Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

That's an outrageously light rifle to fire such a hefty round.

Apologies, my typo. It's 49lb, fixed in my posting.

Arranging to have a few of these is no problem. But what about ammo? Did the Germans have factories making these rounds for captured rifles?

Don't know. They could have done it, of course, and they would not have consumed vast quantities of the ammo.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Apologies, my typo. It's 49lb, fixed in my posting.

Ah, indeed. That sounds much more sensible.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Don't know. They could have done it, of course, and they would not have consumed vast quantities of the ammo.

Googling reveals that such rifles are still being used in combat today (in Ukraine), using WWII vintage ammo. I don't see any reason Antarctic Space Nazis shouldn't therefore own such rifles, along with limited stocks of looted ammunition, even if they don't yet make new ammunition in the caliber (other than possibly reloading used brass).

[Starship777]

If magic is on the table a lot of these problems can be swept away.

Instead of a nuclear reactor what if they invented a Soulburner Gestalt?

Tank got destroyed? Cast Rebuild.

Why trust slaves with assembly lines? Cast Animate Machine.

Use Create Fuel to make diesel fuel.

An army marches on its stomach. Create Food.

A bag enchanted with Cornucopia would be able to let a mortar team fire without stopping. A box for artillery ammo would mean they could shell a city day and night forever.

Duplicate could supply everyone with guns. I'm not totally convinced it would work for bullets (how long after it is fired would it disappear?) but they could research a different spell that let them copy ammo.

But why need ammo factories at all? What if they had some kind of horrible tentacled monster that ate raw materials and produced bullets inside its guts? What if they had demon possessed guns that just created bullets through infernal power? Or perhaps the guns contain tiny portals to the Elemental Plane of Bullets? What if soldiers made a spirit pact with a dark entity that gave them Snatcher (Loaded Guns Only) and then just dropped the weapons when they were empty?

Now that I go through the spells I realize magic Nazis would actually be a nightmare in a straight up battle. Although I am curious as to what they would do the first time they meet a spell caster that has Reverse Missiles going. Or something that has the Insubstantial advantage. Or something that has a high enough speed/Altered Time Rate that it can immediately move into close combat. Or Invisibility. Or Mind Control. Ha ha, now I'm wondering how useful their guns might actually be in a fantasy world except for terrorizing peasants. Lots of monsters would not care and find them tasty.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Starship777

If magic is on the table a lot of these problems can be swept away.

Theoretically, but practically speaking, the Nazi Hexensoldaten are learning a wholly new art and it isn't as if they have any guidelines on how to combine magic and technology.

None of the fantasy world primitives they encounter have spells that are applicable to technological weaponry.

And for that matter, magical energies seem to increase the odds that complex mechanical things malfunction. It's worst for state-of-the-art electronics, but it's still noticable even with such simple mechanical devices as internal combustion engines or automatic firearms, both of which need much more frequent maintainence around Hexensoldaten, especially if they've been calling on a lot of mystical energies.

Originally Posted by Starship777

Instead of a nuclear reactor what if they invented a Soulburner Gestalt?

In a manner of speaking, they have. You could call what they do to their slaves a Soulburner Gestalt and it would be a pretty apt description.

The problem is that aside from the labour the slaves can carry out, this doesn't yield surplus energy. In fact, the Nazis really need to make much more energy than they use, to sacrifice to their dark Thing allies.

So one of the first things they needed to use their slave labour for was a coal industry and power plants. And ever since the beginning, they've been working on increasing their energy generation capabilities, as they've been exploring other worlds and raiding them for more slaves.

Originally Posted by Starship777

Tank got destroyed? Cast Rebuild.

Why trust slaves with assembly lines? Cast Animate Machine.

Use Create Fuel to make diesel fuel.

An army marches on its stomach. Create Food.

A bag enchanted with Cornucopia would be able to let a mortar team fire without stopping. A box for artillery ammo would mean they could shell a city day and night forever.

Duplicate could supply everyone with guns. I'm not totally convinced it would work for bullets (how long after it is fired would it disappear?) but they could research a different spell that let them copy ammo.

Using RPM as the magic system and none of the traditions that the Nazis have access to include rituals that are much use with technological items.

