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Old 09-23-2021, 03:48 PM   #5701
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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Gloconda

This world is a Myth parallel that seems to be evolving from a somewhat Tolkien-eques world into something more technologically advanced. Orcs are nearly extinct, the Elves have mainly left the world, but the majority of the Nobility has Elven blood. Half-Elves are occasionally born. Halflings and Dwarves are still around but rarer. The tech level is four, think the last years of Elizabeth's reign. The world is mainly Normal Mana with small areas of High and Low Mana.

The big changes in this world started in a large northern kingdom that seems like a rough cognate of the Holy Roman Empire, although King Dietrich was more like Charles XII. The king's youngest and least favorite son (his mother was a late political marriage and the king never really cared for her or her Half-Elf son) to suppress pirates in a swampy western province called Sealand while the king and his preferred sons conquered an Eastern Nation.

The pirates weren't much of a problem to scatter, but the issue was keeping them gone in such an empty land. But the young Prince Laurin had many good advisers and tutors as well as being a skilled mage. (The king didn't approve of royalty learning magic, but he saw it as a way to make his youngest child useful). Prince Laurin created a series of Polders. An then had windmills set up to power the pumps to drain them. Soon he got large numbers of settlers for these new lands. He set up new towns and corporations (governments not businesses). But Laurin created no new nobles.

Meanwhile, King Dietrich (like Alexander) followed his victories eastward. Eventually the king conquered this world's equivalent of India. Dietrich and his favored children stayed there conquering and plundering. The King, basically as a book keeping measure, made his youngest son Viceroy while he was in the East.

Prince Laurin, once he had vice regal authority, massively reworked the administration of the kingdom. As most of the nobility was in the East with King Dietrich, he had little real resistance. Prince Laurin, using skilled engineers and mages, built canals linking the river system of the main kingdom with the river systems of his father's conquests to the southeast. These lands had been emptied by the previous rulers who preferred empty lands to breed cattle and horses and train horsemen. Prince Laurin opened these lands to settlement giving the peasants unheard of terms. This drained tenants from feudal lands collapsing their rents. As the eastern wars provided incredible plunder and booty the nobles rarely noticed.

More Later...
King Dietrich had more elven blood than he cared to admit, and he had impressive longevity (far less impressive than Prince Laurin, but impressive). Thus, even though King Dietrich was in his fifties when he started his conquests, he was in the Eastern lands for forty-five years. Several of his sons died of disease, others in battle, and one by old age. Prince Laurin the Half-Elf hadn't even begun to have aging roles.

The most favored heirs agreed to first finish the conquest of the Eastern lands and then decide who will be the next king. Meanwhile, fleets sent from the now wealthy and populous Sealand conquered islands off the western coasts of the Eastern lands. These fleets soon made contact with the grandsons of King Dietrich and discovered the old king was dead as were his sons.

Once this news got back to the Northern Kingdom, Prince Laurin was easily able to get the powers of the Kingdom (or at least those in residence) to proclaim him King Laurin I.

About fifteen years after King Dietrich death a powerful warlord arose from the ancient families of the Eastern lands. In a truly brilliant campaign the Warlord made himself Emperor of the Eastern lands and cast the invaders and their allies out of all of the Eastern lands except the islands off the wester shores.

Now, after sixty years in the east the old nobility and the Grandsons of King Dietrich return to the Northern Kingdoms. Returning like Crusader knights to Queen Anne's England.

Basically, their are two major campaigns here.

First in the Eastern lands. King Laurin has reinforced the Island captured by his fleets. These are mainly fortified trading posts. However, to encourage many of the nobles to stay in the east, King Laurin has issued Letters of Marque. Think of it as The Pirates of the Caribbean versus the Mughal Empire. With the Sea Beggars training the Pirates. This is an over the top action adventure swashbuckler campaign set in a fantasy version of the Indian Ocean.

Second, the Northern Kingdom has evolved rapidly. It is now beginning to enter Tech Level Five, navigation is already a mid-TL5 skill in this setting. The power bases of the old nobility are gone, Their tenants have fled and are now independent small landowners. Their estates are either ruined or confiscated for taxes. And they are strangers in a land they don't know and doesn't know them. The Grandsons of King Dietrich, the sons of his favored and elder sons, face a king that has been running the kingdom they claim for sixty years and is strongly allied with the Church and the merchant towns. King Laurin also has created an effective bureaucracy to administer the kingdom and an efficient modern army to protect it.

