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Old 04-25-2020, 02:37 AM   #2271
Anders
 
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip View Post
Doomsday preppers, French medieval style. Only a third of the estimated 3km of tunnels have been accessed so far.
I'm sure that there's nothing untoward in the rest of the complex...
The question is - was it built to keep something out or to keep something in?
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Old 04-25-2020, 09:36 AM   #2272
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip View Post
Doomsday preppers, French medieval style. Only a third of the estimated 3km of tunnels have been accessed so far.
I'm sure that there's nothing untoward in the rest of the complex...
This was awesome! Thanks for the reference. Pity about the silly 'atmospheric' music in the BBC clip, but the actual tunnels - really cool. I'm definitely keeping that lying around for a game some time...
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Old 04-27-2020, 10:42 PM   #2273
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

<Moderator> A reminder that this is not for posting any random odd news. It must be somehow gameable.

That said, please do not repeat a post that has been removed. Repost and tangent it spawned have now been removed, again.
</Moderator>
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Old 05-01-2020, 04:57 PM   #2274
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OK, PCs sentenced to quarantine in a ghost house.

https://www.blackgate.com/2020/04/30...-ghost-patrol/
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Old 05-10-2020, 06:10 AM   #2275
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

There is a library in the Antarctic. (German)

It stands outside the German Neumayer Station. Other research bases have also libraries, but this one is the only free standing building (okay, shipping container) for this purpose. Some pictures.

It started as an art project in the 90's. A visiting artist decided to build a special place outside the main station as a "refuge for contemplation", where the scientist could meditate and think about existence, environment etc.
But is also a real library, stocked with 1,000 books donated by scientists and artists of all fields. Each book has a special dedication by the author. The library container is also painted in various shades of green, because green is the only colour not found in Antarctica. And because it is the colour of life and spring. It is also the colour of envy. And dragons.

So, what can a GM do with it? What can happen to a group of brooding scientists in a remote location, isolated from the rest of the world, who have access to a number of books with maybe esoteric topics?

First one who responds "Great Old Ones" is not even trying.
To begin, the station lies in the area that was christened "New Swabia" by the 1930s Nazi Expeditions. ("Antarctic Redoubt! Flying Discs!") In the same area was the research base of the German Democratic Republic, which was dismantled after the reunification. (At least they claimed, what could they have "forgotten" there?).
The Neumayer Station has also a certain reputation with the conspiracy theorists.

And I wonder how they collect fees if you do not return the books on time.
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Old 05-11-2020, 10:32 PM   #2276
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

Japanese Giant Hornets invade the PNW - right about where the majority of balloon bombs fell... Coincidence? Probably.... but you never know...

https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-his...-balloon-bombs
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/n...nt-jet-stream/

One slightly out of date article on the first colonies discovered in NA: https://theconversation.com/what-are...nswered-137954
https://agr.wa.gov/departments/insec...nsects/hornets
https://news.wsu.edu/2020/04/06/wsu-...illing-hornet/
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Old 05-20-2020, 04:53 PM   #2277
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
Japanese Giant Hornets invade the PNW - right about where the majority of balloon bombs fell... Coincidence? Probably.... but you never know...

https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-his...-balloon-bombs
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/n...nt-jet-stream/

One slightly out of date article on the first colonies discovered in NA: https://theconversation.com/what-are...nswered-137954
https://agr.wa.gov/departments/insec...nsects/hornets
https://news.wsu.edu/2020/04/06/wsu-...illing-hornet/
ick, another invasive species damaging the American west. A pine beetle has decimated many forests in blue sky country as well.
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Old 05-20-2020, 11:54 PM   #2278
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SuitSat-1 was an event run from the International Space Station on February 3, 2006. This here is some Ken Hite business.

A Russian space suit was released from the station, to slowly drift off in to space. If the visual that looks like someone getting thrown overboard (see here) isn't creepy enough, the suit was (quoted from here) stuffed with old clothes and:

Quote:
...outfitted with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter, which faintly transmitted previously-recorded voices of school children to amateur radio operators worldwide before it burned up on re-entry several weeks later.
It also broadcast television signals. I haven't been able to find out of what, or what the children said. It would be trivially easy to mask a ritual in the voices.

So what do we have here? A scapegoat being released from the ISS, destined to play the role of the Wicker Man. Normally a scapegoat is sent out of a community - this one is being cast off from the entire planet, so the sins could well be all of mankind's. It comes back, of course, but it burns up in doing so. Does that destroy it, or empower it? It landed in the southern ocean; perhaps its burden was meant to be sent to Point Nemo? If so, it missed by several thousand miles.

Whose clothes were they? Who was sent out bearing all the sins of mankind, to return in fire? Or did someone need a scapegoat for himself, to be purified of his sins if only for a moment before the suit came crashing back down?
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Old 05-22-2020, 09:40 AM   #2279
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A fisherman in Coventry (the real-life place in England, not the GURPS worldline, although having them found on the supposedly un-magical Coventry would quite possibly freak Homeline out just a bit!) has, while dredging a river as part of a magnet fishing hobby, found a collection of religious relics: 60 leaden cubes engraved on all sides in Sanskrit with a magic square (an array of numbers), along with a silver coin.

The magic square is apparently a yantra requesting protection from a deity generally regarded as malefic, Rahu, the head (which has been separated from its body) of a power over "thieves, magicians, snakes, poison, jails and isolated places," says the article.

Obviously something simply being an exotic religious practice hardly qualifies it as "weird," but as an exemplary instance of the very mystical astrological side, complete with a deliberate protective practice (I'm not sure whether it's apotropaic, intended to avert Rahu's attention, or more actively request his intervention) and a handy material instantiation, sure does give a lot of hooks for a character whos esotericism runs in that direction.
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Old 05-22-2020, 01:35 PM   #2280
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The mere presence objects doesn't strike me as very mysterious, given that England has had a substantial population of Hindus for well over a century now. The real weirdness, to me at least, is how magnetic fishing (which, according to Wikipedia at least, really is just picking things up from the river bottom with a powerful magnet), brought up lead cubes. Are they lead-plated iron, maybe, to combine strength with ease of surface carving? The still more pressing question is why the writer of that article seems to think "square" and "cube" are synonyms.
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