Alternate Crosstime Organizations - Page 2

patchwork · 11-28-2016, 11:56 PM

All drawn from a source I'm sure people on this board can recognize, adapted for IW:

Daikoku
An early industrial revolution in Japan (and spreading from there) lead to a world-girdling economy and Asian-centered empires with no concept of environmentalism, so that present day Daikoku's 9 billion people live under domes, partially sheltered from a crashed biosphere in which nothing lives or grows, the air chokes and the ozone layer is so destroyed that several hours of direct sunlight can cause permanent damage. They have developed parachronics and have infiltrated several worlds where they offer the products of their manufacturing (TL9 in power generation and information technology and arguably transport, still TL8 in biological sciences and military technologies) in exchange for all the food they can buy, and some oil (they don't need it for power generation, as their fusion plants work just fine despite the waste heat, but it's handy for plastics).

Daikoku hasn't encountered an empty world yet; it would be an expensive and uncertain investment for them anyway, as the knowledge of farming outside of a few hydroponics plants is lost by them. On the one hand, it might give them something to do besides bleed early-industrial worlds dry of food and oil through dummy corporations; on the other, allowing its paranoid, selfishness-is-a-virtue hypercapitalist short-term-thinking culture to really take root in the multiverse is not something Infinity or Centrum would want. Not on a projection-capable worldline, so pick a Quantum of your choice to add them to.

Desolation Road
This artificial skerry has nineteen worlds in it. The newest is a parallel in which American colonization experienced a series of low-probability failures, with hostile locals, natural disasters and disease wiping out English and French colonial efforts and seriously hampering the Spanish, while on the other side of the globe the Ming dynasty is followed not by the mostly-sane Qing but by the mostly-insane Shun. Current year is 1893. One other world has a neo-primitive hunter cult; the other 17 have been nearly scoured free of sapient life. Nearly.

A malevolent godling made this skerry; its early efforts tended to involve straightforward attacks by many-tentacled horrors eating the human population. Then it creates massive, permanent gates to another world to do something similar. As it digests more and more of humanity, it is either becoming more like us, or at least becoming fascinated by us. It is taking its time, using humanoid monsters over the course of centuries, including things like vampires and werewolves, to disassemble human societies from within before administering the coup de grace. There are unconfirmed reports of it even assuming human identity itself. Its rift into the newest world opened on the Grand Canyon about the time Europeans were first colonizing North America, you do the math. It still likes its gooey tentacled pets, though.

The neo-primitive hunter cult was a world in which at some point, an industrial culture turned its back on all that, smashed the machines, declared survival of the fittest and started culling their neighbors. Generations later, its tribesmen receive a surprisingly complete education in science and economics, with the understanding that these are the ideas of the corrupt and weak who should be culled. They spotted the godling almost immediately when it arrived, but acknowledged it as a superior predator, and it was so bemused it passed on without exterminating them, allowing them to hunt throughout its skerry.

There are, of course, small relict populations in the other worlds, After the End style. Their ability to trust each other is poor, and they really don't like the hunters, but something might be made of them. So long as they don't draw the godling back to finish the job.

The worrying part is that the godling chooses its target worlds, and the location of its permanent rifts, with meticulous care, rejecting many easily-digested possibilities. It is not engaged in simple predation, or even self-advancement. It is building something, a multiversal structure that could seriously interfere with Centrum's efforts...

PTTG · 11-29-2016, 04:07 PM

I like Daikoku a lot, it has a legitimate reason to interact peacefully with both stock powers, and yet it's a major threat. I'd up the TL for robotics for the sole reason of giving them mechs, but that's a stylistic choice. I haven't heard of the source, actually.

Lee
Lee is a high-probability person. Virtually every inhabited worldline between Q2 and Q14 has or had a Lee. Lee usually lives in the most geopolitically powerful nation, has a conventional physical appearance, and is otherwise pretty ordinary. Perhaps the only reliably unusual thing about him is that he always has status 0, even when that's quite an achievement in a given timeline.

