(05-23-2024, 12:46 AM)Inquisitive Raven Wrote:(05-22-2024, 10:50 AM)M Fnord Wrote: So I'm doing a thing, or at least I'm in the preliminary stages of doing a thing, that involves IST shenanigans. (A Worm crossover in fact, because it's about time I got the damn mind virus too.) More specific, I had the wild hair to do an IST world set in the late 2010s/early 2020s as the baseline. I've read the 90s update Bob did and I've skimmed the IST25 outline (lord but the forum change did a number on the formatting), but it's been a while since then (god we old) so I'm curious to see if anybody has any bright ideas on what kind of nonsense the IST got up to in the intervening years. There's a couple things that I want to include for story reasons, primarily the discovery of parachronics as the next new superscience, but other than that any and all ideas are welcome. Even the stupid ones - maybe especially the stupid ones.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Worm entities effectively wall off the timelines they intend to use for their experiments from parachronic travel from outside timelines. You could have a team of parachronic travelers arrive in one of the affected timelines just as the entities are setting up their barriers and get trapped. In that case, you don't really need a detailed history of the IST timeline, just enough for characters to make references.
Another option would be to have them discover the parahumans timelines after Gold Morning. This assumes that killing off the entities removes the barriers.
The third option is to have the IST timeline(s) be inside the barrier. Imagine the panic when IST Earth loses contact with all other quanta and possibly a large chunk of their own quantum level. I'm assuming for simplicity's sake that all timelines isolated by the entities are at the same quantum level. Do IST supers have encounters with Cauldron? How does that play out? Tinkertech is notoriously irreproducible. The same cannot be said of the tech developed by gadgeteers.
Oh no, I'm well aware of all that nonsense. I actually have the vague glimmerings of a plot and about 8k worth of gibberish already written at this point, and the barrier thing is a minor plot point that might expand into a major plot point depending on how people react to it.
And tbh most of the IST stuff is going to be random drips of exposition and/or flashback material, so I am honestly just looking for the broadest of outlines and ideas for dumb references. I am perfectly happy to just make shit up and fill in gaps as necessary, just figured that I'd come to the experts first before grabbing my spray cans.
Especially because I'm prone to misreading shit: I'd somehow gotten the idea reading the IST25 outline that the US had gone full Amerxit at some point, which colored some of my initial worldbuilding until I reread it and realized that I'd fucked that up. So, experts.
Mr. Fnord on FFN and Mal3 on AO3 • Conceptual Neighborhood - yet another damned sci-fi blog • The Westerosi (ASoIaF) • The Westerosi II: Subprime Directives: Extradimensional horrors threaten the Seven Kingdoms, and Captain Hasegawa of the Starfleet Rangers has to stop them. If she accidentally conquers Westeros in the process... oops? • Fenspace (shared world)
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"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.