Oh man, I always love fantasy Earth settings. This looks incredible!
Map Thread XIX
- Thread starter water123
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Thanks! Yeah, I feel like fantastical Earth is a really underused setting that should get more love than it does. There's something about mixing the fictional with the familiar that just feels satisfying.
Italy, whatever will be the goverment in charge need to trade with other nations, autarchy was not that great success and still there was the need to import a lot of things. She will not be a pariah like the URSS due to her strategic position and the fact that's outside MittelEuropa influence meaning that the UK and co. will consider her a possible ally or in general an usefull 'friend', while people in Berlin and Wien will see her as a sword of damocle just above the head of their new european order but they will probably know that they can't invade directly as people is both tired and invade Italy will put the socialist in the warpath so they will try to limit any possible spread of socialism expansion and mantain a 'cordone sanitarie' around her.
A-H will probably think to launch an invasion to eliminate the damn thing forever and go back to preunitary nations, after all last time as gone well with Serbia and Romania.
So Italy will probably take a lesson from Switzerland and go for a (very) armed neutrality, while rebuilding and quietly supporting socialist everywhere and prepare for the inevitable fall of the imperialist
so it's 2 am when i'm writing this, but i'd like to say thank you for sharing your thoughts on italy sprcifically. the sequel map is still in development, so i'll look into how i can expand upon italy's foreign policy with this in mind.
It was on the brink of disappearing, the problem was fragmentation (in fact modern basque language is an invention). People from one valley could only understand people from the neighboring valley if the spoke in Spanish. Just have a better educational system, make more necessary the usage of spanish and basque disappears.
So, first of all, that comment is like a month old.
And second of all, what do you mean by the Modern Basque language being an invention? Are you talking about language standardization? In that case, every language, ever, is an invention.
Tbf Basque is a language with a particularly large variety of dialects for its geographic extent, and yeah there could be large difference between one Valley and the other, particularly when one community could have been in the same valley since for over 2,000 years
I think I'm done with this one even though I'm lazy to add a legend for it.
The PoDs for this TL are both Louis, Duke of Burgundy and Nader Shah surviving, hence being able to drive the 2 nations into a more stable future. The ATL Louis XV didn't attempt to support as many wars against the Habsburgs as the OTL, preferring to secure its own Bourbon sphere in the Latin Mediterranean and outside Europe. Not losing Silesia, Austria managed to keep Prussia and other minor German states under its thumb, though the former often squabbled with Russia over Poland-Lithuania. Persian greatly modernized military humiliated Russia, humbled the Ottomans, supported the Dzungars to push back the Manchus and propped up the Mughals against the Marathas. This created an opportunity for the French to vassalize a large part of the Indian subcontinent and later open up Qing China. The Ottomans, faced with increasing enlightened ideas from the West and threatening pressure from the East, collapsed after a revolution. The new entity, named the Bedreddinist Union, followed the syncretic ideology of the scholar Sheikh Bedreddin and was the closest thing to the OTL communism. The ideology was later modified and adopted by the Quebetians and Brazillians following the aftermath of their wars of independence from the mother countries. A syncretic Quebec provided a perfect scapegoat for the British to justify their taxing and maintain their control over North America. However, holding the place costed them other opportunities and Russian increasing presence in the Pacific caused a great deal of concern. The Tokugawa Shogunate reformed just in time but still lost Ezo to the Russians, fortunately the trade network they had established for the past 200 years proved useful as they gained a mercantile empire in Southeast Asia and Australia. The Portuguese and the Dutch were also gearing up their efforts to not be left out of the game. All in all, this world is much gentler than the OTL, the second wave of colonialism was not so prominent and various Africa local civilizations modernized at their own pace. Despite slower progress in military technology, social science and welfare enjoyed great leaps due to unhindered enlightened thoughts. The Church still had a strong conservative influence but they learned to adapt to the time, gradually turning into an international dispute mediator and patron of science. Many lands remained unexplored and romanticism strove in a more humane manner.
P/S: a thank to @Clandango for your advice on Mexico color
The PoDs for this TL are both Louis, Duke of Burgundy and Nader Shah surviving, hence being able to drive the 2 nations into a more stable future. The ATL Louis XV didn't attempt to support as many wars against the Habsburgs as the OTL, preferring to secure its own Bourbon sphere in the Latin Mediterranean and outside Europe. Not losing Silesia, Austria managed to keep Prussia and other minor German states under its thumb, though the former often squabbled with Russia over Poland-Lithuania. Persian greatly modernized military humiliated Russia, humbled the Ottomans, supported the Dzungars to push back the Manchus and propped up the Mughals against the Marathas. This created an opportunity for the French to vassalize a large part of the Indian subcontinent and later open up Qing China. The Ottomans, faced with increasing enlightened ideas from the West and threatening pressure from the East, collapsed after a revolution. The new entity, named the Bedreddinist Union, followed the syncretic ideology of the scholar Sheikh Bedreddin and was the closest thing to the OTL communism. The ideology was later modified and adopted by the Quebetians and Brazillians following the aftermath of their wars of independence from the mother countries. A syncretic Quebec provided a perfect scapegoat for the British to justify their taxing and maintain their control over North America. However, holding the place costed them other opportunities and Russian increasing presence in the Pacific caused a great deal of concern. The Tokugawa Shogunate reformed just in time but still lost Ezo to the Russians, fortunately the trade network they had established for the past 200 years proved useful as they gained a mercantile empire in Southeast Asia and Australia. The Portuguese and the Dutch were also gearing up their efforts to not be left out of the game. All in all, this world is much gentler than the OTL, the second wave of colonialism was not so prominent and various Africa local civilizations modernized at their own pace. Despite slower progress in military technology, social science and welfare enjoyed great leaps due to unhindered enlightened thoughts. The Church still had a strong conservative influence but they learned to adapt to the time, gradually turning into an international dispute mediator and patron of science. Many lands remained unexplored and romanticism strove in a more humane manner.
