Merlin-2 Working out the details

Fred Brackin · 10-29-2013, 12:06 PM

Infinite Worlds adds a second Merlin world Arising from a "Manaclyzm" set off by the terrorist nuking of Jerusalem in 2012 followed up by another terrorist nuke in Galveston harbor in 2016.

Ok, we can explain why not the Trinity test. Oppenheimer didn't time his utterance correctly and no first Hellstorm to prime the pump for future Hellstorms until the Jerusalem bomb. Probably a suicide bomb with the bomber chanting something apocalyptic from the holy book of your choice. Nuking Jerusalem is somewhat odd for members of several religions.

The text in IW has "everything from Cairo to Damascus" being High Mana with the Galveston bomb doing the same for "large parts of the American West".

It occurs to me that I can easily check this with an airline mileage calculator and I finally get around to doing so.

Cairo is 255 miles from Jerusalem and might actually be a short distance outside the High Mana area. Damascus is 155 miles and the zone extends well beyond it. At 43 miles you can probably see the Hellstorm from Amman Jordan and Beirut is well within the HMZ also.

However, if the Galveston bomb produces similar results as the Antarctic bomb in Merlin-1 and gives a 1600mile HMZ that extends east to NYC but stops short of Boston. It goes west to L.A. but stops short of San Fran. North to Toronto and most of Ontario (but not Quebec) and south to beyond Managua Nicaragua (but not the Panama Canal).

That's rather more than "the American West" and will have significant effects on the number of mages in post-Manaclyzm North America. Not sure what kind of Chimeras you get in Canada either. :)

Probably the first truly notable _things_ that show up after the initial Hellstorm are demons in nuclear reactors. Mass shutdowns are almost certain Depending on exact dates Fukushima might be closed when the tsunami hits.The US Navy is also strongly impacted.

Merlin-2 starts much later than Merlin-1 but has a local date more advanced than Merlin-1( and Reality-here and now as well) It's 2027 at the time of publishing for IW (2004). It might be 2036 there if true parallel time ahs been maintained.

That's Hellstorm +24 and would have only the magical state of the art of Merlin-1's 1969 if other factors don't accelerate matters. There are factors that well could. A higher initial TL, faster dissemination of information via the internet. More mages over a wider area though that doesn't kick in immediately. More neo-pagans in the Us than in 1945

So considering all this and anything else that occurs to you, what does Merlin-2 look like in 2036?

It'd probably be TL9 by most of the schedules in UT without the Hellstorms. What is it with them? TL8+1, 9+1?

The latest technomagic trick to occur to me is embedding reinforcing fibers in Earth and then casting Earth to Metal thus easily producing metal matrix composites. Essential Metal matrix composites are obvious to anyone who has the right spells but taking a guess at their armor value using data from Spaceships and other sources I get only the equivalent of "regular" TL9 materials. They would be cheaper.

Diomedes · 10-29-2013, 08:09 PM

As a Houstonian, I found the implications of the Galveston blast intriguing. Looking at the map, the 30-mile Hellstorm would engulf Galveston, Texas City (and its oil refineries), and several smaller towns. NASA would be untouched, though, and might well be repurposed as the main base for study of the Hellstorm. Meanwhile, the "storm" itself would be sitting astride the mouth of Galveston Bay, closing it to Houston's massive freight traffic, doing interesting things to the bay ecosystem, and probably causing a permanent storm surge in Houston. I suspect Houston would want to reroute the Houston Ship Channel through East Bay, far enough to avoid the storm.

patchwork · 10-31-2013, 03:32 AM

I wouldn't assume the second mana area to be as large as Merlin-1's because I wouldn't assume the clandestine organization that initiated it could get their hands on a full-scale bomb of the sort Stalin could. Of course, you pick what makes a good setting for your campaign.

So, since all those reactors conjured demons and the boomer crews were utterly unprepared for demonic attack, what have the demons done with their shiny new toy submarines? (why haven't they finished the job and annihilated the world?) Heck, just steer a carrier at full speed into a dock of your choice, it'll be fun...

And who decided to make a hellstorm in Jerusalem? My first guess would be an apocalyptic sort trying to prod the Antichrist into getting the show started already. Did they succeed? How much? Why or why not? How closely tied were the second wave of whackjobs? Presumably they used old Soviet weaponry? To my way of thinking, this organization is vital to the setting, because they're going to get rolled up by DHS and Mossad, and whatever they know or think they know will form the basis of this world's magical theory.

The collapse of the US Navy and the overloading of a lot of power grids probably causes a massive global economic crisis. Perhaps Korea picks that moment to go ****ity, as the South's allies appear hamstrung? Demons, financial collapse, conspiracies, I think you suddenly have a whole lot of desperate people turning to cults, and in many places those cults have replaced local governments...

