Time-wimey temporal shenanigans: Texas style

[dreicunan]

This may have been discussed before. I know that we had joked about it in my old group in college, but as I was re-reading Lone Star today I realized that I'd basicaly forgotten about it for over a decade.

The Lone Star complex was found in 68 PA (WB13 p. 16). Desmond Bradford supposedly spent 10 years getting 70% of it mapped, 40% up and running, and 80% of the genetics engineering department on line. 4 year after that, in 77 PA, he made the first Dog Pack (p. 104).

Desmond Bradford is 69 years old (p.105). The longest lived recorded female Psi-hound apparently died at the age of 69 (p. 26), presumably some time before 105 PA (near as I can tell, Lone Star is roughly contemporaneous with WB 11, but correct me if I missed something).

Only 37 years had passed by then since the facility was found, and only 28 since the first "Dog Pack" was produced for Karl's perusal.

64% of male Psi-hounds die in front-line service, but the average length of service is 26.5 years...typically starting at age 6, meaning 32.5 years of age (p. 26). Given that by 105 PA they'd only had 28 years to establish that average length of service, the majority of them must have started dying in such high numbers relatively recently.

[Mack]

You're right, the numbers don't add up. If memory serves, someone pointed this out a few years ago and the response was effectively "Oops."

My solution is to just take the life expectancies as a prediction of how long they should live based on the data available thus far, and ignore the 69 year old statement.

[ShadowLogan]

Two Possibilities come to mind (don't have Lone Star):
1. Dog-Boy ages are "equivalent", much like how people use "dog years" to get an equivalent human age for their dog (1 real = 7 equivalent). So a "69 year old" if it's equivalent would be between 9 and 10 "real years".

2. Dog-Boys are actually pre-Rifts in origin and where put in cryo-sleep (ala NEMA/Archie's sleepers), which would allow them to live outside established CS Dates. From Underseas and/or South America (1&2) that mutant animals existed at the time of the Rifts. IINM this would mean the CS didn't actually create the Dog-Boys, much like some of their hardware (SAMAS, some early weapons are also Pre-Rifts given IIRC Canada's RMCP gear, etc).

[guardiandashi]

Another interpretation woud be to take the ages and life expectancy information at face value, and just say that it is a piece of information "accidentally " slipped into a document published later, and misprinted as contemporary, or something like that

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Hot Take:

Desmond Bradford took credit for inventing/creating the Dog Pack....

But we already know hes an insane megalomaniac and consumate liar...

Psi-hounds were, in reality, a creation of the American government, and several hundred were present in the facility in cryo-stasis.

The 69-year old Dog Girl was, in fact, 69 “living” years old. This piece of info got accidentally left unchanged/unredacted in some documents that got out.

Its one of the reasons Joseph is so suspicious of Bradford. Everyone else wrote it off as a Typo... Joseph did not.

A large stock of breeding material and existing clones would also help explain how so many Dog Boys were produced so quickly after their initial reveal - the existing, awoken Pre-Cataclysm Psi Hounds had been breeding for years by the time the outside world even heard of them.

Fits all the facts we know, and explains why the Psi-Hound project was so successful so quickly.

[Axelmania]

The Lone Star complex was found in 68 PA (WB13 p. 16).
Desmond Bradford supposedly spent 10 years getting 70% of it mapped, 40% up and running, and 80% of the genetics engineering department on line.
4 year after that, in 77 PA, he made the first Dog Pack (p. 104).

Already it doesn't seem to line up, as 68+10=78, 4 years after that should be 82 PA?

77 PA is also used as their introduction date on page 22, so if we subtract four years from that, it ought to be 73 PA that Bradford did the 70% mapping...

68 PA - 73 PA would've been 5 years rather than 10... so either they decided to half the time Desmond took to do this, or perhaps they intended for the facility to be discovered in 63 PA rather than 68 PA?

Desmond Bradford is 69 years old (p.105). The longest lived recorded female Psi-hound apparently died at the age of 69 (p. 26), presumably some time before 105 PA (near as I can tell, Lone Star is roughly contemporaneous with WB 11, but correct me if I missed something).

I'm guessing since Psi-Hounds often chase supernatural baddies, some end up going through Rifts, perhaps to dimensions where time flows at a faster rate (like the Astral Plane) compared to Rifts Earth, similar to how Rifts Earth time flows faster than Wormwood time (1 day on wormwood is 3 days on Rifts Earth).

For example: if you were 20 and had a baby on Wormwood, and then that baby spent 60 years on Rifts Earth and then returned home, you'd only be 40 years old: 20 years younger than your baby.

Page 16 of DB7 covers this with the "Time Flows Faster" option. Like "Time Flows Slower" (ie Wormwood) it uses a 1:2 / 2:1 ratio for simplicity but has the option...

Creative Game Masters can increase this lag period, just keep it simple enough to keep track of. That's why I prefer the two for one approach, it makes the math easy.

[hbrika]

That first sentence kills me.

Also they said "Oops" so likely proofreading (rushing) is the answer?

[Axelmania]

You're right, the numbers don't add up. If memory serves, someone pointed this out a few years ago and the response was effectively "Oops."

My solution is to just take the life expectancies as a prediction of how long they should live based on the data available thus far, and ignore the 69 year old statement.

Or just award me a Palladium No-Prize for using Megaversal Builder to explain it. The legendary 69-year-old Dog-Lady was obviously a dimension-hopper. She was born in 77 PA but at 8 years old (in 85 PA) tackled a demon through a rift into a dimension where time passes at 5x the rate, spending 55 years (by her time) there before returning in 96 PA having spent 11 years (Rifts time) there, and being 63 years old. She then lived 6 more years before finally dying in 102 PA at 69 years old.

That first sentence kills me.

Also they said "Oops" so likely proofreading (rushing) is the answer?

Well probably, but it still leaves us wondering which canon we're supposed to keep and which we're supposed to alter. Finding a timey wimey explanation that allows us to keep both dates avoids needing to deal with that dilemma.

Dreicunan has a good point about the 26.5 years average service from age 6 resulting in 32.5 average lifespan being in conflict with 77 PA (as 77+32.5 = 109.5) so a LOT of dog boys must be chasing demons through portals to the astral plane and aging faster than the majority of the staying-safely-on-Earth human CS population.

[hbrika]

I’ll be honest when I read the title of this thread I was hoping for a Time Lord style crossover (maybe with a sarcastic guy with a big scarf even)