Mention a random quirk of your world

The story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves actually happened but not like the disney story.

First off, the huntsman was a knight. Snow White was the daughter of a Duke that whose identity was being kept hidden for security reasons. The Dwarves were loggers. there wasn't a magic mirror, just a spymaster on the other side of a one way mirror. The entire thing had little to do with Snow White's beauty and more that her father had died and if she was dead her lands would have defaulted to the Queen. The poisoned apple did knock Snow White out but it certainly wasn't a peaceful sleep. The Queen wasn't knocked off a cliff so much as shot in the leg with a crossbow and hacked into itty bitty pieces with axes. The Prince was a herbalist that smelled like sunflowers and manure. He and Snow White didn't get married but had a very successful working, and personal, relationship. The dwarves were declared outlaws and had to flee to the Dwarven frontier regions. They latter led the defense of a village against a group of bandit nomads. Think the seven samurai but with less survivors and more rewards. Snow White didn't get married for several years after the story despite the fact that it was a surprisingly happy marriage to an actual charming prince.

My appologies for ruining your childhood.

edited 10th Oct '15 4:50:44 PM by Belisaurius

Teleportation devices exist on Terra 102, but only the global army and trustworthy nobles are allowed to use them, and even then there are strict rules. Otherwise anybody can teleport anywhere, including private areas like bathrooms, bedrooms or heaven forbid, the President's quarters.

There exist public teleporters that others can use, but these all have set destination points that are hard-wired, so that they can't be hacked to teleport to forbidden areas.

'Tin Book' Artifacts are a class of artifact left behind when humanity undergoes an End-of-the-World/extinction scenario. A Tin Book is any form of technology (or structure), or any form of instruction on how to use and/or build said technology, that is far beyond the tech level of humanity's successors or capable of triggering another apocalyptic event.

Common examples are nuclear weapons, access codes to advanced armories, nuclear reactors, disease research centers, defense networks and operating manuals for space based lasers. Upon detecting Tin Book artifacts the OE will deactivate and preferably remove such objects.

Unfortunately, this often causes conflict with successor species who want the shiny mythical precursor tech for themselves. Apparently there is something incredibly tempting about radioactive waste dumps, especially for successors smart enough to realise it isn't cursed but not smart enough to realise it doesn't have to be to be dangerous.

The Core Guard war was caused due to the standard Guard hive mind collapsing under the weight of guilt of their first use of space colonization for the empire.

The Core Guards were programmed at first to protect humanity from anything that could be deemed a genuine threat. The result was the genocide of various alien species that were actively harmful to human colonies and such.

This fact is well known many years later and is regretted by many people, humanity as a whole feeling guilty for what happened. Many alien species who have emerged and joined humanity question this seeing it as necessary for the good of their species.

Core Guards are thus seen as dangerous whether they were the standards or even the fully autonomous Personal Models, thus requiring Knight intervention.

edited 21st Oct '15 6:27:58 AM by EchoingSilence

Alongside regular timespace are a series of alternate dimensions, although only one is known to the public. Zerospace is known to be part of this universe, as a component of the Bulk. The others are less identifiable. The Infoverse in particular is a tricky one. Very few people know of this alternate set of dimensions, and are quite intent on making sure the public at large remains ignorant of it due to the whole "being invaded by extradimensional horrors that bend reality at will" deal.

The most common theory is that it is a universe running parallel to our own, or a set of dimensions existing within our own universe much like Zerospace. That's because the other two well known theories are far too terrifying to consider. First, there is the idea that our universe is merely a simulation, and that the Infoverse is the higher universe's equivalent to Cyberspace. Then, there's the theory that our universe is a hologram and that the Infoverse is the "true" universe our own universe is confined within. Scientists working with Infoverse Theory are dropping like flies these days, as the idea that we are merely constructs of a realer universe that has so far proven to be malevolent or at the very least dangerous to the extreme has proven to be too much for many to handle.

Many, many millions of years ago, there was a civilization that grew and flourished and eventually died out. Little is known of them: they probably didn't have FTL but they understood the basics of gravitics, and their gravitic sensors could detect FTL signatures.

Oh, and they knew enough to construct sail-powered von Neumann probes that would arrive at a promising-looking star, build up the specialist automata needed to construct a massive swarm of computational satellites orbiting the star, and spawn more probes to go out and do likewise.

Said von Neumann probes aren't conscious, and neither are the Matrioshka brains that they build; indeed, they've remained remarkably stable and unchanging over the eons, easily winning the title of "longest-running machines in known space". The Matrioshka brains have one purpose and one purpose only: they scan the neighborhood with a sensor array of millions of satellites, and any planet that shows signs of intelligent life—or any passing gravity-driven starship that catches its attention—gets blasted with a Nicoll-Dyson gamma-ray laser.

