[Infinite Worlds] Compiling a list of canonical ways to cross quanta

[ericthered]

Conveyors that Infinity licenses out normally have only one pair of destinations. I believe organized crime and government organizations are able to overcome that limitation, and centrum is probably better at parachronics than they are.

I tend to expand the conveyor licenses into loops with multiple nodes, but that's about economy, and it maintains the principle of controlling where the thing can go.

spy organizations do tend to have complicated communication networks though. Lost in Dreams had one scenario where a homeline big game guide would meet up with centrum agents on a dinosaur world to exchange messages.

[Crystalline_Entity]

Originally Posted by TGLS

There's a logic to it. It's probably doable for a team of Centrans to swipe a conveyor from organized crime, and thereby have a run of several Q5 timelines. There are several timelines that have lots of traffic with Homeline. A mail route that goes:
-> Q5 World of Interest
-> Q5 World (i.e. Earth-Beta, Gallatin)
-> Homeline
-> Q6/7 World (i.e. Armada-2, Brittanica-3 both have high Infinity Class)
-> Centrum

This would co-opt much of Infinity's infrastructure (lowering costs), and it's not as if they need to rebuild the whole system if they add another world of interest; just add more mail traveling through the Q5 World.

<sidetrack>
I realise that this is talking about a mail route, not necessarily in the same conveyor, but is there any evidence either way whether a Homeline conveyor will work with a Centrum projector (or vice versa)?
</sidetrack>

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

<sidetrack>
I realise that this is talking about a mail route, not necessarily in the same conveyor, but is there any evidence either way whether a Homeline conveyor will work with a Centrum projector (or vice versa)?
</sidetrack>

I don't think there's any, but it does sounds like a Engineer (Parachronic) roll.

[Michael Thayne]

I just remembered that we do have a fairly detailed example of portals in the GURPS Classic adventure The Lost Inheritance. Indeed its more detailed than any I'm aware of in any other GURPS resource. It's actually fairly neat because it's implied the portal can take you to a wide range of worlds, but each requires a different password, giving the GM an easy way to control where and to how many different places the portal can take the PCs.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The sidebar on IW54 suggests that Centrum renegades—or even the official leadership, if backed into a corner—might be able to make an alliance with Reich-5. So even before the "Red Moon" Pyramid article it was established as something that could happen, even if it hadn't already.

I always took that introductory sidebar to mean that Centrum was aware of down-quantum Nazis that worried Infinity, but couldn't actually reach them (save for those on Q6 Reich-2, who are mentioned as a "rum lot"). That Grade 4 Goldstein was just looking for a way to reach them.

(I had to look up her name, as it's not mentioned until the end - and only now, after many years of owning Infinite Worlds, realized that the stinger was that Centran agent looking to help Nazis was likely of Jewish descent...)

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Also, I don't think there were any examples of Centrum and Merlin-1 overlapping until Taft-1 got fleshed out in Worlds of Horror, so there's a first time for everything.

I grant that Centrum tech is limited to Q6-Q8, while Reich-5's mules can't cross quanta. But nexus portals can go damn near anywhere, and there's nothing impossible about both sides using nexus portals to go to Q5.

I had forgotten about Q3 Merlin-1 and Q6 Taft-1. Though Merlin-1 had never been as officially limited to Q3 as Reich-5 - mostly because it seems to access very few worlds, has an even more limited crosstime capability than Reich-5, strictly magic (no mules).

It seems that Reich-5's psychic parachronics are limited to within Q3 - drugs, brain surgery, and glandular implantation. But Demonic Seeding doesn't have the "Limited Quanta: Single quantum" disadvantage like the others.


So, magical means from Q3 can cross quanta. Which would actually fit with the idea that the magic-y Stormbomb can draw from a Q3 world, even the Banestorm of Yrth.

But they're much rarer - in Reich-5's case, outnumbered by in-quanta-only travel, in Merlin-1, fewer worlds & a smaller parachronic program.


And this all could still mean that Red Moon is on Q6, only accessible to Reich-5 via magic, like Taft-1 - but not a Q5 world accessible to Centrum, which would be a game-changer (especially as Centrum doesn't use magic).