About the closest they can get is using weather control magic to improve LTA airships or alchemy to make better raw materials before applying TL7 manufacturing methods, but none of the rituals they learn from TL3 people are any good for directly creating TL7 stuff.

Originally Posted by Starship777

But why need ammo factories at all? What if they had some kind of horrible tentacled monster that ate raw materials and produced bullets inside its guts? What if they had demon possessed guns that just created bullets through infernal power? Or perhaps the guns contain tiny portals to the Elemental Plane of Bullets? What if soldiers made a spirit pact with a dark entity that gave them Snatcher (Loaded Guns Only) and then just dropped the weapons when they were empty?

Because the Antarctic Space Nazis haven't found any dark entities who understand the first thing about technology above TL3. Snatcher, if it worked at all, would only access any of the other worlds they have found, not one of which is a version of Earth and none of which have more than TL3.

Originally Posted by Starship777

Now that I go through the spells I realize magic Nazis would actually be a nightmare in a straight up battle.

From a prior campaign, Nazi commandos from Jagdverband Wehrwolf and the tireless, fearless stormtroopers of SS-Sturmkommando Totenkopf are absolute terrors in battle.

Originally Posted by Starship777

Although I am curious as to what they would do the first time they meet a spell caster that has Reverse Missiles going. Or something that has the Insubstantial advantage. Or something that has a high enough speed/Altered Time Rate that it can immediately move into close combat. Or Invisibility. Or Mind Control. Ha ha, now I'm wondering how useful their guns might actually be in a fantasy world except for terrorizing peasants. Lots of monsters would not care and find them tasty.

RPM doesn't have quite the same oddities as GURPS Magic, but there will, of course, be spellcasters capable of matching and defeating even TL7 weapons. In which case the rest of the unit will shoot him some more, blow him up and cut the remains into pieces.

As for creatures that are enormously physically and magically powerful, well, that's why these wacky Nazis want the higher ground, in the form of endurance-cruising nuclear-powered zeppelins, not to mention dinosaur-killing ordnance.

Nazism kind of means giving up on the chance of holding the moral high ground, so a good Nazi should always aim to hold literal higher ground, for optimal sneering at his inferiors. Zeppelins are an enormous advantage in this regard.

[Starship777]

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I agree RPM is the way to go. It is just too crazy otherwise. Although now I am looking through D&D monsters contemplating all the ways I would torture Nazis with them.

• A skittish invisible Rust Monster. This is not a combat encounter but not immediately obvious why their gear is degrading so fast.
• A Zelekhut. It is a type of Inevitable which are extra-planar constructs. Zelekhuts are charged with hunting down those who would deny justice—especially those who flee to escape punishment.
• All kinds of swarms especially Hellwasps that can crawl inside dead bodies and animate them.
• A pack of Bulette. Literally land sharks.
• A Frost Worm. Bursts out of the ice and swallows someone whole before retreating back under the ice.
• A Will-O-the-Wisp. Leads men to their deaths.
• A group of Dopplegangers. Replacing officers with duplicates.
• A Mimic. When an ordinary trapped treasure chest isn't enough.
• A cluster of Phase Spiders. Won't stay in reality long enough to get shot.
• A Bodak. Sure they might destroy it but do they know that victims killed by its death gaze rise as a new Bodak 24 hours later?
• A swarm of Spectres. Victims slain by a Spectre create a new Spectre in 1d4 turns.
• An Invisible Stalker.
• An Aboleth mage. Slimy fish/amphibian things that can turn people into slaves.
• The Tarrasque. Basically Godzilla.
• A Mind Flayer riding a Beholder. Projects of cone of anti-magic, disintegration beams, mind blasts, and mental domination.
• A Dracolich that is also a high level Evil Cleric. Have fun fighting an actual army of undead.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Icelander

So you could buy several hundred senior SS, leading scientists and selected settlers, along with several thousand stormtroopers (who conveniently don't even require food) quickly building up a slave settlement of fifty thousand or more and managing to build reactors to power zeppelins in 40-50 years?

By which time the slaves would be pushing a million and the free citizens would probably be around 50,000.