(Apparently said civilization believed very strongly in pre-emptive strikes. Or else it was a self-replicating weapon that got far out of control.)

Fortunately for humanity's far-flung stellar civilizations, the probes have some significant defects. For one, the gamma-ray lasers lose their cohesion and power unnaturally quickly: they can scour away a planet at 500 light years and sterilize it at 2500, but are virtually harmless at 10000 light years. For another, the von Neumann probes did not reproduce perfectly: starting with the third generation significant defects were observed, and the newest ones ever observed were apparently of fifth-generation manufacture; these are invariably nonfunctional. (This is another reason humanity has survived to reach the stars instead of being blasted out of existence, and why there are only some two thousand Matrioshka systems observed instead of millions.)

Fourth-generation and third-generation Matrioshkas may be skirted by very careful or very foolish FTL skippers who can avoid their firing solutions or confuse the targeting sensors (very unlikely, unless the Matrioshka is particularly defective, since even a fourth-generation Matrioshka has hundreds of thousands of satellites), but the expanses of space that must contain the home system of this civilization are marked on the charts with "death cannons be here". Nothing has ever gotten close enough to a second-generation Matrioshka to study it; as for first-generation ones, it is hypothesized that they are virtually Dyson spheres, unblinking eyeballs surrounding entire stars, keeping a genocidally jealous watch on everything around them for any sign of intelligent life.

Inspired by the worryingly plausible "planet of asshat griefers", as Charlie Stross put it.

Faced with a strongly enforced culture-wide Fantasy Gun Control, various non-state actors within the story have resorted to developing an assortment of biological nasties, ostensibly for industrial purposes, to aid their less-than-savoury activities.

Under my newest setting, the Sol system is oft descrubed as an example of "polite Balkanization"; despite most worlds being independent (Mars in 2052, Jupiter & her moons in 2065, even Luna in 2070) there has never been any armed conflict off Terra. Some people (half-jokingly) suggest this is because the Brits, in all their tea-drinking Stiff Upper Lip glory, handled most of the negotiations, though why there's never been shooting is still mostly down to exoplanetary governments actually having a clue.

Mars was also the first planet to launch a full-blown interstellar-capable space vessel, so some theories say everyone's playing nice so they can get their own spacers aboard for its next mission.

Magical ability is funnily enough religious, but that's only because all magical power comes from the blood of the gods, with each god serving a different ideal and their magic based around said ideals.

This is oddly like a mashup of the religions in my setting...

To clarify : there is one religion centered around "virtues" where each divinity is a personification of a virtue ; and there is another religion whose gods are the source of magic, which in one case actually comes from the blood of a god (or so the myth goes).

So... great minds think alike or Cliché Storm ?

edited 24th Nov '15 5:09:39 AM by Aetol

Yeah there are several gods, one of them doesn't have a tower of worship and grants their powers differently, they typically take those near death or recently dead and revive them with a infusion of their blood. Why? They just don't care, the Jester cares for nothing more than chaos and anyone who uses their power is serving that purpose.

I like to think Strange Minds Think Alike.

edited 24th Nov '15 5:09:16 AM by EchoingSilence

The People's Republic of Zavi have their own Eldritch Location on their continent: the jungles known only as the End of Civilization. Information on the End of Civilization is spotty to those outside the Kykzavi government, consisting mostly of myth, hearsay, and intentional deception by the People's Republic. The apex predator is something known as a zvrak, and while physical descriptions are scarce and contradictory, one unverified but potentially telling nugget comes from the manual for a particularly powerful Kykzavi anti-tank weapon: "for use against Terran M1A3 Abrams and juvenile zvrak".

edited 24th Nov '15 8:11:52 PM by KillerClowns

One of the most ambitious projects New Pyrrhius has developed, other than the countless oversize military vehicles with some variety of death ray involved in its construction, is the Armitage Project. Following the Great Pyrrhic War, there was a mental health epidemic that the Militocracy could not simply pretend isn't a problem, or pretend is a problem that can be solved with violence, like the previous mental health epidemic. Billions of military veterans were in the grips of numerous mental illnesses brought about by the 20 year long conflict, post-traumatic stress disorder being the prime example. The solution, instead of putting additional funding into traditional methods, was to commission AI engineers to build several AIs capable of reconstructing a human consciousness based on parts of the human mind it identifies as healthy. The results have been colorful, to say the least. Although veteran suicides declined, bizarre reactions to seemingly innocent trigger phrases, typically culminating in violent outbursts, spiked dramatically. Although the Militocracy has denied that the Armitage Project is being used to program military veterans into being sleeper agents for the purpose of rooting out previously undetectable dissent, most people know better. Particularly since spokespeople for the Militocracy have denied these claims even when the Armitage Project was not brought up.

