Arrival Day - February 4, 1962

[Lucius]

The astronomers will notice

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Then again, it's amazing the things people fail to notice...

[Steve]

Well, I would imagine so. However, with faerie-kind appearing on Earth, there would probably be less interest in what Mars and Venus looked like.

[Steve]

I'm going to start skipping around a bit in the timeline as I fill in ideas.

 

In early 1991, the Personasoft Corporation was founded as an offshoot of the Microsoft Corporation in partnership with a fast-rising Japanese company named Genom, an organization pioneering the making of Homonculi workers for various industries to combat the labor shortage going on in that country at the time. While the first generation of home-use Personas had some reports of "twitchiness" in their functioning, that was later found to be caused by unauthorized user modifications (hacks) of the thaumaturgic-based AI software. The current version, Persona 6, has received excellent customer reviews.

 

To combat such occasional malfunctions running amok, police task forces were formed in cities that experienced them. Promptly nicknamed "Blade Runner" units despite having a more formal police title, the nickname has remained to the present day. The incidence of such malfunctions remains a very small percentage.

[Steve]

After the war, the various Witch Kings and Queens began carving up the vast territories they had gained in Russia and China. No longer united by the power of the Dark Lord, they fell to squabbling with each other. Humans still lived there, slaves to their inhuman masters.

 

Unlike other regions of the world, a trickle of power still flowed into Russia and parts of China and India, one effect of this being a failure of various modern technologies within those zones. Guns still worked, but things powered by electricity and motors would fail. Strange plants and animals began being seen, creatures from fairy tales that managed to survive Nd thrive in that part of the world.

[Steve]

Some of the plants and animals had powerful medicinal properties, so a thriving trade in such things developed. Based out of coastal regions such as Hong Kong, Shanghai and other places, profession "adventurers" began braving the darkened interior regions of Asia to bring back such treasures. The attrition rate is terrifyingly high, so most retire after a big enough score. Some crave the danger and keep on, even though they know that means their eventual end at the hands or claws of something.

 

Castles and goblin-haunted fortresses dot the lands, not all of them under the control of one or the other of the various Witch Kings or Queens. Riches can be found in such places: gold, jewels and the occasional magical trinket. The only difficulties lie in getting it away from whatever might be guarding it and then transporting it by foot or horseback to civilization.

[Steve]

In the early 1980s, Japan was the first country to begin experiencing incursions of goblins and sometimes human servants of the various Witch Kings and Queens. Combatting them were the first "magical girls" of the time, low-powered superhumans usually armed with some kind of magical implement. Sometimes small teams of low-powered superhumans would appear, composed of young men and one young woman, saving lives and battling the incursions.

 

It is believed that such happenings are due to Japan's nearness to the affected zones of the world, since occasional sightings of such "superhero" teams and magical girls have occurred in Hong Kong and other cities near the zones controlled by the Witch Kings and Queens.

 

Sometimes such battles escalate to having an actual Witch Queen (usually) or Witch King (more rarely) make an appearance. It is unknown why they are instigating such battles or who is providing the powers to those heroes opposing them. Their goblins and human servants seem to revel in their wickedness, acting like comic book villains. However, property damage is relatively low, and some now think it is a game of some kind being played by some of the Witch Kings and Queen.

 

After thirty years, the original magical girls and Sentai teams are long gone, replaced by newer versions every few years.

[Steve]

In the last ten years, a new form of reality TV show has appeared: Dungeon Crawl. Originally aired in Hong Kong, it has since grown into a worldwide phenomenon.

 

The premise is fairly simple, a party of "adventurers" travels through a manmade dungeon, battling monsters and outwitting traps while their adventure is televised. At the highest levels, it is a bloodsport and people can (and sometimes do) die. The victors are treated as heroes and many teams have developed large fan followings. The various Dungeon Masters also gain their own fan followings.

 

For those who think this sounds familiar, it is. The concept is a port of the D&D world "X-Crawl" into this one.

 

In more "civilized" regions of the world, such Dungeon Crawls are less lethal affairs, for the players. Like in the original Games that still occur in Hong Kong, instead of entering such dangerous places themselves, each player uses a technomagical means to "possess" a Homonculi body that does it instead. Players can spend a great deal of money on custom bodies and Personae with appropriate fighting skill packages.

 

The prizes can make a person quite wealthy, and many professional players make a living at this, managing to make enough to offset the costs of Homonculi bodies and Personae.

 

To make it safer, baffles are installed to greatly limit the amount of pain a player experiences. In the Hong Kong Games, there are no baffles, so players can go into shock experiencing what their Homunculus avatars do and die.

[Steve]

To ensure fairness in a Dungeon Crawl, there is a standardized numbering scheme on the abilities of a Player's Avatar and tests to determine how capable it is. This system roughly corresponds to Hero's costs, so a Dungeon Master can advertise their game as being for Avatars of 200-250 points, for example. This cost includes the physical abilities of the Avatar body and the skill capabilities of the installed Persona.

 

The rarest Players are those capable of using magic, and they are highly sought after to join teams. The technomagical method allowing a Player to possess their Avatar will allow a Player with the ability to use magic in their natural body to also use their magic in an Avatar form, if it is manufactured to the proper specs.

