I appear to have started another sourcebook... Its an Addiction...

[Dan Gurden]

Federation Timefleet.


Introduction.
Welcome to the Federation timefleet sourcebook. A fan-based document that details the Timefleet of the 29th Century and goes into a littl more detail of the organisation. My intention is to create a document that would allow you to use the Timefleet in your games to serve as a potential ally or even an adversary, much as they appeared in Star Trek Voyager. It should be possible to create Timefleet characters too, and an adventurous narrator might wish for a Timefleet character to join their crew for some reason or even a full Timefleet game. This source material is presented to support and supplement the ICON Time Travel Sourcebook originally published by Last Unicorn Games

Contents;
Introduction
History of the Federation Timefleet
Federation Timefleet Operations
Time Travel Theory
Timefleet Character Generation
Timefleet Technology
NPC's

[Dan Gurden]

History of the Department of Temporal Investigations and Federation Timefleet

"It is the findings of the best minds of the Science Directorate that Time travel is theoretically impossible"
- Vulcan Science Directorate dictate 22rd century

When Humanity created the Starfleet and began exploring space under the watchful care of their Vulcan allies, it was clearly established by the Vulcan Science Institute that Time Travel was not possible. Although humanity almost immediately started encountering odd temporal effects or individuals claiming to be (or having encountered) time travellers. Many of these were minor effects and were often recorded as side effects of Faster than Light Travel or speculation, but some of the more 'direct' incursions often left little to no evidence beyond anecdotal reports. As such the leading minds of the Vulcan Scientific Community continued to deny the possibility of time travel. Captain Archer of the Starship Enterprise reported several such incidents, and even warned of a temporal war being fought on a number of occasions. His views and reports were often viewed as worryingly inaccurrate, with only Archer's exemplary record of exploration and connections within Starfleet command allowing him to remain a frontline Starship captain.

However over the years the sheer volume of evidence of such temporal incursions, sometimes even Starfleet ships and personnel travelling in time themselves with all relevant sensor logs available for the record, agan the Starship Enterprise under Captain Archer provided the first hard evidence of this kind when he and his crew found themselves in an alternate 1940's America. His reputaion was restored in regard to these 'quirks' and time and again Archer and crew found themselves at the centre of events, and back at Starfleet command and even on Vulcan opinions began to change. Eventually even the Vulcan Science Directorate retracted their previous statement regarding time travel. It has since been theorised that the Vulcan adherance to the path of Logic had simply closed off their minds to the concept of Time Travel, as it was an illogical speculation to try and visit the past of future, and that perhaps the human tendancy to believe in the impossible as opposed to accepting logical conclusions may have been partially responsible for the surge in these temporal incursion encounters once Humans took their place in the larger galaxy. Either way the events caused some embarrasment to the Vulcan Science Community who immediately embraced these new concepts as an opportunity to directly observe the past or future (as a hypothetical concept) and to develop new concepts to achieve temporal displacement such as a warp speed slingshot around a large gravitational mass. It is no surprise then that the only individual to have successfully calculated a time travel jump manually on a slingshot course manually was Commander Spock, a Vulcan/Human hybrid.

One thing was now certain, the possibility of Time Travel could no longer be ignored, and its dangers needed to be guarded against, already Alien influence on the past had been discovered and changes o the path of humanity had been fought and successfully corrected. Once the United Federation of Planets was created and Starfleet was officially adopted as the Federations Naval and Expeditionary arm, steps were taken and ratified in the Federation charter. It was at that point that the Federation and Starfleet created the Department of Temporal Investigations, initially based on Earth. The DTI Organisation was dedicated to the analysis and enforcement against any recorded temporal incursions, and support of any group studying Temporal scientific theory. The DTI mandate gave them authority over both Starfleet and Civilian operations in these instances, the nature of these temporal events often pushed much of their operational focus upon Starfleet activities; attending sites after any reported temporal activity to interview all participants and analyse and potential effects, the goal seemed deceptively simple, but in reality it was not so, the limitations of enforcing Temporal activity soon became clear as changes to the timeline were almost impossible to perceive objectively by 'local' observers, often only the time travellers themselves were the only people to be able to percieve any changes to the timeline upon their return. On the whole though it was found that temporal incursions seemed to show a certain 'fluidity' with very few changes seeming to affect the present, combined with the efforts that many Starfleet officers seemed to take when subjected to a temporal incursion to avoid timeline contamination led to almost zero percent timeline alterations. So while these changes were occasionally reported there was little that could be done to correct them, as there was no true way to analyse these changes.

