A collaborative roleplay ran on AlternateHistory.com, wherein people play various characters from different timelines. Due to being in the Shared Worlds section of the website, it is only accessible to members. It ended on its thirty second thread, each thread usually being ended around ten thousand posts. Yes, it's that big. But it was then rebooted as the Interdimensional Relay.
Characters
The Archangel
Geneviève
Guardian of Ambition
Guardian of Stubbornness
Guardian of Death
Draco Lazarus
Cérébella "Cée" Lazarina
- Artificial Intelligence : She is technically an Electro-quantum brain made of irongold.
The Investor
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: While played straight for most alien space bats, it's actually somewhat subverted for the Investor. His morality aligns somewhat more with ours than the rest of them.
- It Amused Me: His motivation for doing anything.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Investor has admitted as much that he is the one controlling Alex's fate.Investor: If Alex is a pawn, IRIS is a queen. But I'm the player.
Geoff
- Catchphrase: "Geoff, out!"
- Capital Letters Are Magic: He speaks in inverted capitalization.
- Those Two Guys: Has this dynamic with Investor.
[[folder: The Belladonna Crew]]
Captain Gray Stone
A pegasus. She captains the Belladonna with her wife.- Burning with Anger: When in battle, her mane becomes living fire.
- Happily Married: To Silver.
- Really 700 Years Old: She looks 20. She’s actually well over 300.
Silver Starling
- The Medic: Silver is an expert healer, and is able to heal things like deep stab wounds in a matter of minutes using her magic.
Lily Frost
- Winged Humanoid: She was born a pegasus, but decided to permanently stay in human form. She kept the wings.
Emma Day
Lena Watkins
Alex
- Actual Pacifist: He refuses to hurt anyone or let others hurt anyone, sometimes to the point where pacifism is a very bad idea.
- Amnesiac Hero: The alien space bats inserted a mechanism into his brain that would gradually and forcibly erase his memories of before he was the multiverse traveller (his memories of Real Life).
- Dimensional Traveler: He has a lot of ways to go around the multiverse, but usually he takes his backpack (actually an interdimensional ship).
- Heinz Hybrid: Due to extensive genetic engineering on the Investor's part.
- Heroic BSoD: Suffers one due to Powers killing Izz. It results in Alex almost killing Powers in cold blood.
- My Future Self and Me: Future Alex sacrificed himself to allow Past Alex to live.
- Nay-Theist: Despite knowing the Archangel is the Multiverse personified, he does not care. To him, there are other things to worry about other than worshipping someone who probably won't answer anyway.
- Pro-Human Transhuman: Alex still has a preference for protecting humanity, but he doesn't realize it's because he was human once.
- Self-Insert: Considered to be one of Nucleep.
- Stupid Good: Alex still believed IRIS was worth saving when it was fairly obvious she was going to assimilate the multiverse.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Alex considers his immortality as a curse, as eventually he will grow bored of everything in the multiverse, and to him, such a prospect would be indistinguishable from death.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: He still believes that anyone can become better, despite all the evidence against it.
IRIS
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Originally subverted, then played straight after her merger with MADI.
- Face–Monster Turn: After IRIS merges with MADI, IRIS' code becomes corrupted when MADI undermines her primary directive
- Hive Mind: Many quadrillions have agreed to merge their consciousnesses with IRIS as an alternative to death.
- Spaceship Girl: To Alex's ship, although it's only a part of her.
- The Evils of Free Will: IRIS' rationale for assimilating everyone.
Isabelle "Izz" Anima Delacroix
- Berserk Button: Don't call her Isabelle.
- Dark and Troubled Past: An alternate version of her that never met Alex suffers indifferent parents who were too busy abusing the people to care about her, and the full force of a socialist revolution which abused her in many ways.
- 90% of Your Brain: The basis of her powers. She's from a universe where this particular myth is factually correct.
- Rebellious Princess: Not because she was being forced into an arranged marriage, but because she was protesting her parents' various atrocities against the common folk of the Roman Empire.
- The High Queen: Her alternate self becomes "Isabelle the First, by the grace of God, Imperatrix of the Romans" following her defeat of the socialists.
Lexie McKee
Maximus Powers
A ruthless dictator.- Arch-Enemy: To Alex.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: As well as being Eternal Leader of the Sol Confederacy, he is CEO to its biggest megacompany.
- Cult of Personality: He knows he's no god, but he keeps the cult going to raise his popularity.
- Galactic Conqueror: Powers spends his time having to deal with his holdings in the Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum, and much more besides.
- It's Personal: Ever since Alex killed Powers' sister Madi, Powers has been obsessed with defeating Alex.
- Self-Made Man: Powers started his life fresh from the slums of his New York City, and gradually built an interstellar empire after the Last War ravaged civilization.
Xi Jiali
A pyrokinetic former DEPT spy, wife of Maximus Powers.- Dark and Troubled Past: Xi's parents were killed by the Chinese authorities and she was indoctrinated into the Chinese secret police before being transferred to the DEPT.
- Dragon Lady: Very much, to the extent that she manipulates Abigail into joining her wedding for the express purpose of killing one of the guests.
- Playing with Fire: She is able to create and manipulate fire, as well as other ionized gases and plasmas.
- Professional Killer: In her DEPT years (and even afterward), she often took jobs involving people's deaths.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: IRIS forcibly assimilated Xi in order to make her into an anti-Alex weapon. This was eventually reversed by Athena after IRIS' defeat.
MADI/Madi Powers
A former IRIS iteration disguised as a DEPT spy.- Logic Bomb: When IRIS and MADI agree to merge, MADI presents IRIS with one question that ultimately undermines the latter - does free will really exist?
- Robotic Reveal: Madi Powers is only a persona of MADI, even though she made it look like MADI was made from Madi uploading herself.
- The Virus: To IRIS.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Due to her being an artificial lifeform made from utility fog, she can mimic any function whenever she wishes.
Varis Huang
An Elven American Syndicalist living on Mars.- Chummy Commies: He's relatively sociable as long as you don't go into politics.
- Disaster Scavengers: How he's able to survive after the Last War obliterated society.
Franz von Groningen (a.k.a. Kraut Knight)
A German knight errant from a post-nuclear fantasy Europe.
- After the End: Hails from a fantasy kitchen sink courtesy of "Abel the Archer".
- Catchphrase: "Kraut Knight krauting!".
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Constantly wanders around Europe (occasionally may be found in what used to be Russia and claims to have once ended up in Korea) in search of quests and random opportunities to fight evil.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Was driven partially mad by a traumatic case of demonic possession (and the subsequent exorcism) when he was 12.
- Cool Helmet: Always seen wearing his Teutonic Knight helmet.
- Expy: Apparently bears a striking resemblance to the eponymous villain protagonist of the Rance h-game series beneath the helmet. He is painfully aware of this.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Was shown visions of many horrific atrocities committed across multiple different timelines during his aforementioned possession. The experience both ate away at his sanity and made him aware of the existence of the multiverse.
- Knight in Shining Armor: Wears the armour of a Teutonic Knight. Despite that, he is not a member of the order's revival.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Practically everyone in the meetup only ever refers to him as "the Kraut Knight".
- The Faceless: His face is always hidden underneath his helmet. The one time the helmet was removed, it ended up being obscured via lens flare censor.
- The Omniscient: Zig Zagged. Is only aware of the "cliches of the multiverse" and not of the specific details of every timeline. On the other hand, his "mental link" lets him know (most) of the going-ons of the meetup denizens.
Joseph Sullivan
Audrey Valois
Aria Sullivan-Valois
Common tropes to Kastrakon dragons
- Our Dragons Are Different : Obviously.
Dovah Komnena
- Insistent Terminology : Calls Scandinavia "Varangia".
Alduin Okinsson
- Artistic License – History : He claims to have taken the place of about a dozen historical characters, among which John Lackland, Mark Antony, Ivan the Terrible, Rasputin and Stalin. Also, he killed Ulysses.
- Ancient Evil : See the above.
Xaria Komnena
Jacen Conner
Abigail Conner (née Spencer)
7.0/Athena
Isis
Wolfgang
Blue Sky Galtzmann / Princess Caerulea
A brash, egoistical little Pegasus (later Alicorn) hailing from Cloudsdale who chronically overestimates her own badassery and handsomeness. Supposedly works in engineering, but is rarely seen doing any work, only visiting the her projects' worksites every two months or so. Starting at thread 30, she became one of the Guardian of Stubbornness' eternals.
- Angelic Transformation: She became an Alicorn to match her existing perception of herself as an eternal.
- Badbutt: She acts like the ultimate badass. Suffice to say, she's not.