P/S: a thank to @Clandango for your advice on Mexico color
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I'm not debating that. What I'm debating is the claim that the Modern Basque language is an invention. I don't think it makes much sense to call it that. All languages have dialect variation, and if OP was referring to standardization, then any language could be claimed to be an invention at that rate.
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I saw it just now.
It is different an standardization for a language with different dialects that could be mutually understandable, from what was done to Basque. Traditional speakers did not understood "batua" basque and nobody spoke traditionally anything close to modern Basque. For instance, usual basque names date back to the XIX-XX century when batua basque was created.
(crossposting from the Oneshot Scenarios thread)
Hey guys - this is a reworking of one of my earlier settings, based on the idea of Earth in the Star Wars universe, with a slight twist (also, a map thrown in this time round - my first try ever, sorry it's nothing special). It's sort of a hodgepodge of Canon, Legends, and some of my own ideas thrown in. Hope you enjoy!
A Galaxy Not So Far Away
During the Late Republic Era, one of the galaxy's best-known smugglers was one Teglad 'Teg' Fomen. A complex figure, Fomen was loathed by many for his sadistic nature, but loved by many more for his numerous charitable acts in some of the Galaxy's more impoverished systems. Fomen was an Asgredi, a species native to a ringed, moonless planet, large by terrestrial standards (13,579 km in diameter) called Quimm, situated in a four-star system on the outskirts of the Banthahead Nebula. Quimm is noted as one of only a hundred or so worlds (others examples including Glemptooine and Mon Cala) in the Galaxy to host more than one native sentient species, the other being the Wolzhef, an aquatic race the Asgredi first encountered shortly after developing steamships, with whom have a relatively peaceful relationship (aside from a few off-shore skirmishes about deep-sea mining). The Asgredi are physically humanoid, sporting large crania, and possessing twelve fingers and toes. Averaging at around four feet tall, Asgredi have bright green skin and tails (which males can use to deliver a powerful venom to their prey)[1], as well as a third, inner eyelid to protect their vision from the harsh light of Quimm's four suns.
Fomen was the last (and only male) of five children born to a family of immigrants on the small city-planet Denon. His mother, a former slave of the notorious Magga the Hutt, was heavily disabled following years of mistreatment, while his father, a renowned droidsmith, passed away from illness shortly after his son's birth. As a result, Fomen took up petty crime as a child in order to support his family (he would get his revenge on the slimy hermaphrodite that had enslaved his mother almost a century later, cementing his status as one of the Galaxy's most cunning outlaws). Teglad's name, ironically enough, originates with an ancient Asgredi legend - the character of Teglad was an angel who ferries souls of the devout and charitable up the River of Light (Quimm's thick planetary ring) to the Great Above, a realm of endless summer (just as his brother Domec brought souls of the wicked down to the Great Below, a land of eternal winter).
As well known as Fomen may have been in life, his level of infamy would only increase after the unusual circumstances surrounding his death: in the year 30 BBY, Teg Fomen and his human partner-in-crime, Grexeb Calrissian, took part in an ill-fated trade deal on Ord Vraang in which Calrissian was killed by an Ithorian bounty hounter, and Teg narrowly escaped with his life. However, after making the jump to hyperspace in his transport, an old but fast-moving Corellian THX-1138 light freighter (a class nicknamed Soup Bowls for their saucer-like appearance), Teglad was never seen again. The smuggler's fate has long been speculated upon by conspiracy theorists and holowrights alike, but the truth was, as always, far stranger than fiction.
It is now accepted amongst galactic historians that Teg Fomen met his end shortly after an unfortunate encounter with an astronomically rare phenomenon known as a hypertyphoon (blamed for the loss of several previous starships of note, possibly responsible for the infamous vanishing of the Flying Ortolan), causing his freighter to be thrown over ten thousand lightyears off course. Fomen's craft was yanked out of hyperspace after bouncing too close to the gravity well of a binary pair (known to Earthlings as Zeta Reticuli) in a largely unexplored region of space within the Rectangulum Minor constellation[2]. His ship's hyperdrive and life support systems had sustained heavy damage from the typhoon, forcing the lost smuggler to seek out the nearest inhabited planet (albeit at a much slower speed than a THX-1138 would usually allow). After limping some forty lightyears, Fomen's freighter arrived at a podunk planet showing signs of civilization (curiously, no orbital infrastructure). With little other option, Fomen initiated landing procedures, although with his ship in less than ship-shape, wound up crashing into a desert roughly fifty km outside of a human settlement called Roswell, New Mexico, its sole occupant narrowly surviving.
