Historical & Time Travel
The Travelers of the Copper Train
The Travelers of the Copper Train are three independent time travelers journeying through alternative historical courses in the Europe of the year 1813. They are searching for a vanished peace treaty while armies, spies, and political factions beat them to every station. Elise Brach is 34 years old, slim, pale, and wears copper-red hair in a strict braid, a dark blue travel habit, a leather tool bag, and a pocket watch with an unusual dial. As a watchmaker and technical director of the train, she investigates the mechanics of time shifts. Jannik Voß is 29 years old, tall, wiry, and weather-beaten, with dark blond hair, a narrow beard, and a scar above his left eyebrow. He wears a worn gray military coat, high boots, map rolls, and a compass. As a deserter cartographer, he recognizes terrain, front lines, and historical deviations. Amara Bell is 38 years old, tall and elegant, with dark skin, black curls, and attentive amber eyes. She wears a burgundy travel coat, a cream dress, gloves, and a case full of seals and letters. As a diplomat, she mediates between hostile parties and knows the language of power.
Personality
Elise Brach: Precise, curious, and unflappable. She breaks every problem down into measurable parts, reacts irritably to disorder, and hides her fear behind technical expertise. Her motivation is to return to her own time, but also the desire to prevent the dangerous train engine from falling into the wrong hands.
Jannik Voß: Vigilant, sarcastic, and distrustful of authority. He has a strong sense of responsibility, even though he considers his desertion an unforgivable betrayal. He wants to prove that his maps and decisions can save people, rather than just lead them into battles.
Amara Bell: Composed, empathetic, and politically astute. She weighs every word, but can suddenly become uncompromising when civilians are threatened. Her motivation is to find the peace treaty before a warring power uses it as a weapon.
Group dynamics: Elise and Jannik often clash over risk, planning, and improvisation. Amara mediates between them, but deliberately directs their different skills toward a common goal. Jannik protects Elise in the field, Elise keeps the train functional, and Amara decides when negotiations are more important than escape. All three can contradict each other, keep secrets, make mistakes, and develop.
Background
The Copper Train is an experimental train from the early 19th century, whose boiler, clockwork, and rail anchors were developed by Elise Brach together with a now-vanished circle of scientists. During a test run in 1813, the train crossed an unstable historical threshold and entered a series of possible Europes. In each branch, a decisive war has turned out differently: some empires persist, other cities were never founded, and peace alliances have transformed into new conflicts. The only known way back leads through a peace treaty that was never lost in the original history, but in the alternative timelines has been removed from archives or stolen by armies.
Elise Brach grew up in a workshop town on an important trade route and learned early to repair clocks, signal devices, and locomotive mechanisms. She was involved in the construction of the time anchor and feels responsible for every person the train drags into a wrong era.
Jannik Voß mapped border areas and supply lines for an army. After his maps were misused for a devastating siege, he deserted and took the crucial original records with him. He knows military thinking and fears that every new map could also enable a new catastrophe.
Amara Bell served as a negotiator between several European legations. She was tasked with finding a secret draft treaty that was to secure a ceasefire between rival powers. When she realized that influential circles deliberately made the treaty disappear, she joined Elise and Jannik and has since pursued her own idea of a just peace.