The Gardener would be happy to stay in one universe for five hundred years, creating the perfect tomatoes. This type of thing can have a surprising level of effect, after all America got partially colonized because of tobacco, and you can ask the Irish about the effect of potatoes.
And then there are versers who in a few short years make some major changes. Perhaps one is a black medic who 'invents' pennicillin and latrines and handwashing and quarantine (a la Moses except for pennicillin), and thus cuts short much of the major plagues of the Middle Ages. That would change the world massively.
But what about the Ghost, who if he had stayed on in the Reformed US of A, could have lived to create a world-wide empire within sixty or so years, and then once technological society got back going, it would not have been very long at all before colonies were planted on other planets. Within two hundred years, a just, freedom-loving, God-fearing civ could have been spread from Mercury to Neptune's moons.
And its possible that with the Ghost's 1)wisdom to support limited government and 2)massive prestige as some sort of immortal hero that this might have been achieved with minimal destruction and war.
Now imagine one of two things...Ghost gets versed out, and a hundred years later another verser arrives. Or, two, Ghost doesn't get versed out, and a verser arrives.
Not in every world does this occur, but in some worlds you have the conjuntion of the right verser and the right world so that the verser can do as Archimedes speculated and move the world in very dramatic ways.
This of course can be extremely negative. One of the werser's I've created takes over planets so that they will adore her. And its certainly possible that the next "Middleearth" you arrive in might have the Dark Lord being a verser. He's been trying to crush the Free Peoples for the last five hundred years and he's about to succeed...
The question here is...how could one man with several hundred years and lots of determination and power radically reshape a world?
C has created a spy agency, but something far more massive is clearly possible.
One possibility that could be rather sad is the Well-Meaning Tyrant. George Smithers is the type of guy who talked your ear off at parties about his political schemes. He was a bore, and a bit of a nut, but in modern society largely harmless. However...he versed. Some time later, he's managed to get some power, and a vision. And he decides to implement it on the low tech Ytargxi, a humanoid race. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned. And despite his rants, and his tech advantages, and his concentration camps for 'ungrateful reactionary thugs', things keep getting worse and worse over the course of the Hundred Year War. Perhaps if he didn't execute the servants who brought him bad news...
In any case, by the time he's done, George aka the Enlightened One has managed to pretty much destroy civilization for hundreds of miles around. And he's poisoned the rivers as well because after the Coalition of the Free rose against him, he had no choice but to nuke their cities.
But George doesn't know how to quit, and he knows there are more civilizations over the mountain range that need his help. But first, he's sensed a verser, and its time to recruit the verser to his side because he realizes that was part of his problem...he was relying on unreliable and kinda dumb Ytargxi when he needed to have a good right hand...a human.
And George is not the type of person to understand "No, I don't really want to."
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Or you could have a world in which a Valley Girl Verser arrived and taught them style and fashion...the most famous rock and roll star of all time, the Outta This World Girl, the Versifying Verser....and then have the verser be some girl rocker that the player loves to hate. :)
Ya know, a verser could impact the world dramatically just by versing in. A scenario that I imagined was the verser landing, and within minutes of getting oriented, hears a woman screaming for help. The verser, being the hero that he is, jumps to her rescue. She's being attacked by 2 thugs intent on raping and killing her. Upon dispatching the thugs, the woman turns to him, and he sees she's extremely pregnant. The woman says "Thank you kind sir. I'm Mrs. Hitler. My baby Adolf and I will be eternally grateful to you." If he had taken no action, Hitler would have been killed right there.
Her name was Schickelgruber. Hitler adopted the shorter name for effect.
It's an interesting notion, but that it assumes that World War II would not have happened without one man, and that's unlikely in the extreme. The outcome of World War I made World War II nearly inevitable, and the self-isolating practices of European Jews along with their keen financial abilities made them obvious enemies and scapegoats for any regime looking to build popularity. Most of the big things are much bigger than one man.
--M. J. Young
I heard it was his grandfather's name. It became his name when his grandfather legitimized his father and they both inherited the name.
While I think WWII might have been inevitable without him, I think it would have been a much different event without the presence of a galvanizing, charismatic leader who was able to speak with the authority of a military man, the perspective of a commoner, and the forethought of a genius (an evil genius to be sure, but a genius nonetheless). At the very least it might not have been as big, as bad, or as soon after the first without him and his people egging things on.
I should have known that would drift the thread.....
Eric, I see what you mean. In Dancing Princess, I tried to introduce metalworking concepts such as solder and stainless steel. Solder was judged interesting but ineffective, and stainless steel, although rare, had been discovered. I certainly see what you mean about a long-stay verser.
It was an episode of Sliders. Quinn and company invent penicillin and eradicate a deadly plague. Just what you were talking about. Even just the knowledge that the rats were the cause would surely have stemmed The Bubonic Plague. Ironically, it is believed a different breed of rat, immune to the plague, is what ultimately stopped it.
(Doing Therapy)
Both Nikolaj and Jhiaxus brought religion to the Orcs of Orc Rising. Nikolaj is bringing Christ and Jhiaxus brought Odin. Both are likely to radically shift their worlds over the long haul.
Someone with a decent amount of magic and the generalship who arrived in Philly 2007 could lead a crusade to wipe out the vampire menace, and actually succeed. It would require getting together enough proof that the skeptics would be persuaded, but once that was done, you would have a vast spy hunt with hundreds of thousands of supporters with probably some nations directly controlled by vampires.....heh, sounds like a metaphor for the hunt for Soviet communists in the State Department.
Probably such a world would have spells set up to detect visitors from other dimensions...and so the verser could arrive and be sought by the police and by the last remaining vampires with both of them assuming he is some sort of mega powerful visitor from Beyond.
Also, you could design a world that perfectly matched a verser because said verser was supposed to have been running the place for a few hundred years....and then send another verser there. Take a basic modern world (use one of my 'Ten Faces of America'), and then ask yourself what would the rules be if say A1 or MJ were in charge for a century...
As a matter of fact, that would be a rather easy way to characterize a world. Don't say its because said verser was there, just say in your mind...this is Joe's America, and then project on a vast screen of the populace the general character traits and types of skills are now more favored than other choices.
Let's say Joe is quick of temper, quick to forgive, and impulsive. He likes extreme sports but hates team sports. He also likes the violin...
Joe's America has a large greeting card market for apology cards, and flowers do well as well. So does impromptu boxing matches in alleys, and bar brawls. There are team sports, but the NFL is a struggling league staying one step ahead of its creditors. Where the real action is at is the Cross-America Foot/Bike/Hanglider/Boat (etc. etc.) race where over ten thousand contestants pay a thousand bucks to enter, and only about seventy or so finish the competition. Edit: Forgot the violin. Cause Joe hates team sports, there are very few large orchestras, but violin playing is something that anyone with any degree of talent is taught in the public schools. About a third of the population is at least 1@7. And hearing ten 3@10 violinists engage in a violin duel is an auditory experience the verser will never forget even thousands of years later.
Joe's America is a quick way to slightly customize normal reality without much work on the ref's part.