Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Celebrity

This world is rather upsetting to Infinity. They suspect that it's a joke perpetrated by some deity-level being at their expense.

Probes showed what appeared to be a near-parallel in the mid-1950's but with a conspicuously-higher standard of living. Otherwise it seemed normal.

Until the first agents were sent in and they were swarmed by autograph-seekers and paparazzi.

Every single parachronic traveler to this world is made as soon as he arrives. And often before then - some Infinity and Centrum agents who have never visited have fan clubs, with fan magazines describing their lives and exploits in terrifying detail. One investigator was horrified to find a photo-spread of himself during an exercise routine at his home.

Any traveler to celebrity will be taregted like a major media figure, with groupies and paparazzi and interview requests. They will know things that they have no way of knowing unless they actually visited Homeline, yet there is no other evidence of parachronic travel.

Celebrity is a headache of Security, but they are comforted in knowing that Centrum, Reich-5, and the Cabal are in the same boat. There's been talk of making Celebrity a neutral world for political negotiations.

Fiendish! You are an advanced Dark Lord.

[Flyndaran]

Interesting place as it would be a great way to find out about rivals. It's not like your actions could blow the secret after all.

Really weird would be if one and only of your PC group is not famous. Every known event involving the others lacks all reference to said individual. Either the events played out slightly differently or involved a stand in local.

Could create paranoia. Is that member really a member or has someone implanted memories and placed a spy among them?

[PTTG]

Centrum and the Cabal are popular there too? That's a damn good reason to visit and fill up your dossiers...

It might be good to have it be mostly useless tabloid news, though. "Who's the mystery lady seen leaving last Tuesday's lodge meeting with Lord Kranox, Demon of Dispair?"

[PTTG]

A few interesting puzzle worlds that strive to make it harder to infiltrate their societies than simply faking an accent and wearing the right clothes:

*A reality quake in 1870 that caused sunlight to become much more hazardous to human beings in particular. In order to escape sunlight, most people became effectively nocturnal. Outtimers aren't affected.

*Local humans have generous levels of Temperature Tolerance, resulting in civilian fashions that are light, if not downright diaphanous, the world over.

*A modification to the human microbiome causes all humans to have Bad Smell; locals are used to it.

*Simple cultural changes circa the 1050s appear to have snowballed to the present. Butchering live animals is part of daily life for pretty much every chef or homemaker. The food produced here is spectacular, but anyone with any qualms about personally killing animals will sooner or later have to deal with it. In particular, guests are often offered the killing blow for the main course.

*Outtimers have Frightens Animals on this worldline.

*Outtimers and their artifacts act as a grounding rod for crosstime electromagnetic energy on this worldline, causing them to produce severe radio interference. At close ranges, they cause electronics to fail and even melt down! Luckily, electronics which themselves originate elsewhen aren't damaged.

*Extraordinarily strong inertia rules on this timeline. Any and all effects caused by outtimers revert themselves over the course of 1-10 minutes. Especially small things, like footprints in snow or similar traces, vanish in seconds. It's possible to speak to natives, but they often grow confused within 1-10 minutes as their memories become erased. Even major harm to locals or large-scale devastation reverts in the course of hours. Bring your own food, water, and oxygen, and you'll be OK.

*A deadly pathogen is endemic to this worldline. Full biohazard wear is needed for outtimers, but locals are entirely immune to it.

*Outtimers are high-powered mana enhancers here, due to a grounding effect for ozmic currents. The world is otherwise trace-mana with a substantial population of latent mages.

[PTTG]

In Mayfly, humans live for ten years, aging to approximately 80 years of physical and general psychological age in that time. They appear to learn very quickly, but they do not posses Enhanced Time rate or other such traits. They can speak clearly, as adults do, but generally aren't as cynical as someone of their physical age.

The society is a fairly pacifist TL4. Most of their goods are barely serviceable, because their greatest craftworkers have only a few years of experience. They have religions, philosophies, law. Generally there is an exuberance for life and a principle of acceptance of age as one reaches the big 1-0.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

A world were lifespans are unpredictable. Someone might live the Biblical threescore and ten, or they might live as long as Methuselah, or die of old age in their 30s. No one can predict their lifespan in even the most general way.

