The Devaluer of Souls

Most devils are into getting souls, everyone knows that. But a lot of humans don’t want to sell their souls. They consider them pretty valuable or whatever. That’s where the Devaluer of Souls comes in. It’s his job to drive down the value that people have for their souls. There’s a lot of ways that can be done. In the past, he’s tried to start philosophical movements that encourage people to think of human life as a worthless, meaningless affair, so why not sell your soul? He’s obfuscated the idea of eternity in people’s minds, so that they won’t understand or appreciate the commitment that selling ones soul really signifies. But suppose some enterprising devil wants the soul of some particular person. That’s when the Devaluer is sent in to do his best work. He will haunt his target, insulting and terrifying them until they think their lives are things from which to escape. When he does his work, people can’t sell their souls fast enough.

But if he’s not the one buying the souls, what does the Devaluer get out of the deal? Why would he do this for all the other devils? He may not get souls, but they pay him in the next best thing: Cash Money! The Devaluer likes to spend his free time lounging in vacation resorts on Earth, and he needs money to keep relaxing in style.

Second-Hand Simmons

Don’t point out that it’s actually a third hand. She’s heard it before and she is getting annoyed with it.

Corrine Simmons has a strange hand-like energy construct that she can control with the skill and dexterity as though it were her natural limb. This secondary right hand, which appeared for no reason known to Simmons (but which may involve certain Space Gods), can stretch to a length of dozens of feet and can lift a car with ease. Unfortunately, Simmons has decided to use this gift for crime. When you can pick up ATMs and carry them away, who is going to stop you? Well, Natalie Archibald‘s police task force, that’s who.

It wasn’t intentional when I started that the vast majority of human characters in the Valia/Space Gods portion of my character creation would be black, but I’m gonna roll with it. If a lot of white characters had accumulated together in a superhero story, barely anyone would notice. In an ideal world, that could happen with a black cast too.

There has to be some good guys in the timestream right? Someone who isn’t using time travel for their own wants at the risk of reality itself?

Inspector Lacuna

Inspector Lacuna is the head of a precinct of Time-travel Cops who police history to make prevent temporal infractions from tearing the universe apart. This is, of course, a pretty noble goal. Unfortunately for her, the team she has assembled isn’t particularly well suited for the task.

Detective Muhandae

Detective Muhandae has seen it all. He’s a world weary gumshoe who has been solving time travel-related crimes since before he was born (because of time travel, you see). He was a good man, once. Young and strong. But as he gets older, he’s getting tired. It’s become a lot easier to accept a bribe than book a perp, easier to turn a blind eye than follow a lead. He’s not really a bad guy, but he sure doesn’t care as much as he should.

Agent 12:00

Agent 12:00 is a genetically enhanced supersoldier from the future. There’s no worry about her getting too tired to do the job. She will pursue a temporal fugitive like a machine. Unfortunately, she is also as ruthless and uncaring as a machine. She doesn’t care about the good her job does so much as catching the bad guys and she’s perfectly happy to run over civilians that get in her way.

Tobias Tock

Constable Tobias Tock really is a genuinely nice guy. He’s brave and noble and kind. Sadly, he’s also dumber than a truck. Even having worked on the job for decades, he still gets confused about how time travel works. On more than one occasion he has had to stop and ask a criminal to explain the crime to him, which usually gives the chance for the bad guys to just lie and get away. Still, his heart is in the right place. Maybe that counts for something.

Time Venturer

So, if the Time-Travel Cops aren’t good enough, maybe someone from outside the organization can do a better job. How about a superhero? The Time Venturer dedicated his life to holding the timeline together and stopping time-villains from messing things up. But he died. In a time explosion. And his paraphernalia was scattered throughout history and ironically wound up providing a lot of those villains with the very means they needed to travel through time in the first place.

It’s like this: the timeline is screwed. You’ll probably want to be getting out of there.

Last week was the first taste of some of the time travellers messing up the timeline for everyone else. Well, here’s some more of them:

Dr. Von Eiskammer

When this scientist saw his country being taken over by fascists, he decided he wanted no part of it. He invented a cryogenics chamber that would allow him to escape to the future. The only problem with that is that freezing oneself only gets them to travel to the future. If the scientist wants to get back in time to get home and maybe overthrow his enemies, he’s going to have to find another way. For example, he could steal someone else’s time machine. Well, with no better ideas, he’ll go with that one.

Timmy Mallory

In the 80s, this precocious young boy was rummaging through his attic and found a case belonging to his grandfather. Inside there was a digital watch with a button that, when activated, allowed him to travel to entirely different time periods. Being a child, he had no compunctions about using his new powers to just play around and do whatever he wants. Like stealing candy or whatever kids do.

(It has been mentioned that this kid looks like little PDR. I was going more specifically for a reference to the kid from Time Bandits, but hey, whatever. Little PDR was a pretty iconic 80s kid.)

Braininajar Jones

In the future, sometimes people will be brains in jars. This particular brain in a jar has access to a mental projection machine that allows her to send her consciousness through time itself into the bodies of people in the past or future. This allows her to alter the timestream in her favor, gathering a veritable empire of riches. Pretty good for a brain in a jar.

Ghuk

This cavewoman who stumbled across the remains of a broken time machine has decided to explore the future, though where her time machine takes her is mostly not a destination of her choosing. Though she likes the easy lifestyle that technology brings, she is generally not a fan of the clutter and confusion of the future. And with her temper, when she gets unhappy, other people find out very quickly and painfully.

