Albion, where the Sun never set

[Peppe]

Why is the second half of the entry all-bold?

Probably some formatting issue, I'll fix it

 

[Peppe]

Sorry for the time it took for me to update, this one was a bit on the longer side and I ended up losing inspiration once or twice

The American Exiles/Early American Diaspora​

The American Exiles (also known as the American Refugees, the Early American Diaspora or the Blue American Émigrés) are the community of descendants of those who fled the United States of America (1776-1926) in the aftermath of the First World War and the wake of the Second American Revolution (1920) and Civil War (1920-1926) due to their opposition to the revolutionary (Communist) American political climate. Although the term has been used broadly to refer to anyone who has left the USSA due to regime changes or political opinions, they original exiles are markedly different from the later ones, having retained more of their pre-war culture and lacking the influences of communism and socialism, and often prefer to be called first-wave exiles.

Most exiles left the United States from 1920 to 1926, numbering in over 3 million individuals (although exact numbers are impossible to know and estimates vary wildly), traveling by foot, train, ship and plane, although some also managed to leave during the late-1920s and the 1930s. Besides them there were also those (numbering on around a million) who, while considered by modern historians as exiles, never had to actually flee, instead living on the exchanged territories in the West, the Plains and New England. Although historically characterized as comprising of the fleeing upper and middle classes, the exiles spanned all classes of american society and included military soldiers and officers, intellectuals of various professions, dispossessed (or not) old and new money aristocrats, politicians and government officials, various anti-communist governments from the civil war period, and ideologically opposed people of all ranks, including farmers and workers. Although their bulk was, admittedly, of white americans, there were also large groups of Native and African americans among the exiles of the first wave, who left either due to disagreeing loyalties with the new government, personal opposition to communism or fear of what the new government may bring.

Of the exiles, a large portion migrated to Canada and Oregon, bolstering the countries populations, while on the south many fled to Mexico and the Caribbean countries, in special Cuba where the southern elites would soon establish their neoconfederate state; many also fled across the sea, either to the British Isles, Scandinavia or Hawaii, and some would even establish a short-lived republic on the “American” Treaty-Port of Shanghai. There were also the breakaway states of the US, like California, who due to its size and population is considered more of a subset of the larger american diaspora, and the three buffer republics of North America, whose origins are directly intertwined with the Civil War and the exiles.


In the aftermath of their migration, the exiles tried to settle down the best they could and, soon after, established a community among themselves, often times centered and led by the old american upper classes, whose war-heroes and still-wealthy members served as a focus beam for the stateless americans. Most often occurring on territories either a part of or connected to the Albish Empire (where there was some interest of the government to focus the incoming americans on leaders that would work with them), some of the leaders of the exiles during their earlier years were:

- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1944) and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1965), who were the de facto rulers of Canadian New England for much of the 20s, the 30s and the early 40s; they had already been respected beforehand (their family and actions during the First World War being the reason behind it) while during the Civil War Franklin basically took over northern New England as an warlord, which, after swearing allegiance to the Albish Crown, made him the region’s administrator for decades, besides also being considered the supreme leader of the americans in Canada​

- John D. Rockefeller (1839-1935), who while much impoverished due to the loss of his properties and accounts in the US was still considerably rich (and known for his philanthropy before, during and after WWI); living in Montreal, he was the de facto leader of the large american community there until his death​

- Margaret Carnegie (1897-1978), the richest heiress on the US before the war, and still extremely rich beforehand (due to Andrew Carnegie’s having much of his money either in person or with the Rothschilds of London), she led american exile society in the St. Lawrence Basin and the Great Lakes for most of her life​

- William S. Sims (1858-1933), the most respected American admiral during the First World War and Roosevelt’s second in command during their time as warlords, he was responsible for the mostly navy-originated exile society on Newfoundland, being known for his work in training new cadets as much as for his position as the great​

- Ottowa W. Gurley (1868-1944), who was before, during and after the First World War one of the wealthiest black men in the United States, in the 1900s he founded the district of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which he led until the civil war when, fearing both white and communist attacks (seeing as how Greenwood was the first “Black Wall Street” due to its local wealth), he commandeered his entire community northward, settling down on what became the modern city of Greenwood, Alberta, a center of the Canadian Afro-American community to this day, which he headed until his later years​

- The Vanderbilt Family, in special Ava E. Vanderbilt (1853-1933), who, although better known for being Emperor Leonard’s grandmother-in-law, was the center of New Yorker society during and after the Civil War, being responsible for helping establish the Long Island Militia due to her previous leadership of the suffragette movement as well as for being the one to request Albish re-annexation of the islands as a defense against the Red forces, being New York and Long Island’s de facto ruler until her death​

- The Green Siblings, Harriet (1871-1946) and Edward (1868-1937), who walked hand-to-hand with the Countess of Brookholt in commandeering New York, both the children of the most known miser of Wall Street, Harriet was Ava’s social right-hand-woman, while Edward, who served in the US Army (reaching the rank of Colonel) and served as mayor of New York in the 1910s, was the military leader of the LIM​

- The Cabot and Ford Families, who became the center of the community on Canadian Michigan, theirs was a bit more problematic of relation, as their command of said community came in part due to their control of much of the region’s industries as well as their cozying up with the Canadian government​

- and The Astor Family, in special John J. IV (1864-1940) and his children, who became the leaders of the american exile community in Hawaii, having fled there during the early stages of the civil war due to Astor’s daughter-in-law (Adele Likelike Robinson, a New Zealander-Hawaiian heiress and aristocrat) and soon entering the pineapple-growing business, which, due to their employing mostly of american refugees, resulted on their de facto control of the community (in special after the failed Sugar Cane Coup of 1926)​

Although the nearly one century has passed since they left the US, the American Exiles still remain a visible cultural group on Canada and Alyaska and although some of them have stopped existing or have mostly been integrated into the Albish upper class, some of those families who led the community in the past have continued to do so, with the ones who are most recognized for that being:

- The Roosevelts have mostly remained the premier family in New England, either through social influence or in positions of power (as the Roosevelts have historically been high-ranking members and leaders of the New England administration and military) and have also spread outside of their original “territory” into the larger Canada, with many of the family’s members being involved in local and imperial politics. Known for their often high marriages (including some minor members of the Imperial Family), the Roosevelts are also a part of the peerage of Canada, with their members including the Duchess of Vermont, the Duke of Rochester and the Earl of Middlebury​

- The Vanderbilts, who have not only remained the social center of the Islands but also are considered possibly the overarching heads of the american exiles in Albion, their numbers are too large for the family to be centralized on its entirety, but the Brookholt branch has, historically, been considered the most important among the clan, in no small part due to their direct relation to the Imperial Family (with the current Duke of Manhattan, Lawrence B. Vanderbilt, being the third cousin twice removed of Empress Charlotte), which has resulted on the branch being considered of a higher level as the “commoner” cousins of the ruling dynasty of Albion​

- The Fords (the Cabot Clan having moved shop to Australia in the 50s) have continued to commandeer the Detroit society, having historically been one of the group of families who hold the control of the Michigan government and military for the past how-many decades. They aren’t an exactly beloved bunch (that honor probably goes to the Rosenbergs) but they are a savvy one who has made an art out of gaining votes through the carrot-and-stick method​

- and the Robinson-Astors, who have continued to commandeer and sustain the american exile community in Hawaii to this day as well as remained one of the leading families of Hawaii, being known not only for their familial connections to the House of Kamehameha (and its branches and cousins) but also for being the creators and owners of South O’ahu, the world’s largest artificial island, who not only houses much of their farms in Hawaii but also much of the american exile population of the country (which makes them the largest landowners of the country, as besides SO they have the ownership, either through inheritance or takeover, of nearly two of the eight main Hawaiian Islands)​

- Of note is also the Afro-American community in Alberta and Montana, who, although not led by a single family, still has a sort-of ruling council made of its most esteemed families, like the Gurley, Winfrey and Stradford families. The Indian-American community (also known as Native Americans and American First Nations), although sometimes identified as being a part of the exiles (in special more racially mixed tribes like the Kaw and Osage) have historically preferred to be identified as being a group all on their own; similarly, the Minnesotan Nordics also prefer to be identified that way, either being identified as being a Nordic-descend ethnic group or as being an ethnic group of First Nation and European origins (like the Metis)​

Extra: Besides Canada and Hawaii, there also exist somewhat large populations of the american diaspora living in Mexico, Alyaska, Oregon, the Caribbean, South America, Iberia and the British Isles, who due to some reason or another are identified (internally and/or externally as not being a part of the exiles proper (although they in general “descend” from them):

- Although originally identifying as being a part of the exiles, the Anglo-Mexicans (known in Mexico as Anglicans or Northerners) have long since become a culture of their own after the 20th century’s Holocaust and the effects of entering Mexican and Native American cultures into them. Numbering on around 5 million, who live mostly on the autonomous Kingdom of Baja California and on Tejas​

- The earliest branch of the american diaspora, preceding even the exiles, are the Alaskan-Americans (also known as the Gold Rush Migrants) who came in droves to what is now modern Alyaska during the late 19th century in the region’s gold rush and never left, developing a mixed breed of west-coast American and old-believer Russian cultures that makeup about a third of the country’s population​

(They are included even among the Alaskan nobility, with the MakDyak Clan being by birth a part of ancient Scottish nobility (Clan MacDuich) and in Alyaska being the only noble family to have the rank of "Grand Duke". Their first member in Alyaska came specifically during the Yukon Gold Rush and made a fortune that has still mantained the family over a century later)​

- In Oregon there are two distinct groups, the Mormons (who will someday be commented upon) and the Pioneers (which are not entirely descended form the original pioneers, as the local american exile community is added to their numbers), who are the local american-descended community; marked by their often times complicated history with the Oregonian Government (in special due to the original rebellions), they mostly live in enclaves in the big cities or in small towns on the Willamette Valley and the Alava Peninsula, having their numbers at around some 80.000​

- In the Caribbean, there are technically five different communities descended from the Americans:​

- The Cuban-Americans, which make the largest of them, they descend from those who fled the south during the Race Uprisings in the Civil War, being made mostly of angle-descended whites or anglo-hispanics, and became known for, in the Interwar periods, taking over the Cuban Republic and establishing the Second Confederacy. Deported in droves in the aftermath of the war (mostly to reeducation camps in the USSA), most of their population nowadays is in the South, where they make around a fifth of the total population​

- The Bahamian-Americans, who number some 15.000 people living mostly on the boroughs of Nassau or in the Keys, they are the biracial descendants of those who fled the south during the Civil War and ended up intermarrying in the past century​

- The Puerto Ricans, they are the descendants of those white americans who migrated to the island during its time as an american territory (as well as those who became stranded there due to the wars), and while numbering at around some thousands, they are known for being a major part of the island’s tourism industry, being the owners or administrators of many of the hotels and resorts there​