This is starting to sound reasonable. It is worthwhile to note that nearly all of the people working at Hanford had no idea what they were making. The stuff that they thought they were producing was officially called "tube alloy", only later did people learn it was called plutonium and was used to turn Nagasaki into flaming radioactive rubble. So your army of mind controlled zombie slaves could be just the the thing, to act as pipe cutters and riveters and concrete pourers and crane operators and such.

Now the Hanford project had one genius (Enrico Fermi), but he was backed up by a whole bunch of other geniuses back in Los Alamos doing theory and experiments needed to get the nuclear data required to make the reactor work. After driving out or executing all the Jewish scientists and then invading their neighbors so that the other European scientists fled to the United States, Nazi Germany basically only had one physics genius left - Werner Heisenberg. And either Fermi was just a better genius than Heisenberg, or Heisenberg was actively working to sabotage the German nuclear program. Not to mention that Heisenberg was accounted for after the war. So getting the nuclear physics expertise may be difficult for these 3rd Reich holdovers.

Maybe the Nazis are actively conducting intelligence gathering and recruitment operations in our world? Perhaps they support Neo-Nazi movements, and recruit the best and the brightest? Maybe they send some of their most gifted ubermenschen to universities to major in nuclear engineering? Plus, there's enough information in the public domain to go a fair ways to building up a technological base for constructing reactors - all the nuclear cross sections are basically available to anyone with an internet connection.

Luke

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

This is starting to sound reasonable. It is worthwhile to note that nearly all of the people working at Hanford had no idea what they were making. The stuff that they thought they were producing was officially called "tube alloy", only later did people learn it was called plutonium and was used to turn Nagasaki into flaming radioactive rubble. So your army of mind controlled zombie slaves could be just the the thing, to act as pipe cutters and riveters and concrete pourers and crane operators and such.

Brilliant.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Now the Hanford project had one genius (Enrico Fermi), but he was backed up by a whole bunch of other geniuses back in Los Alamos doing theory and experiments needed to get the nuclear data required to make the reactor work. After driving out or executing all the Jewish scientists and then invading their neighbors so that the other European scientists fled to the United States, Nazi Germany basically only had one physics genius left - Werner Heisenberg. And either Fermi was just a better genius than Heisenberg, or Heisenberg was actively working to sabotage the German nuclear program. Not to mention that Heisenberg was accounted for after the war. So getting the nuclear physics expertise may be difficult for these 3rd Reich holdovers.

Well, in the world they came from, Hans Kammler knew about the other worlds since they were discovered, in 1943. And he was part of the planning for a new Reich in another world.

This plan was unknown to Hitler or others outside the SS (who did not believe in the occult and would have considered the esoteric aspects of the research involved ridiculous). As the tide of war turned against Germany, the upper echelon of the SS leadership started to become aware that victory for the Third Reich might be impossible, especially as their research did not turn up anything that would make enough of a difference on Earthly* battlefields in time to turn the tide.

As a result, they spent much of 1944 and early 1945 preparing the Last Redoubt, though in such strict secrecy that only in the last few months would they dare to openly loot factories and move entire armouries over. Before that, they stuck to things that were not urgently needed for the war effort. On the other hand, control over a whole lot of secret research meant that there was every opportunity to arrange for the best scientific equipment, and minds, to be transported over, even if the last steps were only taken when Germany's defeat seemed inevitable.

Hans Kammler may or may not have been able to move any actual geniuses to the Last Redoubt, but among the several hundred living settlers chosen would have been many of the engineers and scientists involved in all secret SS programs over 1944-1945. And Kammler would have been aware of the driving need for massive amounts of energy, to satisfy the dark Things that they had allied with, so he'd have prioritised the construction of power plants.

Mind you, while the history of the world these wacky Nazis came from seems to match ours until 1943, it is not necessary to confine ourselves merely to people who were unaccounted for after the war. Indeed, it seems utterly impossible that the Natactic Space Nazis could have done what they did and history remained the same. This is deliberate and a mystery for PCs to explore. For our purposes, just note that any true believing SS man could have fled to the Last Redoubt, regardless of what happened to him in our history. I'll rule that the senior SS leadership didn't trust Heisenberg, but that they secretly obtained copies of all the research he did, as well as recruiting whoever involved in the German atomic program who was a genuine Nazi, ideally of the occult loopy kind, or at least could be brought into such a belief system.

