensation. The portal is two dimensional when viewed. Perhaps the best example of this portal is the 'window' that the sorcerer Eibon used to escape to Saturn from his pursuers.
Simmons' farcasters… With the Lions and Tigers and Black Goats living in the interstices…
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 20:22:39 EST
From: EdDrWho
Even if you couldn't rejig the Gate to be a genuine Tardis with your sonic screwdriver, you maybe could load the Gate on a truck and drive it away from its target and step thru it while the truck was moving, and you would arrive at that target slightly earlier in local time.
Er-HEM. It's a TARDIS, and a gate is much closer to a SIDRAT, the dinky localized version of the classic TT Type 40 Capsule. The newer Type 120's are said to be much better…
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 00:08:59 EST
From: Mintarr
When a billiard ball was rolled into the field, it apparently shot off at a healthy percentage of the speed of light. But what actually happened was that it came to a complete and utter stop as *we* shot along at a high "speed".
I know its not the same thing exactly…but this makes me think of Smith's ability to send things 'away' in Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land. Yet another psuedo-magical form of gating?
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 01:04:40 EST
From: LizardRoi
I know its not the same thing exactly…but this makes me think of Smith's ability to send things 'away' in Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land. Yet another psuedo-magical form of gating?
And remember, Michael Valentine Smith made things go away by turning them 90 degrees to *everything*.
And how about The Number of the Beast? Travel through space\time and alternity by pressing on all 6 axis of a gyroscope *simultaneously*. Since the force at each cardinal point will be transferred at 90 degrees to the input, where does the force go? How does the gyro deal with it?
And just to flirt with the edge of the Heinleinian abyss, how about that Waldo, eh? About a fella that takes quantum physics to heart and tricks the world into running off of power from beyond. Solid metal antennaes flexing and *reaching* for the power due to some glyphs drawn in chalk by an old hermit. Nope, nothing Lovecraftian or DG there.
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 01:10:53 EST
From: Popeyesays
And just to flirt with the edge of the Heinleinian abyss, how about that Waldo, eh? About a fella that takes quantum physics to heart and tricks the world into running off of power from beyond. Solid metal antennaes flexing and *reaching* for the power due to some glyphs drawn in chalk by an old hermit. Nope, nothing Lovecraftian or DG there.
And don't forget Jonathan Hoag - which I was reminded of by the sudden appearance of a "glove" cleaner in our group. Maybe he is trying to avoid disturbing gunk beneath his nails.
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 09:40:58 +0100
From: Martin Ostergaard
- are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or forgotten about?
If you have ever read The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny, you would be aware of another type of gate or dimension-shifting. The main characters are capable of doing a socalled "Hell-ride", where they change subtle details in terrain and surroundings, until things match where they want to be.
Example: Walking along a trail in the woods, maybe you want to get to a dimension where trees are red instead of green and the ground is more hilly. You start out by imagining one red tree after the next bend, and a small hill, over the hill you imagine more red trees, etc, etc. This can go as far as changing the vehicle youre driving/riding.
Obviously you do not have to be in control of the process. This is close to the wormhole kind of gate, but is more gradual and you may not even realise what is happening until you are unable to get back to your starting point by the same route.
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 15:45:11 +0100
From: Juergen Hubert
Maybe a really bright scientist could work this out and apply it? (back to my old complaint - we physicists should have a few Mythos points by default, by Cthulhu!)
"By Cthulhu?" Personally, I think of myself more of a Daoloth cultist…
Hmmm… What Mythos entities would fit in best with the various academic fields? What type of scientist has the best chances of "accidentally" making contact with a Mythos deity?
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:54:49 +0000
From: Jonathan Turner
Hmmm… What Mythos entities would fit in best with the various academic fields? What type of scientist has the best chances of "accidentally" making contact with a Mythos deity?
Archaeologists, anthropologists, physicists, theoretical mathematicians.
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 10:35:28 EST
From: "William Timmins"
A big followup… I apologize for how long this is, but I hope it's useful. Grew a bit larger than I expected… ;)
Here's a simple rule for how much time has appeared to pass.
time travelled = vector x distance travelled
vector is in c, positive if moving in the same direction as the teleport, negative if moving in the opposite direction. Distance is in lightseconds, lightminutes, whatever. If distance is in lightminutes, time traveled is in minutes, etc.
If the observer is considered at rest, the vector is of the reference frame of the teleporter. If the teleporter is considered at rest, the vector is of the observer.
