One day, a beautiful lady with long, lustrous raven black hair bought herself a new tech toy as she so dearly loved to do. It had Scriff Inside! imprinted on the cover of the PDA. She went to work that night, and took it in to show off to her fellow employees before setting to work. Rain pounded the roof of the building, and work went on. Finally time for 'lunch' at midnight arrived, and she went out to the car to put her new device up as the rain had finally ceased a half hour ago. But a truck came barrelling into the parking lot, driving much too fast for a wet, and dark night.
It did not hit her. But it did roar through a very large puddle and drench her, and the PDA in her hand.
A half-dozen worlds later, and she sort of understands, as much as most versers do, what is going on.
So she arrived in a world in the midst of a parade in honor of Coordinator 129 whose wise council led District 129 as his father had led it before him. It was a blessed and wonderful world, all the posters on the walls said so, and anyone who disagreed was an Enemy of the State, and quite obviously insane. The Coordinators, with their superior wisdom and benevolence, had removed the burden of excess choice from the People.
It was a scientific fact, proven by studies funded by the Coordinators, that more than three choices was painful for the average person when confronted by any choice. So there were Trucks, Cars, and Cycles with Red, Blue, and Green colors for each of the types of vehicles which those with ten years service could receive by cashing in their Benevolence Points. They got BP's by doing extra service to the Community as determined by the Coordinators.
So, when an unknown person appeared in the midst of the parade, the instant assumption was that she was an assassin, a servant of conservative radicals, and a Hater. So she was apprehended with the typical lack of concern shown to the subhuman. Which meant she woke from her coma ten years later.
By then, her remarkableness had been well-established. Her backpack was well-made and had over a dozen colors in it. Heresy or Unscientific Thought! But inside was worse, a totally unbowlderized collection of thousands of books and songs on a tiny electronic device. It was then that the serious men got involved which they rarely did.
The device was at least twenty years in advance of anything even the Black Tech Cites could make. It was phenomenal. It was scary.
So she was closely observed as she slept in her coma. And one fact became clear. She was not aging. Not in the least. Massive efforts were expended to raise her from her coma. A whole new Black Tech City dedicated to coma patient's recovery was set up. In the space of five years, over twenty-five years of research was force fed into the solutions for comas.
This had notable bad effects as a number of thoroughly stupid theories got advanced, and hardened into dogma. But they were lucky enough to have some truly brilliant scientists, and so the breakthrough was made.
She woke to find herself controlled by electro-mechanical means. They wanted one thing. 'What's your secret to immortality?'. She tried to verse out, but with a multiple watchers and a device in her head that could freeze her muscles at a word, it did not work.
They asked about the yellow substance in her blood, and she realized that they were so close. And she did not want to oppress other worlds with their ways, nor, did she want to have them find a way to use scriff tomake themselves immortal overlords in this world. The populace had it bad enough without their bosses living forever.
So she began to lie, to lead them on a path. She was the daughter of a goddess and a merman. She needed time and privacy to brew up her magics.
So they gave her a lighthouse by the sea, and watched her carefully by human eye, and in her lab, with cameras.
She brewed up some small magics, all that would work in the world's low magic bias. Besides she was no great magi.
And then she took the ravens that roosted all over the lighthouse, and what she had heard from some other versers, and she fed some of her Special Brew No. 9 she called it with a smirk to each Raven. Each raven, thus sedated and scriffed, was put into a huge blackpot, and covered by a lid. Airtight. The whole thing was heated to a slurry mess. By this time, the raven had either versed or plain died. She then dumped the slurry mess off the side of the lighthouse into the sea with an expression of disgust.
"Spell is still not working."
She filled pages of notebooks with structured nonsense so that her watchers had something to read.
Now each raven had a message attached to its leg.
"I am a verser on Timeline 1.475. Held prisoner by evil forces. Please rescue me."