- The Antillean-Americans, they are the american exiles living in the various islands of the Lesser Antilles, numbering at the few thousands or hundreds and living in small ethnic pockets on the port towns of the region​

- The Tobagonians, the smallest of the groups, who migrated in specific to the island of Tobago on the Southern Lesser Antilles, they are differentiated from other Antillean-Americans due to being the result of the intermingling of american exiles and Bharati immigrants. Considered something of a dying culture, they number in the lower hundreds​

- In South/Central America, there are two “distinct” groups of american descendants:​

- The Confederados in Brazil, a small group living in the Province of São Paulo who descend from american southerners who fled the US in the ending and aftermath of the 1st Civil War. Surprisingly racially mixed for a group whose ancestors literally fought to retain slavery (although, admittedly, they seem to have mostly shied away from slavery even at their start), their numbers nearly fell down to 0 in the early 20th century due to the Brazilian Civil War (mostly due to the Massacre at Americana), but have in modern times come to number around 40.000 people, who retain some american cultural traits and a English-tinted accent (although they have in general been greatly affected by the addition of Italian and Brazilian culture)​

- The Bananas in Colombia and Panama, who descend from a mix of american exiles as well as of american emigrants who came over due to either the banana plantation or the Panama Canal, they have mostly integrated into the local cultures but still retain some small american traits (mostly the accent and religion). Not a large group, they number at around a hundred thousand people living either on the coastlines of the Colombian departments of Antioquia, Cordoba and Sucre or on the lands around the Panama Canal​

- In Iberia the number of american exiles to come numbers at around some thousand, mostly from catholic regions of the East Coast (Maryland), who settled either on the north of Portugal or in Galicia their descendants, sometimes known as the Iberian-Americans or the English, number in the rank of the few hundred thousands in Galicia (where they make about a fifth of the population) or the tens of thousands in Portugal (making about 5% of the total population of the Minho Province), and have mostly integrated into the local culture and society. Their pockets in major Iberian cities (in special Seville, where they number at around 7.000) have managed to retain a bit more of their culture, although most have long since stopped speaking English and have long-since become more Latin in their Catholicism​

- And, finishing things up, are the american exiles of the British Isles, who came over in the war (by taking a ship from Canada or the major East Coast cities before chaos erupted) mostly during the early stages of the civil war and settled in London (mostly in the East End), Bristol and on the lands around Morecambe Bay. Nowadays the London and Bristol groups have mostly gone extinct (either assimilated or moved to Morecambe), but the Morecambians have managed to grow in numbers (bolstered by a mix of natural reproduction and migration from either other British communities, Cumbrians or, of all people, the Beothuk People of Newfoundland), with their settlements in the region having since become a semi-official city with nearly a million inhabitants (known as either Morebay or by the nickname of “Newer York”, given due to Walney Island’s resemblance in shape to Manhattan)​

The American Buffer Republics​

MASSACHUSETTS
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, oficially the Most Rightful and Honorable Commonwealth Nation of Massachusetts but colloquially known as either Massachusetts or Nantucket, is an island nation in northeastern North America consisting of 6 islands separated from the continental seaboard by the Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds. It lies nearly 6 km off the coast of the USSA state of Plymouth and is 37 km east of Rhode Island, the easternmost part of Albion’s American Military Territory. With a population of about 35.000 people over a land area of 374 km2, Massachusetts is one of the world’s smallest countries in area and has one of the largest national capitals in the world by percentage, as the town of Nantucket comprises the entire island it lies on, making up about a third of the country’s total are. The official national language is English, in specific the New Englander variation, while Italian, Irish and Spanish are major secondary languages, with over two thirds of the population being at least conversational in one of them.

Originally inhabited by the Wampanoag people, a native american nation who inhabited most of Plymouth and Massachusetts before colonial times (and are the probable origin for Nantucket’s name), Massachusetts’ territory was colonized by Europeans in the 1640s, when Thomas Mayhew secured it and the Elizabeth Islands as a proprietary colony and established it as a center of quaker settlement. A center for the whaling business for the 17th, 18th and much of the 19th centuries (still shown on the country’s flag, which is the original flag of the Town of Nantucket over the Union Jack), then becoming a vacation center together with Martha’s Vineyard when the whaling industry started to decline due to ambientalist restrictions.

Finally, in 1922, the government of the US state of Massachusetts, then fleeing Boston following the city’s capture by the Reds, established an administration in exile at Nantucket, at the time also a center for naval forces in the Eastern Seaboard (as a defensive position against any attack fo the Royal Navy during the First World War) and in 1923 also took control over the island of Martha’s Vineyard, establishing the commonwealth’s modern territory. Being involved in the Second American Civil War only until 1924, that same year the government of Massachusetts officially requested the protection of the Albish Empire, then already involved with the taking over of Rhode Island and New York. A Albish protectorate for the next five years, Massachusetts finally became its modern self in 1929, when it officially became the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a de facto republic under the aegis of Albion’s Imperial Crown, which it has remained being to this day.

Originally made of the quaker settlers of Nantucket, Massachusetts population has since then come to comprise of various groups due to immigration as well as the coming of refugees from the continent during the war, having a large black minority as well as a slight Asian one (mostly coming from Bharat) while its white majority is made of both English-descending protestants and Italian, Irish, Spanish, Jewish and German minorities. Religiously Massachusetts is overwhelmingly a Christian protestant nation, whose various groups (of whom the quakers make about 25%) make over 60% of the population, besides them there is also a large Catholic minority (making about a quarter of the population) and jewish and irreligious minorities. The Anglican Church (and its colleagues) is the state religion, but freedom of religion is the official policy of the government and guaranteed on its Bill of Rights.

Although known for its tense relationship with the USSA and for the fact that it has a permanent Vice-admiralty located on it, Massachusetts is a major tourist destination year-round, with it having a cyclic nature between those coming for the resorts and recreational areas during the summer months and those coming for the historical and scenic tours during the winter and autumn months, with the abandoned towns at Martha’s Vineyard making the island a center of urban explorers. Besides tourism the Commonwealths main sources of income are being a banking heaven, its status as a pitstop in the New York-Halifax sea-lane, and the local naval base, whose servicing makes much of the local economy when tourism dries up. Fishing and farming are also parts of the local economy

A de facto oligarchy almost from the beginning, with its government being commanded by a clique of the major and older families, Massachusetts is currently under the Governorship of Zebulon III[f] Kennedy, whose family has had 9 members before him holding the office (while among his relatives there are another 6 governors), while the current Head Councilman (who leads the General Court of Massachusetts) is Ignatius V Nickerson, who has held the position since early 2015. Besides them there is also the current Vice-Admiral to Massachusetts, Adelaide Swynford Burns, a native of Middletown, Rhode Island, who has led the Naval Base of Nantucket since the late 2000s.




[a] In specific with the New England accent. This causes some confusion to foreigners as the past century has caused many differences between Massachusetts’ accent and continental (USSA) New England, resembling more a mix between it and the Canadian, Irish and British accents
|b] Due to Nantucket being the overwhelming center of the commonwealth, many people just think they all are from there (which can be very offensive for people not actually from Nantucket)
[c] Specifically a “oligarchical representative republic under a constitutional monarchy”
[d] Whose officially title is “King/Queen of New England and Lord of Massachusetts”
[e] Official date, some consider the start of the protectorate as being when the commonwealth was established
[f] Not the third Zebulon Kennedy (he is the only one with that name on the family either in modern times or history) but the third Zebulon to have served as governor, the Head Councilman is, equally, the fifth Ignatius to have held the office

NEVADA
Nevada, officially the Free Republic of Nevada, is a sovereign landlocked nation in southwestern North America, bordered by Oregon to the north and California to the south. De facto founded in the turn of the 20th century by Margaret Brown, when she led the founding of the city of Las Vegas, the republic was officially established in the 1920s during the Second American Civil War as a warlord state, becoming an internationally recognized nation a decade later.

Deriving its name from the defunct US State of Nevada (1864-1926), the republic is mostly located on the western banks of the Colorado River, which serves as its main source of water and energy. Its capital and largest city is the city of Las Vegas, whose population of nearly 2 million makes the overwhelming majority of the nation’s inhabitants. A cultural melting pot, Nevada recognizes four official languages within its borders, English, Spanish, Korean and Southern Paiute (the last being a native american language related to Aztec), while its population also has self-identified speakers of Chinese, Cantonese, Italian, Navajo, Hopi, German and Gaelic.

An oligarchy that has been called both a criminal state, a monarchy, a military dictatorship and a plutocracy all at the same time, Nevada is officially a republic whose government is made of a group of 15 people: a semi-figurehead president (whose descent from Margaret Brown is a prerequisite for holding the office), the Archmanager of Nevada (whose job it is to lead the Nevada civil service), the Chief Magistrate (who is both the head judge and head of the police), and the other 13 members of its administrative council, who are responsible for passing the laws of the country.

Often times called the “Home of Vice and Sin of North America”, Nevada, although also known as the “Entertainment Capital of the World” and a global leader of the hospitality industry, is a country centered on tourism and business of both the legal and illegal variety. Started as a worker’s town during the building of the Sherman Dam, Las Vegas, who is often correlated with the entirety of Nevada, is a metropolis known for its tourist attractions, hotels, “funhouses” and, most of all, its cassinos, who kickstarted its development into a metropolis. Prostitution, drug use and underage driving or sex are all legal in the republic as well, and its lax laws about marriage make it be known for having the largest rate of marriages and divorces in the world, as people often travel there to marry or divorce quickly.

Behind the sparkling side of things, Nevada is also known for its underbelly, as outside of The City the republic is made of a few sparse towns and settlements of varying levels of development and wealth dotting the desert. Las Vegas herself is also known for its dark underside, as while its police force is one of the most militarized in the world the city is infamous for its criminal syndicates, mafia families and gangs, who exist in a sort of inner world within the republic as they work under, together and allied with the Nevadan government. Said groups are so deeply involved in the nation that many are led by members of the government (some of whom only became wealthy due to organized crime), have “territories” within Las Vegas, and even war against each-other with the approval of the government.

Officially neutral in the many matters of North American geopolitics, de facto Nevada is a buffer zone between its neighbors, who have a gentleman’s agreement about anything involving the republic, with its gang wars having often served as proxy conflicts between the two. Recently there has been some instability brought to the republic in the way of a terrorist group self-entitled as “Bane”, who have become infamous for their bombing attacks, murdering wealthy individuals and families and publishing a manifesto expressing their objective of abolishing Nevada, eliminating its ruling class and establishing an anarchist state on the place of the republic.


Due to their often-long history in the ruling of Nevada, where they have been the people in charge for generations, the author feels a need to identify some of the main dynasties of the republic, as well as some who are now only history but are still of note, who are:

- The Brown Family, the most obvious of them, being the hereditary presidents of Nevada and descending from its head founder, Margaret “Unkillable Molly” Brown, they currently comprise of 28 members, of whom 7 live in other countries, and besides serving as the heads of Nevada they also are its richest family, having a monopoly on the energy and water distribution on the republic as well as other financial ventures both within and outside of Nevada​

- The Barrueco Family, at the largest made of 44 people, the Barrueco Clan were a Hispanic-American family whose origins date to the beginnings of Las Vegas, having moved there during the city’s early years and establishing themselves as citrus farmers before expanding to the business of organized crime. The family, who in the early 2000s were the wealthiest in the republic and one of the richest in the world, was massacred in 2009 at their own mansion, with the only survivor, Helena (who at the time was only 12), moving to Russia, where she has lived since​

- The Marchand Family, a family who gained power in the 30s when its founder, King Marchand (whose wife became known as a female impersonating a male female impersonator), became one of the leading mobsters in Nevada and California after moving there from Chicago. The family, with its 15 members, is known for being almost like hereditary socialites, being the center of Nevada’s diplomats and welcoming officers and being also some of the main actors of the Californian movie industry​

- The Gordon Family, a more recent addition to the ranks, having been started when John Gordon Jr. migrated from New Jersey in the 1970s and became the Chief Magistrate of Nevada. The family is small, with only some 5 members, but they are considered the undisputable heads of the Nevadan civil service, with John’s daughter, Barbara, being the Archmanager of the republic​

- The Castle Family, another victim of the byzantine disputes of Nevadan politics, the Castle Family flourished in the mid-to-late 20th century in the republic, having started as the owners of a bookshop before expanding to command most of the printing in the country. They were always a small bunch, and in the end died out in a single well-placed bombing in ’97​

- The Andretti Family, another family who rose through organized crime (having been started by Sal Andretti, a mobster and close friend of King Marchand, having migrated with him to Nevada), nowadays they, who have an astonishing 112 members (mostly due to Sal Jr.’s many mistresses), have become the heads of the food and alcohol industry in Nevada, a position they gained in part due to taking over the Barrueco territory following their murders (which most people blame the Andretti for)​

- The Jackson Family, a family who started when its current head, Samuel (born in 1949), moved to Nevada in the aftermath of the Second World War, having as its members him, his children, his grandchildren and their consorts (numbering in total 13), they are one of the few among the post-founding families of power to not have risen to the position through the organized crime, as Samuel had luck in marrying the heiress to a cassino and expanded from there, with him and his children controlling a considerable chunk of the entertainment business of the republic​

- The Todd Family, another odd one, being the smallest and the most recent among Nevada’s main families, originally the Todds were a part of the entertainer class of Las Vegas, being known as acrobats and contortionists, and only in the current generation that this changed, when Burford Gilbert Todd, mostly known as “Billy” (born in 1992), entered the police force at the age of 17 and rose through its ranks, becoming the Chief Magistrate after his mentor’s retirement in 2018. The family comprises of Billy and his 3 siblings​

- The Kim Family, the only Asian family on this list, who started as Korean immigrants who came to America in the early 20th century, the Kim clan (whose members number in the 70s) rose to power in the 40s and 50s, when Mexico exterminated the then-leading yakuza clans in the city, and have since then mostly remained in power as the leading bosses of the mob in Las Vegas’ “Asian Sector”. Known for their involvement in the drug trade and the very hereditary nature of their leadership, the Kim clan is also known for their somewhat strange honor code and way of dealing with enemies, as they will not kill children on purpose (and even in the case of traitors will only exile them to somewhere unknown) but almost always execute any enemy or traitor by cutting their face out while the person is still alive​

[a] The local Nevada accent being akin to a mix between American, Oregonian and Californian English, with a Spanish tilt
|b] Specifically Southern Paiute
[c] Although Nevadan is also used, and Vegan is sometimes used as a joke
[d] Some don’t agree with this characterization, preferring instead to call it some sort of oligarchical monarchy due to the Brown Family’s hereditary control of the Presidency. It is also something of a military dictatorship, as peace is mostly mantained by the police, who is de facto an army
[e] California and Oregon formally recognized Nevada in 1935, although it had already become their buffer state in the late 1920s and was de facto recognized by them since 1926

YELLOWSTONE
Yellowstone, officially the Republic at Yellowstone (also known as the Yellowstone Republic), is a landlocked country situated at the confluence between Central, Western and Northern North America and bordered by Canada to the north, Oregon to the west, and the USSA to the south and the east. Located mostly on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, Yellowstone is geographically divided by a variety of mountain ranges and plateaus, including the Middle Rocky Mountains, it is also located on top of the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest volcanic caldera in the Americas and only rivaled by the Lake Toba Caldera in a world scale, which is responsible for the high levels of volcanism and geological activity within its territory. Although having a land area of over 20.000 km2, Yellowstone has a permanent population of around 25.000 people (with its biggest city, Buffalo, alone housing nearly half of it), making it one of the most sparsely populated nations in the world with a density of around 1 person by square kilometer.

Although Yellowstone’s territory has been inhabited by native americans for at least 11.000 years, the republic’s history only properly begun in the 1870s, when President Ulysses S. Grant established the Yellowstone National Park and Resort on what is now the republic’s northwestern corner. The only official instance of ecotourism in history, Yellowstone was, for the first 50 years or so of its history, a major inland holiday location in North America, having various small hotels and resorts within its expanse of natural beauty. It was during that time that Yellowstone Town, the republic’s capital, was founded, serving as a service-town for the resorts and for the rangers who administrated the national park. Finally, in the 1920s, Yellowstone became a small “warlord state” during the Second Civil War, being led by Horace M. Albright, who had been Yellowstone’s Superintendent since 1919.

Finally established in 1926 as a directorial republic at the end of the civil war, Yellowstone remained a major tourist destination even after that and has remained being so to this day, being a buffer state between its neighbors as much as a pleasant attraction for their high echelons. Due to its origins, the republic is sometimes classified as one of the closest things to a true communist state in the world, as outside of overarching issues and the park itself the republic’s board of directors (which was only slightly changed from when it was made of the monetary administrators of Yellowstone) is not involved in the matters of its 25 settlements, who each exist as autonomous administrative divisions, often times as direct democracies. Due to its location in the middle of three powerful states, two of whom are a part of the Commonwealth and the other being in barely speaking relations with them, Yellowstone is also known as a location where espionage of all sorts occurs between the powers of the world, who consider it a neutral ground for shady deals and shadowy conversations, something that is only helped by Yellowstone rather lax police force, which as a branch of the Yellowstone Rangers is more focused on local matters and protecting the park.

Possibly one of the greenest states in the world, Yellowstone is marked by being covered almost entirely by its original vegetation, in part due to the republic’s only harsh laws on preservation, which makes over 90% of its total area. It is also known for lacking an official driving side due to its near-absolute prohibition of automobiles (only some government sectors and people with permits can drive them), being one of the countries with the smallest number of motors per capita and one of the countries with the highest number of carriages and steam locomotives still in use.

Although de facto English, Yellowstone lacks any official national language, having a somewhat diverse population due to work-migrants and the native american tribes living within it. It also does not have a local currency, recognizing a dozen different coins due to its history as a center of tourism, of which the Pound and the USSA Dollar are the most commonly used, with every shop having their prices set for at least those two.

Although not often noticed, Yellowstone is still, technically, an oligarchy, as its Board of Directors, which include the direct descendants of its two founding fathers, H.C. Albright and President Grant, is made of hereditary positions held by its shareholders, with the only offices of Yellowstone’s decentralized central government to not be inherited being Superintendent and Chief Manager.

[a] Although most people think it is “of”, officially the name of the republic is “at Yellowstone”, referring to the fact that the government recognizes the land of Yellowstone as being a unique thing and being of its own
|b] Named after one of its founder, Buffalo Bill (originally it was named “Cody”, which was one of his personal nicknames, and colloquially is still known by that)
[c] Although de facto it is English
[d] Officially identified by the state, who considers “Yellowstonian” as being dumb and prefers to use the nickname given by locals to their own country, the Black Bear Republic (a bit of a complicated origin but it involves the black bear being the main simbol of Yellowstone as a park and resort)
[e] Actual citizens, not counting tourists or people who not actually live in Yellowstone but have properties or citizenship there
[f] Yellowstone recognizes the US dollar, the Californian dollar, the Imperial Pound, the Alyaskan ruble, the Mexican peso, the German mark and the Brazilian real (as well as some other minor currencies)
[g] Yellowstone does not have any official or standardized driving side, normally people use the right, although due to government parameters most actually walk or use bicycles or trams to move (Yellowstone prohibits automobiles outside of a few special necessities, so most people either don’t have any vehicle or have a horse-drawn cart, truck or carriage)

 

[Analytical Engine]

*cackles evilly*

 

[Peppe]

*cackles evilly*

Why do I feel this is a reference that is going right over my head?

 

[Analytical Engine]

Why do I feel this is a reference that is going right over my head?

Because of the formerly American things/people becoming British.

 

[Peppe]

Because of the formerly American things/people becoming British.

Ah, now I get it

 

[Peppe]

First RIP His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
I may not be a Brit but I always had him as my second most-like royal after the Queen, the somewhat-catankerous grandparent who you still find endearing even when he does a foot-in-the-mouth gaffe, so I sincerely felt sorrow when I heard of his death (which happened only minutes after I woke up today, if you can imagine).
Second, I made this almost entirely on impulse, although the premise was already planned for some time, since I normally don't like to directly connect this TL to the present moment (so I don't need to think about sudden changes caused by occurrences in real life), but Prince Philip's death today made me make this in his honor.

As Pontus still uses the Julian Calendar (together with some other few), the dates in the infobox are based on it (with the notes saying the date they are on the Gregorian Calendar) while on the post itself they are based on the Gregorian Calendar. Sorry if it makes things confusing

Filippos I (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark; 10 June 1921 – 9 April 2021) was the King/Emperor of Pontus from 3 December 1944 until his death on 9 April 2021. He was born in Greece as the only son and youngest legitimate child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, the 4th son of Irene and George I of the Hellenes, and was only that until 1927, when his father became King Andreas of Pontus.

Starting when he was 23, Filippos' rule, which, at 76 years and 127 days, is the longest verified in reign in history, was marked by military conflicts involving his nation and its main neighbor, Turkey. Although initially peaceful, just over a decade into his reign Pontus was invaded and occupied by Turkey during the Second World War, which killed over a tenth of the country's population while he, his family and the remnants of the Pontic Army fought a guerilla war against the Turks, having his headquarters at the Sumela Monastery, which in the aftermath of the war was given to him by the monks and made into the modern palace. Following the end of the war and the Turkish retreat, the 1960s were marked by the rebuilding of Pontus, during which Filippos became the first Pontic monarch since the Emperors of Trebizond to have a coronation and the first hellenic monarch to marry a commoner, while the 1970s saw him establish the Alexian Walls while Trebizond became a tourist destination on the Black Sea together with the Dobruja and the Russian Riviera. A military monarch even after the war, Filippos reign saw, following the Second World War, the establishment of the Pontic protection over Lazistan, as well as various skirmishes and minor wars between Pontus and Turkey, with his only serious conflict being when Pontus allied with Greece during the Third War of the Straits.