This looks hopeless, but it is actually a fairly normal set up for swashbuckler stories. The Scions of a faded aristocracy and the by-pasted heirs of the king versus a modernizing state they can't understand.

This is a Q4. Both Homeline and the Cabal are deeply interested in this world. This world is designated "Gloconda" because of its extraordinary wealth of gemstones. This parallel has way more than two orders of magnitude more jewels and gemstones than Homeline. These gems are also dramatically easier to enchant into powerstones.

Both sides are constantly trying to acquirer the finest gemstones.

Note: The powerstone enchantment seems to be unknown on this parallel.
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Old 09-24-2021, 02:47 PM   #5702
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Note that this requires not aerogels but actual antigravity. You need stuff that is not only lighter than air, but several hundred times lighter than vacuum to do this. The simple fact is that water is 800 times denser than air, so you can float 800 times as much stuff on it in the same size weightless hull.
This is an Azoth world. These Airships are semi-Magical and meant to replace ships for the coolness factor.

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Even that's a fairly optimistic effect. You'll note that the existence of relatively powerful flying weapons platforms has failed to eradicate bandits and rebellions in our world. And not one you want anyway, because effective government control is an adventure killer. To get the pulp effect you very much need regions that are not effectively policed, where heroic individuals and not the institutional forces of a sovereign are the only source of order or justice.
Even gunboats aren't effective at "gunboat diplomacy" anymore. If someone sailed a fleet into the harbor of the city of Algiers today, with the intent of blasting the city to pieces, as the British did in the 1820's when they'd had it with the Bay of Algiers, the fleet would likely take as much damage as the town. For that matter, cheap missiles would likely have eviscerated the fleet first. However, in the 1930s, which I would suggest was a peak period of planet Earth's technological divergence (their were actual TL3 and TL4 societies at that time) a well armed and armored airship gunboat would be very effective.

Besides, this is a highly cinematic setting.
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Old 09-24-2021, 03:15 PM   #5703
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The Them designation denotes worlds, all probably myth parallels, where the events described in the eponymous movie actually happened. In all cases, it resulted in scientists studying the remains of the ants in an attempt to replicate the process in a controlled way.

In Them-2 (local 1966) the Earth is besieged by giant mutant arthropods.

Them-3 (local 1978) has solved world hunger with human-size vegetables.

Them-5 (2015) has dog-sized, trained ants used as manual laborers in a retro-future world based on bio-tech rather than machines.

Them-7 (1956) was quickly closed when it was discovered two of the scientists on the study were named Ray Palmer and Hank Pym.*


* This is meant as a joke (by me) and not a serious submission.
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Old 09-25-2021, 01:13 AM   #5704
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All the same, any or all of the above would be fun things to have as local colour in the right kind of world-line. Might not be enough to carry the thing by itself, but you could add them to some other one. (The dog-sized ants could just as well be local colour in a Dungeons-and-Dragons-type parallel, for that matter. They're always having giant scorpions and giant spiders and that kind of thing, naturally occurring or as the result of a wizard. Maybe the place you're adventuring through had a mad wizard scientist a hundred years ago and heroes defeated him and there were all these giant ants left over and the locals thought it was a pity to waste them.)

For Astromancer's airship, anti-gravity and alchemy could go together, if you read some of the wilder New Age alchemy stuff. Of course it's magic, but if you want it to make sense it's as well to be clear what the magic does, so anti-gravity magic rather than lighter-than-air-materials magic.
(Not that aerogels aren't amazing. But I don't think anything that could legitimately be called an aerogel could account for what you're describing in a way that doesn't look obviously unworkable to beady GURPS players - it'd surely need to have negative weight to get enough lift to be a good cargo vessel, and aerogels as such just work by being very un-dense. Cinematic is one thing, but any time you try to explain your gadgets by reference to real things, you run the risk of your readers saying "But that's not what that does".)

An airship might be better at "gunboat diplomacy" than an aeroplane, since it can hover over one place without any more effort than it takes to compensate for the wind, and might not need to refuel as often as a helicopter.
If this is less effective if the opposition have missiles, then this rulership will continue only until the locals get missiles, or until they find a way to fly someone up to the airship to sabotage it. Either sounds like a job for the players, if the airship are people we don't like.
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Old 09-27-2021, 02:37 PM   #5705
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From a Ruined Tomb in a Forgotten Land

This world is a near parallel to Homeline until 1930. In that year the events of the film Dracula unfold in a world that had not previously shown any sign of being a myth parallel. Some researchers suggest that and outside force sent the Count to this parallel.

