Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

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MacynSnow
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by MacynSnow »

Davies wrote: Sun Mar 28, 2021 7:57 am More like Ultimate MU vs. Regular MU.
So, which is which?
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Davies
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Davies »

... read the introduction of the World More Grim, and that should answer the question.
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MacynSnow
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

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Ok, got the differences now thank's Davies! :D
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Davies
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Davies »

More Trivia Notes About the World More Grim

* Doktor Makabre is probably not a robot in this world, but little is known for sure about the man in powered armor who emerged from nowhere to seize control of the Republic of Kosovo shortly after it declared independence from Serbia in 2008. A frequent opponent of the world's superheroes for the first ten years of his rule, with designs on world conquest, Makabre has somewhat calmed down since his marriage, in 2018, to Princess Pele, a fire-controlling supervillainess from Hawai'i, and the birth of their daughter in 2019.

(My Dad Doom was awesome, okay?)

* Billie Zane is still the daughter of Franklin Zane and his wife, the former Jane Baldwin, but neither of them were superheroes. Billie herself is an intellectual giant, a multibillionaire, and a complete sociopath, but has managed to remain on the right side of the law through employing some excellent lawyers.

* Rather than a superhuman being created through merging four humans into a single entity, the Dybbuk (Jack's counterpart) is a ghostly entity who claims to have been the original Jack the Ripper in life. Imprisoned in a ghost trap through the twentieth century, he was freed in 2009 and has since wreaked misery.
Spoiler
This was inspired by the rather Joker-esque portrait of the dybbuk monster in Pathfinder 2nd Edition Bestiary 3, which arrived in the mail yesterday.
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Voltron64
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Voltron64 »

Additional Trivia of a World More Grim

* The counterpart of both Bzz Tirgal and Victor Furtado is Meteor aka Connor Roberts, a former Air Force pilot discovered a Power Prism while fleeing unusual gases he encountered while exploring a cave. He's pretty much the most straitlaced member in the Superhuman Crew.

* Shadowraptor's personal aide and confident is not Martha Paddington, but rather his maternal uncle Will (counterpart of Dr. Caulder)

* Riverwind's counterpart is called Iridescent and far more powerful than her WLM counterpart (in fact, she's intended as an expy of the Valiant Comics incarnation of Doctor Solar, complete with slver hair and "bleeding" rainbow-colored energy when wounded.)
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Davies
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Davies »

Yet More Trivia of a World More Grim

* Red Shift was probably the closest counterpart to the Blue Bolt, but, well, not anymore.

* The closest equivalent to Trouble is a gun-toting cyborg super-soldier known as Uplink, a Black woman who claims to be a time traveler from the future. She's worked with the Crew and with RAH Inc., but isn't permanently associated with either.

* Le Charme's counterpart, known as the Dreamdancer, is also much more powerful, and apparently the guardian of a psychic reality she calls the Imagerie which may or may not be the source of all psychic phenomena in the World More Grim.
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Davies
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Davies »

* Gods of Egypt was never made; instead, an adaptation of the legend of Feridoun and Zahak the Serpent King was released in 2016, featuring a largely Persian cast. (It bombed at the box office, unfortunately.)

* While pitched in 1979, the production of Footloose was ultimately cancelled because of the Pythonian Insurgency. It would finally be filmed in 1998. However, Bonnie Tyler still recorded “Holding Out For A Hero” in 1986 … and this would prove to be very important to certain events that happened in 2021.
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Davies
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Davies »

Not quite pop culture, not quite trivia, inspired by my reading of Guns & Gears for Pathfinder ...

* As far as the official histories are concerned, the devices known as Violet Rays were first demonstrated by one Nikola Tesla in 1893. These appliances applied a high voltage, high frequency, low current to the human body for therapeutic purposes. In the World Less Magical, these actually worked -- sometimes. Despite that, due to concerns about their occasional side effects and a culture of contempt for alternative medicine, their manufacture gradually ceased in the early 1950s, though they enjoyed a brief renaissance in the mid-1970s. The Violet Ray devices are typically built as follows: Healing 2, Restorative, Stabilize, Side Effect (Electrical Damage 4 on a failed roll) - 7 equipment points

