Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

I find this a pretty viable scenario. Figure that expat Cuban groups in Miami make contact with the Cruzes, and like what they hear. As a result, they start doing for Cuba what Irish-American organizations did for the Provisional Irish Republican Army -- raise money for "lobbying" and "relief" efforts, some of which winds up spent on things that go "bang" or "boom."

In this particular case, the money that gets raised by the Cuban groups gets salted with additional black funds from the CIA, and Spanish-speaking spec ops types start mustering out to take positions with "security firms" based in southern Florida or (better yet) Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile, any situation in which law and order breaks down in a Spanish-speaking nation close to the U.S. draws the attention of the cartels, who pretty much define the notion of "amoral opportunists."

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Oh, yes, and there are so many new opportunities, too (you may recall a mention or two of psi-based and psi-stimulating drugs in the timeline, and I've no doubt that the cartels are heavily invested in that market). Of course, they're not going to be helping any one side for a while, methinks, rather than selling to everyone and perhaps working to keep the chaos going.

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Hey. I just saw this trailer for IL-2 Sturmovik 1946. The trailer is quite old, but the game is one of the finest WWII flight simulators ever made.

Apparently, the 1946 expansion added a bunch of experimental aircraft that were on the drawing boards. Some of these are great ideas for Dp-Earth, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuFMBT2VAA4

Enjoy!

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Thank you. Added link to my files, to watch again (saw it, but don't have time to look up all the aircraft right now.

Some, like the Heinkel Lerche (which I'd know of but forgotten about), are much more workable with magic than without.

Of course, WWII won't run to 1946, at least on Earth(2) - the Cythereans might hold out that long, but no-one else associated with the Axis Powers will.

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Oh, I don't think it'll run even until 1944, in your setting. However, given that the NAZIs, there, have spaceflight, I think it's entirely reasonable that they'd have this sort of technology.

Also, found another couple:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X12lEjsmFeo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5CgpWdGo4

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Cool. Thank you.

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Sorry this isn't an update, but an article was pointed out elsewhere, which is extremely relevant to this setting, at least for Earth 1: Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have been in an Occult War for 25 Years. Yes, really.

Now imagine how this applies to Earth One - I mean, they'll probably wait a while to really go after each other until WWII(2) is over, but still.

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

The question is, how overtly or covertly would they wage the conflict? And how quickly would the gloves come off (if at all)?

Here's the thing. I spent about six years, or so, living as roommates with, and having as friends, a lot of people in Colorado's pagan community (some of that experience seeps through in my Facets campaign).

While most of them are a pretty decent bunch (every group has its maladroit freaks and nasty abusers), almost all of them are at least a little bit flaky. In many ways, they turned to "magick" as a way to fill voids in their lives -- whether in relationships or professional success or whatever.

Paganism and magick, as with any other religion or irrational belief system, exists primarily to help struggling people create supportive communities. In that sense, paganism and "magick" have tremendous value as means to help people maintain (or even improve) the quality of their lives, and help them through difficult times and profound personal changes.

However, one of the reasons so many of them turn to pagan magick is because, as a rule, they're fairly marginalized people, to start with. They're neither captains of industry, nor leaders in the arts, nor influential decision-makers. They seldom move and rarely shake, and mostly they just rely on one another just to get by in a world from which many of them feel terribly alienated.

That's the context in which to see the "conflict" between Morrison and Moore. They're famous in the comic book world, and rightly so. However, neither will ever write the great English novel, and while their works sell well and do have artistic value, neither will ever create any work that would count as "universally influential."

Neither Moore nor Morrison will ever write anything as good as Everybody Comes to Rick's, and while I liked the film, Watchmen, very much, it cannot even begin to compare to Casablanca.

That means the "war" between them rates as only slightly more meaningful than the "tempest-in-a-teapot" nature of university politics.

The profession in which both men work has such limited appeal (albeit more now than ever before), that it keeps the stakes pretty low. As such, they have no need to exercise any mature restraint, and can go after each other with nasty childishness. They have nothing to lose, really, by treating each other like hateful middle school kids, so that's what they do.

All of that changes, were it to turn out that magick actually did anything other than provide emotionally-cathartic ritual drama, and that brings us to Dp-Earth.

If it turned out that the Dp-Earth versions of Morrison and Moore could actually cast spells (which seems likely), then that escalates the potential for collateral harm. If they continued to behave so immaturely in those circumstances, their actions would draw the attention of people who actually exercised real clout in the real world of economics, politics and law enforcement.

I'd think Scotland Yard would show up, at some point, and ask the polite British version of "WTF do you two think you're doing?!" If that didn't cause them to wise up and start to behave like responsible adults, then I'd expect considerably less polite members of an MI-5 task force to appear and take matters in hand.

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Oh, hey! I just thought of something.

Do Rick and Ilsa, Louis and Sam and Victor exist in Dp-Earth?

(I honestly don't know how I'd feel about it, if they did. Casablanca is melodramatic, yeah, but I'm really not sure it belongs in a comic-book world.)

Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
 

Um, Dp-Earth? I was referring to Earth-1 (Infopunk Earth, as nerds and famous people do tend to be among the empowered, as do people with strong occult interests; famous nerds with strong occult interests are a certainty), not Earth 2, Dieselpunk Earth. Moore was born in 1953, and Morrison in 1960, so neither of them have Dp-Earth versions, as yet. Their parents should exist their, but I'm not sure if either set of parents would have met yet.

Well, to be fair, Earth-2 is not purely a comic-book world. It's mostly closer to the pulps and the movie serials, just with a higher level of realism than either (apart from the powers, of course). I could see them existing, but if so, the events that were dramatized in the play and movie would have already happened. If not, I'm not sure whether or not the film would still be made, since it already exists, but its existence would still be a boon to the careers of everyone involved.