~~combatmedic~~ · 10-31-2013, 05:43 AM

IW describes a group related to Hamas as the perpetrator of the attack that destroys Jerusalem. I agree, Fred-- it seems bizarre.
Maybe extremist adherents of some weird splinter sect of Islam might contemplate destroying Jerusalem, but if Hamas in that timeline is anything like Hamas in OTL, I don't see it. Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims.

Destroying Tel Aviv with a truck-borne nuke, though, might be more plausible.

Or maybe Hamas caught the blame, but was totally innocent, and some other faction was responsible. Godless commies? Neo-Nazis?

~~tantric~~ · 10-31-2013, 07:16 AM

A bit off topic, but I'd really like to see more Merlins. One that isn't a close parallel would be great, but one where psionics replaces magic would be much better. I tried this once in something called "Omega Earth" but it never went anywhere.

Fred Brackin · 10-31-2013, 07:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by patchwork

I wouldn't assume the second mana area to be as large as Merlin-1's because I wouldn't assume the clandestine organization that initiated it could get their hands on a full-scale bomb of the sort Stalin could. ...

The Antartica bomb was supposed to be of the same scale as the Trinity test bomb. That one was pretty near the practical minimum for a simple plutonium or highly enriched uranium bomb. Really small nukes are advanced designs.

dcarson · 10-31-2013, 12:35 PM

A homemade or poorly maintained stolen/blackmarket nuke could have a low yield from inefficiency. So tweak to suit.

Fred Brackin · 10-31-2013, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcarson

A homemade or poorly maintained stolen/blackmarket nuke could have a low yield from inefficiency. So tweak to suit.

I do not really believe this to be true and at any rate it's antithetical to one of the core premises of the setting cluster. The first nuke is bad and the second is 8x worse. If you could control this by only using teeny-tiny nukes it'd contradict this basic premise.

About the demons, canon from Merlin-1 seems to indicate that it's not automatic and the demons only come one at a time. You don't get Orcas either. You get things that are moderately challenging to 4-6 well-prepared PCs. Even ones with melee weapons rather than guns.

So I don't think you get a runaway demon invasion. Retail carnage rather than wholesale. Indeed one or more demons might get captured and serve as important information sources after being Holy Water-boarded.

Diomedes · 10-31-2013, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tantric

A bit off topic, but I'd really like to see more Merlins. One that isn't a close parallel would be great, but one where psionics replaces magic would be much better.

That would be interesting, but psionics instead of magic basically makes it not a Merlin by definition.

Prince Charon · 10-31-2013, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I do not really believe this to be true and at any rate it's antithetical to one of the core premises of the setting cluster. The first nuke is bad and the second is 8x worse. If you could control this by only using teeny-tiny nukes it'd contradict this basic premise.

About the demons, canon from Merlin-1 seems to indicate that it's not automatic and the demons only come one at a time. You don't get Orcas either. You get things that are moderately challenging to 4-6 well-prepared PCs. Even ones with melee weapons rather than guns.

So I don't think you get a runaway demon invasion. Retail carnage rather than wholesale. Indeed one or more demons might get captured and serve as important information sources after being Holy Water-boarded.

That could be an interesting game: Create a submarine crew, and then pit them against a demon that was accidentally summoned by the on-board reactor.

EDIT: For added pressure, it's a ballistic missile sub, with nuclear weapons in the missile tubes.