The immortal raven versers, several dozen so far, fly into various worlds, and often get killed. But then at some point, in the midst of this strangeness, the raven senses something familiar so he goes to it. Another verser who then reads the message...some versers take up the Quest for the Lady of Ravens as she is known. Others simply add their message to the raven they find. It occurs to some that this might be a way to create some sort of Raven Internet Interdimensional.
Very interesting premise, so is this a game you are running for her, a story, or a plot device to add to your multiverser games?
Plot device. She came up with the idea for the ravens.
You do realize that a Raven coming to any Jhiaxus with a note has special significance correct?
Oh, yes, that was an immediate thought.
Ok grumblegrumbleevilgmgrumblegrumble :P
of course, because normally it are seagulls that live near lighthouses ;)
Cool idea! Awesome.
Niko,
It does add a mythic overtone to things, doesn't it? Like maybe there is something more going on than is at first apparent. There's also perhaps an archetypical feel to this 'World'.
It does. Ravens usually don't bode well as omens though, but knowing you a bit, you probably do not mind that ... at all.
Hmmm--I find the notion that she can identify her location dubious. I know that di Vars can't do it, nor the Architect, nor Whisp, Mother, Adams--it's never been done. That doesn't mean that someone couldn't do it. But then, one verser successfully finding a way to catalog the randomly-distributed array of of worlds doesn't mean that their catalog system would have any meaning. It would be like giving Library of Congress Catalog numbers to native Martians and expecting them to find your book (when everyone knows that Martians use the Dewey Decimal System).
That is, any means of identifying a universe is going to be based on a randomly determined base and scale. The number 1.475 assumes that there's a 0.000 or a 1.000 somewhere, and that there's an incremental system of units of a specific length. That is, if I were to say that you were to find an object that is 1.475 away from 0, you would need to know where 0 is (an arbitrary decision by the person who created the scale--e.g., 0 degrees is the freezing point of water on the Celsius scale, the absence of all energy on the Kelvin scale, and nothing in particular on the Fahrenheit scale) and whether I'm talking about inches, centimeters, meters, miles, light years, or the width of my own hand.
And worlds are constantly in motion relative to each other, adrift in the scriff, bumping into each other and bouncing away, never in the same place twice relative to any other universe. They don't have labels; they don't have "frequencies". All that distinguishes them is their histories and whatever that means they are now.
So the only way to find a specific world is to follow the trail through the scriff left by another scriff traveler. That's theoretically possible, at least, and the Ravens should leave such a trail.
--M. J. Young
As a plot Device all the numbers and logic really don't matter, it's how the player reacts to it. If the player makes it a point to investigate it, then every time he verses, it's a possible world to send him to. In this case I'm not so big into the technical details on how could someone track it, it's a camouflage for "Does the player want to help, and to what degree, or not." As far as I'm concerned she could have put a random number on the page, all that matters is the player's reaction.
It would have to be a Little Multiverse which had some 'frequency' or something, and a steady framework of worlds inside the LM.
As to being arbitrary, yes, but if you find one of the landmarks inside the map, then you can use the map.
One marker for universes is a Verser Leaving or Arriving. You probably don't need that much more advanced tech than now, or you might be able to do it now, a network of gravity measuring devices (supersensitive to minor fluctuations) and spread out over a large area to localize the gravity changing point, plus some semi-difficult math...and you could detect when a verser arrived and pretty roughly where based on the change in gravity.
With more sensitive tech and better math, you might be able to deduce the arrival of versers in earlier times by the effect on planets.
I'm not sure if there is a propagation wave effect. I'm not sure how long it would take you to detect the arrival of a verser on Earth from Alpha Centauri.
Oh, yeah, you could do it with a sub-multiverse of related universes, defining the universes according to some kind of frequency relationship.
Yeah, I don't know how long it takes for gravitic effects to be felt elsewhere. I'm given to think that it's probably a speed-of-light thing, but I don't know why. I do know that with relativity gravity is not a force but a distortion in space, but I don't guess it makes that much difference to the process.
--M. J. Young