New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

What made it break apart? Earth's atmosphere is pretty shallow. A breakup on atmospheric entry is very possible, but the distance between impact points resulting from that would be tens of miles, not world-wide.

The lastest work on asteroids suggests most of them are just heaps of rocks held together by inertia, friction, and maybe frost. Many things could have broken it up. Just coming near the Earth would be enough for some asteroids.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The lastest work on asteroids suggests most of them are just heaps of rocks held together by inertia, friction, and maybe frost. Many things could have broken it up. Just coming near the Earth would be enough for some asteroids.

And a lot of bodies have additional stuff moving in approximately the same orbit travelling along with them - this is after all the principle behind meteor showers, comet tails, gas toruses, shepherd moons, or moons in general for that matter. A large asteroid might very well near miss the Earth by several hours and still be accompanied by impacts of a couple city killer boulders.

Indeed since it'll still be out there for another potential encounter in a few years or decades, that might be the lucky outcome - causing enough damage to wake people up to this being a real threat they need to do something about.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by PTTG

As the soot clears, communication is being re-established among universities to find a changed world. The Axis fell to internal strife, as did the Allies, and around the globe, disillusioned people are turning to the idea of a scientific world order.

It does sound like a plausible backstory for a 1930s 'The World of the Future is ruled by the Scientific Elite' setting, so well done there. Could be quite interesting.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

The Caucasus: Basically, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Kurdish people, teamed together and built a federation. They manage to keep both raiders and their neighbors out (which sadly tends to be the same thing). They were severely trashed in the long WWII. However, they are recovering. They've gotten diplomatic recognition from the Western Allies and will receive aid as soon as it becomes practical to do so.

The internal politics of the area are tense. Centuries of persecution tend toward all these groups being a little paranoid.

Turkey: Basically, trashed and reduced to local warlords fighting each other. Some gangs shout about Turkish nationalism others shout about Islam. Both groups are highly dangerous (the Turks were always effective warriors) and little really distinguishes them from each other beyond window dressings.

Greece: The north resembles the Balkans the south and the islands are under the influence of the Western allies and starting to recover.

Cyprus: Post-apocalyptic with extra helpings of religiously motivated civil wars.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

It does sound like a plausible backstory for a 1930s 'The World of the Future is ruled by the Scientific Elite' setting, so well done there. Could be quite interesting.

Thanks! I think it could serve as a straight cover of it, or as a deconstruction.

In A), the international academic community pushes some of the more outdated ideas out of circulation, and the severe challenges force rapid technological development. Political unification under the Universities follows quickly thanks to the close academic connections between them.

In B), the need to bring the former Axis scientists into the fold, not to mention inertia in the less enlightened parts of the former Allies, means that psuedoscientific racism is widespread in this world. Every university was its own fief during the asteroid winter, and now they bicker, trading papers for resources, land, and promising students.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wells-7

Finishing off the main area, Europe was always seen as the main adventure area on this Parallel, other areas are important backstory.

The Tyrol: This area of German speakers were unique in that they were persecuted by the Axis powers. The locals want friendly relations with the Western Allies badly. They will be willing to aid in smuggling the PCs into the remaining Nazi strongholds and the even harder to infiltrate Midwinter Aton strongholds.

Otherwise the area is post-apocalyptic with medieval touches.

Switzerland: The Germans invaded three times starting in 1947. The Swiss "won" each fight. The cost of winning was always high enough to make the victory joyless.

The area is post apocalyptic but healing. Centrum has stepped into the breach. The Centrum now rules in Switzerland. The Centrum's relative incompetence in German is its main weakness (they know French), that and the simple fact that the Swiss smell a rat. But they aren't in a good place to do much about it yet.

Austria: Pretty much owned by Midwinter Aton. The people know their lords (there is no pretense of egalitarianism) care nothing for them. They also know their lords are monsters.

Austria combines the Post-apocalyptic with Gothic Horror. Midwinter Aton is sadistic, cruel, and stupid enough to give in to their base desires to wallow in the pain of others.

South Germany: This area, especially the high alpine forests, holds the last areas of Nazi power and authority. The area around Berchtesgaden is the titular capital of this rump state, the National Redoubt. The S.S. strongholds tend to be the real centers of power.

The Cabal is giving the remaining Nazi scientists and engineers advances technology to build Wunderwaffe to strike the West. The Cabal knows the Nazis can't win, but they want to scare the Western allies into a panic in order to facilitate taking power.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

A powerful Southern Senator in the 1940s is convinced that a military base on the moon is vital to defeating first fascism and then the commies. He gets funding for a satellite program in 1943. When Wernher von Braum comes to the US, the Senator gets von Braum put in charge of it despite of controversy and gets the government to collect and present to von Braum all of Goddard's research and papers ( NASA kept discovering that Goddard solved important tech problems first all the way through the 1960's). So by 1948 the first satellite (SkyLark) went into orbit.

Russia, terrified of being left behind, launched their space program very quickly.

The local year is 1980. The Americans have a Moon Base. Asteroid mining is being looked at and experiments in microwave broadcasting of power have just started. Russia has just landed on the Moon. So far they've kept to areas that the USA has not claimed. This world had no Vietnam or Korean wars, tensions in Europe were far less, almost all the Cold War competition went into the Space Programs.

Homeline likes this Q6 world (they call it Goddard-5) and hopes to skim off some useful space tech. Centrum is unhappy with this world. The early successes in space and the lack of the Asian wars has made for a reduced security state, and fewer means for Centum to take over. This had led Centrum to plot to start an incident on the East/West German border.