Granted, the German atomic program was nowhere near the success of Los Alamos, but it doesn't have to be. Those atomic scientists that Kammler selected just have to be able to build a reactor at some point during the 40-50 years of the history** of these Antarctic Space Nazis. That's ten times the time that the Allies took and while Los Alamos was obviously a lot bigger concern than the research part of the Last Redoubt, the growth of the slave economy of the Antarctic Slave Nazis means that there would actually be quite a lot of surplus resources available after the first generation (during which, yes, a lot of unforeseen problems with settling a new world no doubt cropped up).

*Most of Earth being Very Low Mana, at best, which made even awesomely powerful otherwordly allies rather limited in military terms.
**Which, in itself, is merely an arbitrary number I threw out because it seemed a plausible time for the Antarctic Space Nazis to have solved any early problems and to be in possession of long-range exploration zeppelins, albeit possibly the earliest nuclear versions. If it would be more plausible for the earliest nuclear zeppelin to be launched later, or earlier, I can adjust that date.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Maybe the Nazis are actively conducting intelligence gathering and recruitment operations in our world? Perhaps they support Neo-Nazi movements, and recruit the best and the brightest? Maybe they send some of their most gifted ubermenschen to universities to major in nuclear engineering? Plus, there's enough information in the public domain to go a fair ways to building up a technological base for constructing reactors - all the nuclear cross sections are basically available to anyone with an internet connection.

Luke

Actually, since leaving Earth, these wacky Nazis have had zero contact with any technological world. They can't go back and don't know what happened on Earth.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Starship777

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I agree RPM is the way to go. It is just too crazy otherwise. Although now I am looking through D&D monsters contemplating all the ways I would torture Nazis with them.

Note that although all sorts of supernatural critters have been encountered, the Antarctic Space Nazis have not found any D&D worlds. There are no philosophical concepts of Good, Evil, Lawful or Chaotic with measurable effects and while there are various otherworldly beings who are worshiped as deities and grant power to their worshipers, there is no reason to believe that any of these actually had any role in creating worlds or even specific peoples.

Despite the discovery of a World Tree, magic and Things of unutterable power, the matter of religious faith is every bit as much up to individual belief as in our world, not measurable evidence.

Instead of D&D monsters, think Lovecraftian ones. Well, in the worst cases. Also, think fey and all sorts of faerie creatures, as well as a range of biologically impossible alien creatures who are able to survive only because of occult energies. Of course, even on strange worlds, most of the alien fauna are more or less biological and bound by natural laws, which has enabled the Antarctic Space Nazis to deal with some very hostile environments (with resources they needed for some reason) by drenching them in stockpiled chemical weapons* before sending stormtroopers in to kill anything that didn't need to breathe.

*There was plenty of spare chlorine, sarin and tabun in WWIII Germany that the senior leadership of the SS could scrounge up in 1944.

Originally Posted by Starship777

• A skittish invisible Rust Monster. This is not a combat encounter but not immediately obvious why their gear is degrading so fast.
• A Zelekhut. It is a type of Inevitable which are extra-planar constructs. Zelekhuts are charged with hunting down those who would deny justice—especially those who flee to escape punishment.
• All kinds of swarms especially Hellwasps that can crawl inside dead bodies and animate them.
• A pack of Bulette. Literally land sharks.
• A Frost Worm. Bursts out of the ice and swallows someone whole before retreating back under the ice.
• A Will-O-the-Wisp. Leads men to their deaths.
• A group of Dopplegangers. Replacing officers with duplicates.
• A Mimic. When an ordinary trapped treasure chest isn't enough.
• A cluster of Phase Spiders. Won't stay in reality long enough to get shot.
• A Bodak. Sure they might destroy it but do they know that victims killed by its death gaze rise as a new Bodak 24 hours later?
• A swarm of Spectres. Victims slain by a Spectre create a new Spectre in 1d4 turns.
• An Invisible Stalker.
• An Aboleth mage. Slimy fish/amphibian things that can turn people into slaves.
• The Tarrasque. Basically Godzilla.
• A Mind Flayer riding a Beholder. Projects of cone of anti-magic, disintegration beams, mind blasts, and mental domination.
• A Dracolich that is also a high level Evil Cleric. Have fun fighting an actual army of undead.

