Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-25-2017, 03:26 PM   #211
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

I don't know if I mentioned it before but it is my opinion that the Time Tunnel knock-off campaign should not be based off of Homeline but in some other Earth in the early stages of developing parachronic technology. They'd count as an Alternate Crosstime Organization in the start-up stage.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 05:34 PM   #212
Delcar
 
Delcar's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Central Florida
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Interestingly enough, the Rhenee from the original World of Greyhawk setting were clearly a water dwelling Roma, originally from Earth.
Delcar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 06:10 PM   #213
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I realized that I set up the premise for the factions in "All Along the Watchtowers" but I didn't actually list them. Oops.
...
No faction against all these brutal murder sprees? A Mankind First group that uses whatever powers they have to sabotage any attempt to create a reality quake / crisis thus protecting the natives?
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 06:31 PM   #214
sir_pudding
Wielder of Smart Pants
 
sir_pudding's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
No faction against all these brutal murder sprees? A Mankind First group that uses whatever powers they have to sabotage any attempt to create a reality quake / crisis thus protecting the natives?
Yes, Legendary Aeon is about trying to prevent Crises (and making them as non-destructive as possible when they can't). They aren't specist though...

The Scourge intends to end the war completely and therefore ultimately Crises as a thing entirely. They are a bit specist, in that they dislike aliens meddling on Earths, so that's a bit "mankind first".

Last edited by sir_pudding; 08-25-2017 at 06:36 PM.
sir_pudding is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 08:32 PM   #215
fchase8
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Quote:
Originally Posted by William View Post
Mm, seems reasonably like their sort of area for a stopover... but, of course, any Early Far-Romani on Yrth are probably stuck there, unless their parachronic pathfinding is much better than your average run of worldhopper skill.
Gallatin might be the most high-tech world that the Buffalo People would want to visit, TL 7 with some low TL 8, but Ohio Association Great Plains barely has a white man's government. Indeed, the Buffalo People would probably assist Sioux terrorism there (as mentioned in Infinite Worlds).


Could Far-Romani get involved in The Nine Worlds? They wouldn't want to go to Engstrom/Midgard, but some of the connected worlds might draw them - super-powered Jotunhaim South America could be tempting for Late Far-Romani to fight Nazis, while Early Far-Romani might fight Nazi Elves on Alfheim.


Were even regular Romani mentioned in GURPS Yrth? I only have the old nineties edition.

I could imagine rumors on Yrth that the Romani have access to other worlds, given how many rumors there have been in our history about the Romani even without magic. And if Homeline agents on Yrth have heard of Far-Romani, they could search out the Romani to try to see if they have a reliable route to/from Yrth.
fchase8 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 09:26 PM   #216
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Quote:
Originally Posted by fchase8 View Post
Were even regular Romani mentioned in GURPS Yrth? I only have the old nineties edition.
Not in the 4e GURPS Banestorm. I suspect that there have never been enough of them banestormed to Yrth to establish them as a culture. A few must have been taken there, but with tiny numbers, they'd end up assimilating or dying out.
johndallman is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 10:02 PM   #217
starslayer
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Tombstone industries

Tombstone industries is a crossworld book publishing company.

It generally gravitates towards worlds in the TL5-9 range, setting up shop in the most poor and improvised districts of large urban populations.

Regardless of what the worldline thinks about such it primarily employs women, free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, free health care with its own doctors, provides free contraceptives, and hosts lectures and seminars about female empowerment, the right to choice, and sexual freedom as well as a huge number of skill building workshops hosted at the facility after hours.

The books it publishes are primarily magical in nature, focusing on demon summoning and control, trans-world travel, outsider summoning and binding, and other extra-dimensional topics. Books will contain both knowledge and applied content(IE actual working spells and rituals). Depending on the world it may present itself as being a novelty; but regardless of presentation the books have very real knowledge and power within the pages. The books are generally arranged very safely with instructions on multiple protective wards and redundant bindings. The books have enough inherent magic within them to offset low manna penalties (at significantly increased casting time), and allow non-mages to cast directly from the pages (again at significantly increased casting time)

This presentation is all an insidious lie. Tombstone industries is the brainchild of 'Demon Lord Grave' a medium to high powered demon intent on radically extending his reach inside multiple worlds and providing a profit stream. To accomplish this he has initiated several measures:

1. The bound summoning racket- By providing detailed instructions on how to summon and bind his enemies Grave diminishes there power by forcing them to tend to errands by mortals. The detailed instructions make it very hard for the demons or other summoned entities to twist requests and cause havoc.

2. The returning summon- Many of the books list a perversion of his own true name as a 'friendly' summon. Due to perversion of his true name anyone attempting to use the binding rituals when using his name will summon him 'free', and he can freely choose to ignore these summons- this helps assure that even when vanquished it is mere moments until he is summoned back to one of the worlds where his company exists, and it provides him with a near-constant gateway into people's homes for his own entertainment and appetite.

3. The returning summon(2)- For a suitable fee grave will put similar false notes in a few of his books for other demons.

4. Magically active materials harvesting. Each tombstone industries location is a carefully arranged magical and alchemical contraption as much as it is a book printing and binding facility. The water, food, and even the air are all spiked with aphrodisiacs boosting sexual desire and fertility. The contraceptives are all subtly flawed and actually encourage pregnancy rather than prevent it. The doctors monitor for those who have conceived, and finally the entire magical contraption painlessly removes the growing fetus via teleportation, and allowed it to develop in deep underground facility until it has acquired a soul. It is then summarily slaughtered, the flesh of the unborn used to make the pages of the books, and the primal sinless soul to empower it (or give grave a quick snack). The unborn flesh and primal souls are also sold in other markets directly.