It wasn't long before Fomen's ship (at least, what was left of it) had been salvaged by the United States government, while the smuggler dying several hours into military custody. Teg Fomen's death is likely to have been caused by a number of factors: on top of the injuries he sustained during the crash, American doctors' efforts to save his life with no knowledge of Asgredi biochemistry probably did more harm than good. Fomen may also have overdosed on drugs - he is known to have struggled with addiction to a variety of spices such as deathsticks, Mustafarian firefungus, and even psychadelic mynock droppings - in fact he is believed to have been high on Asogian seasponge at the time of the crash (one of the side effects of which includes severe swelling of the head). Lastly, it is believed that Teglad attempted suicide during his capture, intentionally stinging himself with his tail (although death from Asgredi venom is usually instantaneous, it is possible that the various drugs in his system may have delayed its effects, resulting in a more drawn-out death for the smuggler). Despite the government's best efforts, this secret proved impossible to contain, and it wasn't long before word got out that the US had recovered a damaged spacecraft and its deceased passenger (who was nicknamed 'Rosie' after the location of his discovery), with Fomen's lifeless green face plastered over the front page of every newspaper at home and abroad.
As the salvaged saucer was found to contain no shortage of stolen weaponry, the assumption that Teglad Fomen was an scout sent in advance of an oncoming invasion was not an entirely unreasonable one. The 40s and 50s saw a period known as the Green Scare, where two billion pairs of eyes turned skywards, fully expecting a fleet of spaceships to begin vaporizing our precious national monuments from orbit any day now - some even suggested a preliminary sterilization of the planet Mars with atomic bombs (Mars being considered the most likely candidate for the saucer's origin at the time). There was also some brief panic over (what were later revealed to be falsified) reports surfaced that the Russians were in possession of their own alien spaceship (this one supposedly recovered from the Tunguska region). In the 1950s, two oceanic explorers, Doctors Milo Thatch and H.W. Jones, discovered a long-sunken plateau in the Atlantic Ocean (creatively named Atlantis), which subsequent investigations found to be home to structures apparently of both human and extraterrestrial origin, proving that Fomen was not our first interplanetary visitor, although the full significance of this discovery would not be known for decades later.
Although one might expect that proof of alien visitation both past and present would lead to an explosion of UFO sightings and alien abduction claims, this was not the case: with space creatures now seen by the military as a far greater threat than even communism, those who reported any close encounters could expect an immediate government response, with those who spread UFO-related hoaxes facing the severest of consequences. That's not to say weird shit doesn't happen at all, however: there was that lady Florida who claimed to be in a sexual relationship with Teglad Fomen's ghost, and in 1966, well over a hundred people died during a siege at a compound belonging to the Church of Orion, who worshipped the dead outlaw as humanity's saviour. A growing number of kooks are of the belief that the reptile-like visitors found on sunken Atlantis never left, but have in fact learned to disguise themselves as humans, entering positions of political power and manipulating society from behind the shadows.
Despite the craft's extensive damage, Earthling scientists were able to reverse engineer various alien technologies, leading to a rapid (and very one-sided) space race, with Chuck Yeager becoming the first human (ha!) to enter space in 1951, and Alan Shepard landing on the Moon just a couple years later, returning home in time for dinner. Before the decade was out, a manned Venus flyby had taken place, and John Glenn (despite some opposition) had taken the first cautious steps on the planet Mars, proving it to be lifeless once and for all. By the 1960s, the US no longer held a monopoly on space travel (Soviet espionage in the United States having revealed a great many secrets, such as repulsor tech and artificial gravity), and with no Outer Space Treaty, space militarization (up to and including orbital death rays) is in full effect. It isn't just the field of space travel that's benefitted from the wreckage at Roswell, however: hovercars are, at long last, a thing, and the holotelephony was a brief fad in the late 60s. Despite many arguing that civilian ownership of laser weapons is protected under the Second Amendment, by the 1970s, their usage is restricted for police and military personnel. Many submarines and aircraft are equipped with forcefield generators.
The political landscape is rather different: Thomas Dewey was elected over Harry Truman in 1948 (cue Korean War fought with blasters - one of the easiest devices to reverse engineer), and is remembered as a fairly popular president, serving two full terms, having easily defeated Estes Kefauver in 1952. The 1956 Presidential Election proved to be one of the most memorable of the twentieth century - on 3 November, just three days before the election, Republican candidate Robert A. Taft died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage. As his running mate was a largely unknown figure to the American public, he was ultimately beaten Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II who, despite middling approval ratings, was re-elected over Nelson Rockefeller 1960, although would not live to see out his second term: on 2 June, 1962, during a state visit to Texas, President Stevenson was shot by an unknown assailant, and died en route to hospital. Shortly thereafter, 23-year-old Ernest Naylor, a African-American with several previous convictions and a history of mental illness, was arrested by police on suspicion of assassinating the President, although was ultimately acquitted (which was seen as a major victory for the growing civil rights movement).
Years later, the true identity of Stevenson's killer remains unknown (hats and t-shirts bearing the message 'I Shot AS' were popular amongst youth subcultures for a while, to parents' horror). This mystery has proven to be an unending source of frustration and embarrassment for the CIA, and there are countless conspiracy theories suggesting that Vice President John F. Kennedy was behind his predecessor's murder. Despite these suspicions, Kennedy won against Barry Goldwater in 1964, and was succeeded in 1968 by California Governor Richard Nixon. While there was nothing akin to the Watergate Scandal ITTL, 1971 saw the impeachment of Chief Justice Hoover, who passed away during the proceedings. Before unforeseen circumstances caused the abolition of the United States government in 1972, the presumptive Democratic nominee was the hugely popular Robert F. Kennedy (who's family's reputation was somewhat tarnished after his brother Teddy killed himself and several others in a drunken hovercraft accident).
