1568: The Wildfire Ring

[Bob Schroeck]

Atsuko Natsume? Nuku-nuku???
Or do you mean Akiko Natsume?

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[deadpan29]

A few thoughts:
1) The Kuno's would most likely go for making someone overlord, prefering a feudal system to modern egalitarianism, though they might go for making the Emperor a true power rather than supporting a Shogun.
2) Colonge would be looking for a way to use this to the advantage of her people over in China, so you might look up events of the Ming Dynasty as well.
3) For additional touches of the wierd, Tomobiki-cho (Urusei Yatsura) is supposedly located in Nerima Ward. Doraemon also takes place in Nerima. (You know, the series with the TIME TRAVELING robot cat.)
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Akiko, right. In my defense, I was way more than half asleep when I wrote that. ^.^
1a) There's also the possibility that they might try to make their own ancestor shogun. ("Who's that samurai with the live rabbit strapped to his head?" "GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER!")
2a) Oh my yes. I figure that at this point, the Amazons, Musk, and Phoenix are all rather more powerful players than their descendants.
3a) ...No, that's a bit too much weirdness, thanks. @.@;
--Sam
"This is graveness."

[Bob Schroeck]

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"Who's that samurai with the live rabbit strapped to his head?"

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Why am I suddenly hearing Isaac Hayes in my head doing the theme from Shaft with these lyrics? Out, I tell thee, out!

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Niteflier]

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("Who's that samurai with the live rabbit strapped to his head?" "GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER!&quot

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Acctually, isn't this a reference to 'Girl Days'?Without a word...

[Necratoid]

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The well can also transport information, both digital and DNA. How much is a live dodo worth?

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I was going to say Tasmanian devils... but you took one of my points. Some problem will include knowing where most of the really good catches of resources are. A few oil/natural gas sea born rigs will take care of your major power needs. They know that silicon valley is full of sand useful for microchips and that taking over most of the world is going to be far too much effort. Taking over Australia on the other hand... thats a good idea. lots of land. Almost no people. Sunny enough for solar power...
Also, documentaries. Lots and lots of opportunity to make good documentaries on sights destroyed in modern wars and by modern (often backwards at the same time) regimes.
Anyway, after the first wave 'What happened?'s and such and people take stock your going to get to the social order thing. First off, their major industry/mechanized military has a female CEO (with female bodyguards)... so a major force is going to be that women aren't going to be made second class citizens. This is a truely Earth shaking idea for the time. Ranma may be elected a rep as a political move as he is also a she physically and therefore the ideal example of how the sex of a person is rather irrelevant to ability.
Next, the whole idea on if they should have an expansive military empire or not. With such power in the industry sector there is going to be first get a resource base. Wall the city (with stone and metal or with troops) for defense. Get a path to the ocean and make a port. They'll need to fish before they get a rice farm going or whatever. A few villages that make rice should pop up from people moving near the area where they kill the demons and pick on the peons far less.
Tatewaki may end up in a movement to start a samurai regime so will those wanting to wipe out the U.S. before it exists. Small things like picking certain streambeds clean of gold in California (no Gold Rush populating the west) and gifting the short stalk grains (while the rest of Europe ate the viable in the mini-iceage potato the French were already French. Never mind that there was a solution to the famine on their long stock grains The king should change the global weather, now they were not going to adapt adapting is for other people. (Im not bashing here, the refused the potato and blamed the king the bread riots that led to the French Revolution are largely, because the French wouldnt allow cultural contamination like logic to bug the.)
Actually solving problems does prevent major changes in history such as the Japanese having a typist that could actually type, say more than two words a minute, Pearl Harbor wouldnt have been a sneak attack. They would have got to officially declare war before attacking which they feel would have prevented them from being nuked little things like genocidal rampages through China and elsewhere and torturing starving prisoners to death for entertainment escape their minds. Granted that is partially true but they also ignore a ground battle would have killed off most of the Japanese because they wouldnt have surrendered if the Emperor didnt go over the militaries head and surrender.
Anyway, I wonder how much time Kagome will have to run around for a while... most of the people capable of dealing with the now forest area of Nerima more violent residents are elsewhere. So Kagome and Inuyasha are probably going to end up dealing with it. Who is else left to do it? There is evidence that was why the government half ignored the mess of Nerima in the Ranma 1/2 series... when something bizarre showed up it was time to hire the Nermites.
The Nermites won't even hear of the well unless say... Kagome shows up to get Sango medical attention. First time some randomite discovers that a place where lethal diseases and slow death mortal wounds can be healed word will get around.