The Khonsu Kid

Time travel has seriously messed with the timestream. As a result there are time periods that shouldn’t even exist, called Anachroclasm eras. For example, this gunslinger is from an ancient Egypt that is full of cowboys and robots. Naturally, to survive in that sort of environment, he’s had to resort to some underhanded acts like robbery. Thankfully, crime pays: During one heist he discovered a fancy hat (not pictured) that allows the wearer to traverse the timestream. Very handy for avoiding the Pharaoh’s lawmen.

Jikan Jingai

From another Anachroclasm Era, this one an Ice Age where criminal shoguns and their samurai mobs thrive while prohibition offers them opportunities, the Jikan Jingai uses time travel to get products from other eras and bring them home for sale on all sorts of black markets. If something is banned or can’t be produced in this freezing world, it just makes sense to go to another period to steal what you want, right?

Time Hobo

The Time Hobo doesn’t have his own time machine or access to any time warps or anything like that. But somehow, he finds his way around the timesteam. From the days of the dinosaur to the distant future, this eternal anachronism has a tendency to just turn up at the strangest times looking for whatever work he can get. Admittedly, he has a tendency to blow his earnings on get rich quick schemes (or wine), but he never stays down for long.

Okay, so that was a bunch more people who are messing with the timeline in their own interests. Isn’t there anyone out there who wants to ensure that history isn’t accidentally destroyed? Next week, we’ll meet the good guys (such as they are).

Does time-travel count as a Supernatural thing? It’s more the domain of science fiction, isn’t it? But it surely is inaccurate enough that it doesn’t count as “hard” sci-fi. Anyway, I wanted to introduce a bunch of time travel characters, so I’m including them in Supernatural Sundays whether you want me to or not.

I mentioned somewhere on this site about a year ago that Kip and I were working on a project. I am still not doling out too much information, but here are some of the characters involved:

Professor D’Eon

This American professor was stuck in a bit of a rut in the 1980s. He found that he didn’t enjoy teaching very much, he didn’t enjoy life very much actually, but what he did enjoy was movies about time travel. With that in mind, he built himself a Time Car and began travelling all over the timestream looking for adventures comparable to those he sees in film. He has no concern for the stability of history or anything like that, he just wants to have adventures.

Knight of the Clock

When a European knight in the dark ages found a sword that could cut portals into other timmes, he took it as a sign from God that his quest was a noble one. But what was his quest? Well, since God is on his side, he figures that whatever quest he sets his mind to is righteous. With that kind of freedom, the knight can now travel to any era he likes and do whatever he wants to the godless heathens he finds there, especially when it comes to taking their stuff.

Jakkhax99

In the sprawling metropolis of Neo-Manila in cyberpunk future times, this cyborg crook managed to steal an experimental Time Belt from a global hypercorporation. Now he’s able to extend his crime spree to all sorts of time periods less advanced than his world. He can steal whatever he wants and who is gonna stop him?

Hung-Shi Tu

Coming from roughly the modern era, this Chinese astronaut (or taikonaut, if you prefer) was piloting a space shuttle that discovered a time-warp anomaly that could bring her to any point in history. Rather than turn this knowledge in to her employers, she has decided she could use unlimited freedom the anomaly provides for her own purposes.

A.G. Bromley

This Victorian Era gentleman has access to a time-travelling hot air balloon. Occasionally the other men in his club will make some sort of wager and he will embark on a journey through history and the future to win. And, if he’s feeling nice, he might even use his innate greatness as a civilized Englishmen to help the poor, pitiful natives of all the other time periods he visits.

Uchoyo of Rhapta

In the ancient city of Rhapta, one merchant was the greediest of them all. He travelled the extents of the explored world, and beyond, but his lust for more wealth was unsatisfied. But luckily, for him but nobody else, the merchant acquired a strange crystal orb that allowed him to jump through time. As soon as he realized his reach now extended through infinity, his greed expanded in an attempt to fill that gap.

Fariba the Mad

In the dark ages, there was a Persian princess who had a reputation for being both extremely vain and extremely eccentric. Her reputation was, if anything, an understatement. In an effort to appease the princess, she was given a supposedly magical mirror that was actually a time-travel device that allowed her to switch places with other time travellers in history. And with no particular goal in mind beyond her own amusement, she set about using that ability to mess with everyone.

You may have noticed that all of these characters are pretty much time-travelling jerks. That is not accidental. We’ll be back with still more time-travelling jerks next week, and they’ll get even stranger.

Time again for me to flesh out the Efmon family. These are the people from a fantasy world who mutate themselves to serve their demon bosses.

Grunnich Efmon

Grunnich is the family’s hunter. Her mutation allows her to run, on all fours, at speeds about as fast as a car and she can track scents from miles away. Her claws and her bite allow her to do a lot of damage to her prey. Since the war, Grunnich has been helpful during invasions of new worlds. When the Efmons show up in a new place and start conquering, often the first instinct of the locals is to flee and seek help. Grunnich makes sure those runners don’t get anywhere.

Essan Efmon

As should be obvious from his great big head, Essan is a smart guy. His mutation allows him to think more quickly and abstractly than a normal mortal, which has become especially useful since the family had to flee their home dimension and start dealing with the mathematics of higher space. This works out nicely for Essan, who is something of a coward and has no desire to be anywhere near physical conflicts. A downside for Essan, however, is that his intellect has riddled him with doubts about the cult-like nature of his family’s worship of the demon Thalamaya. But Essan keeps those thoughts to himself. He is a coward, after all.