okay then we should start with the antagonist and a believable motive.

let me give this some thought.... as i write this post lmao....

the year is... dunno 2262.. whatever. actually fuck that kick it up to 2362 more believable with time travel and all.

Man is scientist. Man works at physics lab of sorts - science people help with details on this for me - maybe some quantum shit idk

He discovers time travel basically - when no one else is at the lab.

He is leik oh shit i discovered me some time travel. Tries to keep that shit a secret while he figures it out.

Okay now here is where I insert my motive - in the course of figuring it out he discovers the present can be changed by altering the past, discovered in a small experimental way that doesnt change much.

Now he knows he can do it.

Now here is the kicker - when he was a little boy his parents, and a bunch of other people for that matter - got their asses killed by a big-ass astronomical event like an asteroid or solar thingy.

He wants to stop that shit from ever happening because he had a horrible adolescence because of it and is mentally ill as a result. or something.

no one knows what technology would be needed to prevent the Event, but he reasons it is possible, being a man of science.

so he decides that if he speeds up human development a few centuries, he might get us up to a point where when the shit hits the fan, we can stop it.

he researches it and decides the best way is to go back to _____ AD and do ________ so that the middle ages end sooner/never happen.

So he hastily gets in his time machine and does it but is discovered by mr. associate scientist who tries to stop him but gets sucked in in process. Machine has complications and also pulls other people from time periods.

Begin story.

Something like that. His logical slips can perhaps be explained by his insanity/grief/naivete

One of his slips is the following - if he changes history so much as to skip the middle ages you can bet his parents will never get born. the population of earth would probably be radically different. so his plan may avert the Event but his parents will not exist in all likelihood.

What do you think it is the best I can do.

It is not easy, like at all, to come up with a believable personal explanation for why this dude would do this.

It is much easier to assume he is part of some type of extremist group who is dead set on "correcting" history.

You know Liam Neeson's character in Batman Begins? Like that

As out there as that is its more believable than "i can save a loved one by going to the year 1114."

come on. lol.

another potential motive for changing history is that the guy is an alien.

or you could just maybe never reveal the motive and keep him as a mysterious figure, the protagonists never knowing what he is planning and why exactly.

I LOVE your way of brainstorming! I've got my own thoughts I'm going to put out in a sec too but I just HAD to comment on yours first.

OR OR OR OR I HAVE AN IDEA

hang on hear this one out i think you might liek this i like it a lot:

The Antagonist who is Trying to Change History doesn't need to be from 2362.

He can be from fucken 1213. Or 672 or 1510 or whatever. Here is why.

Scientist team in 2362 discovers time travel.

They, for some reason later described, could chalk it up to mere foolishness or curiosity, go back to middle ages AD to check things out - from a distance. just look around and all (for purposes of this story i think we should assume there is no such things as the butterfly effect)

BUT they fuck up somehow - and Mr. Medieval kills one of them and jacks the machine with very little knowledge of how it works/the implications. He only knows its liek a tiem machine or w/e

So he decides to change history in a way that to him is very important but to us is like "whatever that shit is dead and gone"

like "I WILL SAVE GREECE FROM THE INFIDELS" or "I WILL SAVE JOAN OF ARC FROM CAPTURE" or even something way more boring like "I WILL SAVE MY FRIEND JOE MEDIEVAL FROM DEATH AT THE BATTLE OF CRECY"

All of these things presumably would be gravely problematic for the Enlightened Scientist(s) who believe that doing such a thing could disrupt the existence of the universe or worse. So they follow him through and attempt to stop him.

And obviously our Party gets pulled thru on accident as well.

This makes the antagonist interesting believable and also somewhat tragic because he does not understand that he is going to like end the fucking universe all in the name of the King of Naples or something.

Also in terms of the raw history, I know this is the tail end of the Middle Ages but imho perhaps one of the most formative historical events ever was the fall of Constantinople 1453 - arguably responsible for Columbus' voyages and the Portuguese voyages etc.

