As some of you may've noticed in my .sig, I have a new website. (http://jarcane.info)
I thought it would be interesting and fun, and a better way of getting people here interested in my site, to do some kind of community project that would ultimately be hosted free on my download page. This way I can get folks interested in the site, but still feel like I'm contributing more than spam.
So here's the idea: A lot of sci-fi shows, Doctor Who especially, like to drop odd little tidbits of the "past", strange stories and events usually just tossed in there in the same fashion as the Doctor's incorrigible name dropping, that build a sense of future history as well as stimulating the curiosity, as well as providing awesome potential adventure seeds.
Post your own weird brief future history "facts", and once I've got enough of them, I'll put them together as a PDF and throw it up for free on my website.
An example:
2157: The domestic cow becomes officially extinct, as a result of a genetic experiment gone awry. An experimental retrovirus intended to combat parasitic insects like fleas and ticks in dogs, had accidentally exposed to a herd of cattle in 2152 by one of the test subjects, a cattle herding dog in a Texas ranch, and turns out to have deleterious effects on the health of domestic cattle, and despite the best efforts to contain it, soon spirals out of control.
Gee, that's pretty harsh. Think of all the cheeses we'd lose!
2089, while quarrying limestone in Bedford, Indiana, workers discover the wreckage of spaceship and, nearby, the fossilized remains of a crustaceoid creature which is presumed to have been the pilot. No data can be recovered from the ship; based on sedimentary analysis it must have crashed some 150 million years ago.
Mid-21st century: The governments of China, the recently re-unified Korea, and the United States begin independent breeding programs of the "Neo-dog", a genetically engineered and "uplifted" canine based on the common domesticated dog, intended for military and civilian security service.
2139: The Korean Neo-dog line successfully lobby for recognition as fully intelligent and independent beings, obtaining individual rights and privileges as citizens of that nation. The Korean Neo-dogs thereafter channel the wages to which they were now entitled to purchase further genetic engineering for their offspring, and were sponsoring marriage contracts with the genetic lines from both China and the United States. Recognition and citizenship follows in the United States in 2168, though China resists recognition of the Neo-dog until 2201.
!i!
2543 BCE: The technologically sophisticated inhabitants of a small planet orbiting a red sun discovered that their was preparing to supernova. In a final attempt to save some small vestige of their society, noted scientists prepared an adaptive genetic assimilation matrix and a representative genetic sample of their species. The genetic matrix was placed in a series of escape capsule supplied with holographic records documenting the society and history of the planet, and were launched in a variety of directions from the planet. Not long after, the glowering red sun exploded in a supernova.
1054: The light from the supernova explosion reached Earth and could be seen even by daylight for three weeks. No record of the fate of the genetic matrix capsules exists.
!i!