 

When making public appearances, almost every Player does it in their Avatar body. The fans seem to prefer it that way.

[Steve]

In the past few years, a variant of Dungeon Crawl has appeared, and it is rapidly gaining in popularity.

 

Fighting games have always been popular, so it was perhaps inevitable that someone would combine them with Avatars to produce a new form of game, one known simply as Arena. Like with Dungeon Crawl, Players purchase Avatars that are then used in martial arts combat against each other. Since there is no requirement for a dungeon, matches often take place in abandoned buildings and back alleys.

 

Japan and a few other countries have formalized such games with private parties providing venues for Arena matches. They have become quite popular.

 

The technomagical apparatus allowing for Avatar possession has been streamlined since its first introduction, and they now appear as a cap of thin wires connected to a circlet that fits to the head. A wire leads to the actual apparatus, a box about a foot long and four inches across on each side.

[Steve]

Due to the popularity of Arena, licensed versions of video game characters are available in Homonculus form. Want a Kitana Avatar or a Ryu Avatar, just go to one of the stores that sell them.

 

I suppose there could also be "unplayable" characters that simply run on their internal Persona programming. To fight one of them, you need to go to one of the venues that caters to Arena combatants. They would be like a mix of sports club and video game arcade.

 

Now that I think about it, Arena might also work using miniature Avatars, since Homonculi can be formed that are as small as a foot tall.

[Steve]

After planning for decades, the Martian invaders finally made their move on Earth in 1988, beginning with scouting expeditions. Launching from positions south of the Martian polar regions when they were hidden from Earth view, scout craft travelled to their targets, landing in remote regions. Disguising themselves as humans, they began infiltrating Earth. Their native forms, while humanoid, are clearly inhuman, with elements of Lovecraftian design most similar to D&D's Mind Flayers. Somehow they are able to transform into near-duplicates of humans, differing from the originals in the structure and placement of certain organs as well as the brain.

 

Their planned invasion was actually thwarted by agents of the Unseelie, their masters hating the idea of someone else conquering Earth. The infiltrators were discovered, compromised and fed false information on potential landing sites that would provide needed resources for the construction of war machines, leading to the invasion beginning in the southern regions of Earth: Australia and South America.

 

Hundreds of millions died in the ensuing conflict, resulting in the Grey Martians defeat. Earth's government's were able to seize Martian technology, using Martian spacecraft to decapitate the enemy by carrying hundreds of thousands of UN troops in a massive counter-assault, clearing out their tunnels complexes in an operation lasting for two years.

[Steve]

The surviving Gray Martians were driven underground, hiding amidst humanity and fighting as a fifth column element. Their technology was mostly destroyed in the intense, bloody fighting on Mars, leaving only scraps that are being studied by humanity.

 

The more human-seeming Martian races on the rest of the planet are in the process of being contacted and tentative diplomatic missions are underway.

 

Using captured Martian spacecraft technology, Venus is in the early stages of being explored, but it is considered to be highly dangerous. Reports of human inhabitants are officially unconfirmed at this time, but there are reported sightings.

[Cancer]

Things you might be able to use in some way: the transits of Venus in June 2004 and 2012, when Venus moves across the face of the Sun for a few hours as seen from Earth. The previous ones were in the late 1800s. There was a transit of Earth as seen from Mars in 1984, though those events aren't quite as rare as the first type I mentioned.

 

I assume Project Apollo did not fly due to the disruptions of the Fae.

[Steve]

That was pretty much the case. The unmanned Apollo missions followed our history, but the manned missions were scrapped because of the war against the Unseelie. There was discussion of restarting them once the war was over, but without China or Russia to compete against in the Space Race, there was not much urgency to it.

 

However, using captured Gray Martian technology, landings on the Moon did eventually take place in the early 1990s. A small UN colony conducts research there, but it is considered a boring post compared to the various Mars expeditions.

 

Part of the impetus for exploring outwards is to find out if there is anyone else unfriendly out there in the Solar System. After two wars fought against alien invaders, nobody wants to take chances. Captured Gray Martians have been ruthlessly interrogated, but little has been learned from them.

 

The human-like Martian races compose an ancient, slowly dying civilization, and it has NASA's best minds a little freaked out to know that there is a real "Barsoom" in our Solar System. The fact that Venus is a reenactment of the Jurassic is less concerning.

[Steve]

Due to the continuing efforts of Gray Martians and Unseelie to infiltrate and disrupt human society, the U.S. government has established response groups to deal with such threats.

 

The FBI has organized its task force under the codename "The X-Files" and it is composed of a dedicated group of agents who handle all reported sightings of Gray Martian and Unseelie activity. In addition, dealing with any strange phenomena related to Glamour is also part of their mandate (ghosts, criminal uses of sorcery, etc).

 

The joint task force known only as MJ-13 was actually initiated in the 1960s as a response to the sudden infusion of Fae into the world. Following the end of the war against the Unseelie, they have dedicated themselves to dealing with opposing all Unseelie and Gray Martian activity on foreign soil. They are less investigative than those agents in the FBI's X-Files group and have a reputation for being a bit heavy-handed and triggerhappy.

[bubba smith]

very good steve I like this

[Steve]

Thanks!

 

Since my various threads on the setting don't garner many comments, I wasn't sure if anyone was finding them of interest.