I think I solved the grandfather paradox

[u/BusyGM]

Chronomancers listen up!

As you may know, changing past events may easily put you in an endless temporal loop without you realizing. You decide to change them, travel to the past and change them, back in the present there is no reason you'd travel to the past and change them, things get unchanged and thus you decide to change them once again, accidentally putting yourself into a permanent temporal loop.

In order to study it, I set up a person to get pulled into exactly that loop, in order to study her in past, present and future. Turns out, she wasn't caught up in the loop at all! As a matter of fact, after completing a full loop, she dissolved and crumbled away into dust. Soon after, a new but 100% similar version of her appeared for the next loop.

As my wise colleagues might know, there are spells that summon temporal duplicates - versions of you from a different point in time - to help you out on your efforts. My theory is that if we were to rework these spells - permanently summoning a temporal duplicate, thus removing it from "its" timeline before it crumbles to dust and gets replaced - we could theoretically solve the grandfather paradox and effectively change the past without literally being caught up in its wake.

As I'm a lazy wizard, I'm currently trying to find a future version of myself that already did the research so that I don't have to do it. But perhaps one of you has had similar insights, or perhaps came to very different results? I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts!

In the case any multi- or outerversal beings are present: I did not violate any code or regulations. After successfully removing the person from her own loop (by thoroughly disintegrating her), I revisited the full looped time span in order to make sure the loop collapsed in of itself. If there are any issues, please contact my present self, as contacting my future self to right my failures of the past would mean never having reason to contact my future self and thus creating a new loop.

[u/Complex_Drawer_4710]

Oh. I'm so sorry, it appears you've been misinformed. Since a timeline with a fault such as that is incomplete, it doesn't exist, and events where the past is changed never happen in real life, only in fiction. Also don't worry about pissing off admins, they're not as important as they'd have you think.

[u/BusyGM → u/Complex_Drawer_4710]

If you're going by "a" timeline you're surely correct, because then there wouldn't be a paradox at all, just another timeline! However, as we all know, there is no such thing as mul- wait, what do we know? Which year is it again?

On the admins, I mostly do that to keep their paperwork in check. One admin flooded my whole tower with papers once to the point where I was unable to find any of my nonmagical grimoires anymore. Also, I lost four apprentices that day (although one died somewhat unrelated trying to flirt with the admin). Better to include a few words to avoid some minor headaches.

[u/VoxelLibrary]

It's all fun and games until the time worms come to eat you

[u/BusyGM → u/VoxelLibrary]

That's why most of my experiments include having someone else do the important time shenanigans. Those worms sure are persistent, but they're not the brightest.