Azoth-8

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Being neither a physicist nor an alchemist, I'm dead in the water in trying to come up with something. If I was both a physicist and an alchemist, and had designed a provably functional warp drive, I'd be way to busy at NASA to post here.

Sounds like your setting is mostly focused on one world anyway, so FTL would just be background flavor for the most part, assuming it isn't the sort of FTL that lets you crack a planet.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Kale

Sounds like your setting is mostly focused on one world anyway, so FTL would just be background flavor for the most part, assuming it isn't the sort of FTL that lets you crack a planet.

True enough. But second thoughts are useful. I now see Azoth-8's warp drive as a form of the Alcubierre warp drive( proper citation later). Alchemical means are used to generate and sustain the warp.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

True enough. But second thoughts are useful. I now see Azoth-8's warp drive as a form of the Alcubierre warp drive( proper citation later). Alchemical means are used to generate and sustain the warp.

For STL drives, are they pseudovelocity drives or are they Newtonian, like say Traveller grav drives?

Any ideas on acceleration?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by warellis

For STL drives, are they pseudovelocity drives or are they Newtonian, like say Traveller grav drives?

Any ideas on acceleration?

Sorry. No I don't. Use what you find coolest while listening to either Houses of the Holly or the White Album.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Sorry. No I don't. Use what you find coolest while listening to either Houses of the Holly or the White Album.

Is there anything Azoth-8 is technologically retarded in due to focus on Alchemical tech?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by warellis

Is there anything Azoth-8 is technologically retarded in due to focus on Alchemical tech?

There might be some areas of non-magical chemistry that are ignored because everyone is into Alchemy. Of course I'm going with the very New-Age take on Alchemy as physical science but taking into account spiritual and mystic forces.

[Astromancer]

China is still in the middle of the Cultural Revolution in this world. Certain types of undesirables are sent to off world prisons. Those on the Moon are simply seem as death camps. The interstellar camps/bases are mysteries.

In a world where Alchemy works, it should be remembered that China has the oldest and most extensive history of alchemy. It would be a great source of surprises and threats in any campaign.

[Astromancer]

India's history is changed on this world as well. Because the history of WWII was radically changed by the cargo saucers, large amounts of grain were imported into India from America during the war reducing the number of famines caused by the need to deny the Japanese India's grain. This caused both Gandhi and Nehru to be at a grain distribution event were a Hindu radical killed them both. This left B. R. Ambedkar leading the independence movement.

Ambedkar, was radically different than Gandhi and far more pragmatic. Where Gandhi fought modernization, attacked birth control, rejected technology, and had strange and destructive ideas on race and sex, Ambedkar embraced the modern, fought racism and sexism, promoted family planning and technological advancement. Because Ambedkar's diabetes was treated by the rapidly improving medical technology of Azoth-8 he is still alive at the age of 79 and in excellent health.

Replacing Gandhi and Nehru in India's first decades of independence, Ambedkar lead to rapid and stunning growth in India. Many traditionalists were bitter and furious with this growth and modernization. Throwing them a bone, and shrewdly noticing how Western Alchemy was now valuable, Ambedkar set up a "Traditional Studies Bureau" to gather, classify, collate, and study, India's traditional lore and knowledge.

At first sneered at as the Bureau of Yoga and Vedas this organisation has recovered a great amount of India's ancient scholarship including India's Alchemy and Ayurveda medical lore. Which is creating an Alchemical boomlet in India.

Both the USSR and China want this data. And to destroy any data they can't steal. This is risky, because India is an emerging superpower in this world. Both the USSR and China prefer to use Pakistan to do the dirty work. More deniability that way.

[warellis]

Has India here still swung toward the USSR despite officially being part of the neutral side?

And what was the issue with Nehru? I thought he was modern himself, unlike say Gandhi? Granted it was under his economic ideology that India really stagnated...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by warellis

Has India here still swung toward the USSR despite officially being part of the neutral side?

And what was the issue with Nehru? I thought he was modern himself, unlike say Gandhi? Granted it was under his economic ideology that India really stagnated...

Nehru was in many ways a slave to certain European Left-wing intellectual fashions in a way that Ambedkar ( who was well to Nehru's left) never was. Nehru had a view of America that was based as much on Victorian Upper Class snobbery as anything else. Also Nehru got to be Gandhi's chosen political heir by total servile devotion and passionately toeing the line. So no Nehru and India jumps forward.

Ambedkar would both be a US ally, and a close one, and tell us off as he felt like it. He would have also told off Anti Americans too. Ambedkar would guard India's independence. So he'd have independent relations with the USSR. These would have been warm under Kruchev ( get right spelling later) and icy under Brezhnev.