Infinite Geste
The Lords of Time who came up with Infinite Geste had a simple goal: come up with an organization that could function in any historical era, any timeline, any alternate universe, from the Dawn of Man to the Fall of Man. So perhaps it wasn’t really ‘simple.’ ‘Straightforward’ works just as well as a description, though.
Anyway, setting up Infinite Geste apparently meant looking at every organization, both real and fictional, that might possibly have grappled with the problem, and seeing what they did. Most of the organizations they ended up using are from timelines essentially alien to our own; to give you an idea, the ones of ‘ours’ that the Lords of Time did draw from were the Bavarian Illuminati, Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesserit, and the cult that the Great Race of Yith used in HP Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time.” So it’s not exactly a benevolent organization. Not actively malicious, but not really happy-shiny, either.
But it works. Somewhere on Earth, right now, is a small building with a particular sign on the door. Inside that building is Infinite Geste, and it will offer succour to time travelers, starting with somewhere to lay low and restock and ending with an onsite artisan specializing in time and/or dimensional travel. The acolytes who run Infinite Geste are invariably utterly deferential to actual time and dimensional travelers, to a point that is flat-out alarming to anyone with a shred of egalitarianism (or, indeed, loathing of slavery). But, again, it works.
Note, by the way, that Infinite Geste will serve anybody who is a time or dimensional traveler; anyone who can recognizes the sigil and who has the smell of being not of this time or place will be served. The only rule seems to be that nobody can attack anybody else while enjoying Infinite Geste’s hospitality. The few times that this has been violated proved to be instructional to the survivors. Most visitors behave themselves.
Lastly: who are the “Lords of Time?” Nobody’s sure. They may not exist anymore. Hopefully; they honestly didn’t seem very nice.
I like it. Elements of John Wick, Men in Black, and Heinlein’s “World as Myth.”