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I don't know if I would call the limitation "prevalent". I think in the main Infinite Worlds books Reich-5 is only unambiguously on three or four worlds: Nostradamus, Friedrich, Merlin-1, maybe Agamemnon? And implied to be on Merlin-3. All those are Quantum 3 worlds, but it's a small sample size to generalize from, especially if those are just the first few worlds they managed to reach.

GURPS Infinite Worlds is so specific about limiting so many of Reich-5's parachronic methods to Q3, I took it to be prevalent, or at least intentional.

Even the Chronobahn is listed as going through Q3 worlds.

Originally Posted by maximara

On a side note there are enough problems with Infinite Worlds and Time Travel to justify the existence of a Homeline-2

I had never heard of 'Homeline-2' before - love this idea! Total retcon, comic book idea, like all the versions of the D.C. & Marvel worlds in the movies & TV, very Enter the Spidey-Verse.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Which seems to suggest that at the time of this vignette, they haven't made contact with Reich-5 yet, but probably have found nexus portals to worldlines outside the quanta they can normally access. Also, the article on Red Moon notes that both Centrum and Infinity are unaware of Reich-5's presence on the worldine, which is consistent with Centrum having little intelligence on Reich-5.

I love this deeper interpretation of the intro conversation of IW agents! Another hidden meaning to this entry that I've read a million times before.

Though it doesn't necessarily mean that Centrum's out-of-accessible-band range nexus portal reaches Red Moon. It would seem like any Q5 world that Centrum could reach, the focus would be on using it to get to Secundus, not some item on Mars.


But what if the item on Mars is the reason that the nexus portal exists?!?

Interworld would put the existence of the nexus portal (and possibly creating more, blocking existing ones, etc.) over even reaching Secundus.

It might have been a big debate at the highest levels of Interworld & The Forum. In this case, the Pragmatics might have overruled the more ambitious Interventionists, prohibiting trying to reach Secundus until the item is secured.

Centrum would be at a big disadvantage to Homeline on Q5, and terrified if they were found, if 'the item' was found by Infinity.

This all could prevent Interworld from even trying to use parachronic technology, worried that Infinity would spot it.

Or maybe their parachronic tech doesn't work after going through the nexus portal. It would be easy to imagine that a cross-quanta nexus portal would mess with parachronics, and that Interworld wouldn't be able to fix it.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

True, you can imagine Centrum meeting up with natives of Homeline on Q6 or Q7 and turning them. But you could also imagine, say, native Centrum agents slipping in among a group of tourists or a mining operation from Homeline, or even posing as outtimers with skills that make them worth recruiting. All of these techniques would let agents of Centrum potentially go anywhere Homeline can go.

I've often wondered how Interworld gets agents on Homeline. There's a Q7 world with dinosaurs from across epochs, Crichton, that is mentioned as being the contact place between IW and swagmen.

But Interworld has been able to infiltrate Homeline since before the dimension war began - Infinity first discovered Centrum when an IW spy was found in a top-secret Infinity lab.

I could see IW agents coming in as tourists or outtime recruits, though both imply a really lax Infinity security. Infinity can't count its tourists? Can't vet its recruits?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by fchase8

(I had to look up her name, as it's not mentioned until the end - and only now, after many years of owning Infinite Worlds, realized that the stinger was that Centran agent looking to help Nazis was likely of Jewish descent...)

Oh my, I'd missed that.

I had forgotten about Q3 Merlin-1 and Q6 Taft-1. Though Merlin-1 had never been as officially limited to Q3 as Reich-5 - mostly because it seems to access very few worlds, has an even more limited crosstime capability than Reich-5, strictly magic (no mules).

I think the "official" limiting of Reich-5 to quantum 3 mostly applies to their mules and to a lesser (and deliberately ambiguous) extent, the Chronobahn—the sidebar on p. 55 seems to deliberately leave open the question of whether the Chronobahn can cross quanta or not. Spells, as we seem to have established here, don't seem to have any such limit. But the limiting of Reich-5 to quantum 3 shouldn't, I think, mean they have some special impairment in the use of cross-quanta nexus portals.

It seems that Reich-5's psychic parachronics are limited to within Q3 - drugs, brain surgery, and glandular implantation. But Demonic Seeding doesn't have the "Limited Quanta: Single quantum" disadvantage like the others.

