New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Visagoth-2

Visagoth-2 is a low Mana Q6 parallel. The divergence point from Homeline history was when a civil war broke out among the followers of the Prophet Mohammed which allowed the Byzantine armies to keep the Arabs out of Palestine. The North African coast from Tunis to the Atlantic became a stable kingdom which maintained classical culture and learning.

The local society had maintained a substantially higher percentage of classical literature and learning than had been suspected. Aspects of the Arab Agricultural Revolution are present in this kingdom and spreading to Spain causing population increases.

However, all is not well for this Western Kingdom. The followers of the Prophet are settling their arguments and reuniting. Byzantinium is looking at lost provinces of Rome and watching the prosperity of those they feel should be their subjects. The King's of Italy, desiring to be called emperors of Rome, hungrily eye the fertile fields of the Visagothic kingdom.

Basically, it's war and diplomacy in the period just at the end of antiquity. For outtimers, it seems someone is trying to make changes in this parallel. They've introduced the spinning wheel and paper. Either alone could transform the world. Together they're a tidal wave of change. But who set this up and why?

[ronwit]

Ruh-oh, page 666.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by ronwit

Ruh-oh, page 666.

The devil you say.

[Astromancer]

Does anybody have a good Antichrist/Apocalypse setting idea?

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Does anybody have a good Antichrist/Apocalypse setting idea?

There is a good unofficial In Nomine take on the Revelations events in the In Nomine stuff adventures webpage.

"And I Feel Fine" (no, not the one you did.)

[Astromancer]

Aleister-2

This Q4 formerly low Mana parallel is disturbing to Homeline. Aleister Crowley has become a god. No one seems pleased.

The Cabal is deeply freaked out. They rarely took any Aleister Crowley seriously. Now one of them has achieved apotheosis. He's even raised some celebrity dead people from the grave (FDR, Jean Harlow, Mable Normand, Hitler [so he could stand trial], Lenin [to foul up Stalin], William Butler Yeats [so he could rub his nose in it] and some others).

The local year is 1947. Homeline feels that Aleister Crowley could get out of line. As Crowley has already contacted Homeline agents to set up diplomatic relations, it seems highly likely.

Although highly intelligent and occasionally very astute, Crowley was a jerk and one that seems to have been on the autism spectrum. Managing a deity, especially one with ultratroy political views and a tendency to meddle should keep any party busy.

[Astromancer]

It's become a trope described on the TV Tropes web page that "Reed Richards is Useless!" This means that comic book super inventors never seem to change anything. The Justice League has teleporters, the Fantastic Four can fly back and forth to the moon and have a robot butler, Tony Stark and the other two have fusion power. Where's the benefit to society?

Picture a super inventor in 1938. He's cracked fusion power (he read the same Sci Fi stories that had Issac Asimov worried about the limits of fossil fuels in the 1920s). Seeing the threat from Nazism and Stalinism he gets a cousin of his to introduce him to Eleanor Roosevelt and proves to her that he has useful technologies.

In this America the first fusion power plant opens in 1941. A plant that processes coal into fuels for aircraft and other vehicles opens in West Virginia in May of 1942 and in Wales in the same year. The first communication satellite was in orbit in February 1943.

WWII ended early and the Cold War started early but the post-WWII prosperity is still ongoing in 1985. Moon bases, Mars colonies, Airship cities over Venus, and other wonders abound. However, this Q5 parallel isn't someplace Homeline visits regularly because they have superheroes. No one seems to be on a par with Silver Surfer or the Silver Age Superman but large numbers of powerful people who can't be predicted aren't a risk Homeline likes to face.

Recently however a lost super was found on a Q3 parallel. She and some Cabalists were fighting a group called Midwinter Aton. The dark Wizards managed to get themselves killed, the Cabalists escaped, and the super joined up with the ICops for a ride out of what was a hell parallel.

The Super (picture a pretty teenage girl who's a Flying Brick with Empathy powers like Councilor Troi) joined the Homeline crowd and started working for them. However she has discovered that her parallel is known to Homeline.

The 5Q parallel described above is her home parallel. The Icops are willing to help her get home if she will help Homeline get some of her parallel's technology. She wholeheartedly agrees. After all, both groups are good guys.

Basically, the PCs are helping an sweet naive enthusiastic teenage super do industrial espionage in a world of far more experienced Supers.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Basically, the PCs are helping an sweet naive enthusiastic teenage super do industrial espionage in a world of far more experienced Supers.

Although as with so many "secret" missions, you need to not ask why.

It's a world that has a 20th century United States, patents are public records, and many of them 40 years old now and thus expired even locally. Throw in the fact that any technology anywhere widespread enough to be world changing can usually be purchased for cash - comes along with being widespread after all - and on a line with superpowers anything that [is] closely held by supers probably won't work on Homeline anyway, which rather cuts into the motivations to try to steal it....

This is a fairly common proposed mission - "there is information we don't have, go steal it without anyone finding out". But when it is something thousands or millions of people already know, and new ones learn every day, there's no real reason to keep it secret you are interested in learning it too, let alone resort to espionage. Buy a textbook - there definitely is one on 40 year old world changing technologies.

OK there's more excuse on low technology lines, but way too many missions seem to hinge on Infinity not knowing something that could be looked up in a university library.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Although as with so many "secret" missions, you need to not ask why.

It's a world that has a 20th century United States, patents are public records, and many of them 40 years old now and thus expired even locally. Throw in the fact that any technology anywhere widespread enough to be world changing can usually be purchased for cash - comes along with being widespread after all - and on a line with superpowers anything that [is] closely held by supers probably won't work on Homeline anyway, which rather cuts into the motivations to try to steal it....

This is a fairly common proposed mission - "there is information we don't have, go steal it without anyone finding out". But when it is something thousands or millions of people already know, and new ones learn every day, there's no real reason to keep it secret you are interested in learning it too, let alone resort to espionage. Buy a textbook - there definitely is one on 40 year old world changing technologies.

OK there's more excuse on low technology lines, but way too many missions seem to hinge on Infinity not knowing something that could be looked up in a university library.

Good point, and I told someone on the Onyx Path forums that instead of stealing books from the ancient library of Alexandria (she was playing a time traveling Mage) she could just buy copies made by library scribes. They did that regularly. My face is red.

Still, Homeline is paranoid about superheroes and the Super they've got is a naive teenager. So foolishness could happen. Maybe my idea makes good comedy.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Still, Homeline is paranoid about superheroes and the Super they've got is a naive teenager. So foolishness could happen. Maybe my idea makes good comedy.

There's nothing wrong with the core concept, it's just got the relatively common problem of most infinite worlds (or for that matter massive interstellar or sandbox modern world) settings. There just isn't very much motivation to take risks when everything you could gain can be had somewhere safe.

Generally you solve this by forcing the characters to react rather than motivating them to act - there's a threat coming from there, or somebody who stole something and we want back fled there, or somebody else has already stupidly gotten in trouble there and you need to rescue them.

Ambiguous implicit threats can work too "our new weird parachronic radiation detectors have recorded something new from this direction over the last few days....". It doesn't match all that well with the naive teenager, but it could be the motivation for whatever branch has the weird radiation detector [telling] her Infinity knows about her home. How unhappy she is they could have taken her home anytime in the past year and didn't mention it could be another conflict seed.