The Messinian Salinity Crisis & The Zanclean Flood in TimeWatch

"Hey! I gotta idea for a time travel adventure!"
"What hellhole are you... I mean, what hellhole is TimeWatch sending us to?"
"How about a relaxing trip to the Mediterranean?"
"How about telling us what the catch is?"


The Messinian Salinity Crisis

The historical significance of the Mediterranean Sea and the area surrounding it is undeniable, but that particular body of water wasn't always there. The Mediterranean Sea dried up a little less than 6 million years back in an event called the Messinian salinity crisis. The Straits of Gibraltar closed off the Mediterranean from the Atlantic Ocean. The hot and dry climate did the rest through evaporation, although lakes of brackish water remained.

Anybody traveling to the area during this period could encounter a deep dry basin. The dry climate and higher air pressures due to being up to 3-5km below sea level combined with summer heat to create desert like conditions. Much of the area would be covered in a layer of salt.

Why would anybody take a time machine to such a place? It makes for a good location for a temporary base. The inhospitable climate means that nobody and nothing is likely to just wander by and be a bother for a period of a few hundred thousand years. Evidence of the base's existence will be power washed away when the Mediterranean Basin becomes the Mediterranean Sea again (see below). Of course, it being such prime real estate for a time traveler in the market for a secure and isolated base location means that it might also be one of the first places for people to look.

A hydroelectric dam placed between the Mediterranean Basin and the Atlantic Ocean could be a vast source of electrical power. It could power a base or be the whole motive for going there. The idea of damming off the Mediterranean Sea came up in the 1920s as the Atlantropa proposal. Of course, methods of time or dimensional travel that use more power than such a dam would produce would make the whole venture unprofitable.


The Zanclean Flood

The Messinian salinity crisis ended about 5.33 million years ago with the Zanclean flood. The triggering event was the formation of the Straits of Gibraltar. It took anywhere between several months and two years for most of the Mediterranean Sea to refill. Signs of erosion from the massive flow of water from the Atlantic Ocean suggest that flow rates were impressive.

Given the historical significance of the Mediterranean, preventing the Zanclean flood is of interest to groups with an eye towards altering human history. However, an effort on that scale would be difficult to hide from anybody with the ability to monitor for historical changes. This might lead to such a project being used to conceal or distract from more subtle time travel shenanigans.

Going back to make sure the Zanclean flood happens on time could involve anything from being issued shovels as a punishment detail to the faster and more fun method of explosives. The Zanclean flood could be deliberately triggered to destroy a decommissioned base in the Mediterranean Basin. It could also be used to destroy an effort to make the Atlantropa proposal happen during this period.

Finally, the Zanclean flood might have been an accident. An example of collateral damage from an exchange of eldritch weapons during a time war. Or the result of teleporting a nuke into the past to stop it going off someplace worse.

My TimeWatch Resource List

“TimeWatch, by Kevin Kulp, is a GUMSHOE game of investigative time travel. You are a defender of history, an elite TimeWatch agent plucked out of your native era and trained to stop saboteurs from ripping history apart. Your training allows you to diagnose disruptions in the time stream and track down the cause, making conclusions that less capable investigators might just guess at. The TimeWatch rules presume that you are a highly competent badass. Who are you to prove them wrong?”

- Description of the TimeWatch RPG from Pelgrane Press.

I backed the TimeWatch RPG Kickstarter in 2014.* Time travel hi-jinks and the GUMSHOE system made for an appealing combination. The latest series of updates include electronic versions of the finalized game materials and news that the books are going to press soon. Which gives me a deadline for getting ready to run the game if I wish to wait until the physical copy of the rulebook arrives. My knowledge of real and alternate history isn't something I can rely on to launch a TimeWatch campaign without research. To that end, I put together a resource list after a quick pass through my personal library.

GURPS Time Travel. Steve Jackson and John M. Ford explore the concept of a time travel RPG. Plenty of ideas to mine here. Pity that the timeline in the back ends in 1994, but that can't be helped. Copyright 1991, 1995.

GURPS Alternate Earths. Kenneth Hite, Craig Neumeier, and Micheal S. Schiffer present a number of alternate histories for the Infinite Worlds campaign frame from GURPS Time Travel. Some of the alternate histories don't stand up to close inspection, but whisking the player characters in and out of them fast enough should help prevent awkward questions. Copyright 1996, 1998.

GURPS Alternate Earths 2. The sequel to GURPS Alternate Earths. Copyright 1999.

GURPS Who's Who 1 and GURPS Who's Who 2. These anthologies complied by Phil Masters presents figures from throughout history. More importantly, those figures are presented from a game perspective. Information on how they might react to the player characters and notes on how they might impact a time travel game are the focus. Copyright 1999.

Suppressed Transmission and Suppressed Transmission 2. Anthologies of Kenneth Hite's column of the same name which ran in Pyramid Magazine during its years as a website. In particular, the essays on history and alternate histories promise plenty of ideas for the borrowing. Some of the concepts here are more thoroughly explored in Kenneth Hite's later works. Copyright 2000.

What If? An anthology of essays describing turning points in military history and the alternate worlds that could have resulted from changes to that history. Copyright 1999. Edited by Robert Cowley.

What If? 2. Editor Robert Cowley casts a wider net for the essays in this sequel to What If? The book is not exclusively focused military history. Copyright 2001.

With all this, I don't have to come up with my own ideas for TimeWatch. I can just borrow from the hard work of others!


* The fact that I'm getting my backer rewards two years later doesn't surprise me. My previous Kickstarter experiences have turned me a little cynical and I regard the delivery dates given for backer rewards as fictional. I have to credit Kevin Kulp with keeping up excellent communications and updates for TimeWatch's backers. Not every Kickstarter goes to that much effort to maintain goodwill.