I should probably note that an actual army of undead might not be as unfamiliar to the Kadavergerhorsamer stormtroopers of SS-Sturmkommando Totenkopf as you might think. When they deploy chemical weapons, they don't really need protective gear.*

That being said, the existence of horrible monsters is an excellent reason why exploration of new worlds need to be done by zeppelin, not walking Jäger. Yes, there are flying monsters, but those are much rarer than the alternative, and, in any case, while walking, all kinds of flying, burrowing and ground-based monsters can attack you, while if flying, only flying monsters are a threat.

As for monsters who might follow them home, infiltrate their leadership, etc., that's one advantage of their allegiance. The Antarctic Space Nazis more or less had to accept their allegiance, for the simple reason that the part of the World Tree they can access is under the control of the Things with whom they allied. Traveling there without the permission of these things would be extremely hazardous and, as a result, the scouts that travel to other worlds for the Antarctic Space Nazis usually have a 'safe' way home.

By the same token, dopplegangers and mimics would probably not be able to fool the Things, even if they could deceive mundane senses, and, in any event, the senior leadership have some way of communing with the unearthly intelligences in question, that could not be mimicked by monsters merely because they could assume their intelligence.

What this actually means, of course, is that certain threats are less threatening to the Antarctic Space Nazis only because they've already been thoroughly compromised. For all that their leaders believe themselves to be pursuing their own goals, from the perspective of the Things they serve, they exist merely to provide them with ever more energy and ever more sacrifices.

*But they wear gas masks nonetheless, because it's Kool. Also because the more ordinary settlers of the Nazi Last Redoubt would prefer not to be reminded of what their shock troopers actually are and what that says about their allies.

[Culture20]

Marvel’s Thunderbolts #156 and #157 (2011, Luke Cage, Heroic Era) has a WWI German castle which has just returned from a magical tour of the multiverse, populated with nastiness. Baron Gothenvald isn’t a Nazi, but almost all of the concepts would translate well, especially the loss of humanity.
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix7/gothenvaldbaron.htm

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Culture20

Marvel’s Thunderbolts #156 and #157 (2011, Luke Cage, Heroic Era) has a WWI German castle which has just returned from a magical tour of the multiverse, populated with nastiness. Baron Gothenvald isn’t a Nazi, but almost all of the concepts would translate well, especially the loss of humanity.
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix7/gothenvaldbaron.htm

Yes, it would make sense that a lot of comics had what amounted to Antarctic Space Nazis with occult powers traveling the multiverse. That is, after all, the sort of thing that happens in comics.

The Last Redoubt of the Antarctic Space Nazis is, indeed, some sort of a fantasy analogue/correspondence of Wevelsburg castle, Zentrum der neuen Welt, and the SS settlers and homesteaders live in the castle and in farms and villages around it.

There is some light industry there, but the massive coal power plants of the early days were mostly concentrated in yet another world, where there were massive and easily accessible deposits of both coals and petrochemicals, as well as iron and other minerals. It's there that much of the slave labour would have been concentrated and in that world, pollution from coal plants would have been less of a concern.

Once the Antarctic Space Nazis develop nuclear reactors, they can maybe move the center of their energy generation efforts to the Zentrum der neuen Welt, but while they were relying on coal, there was a deliberate decision to keep the environs of the castle as clean and attractive as possible.

Even in terms of slaves, only those selected to become favoured second class citizens because of perceived Aryan blood would have been allowed near the castle, with lesser slaves (and those subjected to unspeakable rituals to make them Kadavergehorsam) concentrated around the industrial sites in the resource-rich world (or worlds, with them setting up several industrial centers near resources they need in worlds they start to conquer), or, for those employed in agriculture, used on vast industrial farms located at some distance from the idyllic landscape around the castle.

Ironically, I imagine that travel over the World Tree would, in many cases, be easier than mundane travel over long distances within a world. On the other hand, laying roads or tracks there would be right out, but zeppelins that could fit through the gates might travel between the worlds with finished goods from the industrial outposts to the home world (and food from the home world to the industrial outposts, though most of the population at those dismal places would have been beyond food).