In his later years, Filippos started to suffer from a decay on his physicial health as well as the early stages of Parkinson's Disease, besides showing signs of what was possibly bipolar disorder and suffering from a failing sight. Finally, in 2016, Filippos formally passed all official functions as a monarch to his son, Crown Prince Filippos, making him his Regent and de facto abdicating, after nearly dying when he fell down a flight of stairs and was diagnosed with ostheoporosis. Following his retirement, the Basileus remained a public figure in a more laid-back approach, being known for going to walks (on a weelchair) with his wife, often stopping to eat and frequently interacting with the public.

Married twice, Filippos was first wedded to the Princess Helena Vjera of Montenegro (a daughter of King Danilo III, born in 1924) in 1947, with whom he had four surviving children during their 8 years together. The Queen consort died in 1955 during the Turkish Occupation of Pontus, not surviving the birth of their youngest daughter, Caroline, due to being forced to give birth without any help besides her husband and his mother. Following Queen Vjera's death in 1955, Filippos stayed a widower for nearly 8 years before marrying Stamatia Dellopoulou, who had worked as Princess Caroline's wetnurse before becoming her and his other children's governess, and with whom he had had an affair since 1958, only waiting so long to marry due to fears over the public and nobility's reception to it, as she was both a commoner and a single mother. They had a son, Prince Serafeim, together, who was born mere days after their wedding in a surprise pregnancy.

After another death scare in early-2021, when he had to completely replace his hip and much of his leg bones with implants, Filippos became mostly bed-bound at Sumela Palace, where he died on the 9th of April, 2021, during his sleep, his wife, the Basilinna, being the one to find his body. The basileus was succeeded by his eldest son, Filippos II.

[a] Originally the "King of Pontus", following the Second World War the Pontic Agora/Senate changed the translation of Basileus to "emperor", with his full title being "βασιλικός και Αυτοκράτης του Πόντου", or "Emperor and Autocrat of Pontus". Other titles also include "Highest Among All", "Lord of the East, Medea and Iberia", "King of the Bosphorus", "Despot of Lazica" (that one being a reference to the fact that Lazistan is a Pontic protectorate in the sense of ceding its military protection to its western neighbor) and "Prince of Theodoros" (which he "inherited" from his first wife, who as the daughter of the last daughter of the Kommenoi of Theodoros (who fled to Russia when the Ottomans came in[1]) was technically the "heiress" to both it and the Trebizuntine Empire
|b] Or 3 December 1944 by the Gregorian Calendar
[c] Or 9 April 2021 by the Gregorian Calendar
[d] Or 28 June 1962 by the Gregorian Calendar
[e] Or 10 June 1921 by the Gregorian Calendar
[f] Or 9 April 2021 by the Gregorian Calendar
[g] Not to be confused with the Sumela Monastery, who shares its grounds with the Palace ever since the end of Turkish Occupation
[h] The planned date for Filippos I's state funeral, it will be on 28 April 2021 for those who use the Gregorian Calendar

[1] Another one of my minor pre-POD pods. Although we don't really know who ruled the Principality of Theodoros, the best bet seems to be some branch of the Kommenoi Dynasty, and so ITTL we have some members of that branch of the family escaping before the principality fell to the Ottomans and seek refuge in Russia, surviving the later Rurikids, Time of Troubles and early Romanovs by keeping their heads down and not getting involved in anything that could make them be perceived as threats

The Monarchs and the Line of Succession to Pontus
1927 to 1944: Andreas I (1882-1944), born Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark. m.Princess Alice of Halifax and Battenberg (1885-1973)
1944 to 2021: Filippos I (1921-2021), m.Princess Vjera of Montenegro (1924-1955) in 1947, m.Stamatia Dellopoulou (1925) in 1963
2021-: Filippos II (1948) unmarried, in a civil union with Alexis Portokalos (1960)

Prince Nikephoros of Pontus (1951-2003) second-in-line to the throne, would have been heir presumptive​

Heir presumptive: Prince Theodoros of Pontus (1977)​

2. Prince Andreas of Pontus (2000)​

3. Prince Mikhael of Pontus (2004)​

4. Prince George of Pontus (2005)​

5. Prince Constantine of Pontus (1977)​

6. Prince Socrates of Pontus (1997)​

7. Prince Raphael of Pontus (2000)​

8. Prince Filippos of Pontus (1981)​

9. Prince Serafeim of Pontus (1963)​

10. Prince Serafin of Pontus (1995)​

11. Prince David of Pontus (2002)​

12. Prince Pericles of Pontus (2003)​

As a semi-salic law is still used in Pontus, women are ineligible to the throne unless the family's entire male line is extinguished. Currently the law to change the succession to either absolute or male-preference primogeniture is in the works on the Agora (as there is no expected chance of it changing things before the 8th slot on the succession)

 

[Analytical Engine]

Are there any other openly LGBT monarchs around ITTL?

 

[Peppe]

Are there any other openly LGBT monarchs around ITTL?

There are three I have put some though into (although I don't know yet if they are the only ones)
- The Queen of the Bahamas is openly a lesbian, although due to dynastic purposes she married a distant cousin and childhood friend of hers, with their children beign conceived through in vitro fertilization (her paramour being their surrogate mother)
- Madagascar's current monarch, who is the country's first king since Radama II, was designated female at birth
- and the King of Natal (also Empress Charlotte's younger brother) is pansexual, with his current spouse being a man

 

[Israel_Dan the Man]

Hey there, I really like the timeline as a whole (although my favorite parts are the world map, company infoboxes, and the 2 much-bigger-than-OTL World Wars), and I just had a question: How did so many people die in WW2?

I mean, the 'Axis' alone lost over 100 million civilians (despite not having countries with giant populations like China on their side), so I'm wondering which countries lost the most people, if that's not too much to ask.

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

I really like this timeline alot, because there's so many fascinating things, and I have a couple of questions about this world, including: Did Irene and George I of Greece ever rule together?

Also, one of the King of Bengal and Bihar's illegitimate children is missing their death year, and Michael of Oregon's death date is incorrect

 

[Arthur Marston]

Hey there, I really like the timeline as a whole (although my favorite parts are the world map, company infoboxes, and the 2 much-bigger-than-OTL World Wars), and I just had a question: How did so many people die in WW2?

I mean, the 'Axis' alone lost over 100 million civilians (despite not having countries with giant populations like China on their side), so I'm wondering which countries lost the most people, if that's not too much to ask.

More advanced technology than OTL WW2, and the war taking place on an even bigger scale.

 

[Peppe]

Hey there, I really like the timeline as a whole (although my favorite parts are the world map, company infoboxes, and the 2 much-bigger-than-OTL World Wars), and I just had a question: How did so many people die in WW2?

I mean, the 'Axis' alone lost over 100 million civilians (despite not having countries with giant populations like China on their side), so I'm wondering which countries lost the most people, if that's not too much to ask.

As @Arthur Marston said, the bigger scope and technology of the war (mostly in the sense of armaments and vehicles) most definitively caused the deaths to be in a larger number than OTL, I mean, this time the conflict affected much of the Americas and places like Mesopotamia and the basin of the Ganges were war fronts, while genocides occured in Europe, the Americas and much of Asia due to the war.

I don't actually know which country was the one with the bigger casualties (also, ITTL the deaths of "Allied" nationals who perished in their genocides are counted among the Axis' dead), but I think it is either Germany, Albion or the USSA, since:
- Germany was under Allied rule for much of the war, and a considerable percentage of its population died from famine, genocide or the war itself (in special when they rose in the German Rebellion or when they resisted the Militants, since they had a no-prisoner policy for "insurgents")
- Albion had much of its territory in the war, including not only the Home Islands which were bombed for years but also even more densely populated regions, like Eastern India, where millions died while the war was occuring there
- The USSA is the USSR analogue of the war in many ways, including the fact that it was devasted in some of its most populated areas by the Mexican advance (they reached the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers at their easternmost), while the parts that were not suffered from the La Llorona Epidemic (caused by ITTL's version of Operation Cherry Blossoms being enacted and basically spreading a man-made epidemic through North America)

Russia herself also was in a rough spot for some time, with a near famine for some years during the war due to the closing of much of its food supply coming from outside while over half of Ukraine was a war zone, but deaths there weren't nearly as high as OTL< since the Russians managed to stop the French advance earlier than their OTL counterparts did with Barbarossa.

I really like this timeline alot, because there's so many fascinating things, and I have a couple of questions about this world, including: Did Irene and George I of Greece ever rule together?

Also, one of the King of Bengal and Bihar's illegitimate children is missing their death year, and Michael of Oregon's death date is incorrect

At the beginning, no, Irene and George's relationship as co-monarchs was similar to Maria II of Portugal and her husband in their first years married, with him being mostly a patron of the arts while she was the one holding the reins of the monarchy. Later on they started having a more cooperative relationship, often tag-teaming the government in special during times when they were hard to work with (although in general George still focused more on public interactions and cultural or educational projects while Irene focused on economical, infrastructural and military ones, since while he was a social butterfly she was socially constipated most fo the time).

In relation to Bengal and Bihar, thanks for the heads-up, I added the date now. The same for Michael of Oregon, I often don't notice this sort of mistake when making infoboxes so I generally need someone to warn me. I'll correct it

 

[Peppe]

Spoiler: ”A Sincere Author’s Note”

So, here’s an addition to this TL that I’m still not sure if I even should be adding it on, since my mind’s screaming at me that it has a 50/50 chance of making people officially think this TL jumped the shark head first in a nosedive and that I’m making it stretch the suspension of disbelief too far for it to work and making this story a pseudo-Science Fiction. I think I probably have spent the past few weeks just fighting with myself if I should even write this, but in the end I decided to do so, if only because I love the idea too much not to want to write it, even if people will (possibly rightfully) bash me for it.
A part of me says that it’s fine since this is in a good part something of a wish-fulfillment fest of a thread who hadn’t an ounce of plausible since its beginning; the other says that even if the latter part is true, I should still try and make things at least somewhat realistic at first glance.
Well, now I’m rambling, god damnit.

So, to people reading this, just say your opinion on this update so I know the general opinion on this, if people disliked it or if I’m just being overly paranoid. If most of you disliked it… I don’t know, maybe I’ll make it that you can see it as a non-canonical update? I mean, this update won't really interact with the rest of the TL so its not like it would be that difficult to do so I think. Well, time will tell, right?

