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Old 08-29-2017, 12:36 AM   #221
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
So you want a faction that is like Legendary Aeon but hates aliens?
I don't see how you got that from my post.
I just don't like groups that only care about some lofty goal rather than all the casualties they inflict. Every one of your groups seems intent on ends justifying the means ideologies. That makes them all bad guys to me, even if some are worse than others.
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Old 08-29-2017, 12:41 AM   #222
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Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
The Pit
...
A whole world that naturally creates the abysmal situation from the episode Slidecage from Sliders. Cool.
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Old 08-29-2017, 04:03 AM   #223
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Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I don't see how you got that from my post..
"Mankind first".
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I just don't like groups that only care about some lofty goal rather than all the casualties they inflict. Every one of your groups seems intent on ends justifying the means ideologies. That makes them all bad guys to me, even if some are worse than others
I don't really see how you are getting that from Legendary Aeon. They are supposed to be the "good guy" faction.
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Old 08-29-2017, 01:17 PM   #224
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Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

Yeah. I think that while we're both fluent in English, we're reading very different concepts in each other's words.
We're getting confused about the other's confusion.
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Old 08-29-2017, 01:29 PM   #225
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Default Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations

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Yeah. I think that while we're both fluent in English, we're reading very different concepts in each other's words.
We're getting confused about the other's confusion.
I think the thing that you are missing is that the war for the watchtowers only occurs on supers worlds on the verge of Crisis and that Crises are a natural and inevitable result of causality being overtaxed by the kinds of things that comic book readers see as continuity failures (but again, they aren't actually that meta in-setting, it is just easier to explain this way). So the best way to prevent Crises is to stabilize continuity and make it more resilient, just like Bronze Age comics, and also to try to make the new reality as much like the old one as possible, which also has the humane benefit of preserving individual identities.
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Old 09-04-2017, 01:39 PM   #226
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"The Insiders": Formed of individuals of varying power sources who all possess some ability or tech that allow them to contact or travel to other worlds, this group was forged through interlocking favors and partnerships growing into something more. Now they've become a informal network of Guanxi dedicated to trading information and services with each other to increase their wealth and comfort. As a group they don't have any real opinions on the other Crosstime factions other than the idea they're dangerous and should be avoided when at all possible; as a result they tend to eschew the spotlight and focus on making few waves where the larger groups have sunk their teeth in.
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Old 09-04-2017, 07:04 PM   #227
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Sounds like a niche group of The Cabal.
Heck, maybe their secret leader is a Grand Master playing a long game with disinformation.
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Old 09-06-2017, 12:26 AM   #228
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[Wrong thread....]

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Old 09-11-2017, 07:37 PM   #229
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Here's a potential for an interesting black swan....

Somewhere several trillion quantum levels "up" from Homeline is a trans-quantum post-human civilization. They wander from worldline to worldline and quantum to quantum freely via omnipresent portals and psibernetic jump devices and integrated mana crystals. Stating the community as a whole is an exercise in futility, even using deity stats -- they can bulk-modify the contents of an entire quantum, and do so as a human might turn on a light switch. Their grasp of cliodynamics and transdimensional science is, as one would expect, unimaginably vaster than Homeline's.

There are a few things close to modern humans in the civilization. Something not unlike tomagachi in purpose exist in ancestor simulations (which verge on being worldlines themselves -- again, their psionotechnomagic makes Homeline-centric concepts difficult to fit around their achievements). In some pocket universes inside of the swirling yet orderly metacosmos, there are even holdouts of old-line humans (and hominids, elves, greys, and others), living in their own worlds that are unimaginably more advanced than our own, yet vastly behind the community around them.

And there is a third kind of humanlike person -- a kind of avatar for some of the mega-minds that inhabit the community.

Their forms are often based on humans, and just as often more fanciful. Nano-Psibernetics grant them incredible powers and reach; integrated mana flow generators empower their magitech. Aside from either of those, advanced biological science creates a being that is superbly healthy and able to support the mind needed to contain even a fraction of the being that endows the avatar with life.

These avatars are exceedingly temporary for their masters -- they rarely persist for more than a few million years before being reintegrated -- and they usually have some almost philosophical purpose. Perhaps to experience, in the truest sense available to a mortal being, the color red. Or perhaps to visit and speak to the inhabitants of some holdout pocket.

One such avatar was flung across the cosmos and landed somewhere near what Homeline would call Q-1500000. It isn't intentionally disruptive, but it is a godlike entity on a quest to walk home across the planes. Its stepping stones are the anchor worldlines (not unlike Homeline and Centrum); sometimes it must travel overland when it reaches one, to make the next jump; sometimes it just uses Warp. Most of the time its visits only last a fraction of a second; a flash of light and a peal of thunder. Other times, it must wait in a given worldline, shaping that world's fate to make the next few steps faster somehow.

The scale of its impacts depend on the GM. Just want to spook people? Then it has no real effect, but theorists are afraid of terrifying consequences. Maybe the real challenge is the fact that it reveals the anchor timelines of the next two Q-levels by accident. Or maybe its Ozmic wake kicks the local mana level up to High for a time.

Want to shake up the campaign? As it leaps off of each anchor world, the world "sinks" in response, either shifting a Q-level or losing its anchor status. Or the avatar decides that it needs to set up shop somewhere in the neutral zone so it can shift that world to something useful for its next great leap... and it's willing to talk. Maybe it carries reality quakes in its wake, causing a wave of micofractures all over Homeline.

Last edited by PTTG; 09-12-2017 at 10:09 PM.
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Old 12-30-2017, 11:32 AM   #230
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Dreamwalkers has yet to be exactly located. Their history diverged long, long ago, and their political organizations are largely unlike our own. It also seems that their form of psionics is different from the type used in the local worldline bundle; psionic abilities are at a mutual -10 for both sides, with one exception.

Their form of crosstime travel consists of jumping into other's minds (as Possession, with Assimilation and Telecontrol, with the limitation "only crosstime.") Though the specific ability is learned (and can be modified, such as by gaining the "body swap" enhancement), it requires fairly rare level of skill and talent. This posession can't be defended against by anyone lacking Mind Shield skill, but most homeline-normal-psi-type-people (that is, every human from Q1 to well past Q7) can attempt to resist the possession, and the Dreamwalker native takes the -10 penalty.

Their understanding of crosstime science is also orthogonal to Homeline's. They can access some, but not all, worlds in each prime-numbered quantum below 22 and above 1. They can't reach Centrum directly.

They are involved in their own crosstime war, although intriguingly enough, it is internal.

Their political structure, in essence, consists of independent city-states that individually swear fealty to a political, philosophical, corporate, or ethnic houses-- all four concepts are kind of bundled together. Wars consist of fairly small groups in formalized duel/battles, which have in recent eras moved off-world to other timelines (thus allowing deadly duels that leave the warriors unharmed).

There are two very broad classes of organizations that deal with other timelines, then: first, those that go there to exploit them for useful knowledge and/or to fight other houses for control of an important city. Second, those that recognize the humanity of the people of other worldlines, and see the battles as little more than crude murder of people uninvolved and unaware of the conflict.

This second group makes for an excellent player organization. They develop new techniques, most particularly one that gives the host some level of understanding of the events and even allows them to communicate with the visitor, and the group of Dreamwalkers attempt to defuse and disable their invading fellow-worlders, ideally without killing their hosts!

Last edited by PTTG; 12-31-2017 at 11:19 PM.
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