[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Use a telescope to look for stars that aren't visible to the naked eye. Earth's skies have loads of them, and they're well-mapped. If they're completely different, this isn't Earth at any time close enough to humanity's span to be useful; if they're absent, the place has been made up, and is not a natural world, and if they're only slightly different, you can try to figure out a date from their positions and Earth's records of their proper motions.

There are dots of light that seem to be stars, but while they can be observed using various scientific methods and seem fine to most observational methods that were used throughout history, I strongly suspect that there are TL7 theories that dictate certain barely observable behaviour, not necessarily known to the layman, and that the stars do not seem to exhibit these expected behaviours upon close analysis.

The stars are only stars by lower TL definitions, by cutting-edge TL7 scientific theories and methods they might as well be something completely different. Lights in the luminious aether, balls of glowing ice, whatever, because they are not the stars of the real world. At the very least, if these are real stars, astronomy and astrophysics have a lot of undiscovered aspects that apply to the stars of Germania Hyperborea.

The visible ones fit in terms of position, more or less, though there is no exact correspondance to a specific Earth date. Rather, the date calculated using one referant will often conflict with that derived from others. The better known 'stars' requiring telescopes to see are often there, but enough are different to cause astronomers to get extremely suspicious. As for stars only known to professional astronomers and not visible with the naked eye, the ones Germania Hyperborea has are completely different from Earth.

Originally Posted by johndallman

An astral plane.

Yup. Not something rigidly rational scientists are comfortable with, especially as there is no way to know whether all the other worlds they visit are simply slightly more stable areas of an astral plane, only appearing to have any objective reality on a human time scale, but actually being entirely created of belief and merely having variable ability to react to scientific measuring and observation by presenting superficially plausible results.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Does the sun move in the sky, or stay static?

What would be some expected effects on flora and fauna, as well as humans surviving there if it remained static, but varied in power, with mists covering it at various times?

Originally Posted by johndallman

Do you mean concave? A normal planet is convex; if this world is a sphere with the sun, atmosphere and so on inside it, it's concave. The idea will be known to some of the ASN.

I did mean concave, and yes, the damned place shows signs of being inside a frozen snowball world, with the ice starting to creep in at the 'poles', but still retaining a pretty warm climate where most of their gates are, for now.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Overall, the worrying thing about these worlds to the ASN is that they seem to be based on different and incompatible bits of Nazi mysticism.

A philosopher might speculate that either the beliefs of the different occulists whose interactions with the World Tree turned up the routes to the different worlds might have somehow created (or plucked out of infinite possibilities) something that suited their beliefs, or there is a single intelligence behind it all, but that it's irrational and inconsistent, despite flashes of genius (Weisthor?).

Or this might result from occultists with inconsistent and incompatible mystic beliefs working together. And the observations of amateur scholars and Ahnenerbe mystics, interspersed with the occasional more professional measurements by apolitical scientists, might actually still be filling in the blanks of areas of these worlds not yet established, which is a hypothesis that ought to horrify any traditional scientists raised on positivism, or at least the comforting idea that there were objective truths out there for science to seek.

A really cynical observer might remark that as Nazis, even educated ones, had no problem espousing multiple incompatible bits of pseudoscience at the same time, they really shouldn't complain if an astral plane leads them to places with inconsistent realities.

Which does, however, bring up interesting questions about Germania Hyperborea. If it's completely imaginary, why aren't there cultures more closely matching the crazier bits of Nazi mysticism and völkisch fantasies?

Why are the Germanics some of the most primitive and poor material cultures around, at least among those who've moved beyond a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and can work metals?

Why aren't various analogues to cultures that were relatively little researched in the 1940s 'actually' Aryans in unexpected places, speaking clear Germanic languages and founding every important society in the Ancient world?

Why, in short, does the cultural, ethnic and linguistic landscape of Germania Hyperborea not match Nazi fantasies of prehistory better?