What if an angel’s mistake caused the past and future to converge into one moment, leaving the present a simultaneous mess of technological, geographical, and social advancements and regressions?
In the world of Heartlines, Angels exist in a realm called Superhaven, guarding over assigned sectors of the world. Hell does not exist, but Fallen angels are banished to live forever amongst humans, retaining only a small portion of their celestial magic. In 1952, in the midst of the Korean War, a combination of adrenaline, existential dread, and extraordinary devotion allowed one such Fallen angel to warp time and space, sending them and their lover into the year 2008. The act of time travel had never occurred before, its nuclear consequences wreaking havoc on the world twice— once in 1952 and again in 2008. The 1952 incident caused the physical aspects of the Earth to warp. Fast food restaurants suddenly appeared where forests had once stood, once-weathered mountains turned sharp and young again, almost alien technological skyscrapers replaced modern urban monuments, replenished glaciers caused coastal towns to flood, etc., etc. Half a century passes, and society has only just begun to adjust before another catastrophe transpires. The second time, in 2008, thousands of people go missing, seemingly sent backward and forwards in time. An equal amount of people from the past and future are sent to the present to take their place, and Aberrations start to pop up in areas of low population density as human souls are trapped in time. On December 12, 2008, an amendment of sorts* takes place, and things slowly revert back to the way they were, but over the course of thousands of years.
*When Aempyriel, the Fallen angel responsible for the time mishap, speaks to God to try and fix their mistake, God condemns them to an afterlife of reconnecting time nodes, like an operator of an old telephone switchboard. When Aempyriel manually reconnects the right wires, that branching timeline is smoothed out back to its intended path.
In the spring of 2009, six months have passed since the world turned on its head a second time. The existence of angels is debated among social groups, and so are the rights of the military’s discarded, AI-powered Tactical Integrated Ground Engagement Robots (TIGERs). Aberrations still stalk low population density areas, and the landscape shifts in highly populated regions. Time-displaced humans, the Yesterfolk and Futurites, slowly disappear back into their original timelines; however, it could take years or even past their lifetime for them to do so. For each one of them that disappears, a missing person from the present comes back to their right place.
You are a freshly appointed intern under the critically acclaimed scientist Keegan Callahan, who has taken a young Futurite, Bo, under her wing. Keegan wants to make sure she never loses Bo to time, so she enlists you and your party of coworkers to find more time energy. Keegan has come to possess a mysterious journal (see Artifacts - Aempyriel’s journal) that she believes marks the locations of time energy wells. She thinks that, with enough of the energy, she can fortify her home enough that Bo will not be taken from her. So, armed with the journal and time-energy-measuring devices (seismometers/seismographs) of her creation, you embark on a dangerous quest to harvest from these rare and unstable wells of energy, learning more about the truth of time displacement along the way.
Note: Again, Heartlines is designed to be system-agnostic, so you’ll need to decide exactly how gameplay proceeds from a stats-and-engine perspective.
The precise nature of a campaign is, naturally, up to the DM and the players – but a suggested starting adventure template may resemble the following:
The party must journey through a mix of high and low population density areas to find a well of time energy. They will fight Aberrations along the way, and if the monster is slain with a celestial weapon or captured by a TIGER, the players can collect a small amount of time energy from it.
Note that TIGER outposts can also be investigated, in addition to towns marked in the Journal or other time-energy-rich town , since it is known that TIGERs send converted Aberrations’ energy to these locations.
Players journey through a dreary, surrealist town, searching for answers and artifacts that set off their time-energy-measuring devices.
The players find an artifact bursting with time-energy that unlocks more lore, leading them to their next location. They check in with Keegan, who grows more frantic by the day, to give a status update.
As the players talk to people in the towns, they should slowly discover that all their contacts seem to share the same network of people in common, who are really Aempyriel under different names. There might also be whispers of a sort of ‘God’ who controls when people are sent back to the right timelines, which Keegan quickly becomes obsessed with and pushes for her interns to find. Time energy will be strongest where there exists an artifact from one of Aempyriel’s past lives, as shown by the journal. As a side note, time energy is also strongest in highly populated areas, as well, since more human tampering with the natural world = more splits in timelines. Nonetheless, players should be led from artifact to artifact, collecting a good amount of them until they are eventually, finally led to Aempyriel in Kimhwa County, Korea.
Angels and the Fallen have the ability to harness celestial magic.
Angels draw their power directly from God, and are therefore more powerful while they remain close to It. They can leave Its realm, Superhaven, to visit Earth, taking on a human form but retaining the rest of their abilities. While away from God, Angels take on the human-like traits of energy depletion and hunger— using their powers makes them very hungry.
Fallen angels acquire their power secondhand from various life forms. This could include the grass, an animal, or a person. Such an act draws from the creature’s life force, and the more power the angel uses, the more energy they deplete. Using their power also makes the Fallen very tired, an amount proportionate to the amount of energy they depleted from the life force. Unlike regular angels, an object blessed by a Fallen causes burns to humans if touched, since God has not vetted it.
God harnesses power from the souls of the already dead (of all life forms, not just humans), but will not intentionally kill to gain more power.
A high concentration of celestial magic sitting stagnantly in one area can result in genetically modified humans, who are more resistant to celestial energy. This means that these humans can harness objects badly blessed by Fallen angels. They are also unaffected by time-warping.