[Torg] Tharkold and Kadandra

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Jan 2, 2008 4:53 PM, Kansas Jim <ksjim at sdc.org> wrote:
> I posted this last night over on the WEG boards, figured I'd
> also post it here for those who don't read both.
>
> The new RPG CthulhuTech got me thinking a bit about Tharkold and
> Kadandra...initially it reminded me of one of my earliest ideas for
> Kadandra, an anime-style world with power suits and mecha that got
> invaded by Magical Demonic Beasts From Another Dimension.
>
> As I got to thinking about it more and comparing it to the setting in
> CthulhuTech, I had an idea. What if the reason the Kadandrans called the
> Tharkoldu "Sims" was not because of a physical resemblance (which later
> material obviously invalidated) but because of a more metaphysical
> resemblance? What if Kadandra and Tharkold weren't just similar
> realities, what if they were the same reality? Maybe Mara wasn't looking
> into another cosm with her funky telescope after all but into a distant
> part of her own cosm? Maybe Mara's telescope was built on intracosmal
> principles (prototype dimthread technology maybe) but she didn't "aim"
> it correctly and instead ended up seeing real-time images from the other
> side of the galaxy or something and so she assumed that it was in
> another cosm which appeared to have a reality very similar to her own
> (and thus inhabited by "Sims").
>

Hmmm I like it, but as you point out later how do you deal with World
Laws.. There is also that old sort of thing where a cosms life was
centered in one spot (eg there is no other life in the entire Core
Earth cosm...)

1) Use them as World Laws. Lets just say that World Laws don't go
through out a Universe but are somehow 'centered' around a world.
Since only one cosm has star-faring abilities.. it would be hard to
say this isnt true. So lets say a cosms axioms are the same, but a
World may have different laws in it. So the Tharkholdu system has a
glowing reality storm around it (which might have attracted her
telescope) because it is constantly pushing the magic and spirit
axioms above what the rest of the universe can support. However world
laws are 'local' so that Tharkhold is different from Kadandra.

2) Go to the Darksied. Have Tharkhold move from cosm to cosm in its
world eating machine.. it physically pulls itself into a cosm that
supports 'orbits' and throws 'dimthreads' from one world to another...
space fungus raining down on the new world to be invaded.. etc. Lets
say that Tharkhold moves itself from universe to universe.. and keeps
its world laws but takes the world from 'cosm' to 'cosm'. And Mara's
telescope was supposed to look for worlds inside her universe (why
isnt there any life but here?) but got caught up in a dim-thread probe
to Tharkhold's universe. She thinks they are in the same universe but
only after things start happening does she realize they came from
somewhere else.. and she thinks the telescope did it.

Actually it would be kind of cool if all the High Lords had to do
this.. so lets say in similar Earth orbits with only comic physics to
explain their 'interaction' are Gaea, Terra, Magna Verita,
MarketPlace, and  Living Land.. and the asteroid ruins of Tharkhold
torn to pieces by the recoil of not transcending correctly into this
reality.

3) They are the mirror universes of each other.  So they are similar
as they can get.. only a left/right handed universe spin.





-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"