Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I don't think stars actually suffer that much. The current state of the sun is not one of explosion, merely of steady heat counteracting gravity.

The issue here is how that happens. Imagine a shell somewhere down in the sun. The stuff outside the shell is kept from collapsing inward because the particles just inside the shell collide with the shell fast enough to push them away. If you suddenly removed the stuff outside, that velocity would mean the inner stuff was exploding away from the new surface, much faster than anything moves in an explosion here under terrestrial conditions. To make this work you need an intelligent process that decides where the "edge" of a volume of gas is (particularly tricky if you want to disable the air guns, where you have high pressure air expanding into air...) and hence where it needs to impose an arbitrary velocity limit that it doesn't also impose on the interior of the gas.

Actually, it seems that trying to set off an explosion of C4 would result in a very hot mass that rapidly evaporates. Which isn't deadly but isn't exactly safe either.

That sounds about right. It burns very hot, actually since it isn't dissipating energy, it presumably reaches hotter temperatures than it would here on Earth, but the expanding flame front expands, well not "slowly" by human standards but substantially subsonically. I suppose you get something that looks very much like a Hollywood explosion - an expanding ball of flame rather than a shockwave.

You can get some shooting in this world with springs, and if you can make rail/coil guns work, that will be quite effective.

Well bows aren't disabled, so yeah, springs work. Actually I'm a little puzzled how you get a steam engine to work and not an air (well steam) gun to. Take the crown off a piston and break the connecting rod and somehow the steam knows not to expand rapidly enough to toss the piston out of the cylinder bore? You might not get a very good gun out of that, but it ought to do to launch a mortar round or something.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What do those parallels have to do with the Nazca lines?

Not much, it was the first usable name related to ancient alien stories that popped into my head.

Nazca-4
The aliens left behind a group to covertly protect and
Guide humanity. TL 12 androids respond to unusual and critical events (like interworld travel). They usually dress in black suits and wear sunglasses.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by (E)

Not much, it was the first usable name related to ancient alien stories that popped into my head.

Nazca-4
The aliens left behind a group to covertly protect and
Guide humanity. TL 12 androids respond to unusual and critical events (like interworld travel). They usually dress in black suits and wear sunglasses.

This has some legs. Make it someplace that Infinity would like to get a hold of, and you've got a very interesting conflict.

[AlexanderHowl]

Deep-1

Deep-1 was original thought to be a standard Q6 echo of the 1910s when it was first discovered. It was buried after a decade when it was discovered that the world took after the original Cthulu Mythos in disturbingly accurate ways, including much faster biological evolution and much faster plate tectonics, as well as the existence of alien intelligences residing on the Earth. Infinity documented the Deep Ones (thus the name of the timeline) and the Migo before their agents were attacked by Cthulu cultists. While their agents escaped, their conveyor was caped by the cultists, and there are reports of Cthulu cults springing up across Q6 since Deep-1 was buried ten years ago.

[maximara]

Archive-1

At first glance this appeared to be divergent a 7th century reality with an intact Library of Alexandria.

But a more detailed study revealed the Library would rebuild itself and its contents if damaged. More over any book brought to or taken from the Library would duplicate itself and these copies could not be destroyed. If that was not enough the Library expands to accommodate its growing collection (it currently it is nearly five times the size of Homeline's own Library of Congress in terms of books)

The results have caused history to wildly diverge from 48 BCE on as people wanting to preserve their writings flocked to The Library. So, many Classical works lost via neglect or intentional destruction still exist.

Infinity thought it hit a gold mine even with the divergence and started grabbing every book they could get their hands on (reasoning that since they would be duplicated no one would miss them).

Then Infinity discovered another property of the Library: that any place these copies are taken to adds any nearby books to the Library's collection. Problem is those copies had been in Washington DC and London adding not only the entire collections of the Library of Congress and British Library but every book in those cities as well.

Infinity is of two minds regarding Archive-1. On one hand the place is still a treasure trove of lost information but on the other they don't want to give the reality more books.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Homeline, at least, isn't monolithic. A crime lord would be happy to have a couple of serious toughs.

Giants wouldn't be very effective. Both on a practical term (guns are way more dangerous), and because Infinity would investigate any giant spotted on Homeline - obviously an illegal crosstime 'recruit'.

[AlexanderHowl]

I agree. A more logical tough would be a genetically engineered and biologically augmented human, which could reach above an effective ST 30 with TL12 technology. While they might weigh 400 lbs, they could lift 1800 lbs without difficulty.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I agree. A more logical tough would be a genetically engineered and biologically augmented human, which could reach above an effective ST 30 with TL12 technology. While they might weigh 400 lbs, they could lift 1800 lbs without difficulty.

Good luck finding one you can recruit with a pile of steaks.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, it depends on their situation, doesn't it? If they were transformed TL12 metamorphic plagues that are leftovers from the final war that ended human civilization on their timeline and left the survivors at TL4, they might be interested in living a TL8 lifestyle. Of course, they might be contagious, but we talking about a beneficial contagion. I can imagine that there would be many people who want to go from ST 10 to ST 30 in a few weeks.

[Flyndaran]

I do have a set of alternates where in the distant past some cross-time aliens experimented on local hominids, them left for unknown reasons erasing almost all signs of their presence.

Even though they put genetic/dietary/etc. faults to stop subjects from escaping, some did survive to hide among the local unmodified humans as monsters or hybrids.

Some may enjoy working with ISWAT just so they don't have to be so paranoid about torch carrying mobs. And as said, comforts of higher tech are always nice for those able to handle the culture shock.