Oh huh, I hadn't caught that. Interesting.

But Interworld has been able to infiltrate Homeline since before the dimension war began - Infinity first discovered Centrum when an IW spy was found in a top-secret Infinity lab.

As tantalizing as this idea is, I think you've misremembered. Here's what IW8 says:

Nine years ago, Corporate Security captured an intruder in a secret Infinity facility on the Quantum 6 world Turkana. He turned out to be from another cross-dimensional para-military organization, the Interworld Service, of a crosstime civilization called Centrum.

So the agent wasn't actually found on Homeline.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

As tantalizing as this idea is, I think you've misremembered. Here's what IW8 says:

Nine years ago, Corporate Security captured an intruder in a secret Infinity facility on the Quantum 6 world Turkana. He turned out to be from another cross-dimensional para-military organization, the Interworld Service, of a crosstime civilization called Centrum.

So the agent wasn't actually found on Homeline.

Actually he was confusing IW with TT:

We did not become aware of Centrum's existence until 2006, when an intruder was captured in one of Infinity's most secret labs.

- 106

This implies the incident was on Homeline-2 because who in their right mind puts one of their "most secret labs" outside their main sphere of influence (ie Quantum 5 in this case)?

It would be akin to the US having the Manhattan Project or Area 51 in Canada and is about as nonsensical.

On a side note there is another variant of Homeline (Alpha) but it is part of the 23 Skadoo setting which was the prototype for Homeline-Centrum only in it it was Gamma (a photo-Reich-5) that was their main foil.

There is a Quick Reference table on the GURPS wiki showing the differences.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I think the "official" limiting of Reich-5 to quantum 3 mostly applies to their mules and to a lesser (and deliberately ambiguous) extent, the Chronobahn—the sidebar on p. 55 seems to deliberately leave open the question of whether the Chronobahn can cross quanta or not. Spells, as we seem to have established here, don't seem to have any such limit. But the limiting of Reich-5 to quantum 3 shouldn't, I think, mean they have some special impairment in the use of cross-quanta nexus portals.

I believe that the Chronobahn is two basalt roads crossing in Q3 Nostradamus. The western end goes to Q3 Friedrich, and then on to Q3 Agamemnon. While this implies that it is limited to Q3, there are still three other routes unchronicled from Nostradamus, and possibly wherever it goes after Agamemnon.

Also listed are possibly U.S. Special Forces from Q3 Merlin-2 (the one with "Manaclysms" in Jerusalem & then Houston in the 2010's), implying that one of the three undefined Chronobahn routes goes there (probably the magical region around Jerusalem, so the southern road of the Chronobahn).

The pg. 55 sidebar does say that the Chronobahn could extend outside of Q3, but that seems to be a GM decision that would change the nature of Infinite Worlds - the same sentence mentions the idea of shifting Reich-5 to Q6.


Spells do seem to have no quantum limit, or at least different limits of their own (like mana). But I don't know how many actual spell-casters Reich-5 has, as all of their magic appears to be stolen (like the demonic seeding).

Recruiting for spell-casters could be a big mission on Nostradamus, where the magic fits more in line with Reich-5 paganism (of course, Raven Division would only want Aryan magicians). Agamemnon, with its active Greek gods, seems too dangerous.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

As tantalizing as this idea is, I think you've misremembered. Here's what IW8 says:

Nine years ago, Corporate Security captured an intruder in a secret Infinity facility on the Quantum 6 world Turkana. He turned out to be from another cross-dimensional para-military organization, the Interworld Service, of a crosstime civilization called Centrum.

So the agent wasn't actually found on Homeline.

Originally Posted by maximara

Actually he was confusing IW with TT:

We did not become aware of Centrum's existence until 2006, when an intruder was captured in one of Infinity's most secret labs.

- 106

I was conflating those two correct entries from Infinite Worlds and Time Travel.

The one from IW does say nine years, so in 2018 Homeline discovers Centrum (not listed in the GURPS wiki).

Originally Posted by maximara

This implies the incident was on Homeline-2 because who in their right mind puts one of their "most secret labs" outside their main sphere of influence (ie Quantum 5 in this case)?

