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Old 09-12-2017, 02:22 PM   #471
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Unmanned rocket conveyors sound like a wonderful way for them to get lost and/or stolen.
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Old 09-12-2017, 03:23 PM   #472
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Unmanned rocket conveyors sound like a wonderful way for them to get lost and/or stolen.
Stealing them would be pretty hard. Or rather, stealing them would be a matter of hacking a very proprietary custom computer, and if you ever use one in a system where infinity is, its easy for infinity to steal them right back.

Getting into orbit to mess with them is really expensive: Its cheaper to just launch your own satellite, unless you don't have access to parachronic tech. And Infinity shouldn't be letting these satellites anywhere near folks with spaceflight and without the secret.

Additionally, infinity already does lots of riskier things (in terms of theft) with conveyors, like renting them to Mining Companies. Swagmen already have lots of the things. Its out-timers getting conveyors and other folks getting projectors that really worries them.

So in many ways, Satellites are safer from theft than your average conveyor: they're really hard to get to physically, and they're pretty easy to make digitally secure.

Losing them is a bigger concern, as the machine is $20 million minimum. I haven't looked up how often conveyors get sent to the wrong place, but I was under the impression it was very uncommon on well established routes. Even then, the computer might be able to try and jump back home.
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Old 09-12-2017, 03:31 PM   #473
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Homeline is only TL8 possibly a bit behind us in some areas like rocketry. So I'd say that launching large conveyor sized satellites cost a lot more than 20 million.
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Old 09-12-2017, 10:07 PM   #474
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Neverland is home to humans with a modified metabolism. They sleep for only two hours a night, and apparently learn quite quickly, but tend to die around 35 or so.

The current TL is 6, and it doesn't seem likely to rise much more due to the short time horizons. Anyone over 16 or so is in their prime, and past 25 they're an elder (and effectively have Social Regard).
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Old 09-13-2017, 04:53 PM   #475
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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That likely depends a decent amount on how powerful the psi powers they teach are, and how long it takes. If you need a year to get a handful of psi perks, it isn't going to change much (but that's probably not consistent with the given description). If you can train for a year and come home with powers on par with Charles Xavier or Erik Lehnsherr, OTOH, it's pretty worldbreaking. I'm guessing the truth is somewhere in-between.
More than perks, but Professor X is beyond a PHD.
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Old 09-13-2017, 05:14 PM   #476
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Neverland is home to humans with a modified metabolism. They sleep for only two hours a night, and apparently learn quite quickly, but tend to die around 35 or so.

The current TL is 6, and it doesn't seem likely to rise much more due to the short time horizons. Anyone over 16 or so is in their prime, and past 25 they're an elder (and effectively have Social Regard).
This an interesting idea done many different ways in fiction. Logan's Run where everyone "ascends" at 30 being the most notable one.
Sliders had an episode where society is only really allowed for a similar age range which leads to more frenetic lifestyles. Even with short effective lives, the scramble to make a mark leads to self destructive burn outs.

I could see a humanoid species strongly evolving toward less personal of goals than ours. Cooperation for group projects long and short term are almost the entirety of society to them.
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Old 09-14-2017, 12:42 AM   #477
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Lemuralantis Lemuria (in the Pacific) and Atlantis (in the Atlantic) appeared sometime around 500 CE. They are sworn foes due to an ancient royal enmity. each a unified and fertile continent-state.

Atlantis is TL3+2 (Crystal-based psionics). Lemuria is TL3+2 (Weird Science Alchemy). They both have difficulty projecting their power, and so they've begun a colonial campaign to provide staging areas and servants in their great feud, and proxy wars are already brewing.

It's not clear where they were before. Are they dimension-hopping civilizations, intentional or not?