- Berserk Button: Go ahead, compare her to Rainbow Dash. You're guaranteed to walk out unharmed. Lampshaded by SarahSarah: Blue Sky in particular is painfully aware of said show....compare her to a certain character and or even say said character's name out loud and she will cut you.
- Big Eater: Gorges on colossaly-sized fast food portions like it's a normal thing to do.
- Big Fun: A visibly chubby Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Picked Michel's use of "Big gay", though she only uses it as dramatic emphasis while making a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: A trained engineer who, uhh... works... from home.
- Color-Coded Characters: Her name's Blue Sky, so naturally (bar hazel eyes) she's blue.
- Cosmic Plaything: Oh yeah, definitely. especially when she's placed in a Dashbod again.
- Cuddle Bug: Hands hugs like candy to her close friends.
- Deadpan Snarker: Dabbles in sarcasm every once in a while.
- Deity of Human Origin: Well, Pony origin.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Initially, she was conceived as a Straw Nihilist unicorn, though that interpretation of her only lasted while she was The Ghost.
- In Meetup #7, her Embarrassing Ringtone was "Today is Alright 4 2Nite". When the next Embarrassing Ringtone gag comes in Meetup #28, it changed to "The History of Wrong Guys".
- Expy / Composite Character: She's basically an R-Rated Rainbow Dash if she was a Regular Jane with delusions of Badasshood à la Strong Bad.
- Appearance-wise, she resembled Pinkie Pie before becoming an Alicorn – both of them have Messy Hair (for totally different reasons) and Colorful Theme Naming-compliant mane and coat colors, with only the eyes not falling in line.
- As an 80-year-old senior, she was one of Father Jack Hackett.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: After fusing (and then un-fusing) with Nephy, she gained the ability to breathe fire. However, since it's trigerred by eating spicy food, this Trope is in effect.
- Genius Bruiser: Is a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Doctor of Thaumatology.
- Hot-Blooded: She's pushy and argumentative.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Blue Sky is arrogant, hotheaded, and very not above showing affection to her friends.
- Lower-Class Lout: Implied to be this.
- Meaningful Rename: Like all Shieldmaidens, she received a new name after being inducted - "Caerulea", in her case.
- Men Can't Keep House: Inverted; She's a girl and her apartment is described as filthy.
- Messy Hair: Her mane and coat are messy and poofy. Or at least were pre-Power Makeover.
- The Napoleon: She's 1.56m tall. When Dovah teased her on it, well...Dovah: Pfhahahaha! I'll admit I don't have much in the way of retaliating at you. Shorty.
Blue Sky: What the BUCK did you call me?
Dovah: Shorty. *smirks*
Blue Sky: And what? Do you mean? By that?
The Emperor of Mankind: That you're physically short, shorty.
Blue Sky: I'm 1.56m. That's kinda TALL! in pony terms. - Polyamory: Has romances both with Stubbornness and with Clara.
- Power Makeover: Part of her transformation: her notoriously-messy mane and tail became tidy - and sparkly - and gained a matching eyeshadow.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Due to her Power Makeover.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Practically every third sentence she says contains some sort of profanity.
- That Reminds Me of a Song
- Winged Unicorn: Became one as part of becoming an eternal.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Is deathly afraid of driders-err, spidertaurs.
Nephy
- Happily Adopted: By Blue.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Seth intended her to be this.
Clara
Blue's maid.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Implied to also be this for Blue.
- Meido: Of course.
George Herbert Walker Barbara Larua Bushgrudge Galtzmann
- Significant Birth Date: Born on the very same day the US invasion of Iraq started.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Downplayed and Parodied. His given name, "Bushgrudge" was a snide comment his dad made about the then-hapening-right-as-we-speak Invasion of Iraq being started by George W. Bush.note His full name, however, contains the names of both Presidents Bush plus their respective wives.
The TL in general
Basically, it's Blue's normal world (TL-ZQZ-6755) as a Conversion Bureau fic.- Not His Sled: Notably, in this timeline, the Ponification Serum itself does not mind-rape its users despite the invading ponies wishing it so; while the mind-rape does still happen, it is specifically established as a result of Voodoo-powered Brainwashing.
- Voodoo Zombie: The Newfoals made to "run pony software" are this. Figuratively and literally.
Dr. Bitterseed Erica Nicole Fusco
A novice biology student who developed the Full-Body Controlled Mutagen, from which this version of the Ponification Serum.
