Editing Traveler/OpposingFactions (section)

==Ananke==

If the Stream- time- is considered as a body with Aion as its blood, a Traveler could be called a sort of virulent disease, infecting and feeding off the flow of events. They squabble with the order of things, fight among each other and cause paradoxes.

To counteract this Anankes exist. Nobody quite knows where they come from or how they are made; they are the antibodies of the Time Stream. Creatures of order and linearity, they are blessed with an instinctive ability to sense snags in the timeline and an absolute willingness to do anything it takes to resolve them, which usually doesn't end well for anybody involved: the Stream is their only preoccupation and so any possible obstacle is to be dealt with swiftly. They oppose Travelers everywhere, everywhen, unless a bigger threat is present. But what could be worse than beings who- accidentally or not- strain the Stream with their very existence?

The shape of an Ananke varies wildly based on individuals; some are whirling snakes, others are rotary saws of tooth and hair, and still others are toothed-gear aberrations swinging pendulums and gears. A few, but for the blue circles in their serpentine eyes and the shimmer of their skin, could very well be human. Some theorize that humanoid Anankes are the result of mortals being lost in the Stream- humans condemned to the abyss of Time acclimate to the place and become its servants, become changed by its brass and ice.

Anankes come in five different types: Mechanisms (living clock-people which act completely automatically), Chronophages (creatures that consume Aion like food), Stutters (balls of memory doomed to repeat the same stretch of time for all existence), Paradoxical (beings spawned from paradoxes that cause contradictions wherever they go) and Clock-eaters (humans infused by the Stream to become its psychotic, time-obsessed servants). Each has some way of manipulating Aion- Mechanisms measure out time and use Aion to control machines, Maws eat living flesh to absorb its Aion and substitute Aion for food to send it back into the Stream, Stutters force time to enter self-regressive loops, Paradoxicals can survive the side effects of paradoxes and are capable of causing them more efficiently, and Clock-eaters... well, they look and can act mostly human, and that might be the worst threat of all.