[VladimirTherin]

Not to mention AUTHENTIC duplicates of many priceless art treasures, in relatively pristine condition if you can get to europe.
For example, Da Vinci did not die until 1519 :-D

[Florin]

With the larger resource base they would have, does Grantville's Geardown problem still apply? Or do they have the manufacturing ability to keep thier nice shiny high technology running full bore?--
"An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo."
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

[CattyNebulart]

probably not full bore but pretty close to it. but Modern tech requiers a huge resource base many of which are centeralized and probably not in Neremia.
They probably don't have a refinery or oil imports for that matter, they probably lack a chip manufacturing plant, and IIRC Neremia is a mostly residential area so they porbably don't have car factories or other heavy machinery producers. What about Pharamasuticals or the companies that supply the machinery for Pharamsuticals? Sure they probably have a stockpile but that is going to run out at some point.
Neremia has more resources but they are also spread among more people. However it has been calculated that a random sample of 1 million people should be enough to keep modern tech going, or at least something close to it and rebuild any losses in a generation or two. So Neremia shouldn't have too many problems.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Valles]

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They probably don't have a refinery or oil imports for that matter, they probably lack a chip manufacturing plant, and IIRC Neremia is a mostly residential area so they porbably don't have car factories or other heavy machinery producers. What about Pharamasuticals or the companies that supply the machinery for Pharamsuticals? Sure they probably have a stockpile but that is going to run out at some point.

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The drugs you have a point on. Computer chips are, IIRC, a low-bulk commodity, and so might be small enough to go through The Well. I don't know about the real Nerima, but the version we're discussing is a sort of 'general anime crossover land', which means that at least one major defense contractor has their development offices inside the ring... And, from the company's name, Mishima Heavy Industries, that would likely include being able to produce armored vehicles on site. They might or might not have a factory complex in the area, I don't think the Nuku-Nuku anime ever said.

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Neremia has more resources but they are also spread among more people. However it has been calculated that a random sample of 1 million people should be enough to keep modern tech going, or at least something close to it and rebuild any losses in a generation or two. So Neremia shouldn't have too many problems.

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Nope. It's smaller than the given size, but also non-random. I'd hold out hope. ^_^
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

From the Nerima wiki:

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Also in Nerima are (as of 1994) 572 factories employing about 8000 people and producing goods worth about 170,000,000,000. The factories are mostly small, and machinery has the largest share of production. Parts for radio and communications products are also produced in significant numbers. A large number of anime production studios are also located in Nerima, such as Toei Animation, Mushi Production, and AIC.

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On top of that, I think we should indeed assume that MHI's factory complex also made the jump, in which case resource gathering is the only real bottleneck. Japan hasn't been noted for an abundance of mineral wealth, so some degree of foreign adventurism may be required.
A certain degree of gearing down will be called for, if only to give allied locals the start of their own comprehensible tech-production.
--Sam
"You know, Charles, sometimes, when I feel like a raving ding-dong, I find a nice bit of chamomile tea... "

[classicdrogn]

Well, there's also the problen Grantville had with electrical generation - I'm sure there are some diesel generators around, espescially at the hospital, but fuel will be limited at best, and unless Mishima has something similar that can run enough of their gear to make a more long-term solution like a steam turbine based system there's that problem in the beginning - but food, sanitation, and medicine are likely to be the biggest sticking points in the immediate term. After all, even if you've got the rice, the automatic cooker doesn't work without household power, and who has fireplaces these days? Likewise, modern plumbing requires electrically pumped water, and who has an outhouse? The medicine issue has already been addressed. The canal routed through Nerima - is that its original course, close enough to be only a minor adjustment, or is there a minor flood when the place the water was flowing through no longer matches by a considerable margin? Ryoga could make short work of that one, but again, in the immediate term it could be a problem.
An important resource they DO have, to start with at least, is the big natural gas tank-farm in the district, so there should be enough for gas heat and cooking for a while.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bob Schroeck]

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and unless Mishima has something similar that can run enough of their gear to make a more long-term solution like a steam turbine based system there's that problem in the beginning

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Maybe they have a bigger version of whatever the hell it is that powers Nuku-nuku...

