Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[Flyndaran]

The idea that of an effective genocide of those that had any powers we would define as magic seems unlikely.
So witches were murdered. That leaves scholarly wizards, and sorcerers to keep working. Sure, we know they're all fundamentally the same. But they don't.

[TGLS]

I'm pretty sure Infinity has a simple test for magic that Scouts can do.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by TGLS

I'm pretty sure Infinity has a simple test for magic that Scouts can do.

The problem is that "magic" is a catchall word that covers many different possible things that have little to do with each other except for not working in the real world. It would be cheap easy to equip them with rocks that glow in normal or higher mana worlds but there are spirit based or lovecraftian magic systems that don't give a rats ass about mana.

But still...a bunch of Europeans show up in a city specifically set up as a trade enclave for Europeans with nothing on their mind but trading. Why the irrational hostility?

[AlexanderHowl]

Parachronics disturbs the spiritual forces that underlie the Path Magic of Mystic-7. Anyone who is from another timeline is automatically identifiable as alien because they lack the proper spiritual resonance. And the Lenape authorities were not exactly hostile, they did not kill the Infinity agents, they just captured them so that they could learn what they were and why the spirits of their world did not like them. When they discovered the problem, they tried to open diplomatic relations and traded back the captives.

Genocide is a strong term for the African and Eurasian elimination of mages. If over the course of thousands of years, the practitioners of magic are executed or forced into celibacy for a few centuries, a genetic magical trait will fade from the population. It is not extinct, it is just that the population of mages stopped being sufficient to support any magical tradition around 500 years ago, and magic stopped being a factor in the Old World. By the 1500s, when the Native Americans were devesrating European cities with blizzards and tornados, the Europeans lacked any magical defenses. Since then, the European powers have been recreating the European traditions and trying to breed more mages, but they lack a scientific understanding of genetics that would allow for efficient selective breeding.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Parachronics disturbs the spiritual forces that underlie the Path Magic of Mystic-7. Anyone who is from another timeline is automatically identifiable as alien because they lack the proper spiritual resonance. And the Lenape authorities were not exactly hostile, they did not kill the Infinity agents, they just captured them so that they could learn what they were and why the spirits of their world did not like them. When they discovered the problem, they tried to open diplomatic relations and traded back the captives.
.

The Lenap defined them as enemy aliens and held them for ransom. That's hostile.

[AlexanderHowl]

Hm, how else would you deal with secret aliens from another world who were committing espionage?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Hm, how else would you deal with secret aliens from another world who were committing espionage?

Espionage? They were trading. In a zone set aside for trade with foreigners which is what they were. Now if I were a government official who learned that the new traders who turned up were mysterious aliens I'd certainly have them watched. But I'd handle them with exquisite care like any possibly dangerous but not obviously hostile unknown.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Mystic-7

M

What makes this "Weird"? A powerful and potentially dangerous alternate but not really "weird".

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

What makes this "Weird"? A powerful and potentially dangerous alternate but not really "weird".

Point to Fred.

Mystic-& isn't "weird" per se. it's just another parallel with distinctive magic rules.

A WEIRD parallel follows ...

Lagomorph

This appears to be a perfectly normal timeline, currently at 1910. It seems perfectly normal, a standard near-echo ... at first.

On the night of the full moon, the entire population are revealed to be wererabbits. All humans change into rabbits during the three nights of the full moon. The next day they turn back with no memory of the experience.

Humans of this world believe that they all fall into a hypnotic trance under the fuill moon (many believe it so ardently that they can be entranced by a picture of the full moon!). The housepets of this world fortunately recognize their humans by scent (at least most of them do).

Of course, photography is approaching the piont where cameras will begin to be used to capture those Full Moon Mystery Nights. Then the population will have to start doing some serious thinking ...


So it's a normal parallel, except that three nights a month the entire planet becomes a LARP version of Bunnies and Burrows. That's weird.

[Astromancer]

Try a Broken Story world, in The Incredible Umbrella the protagonist travels to a universe based on rough drafts and rejected plotlines and revisions. The stories aren't completed or worked out but the characters still try to live out their busted distorted stories.