But the very real and present danger of this activity persisted as did the concern that such technologies might fall into the hands of enemies of the Federation. The DTI tried to create advanced AI's that were able to make massive computational analysis of these cause and effects and to track any disruptions and changes, but these AI were still 'local' and subject to change after a temporal incursive ripple. Although they were able to analyse reported changes and offer speculation on the causes based on probability and deep analysis of the historical record. The most advanced and succesful of these AI's was 'Ziggy' a computer core that managed to create and compare several alternitive universes in a direct real-time analysis of the primary universe to manage and track alterations in a heuristic algorithm. But even Ziggy could be wrong on occssion.

The real power of the DTI and true origins of the organisation that would one day become the Federation Timefleet lay in the accidental discovery of the entity known as the Guardian of Forever in 226X <<Stardate>>. On the planet <XXXX>. The Guardian is a sentient portal, part organic and part machine. It was an enigma, refusing to reveal to much information and often cryptic in its responses. The Guardian allowed those near it to view all of history, allowing them to record historical events as if they were present, it would even allow travellers to step through, enabling them to travel in time directly and return, also it was found that the Guardian was protected from temporal effects due to changes and viewers were also able to view the events changing the timeline almost in 'real-time'. Which allowed them to take steps to change the timeline directly. Upon its dicovery by Captain James T Kirk of the USS Enterprise, the DTI classified the planets location and dispatched several science teams were dispatched to site. The Guardian was open to being studied and was able to converse with the science team the DTI assigned to the site. Although little headway was made in the study of the Guardian, the DTI science teams found the site to be a perfect base of operations, they had finally found a location that would allow them to truly protect the timeline. With the Guardians permission the DTI decamped their HQ from Earth and upgraded the temporary facilities to a new permanent base of operations.

This was the true birthplace of the Federation Timefleet, as their scope of operations was now able to expand to a truly protective agency, able to take direct action when needed. The DTI also maintain a significant science arm, which has remained based on Earth, and managed in direct collaboration with Starleet where they have analysed and number crunched any relevant data pertaining to time travel to develop alternative means of travelling in time and protection aganst the risks of Time Travel. It is this unit that is destined to develop advanced temporal drives and temporal transporters, along with neural shielding to

"Welcome to Starfleet Mr. Kim. Weird is part of the job."
- Captain Kathryn Janeway

[Dan Gurden]

Federation Timefleet Operations
- Temporal Prime Directive
- Monitor the integrity of the timeline
- Dangers to the timeline
- Temporal Incursions.
- Displaced / Local Time Agents
- local ad hoc agents (recruited and memory wiped)
- Crimes you will commit


Time Travel Theory;
Paradox
The Creation of Alternate Universes
Fluidity of Time / Self Repair
Fixed Points in Time
Temporal Narcosis


<<Box text>>
"Fixed point in time. I'm so sorry.
The Doctor
Rumours persist among seasoned Time Travellers of an Immortal time traveller calling himself 'The Doctor', the Doctor seems to appear at opportune moments...

Timefleet Character Generation:

Timefleet Command
Timefleet Engineer
Timefleet Operations
Timefleet Historian
Timefleet Scientic Operations
Timefleet Temporal Engineer (Incursion Specialist)

<<Box text>>
Friend or Foe. Using timefleet as an antagonist or ally.