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An important resource they DO have, to start with at least, is the big natural gas tank-farm in the district, so there should be enough for gas heat and cooking for a while.

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Assuming it was rebuilt after Nuku-nuku and Eimi blew it up -- or that the displacement took place before that event.

-- Bob
---------
For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Good points all. Giving MHI its own private nuclear power plant would probably be carrying things a bit too far...
I have an English atlas of Tokyo, with a very good two-page spread of Nerima better than any map I can find on the web; I'll try to get that scanned and post a link to it here. There're two small rivers/drainage-ditches flowing through the ward -- the Shakujii-gawa and Shirako-gawa, the latter of which appears to originate in Nerima itself.
--Sam
"I'm cookin' with gas! I've gotta handful of vertebrae and a headful of mad! Yeah, that's your spinal cord, baby! Dig it. Who's the man? I'm the man. I'm a bad man! How bad? Real bad! I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness!!!!!"

[classicdrogn]

Foreign adventurism was mentioned - but one peice of legitimate foreign adventure would be a mission to South America to find information about the Maya, since so much of that cultural information was eradicated by the Spanish when they invaded - smoething for the longer term, to be sure, but still worht noting. Besides, if Ryoga travels as widely as fanon suggests, he may end uup there anyway, possibly with a group of other people he's supposedly protecting, as one of the top-echelon tactical humanoid weapons. I'm not sure if they'd still be actrive, or if they'd faded out by then/been whomped by the Aztecs, but anything would be better than having three texts survive from a noteably literate culture, wihch still haven't been comepletely deciphered because the conquistadors stamped out everything they could find of the heathen works. With Mishima to create the tranportation, the Americas and Australia would be sources of rescources without the heavily entrenched and sophisticated cultures of Asia, Europe, and Africa, though hopefully they could be a bit more cooperative and tolerant than the settlers in those areas were with the natives in our world. Still, with only one district's population to work with, such things are far off in the future at best, and who kjnows what sorts of supernatural beings might be aroundd to deal with. I doubt the eagle-demon lord Thunderbird would think highly of noisy, stinking contraptions wallowing about in his sky, for example.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[VladimirTherin]

"mission to South America to find information about the Maya, "
Erm.
The Maya were not exactly the most pleasant of folks. *emphatic cough*
Especially if their own brand of magic actually has power in this world.
Going over there without a helicopter gunship or a few dozen snipers as backup would be inadvisable. Going over there *with* would probably end in mayhem and disaster.

[Foxboy]

I've heard that the Maya were pretty nice compared to the Aztecs....
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Valles]

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I've heard that the Maya were pretty nice compared to the Aztecs....

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Aztec
Maya
Passing no judgement myself one way or the other, since I haven't got the energy to do my research at the moment, I'd like to note that compared to the Aztecs, the Nazis were pretty nice.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Custos Sophiae]

Practically everyone was pretty nice, compared with the Aztecs.
The Mayans did practice human sacrifice, and other gruesome rites. A quote from one recent account -

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Captives were tortured in unpleasant ways depicted clearly on the monuments and murals (such as yanking fingers out of sockets, pulling out teeth, cutting off the lower jaw, trimming of the lips and fingertips, pulling out the fingernails, and driving a pin through the lips), culminating, sometimes years later, in the sacrifice of the captive in other equally unpleasant ways such as tying the captive up into a ball by binding the arms and legs together, then rolling the balled-up captive down the steep stone staircase of a temple.

