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Old 09-19-2018, 12:44 PM   #1051
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Interesting. I suppose that people traditionally visit battlefields and collect cocoons to raise as their own? Of course, most people end up raising their parents and grandparents....

Speaking of...

In Necro, Earth has Normal Death-aspected mana. It apparently reached its present level gradually starting around 100BCE, stabilizing at its present level around 350CE. The current date is around 1800.

Magery is relatively common. Mages tend to become professional necromancers, and their jobs consist of cleaning and animating the bones of the dead to serve as mindless servants. These practices are present around the world, with some variation depending on the resources a particular group has; Chilean people frequently use natural mummies while Europeans in their humid climes prefer preserved, shroud-wrapped skeletons.

In any case, pretty much everybody is quite comfortable when it comes to dealing with human remains, at least when they're dry and moving around.

Last edited by PTTG; 09-19-2018 at 04:20 PM.
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Old 09-19-2018, 01:03 PM   #1052
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Ashtagon, the idea is that it changes at a point in the near future. There's something to be said about the alternative, but keep in mind that means that EVERYONE remembers all of history. Or at least, remembers their perspective of it.

I think the situation is more interesting if you let it go on for a while. On the other hand, reversion-3 probably has a better model. Humanoids that go into a cocoon state and emerge as two beings is probably the most grounded way to do it.



I don't think "remembering all of history" is going to be a problem. You will have a lot of different perspectives, and probably a lot of faded memories. I don't remember some events I lived through very well at all.

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Interesting. I suppose that people traditionally visit battlefields and collect cocoons to raise as their own? Of course, most people end up raising their parents and grandparents....

I'm imagining a warrior caste of soldiers who fight in battle after battle, war after war. The winner generally raises the fallen soldiers. I can actually see someone intentionally killing prisoners so they can be raised in the proper culture.



The real obstacle to high TL on reversion is the population base. You can't really grow it, so you can't support the complex systems of the modern era. On the other hand, it seems that starvation just boots you back to childhood.


It would be interesting to see how religion changes or doesn't change over time.
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Old 09-19-2018, 03:47 PM   #1053
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Even with a 99% reduction in fertility, humans are still fertile enough to grow the population (especially since famine, plague, and war just result in the physical reincarnation of an individual). For example, every unprotected sexual encounter has a 1/40 chance of getting a woman pregnant, meaning that the average woman needs to have unprotected sex 28 times to have a cumulative 50% chance of getting pregnant. In the case of a 1/4,000 chance of getting a woman pregnant, the average woman needs to have protected sex 2,800 times to have a cumulative 50% chance of getting pregnant. That would mean that a woman would have to have sex every day for 8 years to have a 50% chance of become pregnant.

The population would probably grow at around 0.5% per year despite the low fertility because of the effective immortality of human beings in Reversion-3. After 500 years, the population would be over 2 billion, which would be more than sufficient to support a TL8/TL9 society. Since no one loses their skills, technology would advance more rapidly than in Homeline because scholars would have only a 15 year delay between their studies, allowing them to explore topics more deeply than the scholars of Homeline.

Warfare and religion would both change. Victorious armies could raise their slain enemies to be their children (or future spouses), but each 'generation' of warriors would be more and more skilled than the previous generation. Religions that embrace reincarnation would likely have less trouble dealing with the change than religions that embrace resurrection, as the change would destroy that hope of resurrection, so Buddhism and Taoism would likely spread throughout the West. Gender roles would become more fluid as every woman will eventually be reborn as a man and every man would eventually be reborn as a woman.
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Old 09-20-2018, 11:13 AM   #1054
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

An idea that requires a lot of math ...

A skerry of timelines that are designated Essential Timelines are discovered. These seem like any other group of timelines, and their inhabitants live normal lives.

But every aspect of these realities follow the rules for Essential matter (see GURPS Magic). All objects have three times the hit points, damaging phenomena do triple damage, food and fuels are three times as effective, and so on. By comparison Homeline matter is weak and flimsy stuff, our food not at all nourishing, and dimensional travelers are puny and ineffective.

There's quite a market for anything from these realities. Likewise, White Star Trading can make a fortune in the diet foods and alcohol-substitute industries (as Homeline food is only a third as nourishing and alcohol a third as potent).

But besides the basic structure of matter and energy being fundamentally different, the Essential Timelines are otherwise ordinary historical echoes and parallels. Which is ridiculous.

Some want these timelines quarrantined in case whatever makes them "MORE" somehow "infects" Homeline. Others want massive trafficking with these timelines for the exact same reasons. It's a matter for much controversey. Usually discussed over a bottle of Laphroaig from one of the Essential Timelines ...
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Old 09-20-2018, 01:54 PM   #1055
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Try this a world where no one can think math. I don't say this world is a world where math doesn't work. No, no one can count, add, subtract, or conceive of any mathematical process. Just try to get through a day with no math. Or escape this parallel. Note: geometry, estimation, figuring out how much wood the fire is using, are all math.
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Old 09-20-2018, 02:02 PM   #1056
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Try this a world where no one can think math. I don't say this world is a world where math doesn't work. No, no one can count, add, subtract, or conceive of any mathematical process. Just try to get through a day with no math. Or escape this parallel. Note: geometry, estimation, figuring out how much wood the fire is using, are all math.

in all likelihood, so is running a parachronic conveyor. This could make a fun place to strand a party for an episode. Or a very tedious one.
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Old 09-20-2018, 03:59 PM   #1057
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Do computers work? Does general number sense work, as in animals?

If humans can't even do that much, but animals can, then there's an interesting loophole to try to exploit.
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Old 09-20-2018, 04:08 PM   #1058
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In Eden-5, any native human being exudes a mild corrosive oil that protects their skin and hair from damage and infection but breaks down any nonhuman fibers (artificial or natural) within a couple of days, though treated hides (furs and leathers) are capable of surviving a few months of exposure. Without the benefits of animal and plant fibers, human technology seems to have focused on the selective breeding of animals and plants to provide living wearables, resulting in a highly divergent technology from that standard technology progressions recorded by Homeline.

A Q6 world with the same date as Homeline, Homeline is very nervous about Eden-5 because it is technically TL(1+9)^, with high biotechnology and advanced genetic engineering combined with psionics and Path/Book ritual magic. The point of divergence seems to have been around 500,000 years ago, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, though Homeline is unsure. What they are sure of though is that the global society of Eden-5 is completely different than any that they have encountered, with no recognisable languages in common with any other timeline, and that it has colonized the Sol System and may be capable of producing paratronic technology.
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Old 09-20-2018, 04:44 PM   #1059
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in all likelihood, so is running a parachronic conveyor. This could make a fun place to strand a party for an episode. Or a very tedious one.
You understood my mind.
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Old 09-20-2018, 04:45 PM   #1060
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Do computers work? Does general number sense work, as in animals?

If humans can't even do that much, but animals can, then there's an interesting loophole to try to exploit.
That wasn't in my mind. But it is an interesting twist.
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