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Old 12-03-2015, 04:19 PM   #2
Prince Charon
 
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Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: [Psionics] Pulp Psi-Phi

No replies? Oh, well. Have a bit more, which is also in the New Reality Seeds thread:

Quote:
Other Lodges

There are several worldlines in which the SPR was involved in the development of reliable psi abilities in the late 19th or early 20th centuries:

Lodge-1 (Q5, current year 1957) diverged in 1909, when Sir Oliver Lodge made a trip to Tugunska. He returned with a Russian medium named Sergei Sergevich Ivanov, who had witnesst the blast the previous year, and was able to use his mesmeristic abilities (Suggestion, Emotion Control, and a sort of Catalyst power that seems to be based on both) to awaken the psychical abilities of others - including those same mesmeristic powers. This had relatively little effect on the Western Front of the Great War, which quickly became bogged down in the trenches, but was of some benefit on other fronts, as well as allowing the escape of Grand Duchess (and later Tsaritsa-in-exile) Anastasia Romanova to the United Kingdom. Sadly, the French government ignored the warnings of British and even French seers as to the dangers of te Treaty of Versailles. The effect on the Second World War was notably greater, as all belligerants and many neutrals had their own reliable and semi-reliable psychics, some of whom wore colourful costumes and adopted strange codenames; many psychics still do this today, during the Cold War, though they're less common or powerful than on many other 'super' parallels. This is a no mana world, like the other Lodges, with TL7 consumer tech, and up to TL (6+2)^ and (7+1)^ (depending on the mad scientist) cutting edge psychotronics. The first man to walk on the Moon was Sir Geoffrey Huntington, FRS, KBE, on May 15, 1956.

On Lodge-2 (Q6, current year 1925), the Society for Psychical Research was still formed in 1882, but as a result of a hypnotist named MacNichol demonstrating to several luminaries (some of whom were founding members of the SPR on Homeline, and some who were not) how certain students of his possessed practical psychical abilities, including Mind Over Matter (psychokinesis). Early examples of psychotronics and psi-drugs were produced in the late 1880s, and have progressed a fair bit since then, being in most cases more advanced than on Lodge-3. The Great War was delayed by three years, due to various precognitives defusing flashpoints, and was cut short in 1920, by the Spanish Flu pandemic. Eugenics research is fairly common on this worldline, but little in the way of positive results have been found. Currently on this TL(5+1)^-(5+2)^ worldline, France is leaning toward communism, Imperial Russia has a relatively liberal, almost British-style Parliamentary system (albeit with a politically strong Tsar), and the US continues to try to stay out of Old World affairs, having avoided participation in WWI. Space travel is functionally non-existent, but there are a number of researchers trying to change that.

Lodge-4 (Q4, current year 2016) diverged in late 1940, shortly after Sir Oliver Lodge's death, when his ghost contacted several British mediums affiliated with the SPR, teaching them how to enhance their mediumistic and other psychic abilities, and how to train others thusly. Unfortunately, he was not the only spirit to do this, resulting in a World War II that was far weirder, but just as bloody as that on Homeline, even if it was a few months shorter (Japanese psychics arranged the assassination of a few key figures in the Koiso government, including Koiso himself, allowing a surrender on relatively lenient terms, and without the use of the atomic bomb; it helped that Japan's declaration of war reached President Roosevelt before the planes of the Kido Butai reached Pearl Harbor, even if only by fifteen minutes). The US did make military use of one atomic weapon later, when MacArthur ordered the destruction of a division of Chinese troops who had entered North Korea, ending the Korean War, but prompting other powers to increase their atomic research budgets. The UK demonstrated an atomic bomb on a barge towed into the mid-Atlantic in 1952, the Soviet Union in Siberia in 1953, and so forth. Like Lodge-1, many of the more powerful psychics in this worldline act like comic book superheroes and supervillains; this has been going on so long that it's considered normal (if uncommon), and laws have been adjusted to account for it. The most common Psi Talent on Lodge-4 is Probability Alteration, followed closely by ESP, but the most common individual ability is Spirit Communication, and ersatz 'magic' based on getting astral entities to do things is relatively commonplace. Spirit Communicators are loosely divided into 'shamans,' who commune and negotiate with nature spirits and a range of others, 'mediums,' who mostly speak to ghosts, 'thaumaturges' or 'wizards,' who tend to use thoughtforms and other 'mechanistic' spirits (that they can mostly just order around), 'theurges,' who call upon gods and angels, and 'diabolists,' who make deals with demons; similar terminology is developing on the other Lodges. Technology has diverged somewhat from Homeline, being TL(7+2)^ at the cutting edge, with better power production and storage, but mostly less advanced computers. The first man to walk on the Moon was Gus Grissom, in 1964. By 2016, space travel is relatively cheap, with orbital stations around Earth, the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, and manned surface bases on the Moon, Mars, Phobos, Deimos, and some Near-Earth Asteroids. (Unknown to Infinity, governments and some independents on Lodge-4 have developed what they call 'dimensional incursion' sensors, due to a number of individuals with Jumper powers or (usually one-off) psychotronic sub-quantum conveyors who have caused trouble in the past. Intelligence services are being careful about observing them, but the mad scientists and mystics, heroic or otherwise, are often less discrete.)
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Last edited by Prince Charon; 12-04-2015 at 06:37 AM.
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