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The Maya were better than the Aztecs only in that they operated on relatively small scale - a few dozen deaths a year rather than the twenty thousand in one day the Aztecs boasted of.
All the central american cultures seem to have been bloodsoaked by modern standards, not places many Nerimites would want to ally with.
And, of course, it would be very odd if Japan was the only placed where the wilderness was full of hostile supernaturals. The Mayan jungles would also be monster-haunted, and some of the priests would be able to gain real power from human sacrifice.
By the same principle, in northern Europe outside the great cities, there would be elf-lords holding court beneath the hollow hills, kobolds in the mines, and kraken in the ocean depths. Slightly further south, there'd be nymphs and drayds cavorting in the trees.
Presumably, all these creatures vanished before the present day worldwide for much the same reason as they did in Japan itself - the ultimate cause of which, for the purposes of this story, may be the bone-eaters well locking history into that shape.
Note too, Europe had martial arts schools, until gunpowder made them unfashionable, e.g the masters of defence. In the Ranmaverse, it would be reasonable to assume that the best of these schools were on a par with Anything Goes. (People, after all, are the same the whole world round, with the same range of talents, physical, mental and arcane, and the same eagerness to win fights.)
European schools might talk about quintessence rather than ki, and Aztec schools use different terminology again, but the practical results would be the same.
All things considered then, foreign adventures would have a good chance of going disasterously wrong, which might make for a good story.

[classicdrogn]

Well, according to the wiki, the Spanish got there in 1519 and the height of Mayan culture was around 1000 BCE, so it's more a case of damage control, stealthing away material before the conquistadors can root it out and destroy it, than a diplomatic mission to either the Aztecs or Maya - thoguh presenting themselves as wanting to preserve the old ways that the spaniards are trying to destroy might get various hideboud old wisemen to agree to let them see the materials and teach the language, assuming a common one coul dbe found in the first place to make the attempt.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[CattyNebulart]

Saving the bulk of the native americans is next to impossible since everyone is carrying at least some fl virii to which they have no resistance (killed something like 90% of the population) speaking of diseae the neremians will have different versions of the stuff the locals have and the imune systems might no be able the change. fun times.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[VladimirTherin]

Speaking of illness, remember that one co ld ranma had where he was flash freezing/boiling water thrown at him?

[Necratoid]

The whole human sacrifice and cannibalism thing is the result of earlier centuries of stupid. Specifically they killed pretty much every animal worth eating in the area. By the time the Europeans showed up all the meat left was either llama, those bouncing little dogs that one of them sells Taco Bell (I know the name I can't spell it), and humans... so they sacrificed people and handed out the human meat. There just wasn't enough meat in their diets otherwise.
Not that the North American Indians were much better... before they got there North America looked a lot like Africa. Then someone got that bright idea to run a herd stampeding off a cliff... then took meat from the top five or six bodies. They weren't using every part they could of the animals until after they killed a lot of stuff off.
They might of learned it from the Europeans... they did find mummified white people predating the Indians in the Americas. There has also been ancient cliff herd kill sights in France for example... the only reason the Africa still has such wide spread herds is the lack of cliffs to run them off of.
One of the large advantages Ranma has is he knows several styles that haven't been invented yet... the style they were made to counter, and those to counter them.
I would enjoy watching someone try to explain the mission to chronicle the world's cultures. When the golden gods are obliterated (Spaniards missile; missile, Spaniards) by the new gods and the new gods only want info... the new gods are cooler gods. you could probably convince a lot of people Nuku Nuku was a beast god. The ear/sensor wouldn't exactly hurt things in that area... along with the way she acts if given a chance.

[Jinx999]

Quote:The whole human sacrifice and cannibalism thing is the result of earlier centuries of stupid. Specifically they killed pretty much every animal worth eating in the area. By the time the Europeans showed up all the meat left was either llama, those bouncing little dogs that one of them sells Taco Bell (I know the name I can't spell it), and humans... so they sacrificed people and handed out the human meat. There just wasn't enough meat in their diets otherwise./quote
A moment of contemplation showed that canibalism as a nutrition requirement to be a myth. If there wasn't enough meat in their diets, then there wouldn't be enough to feed up the humans they were eating.
That doesn't mean that the mesoamericans did not practice cannibalism, just that they didn't have a good reason to do so.

[classicdrogn]

Simple balance of populations would make it impossible to actually stop the conquest of the Americas and save lives - one district of Tokyo vs. all of Spain, let alone most of Europe? They'lll have enough trouble maintining the sovereignity of the patch of land they're sitting on, for some time, let alone getting all imperial half way around the globe - but a few teams for recon and cultural missions are a different story.
As for being thgouht of as gods... are Tarou and whatserface, the girl who fell in Spring of Drowned Asura also wedding guests, or by coincidence in the area?
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows