Catalog of the Weird Parallels - Page 81

somecallmetim · 06-18-2018, 08:46 PM

Erebus is a world of apparent perpetual night.

The darkness is global, every corner of the planet seems to be equally dark. It wasn't always so. The current year is 1953, and the last hours of daylight are still remembered by the middle aged who have survived the tumultuous last few decades. On the Winter solstice, 1916, the Sun failed to rise in western Asia. Within 12 hours, the last sunset had passed. And things which had previously hidden in the dark fed openly beneath the darkened skies.

Despite all reason, this world is not frozen or dead. Temperatures dropped dramatically, but not as dramatically as they should have. Temperatures hover at a "night time low" appropriate to the latitude and the "season". These aren't the only anomalies. Weather still occurs, though with some shifts in wind patterns. The moon and planets are still visible, reflecting light from something. Other stars are still visible from Earth.

Agriculture has also not failed totally. Plant life grows as if it were receiving reduced sunlight, but not none. Still, the resulting famines completely destroyed the economies of most nations and resulted in the Great War grinding to a halt. Governments fell worldwide, and apocalyptic cults emerged. At the same time, reports of blood sucking vampires emerged. At first, these were written off as the results of hysterical populace. They was little to distinguish them from those claiming to see angels or men from Venus. But the reports were consistent and increasingly common. Soon it was common knowledge that the walking dead preyed on humanity.

The UK suffered significant famines and resulting rioting, in addition to panic and religious terror. The government has only recently managed to reliably feed the population, and draconian social controls are slowly relaxing. Europe faired somewhat better, though nowhere did especially well. Many colonies attempted to secure their freedom, as the European states fell in on themselves, but they were too precious as a source of food, leading to bloody wars of colonial repression in the place of the trenches of the Great War. Atrocities were numerous, and poison gas is a routine element of warfare, with an arms race between the designers of ever nastier chemical weapons and those who design the filters and breathing apparatuses for soldiers and civilians. The discovery that vampires are particularly vulnerable to certain blister agents has helped legitimize their use.

The US established martial law in the east, but the west was left to largely fend for itself, and those traveling their now speak of strange religious cults and cities openly ruled by the undead. Salt Lake City managed to survive relatively intact, albeit as the capital of a theocratic Utah, but points further west are mostly mysterious. The world as a whole is one of points of electric light, slowly groping to explore the darkness around them.

A decade or two ago, this would have been a hell parallel, but humans are adaptable. A generation has grown up accustomed to the night. Electric lights illuminate most human habitations. Chemical agents and ultraviolet lights have given humans an edge in taking the world back from the dead. And most importantly, a mutant strains of plant life that thrive in the perpetual gloom have been developed. These plants have a chloroplast analogue unknown to Homeline science, that turns their leaves a strange silvery-white.

The vampires of Erebus are organized into an organization known as the "Pavane", familiar to the Cabal. Cabalists suspect a powerful working of vampiric ritual magic was responsible for shrouding the world in darkness. The vampires of this world do possess a powerful affinity for magic controlling shadows. Paralabs is very interested in finding out what happened, making sure it can't be repeated on Homeline, and attempting a possible reversal, but so far have made little progress.

This world is very ontoclasmically active, with strange reality shards having been located in France, Palestine, Mexico, and western Canada, and strange societies forming around them. Historically improbable "witch cults" and ruins that correspond to no known Homeline equivalent pop into existence in the lightless wastes.

Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2 · 06-19-2018, 01:15 AM

Voyeur

This world seemed to be a regular parallel at first, perhaps a decade behind Homeline. But eventually it became one of the most existentially-terrifying worlds known to exist.

All the popular culture runs on parallel lines - "the same but different". Not a single soap opera, slice-of-life movie or TV show, sit-com or rom-com is the same. Instead, they have their own productions. Imported, they found a healthy audience on Homeline.

Then the lawsuits stated coming in.

It turned out that the rich families in a popular Voyeur soap-opera actually existed, and the events of the soap opera had actually happened a decade earlier. The litigants not only sued for defamation of character, they sued for breach of their privacy as well as unlicensed use of their identities.

Then it happened again with another Voyeur soap opera, this time leading to the solving of a decade-old murder case.

Soon there was a flood of litigants who could prove that the persons in a variety of Voyeur entertainments were themselves and the events portrayed had actually happened. (This was especially embarrassing to a number of people who discovered that the travails and tragedies of their lives were the subject of comedy shows in other realities.)

Then a agent in Voyeur discovered an RPG called Infinite Worlds ...

Voyeur entertainments were quickly taken off the market, the world was restricted, and the researchers at Homeline were having fits. Somehow, it looked like Homeline was a Myth Parallel to Voyeur! Which was impossible, of course! Homeline couldn't possibly be a figment of someone's imagination!