If for whatever reason our antagonist is attempting to *stunt* development, he could go back and prevent the fall of Constantinople.

Okay, year is like Thucy said, 23XX. The human body has become nearly intolerable to disease due to an extended lack of exposure thus when a lone strand of black plague gets released into the world from an architectual dig, it wrecks havoc killing millions in a matter of months.

Other scientists are desperately trying to find a way to combat it but the modern human blood just is incapable of producing the white-blood cell counts necessary to fight it off with a vaccine. Thus our maniacal scientist/antagonist/wannabe-saviour is working with his time travel theories and finally has a breakthrough. With a desire to be 'the great hero' of the modern world, he goes back in time to collect sufficient blood samples from the age when diseases ran rampant and the blood was constantly bombarded from all angles. He convinces another scientist, one who's working on the vaccine itself, to go as well in a last-ditch hope to save humanity.

The one who goes truely wants to help while the antagonist is only looking for the personal glory, fame and money that 'saving the world' would bring for him.

Those are definitely interesting ideas, making the antagonist being an idiot of the past with the power of the future in his hands. Still, how would he understand what to do in order to 'work' the machine? The scientists aren't exactly going to show him and machinery, especially of that nature, isn't exactly going to be self-explanatory particularly for someone who still believes in dragons, sea-monsters, etc. He probably wouldn't go anywhere NEAR that machine.

In my idea, if the scientist were looking to 'collect' specimens, he would literally stop in the various times to get them but on the last stop in the Medieval era is when the machine gets busted up and they are stranded. That could explain how they all got there.

My thought would be that in that far of a future no one would really need to know very well how to work anything - you would just kind of touch a panel and think about what you want, or some crazy shit like that.

The thing is that this past guy isn't stupid - just short-sighted/from the past thus ignorant.

And what I imagined the scientist's fuck up being was to like befriend a guy who like follows them back into the woods maybe and then sort of thinks they were sent to him from God, or the Devil, holds them under knife point and they out of fear or dumbassness tell all, or enough, and he is a smart opportunistic type and thinks "you know what if that shit is true i could use this thing to save france or make myself king or whatever" and then he kills a guy and hops in and off he goes but in the process pulls Our Heroes with him.

Thing about your disease idea is this - tell me how collecting a few blood samples is going to radically change history, any more than our characters trying to stop him, that is?

Thucy - he's not collecting blood samples, he's collecting the people to then take back and extract enough blood from them to synthesize the body's natural defense mechanism so that the vaccines would actually work in the futuristic people.

About the guy from the past, I could see how that might work if he has them actually program the time for him under threat of violence or something. Still, they would somehow try to jump onboard with him before he left knowing they would be stranded if not and that could be how the scientist either died or only one makes it along with the madman. Perhaps, an apprentice of the scientist so he knows generally how it works but not all the intricacies of fixing it.

He's not going back to change the past, he's going back to collect the people and bring them forward so he can use their blood. The problem is, they 'crash' in the medieval period busting up the machine.

The middle ages is not the destination? And also... I dunno. I hate to keep like bitching but I guess I just wouldnt buy the idea that he needs to bring back the people and a blood/gene sample wouldnt suffice, given that its 23XX

Also about the usage of the time machine.

You could say that we can imagine that in 23XX everything is "idiotproof" and does not need any kind of expertise to operate, principally by connecting with your thoughts. all he would have to figure out is that if I touch this thing and think a command, it works. and thus the wonderful advances of the future come to bite our scientist friends in the ass.

or not. but that's what i imagined. the other thing about your disease plot - so we are saying that the guy needs to be stopped because he cant just extract people from the past, right? cause that would fuck up history? so then why did the "good" scientist agree to go at all? what makes him "good"?

Didn't say he was 'good', just that his motives were 'better'. The other only wants fame and glory, doesn't care who gets killed or hurt in the process. The 'good' one wants to take them, extract what they need and then either return them to their times or help them to assimilate into 'modern' society.

