Transhuman in Lost Worlds

[Mgellis]

I noticed, in Infinite Worlds: Lost Worlds, a reference to the Transhuman timeline (p. 16). I'm assuming this is the Transhuman Space universe, but what year is it supposed to be? 2027? Anyone know?

Mark

[Pomphis]

No, but as Combine is in it´s past (as seen from Ogre), I would assume that this is true for Transhuman as well.

[Astromancer]

I think they decided to limit worlds technologically advanced over Homeline and Centrum. Caliph and Grensbeck were enough. Still, a Cyberpunk-3, which is basically THS, would be fun. Put it in Quantuum6 and watch the fight begin.

(Cyberpunk-1 is a world where dramatic advances in brain/computer interfaces took place in the late 1970's. It's now 2005 and neural jacks linked up to cell-phones provide mechanical telepathy to millions. Cyberpunk-2 is the Metropolis inspired alternitive Ken Hite described in The Hand of Clio's Nightmares!)

[tratclif]

When Lost Worlds came out, I looked at the Transhuman Space timeline. Nothing really interesting happens in TS before 2027. If I were writing up a Reality Transuman, I'd go through TS for Neat Stuff to use in an Earth-based campaign -- AIs, bioroids, parahumans, maybe infosocialism -- then backfill in a far-parallel alternate history.

[Mailanka]

Personally, I'd just keep THS at 2100. I like the idea of the Infinity Patrol being flabbergasted by cyberdolls, xoxes and bioroids.

[nick012000]

Personally, if I was going to run a THS/Infinite Worlds crossover, here's how I'd do it.

The PCs are a bunch of snoopers on Aletheia Station. Reporters, corporate or nanosocialist spies, conspiracy theorists, the chronically curious, whatever. The group's preferably a mixture of all of them. In any case, they hear rumors about weird things happening on Hawking Station, and they decide to attempt to infiltrate it to find out what's going on.

Cue the first adventure, with them breaking in and uncovering some of the mystery. Noone knows it yet, but the attempts at creating the computer made out of spacetime and "flatten" spacetimes "fizzyness" to get it to work has been releasing an increasing amount of oz particles.

In any case, the lights occasionally flicker ominously, they see tentacles scooting around the corner, and the base AI's gone somewhat rogue. They make their way into the facility, and eventually arrive at the black hole chamber right as the oz particles reach a critical concentration and create a banestorm.

The PCs get sucked into Freidrich, and figure out they're not on their Earth pretty quick. They find evidence of the Nazis, and with any luck, they'll realize that if the interuniversal Nazis got there, they ought to be capable of getting ahold of whatever means of interuniversal travel they've got, and use it to get back home.

Cue confrontations with the local Nazi groups, and the PCs eventually attacking and overcoming the local Kerne. With the knowledge gained from it, they could probably genetically engineer themselves psychic dimensional shifting powers. If not, then they can wait for the next shipment, attack it, and infiltrate Reich-5 to get one of them face-raped by the demon the Nazis have.

Cue a shift to the United States of Lizardia. They hopefully make relatively peaceful contact with the Neo-Troodon natives, but unfortunately for then, the Nazis found out about the attack on their base and are chasing them. There's another confrontation to stop the Nazis from attempting to take over Lizardia (and probably take down wards preventing them from escaping), and then they're off again.

This time, they wind up on Yrth, and discover psychic dimensional shifting doesn't work. If they've gotten one of their number face-raped, this isn't much of a problem. The Nazis aren't going to give up that easily; they know that if the PCs get back to their homeworld, they'll be in for trouble when another interdimensional group gets access to their technology.

Cue another confrontation with the Nazis, while they probably have to find a native wizard skilled enough in Gate magic to create a portal home for them. They'd recognize the Banestorms of Yrth as being the same sort of thing as the event that sent them to Freidrich.

Once the Nazis are dealt with, the Wizard sends them home, and they arrive back in Hawking Station, and discover that things have only been intensifying since they'd gone away. Hopefully, though, they'll be capable of providing an explanation of what happened, and once the bigwigs realize what's going on, they'll look at things in Hawking Station a bit more closely.

Hawking Station is, by this point, a High Mana Zone, with the area around the black hole being Very High Mana. Aletheia Station and any of its satellites are Normal Mana. The rest of the Solar System was No Mana, though there might be Low Mana around the other primordial black holes.

