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Old 11-25-2017, 03:40 AM   #2921
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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Eh, foreigners always have barbaric customs, and honestly this one affects a small fraction of the population and doesn't much threaten anybody outside America. Their problem.

I think the explosive one is the gender equality. If Americans have suddenly altered the way families have always worked (and if they've really given up prejudices this has happened, well, not quite overnight but on the timescale of people changing jobs) in an era where feminism is starting to be a serious issue in the rest of the world, that's a big deal.
To a certain degree Hollywood films of the period were acused by some Europeans of being radical promoters of free love and gender equality. Which tells you some interesting things about the 1930s.
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Old 11-25-2017, 07:36 AM   #2922
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An interesting variation would be to have a New World (not only the USA) where, in 1892, everyone suffered infertility with members of their racial heritage, though they retained their fertility with people of a different racial heritage. People of mixed race heritage (a minimum of 25% of their racial heritage being different than their primary racial heritage) maintained their fertility regardless of whom they reproduced with. While visitors to the New World would not suffer abnormal infertility, anyone who spent more than six months in a year in the New World would suffer from infertility with members of their racial heritage for the rest of their lives unless they had a mixed race heritage.
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Old 11-26-2017, 08:39 AM   #2923
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I wonder what the split would be between mixed marriages and non-mixed marriages with winked at affairs on the side to get children.
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Old 11-26-2017, 09:02 AM   #2924
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It would be interesting to find out. After two generations, the dedicated racists would probably be extinct, while the successors would be a mix of African, Asian, European, and Native American blood. There would still be some racial bias, probably with higher levels of European blood being seen as a positive and higher levels of African blood being seen as a negative, but there would be more opportunity for social mobility regardless of racial heritage than even in more advanced timelines. I imagine that Centrum agents would find it strangely comfortable compared to other timelines of the same period, as the Americas would probably have relative racial harmony by the 1930s. Of course, the rest of the Western world in the 1930s would look at the Americas in horror with the ubiquity of miscegenation, and the fascists would be practically frothing at the mouth, especially the Nazis (to the point of banning immigration to and from the Americas).
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Old 11-26-2017, 01:24 PM   #2925
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Try this one, a Q6 echo is going through the Napoleonic Wars and someone is helping Napoleon. At the recent battle of Wertingen, a minor battle, however in this parallel's battle Murat used rifled cannon against the Austrians. The whole War of the Third Coalition was fought with the French using 1870's type weapons and munitions. Prussia and Austria were rendered totally crippled and subordinate. Both Homeline and Britain are aware of the French testing so called "Steamboats" on their rivers. Homeline can see that these boats also use late 19th century tech. Not TL6, but the boats have propellers. soon the French will be able to invade England at will.

Who is doing this? Neither Centrum nor the Cabal are ever this blatant. Meanwhile, back on Homeline, Britain doesn't want any Britains invaded. France demands that Napoleon be left alone, and seems to be seeking to contact and build ties with this France. Russia is worried. If Britain is taken out first, with both Austria and Prussia crippled, not even the Russian winter will preserve Russia from eventual conquest. China and the USA aren't very please either, but as their nations aren't in Europe, they're a bit more sanguine.

Basically this is spying in Napoleonic France. Centrum and the Cabal will be there too. They might even be temporary allies, of a very limited kind. Meanwhile Interworld will have to stay out of the way of the French, The Russians, the Brits, and the Germans. Their agents, all with conflicting goals and worldviews are here too. Remember, office politics back home can kill too!
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Old 11-26-2017, 01:48 PM   #2926
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This parallel has been named Fors after the title character in Star Man's Son.

Some notes on the geography. Most of the attention and exploration of this world has been focused on a continent shaped a lot like North America stretched to be 30% wider and with Mexico below Sanora and the northern four fifths of Canada loped off.

Rivers are more common than in North America and generally more navigable than North America's rivers. North of the main continent are chains of islands like Indonesia or Northern Canada. These island chains stretch far to the East continent. The Thalassocrats say that the people there claim to be Irish and say they walked under hills to get to this land. Both the Slan and the Thalassocrats say that golden skinned people with almond eyes live in the far west. Those folks say that the August Elder of Jade turned a rainbow into a bridge and they walked up into the sky to get to this world.

More later, I have to go...
It's later.

The Thalassocrats are TL4 and think 1690's, almost ready to break into TL5. Thanks to help from the Slan, the Alliance is TL5 think 1730-1750. The Thalassocrats are struggling to catch up as are the Clans. The Slan tech is mainly like that of 1900-1910. But they don't have the numbers to make the best use of their advantage. One piece of TL5 equipment the Slan and the Alliance use well is the telegraph. The Thalassocrats and the Clans destroy any Telegraph poles they see. The Slan have introduced radio telegraphy to the Alliance. The Thalassocrat's spies know about this and the Thalassocrats are bitter and afraid.

In recent struggles the Slans have used airships. Crude and dangerous, yes, but as the other side couldn't do anything about how they were being attacked, effective. The Clans are especially terrified of Airships because the Slan got lucky with Mustard Gas and wiped out a large army/warband.

Slan ships are sail driven. They don't have the fuel to go any other way. These ships are however TL6 sailing ships with steel frames like Yankee Clippers. They are faster and more maneuverable than anything the Thalassocrats have. They also have far better weapons. Rifling and other advantages means their guns shoot much further and more accurately. The Slan have far fewer ships, but the Thalassocrats still fear them.