So… a gate orbiting Jupiter (5.2 AU, or about 43 lightminutes from the sun) connected to Earth is an instantaneous teleport of 43 lightminutes (very approximately).
If an observer is travelling from Earth to Jupiter at 50% the speed of light:
time = .5 x 43 lightminutes
A person teleporting from Earth to Jupiter will, to the traveler, step into the gate on Earth, seem to disappear for about 22 minutes, then appear on Jupiter.
If a person is teleporting from Jupiter to Earth, however, the traveler will see a copy of the person walk out of the gate on Earth. 22 minutes later, the traveler will see the person walk into the gate on Jupiter. In the intervening period, there will be TWO copies of that person.
You can experiment yourself with some graph paper and some thought. It's not at all hard to set up paradoxes, where an observer sees someone exit a gate, then sends a signal to the 'earlier' timeperiod and tells them not to enter the gate (or blows it up).
Now, the fact is that in the normal universe, most reference frames are somewhat close. These effects would probably never occur in normal situations. It's still possible, however, and that's a problem (for causality and physics, at any rate)
There are, however, some other situations that complicate matters.
What happens if the two ends of the Gate are in different reference frames?
Niven had a great article on teleportation and such issues.
If you teleport from a low point to a high point, you've gained energy, vice versa if you teleport the other way.
Where does the energy come from? He postulated getting colder if you teleport uphill and hot downhill.
How about teleporting from one side of the Earth's equator to the opposite side? You'd have a huge linear momentum to bleed off.
What happens if the ends of the Gate are moving, relative to each other? As a matter of esthetics, I'd argue that the 'travel line' is the shortest distance between the two lines, on the time-space graph.
Or:
Time = closing vector/2 x distance
Closing vector is positive if moving together, negative if moving apart.
If you are at rest and two gates are moving at .5 c away from each other, closing vector is -1c.
Or:
Angle of gate travel line from horizontal is half the angle of the reference frames of the ends of the gate (the two more or less vertical lines, 'at rest' for each end)
So travel time can appear positive or negative, depending on the set up. No big deal. One hour on one side of the gate is still an hour going by on the other. No big deal, except for sending signals back and forth to create paradox..
HOWEVER:
The signals are an eye into another problem. Acceleration.
If you accelerate one end of a gate, it's possible to set up two bad situations (at least for any sane universe)
First bad situation:
This is easier to explain if you have scratch paper. Draw horizontal space line, vertical time line. Draw a 45 degree line angling right. Draw a line connecting the vertical time line (our imaginary 'at rest' end of the gate) to the 45 degree line (the other end), the angle should be half of a 45 degree line.
You could estimate it by drawing a horizontal then a 45 degree angle down, and drawing a line midway.
This is the gate travel line. No biggie, except that for some reference frames matter seems to have been destroyed and, in others, created. Oh well, screw physics.
Well, it gets 'worse'. You teleport to the right line, then accelerate the other way, real high acceleration, until the line is vertical. Connect, from the same dot where the gate touches the right line, a horizontal line to the left line.
You will now see the problem. You teleport across, accelerate, then teleport back, and have promptly gone back in time. Instant matter/clone maker.. just keep sending goods or people through. The time trip is more extreme if you actually accelerate the right line to angle back toward the first.
Second bad situation:
With non-accelerating gates, causality and 1:1 relations between things (matter not created/destroyed) were screwed up, but only in 'other frames'. With acceleration, things no longer are 1:1. Consider the gate. If one end of the gate is accelerating, then the other end is now clearly connected to more than one end points. Refer back to your original doodle.
A point in the vertical, unaccelerating end of the gate can be connected, at various angles, to different times and spots on the right line. A huge bunch of them, depending on acceleration. So if you step from the left line to the right, which point on the right do you go to?
In conventional space, the 'angle' depends on your velocity. Different velocities from different points can reach the same point. With the gates, an accelerating end implies some sort of variable 'gate speed', or some other mechanism to synch them up..
The problem is significant because planets orbit and stars move, relative to one another. These effects can be ignored for the average investigator, but a character with Physics and his hands on equipment can push the envelope.
Among other things, a gate orbiting a Neutron star could probably be used, with some suitable magic to protect a character from radiation and gravitational tides, as a cyclic time travel, by bouncing back and forth. Expensive in MP, though.
I've avoided math with this last part, because accelerations are a bit beyond my ability. Still, this all is food for thought in my Endtimes game. Will have to be addressed. Hrm.
Maybe I'll write something up with visual aids.
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 07:41:58 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
Archaeologists, anthropologists, physicists, theoretical mathematicians.