At present, all Lees are or would be 43 years old, with a few minor discrepancies due to differing time rates.

About twenty-five years ago, at least one Lee unlocked latent psionic world-jumping ability. That Lee soon met other Lees and taught them, in turn, the method. Soon, an organization of hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of Lees grew tenuously throughout the cosmos.

As it turns out, there's only really room for one balding, slightly overweight middle-manager named Lee per world, so nearly all of them maintain their position at home. Nonetheless, the Lees occasionally meet to share messages, trade (often swapping clothes, which are sometimes difficult for Lees to find given their awkward body shape), and party.

It's really just an especially large social club. Nonetheless, the Lees help each other out ("Be your own best friend") and can be friendly to outsides provided that a Lee vouches for them ("Any friend of Lee's is a friend of mine").

Flyndaran · 11-29-2016, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PTTG

Except for Mr. Rogers.

He did win The Ultimate Showdown. ;)

starslayer · 11-29-2016, 07:26 PM

The Transcendent

The Transcendent is a war schooner of unidentifiable make and no noticable national markings. It opperates partially by unknown magic or psionic acitivty (even works in magic or psi blocked worlds), and needs a crew of only a few to be fully manned (a helmsman, a cannon-man, a cartographer, and a mechanic)

The cartographer, once out in open water, will find that the maps all change, and can select another world to visit.

The entire process is somewhat confusing, and using the Transcendent is nothing like any other vehicle, however it comes 'naturally' and time spent doing the job while learning counts as working with a gifted tutor.

Each crew member when entering through the 'captains door' instead finds themselves in there own room, unfurnished, 100m^3 in size times the SM of the individual. The cargo hold has a size dependant on the number of crew- about 300m^3 per crew member. Items in teh cargo hold never spoil or go bad. Depending on the skills of the individual they will find doors on there room that lead to a forge, woodshop, kitchen, magical circle, psionic meditation chaimber, and library. Even if the tools in the various chaimbers seem anacronistic they count as very fine for whatever TL they are employed at.

There is also a brig that spans on seemingly forever, just a forever long hallway of.

Once someone has been accepted as crew of the ship they 'know' somewhow, and the ship only selects individuals with compatible skillsets and world outlooks.

The ships hull and weapons operate by unknown magic that causes them to do period damage regardless of the local technology. The hull likewise suffers only 'period' damage for a top of the line warship. Further, only those with very strong willpower will find it weird that a war schooner has docked in port, even if boats no longer exist, nor do ports.

The crew are all 'evil' for most definitions of the word, and they were all 'saved' by the transcendent- it showed up just as they were going to be killed for there deeds and they suddenly became aware of it and there acceptance among the crew.

No one knows if its sheer luck, the selection process in the first place, or some action of the ship, but crew members all seem immune to supernatural or technological coercion.

Scholars who are aware of the ship are not sure if some poor choices in crew selection slowly shifted the ship to take 'evil' individuals, or if that is the in the ships original design. They also argue over wither the ship is sentient or not.

Regardless, whever the ship docks you can expect the motley crew to engage in abuse of the local populace and move on before they get lynched. Attrition is pretty high among the crew, petty fights among the crew often result in bloodshed, but the 'everyone gets there own' nature of the cabins prevents the most territorial behavior.

Depending on who the crew currently are they can be dealt with, and the ship is a very reliable way to get to virtually any Quanta.

Conflict with other factions:
Cabal- The cabal would very much like to HAVE the ship in there own service, but so far none of its selected crew have been cabal members, and any action to coerce existing crew have instead seen it fail.

Infinity- No one likes to talk about the Coventry breakout, but the Transcendent is now very high on there radar. Documents detailing who is at coventry vs other detainment facilities is now highly classified.

Centrum- Centrum attributes stories about the transcendent as naught more then ghost tales told by unenlightened offworlders.

