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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Undocumented Features General
Topic ID: 81
Message ID: 6
#6, WPI Ley Lines
Posted by remande on Aug-23-01 at 02:21 PM
In response to message #4
LAST EDITED ON Aug-23-01 AT 02:23 PM (EDT)

>>*Wonders why the thought of Corwin looking for the Galatic Leyline
>>popped into his head, Well I do picture him as a younger black haired
>>Gene
>>Starwind.*
>
>... Er.
>
>--G.

Hey, Ben, is the WPI ley line theory canon?

For everybody else:

I am betting that this is canon, but that's Ben's call. Certain points in HL call it canon, and that's somehow applicable here (see UF4 and HL1 to see how the relationship goes).

In real life, there was a small cabal of Wedge Rats that considered themselves magically active. Many more Wedge Rats were playing the Palladium games Beyond the Supernatural and Rifts. These games have a Ley line theory.

The idea is that the earth is encircled by hundreds of ley lines, some large and some small. We mundanes don't notice them, but they carry mystical power. If you can do magic, you can tap the power and do whatever you do that much better.

Where two ley lines cross, you have a nexus point, and there is major mojo there. If you're going to use a lot of magic, you want to be at one of these nexus points. Sometimes (often, in Rifts), nexus points can become rifts, or transdimensional gateways. The bigger nexus points are marked; examples include Stonehenge and the St. Louis Arch (see HL3).

Anyhow, strange things were often afoot at WPI in real life. You have to realize that the mascot of the school is the hundred year old disembodied preserved head of a goat, there was a rumored satanist cabal in town, and even some of the founders of WPI were accused of satanism. So we figured out that it had to be ley lines.

We figured out that there was a constellation of minor nexus points in Worcester. The big one is Bancroft Tower. Nexus points on campus would be Higgins House (former residence of the alleged satanists), and Skull House (home of WPI's "Skull" secret honor society). Debate raged on as to whether the Wedge itself sat on a nexus point.

Enjoy, kids!

--rR