[ASH] Info File: Supertech Taxonomy

[Saxon Brenton]

On Sat 14 Oct 2006 Dvandom (Dave Van Domelen) replied:
>>Over the years I've occasionally wondered how an Anchor would do in other 
>>universes with other laws of physics.
>
>      Well, an ASH-universe Anchor couldn't even GO to another universe.  
>Violating the boundaries between realities is itself against the natural 
>law.

<thwaps forehead with plam of hand>  Yes, of course.  I should have
thought of that.

>       It helps to see Anchors as the universe's antibodies.  They are 
>able, whether actively or passively, to repair damage done to the universe. 
>  The Magene is an infection of reality, breaking it down in various ways.  
>Anchors fight that infection.  No one knows if this is actually an 
>anthropomorphic effect (i.e. there's some self-aware part of the universe 
>directing the creation of Anchors) or just a sort of reflexive response.

If, as you say later, they are so tightly tied to the ASH universe's reality
that they would only be able to strengthen it and no other, then that
might be taken as a sign of anthropomorphisation.  But then, since they
can't be taken outside to other universes to test it against other
realities, then this is an aspect unlikley to be realised except by the
maddest of mad theoreticians. (Even embedded pocket dimensions, like
the one that the Family were guarding, with the Norse dwarves and their
mechanical goat, would be inaccessible...)

[...]

>      If the Looniverse has Anchors of its own (and there doesn't seem to 
>be any evidence that it does), they'd work under totally different 
>principles. Is Drama a natural principle, or an invading energy (given that 
>it comes from the Authorial domain)?  If it's a violation, then Limp 
>Asparagus Lad would be an Anchor.  If it's a natural part of the 
>Looniverse, then perhaps CAPTAIN CAPITALIZE would be what passes for an 
>Anchor, ensuring high drama.  And so forth.  But the Looniverse seems 
>chaotic enough in general that it wouldn't have an immune system, it just 
>goes with whatever.

To be fair I think the impression that the Looniverse is inherently chaotic
has some grounding in truth but is vastly overestimated simply because
it operates on a different system. It looks chaotic when compared to
univeres like ASH (the latter of which runs primarily on nice, relatively
straightfoward, and essentially self-consistent rules of physics).  But it's
like comparing apples and oranges (or perhaps apples and bicycles).  It
looks chaotic (hell, it looks like it has an out-and-out deathwish) because
the system it operates under is one that inherently generates crisis (and
because of the way comic books cliches have evolved over the decades,
some of those crises may be of universe destroying, multiverse merging
magnitudes) only to be pulled back from the brink by its heroes.  But
it's self-consitent and (providing everyone plays their part) 
self-sustaining.
Or, to invoke a classificatory description of various alien dimensions that
was made in one of the Champions RPG books (The Mystic Word, IIRC)
the Looniverse is *not* a world ruled by a Dimensional Lord and where
the only laws of reality are the Dimensional Lord's whim.  Even the Writers
need to stick to the rules of storytelling, even if those ruloes give us a
wider remit that those of physics, and even if we argue about them anyway.

---
Saxon Brenton   Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia

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