Timefleet Technology
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Federation Timeships
- Temporal Transporters
- Future Tech - Sub-space pocket
- Advanced Phasers and Tricorders
- Holo-emitters
<<Box text>> AI's as a separate species in the 29th century

NPC's
The Guardian of Forever
Captain Braxton
Agent Daniels
Professor Data
Guinan
Professor Samuel Beckett
Rear Admiral Al Calavicci
Dr. Beeks, the project psychiatrist

[Owen E Oulton]

I've been working on a bunch of DTI/Temporal Ops stuff, if you want a co-author...

[Dan Gurden]

That would be a pleasure... After the delays on the Bajor stuff when it was sat on my hard drive at 90% done... Dont want to go through that again.

How do you want to split the work?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I have a couple crosstime adversaries, and notes toward adapting a version of that adventure someone ran years ago where they went back to Cretaceous Earth? (Was that anyone still on this board?)

EDIT: Checking my notes, I have a few adventure ideas kicking around too. I've committed to a few articles for the Arkham Gazette right now but I'll toss what I have into a google doc in a few weeks for people to look at.

[Owen E Oulton]

Well, I'm on vacation right now and won't be home until the 25th, but I can send you what I have then so we can see if we're on the same wavelength. Then we can fine-tune the ToC and divvy up the workload.

[Dan Gurden]

Not a problem mate.

From what you were suggesting you had a DTI / Temporal Os stuff in mind while my thoughts were more on Timefleet (with the bit above in how they grew out of the DTI)... So we could split that rather evenly between 23rd/24th Century and the 29th. And then we mieet in the middle for the Narrators bits about how to incorporate Time Travel (and stay sane by ignoring the inconsistancies) along with some plot ideas and NPC and adversaries.

Does that sound good?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

A lot of the inconsistencies can be seen as variances in method. Instead of a number of different technological means to achieve 'time travel,' all these different methods—the slingshot effect, the Guardian of Forever, the Atavachron, Borg time-portals, K'mtar's spooky-sounding method, that thing that creates a duplicated Picard, the Orb of Time, the Mannheim Effect—are all fundamentally different things happening at a physical level, and are different 'time travels,' plural.

[Owen E Oulton]

Different takes on time travel abound - as many as there are writers... For instance in Christopher Bennett's DTI books, LUG's DTI Thucydides would not fit in - not perfectly, at any rate. Timefleet, in the 29th century, would appear to be a division of Starfleet under the authority of the Temporal Integrity Commission. the TIC and the 31st Temporal Agency are a lot more hands-on than DTI. then, of course, there's the other Temporal Powers and agencies, as well as the Temporal Cold War which (in my campaign anyway) is a mere side conflict in the Great Time War (Doctor Who). That greater conflict is, of course outside the scope of a Star Trek Netbook.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Different takes on time travel abound - as many as there are writers... For instance in Christopher Bennett's DTI books, LUG's DTI Thucydides would not fit in - not perfectly, at any rate. Timefleet, in the 29th century, would appear to be a division of Starfleet under the authority of the Temporal Integrity Commission. the TIC and the 31st Temporal Agency are a lot more hands-on than DTI. then, of course, there's the other Temporal Powers and agencies, as well as the Temporal Cold War which (in my campaign anyway) is a mere side conflict in the Great Time War (Doctor Who). That greater conflict is, of course outside the scope of a Star Trek Netbook.

'Timefleet' doesn't show up in the show at all. The TIC may operate aboard Starfleet vessels, or it may requisition Starfleet resources like the Science Council or other civilian bodies to serve its needs.

[Dan Gurden]

The view that I am taking is that this is partially right. The Federation Timefleet did show up twice in Voyager and called themselves as such, but its clear that their role remains the same as Starfleet, but sope of operations have expanded.

The DTI in 23/24th centuries is effectively a civilian oversight group. But the implication is that by the 29th century Time Travel is so common that they have effectively, and by necessity, merged. Maybe a better presentation would be Timefleet as a specialist section of Starfleet?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

The Federation Timefleet did show up twice in Voyager and called themselves as such,

Well... not really:
- http://www.chakoteya.net/voyager/523.htm
- http://www.chakoteya.net/voyager/304.htm