Although there is no sign of Castle Dracula or other supernatural creatures, Miss Lucy Weston is still at large in London. There are reports of strange children in the poorer areas of London. Strange pale children who beg to be let in out of the night.

Basically, a quite and creepy little monster hunt in a version of 1930s London. If the Vampire outbreak gets out of hand, it could easily alter the course of WWII.

Homeline's main interest is who brought the Vampires to this world and why. Is it a new plot by the Cabal? If you're doing a Cabal centered campaign, your faction might ask the same question.
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Old 09-28-2021, 01:54 AM   #5706
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

In 674-678, the Arab forces besieged Constantinople by land and sea. In our world they were defeated by Greek Fire at sea and by three generals on land. But in this timeline, they took Constantinople.

Following the defeat of the capital, the Arabs managed to take the rest of Byzantium without much resistance as various Byzantine generals fought among themselves rather than presenting a united front.

It is now 685, and Arab forces have taken Constantinople and the rest of the European and Asian Byzantine empire. The new Caliph is Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and he is gazing hungrily westward in Europe. What happens now?
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Old 09-29-2021, 04:39 PM   #5707
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Barbary-6

The Dey of Algers in Homeline history made a deal with the infant USA, build me modern high quality naval ships and I'll take the ships as tribute and your Merchant fleet will be under my protection. But neither Baba Mohammed ben-Osman nor successor were interested in keeping their word to the young republic. However in this Q6 Low Mana parallel the Baba not only lived to be 93, he decided to keep his word and see if the new republic could supply him with a navy. Soon Baba Mohammed ben-Osman was generously paying for quality American ships.

One limiter on Islamic naval development was the lack of quality timber and naval stores available to most Islamic societies. In this world the USA is Algeria's shipbuilder.

Now the local year is 1806. Napoleon has offered the Dey an alliance. Britain can't permit this.

Basically, this is a Napoleonic period Naval war with Britain trying to quickly knock Algeria out of the Picture. Meanwhile, Napoleon wants the Algerians to stay in.

Centrum wants to get Britain to invade America six years early and with enough force to crush America and reabsorb it into the Empire. This would cut off Algeria's supply of quality ships. Homeline wants the Brits to launch their invasion against Algeria. The Cabal is interested in the influence of the Jinni on Algeria's rulers and both the Cabal and the Jinni are wildcards.

So brush up your Hornblower and your Aubrey–Maturin.
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Old 10-04-2021, 04:39 PM   #5708
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Lost-3

The Lost worlds are defined by a realityquake displacing a large area of the Earth's surface from a human inhabited Parallel to a parallel without human inhabitants. Lost-1 had a large section of southwest Asia, including all of Mesopotamia, into a nearby parallel, but as this world's local year was 12,000BCE, no one has noticed yet. Lost-2 has had a large swath of North America which includes all of the continental United States, most of inhabited Canada, and a big chunk of Mexico, shifted into another parallel just as a nuclear war was beginning. Only 20 months have passed since the transfer. The local year is 1967.

Lost-3 has also seen a large swath of North America transferred. The local year in the world that the people came from was 1769. The local year (at least according to the position of the stars) is 25,431BCE.

The areas transferred includes all of North America east of the Mississippi and most of the islands of the Caribbean and the Bermudas. The transfer was fifty years ago. New England (which includes New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland), New York (which includes northern New Jersey and Bermuda), and Pennsylvania (which includes southern New Jersey, and Delaware) are allied against Quebec and her Native American allies. War hasn't broken out yet.

Maryland south through Georgia are separate nations struggling with both the Five Civilized Tribes and a coalition of French and Spanish West Indian colonies. The English West Indian colonies are also a coalition and allied with the Seaboard English speaking nations.

New Orleans has made a special deal with the Choctaw nation. They're an independent trading city.
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Old 10-10-2021, 07:43 AM   #5709
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The areas transferred includes all of North America west of the Mississippi and most of the islands of the Caribbean and the Bermudas.
Err, do you mean east of the Mississippi?
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Old 10-10-2021, 08:43 AM   #5710
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Err, do you mean east of the Mississippi?
Yes, I will correct.
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