New Reality Seeds

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The ICops of course. And it totally makes sense the US government would trust them with the job instead of raising their own parachronic security forces. Doesn't it?

But the I-Cops (and the US equivalent) would have to have agents on every corresponding point to the White House in every Q5 timeline. And the White House is not the only high value target. For example, North Korea would just have to pace an aircraft battle group on Homeline with a ship on another timeline and send over a drone with a nuke when its path intersects with the target. Within a moment, $20 billion of military hardware is vaporized and 12,000 military personnel are dead. It does not take that many crosstime attacks to escalate to WW III on Homeline.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

And the White House is not the only high value target. For example, North Korea would just have to pace an aircraft battle group on Homeline with a ship on another timeline and send over a drone with a nuke when its path intersects with the target. Within a moment, $20 billion of military hardware is vaporized and 12,000 military personnel are dead. It does not take that many crosstime attacks to escalate to WW III on Homeline.

It does not take many ballistic missile attacks to escalate to WW III either. Building a conveyer is apparently somewhat easier than building a ballistic missile, but not a lot. This is only an issue to the extent an attack by conveyer is more anonymous - not really harder to defend against, despite a lot of work on it ballistic missiles are still next to impossible to intercept too - and I'm doubtful it is if you use a nuke. A conventional car bomb maybe.

It's also worth remembering that since it isn't relevant to any *cross time* adventure plots we don't really know what defenses if any Homeline governments have against conveyers. A defense system that causes one trying to materialize in restricted space to end up in Vanish wouldn't matter a bit to anything in the published material if it cost enough (or didn't work on lines that couldn't build projectors so Infinity has basically no use for it off Homeline). If you are trying to make the setting make sense you really will need people to have parachronic detection and defense technologies they haven't necessarily shared with Infinity.

[Astromancer]

According to the book I'm reading, John Fisher had planed to get Margaret Beaufort declared a saint. This is rather wild, Henry VIII's grandmother might have been declared a saint.

Try this campaign. Catholics in late Elizabethan England are trying to convince people that they can be Catholic and loyal. Elizabeth is inclined to allow this, until groups of harebrained fools try to kill her, then everyone panics for awhile. That much is like our history. Mean while, John Fisher had escaped to France and Henry VIII couldn't kill him. He published his biography of Margaret Beaufort and the pope later advanced her to the status of Beatus. Now proof of a miracle is needed to allow Margaret Beaufort to become a saint.

The Catholics are trying to find that miracle in England. Meanwhile protestants hold that the age of miracles has past. Thus finding a miracle and declaring a woman who was the mother and grand mothers of English monarchs a saint would pose a problem. The PCs could be either trying to find a miracle, prevent the finding of a miracle, calm everyone down so no one gets killed, create a phony miracle in hopes of reward, or simply record the chaos for an out time symposia on religious violence.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by malloyd

It does not take many ballistic missile attacks to escalate to WW III either. Building a conveyer is apparently somewhat easier than building a ballistic missile, but not a lot. This is only an issue to the extent an attack by conveyer is more anonymous - not really harder to defend against, despite a lot of work on it ballistic missiles are still next to impossible to intercept too - and I'm doubtful it is if you use a nuke. A conventional car bomb maybe.

I always though of conveyors like nuclear weapons, in terms of difficult to make - while difficult to build, the big issue is getting the scientific know-how. And Infinity control parachronic know-how a lot better than the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I think the creators of Infinite Worlds intentionally wanted to parallel parachronics and nukes. The fear isn't states using parachronics in war, but terrorists - like how IRL we're more worried about terrorists getting nukes than even North Korea. North Korea has nukes and, it seems like, missiles that could reach the U.S., but is constrained by the response to using them.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

Victorian England had a strong republican movement in the midcentury period. Basically Victoria morbidity and reactionary politics took away respecy for the monarchy. In our world the Prince of Wales got desperately sick and sentimentality kicked in. On this Q6 world it happened differently. The Prince never got sick and got into a nasty sex scandal.

The monarchy stayed unpopular long enough to convince Britain's elites that it will have to go. Centrum is freaked. Sure they've no use for monarchs, and Victoria was a deadweight, but what will losing the monarchy do to the Empire?

Centrum agents are acting badly. Some seem to think a few well placed assassinations will fix everything. The Cabal gets wind of this. An early death for Victoria would foul up their plans. They reach out to Homeline.

Can the PCs keep Victoria and her kids alive? What about the Cabal's motivations? It is March of 1888 in this world, is Red Jack part of the Cabal's plans?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The monarchy stayed unpopular long enough to convince Britain's elites that it will have to go. Centrum is freaked. Sure they've no use for monarchs, and Victoria was a deadweight, but what will losing the monarchy do to the Empire?

Why would it do anything? The establishment of the Third Republic didn't do anything in particular to the French empire after all. Centrum might even see it as a potentially huge step forward - if it could somehow be manipulated to allow some representation of the colonies in the new legislature....

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Why would it do anything? The establishment of the Third Republic didn't do anything in particular to the French empire after all. Centrum might even see it as a potentially huge step forward - if it could somehow be manipulated to allow some representation of the colonies in the new legislature....

