Real-Life Weirdness

[DeadParrot]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

The body is under... the bombing range? A table purchased at a charity shop has a message painted on the bottom saying that the body is buried at a particular set of coordinates. These coordinates turn out to be a bomb testing range near a Florida Air Force base, so checking for a body is a bit problematic.

Kids, those meddling kids! Never overlook the possibility of this being a prank by one or more kids. Either just before the table left their house or free range kids wandering the store and having a bit of fun. Now laughing at all of the attention their prank is getting. Possibly inspired by an NCIS(or was it JAG?) episode where criminals were using a bombing range as a body disposal site.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

As a cranky old guy, I'll note that I don't see the "N" or "W" the article claims in the picture. So it describes four different locations. The southern ones are in the Pacific and Indian oceans not near any land, but the the "N" "E" one is in India, north of Lucknow.

Which is the sort of insight you'd get in a campaign or an action movie. Cue the line crossing a map montage...

AFAICT the store where the desk in question was purchased is also in Florida, so of the four possible locations the one in the same jurisdiction seems the most likely.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

As a cranky old guy, I'll note that I don't see the "N" or "W" the article claims in the picture. So it describes four different locations. The southern ones are in the Pacific and Indian oceans not near any land, but the the "N" "E" one is in India, north of Lucknow.

I see a minus sign in front of the second coordinate, with a smaller, fainter hyphen separating the two coordinates, so N and W seems fine to me.

[Johnny1A.2]

OK, this bit of military/civil technology from the Cold War could definitely have gaming applications...and it's just too Cool for words:

The 1964 Chrysler Marsh Screw Amphibian

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

OK, this bit of military/civil technology from the Cold War could definitely have gaming applications...and it's just too Cool for words:

The 1964 Chrysler Marsh Screw Amphibian

That's the same drive system used by the Chinese tanks during the American Liberation of Anchorage in 2076, as seen in the simulation being run by the Outcasts in Fallout 3 DLC "Operation Anchorage".

[ravenfish]

To be filed under "I don't know what happened, but PCs must have been involved somehow", a 200 foot radio mast in Alabama was stolen (or, at least, has disappeared). Despite the fact that the mast was supposed to have been actively broadcasting, no one noticed the loss until over a week later when a crew was sent to do routine brush trimming.

Your gaming angle can be either the heist itself, or the nature of the interrupted transmissions- were people prevented from noticing their cessation by the same force that prevented them from properly noticing their nefarious contents in the first place?

[Anders]

THIS THREAD MUST NOT DIE!!!

Parasitic fungus uses amphetamine and psilocybin to turn cicadas into 'flying saltshakers of death'.

Imagine what it could do to player characters.

Edit: It could also be an omen, when trillions of cicadas appear. It could be the basis of a time-keeping season - how many years since the last cicada 'outbreak'. And it could be a weird alien race where kids arrive every seventeen years rather like every year, as for humans.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Anders

And it could be a weird alien race where kids arrive every seventeen years rather like every year, as for humans.

Or a weird alien planet that causes all the human kids to be born at once, seventeen years after colonization -- an event neither their psychology nor infrastructure is prepared for after a decade and a half of apparent failure to have any children. Probably helps the drama if the colony is the lone remnant of Earth-That-Was.

(Compare Bradbury's "Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed", where Mars gradually turns the human colonists into Martians.)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Or a weird alien planet that causes all the human kids to be born at once, seventeen years after colonization -- an event neither their psychology nor infrastructure is prepared for after a decade and a half of apparent failure to have any children. Probably helps the drama if the colony is the lone remnant of Earth-That-Was.

(Compare Bradbury's "Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed", where Mars gradually turns the human colonists into Martians.)

A further alternative, loosely based on how Taarak seems to be structured in the anime Vandread - a nation where the citizenry are either not allowed to reproduce or are outright incapable of it without technological assistance (for Taarak, it's because it was an all-male society), but when each turns 17 their genetic material is used to create the next generation. This would result in "broods" of people (or perhaps just a single brood) 17 years apart.

[Anders]

Hmm... they reproduce once, when they reach 17 (and obviously have more than one kid each) and then raise the kids.