The Time Traveller is, as his name suggests, a man who in 1895 invented the worlds first working Time Machine. His real name is unknown.
Character[]
The Time Traveller is a British scientist and gentleman, living in Richmond, Surrey. His first time travel took him to the year 802,701, where he encountered the peacefull, small, elegant, childlike Eloi and the monstrous, subterranean Morlocks. At first he believed both races to be descendants of 19th century humanity, having evolved in two different directions due to the great divide between social classes in his time. In this distant future he also found a statue of a sphinx, which he later remodelled to use as his own headquarters.
After his return from the future, he told his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers he brought with him from the future. The next day he departed again for another time travel, promissing to be back in half an hour, but he never returned.
Role in the LoEG stories[]
The Time Traveller has a large role in the story Allan and the Sundered Veil, in which it is revealed his time machine can not only take him to different times, but also different dimensions or realms. He saves the astral forms of Allan Quatermain, John Carter and Randolph Carter when they are attacked by strange, monstrous creatures in a dreamworld. He takes the three men to the Sphinx and asks them to help him stop some creatures from beyond the universe, that are invading creation through a hole in space-time. He also discovered at this point that his original theory about the Morlocks being descendants of humans was wrong. They are in reality an alien race better known as the Mi-Go (from the Cthulhu Mythos).
When the time machine is broken, the four heroes are stranded in a chrono-crystal aleph. While Quartermain and the two Carters get to see visions of their futures, the Time Traveller doesn't see anything. This might indicate he no longer belongs to the Time Stream, or even never belonged, in the first place. Not much later his three allies all disappear again since they were only here as astral projections of themselves, their bodies still being located in the real, waking world. The time traveller himself however remains behind in the aleph, which he cannot leave again untill his machine is fixed. He can be seen abording the Nautilus in 2010 with the Time Machine floating.
Influence[]
The Time Traveller was created by H.G. Wells for his story "The Time Machine".