It would be akin to the US having the Manhattan Project or Area 51 in Canada and is about as nonsensical.

Infinity does have some of its "most secret" labs on Turkana (at least IW's Homeline). Pg. 19 lists the labs as:

* Geneva, Swizerland (Homeline)
* Batavia, Illinois, USA (Homeline)
* Livermore, California, USA (Homeline)
* "Clean Room" (Smother, Q5)
* "The Farm", Madagascar (Mammut-1, Q not listed)
* "Wheel", Gobi grassland (Turkana, Q6)

Having some of Infinity's most secret labs on Turkana would keep them from potentially damaging Homeline, and to keep them protected/secret from other Homeline actors. Like putting your atomic testing in the New Mexico desert, Bikini Island atoll, Australian desert, French Algerian desert, deep Siberia, etc.

And the labs were put there before Centrum was discovered, so Infinity wouldn't have worried about putting the labs within reach of Centrum. If they opened more labs after encountering Centrum, would put them Q5 or lower.

Plus Turkana has its own benefit, having magnetic poles that diverge from the geographic ones. The labs were put at the site of one of those poles, so Paralabs could "build an accelerator around the magnetic pole ... and drilled a hole in the Earth's mantle for power."


Indeed, the security pre-contact at "Wheel" would likely have been very lax. Presuming that Turkana has no natives, or at least none capable of parachronic technology, Infinity would have only worried about Homeline spies.

Meanwhile, once Centrum found Turkana, it would have very easy to find "Wheel" - literally just follow the needle on your acting-weird compass. Once "Wheel" was spotted by IW, a spy program would start.

Originally Posted by maximara

On a side note there is another variant of Homeline (Alpha) but it is part of the 23 Skadoo setting which was the prototype for Homeline-Centrum only in it it was Gamma (a photo-Reich-5) that was their main foil.

There is a Quick Reference table on the GURPS wiki showing the differences.

23 Skidoo is really cool, thanks! Interesting to see how long ago some of the worlds have been created.

Indeed, the entry is missing listing that some are in Alternate Earths 2:

* Delta is clearly Aeolus, from the failed Glorious Revolution to current Republican revolution.
* Omnicron might be Midgard - "Society is based loosely on Icelandic semi-anarchy."
* Phi is Cornwallis, with the crushed American Revolution, stagnant European monarchies, and face-off with revolutionary Russia.

Probably because those three aren't listed in IW, something I always found weird (if you're gonna list "infinite worlds," why not include three that GURPS has already well-documented?).

[YankeeGamer]

It's not going to be TOO hard for a dedicated Centran agent to get to Homeline. There's plenty of traffic on Q 6 and 7, and where there's people, there's greed. There's also people who resent getting access to only the dregs, and want more, honey traps, and beyond, There's even the possibility of capturing someone and replacing him with an analogue...
In short, use Homeline's vehicles; there's probably Centran agents all the way to Q 3, but they are on long duration missions--and some might never come back because they like what they find

[maximara]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I was conflating those two correct entries from Infinite Worlds and Time Travel.

The one from IW does say nine years, so in 2018 Homeline discovers Centrum (not listed in the GURPS wiki).

Thanks missed that.

Originally Posted by fchase8

23 Skidoo is really cool, thanks! Interesting to see how long ago some of the worlds have been created.

Indeed, the entry is missing listing that some are in Alternate Earths 2:

* Delta is clearly Aeolus, from the failed Glorious Revolution to current Republican revolution.
* Omnicron might be Midgard - "Society is based loosely on Icelandic semi-anarchy."
* Phi is Cornwallis, with the crushed American Revolution, stagnant European monarchies, and face-off with revolutionary Russia.

Probably because those three aren't listed in IW, something I always found weird (if you're gonna list "infinite worlds," why not include three that GURPS has already well-documented?).

I think it was so they could devote more space to other worlds. Heck as it was they had to put "six alternates trimmed from that book due to size constraints" into GURPS Infinite Worlds-Lost Worlds

Two are mentioned in blink and you will miss it text in IW are:

Aeolus: p 18
Cornwallis: sidebar p 43

Ming-3 is the only one totally missing with not even a reference. As far as I known there seems to be no reference in 4e to it.