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Old 12-11-2018, 12:03 AM   #1231
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

A worldline where banestorm activity is dramatically elevated. They are a constant and global phenomenon associated with high winds and clouds, but no increase in precipitation.

There are three general classes of storms, and long-term residents learn to gauge them with ease. The most common have many names, but in english-speaking regions are called something like baneshowers or oz-devils or similar. These small storms can appear without warning and sweep through a given area at least once a week, but are highly localized and unlikely to carry people away. They never affect inanimate objects already on the plane, but they do occasionally leave creatures or small, lose items. They often have "fortean" effects, such as producing a shower of cherry blossoms or broadcasting audible alien radio transmissions.

Less common are proper Banestorms, which are also known by likewise more serious names. They frequently take people and lose items away, and leave behind them larger artifacts, such as a line of thick woodland incongruously placed in a desert. Nonetheless, they don't take structures wholesale, unless their mundane winds turn the building to splinters. They can scar an area as small as ten feet wide and several miles long, or they might spread out and more subtly influence a radius of more than a mile.

Finally there are Great Storms. These serious storms range in scale from a large thunderstorm up to the largest hurricanes (though such large storms happen once a century at best). They might re-write an area wholesale, wiping a city off the map, or replacing it with another, or merge several elseworlds together.

This world is, naturally, scarred with stretches of altered terrain stolen or duplicated from countless other worlds. New York is parted out, with half of it now a number of 20-21st century sections and the rest of the city various stranger things. A good quarter of the city is made of woodland, parks, and new buildings, and what's left includes a section powered by phlogistonite, one only a century after the thaumic engines of Atlantis first arrived, and two great native cities built in the region among others.

London, in comparison, is not nearly so easily described. The biosphere is vibrant, deadly, and awe-inspiring.

The storms are a constant threat... and resource. The only reliable shelter is a sturdy underground structure, or flight.
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Old 12-11-2018, 07:57 PM   #1232
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Good idea. Given that Oz is invoked, did the Banestorm plague start in the twentieth century?
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Old 12-11-2018, 09:18 PM   #1233
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Tarpit-1

This timeline was originally assumed to be a late stone age echo - the first explorers from Infinity observed anatomically modern humans using mature neolithic technology and a few copper items. Then stellar observations put the local time in the mid 1970s. And then the exploration team's high tech gear stopped working.

The first recovery team suffered the same fate as the exploration team - stranded, with nothing more advanced than stone age technology working. Steel would go brittle, water-wheels would break, primitive chemical experiments went badly wrong or simply failed to react as expected. The second recovery team had a psi-jumper, and through her efforts the surviving Infinity agents were brought back to Homeline.

Infinity promptly slapped a no-go order on the timeline and named it Tarpit-1. A short series of follow-up expeditions by psychic and magic dimensional travelers established some of Tarpit-1's ground rules.

Any technological item more sophisticated than TL0 fails to work. This appears to be sabotage by Tarpit's very active spirit world - spirits, inevitably nicknamed "gremlins" take an active interest in high technology and destroy it. The higher the tech, the quicker it attracts their interest. How they determine something is high technology is still unknown; the gremlins are not cooperating with investigators... However, it's been discovered they can be "fooled", and they have a few peculiar blind spots.

Magical warding can protect items from gremlins, though it takes pretty heavy maintenance to keep the wardings up.

Advanced technology that's sufficiently similar to stone age tech seems to evade gremlin notice - notably, advanced ceramics, glasses, and concrete are all ignored, and certain genetically engineered natural fibers are as well. Those few visitors with genetic augmentation have reported no ill effects. This probably doesn't apply to making such items, but no one's tested that yet.

Mental and social technology also appears to evade notice - including writing. Local civilizations have developed quite a few writing systems, most of which appear to be based on clay tablets or knot-and-cord methods.

Breeding and domestication are also overlooked (or encouraged?) by the gremlins.

Infinity has found little reason to go to Tarpit-1 beyond research; the trouble of operating there certainly outweighs the hassle. The Cabal doesn't yet know of it, and it's beyond Centrum's reach.

However. The Chronobahn runs through Tarpit-1, and Reich-5 has already sent an ill-fated expedition into the steppes of the Ukraine...
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Old 12-11-2018, 09:45 PM   #1234
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

The storms have been a long-term fixture on this world, but the present population is largely from 20th-century worldlines, since global populations tend to be highest in those eras, and later eras seem to be exceedingly rare.

"Ozdevils" is, of course, a regional name from the USA/CSA/Columbian Republic/Nordamerikanische Besatzungszone.

I'm reminded of a different worldline which for whatever reason was prone to receiving intentional travelers. This one is different in that there is a nigh-constant rain of surprised travelers, their goods, and more than a few dangerous crosstime species over the whole planet.

One problem with settlements is that they are either underground or they're prone to disappearing in the next Great Banestorm. It's not exactly post-apocalyptic, but it is rough.

Last edited by PTTG; 12-12-2018 at 12:48 AM.
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Old 12-15-2018, 09:14 AM   #1235
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Go watch Over the Garden Wall. The forest named "The Unknown" is a wonderful model for a weird parallel. The subtle low key darkness is really potent, and yet weirdly kid friendly.
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Old 12-15-2018, 03:49 PM   #1236
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Long Day-3

Most Long Day parallels are dead lifeless hell worlds. There are exceptions.

For this world to be functional would be deeply weird. Basically, this world has an axial tilt of 90%, i.e. planetwide each day takes a year. The night would always be antarctic cold. noon would be super tropical and when the thunderstorms would soak the land. The tech level is three to five. Human settlement is always around hot springs.

The parallel is confusing. Both local legendary and physical evidence speaks of a much more advanced society only centuries ago. But plant and animal life seem to have fully adapted to the environmental rigors of the year-long day.

There seem to be more and larger hot springs than on most parallels but fewer earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. As most geologists would tell you, that makes no sense.

The local crops, they get a morning and an afternoon crop, seem to be genetically engineered and would require more advanced genetic engineering than Homeline or Centrum can do. But none of the ancient preserved books are from after 1937. There is no evidence for the pre-catastrophe society getting beyond TL6. Well, none other than the genetically modified crops and the lunar ruins that can be seen through a telescope.
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Old 12-16-2018, 06:57 AM   #1237
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Long Day-7

That this world is biologically stable is brutally weird. The Earth in this world makes one rotation a year. Thus, a day is eternal. Or at least of geological length. There is a small amount of wobble which creates something like seasons.


The Twilight Zones are habitable. There is evidence that the locals came from elsewhere, some other parallel's British Isles, France, Japan, Greece, China, Iran, Tibet, and Italy. Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Manicheism, and various paganisms, survive in an uneasy truce. That any of this could evolve here without other cultures is impossible. The locals have a wide variety of crops including New World crops. All of the crops have been genetically engineered to flourish on this world.

This is a Low Manna world with a few small High Manna areas, probably less than 0.01% of the inhabitable area of the planet. The Tech level is a low 5. The Effective Tech Level is 6 in medicine and a few other small areas.
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Old 12-16-2018, 07:02 AM   #1238
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
There is a small amount of wobble which creates something like seasons.
You don't need the wobble. If the axis is inclined, then during the orbit, the Sun's angle above the horizon will vary: higher in "summer", lower in "winter". That's what produces our seasons.
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Old 12-16-2018, 09:43 AM   #1239
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
You don't need the wobble. If the axis is inclined, then during the orbit, the Sun's angle above the horizon will vary: higher in "summer", lower in "winter". That's what produces our seasons.
Okay, I was going for a slight touch of unevenness. But a smallish axial tilt, between 6 and 12 degrees, would do well enough.
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Old 12-16-2018, 04:21 PM   #1240
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Long Day-3

Most Long Day parallels are dead lifeless hell worlds. There are exceptions.

For this world to be functional would be deeply weird. Basically, this world has an axial tilt of 90%, i.e. planetwide each day takes a year. The night would always be antarctic cold. noon would be super tropical and when the thunderstorms would soak the land. The tech level is three to five. Human settlement is always around hot springs.

The parallel is confusing. Both local legendary and physical evidence speaks of a much more advanced society only centuries ago. But plant and animal life seem to have fully adapted to the environmental rigors of the year-long day.

There seem to be more and larger hot springs than on most parallels but fewer earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. As most geologists would tell you, that makes no sense.

The local crops, they get a morning and an afternoon crop, seem to be genetically engineered and would require more advanced genetic engineering than Homeline or Centrum can do. But none of the ancient preserved books are from after 1937. There is no evidence for the pre-catastrophe society getting beyond TL6. Well, none other than the genetically modified crops and the lunar ruins that can be seen through a telescope.
Does the planet not rotate on its own axis?
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