As to how a blood/gene sample wouldn't suffice, they are unsure exactly which specimen will best work or how much they'll need. They might figure that they may never get a second chance though it is their intention (at least the good one's intention) to return them afterward. It is, afterall, an attempt to save humanity. No chances can be taken after so many millions of lives were lost to this disease.

I do like your idea of the 'idiotproof' way. It would make the machine seem alive to the person from the past, almost like he was talking to God or something. That would definitely make it seem more probable that God had sent him (especially if he were a monk or the like) to save whatever place in time.

I have no problem going with your 'idiotproof' route given that circumstance.

So, then, does everyone agree to the antagonist being a medieval person?

I like that idea best but I'm not dead set on it. I also think it can make for some interesting ambiguities about religion and so on. If he really strongly believes he is doing God's will, he may do evil things but be a "good" person.

Anyway. Yeah.

yes, but a medieval person from a later time than where he ends up going to. The ONLY question is how do we get the others to be dragged along if he's already starting at an earlier period than them? Any thoughts there? Did they get dragged with the first scientific group and were just sitting there while this monk took over or what?

Or were they dragged there with the scientists but then the monk took the time machine and that's why they can't get back, because they were stranded and the scientist was killed?

Bump just to keep it from getting lost

Wow, my 3 hour check-in that I posted turned into a lot longer. Just read everything up till now, and I have to agree with Thucy about the disease idea. I really just couldn't buy into it myself. Even without direct exposure to diseases, many anti-bodies and defenses are inherited from the parents; or at least the mother.

I like the idea of a zealot trying to hijack the time machine, but I'm thinking he'd become more of an unwilling, and perhaps, unknowing pawn of someone else. Maybe this was the secret goal of one of the scientists when they found our zealot character.

Or, pardon the Doctor Who reference, but maybe one of the scientists want to "kill Hitler" in a sense, and considered this zealot the perfect means to that end. Of course, that may have been his plan, but things go horribly wrong when our zealot turns out to champion some other cause, or goes so completely psycho, that our scientist can't control him.
At this point, zealot person takes control of the time machine and leads whoever is there at the time, into another time. Maybe he misses his target time or place, and they collect a 3rd Party member. Being inexperienced, the zealot kidnaps said person who has seen the machine, and drags them along too. It would all depend on our exact method of time travel if this idea would even be viable. But I think it's an enjoyable twist on Thucy's past person taking control.

sort of but it puts us right back with our original problem - why in the world would a`24th century person be interested in changing the middle ages

Sorry I've been absent. I'm moving to a new house so my weekends are tied up.

I still say the time frame was part of the screw up. He may have intended a time in his own life and in his rush screwed things up.

Or maybe he and a Nemesis got into a brawl and something got bumped that caused all the problems.

Draugnar - wouldn't a brawl resulting in a bump be more of a Deus Ex?

Warden has some interesting thoughts there with the zealot being a pawn of someone else. Still, I think it's more probable if the thief of the time machine were a monk or other religious person taking it to do God's will. That strands the people in the medieval times until he 'returns' which, he doesn't. How they get there in the first place is what we're still planning out.

Yeah I am with you FA on the monk or zealot person - he will be an interesting character I think because he won't be a boring one-dimensional "villain" but instead will be a pious otherwise good person who tragically doesn't know he is hastening the end of the universe. All for the King of Naples, or whatever, as I said. Lol.

I can see you all have already gone pretty far with this, but this is too much for me to get involved now. I'd like to set up a second thread like this so that maybe we can have multiple colaborative stories going on...I think it would be great, but what I think obviously doesn't matter to anyone here. Nevertheless, I'm starting another thread and I'd like it if you helped it as well.

so you dont want in on this or..... i mean you were free to contribute your opinion lol

This has just gone too far for me to backtrack and start now.

I know you all are busy here, but I'd like to know if there is at least some level of interest: viewthread=761003#761003