The United Kingdom also went quite a different direction from OTL, with an Anglo-French Union established in the mid-1950s. The Troubles in Northern Ireland proved to be even more, er, troublesome than OTL: in mid-1971, Princess Louise, the younger twin sister of reigning monarch Anne II of Great Britain (who's mother, Princess Elizabeth, died in childbirth, with her husband Philip serving as prince regent between 1951 and 1966 - much to the chagrin of Princess Margaret) was kidnapped by armed members of the Irish Republican Army, resulting in the largest manhunt in British history. Prior to her kidnapping, Louise was not an especially popular figure with the British public - in 1969, rumours were confirmed that she had received a termination for an unplanned pregnancy, resulting in much outrage from pro-life British conservatives. Roughly nine hours after her capture, the Princess suffered a fatal heart attack (undoubtedly caused by the immense stress of her situation), with her captors found and arrested mere minutes afterwards. The aftermath of Louise's death, which came just a few days shy of her and the Queen's 23rd birthday, saw a huge in anti-Irish sentiment across Great Britain, as well as increased violence in the North (Bloody Sunday, Bloody Monday, Bloody Every-Day-of-the-Bloody Week). The incident is also widely credited with ending Queen Anne's controversial engagement to the Dublin-born Patrick McGrath (their marriage, it was hoped, would mark a new dawn in Anglo-Irish relations), who's extended family was rumoured to have Republican sympathies.
Unsurprisingly, the most piece of technology most difficult to reproduce from the Roswell wreckage was its faster-than-light drive, and it was not until the 1970s that the first hyperspace experiment took place. Earth's first FTL vessel, the Liberty 1, was launched in 1972, piloted by Captain Gordon Webster. Despite the engineering team's best efforts, Liberty, although capable of breaking the light barrier, was woefully underequipped for withstanding hyperspace travel, and was flung more than two hundred lightyears away, in the direction of Spica. Miraculously, Captain Webster survived this excursion, but was left stranded in deep space, and due to the weakness of his craft's forcefield generator, had been exposed to huge amounts of radiation. While rescue seemed impossible, his prayers were answered, although not in the way he might have hoped: the Liberty 1's sudden shunt into realspace caught the attention of a nearby Imperial cruiser, the Intrepid, stationed around the gas giant Chuskapang Prime. Intrigued by the quaint little starship, which matched no known make or model and did not respond when hailed, Captain Queck Kaiter[4] ordered it drawn to Intrepid's docking bay via tractor beam. The barely conscious Captain Webster received immediate medical attention, although despite onboard doctors' best efforts, succumbed to his radiation poisoning.
The Intrepid's engineering team were amazed that such a bare-bones vessel was able to withstand post-light velocities, and were able to determine its origin point with ease by dissecting its crude FTL drive and making a rough starmap of its ill-fated journey, finding its point of origin in a small, relatively uncharted sector. The following events are remembered in history holobooks as the Seven-Hour War, or the War of Galactic Aggression: while the Earth's orbital laser defences were capable of fending off against smaller fighter craft, they were easily overwhelmed by the might of the Imperial Navy, and the Earth, like so many worlds before it, was absorbed into the Galactic Empire, a three-million-worlds strong dictatorship established after the fall of the (relatively) peaceful and democratic Galactic Republic, which had stood for more a thousand years. Already having evidence of two separate alien races, Earthlings weren't surprised to learn that the Milky Way was home to more than 10,000 intelligent species (all of which, oddly enough, have only emerged in the last hundred thousand years), although the revelation that humans have existed by their quadrillions on countless other worlds for millennia was startling - indeed, mankind has dominated much of interstellar politics for centuries, one reason for this being that they're one of the few sentient races immune to the Unnameable Plague[3]. After humanity, the Milky Way's most populous species include the Duros in (distant) second, with the Gran and Sullustans tied for third.
The Earth was initially assumed by Imperial scholars to be one of the dime-a-dozen lost colony worlds founded after the Coruscantine Diaspora, although exploration of the Atlantean plateau later confirmed the slowly growing suspicions that Earth was, in fact, the birthplace of humanity, whose Atlantean ancestors were spread across the galaxy by Rakata slavers between twelve and thirteen thousand years BBY. It should be noted that excavations of Atlantean burial sites have revealed its indigenous inhabitants to be mostly pale-skinned, explaining why the galactic population of humans is overwhelmingly white. That's not to say that people of colour were treated much differently however - stormtroopers are less interested in pushing around humans with a different skin colour than they are in aliens - some Earthling minorities even claim to have received fairer treatment under Imperial rule than under their old governments. That said, a great many Earthlings (many belonging to oppressed groups who sympathized with non-humans subject to slavery and genocide) went on to joined the Rebel Alliance - there's even a memorial for the small number of Earthlings who sacrificing themselves in the Battle of Yavin in 1977, a pivotal moment in galactic history which saw the destruction of the Empire's most feared weapon, the first Death Star.
The Empire finally collapsed after Palpatine's death in 1981, and much has changed in the last forty years. Earthlings can now be found in enclaves all across the galaxy, while many of those shipped offworld during the Imperial era have returned home (some of them, having left in service the Empire, did not receive much in the way of a warm welcome). The Earth is not an official member of the New Republic, and many of the nation states which existed prior to the War of Galactic Aggression have been restored, although the borders are almost unrecognizable from OTL (in the chaos following the Empire's downfall, some countries leapt at the opportunity to gobble up their smaller, poorer neighbours -- such as the Soviet Union, which is now capitalist in all but name). The United Nations has been replaced with a much more powerful organization called ALENA (ALliance of Earth NAtions), a major section of which is the Department of Extraplanetary Affairs, which handles trade with other star systems. Unlike its predecessor, ALENA has a standing army (whose armour many find a little too close to those of Stormtroopers for comfort).
There has been a growing movement to 'Make Earth Great Again', a pushback against so-called 'galacticization' by those who believe that Earth should remain independent from the affairs of the galaxy at large. Most countries have returned to their original languages, although Galactic Standard remains common. Aliens suffer a lot of discrimination - species segregation is common in most countries, and non-humans are often target of violence, one doesn't have to wander far to find graffiti bearing such lovely messages as 'EARTH FOR EARTHLINGS', and 'SPACE FREAKS OFF OUR STREETS'. Although a must-visit for monks and scholars, Earth is largely seen by the wider universe as a backwater, more famous as the home of tobacco and chocolate[5] than the home of humanity.
Footnotes
[1] Asgredi folklore claims that in the ancient past, this ability was also possessed by females, until King Tat the Blessed was fatally stung by his consort, Kemigaga, resulting in the gods rescinding this gift from all Asgredi women.
[2] Smallest of the 101 constellations visible from Coruscant's night sky.
[3] The most devastating pandemic in galactic history, the Unnameable Plague (called 'unnameable' as more superstitious sentients believed that merely speaking its name would cause one to contract it) is believed to have wiped out as much as one-quarter of the Galaxy's biological population, causing the extinction/near-extinction of countless races (including Yoda's species). Indeed, it was so devestating that many ascribed a supernatural origin to the pandemic, suggesting that it may have been a curse unleashed due to archeologists excavating Rakata tombworlds.
[4] Queck 'Steelfinger' Kaiter first achieved galactic fame following his actions at the Battle of Rogomathu, but ultimately betrayed the Empire following its destruction of his home planet of Alderaan.
[5] Remember, Wookiees -- chocolate kills! Say no to Herschey!
Hey guys - this is a reworking of one of my earlier settings, based on the idea of Earth in the Star Wars universe, with a slight twist (also, a map thrown in this time round - my first try ever, sorry it's nothing special). It's sort of a hodgepodge of Canon, Legends, and some of my own ideas thrown in. Hope you enjoy!
A Galaxy Not So Far Away
During the Late Republic Era, one of the galaxy's best-known smugglers was one Teglad 'Teg' Fomen. A complex figure, Fomen was loathed by many for his sadistic nature, but loved by many more for his numerous charitable acts in some of the Galaxy's more impoverished systems. Fomen was an Asgredi, a species native to a ringed, moonless planet, large by terrestrial standards (13,579 km in diameter) called Quimm, situated in a four-star system on the outskirts of the Banthahead Nebula. Quimm is noted as one of only a hundred or so worlds (others examples including Glemptooine and Mon Cala) in the Galaxy to host more than one native sentient species, the other being the Wolzhef, an aquatic race the Asgredi first encountered shortly after developing steamships, with whom have a relatively peaceful relationship (aside from a few off-shore skirmishes about deep-sea mining). The Asgredi are physically humanoid, sporting large crania, and possessing twelve fingers and toes. Averaging at around four feet tall, Asgredi have bright green skin and tails (which males can use to deliver a powerful venom to their prey)[1], as well as a third, inner eyelid to protect their vision from the harsh light of Quimm's four suns.
Fomen was the last (and only male) of five children born to a family of immigrants on the small city-planet Denon. His mother, a former slave of the notorious Magga the Hutt, was heavily disabled following years of mistreatment, while his father, a renowned droidsmith, passed away from illness shortly after his son's birth. As a result, Fomen took up petty crime as a child in order to support his family (he would get his revenge on the slimy hermaphrodite that had enslaved his mother almost a century later, cementing his status as one of the Galaxy's most cunning outlaws). Teglad's name, ironically enough, originates with an ancient Asgredi legend - the character of Teglad was an angel who ferries souls of the devout and charitable up the River of Light (Quimm's thick planetary ring) to the Great Above, a realm of endless summer (just as his brother Domec brought souls of the wicked down to the Great Below, a land of eternal winter).
As well known as Fomen may have been in life, his level of infamy would only increase after the unusual circumstances surrounding his death: in the year 30 BBY, Teg Fomen and his human partner-in-crime, Grexeb Calrissian, took part in an ill-fated trade deal on Ord Vraang in which Calrissian was killed by an Ithorian bounty hounter, and Teg narrowly escaped with his life. However, after making the jump to hyperspace in his transport, an old but fast-moving Corellian THX-1138 light freighter (a class nicknamed Soup Bowls for their saucer-like appearance), Teglad was never seen again. The smuggler's fate has long been speculated upon by conspiracy theorists and holowrights alike, but the truth was, as always, far stranger than fiction.
