From: "Jeff Veyera" 
Subject: RE: (urth) PEACE: What happened to everybody else?
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:23:19 -0700

Thanks for your reply, Mantis. I thoroughly enjoyed GURPS New Sun, btw.

[snip]

Mantis wrote:
In the AD 2274 timeframe, all the Americans have died out.  Throughout
PEACE there is a sense of "decline and fall," like that of the Roman
Empire, with Weer being something like a provincial big man who sees it
crumbling away.  One reason given for the fall of the Roman Empire is the
lead in the water -- the Romans were accidentally poisoning themselves by
using lead pipes.  This single point seems to be a compelling answer for
the soft-apocalypse that happens offstage in PEACE: the citizens have been
poisoned by the fake orange drink, turned into sterile workers or freakish
mutants (sideshow freaks who have to live nomadic lifestyles).  As per
Olivia and Weer's vision of the relatively near future, the continent is
likely peopled by new species of humankind, with tribal organization being
the highest level.  Weer wasn't alive past 1974, so he doesn't have the
details for the last two centuries, but it was all falling action from the
trends he could see.
[snip]

So may we assume PEACE and "Seven American Nights" are related?

[snip]
Mantis wrote:

Weer isn't the "last American," since he is dead, but he might well be
among the last American ghosts (delayed by that elm tree, in his case).
Very much like the goose sidhe in the story you mentioned, who have
survived past the death of their species.

[snip]

Might that not explain the letter nailed down?  If Weer is a ghost, perhaps
he kept moving that letter, and someone among the living nailed it down so
that it would stop moving.


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