Also, before I forget, props to @Oliveia whose ideas on Lunar terraforming in their discontinued TL served as the basis for the ones used here

A Brief History of Extraterrestrial Travel
The space and, possibly most importantly, the Moon have always fascinated humankind, the stars and planets that we are capable of seeing have been, in a way, with us since the beginnings of not only civilization, but humanity at its earliest, when we were barely more than apes walking on two legs. For eons she [the Moon] remained there, untouched and out of reach for all, inspiring artists and scientists who never saw her in any way beyond the side that is illuminated by the Sun.

She [the Moon] was also one of the first to inspire the sheer idea of mankind traveling beyond Earth’s atmosphere, with the 19th century seeing the first books to imagine the idea of traveling to the Moon, who in the beginning of the 20th century served as the spark that shot the opening salvo for the era of extraterrestrial travel.

The science behind it and the section around its research begun slowly, when the first scientists started to theorize it during the time of the First World War, with Robert H. Goddard, an american engineer and physicist, being responsible for, in 1917, publish “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes”, a scientific paper that made, for the first time in history, the idea of a spacefaring vehicle a engineering possibility.

During the interwar period the research into the matter of rockets and spaceflight continued, with the Germans being the first to develop a rocket capable of reaching beyond the Earth’s outer atmosphere, launching their KW-5 in 1945 and in general continuing to study flight-related technology up until the Second World War and French occupation ended abruptly their research shortly before what was planned to be the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite.

Many scientists involved in those projects, fearing what may happen to them (in part due to the allied tendency to get rid of enemy scientists when they didn’t force said scientists to work in their own projects), fled into either neutral Europe or Albion, where the need for bigger and better bombs and missiles caused the research into rocket technology to suddenly skyrocket (pun absolutely intended) as the Axis added said fleeing scientists to their own programs in the war.

It was in a grand part due to the Second World War that spaceflight technology developed to the point of being capable of bringing mankind to the Moon, with the only reason why some kind of manned mission to space didn’t happen in the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s being the focus on reestablishing the economy and returning the world to a level of normalcy not seen since the 1940s.

Finally, on July 19th, 1965, after years of planning in a multinational effort involving Albion, Brazil, Russia, Germany, Japan and the USSA, the first men to land on the Moon were launched on the Luna-9 Rocket, a liquid-fuel rocket not dissimilar from what had been proposed as far back as the 1920s. Four days later, in the 23rd, they landed on the satellite, spelling the true beginning of the Space Age.

“Today, I am happy to tell you this, to all of those in our great world. Man has done what was long-since though impossible and landed on the Moon. And I shall tell you, this is not the end of an era of ambition, of the hubris of our nations united in a single banner, but the dawn of a new age to all of mankind!”

Excerpt from M.K. Gandhi’s speech at the doors of the Imperial Space Agency HQ following the confirmation that the men of the Luna-9 Mission had made to the ground of the Moon. The elderly mission control director died less than a week later, at the age of 95, expressing his contentment that he managed to see his greatest desire occurring and now could rest

Since then, extraterrestrial travel has only developed – the early Cold War being in special an era when the development of cheaper, more efficient and safer spacefaring vehicles sped-up – with the creation of the first nuclear-powered spaceship occurring in 1977 while the late 1990s and the 2000s saw the development of the first solar-powered space vehicles, with a hybrid nuclear-solar one being firstly launched in 2011. The size of the vehicles has also risen over time as the necessities of cargo capacity and transport overtook the need for fast travel, in part motivating the develop of non-fuel-based vehicles to diminish the costs of travel as the quantities of fuel necessary became inhumanly high.
With the de-escalation of the Cold War in the 2000s, there has also been a return to international projects, with Brazil and Albion beginning in 2012 the Ares Project, a planned mission to Mars in what was the two countries first spatial endeavor together since 1969. Launched with a multinational crew of 9 on June 12th, 2018, the Ares IV mission reached the Red Planet on March 16th, 2019, being the first humans to ever set foot on Mars and established a mostly-underground base at the Acidalia Planitia, where they are still currently living at, being set to return to Earth when the Ares V comes to Mars in 2025.

Humanity’s Expanse
Almost as soon as mankind reached the Moon, mankind though about how to colonize Her. Although technically started with the International Base in 1969[1], it was only in 1973 that the theorizing in relation to how to colonize the Moon came to fruition, when a group of scientists[2] headedby the Russo-Ukrainian Mikhail Gorbachev developed the KTS Colonization Procedure (KTS being an acronym for “Kupolopodibne Teraformovane Seredovyshche” or “Domed Terraformed Environment” in Ukrainian), which has since then dominated both applied and planned human colonization efforts.

In short, the procedure starts with the crafting of a large[3] “habitation dome”, a strong mostly-glass[4] dome that has the primary function of conserving a breathable atmosphere; conserving of heat; protecting those inside from UV radiation; protecting against asteroid-based impacts and managing the light absorbed and reflected into it[5]. Following that a self-sufficient primordial habitat is established, with the introduction of simple and resilient CO2-breathing and O2-breathing organisms for the creation of an inhabitable atmosphere and the early stages of terraforming[6], helped by the robot-based mining of ice from either the lunar surface or asteroids orbiting or bombarding the moon[7], which with the heating of the area inside the dome will melt into lakes and pseudo-streams. Following the establishment of a semi-habitable environment, the gradual introduction of other organisms is started, beginning with fungi and more simple plants to terraform the soil into a more usable and earth-like type[8], following which human colonization is theoretically possible, although some prefer to leave the environment in a wild manner some years for it to “settle in”. Some go as far as to compare these habitation domes to an ecosphere in a jar only enlarged by dramatic proportions.

Generally the process of “pre-colonization” from the building of the dome to the earliest inhabitable moment takes about 8 years to over a decade – depending in a great part on the size of the dome, effort placed on the project, funding and the methods used in terraforming –, and was at the beginning the most sound reason against any colonization of the moon, as the first of the modern domes was started in 1975 as an international project and was nearly abandoned hallway into it due to its cost, causing the development of the first nuclear-powered spaceship just to permit it’s continuation.

The first dome on the moon was finally finished in 1984, being made into an extension of the International Base’s status as a condominium between the world’s major powers, and since then mankind has completed and settled a total of 25 of them, the smallest being, ironically, their first one (which is the size of a village or small town) while the largest, finished in 2017 by the Japanese, is nearly the size of Ireland. In total there are 31 inhabitable/finished domes in the Moon, connected by a network of tunnels and underground railways, while other 7 are currently in some stage of their development.

Besides the domes, there are also some bases in the satellite, mostly as stopping points in between said domes or as scientific or utilitarian bases, like for example the Galilee Telescope[9], whose position on the moon’s South Pole makes it the farthest-seeing satellite currently in use, being capable of catching even some of the oldest stars on the Universe (Population III stars), while solar panel complexes on both North and South Poles at the satellite’s peaks of eternal light produce much of the energy and heat supply in the domes[10].

Mankind’s expanse outside of the Moon has been mostly an unfocused one, consisting of the Ares IV base in Mars, established by Albion and Brazil in 2019, and of unmanned missions on the Asteroid Belt sent to extract samples from said asteroids or bump them into the Moon’s direction so the terraforming projects can extract their ice and use it.​

Spoiler: Notes

[1] The first endeavor in building something on the Moon, the project was planned almost as soon as the satellite was reached and took two years of firstly sending the pieces of the base and then expanding it underground to settle and expand it. Although originally sealed from the outside world, the base’s status as the first man-made structure on the Moon made it a prime spot to center the first dome, with the reformed and expanded International Base serving as the geographical center of the International Dome, although it has long-since stopped being a lunar base and become an open building that also serves as a the public and comercial center of the dome
[2] More of a small army with over 500 different scientists of almost all areas of research imaginable
[3] Originally large for the scope of the project (although its size is in modern times considered somewhat small), over time as human presence in the Moon expanded it became easier to build domes in site, making the building of larger domes (in light of the moon’s weak gravity) a possibility that was soon acted upon
[4] Although he basis of the domes is “glass” they include a variety of substances in their makeup to be the closest to indestructible they possibly can, their bases in specific are a wide array of strong and non-corruptible materials that often go deep into the lunar ground to prevent any vegetation or terraforming from breaking the Dome’s seal
[5] Through a system of reflective shields on the domes, they can bot reflect light into the dome during times when it isn’t receiving sunlight due to the phases of the moon as well as reflect light out of it in a manner that make the image seen on earth not change even with the domes being there, as even at the beginning of colonization projects there was no desire to affect the psyche of people on Earth due to changes on the Moon’s appearance
[6] In general bacteria, unicellular plants, unicellular fungi, algae and zooplankton. Since the dangers of anthropogenic global warming became known in the 1990s there has been also the use of this phase of terraforming to deal with the causes of said global warming, as most nations have come to use of their industries’ CO2 output to speedup this phase by collecting the gaseous CO2 and basically saturating the primordial domed atmosphere with it, making it warm-up and heightening the disponible “food” for the CO2-processing organisms of the terraforming process
[7] Any and all asteroids used are previously scanned as to see if they either have something that makes them unfit to provide water (generally some sort of toxicity in their ice) or have microbial life on them, the latter being due to moral reasons. As of the end of 2020 no instance of the second has occurred
[8] Some also try to make things easier (due to the Moon’s soil having a chemical makeup that makes it somewhat unfit to use unless treated) and just transport as much soil form earth as they can and dump it inside the dome
[9] Built in 1998, it is officially an Albish Territory but is also an international disarmed zone
[10] Although there is also thermal power produced as well, the main focus of the PEL is solar energy, which is produced nigh-continuously (only stopping for repairs or in the areas that are only “almost eternal” in their light) in such high levels that they can sincerely power much of the satellite, being responsible, for example, for much of the energy used in the routes connecting domes and in many of the domes and bases themselves. Interestingly, they are territorially divided between Albion, Japan, Brazil and Russia, who make some money off-of selling their excess energy

The Moon and Her Inhabitants
Section I, Transport to the Moon​

Originally, those who inhabited the Moon were, perhaps obviously, the scientists and astronauts of the International Base and later the First Dome, who stayed there for set periods of time in missions and came and wet through the use of rockets and the International Space Station.