They were real!

Really Real!

Right?

Prince Charon · 06-19-2018, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Voyeur entertainments were quickly taken off the market, the world was restricted, and the researchers at Homeline were having fits. Somehow, it looked like Homeline was a Myth Parallel to Voyeur! Which was impossible, of course! Homeline couldn't possibly be a figment of someone's imagination!

They were real!

Really Real!

Right?

This is good. I'm still grinning.

Ottriman · 06-21-2018, 10:37 AM

Yeah, don't think I've seen this type of meta interaction before.

Tax: Duo (Might need a better name)

This is a pair of connected worldlines where one is a high-fantasy one in which most TL 5+ technology does not work while the other is a science fiction world currently at TL (borderline 9 and 10).

The twist is that whenever a person dies in one of them, they are reincarnated in the other with a fraction of their old memories. This means the two are aware of each other, and have recently tried to build portals between the worlds.

However this is till in the testing stage, additionally recently resurrection was discovered and interacts with this oddly. When a person is brought back from death in one world, the reincarnation in the other world dies to make it happen. For all intents and purposes the two are each others afterlives!

Now things are becoming chaotic as the fantasy side wants to use resurrection to bring back those they lost, but doing so imperils the sci-fi side. Tensions are now reaching a boiling point, and full parachronics could cause a terrifying war.

No one is even entirely sure what happens when people cross over without dying or whether that's even possible, but they are determined to find out!

PTTG · 06-21-2018, 10:43 AM

Wait so what would the war constitute? Going over and shooting someone stands a good chance of making an angry infiltrator on your own world...

ericthered · 06-21-2018, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PTTG

Wait so what would the war constitute? Going over and shooting someone stands a good chance of making an angry infiltrator on your own world...

But it makes them an infant, so they're removed from the fight for a decade or more.

You could get some very odd generational waves going.

AlexanderHowl · 06-21-2018, 12:21 PM

Mystic-7

Mystic-7 is a Q7 timeline that was discovered 10 years ago, in the local year 1810. At first, Mystic-7 only appeared to be an historical oddity because the European colonization of the Americas failed due to the Native American populations being inexplicably immune to European diseases, but it did not seem to be dangerous as its technology lagged behind the technology of Homeline by 200 years. With a population of 1 billion people, and a TL5 technology, it seemed to be just another backwards timeline that could be exploited by Infinity without difficultly.

The problems started almost as soon as Infinity established its first trading office in the city of Lenape (a trading city that the Algonquian Federation had established in 1600 in order to facilitate trade between the American nations and the European nations). Their agents were captured by the Lenape authorities for being enemy aliens and exposed the existence of the Secret when they were subjected to the Path magic of the Lenape. When Infinity attempted to rescue their agents from the Lenape, the rescuers fell asleep as soon as they entered the city of Lenape and were also captured by the Lenape authorities. It was only when the Lenape authorities sent back one of the agents with a request for diplomatic negotiations that Infinity realized their error, traded several tons of gold to the Lenape authorities for the captured agents, and forbade any communication with Mystic-7.

Since the Lenape incident, Infinity has been carefully monitoring Mystic-7 through their indigenous assets in the European nations, which have yet to catch up with the magical traditions of the Native Americans. Thousands of years of killing anyone capable of magic had reduced the proportion of Europeans capable of using magic to 10% of that of the Native Americans and had destroyed the indigenous European magical traditions. The fact that the African cultures and the Asian cultures had committed similar acts of blindness had been the only reason why the European nations had not suffered any particular disadvantage, but the magic of the nations of the New World makes them immune to the power of the nations of the Old World.

David Johnston2 · 06-21-2018, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Mystic-7

Mystic-7 is a Q7 timeline that was discovered 10 years ago, in the local year 1810. At first, Mystic-7 only appeared to be an historical oddity because the European colonization of the Americas failed due to the Native American populations being inexplicably immune to European diseases, but it did not seem to be dangerous as its technology lagged behind the technology of Homeline by 200 years. With a population of 1 billion people, and a TL5 technology, it seemed to be just another backwards timeline that could be exploited by Infinity without difficultly.

The problems started almost as soon as Infinity established its first trading office in the city of Lenape (a trading city that the Algonquian Federation had established in 1600 in order to facilitate trade between the American nations and the European nations). Their agents were captured by the Lenape authorities for being enemy aliens

Really. What makes them "enemy aliens"? Are they that violently opposed to foreign trade?

