[PTTG]

In most quantums around Homeline, secularization proceeded slowly yet continuously, to the point that it seems almost inevitable that if the local date is after the 1990s or so, religion might inform people's private lives, but it's never the main actor of history.

Alonso-2 is different. The inquisitions of Medieval Europe continued throughout the next five hundred years without pause, though it did adapt. Catholicism as it is practiced in Alonso-2 is recognizable only in its trappings.

Sometime in the 1600s, the Papistry unified the inquisitions of Europe and advanced its rule over temporal affairs. Over the centuries, it grew stronger and stronger, as the united inquisitions suppressed any kind of dissent, and by the early 1900s, it claimed dominion over the whole planet.

Though some forms of science were prohibited, practical questions of manufacturing, navigation, and engineering were encouraged (albeit with all research institutions riddled with the inquisition's spies). As a result, the current date is anno Domini 2013, and most engineering and technical fields are TL 8, all political and social techs are around TL 5, and medicine, biology, and cosmology are no higher than TL 4. Farming, at least, is TL 7, but seems to have stagnated there due to complete and willing ignorance of genetics.

How does this society avoid discovering immoral research? By having only the most loyal and holy men discover it first. Hidden within this society, the Inquisiton's black universities are verging on TL9 in the most heretical fields, and use that research to prevent the laypeople from discovering those unorthodox lies of reality.

This is how they discovered that some human beings have demonic powers in their blood, and that holy men can take those powers in order to better advance the cause of the Church. Through these techniques, the Inquisition discovered that there were countless worlds of people who must be converted or exterminated, and that their riches were often easily ready for the taking.

Their specialty is crosstime mind control. A captured hellspawn is used as a conduit which an Inquisition agent uses to leap into the mind of an unsuspecting psionic sensitive on annother worldline. Actually moving materials requires a great deal of energy and risk, and can "burn out" the conduit, so they do it only when needed.

Alonso-1, by the way, saw the early spanish inquisition sputter out in immediate internal power struggles and reprisals. All in all, it was so ineffective that Spain became a haven of non-catholic religions and saw something of a golden age.