When, finally, the first civilians came over to the Moon in 1988, mostly to work and provide to the de facto scientific outpost that was the First Dome, it was rapidly understood by the governments involved that they would need to change their approach to how to bring people in, developing the first Helicarriers in their focus for transport capacity instead of speed as nuclear power became somewhat of the norm for the “fuel” of Earth-to-Moon transport[1].
Since then, the process, timespan and frequency of the travel to the Moon has in general remained the same overall. Generally one helicarrier can carry the equivalent of a small town in people, and due to the time needed for it to reach the Moon, a travel between Her and the Earth lasts around two weeks at standard speed, reason why a helicarrier is often compared to a bland cruise ship IN SPACE by those who use it. Due to the relatively small number of helicarriers in use (there are only 32 of them, even if they can carry over 5.000[2] passengers with relative ease), the time it takes for completion, and the necessity for an at least acceptable[3] weather for them to take flight, generally trips to the Moon occur once a month depending on the country, with the ones who have a “large” fleet being capable of doing more than one travel a month.​

Spoiler: Notes

[1] There have always been fears over what would it mean if one of the nuclear-powered ones exploded, crashed (somehow) or was attacked in the air (in special in the upper atmosphere), reason why the mining of Tralphium (or Helium-3) on the Moon came as a major boon to the process as since 2012 all nuclear-powered Helicarriers have as their fuel the substance, who although needing higher temperatures to reach fusion, does not cause the materials involved with it to become radioactive
[2] The max capacity for a helicarrier is around double that, although very rarely does one need to use it
[3] The sky doesn’t need to be open, but it can’t have anything worse than a weak/medium rain

Section II, Moving to the Moon
Although not exactly difficult, officially moving and settling on the Moon has never been (and probably will never be) a piece of cake for those who want to do it, even when their home country actively encourages its civilians to do it the process takes from six months to over a year.
Ironically, it was at the beginning a slightly easier process to do, in no small part due to the fact that some of the first domes completed on the Moon after the First One were initially settled as de facto penal colonies or as a place to settled the homeless, and so, for a time, immigrating to the Moon was relatively easy, comprehending basically an agreement that you wouldn’t do anything stupid in either the helicarrier or on the Moon and the government wasn’t liable if you did so.
As the first years went on and more was discovered, moving to the Moon became a somewhat harder task as most governments started to make sure people understood all that entailed going there, and so, as time went on, the bureaucracy and stages of the process grew exponentially as the need for physical tests, liability agreements and psychological tests were added.
By 2020, moving (although visits and tourism is still a common and relatively fast thing) to the moon, even when you are moving to a location under the same flag as your previous home, is a process more akin to emigrating to another country entirely. Nonetheless, thousands do that decision every year, with her population growing slowly but steadily every year from immigration as much as from births.

Section III, the Moon and the Human Body
Now, onto the last part before the talking about the Moon and the locations within Her.
One of the most important things government officials have to hammer in onto the head of a potential Lunar[1] is that living permanently or even mostly on the Moon is not a walk on the park, it is something that can have and has deep effects on the health, body and even the psyche of a human being, the Moon may be beautiful and somewhat alluring, but living on her is a daunting and tasking effort.

1. Gravity
Possibly the most important thing to consider about life on the Moon is gravity, or, more specifically, its lack.

While the Moon has a gravity (as any body with mass above 0 tends to have), it is only about a sixth of what a human being would experience on Earth, which while not overly tasking on the body in short periods of time, has visible effects the longer you say under microgravity.
A person living on the Moon is expected to gradually lose some of their bone density the longer they stay in the Moon, with the loss per-year, while less than that of an individual living on a 0 G environment, being still dramatic enough for people who have lived a long period of time in the Moon to have visible effects on their body, as without any preventive measures a person returning from the Moon after years if not decades living there will probably not even be capable of walking under the Earth’s gravity.
Besides bones, muscles and organs also suffer in a similar manner, even if not equally, as the heart and lungs in special come to exert less force and work to do the same processes they did on Earth, with someone who has lived for a longer period of time on the Moon being liable to respiratory and heart problems if they come back to Earth either unprepared or without having worked to prevent the bulk of said effects[2].
Finishing the physiological effects of the Moon’s gravity is, of course, the matter of childbearing and what effects the Moon’s gravity has over children, which has been for decades the most contentious issue involving the satellite and any colonization that has been done involving it.
Although at the beginning there wasn’t really any preparation for the matter (seeing as how the first groups to settle in didn’t include children or pregnant women, and for a time no reproduction occurred), the first child to be born on the moon came in January 20th, 1992, and showed that the effects of a pregnancy at a sixth of the earth’s gravity, while not mortal to the fetus, was still responsible for the baby to come later and less developed than it normally would. Besides that, the effects of being gestated in microgravity also showed when the baby, Dorcas Smyth, was brought down to Earth, having a weaker heart, lungs and muscles than even a premature baby.
Since then, with raising children on the Moon becoming a reality, it has become known that, although not exactly life-threatening[3], going through your development years on the satellite has effects similar to those on an adult, only in exponential levels, with people who grew-up on the Moon (their first generation having reached adulthood in the late 2000s and the 2010s) suffering through the need of physiotherapy just to be capable of moving around on Earth, and even then there is not enough data[4] to know what long-term or permanent effects the gravity will have on them.
Due to those problems, most governments advise people who know they are expecting to stay on Earth for the duration of their pregnancy if possible, and those who can often have their children grow up on Earth instead of the Moon, so they won’t need to deal (or at least not on the same level) with the effects of the microgravity in their young adulthood. For adults the main advice to deal with the effects of microgravity has been – and probably will ever be – exercise, preferably as much as possible, as doing so, while not completely negating the effects of microgravity, does weaken them[5].

After gravity, the three main dangers/effects of the Moon on humans, while not by any means harmless, are generally considered minor when compared to it. They may be dangerous and may kill people, but treatment to them is something with definite results.

2. Lunar Soil
Firstly there is the matter of the soil of the Moon, whose composition makes it optimal as the basis for lunar domes, producing a strong glass-like substance, but whose dust is a danger to the health and safety of anyone who enters in contact with it. Now, while normally the terraforming of the land inside the dome has the effect of weathering its dust into manageable levels, its chemistry[6] makes it somewhat dangerous to breathe[7], while its non-terraformed version, which can be found outside of domes and when a project inside of a dome involves digging, can be dangerous due to it being akin to cement dust, a fine and sharp particle than can cause lacerations and clings to clothing easily, causing even more respiratory problems than its counterpart.

3. Mind
Second comes the psychological effects of living on the Moon, as especially during the beginning of a settler’s life on the Moon the change of how they see the night sky, the 180° change of the night-day cycle, the reality of the Lunar day-night cycle[8], and the sheer effects of the Moon’s weaker gravity on human life[9], which together explain why most lunar settlements have surprisingly robust mental health programs.

4. Solar Radiation
And, lastly, the UV rays that come from the Sun, who, although not as harsh as they would be had not been for the composition of the domes blocking most of them, are still a reality for long-term inhabitants of the Moon and those who work outside of the protection of the domes. While not exactly mortal, cancer does appear on a higher percentage on the Moon than the global average on Earth, and the chances of mutations are higher for children born and raised there.
​

Spoiler: Notes

[1] One of the various names used to describe people who move to the Moon, its “slurrified” version is “Lunatic”
[2] Interestingly, due to the effects the weaker gravity has on the body, the Moon’s gravity is in fact considered a good thing for some people, as people with locomotive problems, obese people or people with heart and lung conditions (on the sense of them being strained in some manner) have an easier time in the Moon when compared to the Earth, resulting on the seeking of going to Her for health reasons. The elderly do as well, as the gravity places less of a strain on their bodies, and so the Moon is known for having a considerable elderly population
[3] Unless the individual already had health problems in the areas affected even whitout the effects of microgravity, if a person has a naturally weak heart, for example, and grew up on the Moon, they may only be capable of surviving under earth-gravity if they had a heart transplant, or were permanently connected to a machine doing the work of moving their blood
[4] as of 2020
[5] While everyone under microgravity will still have their muscles and bones decay in some level, exercise may be the difference between reaching Earth on a wheelchair or doing so walking
[6] It is more reactive than soil on Earth, although its dust is still better than Mars’, who can be a carcinogen
[7] Lunar soil, in special pre-terraforming, is akin to silica on its effects to the human respiratory system, and inhaling it may cause what is basically the lunar version of silicosis, which is marked by inflammation and scarring of the upper lobes of the lungs
[8] As it has already been said, when a dome on dark it is illuminated by the reflection of the Sun’s light through the system of shields and panels of the domes across the Moon, which while at least capable of providing “natural” illumination and heat to the domes’ inhabitants is not really capable of making it just like real life, with many comparing it to dusk lasting days on end.
[9] This is especially striking on those who have lived up until their adulthood on earth, as the Moon’s less gravity means that anything involving it will have a weaker or stronger result when compared to it happened on Earth (launching something or jumping will go higher, something falling will possibly have less of an impact), and the change on things so trivial for most people are easy to have an effect on a person’s psyche

The Lunar Infrastructure
Although there is a great variety of buildings and infrastructures on the Moon, with the Domes themselves being never exactly like the other[1], there is still some level of classification to be done in relation to them, with the buildings and structures of the Moon being roughly divided into a few categories:

I – The Urban Domes, also known as the Domed Cities
Although all inhabited Domes within the Moon have urban settlements on them, there are some who are specifically made of an urban landscape, with their vegetation being found in parks and green areas while most of their area is covered by buildings big and small. Often planned as such from the beginning, Urban Domes are generally smaller[2] and have their infrastructure and landscape projected and built with a final bigger picture in mind, being compared to planned cities on Earth as their streets, railways, waterways and even specific buildings are almost always already mapped out even years before settlement is started on them, with some city-planners even having the fun of creating wider images using the map of the domes[3].

II – The Rural Domes, also known as the Domed Countries
The general opposite of the Urban Domes, being often larger[4] than them and having a less orderly appearance, with their landscape being covered mostly by rural or forested areas with few heavily-urban areas, the Rural Domes make up the majority of the domes on the Moon, being responsible for the basic feeding of much the satellite’s population although they in general do not have that large of a population[5]. Some have, to the economical basis of these domes on agriculture and livestock, come to equate the rural domes with the older kinds of colonization where settlers come to build and farm their new land, saying that they are the places where “real” colonization is happening on the Moon.

III – The Uninhabited Domes, also known as the Abandoned Domes
The type of dome with the smallest number of representatives, they are the domes who, although perfectly inhabitable, are either entirely lacking a human population or have a small researcher-based one[6]. Interestingly, besides that there isn’t any other connection between these domes, as the reasons for their lack of habitants and why they haven’t returned are varied and unique, going from the desire to leave a dome to terraform for a longer period of time, a dome having been abandoned after a uprising, a dome being turned into a reservation, or even a dome that is an underwater habitat.

