TL Names

[Archangel Michael]

I've never realy been good with naming TLs or stories. What would be some good TL names?

[Grey Wolf]

Well, for the recent 'To Soar Like Icarus' story's background timeline I was naming each section for a while :-

A History of Kings
The Union Ideal
A Question of Empire
The Crisis of Belief
Century's End
Settling of Accounts
Imperial Complications
Prelude to Hegemony
A Spark for the Fury

Struck me, that some of those would make a good name for a novel or a timeline

Grey Wolf

[carlton_bach]

I like the idea used in the GURPS books (Alternate Earths I & II) of using a single name which has very different connotations in our TL and theirs. Frex "Aeolus" or "Ming" (though they are sometimes a little transparent).

I've tried to imitate that habit with TL names like 'Fem Kronur', 'Bentham', 'Dorestad' and 'Hare Ram'. I think it sounds cool.

[Grey Wolf]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

I like the idea used in the GURPS books (Alternate Earths I & II) of using a single name which has very different connotations in our TL and theirs. Frex "Aeolus" or "Ming" (though they are sometimes a little transparent).

I've tried to imitate that habit with TL names like 'Fem Kronur', 'Bentham', 'Dorestad' and 'Hare Ram'. I think it sounds cool.

Hare ram ??? Sounds decided bestiality in the fields ?

I'm not sure what your names are supposed to mean, though I guess Ming is a continutation of the Chinese dynasty of that name

Grey Wolf

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by Grey Wolf

Hare ram ??? Sounds decided bestiality in the fields ?

I'm not sure what your names are supposed to mean, though I guess Ming is a continutation of the Chinese dynasty of that name

Grey Wolf

Yes, that can become a problem. But would they at least make you curious?

Hare Ram is part of the chant of the Krishna Consciousness people "Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare". In this TL, it is also the traditional battlecry of a militant Hindu sect that has been pushed by Islam - and is pushing back hard. One of the stories we roleplayed in this TL began with an Indian slave raid on Mecca during the Hajj.

Ming and Aeolus are GURPS - one a Chinese-dominated TL, the other an 'American Revolution Lost' one with a belated invention of aircraft.

'Bentham' refers to the hardcore Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It's a TL where the Romantic movement doesn't happen and the modern world unfolds in a cold-hearted, actuarial, early 19th-century culture. I wrote that one out in full and posted it way back.

Dorestad is one where an earlier Germanic mission (Arian) is successful, creating a permanently divided Europe along Romance/Athanasian - Germanic/Arian lines. There's also a good deal of handwaving to kill off the Franks and get a Frisian-Saxon kingdom in America, which was the point of the exercise

'Fem Kronur' means 'Five Crowns' (analogous to the 'Tre Kronur' - three crowns of the Scandinavian nations Sweden intended to unite) and refers to a TL where Gustavus Adophus is more successfgul, eventually claiming overlordship over most of Germany and the Imperial crown and founding an Empire that dominates much of Europe for the following century.

[tom]

Cornwallis is the American Revolution Lost. Aeolus is a different American Revolution Won resulting from a change in battle in the 17th Century caused by different wind patterns.

[chrispi]

Originally Posted by tom

Cornwallis is the American Revolution Lost. Aeolus is a different American Revolution Won resulting from a change in battle in the 17th Century caused by different wind patterns.

I thought that "For Want of a Nail" was the lost American Revolution...

[Evil_evol]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

'Fem Kronur' means 'Five Crowns' (analogous to the 'Tre Kronur' - three crowns of the Scandinavian nations Sweden intended to unite) and refers to a TL where Gustavus Adophus is more successfgul, eventually claiming overlordship over most of Germany and the Imperial crown and founding an Empire that dominates much of Europe for the following century.

Oh, that sounds really cool. I usually focus my great power Sweden ATLs on Carl XII (Victory at poltava, Lesnya etc). Tell me the details, or better yet, just post the darn thing.

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by Evil_evol

Oh, that sounds really cool. I usually focus my great power Sweden ATLs on Carl XII (Victory at poltava, Lesnya etc). Tell me the details, or better yet, just post the darn thing.

Here's what I got together a couple years ago. Be aware it is intended for roleplaying, not as a serious exposition of a plausible Alternate

AE FEM KRONUR

The high vaults of the old church in Frankfurt had never rung to such a
cheer, nor had the Roemerberg ever seen carousing the like of this. Whole
oxen were roasted for the plebs that, showered with silver and gold coin,
lustily acclaimed the procession of the imperial electors threading its way
across the square. As their new ruler ponderously moved his bulk out into
the light, incongruously attired in boots, leather breeches, gold-and-blue
coat, ermine cloak and golden crown, the royal guards and Finn rifles
raised their swords to the sky as one man and the crowds joined into the
miltilingual chant "God Bless Gustavus Adolphus, Holy Roman Emperor!"