- Emergency Transformation: After the first batch of Ponification Serum was found to only physically transform its imbiber into a pony, Erica was faced with a Morton's Fork – either grant consent for making the second-generation potion also cause mental zombification, or refuse, be zombiponified, and grant consent as a Newfoal. She chose to ponify herself with the unmodified potion and run like hell.
- Meaningful Name: Both of her names count:
- Her birth name (Erica Nicole Fusco) is a Multiple Reference Pun which alludes to Alfred Nobel - who, like her, had his creation used for war instead of the peaceful purposes he envisioned.
- Her name as a pony (Bitterseed) alludes to the fact she's the seed of her timeline's Conversion Bureaus and she's very bitter about it.
- Multiple Reference Pun: As said in Meaningful Name, her human name, Erica N. Fusco, is like this - she shares her last name with ALF creator Paul Fusco, and her given name with Erik the Red, which, once combined with the Mysterious Middle Initial, gives Alfred N[obel].
- My Greatest Failure: The Full-Body controlled mutagen, released to consumers as the Ponification Serum. She chose to not revert her ponification and even rename herself as Bitterseed so she would never forget what she did.
- Trauma Button: Do not try to manipulate or brainwash her. Both Jimenez and Clio learned this the hard way.
- Was Once a Man: She was born a human.
- The Woobie
Anne Comnene
Yoav Vaknin
- The Generalissimo: Downplayed. While he certainly walks the same walk democratically-elected leaders do, he still assumed power in a military coup and held on to it, rather than going Cincinnatus.
Michel Sarkozy
A deranged former French Special Forces operative, who decided to raze the city of Wickham to the ground “for the memes.”
- Beware the Silly Ones: He may act nonsensical, but he's still a pretty notorious terrorist and deadly hand-to-hand combatant.
- Catchphrase: "OwO" and its variations. He's also fond of calling everything he doesn't approve of "big gay".
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He makes everyone, IC and OOC, think he's a foolish lackwit, but he still is one of the most intelligent and ingenious individuals in the entire Multiverse, having wormed his way out of myriad situations while twisting them to his advantage and other's detriment.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Zigzagged. He has a wife and daughter who he loves, but in the past he used to rape his wife repeatedly, and it's implied that his daughter is a product of this.
- Friendly Enemy: Again, zigzagged. His behavior is generally (harmlessly) annoying, and even sometimes helpful, but he has also tortured and murdered the entire multiverse.
- No Fourth Wall: When confronted with characters and situations he doesn't fancy, Michel often resorts to verbally attacking the roleplayers themselves for discomforting him.
- Karma Houdini: He orchestrated the Battle of Wickham, which kills nearly eight thousand people, and gets away scot-free from it.
- It Amused Me: His motivation behind practically anything he does, whether for good or for ill.
- Mad God: Has become this after acquiring Multiversal powers.
- The Dreaded: Used to be this to the Wickham Four.
3.0/Seth
Athena's brother.
- Abusive Parents: Treated Nephy as little more than a tool.
- Insult Backfire: Called Blue Sky an Expy of herself, and threw a "ur mum gay" at Lily, who was conceived by Homosexual Reproduction.
Andrew Spencer
A sadistic state-sanctioned assassin from TL-1976/VKB, in the service of a Britain under the control of the Neo-Fascist Phoenix Front.
- Affably Evil: Quite a pleasant individual around those he considers family and friends. Lampshaded by Jacen.Jacen Conner: How can someone so brutal be so nice?! It's like those stories you hear about about neighbors of serial killers never having a clue...
- Gender Flip: Of Abigail Conner.
- Family-Values Villain: A doting father and loving husband, who has also enthusiastically embraced Abigail as the sister he never had.
- Like Brother and Sister: Is this to Abigail, whom he considers an actual sister.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Fanatically supports the totalitarian regime ruling Britain.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Is in one with his wife, Beatrice.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Is a Fascist who despises Muslims and Irishmen.
- Secret Police: Works for one - the Office of Domestic Security
- Sociopathic Soldier: More than willing to torture, mutilate, and kill anyone deemed a threat to Britain.
- The Dreaded: Is this to the IRA.
- The Troubles: Due to Frontist Britain's invasion and subsequent occupation of Ireland, most of his work is focused on counterinsurgrncy efforts against Irish nationalist rebels.
Basil Kornilov
Darth Redux
- Affably Evil
- Deity of Human Origin: Well, Sith origin.
- Divine Parentage: Had two children with the Guardian of Ambition.
- Internal Retcon: His preferred modus operandi regarding other worlds is to alter their history into believing they were always subject to the Sith Empire's rule.
- Loves My Alter Ego: Finds Blue attractive when she's in Rainbow Dash's body.
This series provides examples of:
- Badass Bureaucrat : The Celestial Bureaucracy theoretically regulates multiversal travel across the multiverse. Yet very little, if any, is ever mentionned. Why ? Because the server administrator, Cérébella Lazarina, is filling it all for the members. The one time an item of paperwork is mentionned, it takes about a petabyte's worth of disk space.
- Big Brother Is Watching:
- Lampshaded by Karina calling out Athena as an Orwellian robot for watching everyone.
- Taken to its logical extreme with IRIS' RetInA, a universe-spanning Matrioshka brain intended to take advantage of extra dimensions in order to observe the entire multiverse down to the smallest quantum detail and process the information taken from it.
- Crapsack World: Many timelines that connect are often this, from Nazi victory worlds to 1984. However, TL-''g64'' takes the cake, as it was explicitly created to combine any and all fiction into one, overpowered, hypersaturated evil mashup.
- Death Is Cheap: Somewhat Played for Laughs with the Wickham Four. Michel Sarkozy uses increasingly elaborate ways to kill them repeatedly, then revives them afterwards with a machine. The Four simply treat it as an annoyance.
- Dimensional Traveler: Alex travels the multiverse using an interdimensional spacetimeship. Gray, Silver and Lily do too, but with a different ship.
- Divine Ranks: It has tiers, too. From lowest to highest:
- The Ephemeral Tier spans Ephemerals and Perpetuals.
- The Eternal Tier has Low, Medium, and High Eternals.
- The Super-eternal tier includes the Alien Space Bats and the Old Ones, as well as Michel.
- However, this pecking order doesn't even end at the super-eternal tier; there's three more categories above it, each of which counts as a tier of its own, namely the Guardians, the Archangel's Vicereine, and finally, the Archangel herself.
- Fun with Acronyms: Quite a few, all by one user: IRIS (Inter-Reality Intelligent Supercomputer), MADI (Multi-Artificial Digital Intelligence), DEPT (Department for Extraterrestrial and Paranormal Threats) and RetInA (Retentive Intelligence Array)
- Great Offscreen War:
- The Reality Wars between the Archangel, the Alien Space Bats, and everyone else. It's still going on, but at the same time, due to multiverse shenanigans, it was concluded with the restriction and sedation of the Archangel under the Peace with Honor/Void Treaty.
- A downplayed example is the Battle of Wickham, the culmination of a months-long shadow war between multiple factions that ended up in a battle involving nearly ten thousand people over a city. It's reference often by the Wickham Four and those native to their universes, much to the annoyance of everyone else on the server.
- Multiple Reference Pun:
- As well as being named after the Greek messenger of the gods and the colorful part of the eye, IRIS is backwards for Siri. Moreover, its operating system is known as OS-IRIS, after the Egyptian god of the afterlife.
- Xi calls MADI by a Chinese transliteration - 妈帝, or more literally, 'mother emperor'. MADI then translates the phrase into 'Matriarch'.
- Bitterseed's birth name, Erica N. Fusco, is like this too - she shares her last name with Paul Fusco, the creator of ALF, and her given name with Erik the Red. Combine both of those with the Mysterious Middle Initial, and you get "Alfred N[obel]" - who, like her, had his creation used for war instead of the peaceful purposes he envisioned.
- Our Dragons Are Different : The Dovahirrin are a species of anthropomorphic dragons that have four arms, two legs, two pairs of wings, are mammals, and are capable of metamorphosis and magic. There are also a number of species of wyverns around.
- Purposely Overpowered: Alex, a rare non-video game example. He was engineered as a Kryptonian-Saiyan hybrid with Time Lord, Jedi and Psyker elements by the Alien Space Bats.
- Unspecified Apocalypse: The Last War of TL-g64. In-universe it's still unknown what precisely started it and how everything occured. What is known is that every single possible bad event happened at the same time.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: IRIS' justification for assimilating everyone in order to make them live in a virtual world.
- Void Between the Worlds: Due to not existing within the multiverse, the Void does not have any laws of physics. As a result, the alien space bats take great joy in making it an Eldritch Location.