Every fourty-two years, the Nearing-Dai Song Comet streaks into the inner solar system. It tends to bring with it a collection of rocks from the Outer System, and to leave behind it a trail of rocks, ice balls, gas. Some is captured by the planet known to the locals as Earth.
The N-DS is the center of a mobile sub-universe which is centered on its parts. This has the effect called by the students of weird phenomenon, the 'Weirdness Mountain' after the shape on a graph paper of 'weird incidents' on Earth. As the comet comes inward, it pushes bits of ice and stuff before it, and each of those bits has a sub-universe around it that is unstable because its so small.
Some bits are large enough to cause effects even from orbit, so you have five minute chunks of time in every ninety minutes where locals on the planetary surface can do strange things.
Other chunks are sturdy or large enough to survive crashing to Earth. Being turned into vapor tends to destroy the effect. But if a large meteor crashes down near a village, the whole village is likely to start seeing 'Weird Incidents' as people learn to manipulate the new potential for abilities.
Then the comet nears the Earth, and weirdness is much more common for a month, but its still denied. Later, the comet leaves and you're left with the bits that crashed either before or after.
However, the sub-universe tends to decay after a span from a week to a year to normal reality.
Bits of the comet have different chunks of high bias reality attached to them. So in one town you might see faith healers, and in another town an outbreak of telepathy.
There are legends of intermittent powers and madness, and some organizations have some clue as to what's going on.
Some astronomers claim to be able to see structures on the N-DS but this is considered fringe science. In actuality, there are the ruins of an alien exploration ship and base on the comet. Its the only place in the solar system where the ship's hyperdrive and AI can work. The aliens dropped into the system from hyperdrive, and could not leave. They found the comet, and settled there, but by then the hyperdrive had been badly damaged due to klutzy bias impaired 'repairs'. The aliens may have gone into hypersleep hoping that someone in the future could rescue them, and help them jump from the comet back to 'normal reality' outside the solar system.
I could totally see someone exploiting this by collecting bits of 'starmetal' to make the world's only suit of magic (and magic-inducing) armor.
At least, that's what I would do in this world. BIG potential for abusing the locals.
Interesting exploitation, Harry. I'm thinking that there would be problems with it, given that Eric's definition of the stuff inherently puts it in a separate sub-universe. That would mean that a lot of your actions would have to cross sub-universe boundaries, or you would have to have some way of limiting the extent of the sub-universe so you're not isolated by it. For example, nearly all psionic skills take a -50 penalty for crossing such boundaries, and it looks as if you might arguably have to cross them twice, so that pretty much eliminates all psionic skills from your arsenal. Magic also faces penalties for crossing boundaries, but you might be able to work around that. I'd have to think about it, if you're not in the sub-universe but in the main universe surrounded by the sub-universe.
--M. J. Young
Why bother? Your magic doesn't have to cross any sub-universe boundaries if it affects only you. So you might not manage to throw any lightning bolts but there's nothing stopping you from using the starmetal magic to enhance your strength, speed, regeneration... Internal magics are the thing. Psionics the same way. You can physically interact with things normally, as you're basically forcing the boundary of the sub-universe onto anything you strike with your armored self. You'd just have to get very good at plate-armored fisticuffs, unless you find enough of the stuff to make a sword out of the same sub-universe (which would be one hell of a meteorite considering plate armor could weigh upwards of 35 pounds by itself, and add on two or three more for a weapon of any reasonable size).
Yah, just be invincible, and carry an M-60 and a bucket full of C-4. It may take you a while to knock down a squad or platoon of M1A1 Abrams tanks, but you'll get it done in a couple hours.
Until local superhero Captain Got-There-First shows up and whomps you.
But still, I could see this happening on a less excessive scale. People in tribal communities rally around a 'shaman' or 'blessed leader' whose power actually comes from the bit of starmetal on his staff, which lets him see glimpses of the future. A particularly gifted gambler is in fact telekinetic because of a chunk of this stuff embedded in his pinkie ring. All sorts of odd characters whose oddity is explainable as coming from a chunk of Elsewhere.
Also, I get the feeling that these chunks radiate their demiplane, am I right? Like, to use my example, a suit of starmetal armor might have 'its' sub-universe (and the Biases thereof) in, say, a sixty-foot radius, not just within itself? The cheating gambler might be able to use his Telekinesis on anything within six feet, just enough to usually be able to cheat at craps. That sort of thing.
07, remember, this bit of starmetal doesn't give you the ability, it gives you a chance to learn that skill. So, a verser is going to have a serious advantage over even Captain-Got-There-First.
And yes, radiating from the bit of starmetal instead of just being on contact. In fact, the ones in orbit that rotate the Earth probably have a radius of a hundred miles in order to reach the surface. Still, you could play with the size of these for the most interesting effect.
True on the skills thing - I had overlooked that. The indigs might not be terribly creative in what they try to do.