Yup. And Evolutionary psychologists, in the sense of understanding the-Mythos-in-us
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 08:25:42 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
Will have to be addressed. Hrm. Maybe I'll write something up with visual aids.
In the field, I think, till the rules of thumb are SOP, geometry would be the way to go.
"Left or Right?!"
You're under pursuit. Wounded. But the Gate you have captured is loaded into your vehicle, and you're moving, fast. You need to jump.
"Left or Right? Which way do we drive? How fast?"
The buzz of combat freezes your mind, but your hands still think. Draw the diagrams in the condensation on the side window.
c=1.
x is vector to target
x, vertical, t horizontal. They cross at HERE, NOW/ 0,0 Draw them.
Now x-prime, which maps your worldline in the x/t frame.
One or other, snap choice, say you are going away.
So x-prime starts at the junction of x and t and angles slightly down.
So t-prime starts at the junction of x and t and angles slightly back.
Hyperbolic geometry.
Now draw the lines of "simultaenity" in the x-prime/t-prime frame.
They angle back, parallel to the t-prime axis.
So to arrive backtime in the x/t frame, you jump going AWAY from the target.
"Left!"
"How much time we gonna gain"? Lights angle in from above of you. Garcia's wipes blood from his eyes.
At these speeds hyperbolic geometry reduces to simple proportionality.
c=1.
You are doing seventy - say 30 meters per second.
Your speed is 1/1000.
Thirty-seven light years.
"About one day".
Garcia locks the wheel on the straight stretch. You and Simms grab the guns and gear and you all make the jump. One, two, three.
The lights close in, the flatbed runs wild off the road, but you're gone.
Agent, Magus…
A word
- did you remember - to lie?
- did you remember - to erase your glyph? To wipe that condensation blank?
- or did you leave them the clues they need, to pursue you through time and space?
- x, y, x-prime, t-prime
"Lines and angles smeared on the walls of her cell, drawn with some red, sticky, substance"
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 13:36:48 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
You are doing seventy - say 30 meters per second. Your speed is 1/1000. Thirty-seven light years. "About one day".
make that
You are doing seventy - say 30 meters per second. Your speed is 1/10000000. Thirty-seven thousand light years. "About two hours".
Whatthefuck was I thinking?
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 08:51:40 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
Anybody on the list got an opinion or comment to share, or a factoid that I missed?
Instead of dwelling on metaphysics, I'll add a few mechanics that gates may or may not have. Often Gates can be keyed. The key can be just about anything, and a specific object or password is not the only thing I'm talking about. One nasty trick is to have the gate keyed to a one way exit in a hostile environment unless the proper key is used.
In the Ultima series, the Moongates only open during the correct phases of the two moons - thus Gates can be timed to a complex cycle, possibly taking centuries. Also, the magic stone that opens the Moongate can be dug up and moved. This also works for object gates like mirrors and boxes, just pick it up and go.
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 09:02:32 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
Short explanation of space-time and why instantaneous travel is time travel:
Good explanation, unfortunately, at no point in gate travel does one move faster than light (re: wormholes).
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 14:22:06 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
Good explanation, unfortunately, at no point in gate travel does one move faster than light (re: wormholes).
Is that SOP?
If that is so maybe Gates make sense after all. Wormholes and Einstein-Rosen bridges I can grok.
Thinking about it, "The Dreams In The Witch House" does not imply FTL at any point and that's the main man. Other stories are subsequent accretions & Derlethisms - "The Gable Window" and so on - zat right?
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 09:36:53 EST
From: "William Timmins"
Good explanation, unfortunately, at no point in gate travel does one move faster than light (re: wormholes).
The 'normal' Gate listed in the book does not limit speed. I seem to recall trips of many lightyears, from various stories, going at signification multiples of c if not instantaneous, and so forth.
So, um, other than perhaps Limbo gates (which may or may not be FTL, depending on the mapping of Limbo space to real space), you're wrong.
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 10:11:52 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
Archaeologists, anthropologists, physicists, theoretical mathematicians.
You imbecile, Juergen obviously meant which sciences correspond to which dieties. Gawd! I recommend you unsubscribe immediately. Bleah!
I was wondering if anyone had any information about the mysterious disappearance of this sub. I saw a piece on it on the nuclear accident URL I posted, but has anyone heard anything else?
You did not post an URL. Just some insulting ramblings about the great Homer J. Simpson, you doughnut eating primate.
