About 120 years ago, the Spark Hussein al-Hami was born in the area that we think of as Afghanistan. He was something relatively unusual: a highly religious Spark. Most Sparks tend to be sufficiently self-absorbed that they don't get very deeply into thinking about God -- or if they do, they wind up extremely blashphemous, trying to do things like construct devices to contact or even control the divine. It's rare to have one who takes religion as it is meant to be, and remains deeply pious, but al-Hami was one such.
Al-Hami's central conceit was that Islam would inevitably be corrupted by too much contact with the infidel world. Preaching to them was a fine thing, but it was essential that their lands be kept under their control, without too much contact with the outside. So he made it his life's work to make that so.
About 80 years ago, he succeeded in constructing what has become known as "the Brigadoon Effect", after the Irish town that had experienced this as a natural phenomenon. Certain that the infidels would gradually consume and destroy themselves if given half a chance, and that the Muslim faith would simply need to survive long enough to pick up the pieces, he arranged to begin skipping that world forward in time.
The effect manifests as essentially a ripple in time, and originally covered much of southern Asia. al-Hami didn't really control the effect very well: he was hoping to get the entire core of the Islamic world, but basically got Afghanistan, Pakistan, most of Iran, Nepal, a chunk of China, and most of northern India. All of that land simply disappeared under a sort of shimmering bubble of time. Inside the bubble, things seemed to proceed normally, but it would skip forward, spending one month in "real time" every ten years. Once the western world had collapsed, it would send out missionaries to convert the heathen, and then God would bring down the bubble and the world would live in harmony. No, it wasn't very well-thought-through: al-Hami was soon caught by his own people, and executed for committing an atrocity against the natural order, but the damage was done.
30 years ago, during one of the open windows, the Iron Sheik (ruler of much of Persia) went out to try and find a solution to the problem. In the course a month-long adventure, first combatting and then working with the Heterodyne Boys, they raced against time (and Professor Mongfish) to "the West Pole" -- an intense magnetic field that turned out to be located on the Rock of Gibraltar, and which seemed to be projecting a sort of time distortion. Along the way, they were joined by the adventurer Ember -- a nickname for Embi -- and he was the one who eventually worked his way through, carefully side-stepping the time distortions through precise observation and getting to the Time Ruby at the heart of the field. Working together, the Sheik and the Heterodynes constructed a device around the Ruby, which would theoretically neutralize al-Hami's Brigadoon field. With scarcely an hour to spare, the Sheik made it back to his own lands (carried, along with Embi, on a giant Roc that they had harnessed to the purpose), and neutralized it, grounding the lands back in "normal time". Mostly.
(Moloch's family was keeping the gem, and it had kept them safe in the midst of a somewhat controllable time distortion for centuries. After losing the gem, they were left bereft. They gave it up reluctantly but willingly, knowing that the greater good demanded it, but he has always resented the necessity.)
The problem is, the field projected by the Time Ruby isn't quite powerful enough to cover all of al-Hami's lands, and the Indian lands that were caught in the backwash weren't a priority of the Iron Sheik. So while all of the actual Muslim lands have been brought back by the Ruby, and are protected by it and by the Iron Sheik's device, a bit of western India was not helped. That area is still skipping forward in time, progressing only very slowly as the world around it changes beyond recognition.
Which is where Bangladesh DuPree comes into the story. She was already famous in her lands as an adventurer when this all started, 80 years ago, at the relatively young age of 23. She was a pirate, a sort of dark Robin Hood, stealing from other lands and bringing her booty back home. She was by no means purely altruistic -- she loved the accolades she got, and demanded much of her people -- but her feelings about her people are relatively kind. She is a worshipper of Kali, and honestly didn't mind the effect all that much herself: it was fascinating to see civilizations growing and collapsing at high speed, while she could just sit back and watch. But her people's leaders prevailed upon her, to find a way to get them back in line with the rest of the world. So when the window last opened, a bit under ten years ago, she went out and began to hunt. She's been working on it ever since, and with the next window coming up in just another two months, she's getting a bit impatient.
When she came out, Klaus was still in the early days of his conquest of Europa, and after a year or two of playing cat-and-mouse, she decided to throw in with him. She would act as his strong right arm, commander of his forces when ruthless strength was needed, if he would help her find a solution to her peoples' problem. And he has tried -- but really, not very hard. He's come up with some theories and ideas, but nothing concretely helpful, since he's always been focused on more immediate problems. So she is getting restless, and has begun to look for solutions of her own.
There are two possible solutions in-game, one good and one less so. The good one is complex: it is the [Reality Stabilizer]?. This needs some further details, but it should be a two-part device. Half of it should be whatever Embi stole from the Hidden Castle, and the other half should be in Moloch's possession -- indeed, it's possible that it was originally in Omar's, and a bad interaction between that and Agatha's locket was what killed him. Regardless, if this can be magnified and brought to the affected lands, it undoes all reality warps, and would ground her lands.