The Sixth Wave begins shortly afterwards, and the first spells invented are likely to be of the Gate, Enchantment, and Technological Colleges. Adapting the Gate spells from Magic to sense, manipulate, and create Banestorms is probably first on their agenda. The TSA will almost certainly rig a Create Portal item up to a fusion reactor and begin spewing oz particles all over the place. Once they do, China will. Once China does, the other Great powers most likely will for fear of being left behind, save perhaps the EU. They seem likely to worry about possible side effects of unknown magical particles being released into the atmosphere, and might well delay deployment until studies are done to prove its safety. The FDA's likely to do the same, but that probably won't stop isolate communities from doing it themselves and spewing oz particles all over the American countryside.

Another thing they're likely to do shortly afterwards is invent a process of creating Mana Nexus Crystals; they're basically Golems with Mana Enhancer (Area Effect), No Legs (Aerial), no ST bonus (and probably a hefty ST penalty), and No Manipulators. A 0 point cost template means any character with an Ally can get one basically for free, points-wise.

As all this is going on, Centrum and Homeline are busily infiltrating the rapidly magiteching society, and arguments over whether or not to attack the Nazis gets underway. Sporadic attacks by the Duncanites blow the Raven-SS's cover, and Reich-5 begins a massive uparmament program to acquire Living Space from its neighbors.

The Reich-5 Japanese Empire attempts to link up with its counterpart in Shikaku-Mon, much to the dismay of Homeline. Shikaku-Mon Japanese probably rejects them after frenetic adventuring by the PCs and Timeline agents, though the Swedish join right up with the Germans. The four powers there begin developing parachronic technology in their own right, and things just keep spinning out of control.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by nick012000

Personally, if I was going to run a THS/Infinite Worlds crossover, here's how I'd do it.

[snip lots of good silly fun]

... and things just keep spinning out of control.

Things spining out of control indeed! I'd place Cyberpunk-3 in QUANTUUM 6 and let it be, like Caliph, a high-tech treasure trove both sides are after. (By the way, to get around the year, simply say that although all the locals swear it is the year 2100 CE, both Centrum and Homeline see the local star patterns saying the year is 2000CE. Why this world is a century off is one of the Mysteries of the setting.)

[nick012000]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Things spining out of control indeed! I'd place Cyberpunk-3 in QUANTUUM 6 and let it be, like Caliph, a high-tech treasure trove both sides are after. (By the way, to get around the year, simply say that although all the locals swear it is the year 2100 CE, both Centrum and Homeline see the local star patterns saying the year is 2000CE. Why this world is a century off is one of the Mysteries of the setting.)

Yup. They'd be in Quantum-6. They'd probably be named Merlin-4 by Homeline, though, what with the appearance of magic as a result of a technological experiment. As for the date of the timeline, what's wrong with it simply being 2100 AD? There are timelines set in 500 AD (like the Camelot timelines) or even earlier, like some of the Roman timelines or other ancient timelines. If they can be that far into the "past", why not one a little bit into the "future"?

I'd imagine that once things start getting really unstable, there's only going to be one ending point for it all: the First Crosstime War. Centrum, surprisingly, stays out of it; they're planning on waiting for both combatants to be weakened before they strike.

Neutral Powers: Centrum (Centrum), China (Merlin-4), other Centrum-aligned powers, non-Axis aligned nations (Azoth-7, Shikaku-Mon)
Axis Powers: Greater Germany (Reich-5), United States of America (Reich-5), Japanese Empire (Reich-5), Prussian Empire (Azoth-7), Swedish Empire (Shikaku-Mon), Killer Penguins (Merlin-1), Argentina (Merlin-1)
Allied Powers: UNIC (Homeline), United States of America (Merlin-1), NATO (Merlin-1), United States of America (Merlin-4), European Union (Merlin-4), Pacific Rim Alliance (Merlin-4), various Duncanite groups (Merlin-4)
Allied Powers:

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by nick012000

If they can be that far into the "past", why not one a little bit into the "future"?

See Infinite Worlds Box on p.203 under Future Earths.

[nick012000]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

See Infinite Worlds Box on p.203 under Future Earths.

I suppose we could just say that the reason it would up on Quantum Six is because the initial Banestorm knocked it there like a cosmic cue ball.

I'm also considering having them discover the Time Corps Earth there as well; their time travel technology only works in their own paralell because no other known paralells possess temporal entropy. Wristwatch-1 is the world of Timepiece; Wristwatch-2 is the world of the Hive. They both share the same history, which can only be accessed through use of their time travel devices.