The question has been asked by historians almost since the first landing of
Swedish troops on Usedom in 1630: What did Gustavus Adolphus want in
Germany? Not the least likely theory has it that he developed ambitions to
the imperial throne of a redefined Protestant Holy Roman Empire. In
Homeline, his ambitions (whatever they were) were scotched after his death
at the battle of Lützen in 1632. In Fem Kronur, the able Catholic commander
Wallenstein falls to the bullet of a Finn rifleman in the spring of that
year, leading to a rout of the Austrian troops in Bohemia. Emperor
Ferdinand II sees his life's work, the Recatholicization of southern and
central Germany, disappear in the course of months, dying in abject despair
in 1633.
Gustavus Adolphus, already surrounded by the better part of the electors of
the Holy Roman Empire (the princes of Brandenburg, Saxony, and the
Palatinate, his pretender to Bohemia and the secular procurator of the
archdiocese of Mainz) encamped in Bavaria and in control of large chunks of
southern Germany, lost no time. He disposed of Bavaria, giving it to an
allied Franconian prince, by right of conquest, secularised Cologne, and
outright bought the vote of the archbishop of Trier, making himself emperor
by 1635. His coronation in Frankfurt was one of the wonders of the age.
Needless to say, the legitimacy of this election was dubious at best. The
Habsburg prince Ferdinand III could hardly be expected to accept it, and
neither did the elector of Bavaria, the king of Spain, or the pope. Urban
VIII went so far as to reinvoke the medieval prerogative of the Holy See
and crown Ferdinand III emperor in defiance of the Reichstag (imperial
Diet). Far from legitimising the Catholic leader, this step destroyed his
every hope of gaining the support of most German princes, firmly placing
not only the Protestant but also the moderate Catholic states in Gustavus
Adolphus' camp. Austria posed no credible military threat any more, but the
Spanish armies moving into the Empire in August 1635 did their share in
uniting the Protestant side, burning and pillaging their way to the battle
of Kassel where the Swedish general Banér delivered a crushing defeat. No
second attempt at invasion was made from the Spanish Netherlands.
Being released from the immediate threat of war, the winning princes
assembled in the camp of the Swedish king to divide the spoils. Long rounds
of negotiation were started in Regensburg, rifts began opening in the
alliance, and educated guesses gave the Swedish triumph maybe ten more
years of politically useful life. In due time, it seemed, the war would
resume, and Germany continue to tear itself to pieces. Then Louis XIII
saved the Swedish empire by the most unlikely of expedients - declaring war
on it.
What exactly moved the king to this step is a mystery, but presumably the
rise of a potential new superpower to his east worried him more than the
known devil of a Habsburg encirclement. The following war brought the
resources and political genius of nascent Absolutist France in conflict
with the military power and resolve of Sweden and the Protestant nations of
Germany. A number of south German states cast their lot with France, more
or less voluntarily, and even the pope chose to bless this Catholic crusade
ex post facto. In the course of fifteen more years of war, fought on and
off along the Rhine frontier and the Netherlands, the loose alliance and
hodgepodge collection of territories drawn together by the Swedish was
forged into a political unity. By the signing of the Peace of Metz in 1650,
the word 'Empire' had gained a real political meaning.
In the latter half of the 17th century, the Swedish Empire began rounding
out its territory. Denmark and Norway were subsumed under the Swedish crown
directly, under the 'second union of Kalmar' of 1664. Poland only allied
itself with the Empire under the impression of as growing Russian threat
while the Netherlands joined after a humiliating defeat at the hands of
France in 1672. Neither nation was ever made formally part of the Empire, a
privilege that goes some way towards explaining their continuing loyalty.
Much of Germany (the parts that had not fallen to France or seceded with
Austria), by contrast, was integrated into a federal system dominated
militarily by Sweden and usurping, piecemeal, taxation, tariffs, currency
and policing powers.
The remainder of the seventeenth century was a long, wearying succession of
wars in which France and the Empire fought back and forth over the
battlefields of Europe, in varying alliances, to no great avail. The
legendary generals of their age, Eugenio de Savoy on the French side, Lord
Churchill for the English, and Prince Karl and Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov,
an exiled Russian, for the Empire, could do little more than move back and
forth through Flanders and southern Germany until, in 1713, France buckled
through sheer exhaustion and signed a lasting peace.
The current situation in Europe is stable, though far from peaceful. The
Empire under Gustavus Adolphus IV has become the continent's economic
powerhouse through its maritime trade, the large-scale exploitation of the
Flemish and German coal fields, Swedish mines, and the thriving stock
exchange in Amsterdam. The United East Indian Company has established a
near-complete monopoly on trade with China, the East Indies and the Mughal
Empire. Its government is surprisingly chaotic - centered around an
imperial Diet in which representatives of the various nations meet, with
its central government under the control of the emperor. Within the various
nations, political systems vary from Republicanism, as in the United
Netherlands, to Absolutism, as in Brandenburg. Under the influence of the
more prosperous parts, restrictions and taxation regimes are beginning to
be loosened throughout.
France, under Louis XV, is the absolute monarchy by which all others define
themselves, a centralised state that unites the powers of the nation in the
hands of the king and glorifies him as God's representative on earth in the
splendor of Versailles. It is also, however, a power past its prime, with a
declining economy, depleted treasury, and few remaining colonial
possessions (having lost all its Indian factories and Louisiana to the
Empire and Quebec to England). French culture still holds supreme position
(only a few Conservatives still regard Italy as the arbiter of all things
civilised), and its army and navy still are opponents few European nations
would willingly tangle with, but it has fallen far from where it once
stood, and may fall further. The General Estates are discontent. There is
rumor of a revolution, to force the king to adopt an Assembly on the
Swedish model, with voice for the nobility, burghers and peasantry.

[Alayta]

very intresting!!!!