Reich - The Reich is aware of the ship, and despite it being a schooner they are convinced it must be norse in origin.

11-28-2016, 11:56 PM	#1
patchwork Join Date: Oct 2011	Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations All drawn from a source I'm sure people on this board can recognize, adapted for IW: Daikoku An early industrial revolution in Japan (and spreading from there) lead to a world-girdling economy and Asian-centered empires with no concept of environmentalism, so that present day Daikoku's 9 billion people live under domes, partially sheltered from a crashed biosphere in which nothing lives or grows, the air chokes and the ozone layer is so destroyed that several hours of direct sunlight can cause permanent damage. They have developed parachronics and have infiltrated several worlds where they offer the products of their manufacturing (TL9 in power generation and information technology and arguably transport, still TL8 in biological sciences and military technologies) in exchange for all the food they can buy, and some oil (they don't need it for power generation, as their fusion plants work just fine despite the waste heat, but it's handy for plastics). Daikoku hasn't encountered an empty world yet; it would be an expensive and uncertain investment for them anyway, as the knowledge of farming outside of a few hydroponics plants is lost by them. On the one hand, it might give them something to do besides bleed early-industrial worlds dry of food and oil through dummy corporations; on the other, allowing its paranoid, selfishness-is-a-virtue hypercapitalist short-term-thinking culture to really take root in the multiverse is not something Infinity or Centrum would want. Not on a projection-capable worldline, so pick a Quantum of your choice to add them to. Desolation Road This artificial skerry has nineteen worlds in it. The newest is a parallel in which American colonization experienced a series of low-probability failures, with hostile locals, natural disasters and disease wiping out English and French colonial efforts and seriously hampering the Spanish, while on the other side of the globe the Ming dynasty is followed not by the mostly-sane Qing but by the mostly-insane Shun. Current year is 1893. One other world has a neo-primitive hunter cult; the other 17 have been nearly scoured free of sapient life. Nearly. A malevolent godling made this skerry; its early efforts tended to involve straightforward attacks by many-tentacled horrors eating the human population. Then it creates massive, permanent gates to another world to do something similar. As it digests more and more of humanity, it is either becoming more like us, or at least becoming fascinated by us. It is taking its time, using humanoid monsters over the course of centuries, including things like vampires and werewolves, to disassemble human societies from within before administering the coup de grace. There are unconfirmed reports of it even assuming human identity itself. Its rift into the newest world opened on the Grand Canyon about the time Europeans were first colonizing North America, you do the math. It still likes its gooey tentacled pets, though. The neo-primitive hunter cult was a world in which at some point, an industrial culture turned its back on all that, smashed the machines, declared survival of the fittest and started culling their neighbors. Generations later, its tribesmen receive a surprisingly complete education in science and economics, with the understanding that these are the ideas of the corrupt and weak who should be culled. They spotted the godling almost immediately when it arrived, but acknowledged it as a superior predator, and it was so bemused it passed on without exterminating them, allowing them to hunt throughout its skerry. There are, of course, small relict populations in the other worlds, After the End style. Their ability to trust each other is poor, and they really don't like the hunters, but something might be made of them. So long as they don't draw the godling back to finish the job. The worrying part is that the godling chooses its target worlds, and the location of its permanent rifts, with meticulous care, rejecting many easily-digested possibilities. It is not engaged in simple predation, or even self-advancement. It is building something, a multiversal structure that could seriously interfere with Centrum's efforts...

