Grimoire-2: Current year 1951; TL(6+1)^. Also a former 'secret magic' worldline, with both history and secret history identical to
Grimoire-1 until approximately 1770, when magic became slightly less secret. Masked heroes (many of them magicians, but not all, or even most) were seen as so important to the American Revolution on this worldline that the right to a secret identity was included in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution. This is the only timeline of the Grimoire group in which the USA in general (and a number of other countries) widely accepts people dressing in silly costumes and acting like comic book characters; though would-be 'superheroes'
exist on some of the other Grimoire worlds, they tend to only be accepted on an individual basis, and in a limited area (a single city or town, or part of same), being otherwise considered 'of questionable sanity,' at best. Magic begins to be openly taught in a few countries after WWI, and far more after WWII. The general outcomes of the wars were mostly the same, but the specifics varied in strange ways - for example, the Thule Society never fell out of favor with the Nazis, and used plastic surgery and magic to turn a number of fanatical volunteers into body-doubles for Hitler, at least three of whom are still at large (it is generally agreed that the real Adolph Hitler of this worldline was assassinated in either 1938 by unknown agents (Homeline German SpecOps), or 1941 by Allied superheroes). The Thule Society appears to have split into several factions after the war, intent on manipulating specific governments to take over the world, so that the Thule Society can rule from the shadows. The heroes and governments (and some villains, for that matter) who have fought agents of the various Thule societies liken them to the mythical hydra, for just when you've cut off one head, it seems that two more have sprung up!
Politically, a number of small countries were created after WWI (rather more than on Homeline), and some of them either survived the Second World War, or were recreated in some form after the war was over, along with a few more (the Balkans in particular are something of a mess). Some of these countries are ruled by what might be called 'wizard-kings,' though not all of them do so openly, and almost half of them go with something like the common dictatorial claim of being 'just the First Citizen' or 'just the Party Chairman,' rather than trying to take up the dignity of a monarch (in large part, it depends on who is sponsoring them - if anyone is - and whether they can believably claim to be related to someone who both ruled the region previously, and is still widely respected in the region today).
Much of the former
French Zone of Occupation is a patchwork of such states, as is the border between East Germany and West Germany, parts of
Thuringia, and parts of the French, British, and Soviet
protectorates and occupation zones in Austria. The states and protectorates created by the Soviets very rarely use any royal styling, and always pay at least significant lip-service to communism, whatever their government actually is.
Israel in this worldline is in theory a Dominion of the British Empire, but in practice, beyond giving the British Most Favored Nation status and the British royal family being really popular there (the Knesset agreed to grant King George VI the title of 'King of Israel, Jerusalem, and Acre' in 1949, partly due to the efforts of the British government and the royal family to help Jewish people to survive and escape Germany and German-occupied territories during the war, itself a result of Kabbalist scholar-mages extensively cooperating with British mages to fight the Nazis), the country is more like a close ally that lets the British and Americans have some bases on Israeli soil. By contrast, the
1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine was slightly bloodier on both sides, and seems to have lead to increased cooperation with the Nazis by Arabs living in the Levant.
Checking the maps and information guides before traveling is always important, but more so than average in much of this worldline.
Dr. Robert Goddard sent the first artificial satellite (a radio transmitter that played the Star-Spangled Banner on a continuous loop, powered by batteries which lasted until the satellite burned up) into orbit on July 4th, 1941. This was followed on December 7th of that year by a German transmitter that played the Horst-Wessel Lied (first detected in the US during the attack on Pearl Harbor; this was a coincidence, as Imperial Japan did not share the timing of their attack with Nazi Germany, though most in the USA of this worldline believe otherwise). Goddard, by then employed by the US Army, sent up the first spy satellite in 1942 (a better transmitter with a receiver, a television camera with a telephoto lens, a remote-controlled gyroscopic steering system, and a mercury boiler for power, with a spirit bound to the satellite as a whole, to keep the components from failing too soon). Humans first orbited this Earth in 1947 (a Russian on November 7th, and an American on November 10th), although several nations (and a few mad scientists and magicians) performed manned suborbital flights beginning with Dr. Wernher von Braun's defection to the United Kingdom in 1944 (there is some debate as to whether this should be considered a German accomplishment or not). Both America and Russia have manned space stations, and have vowed to have a man on the Moon by 1960.
Technology in general, apart from the various magical gadgets, is closer to the 1960s or '70s than to the early 1950s, save that transistors and related technologies appear not to have been developed to the point of being commercially viable, although vacuum tubes are significantly smaller and more complex than in Homeline's 1951. While home computers as we think of them do not exist as yet, home terminals with telephone or dedicated cable access to one or more mainframes do, and the bigger terminals often have a bit more computing power on their own than you might expect. Flying cars and personal jetpacks are rare and expensive, though less so (and safer) than the proposed
atomically-powered cars, which only exist in concept form. Magic-based ray-guns are becoming somewhat common, especially variants that can only stun, or cause temporary paralysis. The aesthetic of this worldline is rather Atompunk or Raygun Gothic.
Like
Grimoire-1, most practitioners of magic on this Earth use one or more single-Book styles, and there are nearly as many multiple-Book styles, total, as there are single-Book styles. Path styles exist, though they are very rare (Unusual Background cost of 20 or higher), and the known ones mostly seem to date from after 1770. The most common Path styles on this Earth (meaning that they have somewhere close to a hundred practitioners, out of a worldwide population of 2.6 billion) are Invocationism, an Energy Accumulating style (roughly identical to the style of that name found in Thaumatology: Age of Gold pp17-18), which is mostly practiced in China and other parts of East Asia, and Neo-Hermeticism, an Effect Shaping style mostly practiced in Europe and the Americas (using all the Paths from Thaumatology pp140-162), which appears to have been created in the 1860s or so by studying several earlier Path styles and bringing together whatever worked.
Mystic foci are relatively common on this Earth. They rarely grant Magery, but do grant some often-limited form of Path/Book Adept (e.g. One Path Only, One Ritual Only, Fire Aspected, or some other limit). Some magical styles on this worldline have developed fairly efficient methods of learning Limited Path/Book Adept advantages appropriate to the style (often, but not always, One Style Only), without the need for Gadget or Familiar limitations; indeed, this is one of the more common reasons to join such styles. Familiars exist on this Earth, most commonly as animal Allies that the mage can communicate with silently and from a distance, and can perceive through the familiar's senses; they rarely grant much in the way of other magical advantages.
Many of the governments in this Quantum 4 worldline are aware of Infinity, and though the details they understand are somewhat limited, they strongly suspect that the agents travel through alternate timelines. They are also aware that the Homeliners are concerned about the Thule Society making contact with a group of dimension-travelers called 'Reich-5,' who by context appear to be from a world where the Nazis won WWII. So far, no government has approached the Infinity observers that they are aware of, though it's only a matter of time. No local government is aware of the Cabal's existence, nor their presence on this Earth.
Reich-5 currently seems to be unaware of this worldline, and would be dependent on worldjumpers to reach it.