Note: On the Slan. They have discovered a Southern continent. Picture something the size of Australia with the climate and fertility of New Zealand. They're migrating there as quickly as possible. The Thalassocrats will find out about this sooner rather than later.
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Old 11-26-2017, 02:04 PM   #2927
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This parallel is now named Thulsa, after Thulsa Doom.

A major cultural group on this world are the Airship sailors. They are the most cosmopolitan group going. They are among the very few people who do any traveling. Other than working airship crews, travel in this world is as difficult as in Europe's early medieval period.

The airship folk are the people most likely to produce adventurers that seek adventure for its own sake as opposed to unlucky people fighting to survive.

Mages identified with Mercury are commonly navigators, although mages identified with Jupiter, being weather mages, often get that role. Mages identified with Minerva dominated the engineer slot.

Airship port facilities are were those travers GMs like to start gaming sessions in, are found.

Meanwhile, the American west, in spite of the magic and dinosaurs, looks and seems a lot like Homeline's Old West. These towns are, in spite of their ages, still frontier settlements. Even with magic and Airships.


,
Key to all magic in Thulsa is the Runic tongue. How much RUNE LORE you can learn is dependent on your knowledge of Runic. Magery is a limit on how much Runic anyone can learn.

If you have no Runic you can only learn Rune Lore to either IQ-4 or 6, whichever is lower. Individuals with no Magery may learn Runic to a Feeble level. Those that have this level of Runic may learn Rune Lore to IQ or 12, whichever is lower. Individuals with Magery-0 can learn Runic to the Accented level. Those that have this level of Runic can learn Rune Lore to IQ+1. Those that have Magery-1 or better can learn Runic at the fluent level. Those who have Fluent Runic aren't restricted in learning Rune Lore because of the Runic tongue. but they might have other problems.
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Old 11-26-2017, 02:09 PM   #2928
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Iroquois-7

A Q7 timeline, Iroquois-7 is an anomaly because it seems that the entire Native American population benefited from a symbiotic bacteria that passes from mother to child that gives them the equivalent of Level 3 Panimmunity that first appeared 2,000 years ago. With complete resistance to infectious diseases, the history of Iroquois-7 diverged dramatically from the history of Homeline in 1492, when the Native Americans proved to be immune to the diseases carried by the European invaders. Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas encountered fierce resistance because they were facing civilizations with ten times the population that the Spanish and Portuguese encountered in Homeline, and the Spanish and Portuguese were forced to settle for negotiating trading agreements with the Native American nations of Central and South America in 1542. It is now 1692, and the British, Danish, Dutch, and French are engaged in trade with the Iroquois Federation.

Centrum and Homeline are very interested in the symbiotic bacteria that protects the Native American populations of Iroquois-7, but the symbiotic bacteria seems incapable of thriving in the human body except if it is transferred from mother to child. Both Centrum and Homeline are concerned about the artificial nature of the symbiotic bacteria because it is evidence that there was a previous more advanced crosstime civilization that disappeared before either of them achieved paratronics. While they have been searching for evidence of interference in other timelines, the symbiotic bacteria of Iroquois-7 is the only evidence of the existence of that civilization.
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Old 11-26-2017, 07:49 PM   #2929
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Iroquois-7

A Q7 timeline, Iroquois-7 is an anomaly because it seems that the entire Native American population benefited from a symbiotic bacteria that passes from mother to child that gives them the equivalent of Level 3 Panimmunity that first appeared 2,000 years ago.
That's probably too early. The history of this timeline diverges basically immediately following the appearance of this thing, what with the population boom in the Americas brought on by failure to die of infections and those diseases that were endemic in the pre-Colombian era (a matter of considerable dispute but just about certainly including tuberculosis, typhus and influenza).

Among other things 2000 years of disrupted American history probably means there *are* no Iroquois to name the timeline after - the Confederacy having been formed in the 12th century and the name itself possibly not pre-dating the 17th.

Of course that may not matter particularly - Infinity is notably sloppy with its naming conventions - but any timeline that has any significant change points in the Americas much before the Middle Ages presents a real worldbuilding problem. You can't realistically use much of anything we know about real American cultures in your effort to design what the ones present on such a line are like, and if you make up stuff from nothing somebody is going complain about your cultural insensitivity or something.
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Old 11-26-2017, 09:16 PM   #2930
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Influenza was not endemic to the Americas (the first recorded case was in the 12th century). The first recorded case of typhus was recorded in Spain in 1489, three years before Columbus sailed. While tuberculosis did exist in the Americas since 17,000 BC, there were very few cases in the archeological record because Native Americans did not domesticate cattle or drink cow's milk (it was existent in bison, but Native Americans did not seem to catch it from the bison that they killed, at least not frequently enough to show up in the archeological record). In pre-Columbian times, the two greatest 'diseases' experienced by Native Americans were iron deficiency and osteoarthritis.

In fact, the only three infectious diseases of consequence that I am aware of that spread in pre-Columbian times are Syphilis, Pinta (a disfiguring skin disease that is a nonlethal relative of Syphilis), and American Trypanosomiasis (which is a protozoan parasite). I really do not think that removing them from the equation would have had dramatic effects on Native American cultural evolution, at least in North America, since all three diseases were unknown in North America before the coming of Columbus.
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