Neptune is a series of worldlines inhabited by Homo Hydoquæsedes, a gilled amphibious near-human species sometimes called merfolk. They can survive out of water for not much more than a day, and that in extremes. One in good health can stand an hour or two, though. Where they don't use magic, they use their own form of technology based on worked undersea materials (such as shells). When they need fire, they either go on beaches or occasionally build floating, stone-lined fire ports. Later civilizations use solar concentrators. They use thrown javlins on land, and generally disregard ranged undersea weapons in general (not that there are many low-tech options). They do have a library of technologies that take advantage of the pressure, chemistry, and temperatures of their homes that are apparently mundane, just never occurred to surface-dwelling humans.

Neptune-1 is less outlandish than some; it is a high-mana world with human mages that created or cursed several populations into the sea-dwelling variants. It has a complicated history that doesn't resemble Earth's.

Neptune-2 looks quite odd. The land masses are vast, windswept flats that resemble, in arrangement, Earth's oceans. The seas are small but rich, and home to merfolk. Their history is now alarmingly similar to Homeline-normal 1920*. With this and the U.S. of Lizardia worldline, Homeline cliodynamicists are starting to think there's a god with a sick sense of humor out there just toying with them.

Neptune-3 was an echo until 1449*, when a banestorm swept an entire merfolk city into the Mediterranean, near the pillars of Hercules, complete with a large army prepared for war. They immediately claimed that entire sea as their new nation, and have the TL-0+4 (Undersea Adaptations) might to back it up. Do not cross their waters without paying the toll.... The current date is 1475*.

Neptune-4, current astronomical date 1320. Homo Sapiens lives in scattered inland communities. The glorious civilizations of the merfolk raid them periodically. This is the origin of the Neptune-3 city; its sudden disappearance with the near-entirety of the armed forces led to the fall of the Mediterranian to an Atlantic coalition. TL-0+4 (Undersea Adaptations).

*Adjust to historical taste.
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Old 09-14-2017, 12:58 AM   #478
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Repeat repeats.

Repeat repeats.

There is a two-month window of history in Repeat, from mid-August to October 1999. We don't know what happens at the end, but this is the third time we've sent a scout there and the dates have been inconsistent.

Homeline's alarmed, though, because each September 3rd, news articles indicate some kind of upcoming "second test" by something called the "US Department of Chronotronics."

In actuality, this worldline demonstrates a kind of interesting implication of "infinity."

This parallel found a way to produce small crosstime shifts in the 1970s. Research expanded and, by 1999, they were ready to try opening a probe-sized portal using a hydrogen bomb. This attempt will fail, due to unforseen crosstime interference. A second test, using a larger device, is thought to be able to overcome the interference and open the portal.

This second attempt is this time bolstered by unknown crosstime interference. The effect briefly frees the worldline from its Q-level and sends it hurtling up into deep inaccessible levels of the continuum.

The crosstime interference is the existence of an echo 76 days younger than the current Repeat. By chance, they attempt their first portal at the same instant that the older worldline attempts their second. Naturally, the chronal energy flows from the past to the future, causing the interference.

This whole system is self-sustaining, with a line of older echoes going forward and backwards, each jump far outside of Homeline's present capacity to bridge.

Hopefully it'll be a Fun puzzle world. I wonder what happens if you stop the cycle....

Last edited by PTTG; 09-15-2017 at 10:23 PM.
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Old 09-14-2017, 07:32 AM   #479
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

*laughing*

Oh my. Infinity is going to have such glorious headaches over this one.

[edit: Maybe something in the research experiments that lead up to the two tests causes the echoes?]
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Old 09-14-2017, 12:20 PM   #480
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Homeline is only TL8 possibly a bit behind us in some areas like rocketry. So I'd say that launching large conveyor sized satellites cost a lot more than 20 million.
Hpmeline is far ahead of us in aerospace tech.

See p.14 where Special Operations has conveyors built into "armored TL9 Icarus sub-orbital VTOL gunships". One of these can deliver up to 24 fully equipped Spec Ops division soldiers and all their gear anywhere on Earth(s) within 4 hours. That probably includes fuelling and mission planning.

Just "armored" and "VTOL gunship" is about 2 steps beyond us. Adding the "sub-orbital" is a lot farther than that.
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