A Temporal Fissure, also known as a Reality Rip, is a devastating warp in time and space, typically incurred when a creature with knowledge of the future (whether through divination or through other time-warping methods) actively works and succeeds in preventing the foretold future from occurring.
The Fissure
The main characteristic of a Temporal Fissure is the unforgiving rift that opens up. Damage to the weave and to the time-continuum cause a dramatic physical and metaphysical tear in space around the infraction which typically reaches out between 30 and 300 feet. Victims caught in the tear are irrevocably removed from that timeline, an effect indistinguishable from instant death. Many theories revolve around where victims are deposited, if they survive.
Other Effects
Temporal Fissures have two types of effects, depending on the circumstances that caused the fissure.
Grandfather Paradox
- When the foretold activity is connected to the circumstances that led the entity to stop the activity, a critical loop of information occurs. Without the activity, then the entity would never try to stop the activity, which means the activity would still occur, which means the entity would then try to stop the activity again, and so on...
- In these occasions, entities effected by the paradox are also removed as if caught in a rift, and memory of the inciting incident is swiftly wiped from those who witnessed it. With these corrections in place, Time can begin to heal and preserve itself in mysterious ways.
- Fixed grandfather paradoxes also result in one or more parallel timelines which ultimately isolate the loop.
Denied Fate
- When the foretold activity is detrimental to the balance of the realm, yet it is still halted, the rift is opened as a punishment to those who have denied fate itself. Entities also involved in the irreversible halting of destiny are wiped in a similar manner to those caught in the grandfather paradox.
- In these occasions, the rift also results in a parallel timeline in which the halting events never occurred. The original timeline then continues, though the changer-of-fate hardly gets the chance to witness what he has done.
