Let’s take the ‘stranded in space’ concept and play with it a bit. I’m not sure I could hold up a scifi story with that pace simply because of my inherent desire to put as much sci in the fi as I can. ^_~;;

So let’s put it in a fantasy world, which means we’ve got a bit of a conundrum. Do you we use multiple planets (which would be fun) in a slightly warped version of Stargate. Or play with a location change, or a dimension change, and that would end up something like a quantum mirror, or sliders, and that could be nifty, but hrm…

so let’s say they have a quantum mirror that goes to an infinite number of parallel worlds, sort of like Sliders, well, okay almost exactly like Sliders, only it’s not a quantum mirror rather it’s a missing piece… of something. so they are carry around a ‘nothing’ that pulls them about willy-nilly

and every person who is ‘infected’ by the nothing gets pulled along every switch, that way you won’t lose people (although they won’t know that until something happens and they are pulled through unexpectedly, mwahahaha!)

so depending on how long it’s been around there could be a LOT of people getting yanked around, since they don’t have to been anywhere near each other

and that makes you wonder if there are kids born into clans that get shifted, because they’d end up together eventually, which means there would be this little city that gets bounced from world to world without warning.

they could never end up back where they’ve been before, but there are a series of worlds that they keep returning to, no one knows why. in these worlds the fact that the travelers infect people is well known, although more of a fairy tale than anything else. in some worlds they are hated, in others they are thought to be analog to angels who take then chosen with them into ascension.

like the spinning circles who line up every so often, there is a pattern to the reappearances, but it’s hard to follow.

Only the things being touched follow them, or things that have been infected. Other living things can be infected as well.

Travelers can only be killed/harmed by other travelers or by things from the world they started from. they exist as a sort of void in the world. they can touch things, but cannot be touched by them. sort of like a itsy bity forcefield just at skin level. So hair and things can be touched, dead things, but living things can’t.