DocRailgun · 06-21-2018, 02:00 PM

Seems unlikely. People on Mystic-7 who actually could do magic in the non-NA cultures wouldn't have been killed, they'd have been put to use by the authorities no matter what the culture was. Historically the "witches" who were persecuted across the world were people with no social power and low standing (the old woman who lives in the woods, et cetera) and thus easy to scapegoat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Mystic-7

Since the Lenape incident, Infinity has been carefully monitoring Mystic-7 through their indigenous assets in the European nations, which have yet to catch up with the magical traditions of the Native Americans. Thousands of years of killing anyone capable of magic had reduced the proportion of Europeans capable of using magic to 10% of that of the Native Americans and had destroyed the indigenous European magical traditions. The fact that the African cultures and the Asian cultures had committed similar acts of blindness had been the only reason why the European nations had not suffered any particular disadvantage, but the magic of the nations of the New World makes them immune to the power of the nations of the Old World.

PTTG · 06-21-2018, 02:22 PM

Well, the witches in OTL didn't have magic because nobody in OTL has magic.

Eurasia/Africa might have had good reason to scapegoat magic users. Maybe magic users got a bad reputation for using their mind powers to manipulate people. And regardless, it is easier to scapegoat someone as using powers from the Devil if the person in question clearly actually has supernatural powers.

Alternatively, maybe magic use only appeared once the Bering Strait closed up.

06-18-2018, 08:46 PM	#801
somecallmetim Join Date: Oct 2006	Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels Erebus is a world of apparent perpetual night. The darkness is global, every corner of the planet seems to be equally dark. It wasn't always so. The current year is 1953, and the last hours of daylight are still remembered by the middle aged who have survived the tumultuous last few decades. On the Winter solstice, 1916, the Sun failed to rise in western Asia. Within 12 hours, the last sunset had passed. And things which had previously hidden in the dark fed openly beneath the darkened skies. Despite all reason, this world is not frozen or dead. Temperatures dropped dramatically, but not as dramatically as they should have. Temperatures hover at a "night time low" appropriate to the latitude and the "season". These aren't the only anomalies. Weather still occurs, though with some shifts in wind patterns. The moon and planets are still visible, reflecting light from something. Other stars are still visible from Earth. Agriculture has also not failed totally. Plant life grows as if it were receiving reduced sunlight, but not none. Still, the resulting famines completely destroyed the economies of most nations and resulted in the Great War grinding to a halt. Governments fell worldwide, and apocalyptic cults emerged. At the same time, reports of blood sucking vampires emerged. At first, these were written off as the results of hysterical populace. They was little to distinguish them from those claiming to see angels or men from Venus. But the reports were consistent and increasingly common. Soon it was common knowledge that the walking dead preyed on humanity. The UK suffered significant famines and resulting rioting, in addition to panic and religious terror. The government has only recently managed to reliably feed the population, and draconian social controls are slowly relaxing. Europe faired somewhat better, though nowhere did especially well. Many colonies attempted to secure their freedom, as the European states fell in on themselves, but they were too precious as a source of food, leading to bloody wars of colonial repression in the place of the trenches of the Great War. Atrocities were numerous, and poison gas is a routine element of warfare, with an arms race between the designers of ever nastier chemical weapons and those who design the filters and breathing apparatuses for soldiers and civilians. The discovery that vampires are particularly vulnerable to certain blister agents has helped legitimize their use. The US established martial law in the east, but the west was left to largely fend for itself, and those traveling their now speak of strange religious cults and cities openly ruled by the undead. Salt Lake City managed to survive relatively intact, albeit as the capital of a theocratic Utah, but points further west are mostly mysterious. The world as a whole is one of points of electric light, slowly groping to explore the darkness around them. A decade or two ago, this would have been a hell parallel, but humans are adaptable. A generation has grown up accustomed to the night. Electric lights illuminate most human habitations. Chemical agents and ultraviolet lights have given humans an edge in taking the world back from the dead. And most importantly, a mutant strains of plant life that thrive in the perpetual gloom have been developed. These plants have a chloroplast analogue unknown to Homeline science, that turns their leaves a strange silvery-white. The vampires of Erebus are organized into an organization known as the "Pavane", familiar to the Cabal. Cabalists suspect a powerful working of vampiric ritual magic was responsible for shrouding the world in darkness. The vampires of this world do possess a powerful affinity for magic controlling shadows. Paralabs is very interested in finding out what happened, making sure it can't be repeated on Homeline, and attempting a possible reversal, but so far have made little progress. This world is very ontoclasmically active, with strange reality shards having been located in France, Palestine, Mexico, and western Canada, and strange societies forming around them. Historically improbable "witch cults" and ruins that correspond to no known Homeline equivalent pop into existence in the lightless wastes.

06-19-2018, 01:15 AM	#802
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2 Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: The deep dark haunted woods	Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels *Voyeur* This world seemed to be a regular parallel at first, perhaps a decade behind Homeline. But eventually it became one of the most existentially-terrifying worlds known to exist. All the popular culture runs on parallel lines - "the same but different". Not a single soap opera, slice-of-life movie or TV show, sit-com or rom-com is the same. Instead, they have their own productions. Imported, they found a healthy audience on Homeline. Then the lawsuits stated coming in. It turned out that the rich families in a popular Voyeur soap-opera actually existed, and the events of the soap opera had actually happened a decade earlier. The litigants not only sued for defamation of character, they sued for breach of their privacy as well as unlicensed use of their identities. Then it happened again with another Voyeur soap opera, this time leading to the solving of a decade-old murder case. Soon there was a flood of litigants who could prove that the persons in a variety of Voyeur entertainments were themselves and the events portrayed had actually happened. (This was especially embarrassing to a number of people who discovered that the travails and tragedies of their lives were the subject of comedy shows in other realities.) Then a agent in Voyeur discovered an RPG called *Infinite Worlds* ... Voyeur entertainments were quickly taken off the market, the world was restricted, and the researchers at Homeline were having fits. Somehow, it looked like Homeline was a Myth Parallel to Voyeur! Which was impossible, of course! Homeline couldn't possibly be a figment of someone's imagination! They were real! Really Real! Right? __________________ "When you talk about damage radius, even atomic weapons pale before that of an unfettered idiot in a position of power." - Sam Starfall from the webcomic Freefall

06-21-2018, 10:37 AM	#804
Ottriman Join Date: Apr 2015	Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels Yeah, don't think I've seen this type of meta interaction before. Tax: Duo (Might need a better name) This is a pair of connected worldlines where one is a high-fantasy one in which most TL 5+ technology does not work while the other is a science fiction world currently at TL (borderline 9 and 10). The twist is that whenever a person dies in one of them, they are reincarnated in the other with a fraction of their old memories. This means the two are aware of each other, and have recently tried to build portals between the worlds. However this is till in the testing stage, additionally recently resurrection was discovered and interacts with this oddly. When a person is brought back from death in one world, the reincarnation in the other world dies to make it happen. For all intents and purposes the two are each others afterlives! Now things are becoming chaotic as the fantasy side wants to use resurrection to bring back those they lost, but doing so imperils the sci-fi side. Tensions are now reaching a boiling point, and full parachronics could cause a terrifying war. No one is even entirely sure what happens when people cross over without dying or whether that's even possible, but they are determined to find out!

06-21-2018, 10:43 AM	#805
PTTG Join Date: Feb 2011	Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels Wait so what would the war constitute? Going over and shooting someone stands a good chance of making an angry infiltrator on your own world...

06-21-2018, 12:21 PM	#807
AlexanderHowl Join Date: Feb 2016	Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels Mystic-7 Mystic-7 is a Q7 timeline that was discovered 10 years ago, in the local year 1810. At first, Mystic-7 only appeared to be an historical oddity because the European colonization of the Americas failed due to the Native American populations being inexplicably immune to European diseases, but it did not seem to be dangerous as its technology lagged behind the technology of Homeline by 200 years. With a population of 1 billion people, and a TL5 technology, it seemed to be just another backwards timeline that could be exploited by Infinity without difficultly. The problems started almost as soon as Infinity established its first trading office in the city of Lenape (a trading city that the Algonquian Federation had established in 1600 in order to facilitate trade between the American nations and the European nations). Their agents were captured by the Lenape authorities for being enemy aliens and exposed the existence of the Secret when they were subjected to the Path magic of the Lenape. When Infinity attempted to rescue their agents from the Lenape, the rescuers fell asleep as soon as they entered the city of Lenape and were also captured by the Lenape authorities. It was only when the Lenape authorities sent back one of the agents with a request for diplomatic negotiations that Infinity realized their error, traded several tons of gold to the Lenape authorities for the captured agents, and forbade any communication with Mystic-7. Since the Lenape incident, Infinity has been carefully monitoring Mystic-7 through their indigenous assets in the European nations, which have yet to catch up with the magical traditions of the Native Americans. Thousands of years of killing anyone capable of magic had reduced the proportion of Europeans capable of using magic to 10% of that of the Native Americans and had destroyed the indigenous European magical traditions. The fact that the African cultures and the Asian cultures had committed similar acts of blindness had been the only reason why the European nations had not suffered any particular disadvantage, but the magic of the nations of the New World makes them immune to the power of the nations of the Old World.

06-21-2018, 02:22 PM	#810
PTTG Join Date: Feb 2011	Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels Well, the witches in OTL didn't have magic because nobody in OTL has magic. Eurasia/Africa might have had good reason to scapegoat magic users. Maybe magic users got a bad reputation for using their mind powers to manipulate people. And regardless, it is easier to scapegoat someone as using powers from the Devil if the person in question clearly actually has supernatural powers. Alternatively, maybe magic use only appeared once the Bering Strait closed up.