[Torg] At Wars End - Module or Episode

[Kansas Jim]

Jerry writes:

>         "At Wars End."  This came to my mind and I recall it as maybe a 
> module or maybe an episode of Babylon 5.  In either case it sparked an 

"War's End" was the last module that old WEG published for the Torg
product line.

>         This topic has probably already been discussed here a time or 
> two, but I need a refresher.  What would happen if the war did end.  And 
> ended abruptly.  If I remember correctly that it would only take two 
> cosms to be dislodged to allow the earth to reject all the others.  That 
> is why The Gaunt Man needed so many other realities to come and tap our 
> planet.

Initially yes, Core Earth's feedback was so strong that bumping off one
of the realms would have been catastrophic for the remaining ones. But
as the war progressed and CE was drained of Possibility Energy the
feedback lessened. At some point it reached needing to remove two realms
before the others would be crushed, then three, then four...and then the
Orrorsh sourcebook revealed that Gaunty and Heketon had set up a system
that would bleed CE feedback into already dead cosms, away from Orrorsh,
enabling that realm to resist everything CE could throw at it even if
all of the other realms fell.

>         If this is true then lets say that multiple storm knight groups 
> coordinated a massive stalea destruction run on the two smallest cosms.  
> Which I believe to be Tharkhold and Nippon Tech.  It would only take the 

The Cyberpapacy is probably smaller than Nippon Tech, but its network of
backup stelae would probably make it harder to bring down than NT.

>         How does the earth go about kicking these realms off.  Do stales 
> explode? Do they fly up into the vortex that is the connection as the 
> bridge is either destroyed or sucked back up into the dimensional vortices?

Reality storms will overwhelm the stelae boundaries and rush in to
push the foreign realties out by imposing CE reality once again upon
the conquered territories. The backlash will push to the maelstrom
bridges and then surge up it, unleashing devestating reality storms
on the territory surrounding the bridgeheads in the cosms of the
invaders until the storms destroy the bridges and cut off the connection
between the cosms. It's what happened to Tharkold when the Soviets blew
up one of the stelae that would have protected the landing point as the
bridge was coming down, CE's reality storms blew back up the bridge into
the Tharkold cosm and decimated the territory around the bridgehead.

>         I remember that people and objects would start to transform back 
> into CE norms.  But what about the P-rated invaders.  Would they run for 
> the bridge?  Will they transform?  Will they be kicked off the planet by 
> the planet?  What of transformed P-rated storm knights?  Do they go to 
> their new home cosm?

Some of the invaders might run for the bridge, especially if the High
Lord knows what is coming and plans on collapsing the bridge and
protecting the home cosm from the backlash as soon as he's safely
returned.

But most people will probably be left standing right where they are.
It's likely that the powerful reality storms that wash over the
collapsing realms will transform most of them, including any P-Rateds
who get caught in it.

>         I think you can see where I am going here.  But just incase.  My 
> point is there will be a lot to do after the war with the clean up.  If 

Yes, and that's not even considering the concept of "burned in" stelae
zones that WEG came up with as a possible post-war scenario in "War's
End" (basically, Core Earth reality was so weak that it couldn't repulse
the invading realities entirely, creating semi-permanent enclaves of the
invading realities on Core Earth in a fashion similar to how the Land
Below became the Land Above.)

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html