IV – The Developing Domes, also known as the Ongoing Works
What it says on the tin, really, they are the domes that are in a stage of their development, from building to late terraforming

V – The Research Centers, also known as the Lunar Scientist Bases
One of the more – shall we say – unique aspects of lunar colonization are the research centers established on the planet, focused on studying the Moon herself[7] or use her location as a primal spot for studying the cosmos[8]. They are as numerous as they are varied in their nature, going from simple research stations inhabited solely by scientists and maybe some workers[9] all the way to colonies with their own small towns inhabited not only by scientists but by their families, other workers of the centers and an entire support system around them all[10].
In relation to the general structure they also can vary wildly depending on their location and scale; some are just small steel buildings made to resist the solar winds and the lunar dust while others are underground complexes housing thousands[11] and others even have their own domes to support them, even if they aren’t considered as being a part of the Lunar Domes[12]

VI – The Travelways, also known as the Underground, the Lunar Railways or the Lunar Grid
The network of underground tunnels connection most if not all of the structures on the Moon[13], the Travelways are in nature akin to a bullet-train that was mixed with a cargo-train and the metro systems down on Earth, having underground railways and trains who go across the satellite at often absurd speeds as they travel in between the domes and various structures on the satellite, having mostly one stop at each of them.
Although generally speaking the Travelways are less like a metro and more like an underground planetary railway, they are still connected to both the undergrounds of the domes and some others[14] and have some accompanying tunnels that can be used to travel by foot or wheel, often serving to connect them to smaller underground stops, being agreed-upon travel stop with stores and services or serving to help with discharging of peoples and products depending on the location.

VII – The Underground Settlements, also known as Mining Towns or Mole Cities
As the name says, they are the various underground settlements that exist across the Moon, going from a few dozen to thousands in their populations[15] and extending far and wide across the lunar crust, they are the venture for colonization when people can’t or aren’t interested in living in or creating a new dome, and although one of their alternate names is correct on the fact that many of them have economies based on the mining of minerals, Helium-3 or just lunar soil in general[16], that does not mean it is the norm for all of them, with many of the larger underground settlements, which are generally the ones known as “Mole Cities”, being in fact no different from the cities on either the Domes or even on Earth, with their maps comprehending a mix of corridors/streets and large halls that serve as parks and major connections points.
Due to their location and general size (most are still small), many underground cities are not actually connected to the Travelways directly, and instead either are located around stops (serving as small travel-towns), use stops as the base of their settlement[17] or are connected to them through smaller tunnels and underground rails. Some underground settlements also serve as satellite cities of domes (mostly the Urban ones), being connected to them through localized underground grids.

VIII – The Vaulted Settlements, also known as the Bowl Towns
Vaulted Settlements are basically what occurs when someone takes one of the large abandoned holes created by mining on surface[18], places a hermetic glass ceiling over them, and starts settling the hole with people without placing much focus on terraforming[19]. These settlements, which are admittedly not numerous, are neither here or there in the scale between domes and underground towns when speaking of settling the Moon, being often small towns or villages built on the sides of the man-made ravines that make their landscape protected from the dangers of the lunar surface by their ceiling, which is at its core a scaled-down version of a dome.
While they are often not terraformed outside of the basics, most vaulted settlements have, interestingly, an agroeconomic basis for their economy and lifestyle, either growing livestock or farming hardy produce[20]. They are also sometimes compared to Switzerland for some reason, as they somewhat resemble Swiss valleys in their geography, economy and general climate

IX – Others
And, finally, any of the other smaller structures on the Moon, like “astroports”[21] or prisons[22]​

Spoiler: Notes

[1] Although there are some conventions in relation to Lunar colonization, most countries involved on it tend to like being more “original” when they reach the developing and “landscaping” of a Dome following the end of initial terraforming
[2] Although when compared to early domes in general Urban Domes are neither big nor small, in comparison to more recent ones they are admittedly on the small size, with the largest of them having roughly the size of Londonshire
[3] One example being the city of Romanovgrad, whose street, rail and channel grids comprehend a set of dozens upon dozens of circles creating a pseudo-floral pattern, while New Rotterdam looks like a stylish eye when you look from above
[4] The largest inhabited dome in existence at the moment is the Mikado Dome, with a total area near that of Ireland, which is almost entirely covered by agriculture and vegetation even on its settlements, which resemble traditional Japanese villages more than any other type of urban settlement
[5] Although that is not always the case, the Eerie Dome (whose area is equivalent to Greater Wales), for example, is rural but has a total population large enough to be 5th among the most populous domes on the Moon (having nearly 7 million inhabitants) due to having a large urban settlement within its mostly-rural area
[6] Often on the hundreds or few thousands, although we say researcher-based they are more akin to the populations of larger research centers with families and connected service-providers also living there
[7] Mostly studying the nature of the Moon’s creation, astronomical or geological phenomena that only occur on her, the resources of the Moon and even the effects of the Moon on living beings (there’s one whose studies using tardigrades are being quite interesting)
[8] A prime example being the Galilee Telescope mentioned beforehand
[9] Like guards (to deal with any “funny businesses”), repair/maintenance workers and service workers (like cleaning). Sometimes relatives can also live there if they are helping with any projects or day-to-day running of the base
[10] Although originally relatives weren’t much of a thing, after the understanding that having them there would help majorly with the mental health and stability of scientists it has become something of the norm for larger (and even smaller) bases to have the resident researchers bring in with them their entire families, who will in turn need normal services resulting on the creating of a de facto settlement with shops and even schools, even if it all is rotating the base itself
[11] The largest probably being the Nzinga Research Center, whose population comprehends nearly 12.000 people
[12] They are made from the same materials and have much of the same principles as domes, but since they are generally incredibly small (in comparison to most Domes) and weren’t the initial step of the center they are located on any dome related to a research center is considered an entirely different breed than the Lunar Domes
[13] Having at least one central stop at every dome and major research center and underground settlement
[14] Like nearby underground settlements
[15] The largest “mole city” is Anderstown, who reached the population of 48 thousand in 2020
[16] Which is used to make the strong glass that comprises much of the structure of any Dome on the Moon
[17] Those often being less official in their nature and going as far as to resemble shanty towns
[18] Just look-up open-pit mining and you’ll see it, but for example the Mir Diamond Mine is an open-pit mine
[19] Some just went with pumping in a breathable atmosphere from domes and most stopped after the local air became breathable using the “organic” method, few vaulted settlements actually went all the way with the terraforming
[20] Potatoes and cold-resistant plants on special, some also use transgenic produce
[21] The landing stations for helicarriers (the name “astroports” being just a commonly-used nickname), they are generally located near Domes as – for rather obvious reasons – no aircraft can actually land inside of domes from outside of them
[22] Although minimum security prisons are generally located on common places inside domes, higher-security ones are mostly located by themselves on the lunar surface, seeing as how one can’t actually escape if opening a hole on the cell door will cause a fatal decompression for themselves

The Political Map of the Moon
Finishing things up are the various nations who have control over some part or the other of the Moon

​

Spoiler: On a folder to not make this Too long

I – The International Dome (total population of 50.248)
The main internationally-held part of the Moon, the ID is also the first dome to ever be built on the satellite, being a condominium between Albion, Brazil, Russia, Japan, Germany, the UHI, Portugal, the Hashemites, Ethiopia, Egypt and California. The dome itself is rather small, having the size of about a small town, and serves almost solely as a center of international diplomacy and commerce on the Moon, being colloquially known as the lunar equivalent of the League of Nation's HQ

II – Albion
Territory: 10 finished domes[1], of whom 2 are urban, 5 are rural and 1 is uninhabited; 51 underground settlements and 3 vaulted settlements; as well as another 48 others, including the Galilee Telescope and part of the polar solar panels
Administration: federation between the domes with all settled locations being under a central government headed by a Viceroy and Cabinet appointed by London (currently Her Excellency the Baroness Ferguson)
Population: 52.2 million inhabitants

- Pendragon (Urban Dome) 7.4 million​

- Eerie (Rural Dome) 6.9 million​

- Anderstown (Underground Settlement) 48.000​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population of Bharati origin​

- Large minorities of Anglican, Irish and Black origin​

- Small minorities of Russian, Chinese, Jewish, Spanish, Boer and Italian origin, as well as various other nigh-insignificant minorities of other origins​

Notes:

- The only uninhabited dome under Albion is Plymouth, a semi-urban[2] dome finished in 1986 which was inhabited until 1999; it rose in rebellion under the command of a Christian Fundamentalist group called the Sons of Jacob in 1995 and was held by them until 1999 when the dome fell into civil war and ended up annihilated by a genetically-modified version of the La Llorona Virus that had been guarded on a research center within the dome since 1992. After the survivors were taken from the dome withouth permission to bring anything with them[3], it was permanently abandoned as both a memorial and an example and nowadays it is something of a morbid tourist attraction and studying field as the virus has long since died-out and the ruins have been overtaken by nature​

[1] Most recent one being “Jessamine”, finished in 2016 and named after the late empress
[2] Had an urban focus but was mostly covered by greenery
[3] Not even clothing, which was burned as soon as they were decontaminated for quarantine

III – Brazil
Territory: 8 finished domes, of whom 2 are urban, 3 are rural and 3 are uninhabited; 37 underground settlements and 55 others
Administration: All domes are administrated as slightly-more autonomous provinces of Brazil, while settlements are either added to the nearest dome’s province or are considered a territory, there is no overarching administration outside of the Brazilian central government
Population: 45.1 million inhabitants

- Braganza (Urban Dome) 7.1 million​

- Pindorama (Rural Dome) 6.3 million​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population of “Brazilian”[1] origin​

- Large minorities of Black, Middle Eastern, Japanese and Indian origin​

- Small minorities of various other origins​

Notes:

- Of the three uninhabited domes of Brazil (Cabralia, Santa Cruz and Gama), the first two are due to a desire to leave the domes through a longer period of terraforming, having been finished in 1998 and 2006 respectively but still having almost no population, the last one, in turn, is a natural reservation that is on the process of being made, with its only inhabitants being maintenance workers, zoologists and scientists​

[1] Portuguese basis with the addition of indigenous, black and immigrant ancestry and traits

IV – Russia
Territory: 5 domes, of whom 1 is urban, 3 are rural and 1 is uninhabited; 33 underground settlements and 2 vaulted settlements; as well as 14 others
Administration: Russia does mostly as it does on earth, with most of their lunar territory being divided into oblasts and krais, the only domes not administrated as such as the Svobodnaya and Novorossiya domes, as the former is a de facto protectorate/vassal while the latter is an autonomous tsardom
Population: 27.8 million

- Romanovgrad (Urban Dome) 4 million​

- Novorossiya (Rural Dome) 4 million​

- Mir (Vaulted) 83.000​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population of Russian or Polish origins​

- Large minorities of Manchurian, Cossack and Khazak origins​

- Small minorities of various other origins​

Notes:

- Although Russia is a soft leninist monarchy, her second-largest of her rural dome is de facto independent from the empire in most aspects, being settled and mostly administrated by anarchists who fled from Earth to their “refuge” on the satellite and ended up cutting a deal with the Russians following the failed establishment of the United Lunar Socialist State in the late 1990s​