It is now accepted amongst galactic historians that Teg Fomen met his end shortly after an unfortunate encounter with an astronomically rare phenomenon known as a hypertyphoon (blamed for the loss of several previous starships of note, possibly responsible for the infamous vanishing of the Flying Ortolan), causing his freighter to be thrown over ten thousand lightyears off course. Fomen's craft was yanked out of hyperspace after bouncing too close to the gravity well of a binary pair (known to Earthlings as Zeta Reticuli) in a largely unexplored region of space within the Rectangulum Minor constellation[2]. His ship's hyperdrive and life support systems had sustained heavy damage from the typhoon, forcing the lost smuggler to seek out the nearest inhabited planet (albeit at a much slower speed than a THX-1138 would usually allow). After limping some forty lightyears, Fomen's freighter arrived at a podunk planet showing signs of civilization (curiously, no orbital infrastructure). With little other option, Fomen initiated landing procedures, although with his ship in less than ship-shape, wound up crashing into a desert roughly fifty km outside of a human settlement called Roswell, New Mexico, its sole occupant narrowly surviving.
It wasn't long before Fomen's ship (at least, what was left of it) had been salvaged by the United States government, while the smuggler dying several hours into military custody. Teg Fomen's death is likely to have been caused by a number of factors: on top of the injuries he sustained during the crash, American doctors' efforts to save his life with no knowledge of Asgredi biochemistry probably did more harm than good. Fomen may also have overdosed on drugs - he is known to have struggled with addiction to a variety of spices such as deathsticks, Mustafarian firefungus, and even psychadelic mynock droppings - in fact he is believed to have been high on Asogian seasponge at the time of the crash (one of the side effects of which includes severe swelling of the head). Lastly, it is believed that Teglad attempted suicide during his capture, intentionally stinging himself with his tail (although death from Asgredi venom is usually instantaneous, it is possible that the various drugs in his system may have delayed its effects, resulting in a more drawn-out death for the smuggler). Despite the government's best efforts, this secret proved impossible to contain, and it wasn't long before word got out that the US had recovered a damaged spacecraft and its deceased passenger (who was nicknamed 'Rosie' after the location of his discovery), with Fomen's lifeless green face plastered over the front page of every newspaper at home and abroad.
As the salvaged saucer was found to contain no shortage of stolen weaponry, the assumption that Teglad Fomen was an scout sent in advance of an oncoming invasion was not an entirely unreasonable one. The 40s and 50s saw a period known as the Green Scare, where two billion pairs of eyes turned skywards, fully expecting a fleet of spaceships to begin vaporizing our precious national monuments from orbit any day now - some even suggested a preliminary sterilization of the planet Mars with atomic bombs (Mars being considered the most likely candidate for the saucer's origin at the time). There was also some brief panic over (what were later revealed to be falsified) reports surfaced that the Russians were in possession of their own alien spaceship (this one supposedly recovered from the Tunguska region). In the 1950s, two oceanic explorers, Doctors Milo Thatch and H.W. Jones, discovered a long-sunken plateau in the Atlantic Ocean (creatively named Atlantis), which subsequent investigations found to be home to structures apparently of both human and extraterrestrial origin, proving that Fomen was not our first interplanetary visitor, although the full significance of this discovery would not be known for decades later.
Although one might expect that proof of alien visitation both past and present would lead to an explosion of UFO sightings and alien abduction claims, this was not the case: with space creatures now seen by the military as a far greater threat than even communism, those who reported any close encounters could expect an immediate government response, with those who spread UFO-related hoaxes facing the severest of consequences. That's not to say weird shit doesn't happen at all, however: there was that lady Florida who claimed to be in a sexual relationship with Teglad Fomen's ghost, and in 1966, well over a hundred people died during a siege at a compound belonging to the Church of Orion, who worshipped the dead outlaw as humanity's saviour. A growing number of kooks are of the belief that the reptile-like visitors found on sunken Atlantis never left, but have in fact learned to disguise themselves as humans, entering positions of political power and manipulating society from behind the shadows.
Despite the craft's extensive damage, Earthling scientists were able to reverse engineer various alien technologies, leading to a rapid (and very one-sided) space race, with Chuck Yeager becoming the first human (ha!) to enter space in 1951, and Alan Shepard landing on the Moon just a couple years later, returning home in time for dinner. Before the decade was out, a manned Venus flyby had taken place, and John Glenn (despite some opposition) had taken the first cautious steps on the planet Mars, proving it to be lifeless once and for all. By the 1960s, the US no longer held a monopoly on space travel (Soviet espionage in the United States having revealed a great many secrets, such as repulsor tech and artificial gravity), and with no Outer Space Treaty, space militarization (up to and including orbital death rays) is in full effect. It isn't just the field of space travel that's benefitted from the wreckage at Roswell, however: hovercars are, at long last, a thing, and the holotelephony was a brief fad in the late 60s. Despite many arguing that civilian ownership of laser weapons is protected under the Second Amendment, by the 1970s, their usage is restricted for police and military personnel. Many submarines and aircraft are equipped with forcefield generators.
The political landscape is rather different: Thomas Dewey was elected over Harry Truman in 1948 (cue Korean War fought with blasters - one of the easiest devices to reverse engineer), and is remembered as a fairly popular president, serving two full terms, having easily defeated Estes Kefauver in 1952. The 1956 Presidential Election proved to be one of the most memorable of the twentieth century - on 3 November, just three days before the election, Republican candidate Robert A. Taft died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage. As his running mate was a largely unknown figure to the American public, he was ultimately beaten Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II who, despite middling approval ratings, was re-elected over Nelson Rockefeller 1960, although would not live to see out his second term: on 2 June, 1962, during a state visit to Texas, President Stevenson was shot by an unknown assailant, and died en route to hospital. Shortly thereafter, 23-year-old Ernest Naylor, a African-American with several previous convictions and a history of mental illness, was arrested by police on suspicion of assassinating the President, although was ultimately acquitted (which was seen as a major victory for the growing civil rights movement).
