Meta Rating : 1.6 to 2.2
A time colony is an independent entity in time and space that, while capable of tracing its own origins to a particular flat civilization, is not dependent on that civilization.
Structure and Classification:
Time travel colonies are much closer to full civilizations in their own right; exact details will evolve in a manner much similar to flat civilizations. They do tend to be a bit more regular, as the introduction of time travel allows them to remove the element of surprise from future events, but the growth of ideas, cultures, and technology follows more or less normal curves.
What distinguishes time travel colonies are their origins and how they interact with the rest of the timeline. An Alliance is a group of time travel agencies spread across multiple timelines whose agents interact, and agree to work together, usually for some sort of flat goal. Because most of the personnel in this sort of organization are in fact time travelers themselves, this type of group is classified as Time Colonists, but in fact they are still very close to their Agency Roots. This sort of group only progresses if it manages to extricate itself from flat concerns, and focus on its own survival; possibly policing or guiding Agencies to help ensure its own retroactive growth. If it does not do so, then it runs the risk of being annihilated when a significant number of its founding timelines are rendered improbable.
More conventional evolutions from Agency to Colonist come through the Outpost route. An outpost is an extension of an agency; either all, or more commonly, in part. An outpost is an autonomous agent of a time travel Agency; examples include literal outposts, time ships, expeditions with their own time travel gear, among other things. The most common are based on military and police agencies. Ironically, those Outposts whose factions are going to lose a war do far better than those whose factions are going to avoid war or win a war. This is generally because such “victorious” agencies tend to remain focused on editing the flat timeline, while the losers of the last war turn to their own survival. No longer concerned that their actions will cause their own defeat, the defeated get the last laugh by erasing their opponents, often inadvertently.
The least common form of a Time Colonist is an Ascension or Uplift, two slight variations on a similar concept. This is a flat civilization or time travel agency that has chosen, for whatever reason, to relocate in space in time to somewhere else. The technology and resources necessary to do so are, to say the least, extreme. It is most common for a lesser civilization to make this leap with the aid of a greater civilization; hence the term 'uplift'. Even less common are civilizations that decided to to simply go meta, realizing the physical truth that they could be erased and taking action. This is most common among machine civilizations; who are on the whole less prone to the rationalization biologicals tend to exhibit that prevents them from allocating the necessary resources to go meta.
Technology and Assets:
Time Colonists agents are often equipped with shifter devices or vehicles. This enables them to ensure a more flexible response to temporal threats, but Time Colonists tend to make use of large-scale projectors to move bulk cargo or launch disposable attack drones.
In general, time travel technology gets used more frequently and more flippantly. Major surprises – terrorists, scandals, etc, are almost unheard of, because time travel can be used to stop them, and because everyone knows time travel can be used to stop them. Internal conflict tends to either be subtle and quiet, so completely that it resembles a game of Settlers of Catan more than a game of chess, and long term developments are far more important than short term gains. Or it goes so completely noisy and violent no one is capable of putting together enough information and political will to change things.
The mundane assets of a Time Colony vary, from the resources of an entire advanced civilization, to the resources of a single time ship. There is really no resource requirement on a time Colony; simply that they have the technology sustain time travel without access to the resources of a “flat” civilization.
Role in Meta-History:
Time Colonists are the 'Average Joe' players of meta-history. They are meta enough that they must be paid at least some attention to by higher level metas, who otherwise would simply ignore a similar entity on the grounds that it wasn't going to be there when it go around to paying attention to it. They have a diverse level of technology, more than enough to challenge higher meta individuals and are often embedded in the local time-space deeply enough to be able to significantly annoy higher-meta civilizations.
Time Colonists are the first stable entities on the scale, and as such can continue to have existed for quite some time, either by keeping their heads down, or striking some sort of deal with a higher meta, often to act as a sort of local eyes-and-ears, or some other such arrangement.