Temporal Adherence Principle

This principle simply states that beings cannot exist outside of their own time. They can neither return to the past nor visit the future. In the past, tales of magi creating travelling forward into the future to learn its secrets and then return to the present to take action that would change the future they saw. Other tales exist of wizards that travelled not history, either to witness great events or to alter. Tales with this latter effect, altering the past, often end with protagonists caught in horrible loops, reliving their lives over and again. While these tales invariably have a moral against time travel, there have still been those who have attempted it, though most scholars believe that no one would ever know that the events occurred. Some even speculate that it was event like this that brought about then end of civilization in the Age of Sun.

Much like the ability to commune with spirits of the dead or servants of gods, this stricture does not prevent communication. Priests of many faiths can commune with spirits and powers across the ages to help better understand the past and foretell the future. The accuracy of most foretelling’s, however, is suspect. While more rarely encountered than the other two strictures, the impacts of attempting to travel time seem stronger. Whereas efforts to travel via planar method or raise the dead simply fail, all those who have attempted time travel have vanished. One witness describes a magi that attempted to visit the past break apart, like a glass sculpture shattering into shards, before each piece faded into non-existence.

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane