Oceans. The global frontier. These are the voyages of European enterprise. Their defining mission: to seek spices and Christians, to discover India and China, to find gold and silver and control their sources, to explore strange New Worlds and civilizations, to thwart the eternal Muslim menace, and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. They boldly go where few Europeans have gone before.
###
###
Oh, a TLIGGT. What in the hell is that?
A Timeline In God's Good Time.
Couldn't you just call it a timeline, you pompous ass?
I suppose I could, disembodied voice, but it sounds more dignified. And it let's me kind-of hop on the trend.
And aren't you an atheist?
Yes, but it sounds nicer than having to shoehorn in "Providence" or some other Deist phrase.
What about your other work- that one in the signature? Letting it die like the late Roman Empire?
I will get back to it- in God's good time.
Ooh, a title drop, how fancy.
Kindly fuck off.
No you. Another timeline about Europe doing well? Wasn't real history enough?
Alternate colonialism is interesting too...
And (early) focus on Portugal? You're not Reagent or Viriato, and they have, like, language proficiency and statistics and research.
Off-screen PODs solve all problems.
Oh, that tired old canard. Just go make a one-off map and be done with it.
MFW I remember I suck at graphics -____-
So, what are the points of departure?
Complications in early-13th century Iberia. Castille has decades of political turmoil, an Aragonese Crusade half-succeeds, Galicia secedes to the Kings of Portugal, and the Portuguese get more of Andalus. And that's before we get to the Mongols...
Wow, actual detail and planning! It's a first!
Once again, kindly fuck off.
Getting back to my points, isn't kind of ridiculous to have yet another Euro-wank in the face of rest-of-the-world timelines paucity?
From a certain point of view, sure, but not all native states get screwed, OTL or TTL.
Still completely unable to write dialogue scenes?
You bet your ass.
Pictures?
Probably not, I suck at graphics.
What's the over/under for the "time of abandonment" on this?
It will get done- in God's good time.
###
Prologue
It is the 1400th year of the Lord in Europe. Little do the people know, in the midst of cultural rebirth in the cities and the collapse of feudalism in Western Europe, amidst wars and continuing disease and Church corruption, that a greater change is coming.
The common man knows little of his continent's potential, and little of lands outside of Europe. To many, even Russia seems like a place conjured less out of reality than out of myth; they do not even know the myths of places like India and Cathay. Among the growing urban classes, there is at least knowledge of those places, gleaned from 14th century travelogues, Arab merchants, and the scant remembrances of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.
And of all these nations, poor and ignorant, there is but one that has begun tentatively reaching into the inky blackness of the great ocean void- Portugal. The Ilhas Azuis have been settled for 63 years, the initial monastic settlement on São Erasmo complemented by those fleeing plague. Madeira, the newest acquisition of Lisbon, has already begun producing sugar, despite its youth at 31 years.
Portuguese ships have already passed Cape Bojador, and rumors of fishermen in the far west persist. The treasures and people of Africa await, and beyond them, perhaps Asia, full markets waiting for European customers.
Europe is in the twilight of an old age. Intellectual renewal and urban growth are but the kindling for the spark of greatness that awaits. This great leap, these brave and bold treks across the unknown oceans, shall provide the embers of a dominance Europe cannot even dream of.
Last edited: