New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

A truly fascinating place in any parallel going through something like Homeline's Renaissance would be the Platonic Academy. Basically the Medici set the place up to revive Greek learning in Western Europe. Because of the fall of Constantinople (which many foresaw a long way off) and the invention of the printing press, they were successful.

Not only is the Platonic academy a major turning point in European history, and a setting full of exciting characters and plot options, it's a great point from which to manipulate history. Just introduce Greek texts unavailable on that timeline here and they get circulated throughout Europe. Find ignored/lost works of Greek scientists, historians, philosophers, ect, and alter the course of Western History. A simple example might be simply gathering up all the works of Archimedes available in a echo going through his lifetime and deliver freshly made copies to the Academy. It would speed up the development of mathematics by at least a century.

Another possibility would be to give the Academy a list of decode Egyptian hieroglyphics and the information that the ancient Egyptian speech seems to have been a lot like Coptic. Millions of man hours lost in trying to learn ancient occult secrets from decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics would go to other uses.

[PTTG]

Or, give the Platonic Academy the true magicis lingua,or perhaps a translated vonyich manuscript revealing alchemical secrets.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Minerals are also cheaper in Infinite Worlds, at least on Homeline & colonies. So less of a reason to export minerals from Midas-1 to Homeline.


What if there was a Q3 empty world for agriculture? That could make the whole operation a lot easier. The agriculture world could provide food, and even be where the miners live when not mining.

Indeed, such a world would probably end up being where Infinity would put its conveyors. Though there could be some of Quantum 3's staple weirdness - remains of an ancient, unknown civilization, regions of mana, talking animals, etc.

I'm not sure having an empty world for agriculture or housing is going to work.
Agriculture still takes a lot of labor, even if you import advanced automation from somewhere like Caliph or Shikaku Mon. You're going to need weather satellites, mines and chemical factories for processing fertilizers, machine shops to repair automation, etc. In short you're going to need to colonize a world, or import from primitive worlds that can't figure out the Secret.

An agricultural colony world would be a good spot to place refugees from a Hell World. They can work off their indentured status by X years in the colony. Or given a plot of land there after X years, if they don't want to go to another world*. I doubt this last part, since who is going to be running that agricultural colony. Crop Production Services would be a likely operator. They are going to own the colony, CPS executives basically the landholders, the workers the landless peasantry. Maybe not that stark, but you can adjust it for your campaign.

Or White Star will import grain from various worlds it has access to. Say it buys wheat from a Sumeria parallel, or rice from Ming-3. The latter is more likely, since the local WS factor is going to want to maximize their profits, so they will have to import in large quantities. A world where industrial agriculture is viable, but not so advanced they can figure out that all that grain is basically vanishing.

* I can imagine a person from a Hell World, shaken by revelation of multiple timelines, having seen his/her own world destroyed or dying, would suffer from culture shock just moving to a Safe world. Even if they know about Homeline or other advanced worlds, how likely is it that person will move on? Say they work on an agricultural colony for 20 years, do you make the jump to another world, or do you just build a nice home near where you've been working, and know people, for the last 20 years?

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

A truly fascinating place in any parallel going through something like Homeline's Renaissance would be the Platonic Academy. Basically the Medici set the place up to revive Greek learning in Western Europe. Because of the fall of Constantinople (which many foresaw a long way off) and the invention of the printing press, they were successful.

Not only is the Platonic academy a major turning point in European history, and a setting full of exciting characters and plot options, it's a great point from which to manipulate history. Just introduce Greek texts unavailable on that timeline here and they get circulated throughout Europe. Find ignored/lost works of Greek scientists, historians, philosophers, ect, and alter the course of Western History. A simple example might be simply gathering up all the works of Archimedes available in a echo going through his lifetime and deliver freshly made copies to the Academy. It would speed up the development of mathematics by at least a century.

Another possibility would be to give the Academy a list of decode Egyptian hieroglyphics and the information that the ancient Egyptian speech seems to have been a lot like Coptic. Millions of man hours lost in trying to learn ancient occult secrets from decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics would go to other uses.

I set a low-fantasy/clockpunk campaign in Medici Florence. Young Machiavelli was a handler for the secret service of Platonic Academy, the goal a unified Italy before the French, Spanish, Turks, Normans, etc., could take the place over or otherwise do what actually happened in history.

You get more knowledge/books/hieroglyphs in northern Italy with a different fall of Constantinople. Refugees from that city, fleeing the Turks, brought a lot of Latin, Greek, Arabic learning. And the Turks were relatively nice guys, so if they were worse, and more people fled, more information would have made its way to the rich cities of Italy and Germany.

Or if refugees from other cities the Turks could have taken. Say if the Pope says Muslims are basically OK, its Turkish politics/warriors that are bad, you'd see a lot more trade with those sources of information.

Conversely if Constantinople doesn't fall, that knowledge stays where it is. The Renaissance may happen, but it is greatly drawn out, with advances and changes to society taking generations instead of a few years. In fact you might get a somewhat higher tech level further down the line if ideas and tech are slowly integrated into society, instead of blasted in with huge societal upheavals.

Otherwise a unified Italy would have been a major challenger to France on the Continent. Instead of French activity in early North America, you might get Italian, or Holy Roman if the Pope decides to throw in with Italy and bring in the German states. Britain stays the major naval power but the colonial empires might be very different. Then again this is just a different Shikaku Mon, probably with a tech level about the same as, or less than, Homeline instead of somewhat more advanced.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I'm rereading some Joseph Campbell just now and I thought about a major turning point in western history. The Irish monk Pelagius disputed with Augustine of Hippo over many things including the nature of sin. For Augustine sin was inborn ("with Adam's fall we sinned all"), Pelagius though this was nonsense. A world were Pelagius won, were it was assumed that people weren't born stained with sin, would be a very different one. Perhaps a world where the late classical West might not simply choose to give up.

Picture a late classical world that was on the mend instead of falling to pieces. It could be a very interesting place.

Duel of the emperors! I'm trying to imagine what such a world would look like. I'm seeing a much more Mediterranean west and less German/Irish influence. I'm also curious as to if you'd still see the east-west christian schism.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Drifter

I'm not sure having an empty world for agriculture or housing is going to work.
Agriculture still takes a lot of labor, even if you import advanced automation from somewhere like Caliph or Shikaku Mon. You're going to need weather satellites, mines and chemical factories for processing fertilizers, machine shops to repair automation, etc. In short you're going to need to colonize a world, or import from primitive worlds that can't figure out the Secret.

An agricultural colony world would be a good spot to place refugees from a Hell World. They can work off their indentured status by X years in the colony. Or given a plot of land there after X years, if they don't want to go to another world*. I doubt this last part, since who is going to be running that agricultural colony. Crop Production Services would be a likely operator. They are going to own the colony, CPS executives basically the landholders, the workers the landless peasantry. Maybe not that stark, but you can adjust it for your campaign.

Or White Star will import grain from various worlds it has access to. Say it buys wheat from a Sumeria parallel, or rice from Ming-3. The latter is more likely, since the local WS factor is going to want to maximize their profits, so they will have to import in large quantities. A world where industrial agriculture is viable, but not so advanced they can figure out that all that grain is basically vanishing.

* I can imagine a person from a Hell World, shaken by revelation of multiple timelines, having seen his/her own world destroyed or dying, would suffer from culture shock just moving to a Safe world. Even if they know about Homeline or other advanced worlds, how likely is it that person will move on? Say they work on an agricultural colony for 20 years, do you make the jump to another world, or do you just build a nice home near where you've been working, and know people, for the last 20 years?

That's a good point about needing labor for an empty agricultural world. If Infinity/Homeline wants to set up a full-scale base on an empty Q3 world, that would be one thing - obviously import labor for agriculture and all sorts of things.

Though Infinity/Homeline knows at least some techniques to make utilizing empty worlds more efficiently. Some of that might be high-tech, like robots or weather satellites that are sent up into the air on Homeline, then jumped into another world.

But some of it might be low-tech, adopting techniques from the past/lower-tech worlds, like predicting the weather or making fertilizer. And in a virgin, empty world, low-tech techniques could still be efficient enough to be economically viable, even if not as good as Homeline techniques. Like Infinite Worlds' CMU, the cross-world mining operation run by an alternate Rhodes, which is able to make a profit using low-tech mining techniques on other worlds - not as efficient as modern Homeline mining, but way cheaper. Or Coventry, which is low-tech in many areas, but still comfortable (to be fair, Coventry residents don't get a say in whether they live there...).

If it's a base that Infinity sets up, it wouldn't be completely designed to be economically viable - more like a forward operating military base. Infinity would still try to make it efficient and cheaper, but it wouldn't have to stand on its own.

Using Hell world labor would seem to be too expensive in its own right, at least for Infinity/Homeline - Centrum would be good at that, getting Indentured labor living with basics and no rights (Centrum having experience with that on their own world). But it could supplement a Miracle Workers rescue operation.


Perhaps all of this could be combined: Infinity wants to set up a base of operations on an empty Q3 world, for Q3 operations. But there are also Homeline contractors who want to do it for cheap and/or make money off of it. Plus Miracle Workers wants to save some people from Q3 Hell worlds.

So it is all combined together: Infinity pays for the initial base and infrastructure for their operations. Homeline contractors are hired, and they use their own techniques. Homeline businesses are invited to use the infrastructure set up to run their own economic operations (like how military infrastructure in America, initially built by the government, is then also used by businesses). And Miracle Workers save Hell worlders for less money, by having a place for them to live and paid work for them to do already set up.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by fchase8

That's a good point about needing labor for an empty agricultural world. If Infinity/Homeline wants to set up a full-scale base on an empty Q3 world, that would be one thing - obviously import labor for agriculture and all sorts of things.

Though Infinity/Homeline knows at least some techniques to make utilizing empty worlds more efficiently. Some of that might be high-tech, like robots or weather satellites that are sent up into the air on Homeline, then jumped into another world.

But some of it might be low-tech, adopting techniques from the past/lower-tech worlds, like predicting the weather or making fertilizer. And in a virgin, empty world, low-tech techniques could still be efficient enough to be economically viable, even if not as good as Homeline techniques. Like Infinite Worlds' CMU, the cross-world mining operation run by an alternate Rhodes, which is able to make a profit using low-tech mining techniques on other worlds - not as efficient as modern Homeline mining, but way cheaper. Or Coventry, which is low-tech in many areas, but still comfortable (to be fair, Coventry residents don't get a say in whether they live there...).

If it's a base that Infinity sets up, it wouldn't be completely designed to be economically viable - more like a forward operating military base. Infinity would still try to make it efficient and cheaper, but it wouldn't have to stand on its own.

Using Hell world labor would seem to be too expensive in its own right, at least for Infinity/Homeline - Centrum would be good at that, getting Indentured labor living with basics and no rights (Centrum having experience with that on their own world). But it could supplement a Miracle Workers rescue operation.


Perhaps all of this could be combined: Infinity wants to set up a base of operations on an empty Q3 world, for Q3 operations. But there are also Homeline contractors who want to do it for cheap and/or make money off of it. Plus Miracle Workers wants to save some people from Q3 Hell worlds.

So it is all combined together: Infinity pays for the initial base and infrastructure for their operations. Homeline contractors are hired, and they use their own techniques. Homeline businesses are invited to use the infrastructure set up to run their own economic operations (like how military infrastructure in America, initially built by the government, is then also used by businesses). And Miracle Workers save Hell worlders for less money, by having a place for them to live and paid work for them to do already set up.

That sounds like a great meta game area. Or reason to go to a Hellworld in the first place. Recruiting labor for an IW agro colony. You work with Miracle Workers and probably a national military to get people to the colony. Once there you have to deal with the various private industries that actually run the economy. Add in colonist groups that want some say over how they are governed. And of course the sleeper Centrum agent that came in with the refugees.

[dcarson]

Ranching might be cheap on a empty world. If there are large herds of something tasty you just need to harvest. Buffalo as far as the eye can see takes very little labor, just shoot and ship.

[PTTG]

You know, a magical cross-dimensional empire that has since fallen would be a pretty interesting place to visit...

Perhaps the mana levels dropped (as it tends to do in a lot of fantasy), eventually reaching the point where the portal spells could no longer work, and this fall came long after the society had come to depend on off-world farms and resources.

The final failure might be a sudden calamity rather than the spells getting slightly more difficult over years, and if they were hubritically unprepared for that, the world could be largely empty. If the mana level was Trace instead of None, some magical traps and servitors might still remain; or perhaps eons of quiet have restored the now empty world.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by fchase8

What if there was a Q3 empty world for agriculture?

My version of Centrum has low-population agricultural worlds. Since they're a centrally planned economy, with no shortage of worlds to use for this, and a historical aversion to shortages, they feel this is quite worthwhile. They do sometime use them as bases for operations in the same quantum, which is how some of the Infinite Cabal PCs wound up on "Farm-Production 18".