Years later, the true identity of Stevenson's killer remains unknown (hats and t-shirts bearing the message 'I Shot AS' were popular amongst youth subcultures for a while, to parents' horror). This mystery has proven to be an unending source of frustration and embarrassment for the CIA, and there are countless conspiracy theories suggesting that Vice President John F. Kennedy was behind his predecessor's murder. Despite these suspicions, Kennedy won against Barry Goldwater in 1964, and was succeeded in 1968 by California Governor Richard Nixon. While there was nothing akin to the Watergate Scandal ITTL, 1971 saw the impeachment of Chief Justice Hoover, who passed away during the proceedings. Before unforeseen circumstances caused the abolition of the United States government in 1972, the presumptive Democratic nominee was the hugely popular Robert F. Kennedy (who's family's reputation was somewhat tarnished after his brother Teddy killed himself and several others in a drunken hovercraft accident).
The United Kingdom also went quite a different direction from OTL, with an Anglo-French Union established in the mid-1950s. The Troubles in Northern Ireland proved to be even more, er, troublesome than OTL: in mid-1971, Princess Louise, the younger twin sister of reigning monarch Anne II of Great Britain (who's mother, Princess Elizabeth, died in childbirth, with her husband Philip serving as prince regent between 1951 and 1966 - much to the chagrin of Princess Margaret) was kidnapped by armed members of the Irish Republican Army, resulting in the largest manhunt in British history. Prior to her kidnapping, Louise was not an especially popular figure with the British public - in 1969, rumours were confirmed that she had received a termination for an unplanned pregnancy, resulting in much outrage from pro-life British conservatives. Roughly nine hours after her capture, the Princess suffered a fatal heart attack (undoubtedly caused by the immense stress of her situation), with her captors found and arrested mere minutes afterwards. The aftermath of Louise's death, which came just a few days shy of her and the Queen's 23rd birthday, saw a huge in anti-Irish sentiment across Great Britain, as well as increased violence in the North (Bloody Sunday, Bloody Monday, Bloody Every-Day-of-the-Bloody Week). The incident is also widely credited with ending Queen Anne's controversial engagement to the Dublin-born Patrick McGrath (their marriage, it was hoped, would mark a new dawn in Anglo-Irish relations), who's extended family was rumoured to have Republican sympathies.
Unsurprisingly, the most piece of technology most difficult to reproduce from the Roswell wreckage was its faster-than-light drive, and it was not until the 1970s that the first hyperspace experiment took place. Earth's first FTL vessel, the Liberty 1, was launched in 1972, piloted by Captain Gordon Webster. Despite the engineering team's best efforts, Liberty, although capable of breaking the light barrier, was woefully underequipped for withstanding hyperspace travel, and was flung more than two hundred lightyears away, in the direction of Spica. Miraculously, Captain Webster survived this excursion, but was left stranded in deep space, and due to the weakness of his craft's forcefield generator, had been exposed to huge amounts of radiation. While rescue seemed impossible, his prayers were answered, although not in the way he might have hoped: the Liberty 1's sudden shunt into realspace caught the attention of a nearby Imperial cruiser, the Intrepid, stationed around the gas giant Chuskapang Prime. Intrigued by the quaint little starship, which matched no known make or model and did not respond when hailed, Captain Queck Kaiter[4] ordered it drawn to Intrepid's docking bay via tractor beam. The barely conscious Captain Webster received immediate medical attention, although despite onboard doctors' best efforts, succumbed to his radiation poisoning.
The Intrepid's engineering team were amazed that such a bare-bones vessel was able to withstand post-light velocities, and were able to determine its origin point with ease by dissecting its crude FTL drive and making a rough starmap of its ill-fated journey, finding its point of origin in a small, relatively uncharted sector. The following events are remembered in history holobooks as the Seven-Hour War, or the War of Galactic Aggression: while the Earth's orbital laser defences were capable of fending off against smaller fighter craft, they were easily overwhelmed by the might of the Imperial Navy, and the Earth, like so many worlds before it, was absorbed into the Galactic Empire, a three-million-worlds strong dictatorship established after the fall of the (relatively) peaceful and democratic Galactic Republic, which had stood for more a thousand years. Already having evidence of two separate alien races, Earthlings weren't surprised to learn that the Milky Way was home to more than 10,000 intelligent species (all of which, oddly enough, have only emerged in the last hundred thousand years), although the revelation that humans have existed by their quadrillions on countless other worlds for millennia was startling - indeed, mankind has dominated much of interstellar politics for centuries, one reason for this being that they're one of the few sentient races immune to the Unnameable Plague[3]. After humanity, the Milky Way's most populous species include the Duros in (distant) second, with the Gran and Sullustans tied for third.