[DakkaBoyzRool]

Dismember-1:

Every native of this world appears to be missing at least one or more of their body parts while still remaining perfectly functional. Walking down the street, a crosstimer might see people missing hands while still "holding" items floating where their hand would be, or people missing upper legs while still supporting themselves and their lower legs and feet carrying on as normal, up to missing entire heads while still talking, eating, breathing, etc. Clothing that would be worn over these body parts are also generally missing segments that match the missing limb or organ.

At first thinking these body parts were simply invisible, after a while it was accidentally discovered that solid objects pass through the gaps as if there was nothing there if a crosstimer moves the item instead of a native or a force such as gravity.

How the missing parts continue to function eludes Infinities' researchers, but it seems as if the natives are unaware of their condition as they make no references to it and moving an item through the space where the body part would be causes them great distress if they witness it happening.

Perhaps most concerning of all, however, is that natives perceive Crosstimers as "missing parts" instead, generally causing confusion and panic if they should notice. It is not always apparent what part is missing, so crosstime agents should be careful to take extra precautions while operating here. It also appears that natives can move objects through these "gaps" in crosstimers as well...

[PTTG]

USA Against The World

At some point in the mid-1950s, something goes weird with a huge number of world leaders, senior military officers, and international trade experts. Perhaps the most obvious effect was that the USA returned to its historical isolationism, and did not deploy troops in any significant way for decades.

The soviet bloc states had closer, more effective economic ties; furthermore, many western nations (what Homeline history called the first world), assembled in secret without the USA. They referred to themselves as the Shadow Allies.

It may be that this separation from the States originated from earlier, more aggressive civil rights reform in the USA, but that is unclear. The lines of causation are very hard to draw here, and it's probable that no matter what, some kind of outside force pushed the forces of history along.

The sole place where the increasingly fractious world was remarkably cooperative was a series of nuclear treaties that banned ICBMs, strategic-scale nuclear weapons, and similar devices. How this got agreed upon, and how it came to be enforced effectively perfectly, is still unclear.

In 1975, a wave of attacks on civilians struck locations around the globe. Most horrifying of all, a banned nuclear device was detonated in Europe. Captured terrorists, their documents, and the testimony of intelligence officers from around the planet pointed to a rogue ideological group centered in the USA and with high-level connections to the military.

Homeline's investigations could neither confirm nor deny that the attacks were indeed from a US group, but the Secret Allies and the Soviet Union were swayed. The UN (with a somewhat different governmental structure that removed veto power from permanent members, among other things) also put forth a motion to create a UN army of lesser powers, which again was mysteriously successful.

The coalition effectively consisted of every nation on the planet except for the USA, Canada, and Mexico (and factions within the last two were far from loyal).

It is now 1976. A new wave of false-flag terror attacks has lead to determined calls for a "pacification" of the USA, and troops from Beijing to Moscow to Berlin to London are preparing for deployment.

THERE's your invasion story.

[PTTG]

Toroidal-1 is an especially weird one.

Since prehistory, this no-mana Earth has had a standing spacetime distortion field which connects an area 1,600 km wide with its antipode. Specifically, a vessel can sail south from Madagascar to ultimately end up sailing north into Vancouver. Or, it can sail west from Umpqua territory (present-day Oregon), and arrive in South Africa.

Either route is fraught, but not impassible.

History remained mostly consistent until around 500CE, at which point sailors established regular trade between sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific Northwest. The distribution of food crops from and to Turtle Island (and the slow introduction of Old World diseases) lead to cultural alliances never seen in our history.

Toroidal-2 is an outright donut-shaped band of rock; its surface environment is earthlike, with a band of polar climes around the inner face, desert bands on the "top" and "bottom" of the donut, and a tropical band around the outer belt. It spins along a long axis, giving each part at least a little while of sunlight.

It appears to have been populated for the past 7000 years, with the occasional peoplefall from echoes. It's currently a mid-TL6 with wide margins; the population density is quite low.

Incidentally, the part of the planet that is correlated with Infinity Inc's headquarters has a huge rock formation that, when seen from the right angle, resembles a rude gesture.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea...

A world were lifespans are unpredictable. Someone might live the Biblical threescore and ten, or they might live as long as Methuselah, or die of old age in their 30s. No one can predict their lifespan in even the most general way.

How does one die from old age instantly? That's the only way to not see yourself aging faster or slower than normal.