What The Hell Is Going On Here?
This project originally started as an http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... -Multivers]alternate history of Fenspace. However, after careful consideration, the project as it developed in my mind had very little to do with Fenspace beyond borrowing some loose character concepts and a few names, at which point continuing it in the Fenspace forum seemed a bit silly.
Which brings us to here. Welcome to (The Unnamed Multiverse Project), a crosstime saga about dangerous geeks doing what they do best across the Multiverse: killing people, taking their stuff and (occasionally) saving the day. The goal here isn’t to recreate Fenspace. We’ve done that, twice even. TUMP is… something else. I’m not sure what it is exactly, not yet, but if you’re interested we might be able to figure it out together.
The original thread isn't required reading, JSYK. Though it does have exploding sparklepires in it. That's always cool.
Okay Kid, This Is Where It Gets Complicated – The Backstory
The late twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw a brief and terrible flowering of mad science, sort of like one of those incredibly rare jungle plants that flowers once every 5,000 years and smells like month-old rotten meat when it does. The whole thing can be traced back to an unknown, nameless engineer who managed to tap into something the world eventually called telluric energies before his or her device exploded and rendered them unable to publish (hence, nameless). Telluric fallout spread out across the globe, causing minor mutations in more than a few people and inspiring these people to start meddling with forces previously unknown to humanity. One of these was a woman named Deidre Griest, a postgrad student at Cornell whose exploration of telluric energy changed the world forever.
Deidre’s Inspired device allowed her to scan beyond the boundaries of the Universe and see what was on the other side. Her next Inspired device allowed her and a small group of close friends to explore the worlds they found out there. Eventually she brought in outsiders: with the help of financier Noah Anderson and fixer Tanith Curtis Deidre leveraged her creations into the Mobius Group, the largest and most powerful NGO ever created.
Mobius was the first group from their world to start traveling the Multiverse. They weren’t the last.
{short notes to be developed upon discussion: Mobius has not-quite 100% lock on mv travel, not as tightly-controlled as Infinity but not anarchy either; Griest & Curtis set up the Guild, a sort of part-Facebook part-Wikipedia part-Shadowland org for white-hat / gray-hat freelancers to chat, bitch & get contracts; basic assumption is main characters are white-hat freelancers working for Mobius or other white-hat orgs in various capacities; Mobius kept relatively vague in terms of structure, more the shadowy cabal back home; black-hats from home include the usual bugbears (nations, corps, criminals, terrorists) but also black-hat freelancers playing conquistador, etc.}
Travel To Exotic Places, Meet New And Interesting People
It should come as no surprise that Mobius wasn’t the first group in the Multiverse to poke around in timelines that weren’t their own (and if it did come as a surprise, then shame on you). At last count Mobius and the Guild were in diplomatic “it’s complicated” relationships with the following groups:
Infinity Unlimited is the (redundant) name of an NGO much like Mobius that travels the Multiverse for their own profit. Infinity keeps a very low profile at all times and really doesn’t like newcomers blundering into their affairs.
The one-world government called Centrum is Infinity Unlimited’s nemesis, a stable, conservative, parochial system with a complex about keeping the Multiverse “orderly.” Not fond of Mobius, really not fond of the Guild.
The Time-Space Administration Bureau hails from a very distant timeline rich in telluric energies and technology capable of utilizing it. They’re a sort of Time-British Empire (though not actually British: Guild members have seen signs of an actual Time-British Empire out there, so be careful) with a very British view towards their lessers. Have strained politeness relations with Mobius; many Guildies are on the TSAB’s most-wanted list.
The Domination of the Draka, a world of arrogant slave-owning quasi-transhumans who’ve taken to traveling the Multiverse to sate their genetic need to conquer. Not liked by anybody.
Mobius, through connections with Infinity and Guild reports, has run into three or four discrete groups of Time Nazis using occult methods and telluric superpowers to build their Thousand-Universe Reich. This would be a more distressing issue if it didn’t turn out that Time Nazis from different universes hate each other more than they hate everybody else, which keeps their numbers down.
On top of this, there’s various species of god, angel, demon, wizard, alien, superhuman, artificial intelligence, shambling horror etc. doing their things without realizing they’ve got company. And there’s natural hazards: universes shift and merge and vaporize and coalesce according to the actions of the inmates and just because fuck you, that’s why. The Multiverse is something of a dangerous place, if you hadn’t picked up on that.
Buzzwords, Buzzwords, Buzzwords - A Quick Glossary
Anything involving science, SCIENCE! and nerds will inevitably develop its own jargon. A few of the key words are listed here:
Telluric energy - Mysterious energy fields that seem to be endemic to the Multiverse. Generally assumed to be the source of supernatural and paranatural powers.
Inspired - General term for people who have been exposed to telluric energy and been changed by it.
Sidestep - To jump between universes.
Zero-Zero - Common term for the home universe of Mobius/the Guild, sourced from the Griest Multiversal Coordinate System (coordinates 0-0-0-0-0-0).
Looper - Slang for an agent/employee of the Mobius Group, as opposed to a Guild member.
Guildie - Slang for a member of the Guild.
Snakes - Slang for anything relating to the Draka.
Morrison’s Paradox - “One world’s reality is another world’s fiction.” The most annoying existential angst generator in the Multiverse. Source: comic book writer/Inspired shaman Grant Morrison.
Beebee - (sometimes "babby") Guildie/Looper slang for TSAB agents/soldiers, refers to annoying stinging attacks and/or TSAB tendencies for younger field operatives.
Magpies - Infinity slang for Mobius agents, due to their tendency to grab shiny objects before Infinity can get their hands on them.