The Earth was initially assumed by Imperial scholars to be one of the dime-a-dozen lost colony worlds founded after the Coruscantine Diaspora, although exploration of the Atlantean plateau later confirmed the slowly growing suspicions that Earth was, in fact, the birthplace of humanity, whose Atlantean ancestors were spread across the galaxy by Rakata slavers between twelve and thirteen thousand years BBY. It should be noted that excavations of Atlantean burial sites have revealed its indigenous inhabitants to be mostly pale-skinned, explaining why the galactic population of humans is overwhelmingly white. That's not to say that people of colour were treated much differently however - stormtroopers are less interested in pushing around humans with a different skin colour than they are in aliens - some Earthling minorities even claim to have received fairer treatment under Imperial rule than under their old governments. That said, a great many Earthlings (many belonging to oppressed groups who sympathized with non-humans subject to slavery and genocide) went on to joined the Rebel Alliance - there's even a memorial for the small number of Earthlings who sacrificing themselves in the Battle of Yavin in 1977, a pivotal moment in galactic history which saw the destruction of the Empire's most feared weapon, the first Death Star.
The Empire finally collapsed after Palpatine's death in 1981, and much has changed in the last forty years. Earthlings can now be found in enclaves all across the galaxy, while many of those shipped offworld during the Imperial era have returned home (some of them, having left in service the Empire, did not receive much in the way of a warm welcome). The Earth is not an official member of the New Republic, and many of the nation states which existed prior to the War of Galactic Aggression have been restored, although the borders are almost unrecognizable from OTL (in the chaos following the Empire's downfall, some countries leapt at the opportunity to gobble up their smaller, poorer neighbours -- such as the Soviet Union, which is now capitalist in all but name). The United Nations has been replaced with a much more powerful organization called ALENA (ALliance of Earth NAtions), a major section of which is the Department of Extraplanetary Affairs, which handles trade with other star systems. Unlike its predecessor, ALENA has a standing army (whose armour many find a little too close to those of Stormtroopers for comfort).
There has been a growing movement to 'Make Earth Great Again', a pushback against so-called 'galacticization' by those who believe that Earth should remain independent from the affairs of the galaxy at large. Most countries have returned to their original languages, although Galactic Standard remains common. Aliens suffer a lot of discrimination - species segregation is common in most countries, and non-humans are often target of violence, one doesn't have to wander far to find graffiti bearing such lovely messages as 'EARTH FOR EARTHLINGS', and 'SPACE FREAKS OFF OUR STREETS'. Although a must-visit for monks and scholars, Earth is largely seen by the wider universe as a backwater, more famous as the home of tobacco and chocolate[5] than the home of humanity.
Footnotes
[1] Asgredi folklore claims that in the ancient past, this ability was also possessed by females, until King Tat the Blessed was fatally stung by his consort, Kemigaga, resulting in the gods rescinding this gift from all Asgredi women.
[2] Smallest of the 101 constellations visible from Coruscant's night sky.
[3] The most devastating pandemic in galactic history, the Unnameable Plague (called 'unnameable' as more superstitious sentients believed that merely speaking its name would cause one to contract it) is believed to have wiped out as much as one-quarter of the Galaxy's biological population, causing the extinction/near-extinction of countless races (including Yoda's species). Indeed, it was so devestating that many ascribed a supernatural origin to the pandemic, suggesting that it may have been a curse unleashed due to archeologists excavating Rakata tombworlds.
[4] Queck 'Steelfinger' Kaiter first achieved galactic fame following his actions at the Battle of Rogomathu, but ultimately betrayed the Empire following its destruction of his home planet of Alderaan.
[5] Remember, Wookiees -- chocolate kills! Say no to Herschey!
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Actually chocolate exists in Star Wars (Legends). But there are only very few planets producing it so it would be an important economical resource for Earth.
Here's an alternate map of Africa circa 1912. In this TimeLine, Spanish sells Equatorial Guinea to Britain, France, and Portugal. Itlay has no colonial ambitons, so Libya is shared between Britain and France, and Ethiopa remained inedpendent and annexed Erithrea and the esat coast of Somalia. In the Congress of Berlin, Congo is attributed to Germany (excepted the Katanga whiwh is ceded to Britain in exchange of Heligoland). Moreover, Germany never colonized Cameroon, Togoland and East Africa whiwh is shared between Britain and France. Then, Tangier is attributed to Britain.
Because in a lot of books I've read, in the colonial maps, France was often showed in yellow...
Everyone associates countries with different colors. I know blue is the standard for France on AH.com, but I have seen some maps here with a yellow France.
I imagine a PoD in 1814 where the Congress of Vienna allows Wallonia to France in exchange of Saarbrücken and other places near of Landau. 20 years later, Catholic Flanders became independant from Netherlands and Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg is elected King of Flanders. Brussels, meanwhile, becomes an independent city-state.
Here's a map of Flanders today (please note that in this TL, Furnes, Ypres and Menin still belong to France, Louis XV retakes West-Flanders to Austria in 1748, because because these cities were already French until 1713):
Here's a map of Flanders today (please note that in this TL, Furnes, Ypres and Menin still belong to France, Louis XV retakes West-Flanders to Austria in 1748, because because these cities were already French until 1713):
It still just sounds like you’re talking about language standardization. Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard German, Modern Standard Austrian German, the two dialects of Norwegian. I could keep going on. What you’re describing I pretty normal. Dialects with low intelligibility eventually get standardized into a new form. I’ll admit, I’m not the most knowledgeable on Basque in particular, but I am failing to see the difference if there is any.
Modern German is based off of a literary dialect, that doesn’t mean that Modern German is invented, it was just based off of a dialect that most people didn’t traditionally speak. Standardization is a weird thing.
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