Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Eh, generally I didn't want to create new crosstime powers.

It's canonical in IW that their are unknown crosstime powers out there. Most simply can't interact with Homeline's part of infinity on a regular basis.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by PTTG

In a Doyleist sense, I wanted a way to make it clear these are 100% ordinary animals in every material sense, but still act more like people.

But no people would ever accept near constant predation. Humans respond with as much genocidal self-protection as is within their ability. Until such predation becomes over all rare, but of course still loathed.

[Culture20]

The prey are only having the bodies they assumed/possessed eaten; spirits that adopt prey animals as host bodies probably expect and accept predation. The theorized farmed pigs in the civilized timelines might even have animating spirits who enjoy the farm life.

[adm]

As I understand it, if the spirit's animal gets eaten, they go select another host? Not unlike one of us wrecking/wearing out a car, and getting a new one?

[fchase8]

Lenin-3 has Mussolini stay Communist and ally with the Catalan workers & Cardenas' Mexico in an anti-Soviet, anti-Fascist "third force." Italy stayed neutral in WWII, but has prospered since, in rivalry with the technocratic U.S.-U.K. alliance.

It's not quite 'Italy wins WWII,' but it's close.

[Astromancer]

Try this one. Atlantis raises from the sea and...it's a tacky New Age-y tourist trap. Yes they're the Ancient Atlanteans, yes they have psi powers, but they are decadent. They have taught people from democracies, and only democracies, psi powers, but they are mainly hucksters with a love of exploiting rubes.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one. Atlantis raises from the sea and...it's a tacky New Age-y tourist trap. Yes they're the Ancient Atlanteans, yes they have psi powers, but they are decadent. They have taught people from democracies, and only democracies, psi powers, but they are mainly hucksters with a love of exploiting rubes.

That likely depends a decent amount on how powerful the psi powers they teach are, and how long it takes. If you need a year to get a handful of psi perks, it isn't going to change much (but that's probably not consistent with the given description). If you can train for a year and come home with powers on par with Charles Xavier or Erik Lehnsherr, OTOH, it's pretty worldbreaking. I'm guessing the truth is somewhere in-between.

[Flyndaran]

It would severely impact the world by way of disproving most sciences leading the way to numerous cults, religions, and defunding of scientific research.
Geology, anthropology, oceanology, psychology, history, etc. are wrong in fundamental ways. That's a massive hit to paradigms all at once.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Eh, generally I didn't want to create new crosstime powers. The motivation for the "park's" creators was apparently to create a stable human civilization before the extinction of the dinosaurs (and possibly persisting through the extinction of the dinosaurs), for whatever practical or theoretical ends appeal to someone with that sort of power.

A side issue that just occurred to me, where *are* the points equivalent to western North America at 65 Ma?

I think the western edge of North America at that time was somewhere east of the Cascades (which hadn't risen yet). Almost all of California, and at least the western third of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon and coastal Alaska are younger than that, either sea floor basalts or terranes that were presumably island arcs on the Fallaron plate at the time. This is likely to be a problem a lot of places for anything more than a few million years into the past or future.

[Flyndaran]

Also, the western interior seaway where much of the middle part of the U.S. was under water.
A quick search says that it only fully drained after the KT event.