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 10:25:17 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black
You can experiment yourself with some graph paper and some thought. It's not at all hard to set up paradoxes, where an observer sees someone exit a gate, then sends a signal to the 'earlier' timeperiod and tells them not to enter the gate (or blows it up).
Like I said before, gates and teleportation are completely seperate. You cannot use thermodynamics to describe electrical resistance (although some materials change resistance with temperature). The fact that you mention "the normal universe" shows that you are not dwelling in the realm of the mythos, where causality; like I have stated on many an occasion, is a total sham. The only true understanding is that nothing can be understood.
The Gate can only be created by abandoning nonsensical human science.
The 'normal' Gate listed in the book does not limit speed. I seem to recall trips of many lightyears, from various stories, going at signification multiples of c if not instantaneous, and so forth.
You are still confused. Gates do not teleport. You can see the other side. You walk through at about 1mph. You walk out at 1mph. Teleportation is instant travel from one place to another, completely seperate, place.
Gates allow two places (however far apart) to be linked as one. When I walk though a door I do not exceed c. When I walk through a Gate I do not exceed c. I hope this clears things up.
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 11:56:57 -0500
From: "Mused"
You are still confused. Gates do not teleport. You can see the other side. You walk through at about 1mph. You walk out at 1mph.
Hmmm, I see. And how long have you been walking through these, what did you call them, ah yes, gates?
(Oh yeah, I can see the Freudian vaginal imagery of a gate)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 13:43:03 EST
From: LizardRoi
The only true understanding is that nothing can be understood. The Gate can only be created by abandoning nonsensical human science.
And adopting sensical human science.
I truly loved the details on the space\time ramifications of Gating, and will probably find some good uses for them later. But, the models described seemed to deny the possibility of getting from here to there instantaneously without paying some Einsteinian penalty. When an electron leaps from one shell to another, it does so instantaneously and without ever existing in the "space" between shells. It's here now it's there. So describing the process as a leap just confuses the issue, since leaping implies that the electron was "there" throughout the journey. It wasn't, it couldn't be, it's against the rules (today). It was there, now it's here with no transition state. Paradoxical and apparently impossible, but there you are.
And before someone notes that there is a big difference between an electron and an intelligent being, remind yourself of what intelligent beings are made of. This behavior therefore makes magickal sense. "As above, so below" or vice versa.
No arguments here, just supplying the rationalization for Gating about without checking your watch. It's always local time.
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 21:13:27 -0000
From: "Andy Robertson"
I truly loved the details on the space\time ramifications of Gating, and will probably find some good uses for them later. But, the models described seemed to deny the possibility of getting from here to there instantaneously without paying some Einsteinian penalty.
That's like saying that "Your models of the the Earth seem to deny the possibility that points on its surface could be in a straight line rather than in a curve". They do deny it, and they are accurate, or at least more accurate than the flat-world picture. If you fly from London to New York to Los Angeles you have to curve round with the Earth's surface. Your use of a magical or technological "gate" to do the journey in three steps will not put those cities in a straight line.
It's the same with the timeslip effect of "instantaneous" gating, in that the "penalties" derive from the geometry of the space/time you gate about in, and are nothing to do with the technology of the Gates. I think it's interesting too - FX the Earth's orbital motion would have a big effect on the time of arrival of a Gate journey to a distant star, as has been said. But let's not wiggle a dead thread too hard.
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 15:14:09 EST
From: "Michael Layne"
At the temporal co-ordinates Thursday, 23 March, 2000 AD, moc.loa|ohWrDdE#moc.loa|ohWrDdE peered out of his TARDIS and stated:
Er-HEM. It's a TARDIS, and a gate is much closer to a SIDRAT, the dinky localised version of the classic TT Type 40 Capsule. The newer Type 120's are said to be much better…
I should hope so — 80 model numbers later!:)
TARDIS (according to the Doctor) supposedly stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, which (as it is in English) has sometimes made me wonder if this is also the acronym for something very similar in Gallifreyan?:)
SIDRATs were (I believe) only used by one Time Lord, the renegade known as the War Chief, in the multi-part story "War Game". Since SIDRAT is TARDIS spelled backwards, I strongly suspect the War Chief came up with the acronym first, and then retconned the title (which I don't remember at the moment) which the acronym supposedly stood for. From what I remember of the episodes, it sounds like his sense of humor…
As another link between Doctor Who and Delta Green, has anybody else read or played the module "The Hartlewick Horror" for the old FASA "Doctor Who" RPG? It deals with a remarkably Cthulhoid creature, in a 1920s Britain setting reminiscent of 20s CoC! (I've heard rumors that the author originally wrote "Hartlewick Horror" with Chaosium in mind, then reconsidered, revised it somewhat, and sold it to FASA for "Doctor Who"…)
Even so, the Hartlewick creature certainly wouldn't be the first Mythos-like menace the Doctor faced…
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 15:32:39 EST
From: "William Timmins"
The Gate can only be created by abandoning nonsensical human science.