Centrum isn't progressive, although they can look that way. Victoria was a major force for stability. Centrum has little use for an early WWI that might end the age of empires early.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I always though of conveyors like nuclear weapons, in terms of difficult to make - while difficult to build, the big issue is getting the scientific know-how. And Infinity control parachronic know-how a lot better than the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I think the creators of Infinite Worlds intentionally wanted to parallel parachronics and nukes. The fear isn't states using parachronics in war, but terrorists - like how IRL we're more worried about terrorists getting nukes than even North Korea. North Korea has nukes and, it seems like, missiles that could reach the U.S., but is constrained by the response to using them.

There's an alternate for you.

Officially, Kruschev-1 is one of the nuclear holocaust worlds - a Q5 parallel. Sometime in the Cold War, probably local year 1967, things went hot and there were no survivors. The worldline is heavily restricted, and mostly ignored; there's nothing worth exploiting there what with all the fallout. The current local year is 2012.

The truth is considerably worse, at least in Infinity's eyes. The first scouts on Kruschev-1 found the irradiated remains of a projector in Mumbai. Further investigation revealed that Kruschev-1 developed parachronic travel in the early '60s. It spread, quickly, to all the major powers, and the Cold War became a parachronic Cold War. As far as Infinity can tell, Kruschev-1 was only able to discover a dozen or fewer worldlines, and exploited only a couple before one side initiated a cross-time nuclear strike. The resulting war destroyed Kruschev-1 and appears to have wiped out all of its colonies.

Infinity would like to believe that's the end of things, but there a number of nagging questions:

• Were there any survivors? Worse, were there surviving colonies with cross-time capabilities?
• Was the war that destroyed Kruschev-1 actually started by normal tensions, or did another cross-time power engineer it?
• Did Kruschev-1 actually develop parachronics on its own, or did someone leak the Secret? The timing is difficult to work out. The details of Kruschev-1 parachronics tech are still to be worked out from the remaining evidence, but in broad strokes it looks very similar to Homeline's.

Among those who know the secret of Kruschev-1, there are further theories that tend to come to mind.

• First, was Kruschev-1 one of the first worlds Van Zandt discovered? If so, its history and its fate after discovering parachronics are the secret that persuaded the UN to create Infinity Unlimited, in hopes of avoiding the same.
• Second, was Homeline's parachronic technology is not in fact an invention of Van Zandt, but the result of explorers or refugees from Kruschev-1? One of them might have been Van Zandt himself...
• Third, that if the second theory is true, was the nuclear war triggered not by a national power, but by a rogue parachronics engineer who wanted to cover his tracks, prevent pursuit, and set up his own cross-time empire? This particular theory is probably the result of paranoia. Probably.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Centrum isn't progressive, although they can look that way.

It isn't. But it is egalitarian on a group level. Centrum doesn't want an empire (a bunch of distinct peoples governed by a metropol), it wants a monoculture. At some point those peoples must be brought into the power structures and made not-distinct, and Centrum knows it.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

There's an alternate for you.

Officially, Kruschev-1 is one of the nuclear holocaust worlds - a Q5 parallel. Sometime in the Cold War, probably local year 1967, things went hot and there were no survivors. The worldline is heavily restricted, and mostly ignored; there's nothing worth exploiting there what with all the fallout. The current local year is 2012.

The truth is considerably worse, at least in Infinity's eyes. The first scouts on Kruschev-1 found the irradiated remains of a projector in Mumbai. Further investigation revealed that Kruschev-1 developed parachronic travel in the early '60s. It spread, quickly, to all the major powers, and the Cold War became a parachronic Cold War. As far as Infinity can tell, Kruschev-1 was only able to discover a dozen or fewer worldlines, and exploited only a couple before one side initiated a cross-time nuclear strike. The resulting war destroyed Kruschev-1 and appears to have wiped out all of its colonies.

Infinity would like to believe that's the end of things, but there a number of nagging questions:

• Were there any survivors? Worse, were there surviving colonies with cross-time capabilities?
• Was the war that destroyed Kruschev-1 actually started by normal tensions, or did another cross-time power engineer it?
• Did Kruschev-1 actually develop parachronics on its own, or did someone leak the Secret? The timing is difficult to work out. The details of Kruschev-1 parachronics tech are still to be worked out from the remaining evidence, but in broad strokes it looks very similar to Homeline's.

Among those who know the secret of Kruschev-1, there are further theories that tend to come to mind.

• First, was Kruschev-1 one of the first worlds Van Zandt discovered? If so, its history and its fate after discovering parachronics are the secret that persuaded the UN to create Infinity Unlimited, in hopes of avoiding the same.
• Second, was Homeline's parachronic technology is not in fact an invention of Van Zandt, but the result of explorers or refugees from Kruschev-1? One of them might have been Van Zandt himself...
• Third, that if the second theory is true, was the nuclear war triggered not by a national power, but by a rogue parachronics engineer who wanted to cover his tracks, prevent pursuit, and set up his own cross-time empire? This particular theory is probably the result of paranoia. Probably.

Great way to bring in a minor but deadly foe. Limited abilities but with a deadly sting. May be hiding within your own organization or not.

I could see the survivors of a failed parachronomic colony discovering a Homeline colony. As people from a near contemporary world they could be excellent infiltrators. Heck, have them take out a crosstime human trafficking ring and claim not to know what worlds they're from. They could join the anti-human trafficking squad and become respected allies of the PCS.