The lesser solution is in the form of Z, and she should have enough hints to know that it's an option. With him as a hostage, she might be able to get his father to move the Time Ruby to cover her lands. But even she knows that's not a great solution: it still leaves her at the mercy of the Iron Sheik's good will, and she can't ever let Z go. So a better solution would be preferred. Indeed, we might even make it explicit: she may have hinted at Z that it is in his best interests to help her find a solution, otherwise she will be forced to take action against his father. This puts them into a very tense ally/enemy relationship during the game, and makes Z an active participant in the plot rather than a passive one.
Gil should know the broad parameters of the backstory, but not the details. Possibly Klaus has told him to keep an eye on DuPree, but not exactly why. His opinion of DuPree isn't an entirely kind one, so we should have at least one character who does think well of her.
Characters In Game: DuPree Embi Gil Moloch Z
All Characters: DuPree Embi Gil Moloch Z
In practice, neither outcome happened in either run. In the first run, DuPree was too isolated, and simply got killed halfway through the game, cutting this plot off at the knees. In the second, I fomented a mild alliance between her and Z, and they came up with an unforeseen solution: Z used the Mirror of Amagog to find al-Hami's lair, where the device causing the Jumps was still running, and DuPree destroyed it. That required a fair amount of story-stretching to allow it, but it seemed dramatically appropriate (especially since DuPree got to solve her problem by blowing something up), so I ran with it.
My current recommendation is that this plot be scrapped outright, or at most reduced to historical curiosity in the backstory. Here is a discussion between myself and Darker, on a possible replacement plot: The [Mongfish Legacy]?.
Justin: The Brigadoon Effect was one of the most complex backstory plots in the game, and it was almost entirely for DuPree's benefit -- while it was fun and interesting to write, and made for fine color, it was way too complex for what it accomplished in-game. It provided a curious and different tie for Moloch, but was enough of a non-sequiteur for him that it didn't come out in either run.
So I'm thinking that we should probably do something quite different in its place next time. Several people observed that, instead of having Von Pinn and DuPree at each other's throats, they should instead have some close ties. (Indeed, some players said that a secret love affair between the two would be utterly juicy.) Okay, what can we do with that? It seems to me that the most likely direction to take that is something that ties into Von Pinn's background -- I've been wanting her to have a more active plot anyway.
So the thematic concept is that there should be a plot relating to the Mongfish legacy: something about the family line. This plot should tie Von Pinn and DuPree together in an uneasy alliance -- not liking each other, but needing each other. The plot should in some way focus on Theo, and probably also replace (or at least supplement) the very weak Suspected Revenant plot. By pulling those threads together, I can take two weak plots that didn't connect well to their characters, and replace them with one plot that really hooks very naturally for everyone. (Note that this is probbly going to require almost completely rewriting DuPree's character sheet, though: to tie her to Lucrezia in any way, I will need to dispose of the Jumps completely.)
Darker: In general, tieing them together in a dislike-but-working-together relationship seems like a great idea. But...how to get past Zulenna's death? I have real trouble envisioning that as something that could result in anything but seething, implacable hatred on Von Pinn's part.
(As for the affair: I can see why people said it, and perhaps it's an amusing gedanken, but IMO it belongs firmly in slash-fantasy-la-la-land.)
Justin: Hmm. On the one hand, you're right that it's hard to see Von Pinn forgiving it. But oddly, I can see Zulenna doing so. If she views DuPree as having been doing her job, there might be bitterness but not hatred there. Zulenna grasps her role with far more clarity than anyone else, and it would be extremely in-character for her to be the one person who really groks that dueling is dueling, dammit, and that you are putting your life on the line every time you pick up a sword. If she hadn't been sincerely risking her life, that stand of hers wouldn't have been meaningful.
That has a lot of potential. It introduces a very nuanced tension between Von Pinn and Zulenna, and makes the three-way relationship between them and DuPree extremely complex. Zulenna could well have been the one to make Von Pinn promise to forgive DuPree -- not because she likes DuPree, but because she understands their individual roles clearly. And it provides a better psychological background for Von Pinn to be pushing Zulenna to reconsider her meek acceptance of the no-Revivals rule, which I'd like her to be doing more.
Darker: ...yes, I could imagine Zulenna going that way, if she could get past the "but the dagger was dishonorable" thing (which I think she could, in a "fool me twice, shame on me" kind of way, which is already nicely handled by her special ability). And I can believe that Zulenna would be able to face down Von Pinn over it; she made that leap just before she was killed. Though perhaps intead of trying to force Von Pinn to forgive DuPree, Zulenna might simply assert that it is her perogative to deal with DuPree over what happened, not Von Pinn's. Yes, that dynamic could be very cool. :)