10-29-2013, 12:06 PM	#1
Fred Brackin Join Date: Aug 2007	Merlin-2 Working out the details Infinite Worlds adds a second Merlin world Arising from a "Manaclyzm" set off by the terrorist nuking of Jerusalem in 2012 followed up by another terrorist nuke in Galveston harbor in 2016. Ok, we can explain why not the Trinity test. Oppenheimer didn't time his utterance correctly and no first Hellstorm to prime the pump for future Hellstorms until the Jerusalem bomb. Probably a suicide bomb with the bomber chanting something apocalyptic from the holy book of your choice. Nuking Jerusalem is somewhat odd for members of several religions. The text in IW has "everything from Cairo to Damascus" being High Mana with the Galveston bomb doing the same for "large parts of the American West". It occurs to me that I can easily check this with an airline mileage calculator and I finally get around to doing so. Cairo is 255 miles from Jerusalem and might actually be a short distance outside the High Mana area. Damascus is 155 miles and the zone extends well beyond it. At 43 miles you can probably see the Hellstorm from Amman Jordan and Beirut is well within the HMZ also. However, if the Galveston bomb produces similar results as the Antarctic bomb in Merlin-1 and gives a 1600mile HMZ that extends east to NYC but stops short of Boston. It goes west to L.A. but stops short of San Fran. North to Toronto and most of Ontario (but not Quebec) and south to beyond Managua Nicaragua (but not the Panama Canal). That's rather more than "the American West" and will have significant effects on the number of mages in post-Manaclyzm North America. Not sure what kind of Chimeras you get in Canada either. :) Probably the first truly notable _things_ that show up after the initial Hellstorm are demons in nuclear reactors. Mass shutdowns are almost certain Depending on exact dates Fukushima might be closed when the tsunami hits.The US Navy is also strongly impacted. Merlin-2 starts much later than Merlin-1 but has a local date more advanced than Merlin-1( and Reality-here and now as well) It's 2027 at the time of publishing for IW (2004). It might be 2036 there if true parallel time ahs been maintained. That's Hellstorm +24 and would have only the magical state of the art of Merlin-1's 1969 if other factors don't accelerate matters. There are factors that well could. A higher initial TL, faster dissemination of information via the internet. More mages over a wider area though that doesn't kick in immediately. More neo-pagans in the Us than in 1945 So considering all this and anything else that occurs to you, what does Merlin-2 look like in 2036? It'd probably be TL9 by most of the schedules in UT without the Hellstorms. What is it with them? TL8+1, 9+1? The latest technomagic trick to occur to me is embedding reinforcing fibers in Earth and then casting Earth to Metal thus easily producing metal matrix composites. Essential Metal matrix composites are obvious to anyone who has the right spells but taking a guess at their armor value using data from Spaceships and other sources I get only the equivalent of "regular" TL9 materials. They would be cheaper. __________________ Fred Brackin

10-29-2013, 08:09 PM	#2
Diomedes Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Dallas, TX	Re: Merlin-2 Working out the details As a Houstonian, I found the implications of the Galveston blast intriguing. Looking at the map, the 30-mile Hellstorm would engulf Galveston, Texas City (and its oil refineries), and several smaller towns. NASA would be untouched, though, and might well be repurposed as the main base for study of the Hellstorm. Meanwhile, the "storm" itself would be sitting astride the mouth of Galveston Bay, closing it to Houston's massive freight traffic, doing interesting things to the bay ecosystem, and probably causing a permanent storm surge in Houston. I suspect Houston would want to reroute the Houston Ship Channel through East Bay, far enough to avoid the storm.

10-31-2013, 03:32 AM	#3
patchwork Join Date: Oct 2011	Re: Merlin-2 Working out the details I wouldn't assume the second mana area to be as large as Merlin-1's because I wouldn't assume the clandestine organization that initiated it could get their hands on a full-scale bomb of the sort Stalin could. Of course, you pick what makes a good setting for your campaign. So, since all those reactors conjured demons and the boomer crews were utterly unprepared for demonic attack, what have the demons done with their shiny new toy submarines? (why haven't they finished the job and annihilated the world?) Heck, just steer a carrier at full speed into a dock of your choice, it'll be fun... And who decided to make a hellstorm in Jerusalem? My first guess would be an apocalyptic sort trying to prod the Antichrist into getting the show started already. Did they succeed? How much? Why or why not? How closely tied were the second wave of whackjobs? Presumably they used old Soviet weaponry? To my way of thinking, this organization is vital to the setting, because they're going to get rolled up by DHS and Mossad, and whatever they know or think they know will form the basis of this world's magical theory. The collapse of the US Navy and the overloading of a lot of power grids probably causes a massive global economic crisis. Perhaps Korea picks that moment to go ****ity, as the South's allies appear hamstrung? Demons, financial collapse, conspiracies, I think you suddenly have a whole lot of desperate people turning to cults, and in many places those cults have replaced local governments...

10-31-2013, 05:43 AM	#4
~~combatmedic~~ Banned Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: a crooked, creaky manse built on a blasted heath	Re: Merlin-2 Working out the details IW describes a group related to Hamas as the perpetrator of the attack that destroys Jerusalem. I agree, Fred-- it seems bizarre. Maybe extremist adherents of some weird splinter sect of Islam might contemplate destroying Jerusalem, but if Hamas in that timeline is anything like Hamas in OTL, I don't see it. Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims. Destroying Tel Aviv with a truck-borne nuke, though, might be more plausible. Or maybe Hamas caught the blame, but was totally innocent, and some other faction was responsible. Godless commies? Neo-Nazis?

10-31-2013, 07:16 AM	#5
~~tantric~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Athens, GA	Re: Merlin-2 Working out the details A bit off topic, but I'd really like to see more Merlins. One that isn't a close parallel would be great, but one where psionics replaces magic would be much better. I tried this once in something called "Omega Earth" but it never went anywhere.

10-31-2013, 12:35 PM	#7
dcarson Join Date: Mar 2008	Re: Merlin-2 Working out the details A homemade or poorly maintained stolen/blackmarket nuke could have a low yield from inefficiency. So tweak to suit.