What happens if a character uses an inapposite gate to get to Earth, but later, translates to Earth?

Question

I hate 2-part questions, but they are directly related.

1. In our game, we have an Earthborn human, who was sent via inapposite gate to Ruk, had major surgery done (vat-growth limb to replace one lost a few years back), and, after some recovery time on Ruk, returned via inapposite gate.

   If that character, some time later, translates to a recursion, and then translates back to Earth, would he lose the replaced limb, and revert to how he was prior to the first gate travel? Does The Strange / Dark Energy Network / Chaosphere somehow "remember" his prior, unchanged form? (For the sake of this part of the question, assume the character had never been off-planet prior to that first trip to Ruk.)

2. Another Earthborn character, who has translated multiple times, does something similar - translates to a recursion (where he Inks Spells on Skin), then uses an inapposite gate to return to Earth. After a few days (when the effect of the focus has worn off, but maybe not the tattoos), he travels to Ruk to pick up a few things for the office, then translates home. Does he return to his pre-Ruk appearance (with fading tattoos & all), or does he revert to his pre-tattooed self?

Answer 1

On page 95, the 2014 book of the Strange I have, indicates that the player consciousness gets transferred to a new physical form upon translation. I think that might mean that a person who loses a limb in a recursion could translate to a different one to recover it.

Someone who was born without a limb may have assimilated that birth defect into his or her consciousness. Recursion with a birth defect probably wouldn’t replace the limb.

I would think an inopposite gate would allow an entity to translate without altering their given form, but I’m having trouble finding good information about inopposite gates.

Answer 2

I don't have any direct reference to the rulebooks at hand, but in my opinion a gate translation always works on the status quo. The terminology (recursion, translation etc) is clearly based on the idea that the The Strange functions a bit like an algorithm which operates on the universe itself. However, just like in the real world, there is no indication that there is any possibility of time travel: i.e. no "rollback" or state recovery. The "translation function", so to speak, is stateless and only operates on the given input: character (in their current state) and destination. Although there might be some kind of recursion that is virtually indistinguishable from the origin recursion from just a couple of minutes ago...? ;)

So to answer your questions:

1) the character translates in with their replaced limb, thus they will translate into a being with an intact limb-equivalent and back into one with all limbs, too.

2) The fading tattoos will in all likelihood also translate into some Ruk equivalent and once more appear when the character translates back.

Answer 3

I'm going to go with this second answer. Translation remembers the most recent tranlsation -- so when you go via inapposite gates to ruk, get rebuilt in a manner compatible with earth, go to earth via inapposite gate, and then translate out -- your "Stored body" has the rebuilt limb, and remembers it for later return.