5. Demonic seed incubation. When the doctors find that one of the women is attempting to conceive, they will take this opportunity to instill a demonic seed, either an aspect of grave's power or an outsider/other demon that was willing to pay his price.

6. Vessel sales. Sometimes nosy reporters get too close, an employee digs where they should not dig, someone in 'management' starts studying the books too hard, and they need to go away. Grave likes to take a personal hand in this, but he has multiple loyal vassals who he has trained intricately in the ways of demonic torture. Regardless of who does it, what's left after they are finished is a ruined being with virtually no willpower (will 1) and a soul that has literally been torn to shreds (bonuses for spells like soul-rider due to the extra space)- this makes them very useful as slaves, or as 'spares' for possessors or other things that need to overcome resistance to use there powers.

Tombstone industries as a front company runs at a net loss, it is only those extra services being sold to other demons, harvesting the magical power to create wealth, and selling vessels that keep the company profitable, anyone studying 'the numbers' in enough detail will be able to figure this out, but if challenged the accountants will say that the owner of the company is a philanthropist who is underwriting it.

Tombstone will slowly spread on worlds that don't take active measures to stop it, but it will restrain itself from growing too large. There are a few worlds where this seems to not be the case, and tombstone is a major player in the worlds politics. On these worlds Grave's grand scheme is to literally bring the whole world under his sway, for what purpose only he knows.

Relations with other inter-dimensional groups
Infinity- Infinity hates and fears tombstone industries, and they have no idea how evil it actually is, what they don't like is that it freely talks about the secret, disseminates books of power that lets others cross worlds, and mentions them by name as well as providing magical addresses to many of there worlds, including homeline itself. There attempts to disrupt operations on a few worlds is starting to give them the feeling that there is more to it than just a magical bookstore, but they are unwilling to push harder for fear of reprisal.

Centrum- Centrum does not believe any of this works, and regard Tombstone industries as a group that is at least trying to make things better. There pushes for absolute equal rights between men and women align with Centrum's. Where Centrum has absolute control tombstone generally packs up and leaves (its difficult to continue an operation that relies on being seen as 'good' in a society that has minimal concept of money and all companies are owned by the state)

Cabal- Many members of the Cabal are upset that they did not think of Grave's plan first, and this often leads to conflict on low manna worlds where the Cabal has much more practice operating than a demon that is used to being able to use its full supernatural might. Many other cabalists purchase the books, vessels, raw materials, or 'seed incubation' from tombstone.

The Abyss- Its unknown if Grave is from the abyss, but for those up to date on such things it is known that demons love the 'taste' of unborn child flesh and pure souls, so routinely purchase such when they are on worlds where tombstone exists. Tombstone does not take any direct measures to stop worlds from falling to the abyss, but there are instructions on how to permanently banish demons in many of the books as well as 'shore up' a worldline.

Technomancer- Tombstone was originally set up in the united states, but its secret was revealed and it was torn down, however the US government did not share this information, instead choosing to take the materials discovered and study the magic involved. The site has not been torn down, but it is no longer in production. It has other locations in the USSR as well as Africa.
starslayer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 10:11 PM   #218
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Yes, Legendary Aeon is about trying to prevent Crises (and making them as non-destructive as possible when they can't). They aren't specist though...

The Scourge intends to end the war completely and therefore ultimately Crises as a thing entirely. They are a bit specist, in that they dislike aliens meddling on Earths, so that's a bit "mankind first".
Your write up of that group sounded far more ruthless and "casualties be damned" than defensive and protective as I imagined.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2017, 11:51 PM   #219
sir_pudding
Wielder of Smart Pants
 
sir_pudding's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Your write up of that group sounded far more ruthless and "casualties be damned" than defensive and protective as I imagined.
So you want a faction that is like Legendary Aeon but hates aliens?
sir_pudding is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-29-2017, 12:08 AM   #220
PTTG
 
PTTG's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

The Pit

A high-mana worldline with extremely twisted mana, The Pit is a harsh rocky orb that's marginally habitable without magic. The twisted mana causes teleport and gateway spells to take huge penalties and fail in especially gruesome ways; other spells are generally safer, but nonetheless produce brilliant electrical arcs as a side effect.

It is also a major banestorm destination -- in particular, bane-bolts striking a single target and whisking them, alone, to The Pit. But the main source of immigration are mages who have teleportation accidents. The Pit is something of a sink, or a magnet, for magically disrupted travelers.

Settlements dot the mountain passes and fjords of the world. The rare fertile valleys even have cities, and in general everywhere you find people you'll find at least a few mages, and often many. Indeed, much of the world is only inhabitable at all with magical water filters, with magically-enhanced food crops, and with magical defenses against the powerful (ordinary) storms... and the cryptozooids, many of which are trapped here as the mages are.

Why, then, is this world filtered under this thread, when it seems like it is neither crosstime nor an organization? Scattered around the world, communicating through careful conduits and occasional long travel, the mages of this world are seeking a way out, ideally to someplace less horribly uninhabitable, but honestly anything to have access to the larger cosmos in general would do. In this sense, they are unified, and even willing to cooperate -- even the demons will work in (a degree of) good faith, or at least in expectation of a copy of the research.

However, it may simply be impossible to magically leave The Pit. A large number of very smart people have been trying for centuries, after all.

However, conveyors don't use magic.... Technological society in The Pit is nowhere better than TL5+1 (Magic), but like I said, there are a lot of smart people in that world. If they get their hands on some of the operating principles, they'd be big trouble.
PTTG is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
campaign design, infinite worlds, infinity unlimited, worldlines

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:22 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.