On 21/05/2025 08:15, James Catchpole - jlcatchpole at googlemail.com
(via tml list) wrote:
>
> Alternative obtrav - a world listed as balkanised where it turns out
> that most of it is unified but one small area insists on being
> independent and doing most/all of the things listed...

A small town's favourite comedian has been imprisoned in the main city
for "offences to public decency".  In solidarity to him, the town's
residents and former residents across the world have installed a
synchronised alarm at 3:03 PM (local to the small town, so varies across
the world).  When it goes off, they break into silly walks.

If the travellers are in the small town and don't participate, they get
a verbal dressing down. Depending on reaction rolls, this can lead to
anything from imprisonment, to beatings, to being commissioned to convey
a possibly quite unsafe number of residents to the "crapital" city for a
flash mob.  Preferably with a well-timed and memorable landing, perhaps
indistinguishable from a mercenary assault.  Is a former local boy part
of the guard troops that day to tamp down the response?

If the travellers are elsewhere, they see a small and weird but
apparently harmless set of silly walkers who are then set upon by
locals.  Do they intervene?  If they fail to intervene, how do they
contest charges of "omissions of public peacefulness"?

Alan