{more to come as things develop, naturally}
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
This project originally started as an http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... -Multivers]alternate history of Fenspace. However, after careful consideration, the project as it developed in my mind had very little to do with Fenspace beyond borrowing some loose character concepts and a few names, at which point continuing it in the Fenspace forum seemed a bit silly.
Which brings us to here. Welcome to (The Unnamed Multiverse Project), a crosstime saga about dangerous geeks doing what they do best across the Multiverse: killing people, taking their stuff and (occasionally) saving the day. The goal here isn’t to recreate Fenspace. We’ve done that, twice even. TUMP is… something else. I’m not sure what it is exactly, not yet, but if you’re interested we might be able to figure it out together.
The original thread isn't required reading, JSYK. Though it does have exploding sparklepires in it. That's always cool.
Okay Kid, This Is Where It Gets Complicated – The Backstory
The late twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw a brief and terrible flowering of mad science, sort of like one of those incredibly rare jungle plants that flowers once every 5,000 years and smells like month-old rotten meat when it does. The whole thing can be traced back to an unknown, nameless engineer who managed to tap into something the world eventually called telluric energies before his or her device exploded and rendered them unable to publish (hence, nameless). Telluric fallout spread out across the globe, causing minor mutations in more than a few people and inspiring these people to start meddling with forces previously unknown to humanity. One of these was a woman named Deidre Griest, a postgrad student at Cornell whose exploration of telluric energy changed the world forever.
Deidre’s Inspired device allowed her to scan beyond the boundaries of the Universe and see what was on the other side. Her next Inspired device allowed her and a small group of close friends to explore the worlds they found out there. Eventually she brought in outsiders: with the help of financier Noah Anderson and fixer Tanith Curtis Deidre leveraged her creations into the Mobius Group, the largest and most powerful NGO ever created.
Mobius was the first group from their world to start traveling the Multiverse. They weren’t the last.
{short notes to be developed upon discussion: Mobius has not-quite 100% lock on mv travel, not as tightly-controlled as Infinity but not anarchy either; Griest & Curtis set up the Guild, a sort of part-Facebook part-Wikipedia part-Shadowland org for white-hat / gray-hat freelancers to chat, bitch & get contracts; basic assumption is main characters are white-hat freelancers working for Mobius or other white-hat orgs in various capacities; Mobius kept relatively vague in terms of structure, more the shadowy cabal back home; black-hats from home include the usual bugbears (nations, corps, criminals, terrorists) but also black-hat freelancers playing conquistador, etc.}
Travel To Exotic Places, Meet New And Interesting People
It should come as no surprise that Mobius wasn’t the first group in the Multiverse to poke around in timelines that weren’t their own (and if it did come as a surprise, then shame on you). At last count Mobius and the Guild were in diplomatic “it’s complicated” relationships with the following groups:
Infinity Unlimited is the (redundant) name of an NGO much like Mobius that travels the Multiverse for their own profit. Infinity keeps a very low profile at all times and really doesn’t like newcomers blundering into their affairs.
The one-world government called Centrum is Infinity Unlimited’s nemesis, a stable, conservative, parochial system with a complex about keeping the Multiverse “orderly.” Not fond of Mobius, really not fond of the Guild.
The Time-Space Administration Bureau hails from a very distant timeline rich in telluric energies and technology capable of utilizing it. They’re a sort of Time-British Empire (though not actually British: Guild members have seen signs of an actual Time-British Empire out there, so be careful) with a very British view towards their lessers. Have strained politeness relations with Mobius; many Guildies are on the TSAB’s most-wanted list.
The Domination of the Draka, a world of arrogant slave-owning quasi-transhumans who’ve taken to traveling the Multiverse to sate their genetic need to conquer. Not liked by anybody.
Mobius, through connections with Infinity and Guild reports, has run into three or four discrete groups of Time Nazis using occult methods and telluric superpowers to build their Thousand-Universe Reich. This would be a more distressing issue if it didn’t turn out that Time Nazis from different universes hate each other more than they hate everybody else, which keeps their numbers down.
On top of this, there’s various species of god, angel, demon, wizard, alien, superhuman, artificial intelligence, shambling horror etc. doing their things without realizing they’ve got company. And there’s natural hazards: universes shift and merge and vaporize and coalesce according to the actions of the inmates and just because fuck you, that’s why. The Multiverse is something of a dangerous place, if you hadn’t picked up on that.
Buzzwords, Buzzwords, Buzzwords - A Quick Glossary
Anything involving science, SCIENCE! and nerds will inevitably develop its own jargon. A few of the key words are listed here:
Telluric energy - Mysterious energy fields that seem to be endemic to the Multiverse. Generally assumed to be the source of supernatural and paranatural powers.
Inspired - General term for people who have been exposed to telluric energy and been changed by it.
Sidestep - To jump between universes.
Zero-Zero - Common term for the home universe of Mobius/the Guild, sourced from the Griest Multiversal Coordinate System (coordinates 0-0-0-0-0-0).
Looper - Slang for an agent/employee of the Mobius Group, as opposed to a Guild member.
Guildie - Slang for a member of the Guild.
Snakes - Slang for anything relating to the Draka.
Morrison’s Paradox - “One world’s reality is another world’s fiction.” The most annoying existential angst generator in the Multiverse. Source: comic book writer/Inspired shaman Grant Morrison.
Beebee - (sometimes "babby") Guildie/Looper slang for TSAB agents/soldiers, refers to annoying stinging attacks and/or TSAB tendencies for younger field operatives.
Magpies - Infinity slang for Mobius agents, due to their tendency to grab shiny objects before Infinity can get their hands on them.
{more to come as things develop, naturally}
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"