Then the challenge to the Keeper is to define where the universe that we understand leaves off, and where the Mythos picks up. Our science and understanding of things may be like applying gas law to social dynamics (to whit, Isaac Asimov's 'history science' discipline), but there's at least some instances where it applies, and good reasons why.
If nothing else, coming up with a way which paradox resolves (or fails to resolve) gives the Keeper a guideline for determining what to have happen next. And understanding the issues gives the Keeper good ways to fuck with players who understand them or play characters who do.
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 16:01:39 EST
From: "William Timmins"
You are still confused. Gates do not teleport. You can see the other side. You walk through at about 1mph. You walk out at 1mph. Teleportation is instant travel from one place to another, completely seperate, place. Gates allow two places (however far apart) to be linked as one. When I walk though a door I do not exceed c. When I walk through a Gate I do not exceed c. I hope this clears things up.
Hmm. Well, you misunderstood me, I think, but your comment brings up some interesting points.
First of all, no matter how you go from A to B instantly, it's FTL so long as space-time is unchanged. Whether it's some hyperspatial bridge, an information-transmitter, or what, instant travel has causality problems. (It's not instantaneous to others, etc etc etc)
There are also some aspects of Gates that suggest it 'sends' characters, notably the MP cost.
Regardless, the colocational comment brings up another point. Theoretically, points in space COULD be pulled together. Now I expect such an effect would propogate, at most, at light speed, but let's ignore that.
Points in space pulled together would, normally, have some rather … bad aspects. You'd have to construct massive, shaped gravitational fields that would likely rip apart anything nearby. But let's assume that you can make a Gate that is a big, kind device that can help someone jump through massive tidal forces unharmed, transport them through a line of warped space smaller than the size of a particle, and spit them out, unharmed, somewhere else.
With super super super handwavy science, this is possible, although you might get some nifty side effects. (Maybe slight gravitational weirdness around the edges of the gate, or weirdly shifting light, a glow, etc)
Personally, I would assume that Gates are generally maintained/composed of Outer Gods, like Yog-Sothoth. Creating a Gate would then be a very specific sort of summoning, or, perhaps, causing an 'irritation' that the being solves by creating a Gate. Or something.
Anyhow, Gates that are actually warps in space-time solve a lot of causal problems because, as the esteemed Black on Man states, the distance between ends of a Gate is… 0.
However, you do get OTHER cuteness. By linking spacetime this way, you essentially pull EVERYTHING, the entire universe, into a new shape. Remember lightcones?
One definition of a lightcone is that the forward cone (everything 'above' in time-space within lightspeed left and right) is potentially affected by the observer.
Everything 'behind' in time can potentially affect the observer. Anything 'outside' the forward and backward sweep of lightcones doesn't exist, in any way shape or form, to that observer. Since it is impossible for anything outside the lightcones to propogate an effect to the observer, they don't exist. Relatively speaking.
Now, in normal spacetime, lightcones are simple. In the next year, the 'you' of this instant could possibly affect anything within one lightyear. The 'you-now' exists, after one year, to everything within a lightyear. Going backward, things a lightyear away don't exist after a year ago. A planetoid 1 lightyear away could have exploded 6 months ago, but it hasn't happened as far as you know.
Simple, yeah, but everything in the universe is tied by this simple distance/time thing. It's linear.
However, once you start pulling far apart locations together, you start really screwing up the neighborhood. Lightcones become spotty. Events near Earth might propogate to another galaxy in a year. And so forth. And, keep in mind that GRAVITY should transmit via Gateways. Gravitational potentials are going to be spreading in all sorts of weird ways, causing, perhaps, observably off orbits.
Why is this at all interesting? It does some weird things with physics, but it's more fun to consider Mythos sorts of things.
Perhaps rampant Gate creation can change the fabric of space and make it more hostile to us/comfortable to others. Perhaps specific alterations of the fabric of spacetime can be set up to create some sort of weird secondary Mythos effect (stars are right???). Perhaps Gates are taught to humans so they can spend their energies helping one being, or hurting another.
In a game which heavily mentions the multidimensional nature of other beings and the universe, this all becomes highly relevant.
Perhaps Cthulhu 'tumbled' here, found spacetime too flat to be comfortable, and set up affairs so he could rest until spacetime got groovy again.
Anyway, there you go…
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 23:19:20 +0100
From: "Andy Robertson"
Perhaps rampant Gate creation can change the fabric of space and make it more hostile to us/comfortable to others. Perhaps specific alterations of the fabric of spacetime can be set up to create some sort of weird secondary Mythos effect (stars are right???). Perhaps Gates are taught to humans so they can spend their energies helping one being, or hurting another.
Dyson and the eschatalogical science / Doomsday theorem crowd claim that universes can "reproduce" in this way - the fertile ones, which permit life, eventually generate enough tech to jazz their spacetime up to the level where new universes pinch off.
On another subject, click on this link for a laugh, Mr T.
http://www.theophys.kth.se/%7Emax/toe.html
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 23:20:49 -0500
From: Michael Beck
Keep in mind that many of the creatures who might use the Gates don't see in the visible light spectrum, or may see in dimensional levels that we can't imagine.
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 23:45:54 EST
From: Appelion
Creating a Gate would then be a very specific sort of summoning, or, perhaps, causing an 'irritation' that the being solves by creating a Gate. Or something.
That's MY ultimate ambition… Step through a boil on the "skin" of Yoggie… Not to metion that he might not like these boils…
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 23:49:05 EST
From: Appelion
And, keep in mind that GRAVITY should transmit via Gateways.
So let's say that the spell includes protections keeping everything except MP-paying beings and perhaps visual light from passing through. Of course, you might be able to remove those protections…
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 01:03:20 EST
From: EdDrWho
Even so, the Hartlewick creature certainly wouldn't be the first Mythos-like menace the Doctor faced…
In fact, in the New Adventure Novel _All Consuming Fire_ (By Andy Lane), the Doctor meets a pretender to the throne of Azathoth, and discusses Has—-erm, Fenric, and briefly mentions a few other old friends.
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 22:00:10 +0100
From: "Andy Robertson"
So a Gate could really be a sort of transporter. You cease to exist over here when you exist over there. Just like an electron leaping from shell to shell without existing in the space between shells. Nothing went the distance but the infornation necessary to organize the matter on the other "side" of the Gate. And before the matter\energy arguments start, remember that nothing has to be destroyed or created since it all still exists in the same continuum, all that happened is it changed it's address. When C isn't used as a constant you have some room to manuever. Not that room is meaningful when distance isn't a factor, which it isn't.
Quantum teleportation is still not FTL
FYI, recently breaking science on Quantum Teleportation …
http://quantumteleport.cjb.net/
Only photons so far, but ….
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 23:53:52 +0100
From: "Andrew John Farrow"
IMHO - the discription of gates in the brian lumley - necroscope / vampire world books are as as good as they get .
From: "Janusz A. Urbanowicz"
I ever wondered why those points always do happen at the surface of Earth rather somewhere in empty space or say two meters under the ground. The same applies for time warps - someone moved in time in popular view will appear in the same place on Earth (in Earth surface frame of reference) but they should land in space. This explains why gate spells require san and mps - you have to solve (in your head) some nontrivial differential equations to
take in account source orbital movement, destination movement orbital or other) etc…
From: david wienecke
I always had the opinion that different conjunctions happen lots of places/times both on earth and celestially and are not hideously rare. The NEPHELIM RPG gives the basis I use for conjunctions of elemental and celestial forces. NEPHELIM has ley lines of different elemental powers that move, appear and vanish at different times and places. Two of said lines (possibly of
opposing types) meet and you have a nexus/plexus event. Based in the types of power lines intersecting and their strengths you can perform various ritual magic. Sometimes said conjunctions can be in mid air, miles under the sea or you may indeed need to dig a mine shaft to reach the proper location for a cultic event. (in the vampire flick "Blade" the necessary temple was buried under a metropolis) The trick is to know where the Place/Time is and conduct the correct ritual for that particular conjunction.
I also had the thought that while mathematical formulas are great, (no matter how complex or non-euclidean) the methods for casting mythos magic might be more primitive. Something of the order of Aristotle's forms and Freud/Jung arch-types and more abstract concepts would be necessary. Mathematics always seemed to me to be too human for the Mythos. It seems to be our human method for forming the universe into our own describable verifiable model.
On the other hand Biran Lumly's NECROSCOPE used hyper mathematics taught to his hero by a dead guy to great effect.