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Old 09-19-2016, 06:40 PM   #23
PTTG
 
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Bull Moose:
Roosevelt won the presidency in 1912, and every election since. Current year 1960; nobody knows how he's still alive, but the USA is a freverently imperialist, progressivist wonderland/nightmare.

Platonic:
An infinite, flat white plane, featureless except for a grid of thin black lines, under a slightly unusual sky. The inhabitants are a variety of platonic solids; Icosahedrons are comparable to human intelligence, while those solids with fewer sides are less and less intelligent. Tetrahedrons and cubes are exclusively autotrophs that appear to gain sustenance from the "sun," an apparently infinitely distant sphere.

Icosahedrons have some ability to use fine manipulation; perhaps telekinesis? One other thing of note; while all living things grow into regular shapes, injury can distort, cut, or shatter them (they appear to be made of a brittle, glassy substance). Icosahedrons build structures from slabs of cube-trees and cut them with sharp tetrahedron-grass.

The Icosahedrons mostly speak a language made of musical notes, but previous visitors have taught some of them ancient Greek, a very old dialect of Cantonese, and Centrum's English variant.

Drasil-1:
Everything under the branches of Blue Drasil tree experiences time more slowly than those elsewhere. Especially large trees have increasing effects: Anyone under the canopy of a Blue Drasil tree gets a number of levels of Decreased Time Rate (with all the implied effects of slowed time; each level makes a 1-second action take 1 additional second, so DTR 5 means that an attack action takes five seconds) equal to the tree's SM^3, but it doesn't take effect unless the tree is SM+1 or more. The trees broadly resemble weeping willows with very long 'veils', but the leaves are strongly blueish, and small white flower-buds are visible regardless of outside conditions.

Blue Drasils are not common, but they are widespread -- their abilities insulate them from the climate around them quite effectively -- and they can be found around the world. They are extremely difficult to cultivate, not the least because only very mature trees (>=SM+2) produce saplings, and therefore anyone stepping under the canopy will spend at least eight times as long inside than out!

The trees grow up to SM+6 (20 meters or so), meaning that merely spending the day under one can transport you several months into the future. Rumors of mighty giants (SM+7 or bunyanesque SM+9) are almost certainly just legends. On the other end of the scale, most population centers have a SM+2 or SM+3 tree not too far out, allowing quick access to tomorrow or next month.

The trees have always been a part of history, and so no level of inertia will fix it. I'll sit down and hash out a working world in a bit....

Drasil-2:
A different breed of Drasil tree, the Autumn Drasil, grows here. Those under such a tree's canopy have enhanced time rate at the same way that Blue Drasils work. The red-leaved tree itself is immune to the effect.

Drasil-3:
The Twin Drasil tree grows in two places at once; anyone who walks into the canopy of one instance will, upon departing, walk out the canopy of the other instance. The thick, green foliage permits nearly no light through the curtains. There is no telling where the "twin" of a growing tree is, and transplanting is a very delicate art.

Last edited by PTTG; 09-19-2016 at 11:48 PM.
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