[IW] the "-El" and "Vandal" Skerries

[Curmudgeon]

The "-El" skerries take their name from Superman's Kryptonian surname. Neither Superman, nor the planet Krypton exist in any of the -El skerries discovered so far. [At least as far as anyone knows.] The skerries take the name as the Silver Age -El family was the first literary exemplar of a history where all the great discoveries/moves forward were concentrated in a single family, often in a single lineage.

Jor-El was the inventor of the "Jor-El" [hovercar] , the discoverer of the parallel dimension, the Phantom Zone, and the Phantom Zone projector which allowed travel to and from it. Specifically named among his notable ancestors were: Gam-El, father of modern Kryptonian architecture; Hatu-El, inventor of the first electro-magnet and the first electric motor; Tala-El, author of Krypton's planetary constitution; Sul-El, inventor of the first telescope; and Val-El, the Columbus of Krypton.

The "Vandal" skerries differ from the "-El" skerries only in that all the major discoveries/works are the product of a single, long-lived individual. The "Vandal" skerries take their name from DC's Vandal Savage.

[Astromancer]

Vandal skerries would include worlds were Star Trek's Flint (Requem for Methuselah) was real. But would a figure like Count Scarlatti ( City of Death) who was one person living in multiple time periods because of an accident, also count?

[Flyndaran]

Count Scarlioni if you're referring to the Doctor Who episode.
Scarlatti was a composer as far as I can tell.

But that episode would be interesting for a "weak" Illuminati controlled timeline.

It would allow for a strange campaign where players play different sets of PCs throughout time fighting the same enemy again and again until the proper final confrontation.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Vandal skerries would include worlds were Star Trek's Flint (Requem for Methuselah) was real. But would a figure like Count Scarlatti ( City of Death) who was one person living in multiple time periods because of an accident, also count?

I was going to discount Flint, but I’ll expand on the Vandal skerries instead. A Vandal skerry first of all requires a broad-based polymath to be the timeline’s “Vandal”. A polymath who was a musical composer, great painter, celebrated author, famous dancer, and perhaps a visionary engineer and architect, wouldn’t be broad-based enough to be a “Vandal”, though he could certainly fill the role of the “great musician” or even “greatest artist” in an “-El” lineage. Further, the “Vandal” has to make discoveries in at least two broadly unrelated fields before it is eligible for a “Vandal” classification. Exploration/colonization and military success for example wouldn’t be broadly unrelated enough, exploration and antisepsis in medicine would.

Infinity doesn’t presume that a person is a “Vandal” just because he’s been a “Vandal” in other timelines, it requires proof through actions. Infinity doesn’t care if a timeline isn’t a “Vandal” because this “Vandal” isn’t a polymath, or because he is a polymath but too lazy to apply himself to becoming a “Vandal”.

Not all “Vandal” skerries are successful ones. Unsuccessful Vandals are usually the result of death or reclusiveness. About a third of all Vandals who engage in exploration end up dead, like Magellan, Cook or Hudson, as a result of their explorations. Some Vandals get interested in studying radium and end up dying of radiation poisoning, or attempt to find vaccines/serums against communicable diseases and end up dying of the disease. Another batch of Vandals become bored/disenchanted and become recluses. This is also true of some Vandals who have “invented everything.” They then retire to pursue what entertains them.

Technology usually stagnates under a Vandal because they’ve “invented everything”. Vandals tend to become more arrogant and more conservative as they grow older, suffering from “it wasn’t invented here.” At that point, Vandals tend to view new theories as either “you’re misinterpreting what happened”, or “you did the maths wrong”, or “your procedures were lax, so you’re measuring the results of contamination.”

Flint from Requiem for a Methuselah is a failed “Vandal”, IIRC. I was going to discount him entirely because I remembered him as having been Brahms and Rembrandt which wouldn’t have been broad-based enough. As Da Vinci, though, I’d say he had a decent shot at it. What makes him a failed Vandal is his having “retired” without having made early discoveries of relativity and warp drive, for example. A Vandal in the Star Trek universe ought to be intimately connected with the discovery of the warp drive. They don’t necessarily have to have built the first drive, but they should have devised the mathematics/theory for it, such that “building a warp drive was a simple problem after that.” In the sense that building an atomic bomb was a “simple problem” once you had the maths from relativity theory. It could still be hard to do, even if how you needed to go about it was fairly straightforward.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Count Scarlioni if you're referring to the Doctor Who episode.
Scarlatti was a composer as far as I can tell.

But that episode would be interesting for a "weak" Illuminati controlled timeline.

It would allow for a strange campaign where players play different sets of PCs throughout time fighting the same enemy again and again until the proper final confrontation.

Count Scarlioni probably wouldn’t count but that’s more because he doesn’t get the credit for the discoveries and doesn’t make the discoveries himself. As far as “Vandal” skerries are concerned, they don’t really care how the “Vandal” lasts long enough to make all his discoveries, so being “fractured in time” isn’t a bar. Immortality isn’t required, though it’s quite common and Infinity and Centrum will take additional interest if The Secret seems to be involved, which being “fractured in time" would imply.

All successful Vandal skerry worlds and many worlds in the “-El” skerries are considered, at the least, to be potential threats to The Secret. Any Vandal who turned his attention to time would almost surely discover The Secret.