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Old 10-28-2017, 09:14 PM   #1759
William
 
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

An old idea for a spiritual telegraph:

Quote:
Originally Posted by nytimes
Before the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, Davis proposed that the quickest way to send messages across the ocean would be through a system of spiritual switchboards, in which the living in New York would convey a message to the American dead, who would pass it on to the dead of England, who in turn would make reports to the living of London.
Sounds like a method that would be appropriate for a 19th-century fantasy game in line with Victorian spiritualism.

This is a little similar to another method that was proposed centuries earlier for finding longitude: the wounded dog theory. A quack medicine called powder of sympathy, if applied to something related to a wound -- such as the weapon, or a bandage -- would hasten the healing of the wound. However, the cure was not painless. Therefore, a ship's captain could take a wounded dog aboard his ship, whereupon a centralized timekeeper in London would dip the dog's bandage in powder of sympathy at noon sharp daily, causing the dog to yelp with no other visible reason. Knowing that it was noon in London, a simple calculation from the visible angle of the Sun would give him his longitude. The dog's wound might have to be carefully maintained throughout the course of the voyage.

A collection of 18th and 19th-century American and Victorian superstitions, legendry, and spiritualism could make a very nice and not widely used flavor of magical system for a game, I think.
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