Meanwhile the Cabal is unhappy with this world. The focus on spaceflight and the national programs to enhance science and math education seems to have caught the public imagination. Neither the counterculture nor the New Age movement were ever as important nor lasting. The Sexual Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement seem to have done well without them, so the Cabal is looking for a way to get their hooks into this world. The Cabal wants this world badly, for while this is a fairly normal Earth in most ways, it has particularly rich mystical resources. The Cabal's collective mouths are watering, and that means trouble.

[PTTG]

I love putting magical resources on the moon itself. What if moon rocks were natural powerstones, with the limitation "only self-charges when resting on unworked lunar rock"?

Of course, that works ok for most any psuedomodern setting, but your accelerated space race could very well be a consequence of the Cabal pushing to get access to it, and puts fun cabal infiltrators right in the thick of it.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I love putting magical resources on the moon itself. What if moon rocks were natural powerstones, with the limitation "only self-charges when resting on unworked lunar rock"?

Of course, that works ok for most any psuedomodern setting, but your accelerated space race could very well be a consequence of the Cabal pushing to get access to it, and puts fun cabal infiltrators right in the thick of it.

Sly choice. And as you can use the Cabalists local allies to smuggle in useful tech you can get amazing progress fast.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
NASA already did the work up in 1977. Just look up NASA SP-413 Space Settlements: A Design Study. While they were thinking of using a space shuttle rather than a Saturn V variant, they built a dang good economic case for something that could have been done with 1970s technology.

So, what type of setting would evolve if the USA had built such an orbital solar power array? The USA could have 10 TW of electricity production under its control, enough to supply the developed world with all of its energy needs (assuming that plentiful and cheap electricity would have prompted earlier investment in electric vehicles). The space industry would be worth over $4 trillion per year by 2020, and the US government would have had control over the vast majority of it. What happens in a setting where the US government has no debt and it controls 60% of the energy production on Earth?

I'm taking this...

I love putting magical resources on the moon itself. What if moon rocks were natural powerstones, with the limitation "only self-charges when resting on unworked lunar rock"?

Of course, that works ok for most any psuedomodern setting, but your accelerated space race could very well be a consequence of the Cabal pushing to get access to it, and puts fun cabal infiltrators right in the thick of it.

...and adding PTTG's sly contribution.

Goddard-7

This world diverged in the late 19th century when a respected French scientist conducted experiments in ESP that proved the existence of the phenomena. This attracted the Cabal in numbers.

While keeping Psi phenomena a curiosity the Cabalists soon discovered that this parallel's moon was rich in magical resources including naturally occurring powerstones. The Cabalists needed to get to the Moon by physical means without attracting to much attention.

In this world, space pioneers, like Goddard, Tsiokovsky, and von Braum led charmed lives...literally. Jack Parsons was an easy recruit.

In WWII the USA had the advantage of weather satellites and satellite photography generally. The few serious German stabs at rocketry (the young von Braum had left Germany to work with Goddard and Parsons in 1936) simply revved up the US rocketry program (to hedge bets the Cabal made sure that the USA had jets by 1943 so that extra resources for rockets didn't aid Hitler or Stalin). In 1946 Chuck Yeager was the first human being in orbit. By 1955 John Glenn was the first human to set foot on the moon.

The Cabal, wanting a permanent moonbase and serious lunar development decided to push orbital power satellites. By 1973, just as oil prices spiked, the first commercial power broadcasts to the Earth began. By 1985 US owned power satellites provided 10 Terrawatts of power to the planet Earth and there are major plans to expand the system.

In 1985 (the Local year) the West and allies like Japan are enjoying a lively prosperity. Cheap power has erased the disturbances of the 1970's (the Cabal also prevented the collapse of the Bretton Woods System thus keeping the Real economy dominant over the paper one). So real incomes for working people and the middle classes are much higher than in the 1960's, although the Rentier Class is fading and finance and banking are dull as ditch water.

Meanwhile, the USSR, feeling the bite of brutally low oil prices, is bitter and sees that if they can't either restore their economy or bring down the West they're doomed. The KGB is rumored to be working on bio-weapons (they favor Smallpox). Southwest Asia is also roiling. The short bust of oil wealth seems to have woken the Arab lands up. The simple fact that their oil is now dirt cheap because American satellites bring down the sun's power is infuriating. They feel their future and Islam's was stolen from them. Worse, if sub-Saharan Africa starts getting American Solar power at a discount to help them develop, then they the Arabs will be the poorest and most backwards people everybody pities. In Latin America radicals look North and see the colossus they've long hated growing to reach the stars themselves. This is intolerable.

But even as the Cabal revels in controlling the mystic riches of the moon and explores Mars and the asteroids, their ancient foes are aware of their rival's new prosperity and potence, and seek to bring their mystic secrets into the fight to cripple both the Cabal and its Western allies.

Meanwhile, the Cabal has brought certain portions of NASA, the CIA, and the FBI, into SOME of their secrets. Or as one Cabalist put it "Why evade Scully and Mulder when you can recruit them?" Lunar bases are schools of magic. Astronauts are wizards.

Now these folks that the Cabal has half brought into the Secret! don't see themselves as doing "Magic." They're taught they're using Psi energy. The use of mystic ritual is justified in Jungian terms. The Cabal doesn't teach them about the Decands either. These Wizards are more like non-Cabalists mages in most ways.

(More Later)