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Old 12-30-2017, 11:32 AM   #230
PTTG
 
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Dreamwalkers has yet to be exactly located. Their history diverged long, long ago, and their political organizations are largely unlike our own. It also seems that their form of psionics is different from the type used in the local worldline bundle; psionic abilities are at a mutual -10 for both sides, with one exception.

Their form of crosstime travel consists of jumping into other's minds (as Possession, with Assimilation and Telecontrol, with the limitation "only crosstime.") Though the specific ability is learned (and can be modified, such as by gaining the "body swap" enhancement), it requires fairly rare level of skill and talent. This posession can't be defended against by anyone lacking Mind Shield skill, but most homeline-normal-psi-type-people (that is, every human from Q1 to well past Q7) can attempt to resist the possession, and the Dreamwalker native takes the -10 penalty.

Their understanding of crosstime science is also orthogonal to Homeline's. They can access some, but not all, worlds in each prime-numbered quantum below 22 and above 1. They can't reach Centrum directly.

They are involved in their own crosstime war, although intriguingly enough, it is internal.

Their political structure, in essence, consists of independent city-states that individually swear fealty to a political, philosophical, corporate, or ethnic houses-- all four concepts are kind of bundled together. Wars consist of fairly small groups in formalized duel/battles, which have in recent eras moved off-world to other timelines (thus allowing deadly duels that leave the warriors unharmed).

There are two very broad classes of organizations that deal with other timelines, then: first, those that go there to exploit them for useful knowledge and/or to fight other houses for control of an important city. Second, those that recognize the humanity of the people of other worldlines, and see the battles as little more than crude murder of people uninvolved and unaware of the conflict.

This second group makes for an excellent player organization. They develop new techniques, most particularly one that gives the host some level of understanding of the events and even allows them to communicate with the visitor, and the group of Dreamwalkers attempt to defuse and disable their invading fellow-worlders, ideally without killing their hosts!

Last edited by PTTG; 12-31-2017 at 11:19 PM.
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