Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!

[Flyndaran]

All the agents and exposed citizens were outright murdered for becoming superhuman but with a scent based bigotry? That seems excessive even for dark Homeline.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Out to the Oort Cloud would be a long orbit indeed. If you want a 100 year periodicity you'd need a much shorter one. only a little longer than Haley's 76 year period.

A good Lucifer would just be one where Halley's comet hit the earth in 1910 A.D. when Earth passed through its tail or 837 A.D. at its closest verified approach in our timeline. It's big enough to be in the ballpark of the dino-killer. Though Wikipedia says that it has an unusually high velocity relative to earth, so it would hit harder than its mass would otherwise suggest.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

All the agents and exposed citizens were outright murdered for becoming superhuman but with a scent based bigotry? That seems excessive even for dark Homeline.

I suspect there was an attempt to break quarantine and spread the virus further, and afterwards shooting started. These are covert agents with a habit of getting into and out of scrapes. Once one person decided to start shooting, the sense of duty on the others dragged them in, and when it was all over, all of the infected were dead. At least on the official reports.

[sir_pudding]

There's no asteroid impact in that timeline.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

There's no asteroid impact in that timeline.

Hah! we have never restricted this thread to asteroid impacts.

It isn't a hell parallel though, and that's what this thread usually is about. I thought you were going zombie on me, and then you left a civilization in place.

[AlexanderHowl]

Hell parallels are anywhere where the human species has gone extinct (or approaches extinction) for any number of reasons. The fact that you have them being replaced a race of superhumans that extirpated humans from the Sol System due to the fact that humans smelled wrong to them sounds fairly hellish to me. I imagine that the ease of contagion and the fact that the Ascended Ones are all geniuses that like working together on projects would probably give the I-Cops nightmares.

An interesting scenario would occur if knowledge of the timeline was leaked by a transhumanist who worked for Infinity. While the transhumanist might not be able to get the coordinates, the fact that it existed at all would mean that there could be a substantial number of transhumanists who would be looking for it through random exploration. With the promise of becoming a superhuman with 16x the lifespan of baseline humans, I have known a few transhumanists who would be willing to risk the safety of all of humanity if such an upgrade existed.

[Flyndaran]

I did notice earlier in this thread that we're not all in agreement on what constitutes a Lucifer parallel.
I think, according to Gurps, it's a world that has little to no life and/or is doomed to suffer the extinction of humanity from some combination of man-made or natural disaster.
I suppose it could just be one inimical to Homeline/Centrum humanity, yet with some resource that makes it important enough to require miserable agents/researchers on site.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Ascended Ones gain ST+10, DX+4, IQ+4, HT+4,

They missed a possible +1 to HT. :)

Yes, +4 is the max from Lifespan and Self-repair but there was another +1 from the Immune table the page before. Yes, they should stack because they're coming from different sources. I asked Kromm that during the playtest.

The design does hit some of the high spots but is actually rather simple compared to other Ubermenschen. It misses a lot of the usual kitchen sink's worth of Advantages.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Hell parallels are anywhere where the human species has gone extinct (or approaches extinction) for any number of reasons. The fact that you have them being replaced a race of superhumans that extirpated humans from the Sol System due to the fact that humans smelled wrong to them sounds fairly hellish to me. I imagine that the ease of contagion and the fact that the Ascended Ones are all geniuses that like working together on projects would probably give the I-Cops nightmares.

I suppose in the end its much like the pak protector transformation, though the urges are weaker and target fewer people. That would be a Hell World. Unless your genetics are just right... nope! still a hell world.

Worlds overrun by monsters that reproduce by using humans are a good source of hell parallels. The classic, of course, is zombies, but there are other cases as well....

Vampires: Its been said that if everyone bitten by a vampire became a vampire the world would be overrun by vampires. there are a few variations on this theme. Perhaps the vampires farm out humans, guarding them jealously from other predators, and ruthlessly disposing of emptied shells. This has been done in urban fantasy, but this version is likely to be low tech and very open, with vampire lords optimizing their herds for culling.

Another version is undead slumber, where the vampires depleted the worlds of humans, and ended up in a long hibernation. In coffins around the world, monsters are forever entombed, until they smell the blood of men once again.

Werewolves: This is weird, because werewolves are themselves much of the time (unless you're working with a version were they are not). It will look much like a normal society that appears to have a very weird, very intense monthly festival. Villages may end up fairly isolated, and I suspect monthly accidents, fights, and pack behavior will keep human population lower than what would be expected. And then you end up as the only human in a town full of snarling beast that all want YOUR blood. Not sure if it counts as a hell parallel or not.

Flesh Wasps: This is probably a spin on a classic disease rather than a monster, but a species of wasp can use humans as hosts to incubate large numbers of eggs. utterly horrific, but after the initial population crash a stable predator prey cycle might emerge.

Telepaths: In an ancient war, massive psionic abilities were discovered. one man could defeat an army with mental attacks that froze large numbers of men at once, detected them from afar off, and rewrote their minds. The rewriting of the mind allowed them to give their targets their same powers... and their same obsessions. Every human on this world is a powerful telepath with the delusion that a war is still on, and they must "convert" as many people as possible into soldiers like them.

[Flyndaran]

I always wanted to play in a game where vampires and humans had to team up to survive a zombie apocalypse.
Each side fearing and needing the other. One hot head of either type could cause a TPK, so to speak.