Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

If only the mothers know and many women die in child birth, especially at TL 4 and below... Also I'm sure many women would lie about horrible destinies to protect their kids.
"Of course honey, just remember, that before age 20, you're going to be mauled to death by a bear... sleep tight."

Only the mother knows for sure. Her dreams sometimes are a component to calculating destiny.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Patchwork Q6

Love it. I have a hunch that this NASA is engaged in a naval war with some kind of insectoid martian foe...

[simply Nathan]

Decade
Time seems to flow normally from day to day or month to month, but no political, economic, or even aging shifts happen except once a decade. Every ten years, suddenly everyone is ten years older (young couples now have small children, who a decade from now will be teenagers, and a decade later still will be adults in their own right). People don't even have ages expressed in years, they at most might bring up how many decades ago they came into existence.

Common Law marriages are more common, as "suddenly babies" seems to care about the couple living together leading up to the decade shift more than about them engaging in various acts.

And it's always 199X whenever Infinity sends a team there, and usually they are gone no more than a month on Homeline's side. It might be a long string of shifting echoes...

[PTTG]

Neat idea! That opens up a delightful can of worms about time manipulation.

Elevation: Time passes at homeline normal at sea level. Time is slowed by a factor derived from the altitude. (Specifically, 1-([Elevation in feet]/50000)^9), as a ratio to sea level. This results in something like the following:

Everest		29029	0.04%
Denali		20310	0.92%
		15000	4.04%
La Paz		11913	8.63%
Mammoth Lake	7920	21.18%
		5000	38.74%
		3500	52.04%
Burj Khalifa	2722	60.42%
		2500	63.02%
		1200	80.36%
		500	91.35%
		25	99.55%
Peir		7	99.87%
		1	99.98%
Sea Level	0	100.00%

If you were to spend just a day at the peak of Everest (disregarding travel time and the slowdown of the climb,) outside observers would think you took almost seven years! Note also that this equation suggests that if one were to use an airplane to fly to 50,000 feet, you would at very least achieve zero forward motion in time.

Despite all this, weather works, time seems to pass in space, and in fact, outside of the human realm, there aren't any weird additional effects. The knock-on effects only seem to apply to people and their edifices.

The society of this realm is early TL 6 in a number of ways. However, anyplace above 1200 feet is notably slower than the rest of the world, and it's only getting more obvious as transportation gets faster. It's not just social conservatism... when a king for four generations back comes down from a long journey and finds his country has become a republic in his absence, he might not take it well...

In testing the mathematics of this, I found that the fastest recorded trip from base camp at 17,000 feet to the summit (8 hours) would take 240 days in coastal time! Those who climb mountains are committing to a long, long trip.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Elevation: Time passes at homeline normal at sea level. Time is slowed by a factor derived from the altitude. (Specifically, 1-(B16/50000)^9), in feet.

What happens below sea level? And is it different underwater than on land?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

In testing the mathematics of this, I found that the fastest recorded trip from base camp at 17,000 feet to the summit (8 hours) would take 240 days in coastal time! Those who climb mountains are committing to a long, long trip.

If nonhuman stuff doesn't change, they're committing suicide. Somewhere around 8,000 feet they freeze to death from heat escaping faster than their metabolism can keep up with. Neglecting that, at some point they slow down so much something will eat them, their surface microorganisms nothing else appearing. And of course there is the difficulty of doing something tricky like mountain climbing with the light (and temperatures) pulsing from noon to midnight every few minutes.

Messing with time flow rates tends to work only when you don't push the logic very hard - having a formula like this is begging for your players to pick it apart like that.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by malloyd

If nonhuman stuff doesn't change, they're committing suicide. Somewhere around 8,000 feet they freeze to death from heat escaping faster than their metabolism can keep up with. Neglecting that, at some point they slow down so much something will eat them, their surface microorganisms nothing else appearing. And of course there is the difficulty of doing something tricky like mountain climbing with the light (and temperatures) pulsing from noon to midnight every few minutes.

Messing with time flow rates tends to work only when you don't push the logic very hard - having a formula like this is begging for your players to pick it apart like that.

By "human realm," and "humans and their edifices," I basically meant: "this was put in place by a god who made sure everything else still works regardless. Don't think too hard."

Originally Posted by Varyon

What happens below sea level? And is it different underwater than on land?

Given the equation I created, you'd have to go down a thousand feet to see another 10% change. I'm willing to go with it

[David Johnston2]

Lilith: A world where men exist only as myths. It is in a rough approximation of the 16th century The dominant religion in Europa is Marianism, directed at God's alleged daughter and they are in the middle of their own Age of Exploration and colonialism. Tuetonia is experiencing a Protestant reformation. A maniacal Ivana the Cruel has recently united the Rosyan Empire. Yamato is in the middle of a fierce war of unification. There are differences. Albiona has not broken away from the Mother Church and it doesn't look as if it is going to be as aggressive in displacing the natives in North Columbia (what they call North America). What makes this a truly weird parallel of course is the issue of reproduction. Pregnancy seems to happen spontaneously and the offspring are not clones of the mother.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Ooh, I like...but my namesakes are already used within the IW setting. May I suggest 'Mosaic'?

That's a good one. Would Tatterdemalion be any good?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Only the mother knows for sure. Her dreams sometimes are a component to calculating destiny.



Love it. I have a hunch that this NASA is engaged in a naval war with some kind of insectoid martian foe...

Among others, or exclusively, it's your game. Myself, I want that scene were Scheherazade and Aladdin go into Rick's American Café.

[PTTG]

Daisy-1

A circular chain of 7 echoes of (insert an interesting date) which are apparently linked along the international date line. It's unclear -- perhaps impossible to determine -- when the portals formed, because anytime someone sailed across the date line from Daisy-1A to Daisy-1B, that same person sailed from Daisy-1B to Daisy-1C!

Without crosstime travel, it's all very stable and almost elegant. Of course, as soon as even the most trivial interaction occurs, things are going to break in a breathtaking fashion... albeit rather slower if it predates Pacific travel.

What dates would be most interesting?

EDIT: And if you want it really interesting, have Daisy-1A on Q5, Daisy-1B on Q6, and so on.