Emerald Sorceror-Dukes
MP
Nuggets of rEality
mp as a cross-dimensional flying dutchman carrying frtilizer for growing realities.
also a 20 syrong board running the em corp
...?
What?
Well, Harry, it's not really that surprising you didn't get it. I'm not sure I got it all, and I've known Eric for mumble-mumble years now.
Emerald Sorceror-DukesMP and mp both stand for Mary Piper. Eric loves the Mary Piper scenario. You see, you're on the Mary Piper in its "alpha scenario" form, a multi-masted trading vessel in an early gunpowder maybe colonial worlds, the beautiful green emerald gemstones being highly valued throughout the civilized worlds; but the world book pairs it with a beta scenario, in which the ship is flying between planets, and the green stone is a clean radioactive energy source. Eric has taken it upon himself to expand this (as the book suggests), creating such things as the Mary Piper camel caravan, the Mary Piper wagon train, and a wealth of Mary Piper scenarios which break the traveling trader mold completely beyond recognition.MP
Nuggets of rEality
mp as a cross-dimensional flying dutchman carrying frtilizer for growing realities.
also a 20 syrong board running the em corp
I think he's saying that "emeralds" in this scenario (one of the things you have to define to get a good trading scenario from the model) are nuggets of reality that can be used by sorcerers, and that the ship is traveling between related universes, planting realities as it goes. I'm betting that "syrong" is a typo for "strong", and thus that it has a twenty-man crew (which is short, and I see no reason for making it smaller) and that "em corp" is supposed to be "EM Core", that is, an electromagnetic engine that powers it.
But some of that is guesswork on my part. I'm pretty good at guesswork, usually, but I have to admit that I could be wa-a-ay off on some of this.
--M. J. Young
So far I'm amused by the Mary Piper Alpha, I'm just wishing my first significant Verse had been a higher magic one. The way you did it at Ubercon made it seem like this was a null-magic world, or close to it.
Urk. This is what I'm like after only two hours of sleep in the preceding day. Incoherent. But I got a bright idea of joining two ideas together.
But first, Graeme came up with theidea for Mary Piper: Old West Caravan....I think I have this complete. I think I've also may have finished the idea suggested by MJ of a Children's Bedtime Story inspired Mary Piper (with Little Red Riding Hood, and the Old Woman in the Shoe, and of course The Wolf and the Jabberwock.) One of my favorite variations on this is a Siberian nuclear powered train in an anarchic zone. Another is a Bussard ramjet thats takes enviromental data to modify terraforming plans out to various solar systems so that the locals there can tweak their terraforming to avoid enviromental collapse.
Anyways....
Idea One: Mary Piper.
Idea Two: Sorceror Dukes of Emerald. A while back I came up with a techno-dimensional crossing group, and a group of major mojo magicians that were inspired by the Princes of Amber. And since Amber is a stone, and Emerald is....
Now cross these two...
What if the SDoE is a corporation of say twenty individuals on a board of directors? What if they have the power to grow universes? What if their primary tool in this job is the Flying Dutchman version Mary Piper which wends its way from bubble universe to bubble universe?
Why do they do this? Well, they want to grow full-fledged universes which takes some work. And in the meantime, they will be happy to defray some of the costs of this mission by trading fertilizer aka magic emerald stones for other valuable stuff the locals make.
It offers the verser the chance to start on the Dutchm...Mary Piper. To visit alt-universes including strange ones....
I think the Piper is going to travel up and down rivers....maybe its a steamboat, or a clipper...or maybe it changes to suit the universe its in. And it will seek out natural gates, a nd travel through them trying to find a way to get to its destination.
This offers a really huge chance to see lots of strange sites.
Also, there is political power plays,a nd members who haven't bothered to vote for centuries, and someone going around and collecting proxies at sword point....Its inspired by the way the Princes of Amber treat each other.
What happens to the bubble universes they take apart to harvest? What if those universes have people in them, etc?
I was thinking that they might be sold to various entities. And this might be the source of one of the conflicts on the Board of Directors....some are willing to sell them to just anybody or anything...
"Vlad, you need a Private Hunting Preserve where the world is keyed to respond to your voice....?"
And others are more interested in some semblance of honor, and in only selling to people who are decent.
This would be thematically unified with the spell-cursed and spell-enslaved crew of the Mary Piper. Slavery would be the big issue.
That is an interesting idea....taking apart a universe, and using its parts to build something else. It reminds me for some reason of Andre Norton's Witch World (which I haven't read much of).
I guess, it would give you an excuse to put a wide, wide variety of cultures together in very tight quarters.
And I suppose that they could be stuck together in a squished up clump next to another several dimensions...and in between those dimensions,a nd some oncoming pan-dimensional Eater of Universes and his Minions.
"I've heard humans are good fighters. Lets see if they can fend of the Smarg because our troops certainly aren't."
My rule book has wandered off, or I'd see about finishing off "Magical Vampire". Maybe I can do some "Alpha" later.
Anyways, lets design a bit of Mary Piper: Tau: Sorceror Dukes of Emerald
Emerald is a Material World of fabulous magics. Teleporting by will is a trifle. Living for centuries is a mild bit of work. It is a pre-Singularity Magic World. In some worlds, computers and biologics run hand in hand. Here, spirit magic and biologics run hand in hand.
There are great Elemental Magics, but the really sharp, cool stuff is the hidden things. The way some people are trying to teach spirits how to become smarter, and then have that spirit teach others spirits at Lightning Speed how to be smarter is where the big brains are. Once you can get a spirit to be smarter than a human, you can use him to teach the next generation of summoned beings to be even smarter. Who can repeat the process in a loop that goes higher and higher, faster and faster.
The Emeraldians don't realize it, but they are well on their way to becoming a Border Supernatural.
And then a group of nerds who were not as sharp as the sharpest discovered the existence of other dimensions. More, they realized that you could have centuries of study time in this other dimension, and come back the day after you left with the spell they used.
They formed a corporation "the Sorceror Dukes of Emerald,Ltd.", and set out to study and experiment in the Multiverse.
They've been doing this for a varied amount of time. Some have only been 'outworld' a couple centuries. Others have been gone a millenia. There are rumors of many going 'native'.
After all, each Sorceror Duke has the might of a fully modern magic society behind him. They can easily conquer a dimension, and become King.
But in "The Real World" of Emerald, its only been a week. That's right, they are convinced the other dimensions are not real.
MORE LATER>>>>