Meanwhile, in the city of Hespera, this is a mature technology that was developed around two hundred and fifty years ago, and has had most of the bugs worked out of it. Hesperan Violet Ray devices do not have a Side Effect, and are frequently used for emergency medical treatment within the environs of the hidden city. There are also larger, more powerful devices of this sort in the Hospital, with Healing effects at 9 ranks, but these are every bit as immobile as an MRI device would be.
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Davies
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Re: Pop Culture of A World Less Magical

Post by Davies »

Between them, Warpwitch and the Discovery Company have managed to discover a few more "nearby" parallel worlds in the reformed multiverse. These are Warpwitch's names for and thoughts about them, with the caveat that she has spent only a few days (or less) on each.

The World in Shades of Grey: Not literally, but it seems that way sometimes. This is a reality where the current year on Earth is 1955 ... but it has been 1955 for nearly seventy years. None of the locals seem able to recognize that this is happening. There are no overt superpowers, but Earth in this reality is being used as a cold war battleground between the forces of Asmodeus and a group who seem sometimes like less-than-benevolent angels and sometimes like the aliens in The Day The Earth Stood Still, with both sides recruiting and empowering humans as cut-outs in their conflict. We were unable to determine whether either side in this is responsible for time going out of joint.

The World that Drowned: Roughly four generations ago, something happened here that caused the sea level, all over the world, to rise about thirty meters, drowning most coastal cities, which are still in ruins. Human civilization has retreated inland, and the people here are utterly terrified of the water. There is definitely some nonhuman intelligence active in the risen seas, but we were unable to determine whether it bore any relationship to the Atlanteans of our own world, or possibly to something a bit scarier.

The World that Turned its Back on Tomorrow: This is a weird one, and it's me saying this. It runs pretty much like home up until the early twentieth century, but then World War I seems to have been averted. In the twenties, the United States, the British and the Restored Roman Empire got into a space race that put them on the Moon by 1932 and then on (an uninhabited) Mars by 1939. Things get a bit confusing at that point, but we think they discovered some sort of stardrive on Mars and started exploring the nearer universe. And then, in 1961, everything stopped. Spaceships and pretty much all advanced technology stopped being built and even talked about, which is odd enough, but they tore down every single observatory on Earth, too, and refuse to discuss the stars in anything except the most general terms. Something that they found out among the stars must clearly have terrified someone, and that could make sense ... but what could terrify everybody?

The World Where Everyone Is A Talking Cat: Kinda speaks for itself, I think. The cats say that there are talking dogs somewhere, but as they are cats, I don't know if I should believe them or not.
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Davies
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Parallel Worlds, Part II

Post by Davies »

The World With Too Much Contrast: This is the first one that we've found where the reality nexus isn't on a version of Earth. It's a planet somewhere else in the galaxy that's tidally locked, with one side an eternal day and the other a constant night. Going far enough to the nightside that the stars come out made it pretty clear that the stars were nothing like they have been at any point in history. Anyway, it's a world occupied by humans and near-humans operating at a pre-Industrial tech level, some of whom have odd gifts that they consider magic. Their magic is more like what we'd consider weird science, though -- very device-based.

Islandia: Apparently, Max hates my naming convention and since he got here first, he's declared that this one isn't going to be given a name like that. Love you too, Max. You're just a peach. Anyway, the current date here is 2222, but it stems out of a world with no superpowers at any point in the history we know and then goes crazy for space in the 90s, leading up to humanity only existing in dozens of orbital colonies throughout the solar system that are linked by teleportals that one bunch of ETs donated, with another bunch introducing a virus that gives people psychic powers. (Mei says that the name comes from the term someone named Gerard O'Neill used for space colonies, "islands". I'm still going to call it The World With The Sky Full of Diamonds in my own thoughts.)

The World Without Masks: Okay, given that I wear ordinary clothes to do my thing, I maybe shouldn't complain, but this one is odd -- not weird, just odd. There's all kinds of weird science and supernatural stuff here, giant monsters and the giant robots that fight them, mutants and immortal warriors and stuff like that, but nobody wears a costume. Nobody has ever worn a costume. That is strictly the stuff of kid's literature and movies and games inspired by same. It's like some evil genius set out to create a world that's so much like home except for that one little thing ...
"I'm sorry. I love you. I'm not sorry I love you."
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