Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[Prince Charon]

(Not sure if this is quite weird enough for here, but it's rather weirder than average. I'm not posting this to the Alternate Crosstime Organizations thread, mainly because the folk below are in no way organized.)

On this as-yet undiscovered worldline, the mana level overall is very low, but the average Magery level (across the entire human population) is 10! On their own world, this is obviously not noticeable, but unfortunately, some of the local magical styles (RPM variants, with the number of Paths averaging around ten or eleven, though they got as high as eighteen and as low as three) allow one to jump worldlines, leading to exceptionally powerful mages mysteriously appearing in low mana or higher worldlines, and making all sorts of trouble. Analysis of behavior and clothing of these travelers (none of whom have been caught, but several have been witnessed, many of them apparently completely unconcerned about the Secret) suggests that this worldline may have been a close parallel or historical echo of Homeline until fairly recently.

[maximara]

United Dragon States of America, 1915

Current Affairs: The United States mobilizes for the war in Europe
Divergence Point: 1776; The Declaration of Independence uses "intelligent beings" rather then "men"
Western (multipolar), Orthodox (empire), Japanese (empire).
Great Powers: German Reich (dictatorship, CR4-5), British Empire (representative democracy, CR4, CR5 in colonies), Russian Empire (dictatorship, CR5), United States (representative democracy, CR3), Japan (representative democracy, CR4-5)

==Worldline Data==
Tech Level (6+1)^
Mana Level: High Mana in United States; normal mana everywhere else.
Quantum: 6
Infinity Class: Z3
Centrum Zone: Red

==The Coming of Dragons==

The signing of the alternate Declaration of Independence awoke "dragons" one for each state that signed the document. In their "natural" form each dragon is 45 feet long (monstrous) but they only assume this form in battle or when insanely angry. The rest of the time they are man sized.

In terms of personality the dragons are fanatical "radicals" and firmly believe in unity and quickly adopt Dickerson's original Articles of Confederations with some alterations making it more like Homeline's Constitution with a Bill of Rights in structure. The States are less then thrilled but note that there is a section regarding the standing of the states and don't seem concerned with the clause of 'your State Dragon will either leave or weaken to ineffectiveness.' and so go with the document as is.

Since the 13 dragons can't be everywhere they are assigned to where it is believed they will do the most good...which resulted in all of them getting assigned to the Continental Army under Washington. The dragons would use their powers to feed and clothe the army when needed (they can only create organic materials)...which thanks to the way the Continental Congress was printing money turned out to be nearly all the time preventing them from directly participating in the battle.

Things were so bad at Valley Forge that the Dragons were too exhausted to supply all the army and asked Washington if one of them was killed at full size how long would it feed the troops. Appalled at what they were suggesting he asked the Dragons to come up with another option and gave his reluctant consent for them to "borrow" food from the locals.

Eventually the war ended as it did on Homeline in 1781 and then came the issue of paying the army. The Dragons suggest an amendment to fix the mess things were in which was quickly passed being the 11th. The creation of the District of Columbia in 1790 saw the "birth" of a dragon for that region and as a state was added a dragon was "born".

Things progressed as they did on Homeline until the War of 1812 when the US army tried to invade Canada. Thanks to the Dragons of Ohio and New York the army penetrated deep into Canada. The British tried to do multi-pronged attacks but couldn't effectively stop the dragon assisted army. The attempt to invade and burn Washington turned into a rout as the DC dragon demonstrated a previously unseen ability - it breathed fire careful to hit the ground in front of the British troops. Robert Ross showed what might be called insane bravery as he stood alone as the DC dragon towered over him. He unsheathed his sword and formally surrendered.

Stories of this power quickly spread and it became nearly impossible to find anyone willing to fight "a huge fire breathing lizard" Then the New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio Dragons demonstrated the ability to "breath cold so intense it froze the lakes themselves". At which point Britain lost what control over the war it had with people surrendering just on the story there was an army with a State Dragon on its way.

After the war the Dragons along with the rest of the country got the idea of Manifest destiny in their head with expansion happening much as it did on Homeline. During this period one important about the State Dragons came to light - they could only function in the states and areas within a range of about 20 miles of the boarders

Annoyed with the lost of potential fellow dragons thanks to Slavery and with the increasing gyrations to keep the balance in the Senate they decided that announced they they would make as much cotton as fast as possible to encourage the abandonment of slavery by making the slave product effectively worthless.

Their timing was horrid as they announced this on the heels of Lincoln's 1860 election. The South succeeded and quickly saw their dragons take up residence in Washington with the noted exception of the Virginia dragon who went off to the western part of its state. The Virginians quickly found why as that section declared itself independent of Virginia and the CSA and its Dragon promptly renamed herself West Virginia.

Then the Dragon grouped themselves into the Dragon Army and waited hoping that cooler heads would prevail and things could "go back to the way they are supposed to be". The DC Dragon helped funnel supplies to Fort Sumter and was there when the CSA attacked. General P. G. T. Beauregard watched in disbelief as mortar round after mortar round hit a barrier surrounding Fort Sumter never getting to the fort itself. For two days this lasted until having exhausted his ammunition Beauregard was forced to pull back. It quickly became clear what would happen - the dragon army that was was sitting in the North would mobilize and they would not be happy.

Never mind with the announcement the South's main cash crop would be worthless and so the CSA formally surrendered by the end of 1861. Years later it would turn out that the dragons had been bluffing about the amount of cotton they could make though not about their intentions.

Come that reality's version of the Spanish-American war and the Dragons are annoyed that Cuba is too far away though during the Indian war they did found out that an US army base could serve as a focus for any of them...once they were taken to it by normal means. Which still left the matter of establishing a formal army base...the hard way.

The Dragons take their first formal action in politics by begging the Republican Party to nominate Teddy Roosevelt for candidate in the up coming 1912 election by saying they need a strong man for what will come. Concerned that the Dragons would take such an action the GOP follows their wishes resulting in Teddy Roosevelt being the first president to serve three terms and then the Great War begins.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by maximara

United Dragon States of America, 1915

Does anywhere else have dragons? The Chinese, at least, will be trying really hard to awaken theirs. The Welsh will want theirs to throw off the English, and many other places will be looking for them.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Does anywhere else have dragons? The Chinese, at least, will be trying really hard to awaken theirs. The Welsh will want theirs to throw off the English, and many other places will be looking for them.

The countries that formed Simón Bolívar's Gran Colombia got dragons but they were pale versions of those seen in the United States being at best 15 feet long and spending most of their time trying to hold things together. The dragons got notably weaker as things deteriorated until when Gran Colombia fell apart in 1831 they simply disappeared. It is unclear if they dissolved back into what ever dragons come from or if they were waiting to come forth to galvanize the people. Nobody is exactly eager to find out and so would be dictators tend to have "accidents".

Right now the only theory that has been clobbered together is to get a State Dragon requires four things:

1) Must be a colony or subject nation.
2) They must rebel based on unfair treatment by their "mother" country
3) They must declare that all intelligent beings are "created equal"
4) The government set up must be a repressive democracy (or at least leading that way)

The Chinese and Wales fail step 1 out of the gate (heck the heir to the English throne is the Prince/Princess of Wales). However London took dragon reports out of Ireland related to the potato famine of 1845 very seriously... enough that food literally pored into the country and a total restructuring of Ireland was done to shift power back to the locals.

The outcome of the very brief American Civil war has made Europe nearly paranoid to the point that any report of a dragon in a colony or subject state results in an immediate reevaluation of how the locals are treated.

However, the non appearance of any dragons during the Opium Wars convinced Europe that as long as the nation involved is not a colony or "subject" nation everything else is on the table.

[PTTG]

In 1959, researchers in France develop a personal teleporter device. Outtimers would recognize it as a form of eccentric psionotech, but locals consider it purely conventional, if amazing, technology.

Teleporter booths are even now being installed all around the planet, and are being integrated into the space program. At about 15 kilojoules per kilogram per 100,000 kilometer of travel, and operating at light speed, the devices are shockingly efficient... in theory. Due to current technical limitations, the effective floor for distance is something like 100,000km, so even changing floors in a building requires the same energy as traveling to the opposite side of the planet.

The machine itself requires a few pieces of equipment that cost $10,000 ($1500 in money at the time) per installation, regardless of size. In addition, the machine requires an additional $200 ($30 in 1960 dollars) per kg of capacity... again, these are limited by the technology somewhat; it's expected that prices will drop substantially over time.

The current date is 1968. Teleporter stations are finally leaving the prototyping stage, and it's already possible to zap across the Atlantic for $100 in GURPS/modern (~$23.50 nominal).

Fun to explore in the early '70s, but also fun to imagine the 1990s and onward.

[Ottriman]

Conspiracy

This timeline resembles our own on the surface, but underneath the hood things are very different. It all began when agents got into trouble and encountered members of a dastardly conspiracy to place lizardfolk from dinosaur times among the populace.

The lizardman agent asked simply "Which conspiracy do you belong to?" And from there, everything became super strange. So apparently there's several different competing secret conspiracies, and those are just the ones the lizardmen know of!

To people of this world, secretive outsiders arriving from another world and conspiring to keep that a secret is practically just Tuesday. It's not something worth worrying over or considering all that strange.

Maybe everything is done via conspiracy on this world!? Or is it? They are of course cinematically competent at ruling the world and hiding from others. So the different secret conspiracies are mostly unaware of each other!

Perhaps the place is so saturated with contradictory conspiracies that they are effectively powerless?

This bears investigation.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Ottriman

Conspiracy

This timeline resembles our own on the surface, but underneath the hood things are very different. It all began when agents got into trouble and encountered members of a dastardly conspiracy to place lizardfolk from dinosaur times among the populace.

The lizardman agent asked simply "Which conspiracy do you belong to?" And from there, everything became super strange. So apparently there's several different competing secret conspiracies, and those are just the ones the lizardmen know of!

To people of this world, secretive outsiders arriving from another world and conspiring to keep that a secret is practically just Tuesday. It's not something worth worrying over or considering all that strange.

Maybe everything is done via conspiracy on this world!? Or is it? They are of course cinematically competent at ruling the world and hiding from others. So the different secret conspiracies are mostly unaware of each other!

Perhaps the place is so saturated with contradictory conspiracies that they are effectively powerless?

This bears investigation.

Minus the lizard men and other outtimers, isn't that the timeline Stopwatch is trying to bend their timeline into? One where everything is a sinister conspiracy to bring the grey oppressive bureaucracy of their Absolute Now? Where nothing is as it seems, and anything that seems to promote freedom, individuality, democracy, etc. is just a cynical front?

While Timepiece is trying to make history actually what it looks like, and generally promote freedom, individuality, democracy, etc. Or so Timepiece claims, anyway.

Of course with dozens of different conspiracies, I am now picturing a job fair for conspiracies, but how could that work?

[PTTG]

Null-Geography:

Krakatoa's 1880s eruption unleashed a wave of thick smoke and steam that enveloped the planet over the course of days. Though the smoke settled out, the fog remained, and in this fog, navigation became strange.

In essence, travel between any two points became unpredictable. It's usually possible to travel safely between two points in a city or town, but past a nebulous distance, everything is essentially random. Travelers cross about 50 miles of thickly shrouded, obscured terrain with few signs of humanity -- mainly any road they were traveling on -- before encountering some other settlement. Which settlement they arrive at has no bearing on the place they started, the road they traveled, or any previous travelers.

A party of travelers aught to stay within sight of one another, if they want to make it to the same place...

[adm]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

...Of course with dozens of different conspiracies, I am now picturing a job fair for conspiracies, but how could that work?

Have you seen 4Chan?

[Ottriman]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Minus the lizard men and other outtimers, isn't that the timeline Stopwatch is trying to bend their timeline into? One where everything is a sinister conspiracy to bring the grey oppressive bureaucracy of their Absolute Now? Where nothing is as it seems, and anything that seems to promote freedom, individuality, democracy, etc. is just a cynical front?

While Timepiece is trying to make history actually what it looks like, and generally promote freedom, individuality, democracy, etc. Or so Timepiece claims, anyway.

Of course with dozens of different conspiracies, I am now picturing a job fair for conspiracies, but how could that work?

Originally Posted by adm

Have you seen 4Chan?

I left the tone kind of open there for others to pounce on and extrapolate for themselves. What I had pictured for myself was mostly a parody/tongue in cheek thing.

So for example for a conspiracy job fair, there would be a seemingly normal job fair but half or more of the recruiters are part of some conspiracy. And the different conspiracies only know of some of the different conspiracies and think the rest are "straight men" (read: not part of a conspiracy).

The different conspiracies would have these grand sinister plans, only for those to never truly reach fruition due to sheer secret competition and comedic unlucky interruption from the few straight men that actually exist.

But I left things open for other more sinister takes.

Another comedic aspect that might be played up would be if every "straight man" that the conspiracies thought they had under their thumbs were actually aware and only humoring them. A meta-conspiracy to humor the other conspiracies and make them feel like they're in charge while running the world normally in a non-conspiratorial manner.