11-29-2016, 04:07 PM	#2
PTTG Join Date: Feb 2011	Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations I like Daikoku a lot, it has a legitimate reason to interact peacefully with both stock powers, and yet it's a major threat. I'd up the TL for robotics for the sole reason of giving them mechs, but that's a stylistic choice. I haven't heard of the source, actually. Lee Lee is a high-probability person. Virtually every inhabited worldline between Q2 and Q14 has or had a Lee. Lee usually lives in the most geopolitically powerful nation, has a conventional physical appearance, and is otherwise pretty ordinary. Perhaps the only reliably unusual thing about him is that he always has status 0, even when that's quite an achievement in a given timeline. At present, all Lees are or would be 43 years old, with a few minor discrepancies due to differing time rates. About twenty-five years ago, at least one Lee unlocked latent psionic world-jumping ability. That Lee soon met other Lees and taught them, in turn, the method. Soon, an organization of hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of Lees grew tenuously throughout the cosmos. As it turns out, there's only really room for one balding, slightly overweight middle-manager named Lee per world, so nearly all of them maintain their position at home. Nonetheless, the Lees occasionally meet to share messages, trade (often swapping clothes, which are sometimes difficult for Lees to find given their awkward body shape), and party. It's really just an especially large social club. Nonetheless, the Lees help each other out ("Be your own best friend") and can be friendly to outsides provided that a Lee vouches for them ("Any friend of Lee's is a friend of mine").

11-29-2016, 07:26 PM	#4
starslayer Join Date: Dec 2006	Re: Alternate Crosstime Organizations The Transcendent The Transcendent is a war schooner of unidentifiable make and no noticable national markings. It opperates partially by unknown magic or psionic acitivty (even works in magic or psi blocked worlds), and needs a crew of only a few to be fully manned (a helmsman, a cannon-man, a cartographer, and a mechanic) The cartographer, once out in open water, will find that the maps all change, and can select another world to visit. The entire process is somewhat confusing, and using the Transcendent is nothing like any other vehicle, however it comes 'naturally' and time spent doing the job while learning counts as working with a gifted tutor. Each crew member when entering through the 'captains door' instead finds themselves in there own room, unfurnished, 100m^3 in size times the SM of the individual. The cargo hold has a size dependant on the number of crew- about 300m^3 per crew member. Items in teh cargo hold never spoil or go bad. Depending on the skills of the individual they will find doors on there room that lead to a forge, woodshop, kitchen, magical circle, psionic meditation chaimber, and library. Even if the tools in the various chaimbers seem anacronistic they count as very fine for whatever TL they are employed at. There is also a brig that spans on seemingly forever, just a forever long hallway of. Once someone has been accepted as crew of the ship they 'know' somewhow, and the ship only selects individuals with compatible skillsets and world outlooks. The ships hull and weapons operate by unknown magic that causes them to do period damage regardless of the local technology. The hull likewise suffers only 'period' damage for a top of the line warship. Further, only those with very strong willpower will find it weird that a war schooner has docked in port, even if boats no longer exist, nor do ports. The crew are all 'evil' for most definitions of the word, and they were all 'saved' by the transcendent- it showed up just as they were going to be killed for there deeds and they suddenly became aware of it and there acceptance among the crew. No one knows if its sheer luck, the selection process in the first place, or some action of the ship, but crew members all seem immune to supernatural or technological coercion. Scholars who are aware of the ship are not sure if some poor choices in crew selection slowly shifted the ship to take 'evil' individuals, or if that is the in the ships original design. They also argue over wither the ship is sentient or not. Regardless, whever the ship docks you can expect the motley crew to engage in abuse of the local populace and move on before they get lynched. Attrition is pretty high among the crew, petty fights among the crew often result in bloodshed, but the 'everyone gets there own' nature of the cabins prevents the most territorial behavior. Depending on who the crew currently are they can be dealt with, and the ship is a very reliable way to get to virtually any Quanta. Conflict with other factions: Cabal- The cabal would very much like to HAVE the ship in there own service, but so far none of its selected crew have been cabal members, and any action to coerce existing crew have instead seen it fail. Infinity- No one likes to talk about the Coventry breakout, but the Transcendent is now very high on there radar. Documents detailing who is at coventry vs other detainment facilities is now highly classified. Centrum- Centrum attributes stories about the transcendent as naught more then ghost tales told by unenlightened offworlders. Reich - The Reich is aware of the ship, and despite it being a schooner they are convinced it must be norse in origin.