Open Sandboxes and Worldbuilding Futures

[raz]

Hello SARPfans! I came across the Open Sandboxes thread the other day. Based on that concept, an idea with regard to time shenanigans came to mind. Not time travel into the past (because you can't change the past) but rather a plot regarding the effects of time dilation or other space-time anomalies.

For example. Say an entire colony fleet goes through a particularly wild wormhole that throws it out very far away from the Kikyo Sector and also far into the future. This type of FTL travel already canonically has variable time experiences within transit, so could easily be explained as a plot device to have shot the example colony fleet into the future. When they try to contact the Kikyo Sector our brave characters in the colony fleet hear nothing back and they're too far away or are otherwise prevented from returning home in a timely fashion (fold drives got messed up by the anomalous wormhole?).

So given this, the colony fleet proceeds to create its own sort of faction and interact with other stuff and doesn't need to necessarily adhere to the core timeline because they exist in YE 145. By necessity, the characters and offshoot faction in this situation could explore things like having to get back to their normal timeline in the past while fighting new enemies. And as a bonus, whatever they do doesn't impact our beloved Kikyo Sector's status quo at all (and something happening in the current year could eventually solve their problem and make the future timeline doomed anyway).

Basically if someone wanted to make their own vision of Nepleslia, this idea could allow them to use a lost colony fleet flung into the far future to do so.

It's not something I want to do necessarily, but I thought it was a cool plot device so brought it here to talk about rather than slapping it into some kind of sci-fi subreddit.

 

[Soban]

100% on board with the ideas here.

 

[HarperMadi]

Soundsl like fun!

 

[raz]

100% on board with the ideas here.

Well, it's not really an interest check or anything. Just a topic of discussion and "what-ifs" as the concept might pertain to the Star Army Universe.

For example, to use a Nepleslian hypothetical again, let's say a Grand Admiral gets tired of how his country has gotten soft and sets out with a fleet to go and fight like real Nepleslian men do. Really get out there and find a place where they can tear each other (and their enemies) up. Boom! Through a wormhole that spits the fleet out 100 years in the future with no contact or way home! So they use their gritty ingenuity to set up New Nepleslia. This would provide in-character opportunities for development of alternative governmental structures, new military organizational doctrines, and etc. on top of also being a sandbox for actual RP against new (or familiar) adversaries.

While the above isn't something I'd be into, it's a good enough on-the-fly example.

What would you do with the concept presented in the thread's first post?

 

[Soban]

I've been mentally playing with some of the same ideas. Although the way I'd frame it is a patch of space (or a bad wormhole or something) where time moved fast for a period of time before 'returning' to the main universe with a new and perhaps slightly different culture. Alternatively, there are also patches of space where time for whatever reason moved much slower, bringing a splinter faction of an ancient enemy with a grudge back.

 

[demibear]

This is a fairly common scifi trope that I like. The galaxy/universe is also quite vast that you can randomly deposit yourself into, throwing things into the future is an interesting element to bypass drama.

I have been entertaining the idea of developing a faction on the other side of the galaxy that doesn't have any real chance of interacting with Kikyo beyond a few "missionaries" that might have made their way. You can always find them in places they shouldn't be.