In the older days of the kingdom of Tír Taugh, before iron became so commonplace the Helfae had to exchange their magic for iron immunity, there was astonishing amount of interracial romance and children born of Helfae and people. These days, with Helfae's descandants the Wyldered mostly hiding in the woods creeping out the passer-byes, the amount of 50/50 hybrids had decreased to near-zero. However, the Helfae genes still pop up from time to time in humans along with weirdest magical gifts, such as ability to hear colours while blindfolded, making small animals dance to music playing nearby or forcing a grav-car to go without fuel by giving it a stern talking-to.

It is common knowledge that elven magic is going away : recorded history tells of feats of magic that would be impossible today. But in reality, this is not true : most "historical" accounts are closer to legends. The misconception is self-sustaining, as most things that do not have an obvious explanation are attributed to "ancient magic".

edited 26th Nov '15 2:50:14 AM by Aetol

Undead weaponize their decaying flesh. When "killed", they rupture into a cloud of toxic gas, atomized blood, and virulent mould spores. This serves the dual purpose of choking nearby assailants and providing their allies a smokescreen. The explosion is enough to send a living person flying.

Despite being an illegal and somewhat ostracized group on Terra, the Japanese yakuza syndicates are generally accepted as a fact of life in Mars. Even the Martian government has (quietly) negotiated with them to deal with... problems on occasion, and they tend to restrict themselves to business-related and generally more impersonal crime.

Naturally, they use Mars as a form of safehouse; the government is unlikely to bother them if they stay quiet and the locals are either jaded or merely apathetic to their presence.

One of the most popular beverages Terra 102 is a soda whose colour and flavour depends on what the user feels like drinking. Technology in the can reads the users mind, the data sent to the factory, who then teleports the flavouring into the can. It pretty much took over most of the soft drink business.

It'll most probably activate when the user opens the can. So you can still give your friends the drinks they want.

edited 29th Nov '15 3:23:39 AM by ironcommando

Wouldn't that run afoul of IP laws ? If I'm feeling like having a concurrent drink, they can't give me that, right ?

I'm guessing there are multiple ways to achieve the same result, as far as an ordinary human's senses are concerned. Or maybe practically no one wants the concurrent drink, but a very slightly altered version that fits his taste just a bit better. Or maybe it bypasses the law because 1) the process is automated, and 2) although it ends up creating an exact copy of the drink, it's not actually replicating it, but reaches it independently based on the customer's subjective experience.

Or, you know, be upfront about it by printing the Terms and Conditions on the can itself. Who's gonna read it anyway?

Terms and Conditions wouldn't protect a company against another company in terms of IP laws. User Agreements protect the company from the users but unless you've got an agreement from an entire company then you're still vulnerable to legal action.

Hm. They're probably the only soda manufacturer on the planet. Stuff like coffee and tea and milkshakes/chocolate and alcoholic drinks are made by other companies, and those have a much different texture and nutrition value (and caffeiene for coffee/tea, and alcohol for beer/wine) from soda.

But generally, most of the other drink companies don't complain since this is limited to only soda. So even if one wanted a beer soda (flavour restricted to users who are 18+), it just wouldn't be the same as drinking actual beer.

edited 5th Dec '15 11:25:50 AM by ironcommando

Even into the atomic age, the Kykzavi have kept their traditional war dances alive, as a tool to whip their own soldiers into a battle frenzy, and to terrify their enemies with both their power and discipline if they're within hearing range. Kykzavi armored divisions have a particularly distinctive war dance that uses their tanks as drums. The sound, combined with their brutal reputation and unquestioned technological superiority, is enough to break any but the most disciplined soldiers.

Every so often, some poor bastard will assume that the war dance takes up the entire Kykzavi military presence and try to initiate a daring mid-dance attack. Kykzavi sentries are trained to filter out their own sides' music, however, and their soldiers are trained to switch from a war dance to a combat situation at a moment's notice. So this mostly serves to piss them off.

edited 5th Dec '15 4:43:34 PM by KillerClowns

Due to the planets slower rotational speeds and a lack of a pole-to-pole tilt, the colony world of Midava's far side is bathed in twilight for half of the year. In fact the worlds very name is a combination of mida (land) and ava (shadow). Due to a lack of daily sunlight, the far side of Midava is devoid of the luminous, anemone-like plants that cover the rest of the world. It is a desolate place, scarred with deep valleys and dotted with the ruins of some unknown species.