V – Japan
Territory: 3 domes, of whom 1 is urban, 1 is rural and 1 is uninhabited; 18 underground settlements and 1 vaulted settlement; as well as 26 others
Administration: all domes, settlements and others are administrated within the Japanese provinces/prefectures
Population: 31.9 million

- Tsukimiyako (Urban Dome) 28 million​

- Mikado (Rural Dome) 3.1 million​

- Tataraba (Vaulted Settlement) 154.000​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population of Japanese origins​

- Minorities of Ainu, Okinawan, Oceanian and Taiwanese origins​

Notes:

- Japan’s only uninhabited dome is Ryūgū, who, as the name could possibly imply, is a dome around the size of Kyushu (and which was built differently to not be that tall, so it isn’t an exact dome) whose insides were made into the closest thing the Moon has to a sea, as it was filled with seawater (and melted ice from extracted meteorites that was treated to resemble seawater) almost to its top and turned into mankind’s largest aquarium whose ecosystem is just now coming into truly being after nearly 20 years of administration. The dome does actually have a visible population of some 10.000 people on the man-made islands on the small part of it that is not filled with water​

VI – UHI
Territory: 2 domes, both rural; 9 underground settlements and 5 vaulted settlements; and 7 others
Administration: there is some overarching administration (led by an appointed Viceroy) but domes and vaulted settlements are ruled either directly or nominally by branches of the Imperial Dynasty and some other noble families in a semi-feudal manner
Population: 10 million

- New Silesia (Dome) 4.9 million​

- Kropfenstein (Vaulted) 72.000​

Demographics:

- Slight majority of the population of Hungarian origins​

- Minorities of German, Serbian, Slovakian, Moravian, Bosnian and Turkic origins​

Notes:

- Although the Hapsburgs seem to have used the Moon as something of a familial dumping ground, with most of their territory being ruled by minor branches of the dynasty, they are surprisingly dedicated in making the administration of their colonies a smooth and efficient process for a group that has decided bringing back feudalism is in vogue​

- The hapsburg lunar territories have a surprisingly large Romani population, with about a third of their total population within the UHI living on the Moon​

VII – Germany
Territory: 1 dome, which is semi-urban[1]; 13 underground settlements and 2 vaulted settlements; and 22 others
Administration: German territory on the Moon is administrated as colonies of the empire (if with more leeway than past colonies on Earth) while New Rotterdam on itself is a pseudo-condominium with the Netherlands
Population: 6.7 million

- New Rotterdam (Dome) 5.8 million​

- Kürstin (Vaulted) 21.000​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population of German origins​

- Minorities of Polish, Danish and French origins​

Notes:

- Germany’s dome is actually sort-of a condominium between it and the Netherlands, as the project was a cooperation between the two nations, because of that New Rotterdam is probably the closest you can find to a place with international borders on the Moon, as half of it is administrated by the Dutch and the other by the Germans​

[1] It has a large urban area, but it also has a large covering of countryside

VIII – Egypt
Territory: 1 dome, which is semi-rural; 18 underground settlements; and 24 others
Administration: all territories are within the provinces of Egypt, if in a relationship akin to OTL French ultramarine departments
Population: 6.4 million

- New Memphis (Dome) 6.1 million​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population of Sudanese origins​

- Minorities of Egyptian, Berber, Arabic and Italian origins​

Notes:

- Islam on the Moon is a wide mix, with the Egyptians having under their rule both traditional Muslims (which saw the need for much research and calculations due to things like finding the position of Mecca using the Moon as a base) and many sects that either came to the Moon or were literally born due to the changed caused by living on it​

IX – California
Territory: 1 dome, which is rural; 44 underground settlements; and 5 others
Administration: an utter mess that resembles a patchwork of company towns
Population: 5 million

- Liberty (Dome) 4.8 million​

Demographics: the population is almost equally divided between Hispanic and English origins
Notes:

- California is the only country who entirely based their colonization effort on private enterprises (only three of its underground settlements and 2 of its research facilities are government-funded-and-run), and its presence on her is compared less to other nations like Albion and Brazil and more to the East India Company​

X – Liechtenstein
Territory: 1 dome, which is rural, 1 underground settlement, 5 vaulted settlements, and 1 research center
Administration: the administration of the territories is done on a settlement-level due to the nature of settlement and semi-feudal nature of Liechtenstein on itself, while an overarching administration over the land is present in the form of the members of the Princely family who live on the Moon
Population: 982.000

- New Liechtenstein (Dome) 717.000​

- Leopoldsburg (Underground) 3.500​

- New Eschen (Vaulted) 24.000​

Demographics: the ethnocultural makeup of the territory is an utter mess, although German-Italians are a slight majority
Notes:

- The only case on the Moon where the country doing the colonization is actually smaller than the area it is colonizing, Liechtenstein enterprise on colonization, which started quite early on the 1980s even, was backed almost solely by its ruling family, the absurdly rich House of Liechtenstein, who used their personal fortunes and some loans from Albion and the UHI to build their dome and used it and later investments to make all the money back through the selling of lands to settlement​

XI – Korea
Territory: 1 dome, which is urban, 15 underground settlements, 3 vaulted settlements, and 16 others
Administration: the entire territory is considered an autonomous province within Korea, with the various settlements and the dome being divided into boroughs for local administration
Population: 11.3 million

- New Seoul (Dome) 10.5 million​

- Baekje (Vaulted) 403 million​

Demographics:

- Majority of the population is of Sino-Korean origins​

- Minorities of Japanese, European and Thai origins​

Notes:

- Korea is the only colonial power on the Moon who has mostly urban areas under its control, with New Seoul being about two-thirds urban while outside of it only the vaulted settlements are rural, most of its research centers are also known for not having domes even when their population is equivalent to that of towns​

​

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To everyone who has finished this, sorry if the end was a bit rambly or a jumbled mess, I had been stuck on it for days and in the end doing that bulletpoint list was the only thing that came to my mind​

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

Although originally sealed from the outside world, the base’s status

Was there to be more?

 

[Peppe]

Was there to be more?

Yeah, I think I probably ended up erasing it at some point by accident and never noticed, I'll correct it.

 

[Deleted member 77383]

What proxy wars had occurred in the Cold War? And what’s terrorism and civil unrest like in the USSA as well as the world?

 

[Peppe]

What proxy wars had occurred in the Cold War? And what’s terrorism and civil unrest like in the USSA as well as the world?

In relation to the proxy wars that happened in the ITTL Cold War, I admit I haven't though of every single one of them (various nations had guerilla insurrections and minor wars) but there are some "major" ones:
- The War of the Malian Succession (1966-1975), which is the TL's rough equivalent to both Vietnam and Korea and started as a normal civil war before becoming a proxy conflict. Ended in a Brazilian-aligned victory although by that point Albion wasn't focused on the conflict anymore
- The Scandinavian War (1972-1974), the war that resulted on the changed map of Scandinavia fought between the Nordic Federation and a semi-facistic Sweden, technically an Albish-aligned victory
- The Cuban Troubles (1980s to the 2000s), a proxy war based almost entirely around guerillas fighting each-other that started after Cuba was unified following the 1982 Crisis and lasted until the de-escalation of the Cold War in the 2000s
- The Zanzibari Civil War (the first, not the modern, lasting from 1985 to 1988), which saw a Albish-aligned victory
- The War in Mozambique (1989-2015), an unique case of a conflict that started as a proxy war between Brazil and Albion, the Brazilian-supported side of the then civil war ended up collapsing in on itself in 1998 and being absorbed back into the Albish one, and the remainder of the conflict was a lowkey-version of the Syrian Civil War before it finally ended in 2015 after a 4-years-long truce
- The Continuation Wars on the Philippines and China are often considered proxy wars due to sides often having support from either Brazil or Albion, but they are unique beasts that became proxy wars by accident and as such I don't really count them as being it

A point I feel I should make is that there weren't only Brazil.vs.Albion proxy wars on ITTL, as during their short attempt at becoming a superpower the USSA tried their hands in proxy warring on both Europe and the Americas with the October Uprising of the Irish Republican Army, the Third Haitian War and the Rio Grande Uprising in Mexico.

Now, in relation to terrorism and civil unrest, these are the things that I have though upon:
- The USSA is surprisingly lacking on matters of terrorism and civil unrest due to the fact that its government is rather strict on surveillance and gun-laws (outside of government almost no-one has permission to own weapons after the Rockies Uprising) and while resembling the late-USSR they were bafflingly efficient when dealing with beating te racism ou of their citizens through propaganda and example-making
- Outside of the USSA, the world is a mixed bag depending on the region and nation, but here's some highlights:

- Oregon has been on a lowkey war for the past decades with the Mormons, which rise up periodically against the Oregonian rule and have taken some practices from OTL Al-Qaeda (which has created a bad-rep for Mormons outside of Oregon, who mostly consider their Utah cousins a bunch of fanatics)​

- Organized crime is a surprisingly-high cause of civil unrest, a special example being in Italy, where the Three Sicilies are in a de facto war against most mafia families while the Romagna periodically has to deal with them taking over minor towns​

- As gun-laws are rather more strict on most western countries, mass shootings are much rarer than in OTL and often have a more profound impact on people (similar to how Brazil in OTL has had only two mass shootings of note on the past 2 decades and both managed to make the country stop for a bit in shock)​

- Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists are less of a thing ITTL, in special due to the better turn the Middle East had on the TL and due to the fact that Islam is currently going through its equivalent of the Protestant Reformation. It is more of a problem on West Africa, though, mostly due to the Islamic Caliphate that popped-up in the Sokoto Civil War​

- Christian Fundamentalist terrorists, on the other hand, are more common on the West as well as white supremacist and neo-nazi-esque terrorists (South Africa being an example where they were in a de facto insurrection for decades before the Imperial Albish government ended up squashing them after a white supremacist group managed to kill Empress Eleanor)​

- Gender and Sexuality-based hate crimes are, unfortunately, still a thing, but their frequency and scale often depend on the country they occur on (in some they are rare, in others they happen but aren't common, and in even others they are a tangible and often reoccurring cause of strife and suffering)​

- Political-based civil unrest is still a thing, of course, but since that's a complicated matter that I'm not poking even with a ten-meter-long pole I'm just going to say that while powerful or semi-powerful monarchs are the norm and aren't as fragile on the public's support as OTL (monarchies are considered the norm ITTL, so being a republican in is like being a monarchist is in OTL on most places in the TL) there are always disagreements, fanatics and fools (Provence, for example, has the reoccurring problem of its citizens breaking into fights due to the political divide on the country, with the monarch being literally the only politician that is actually viewed as being politically neutral)​

Well, that's what I can draw from my memories and what notes I have on those subjects.
Does anyone have more questions? I'm in the "mood" for answering them.

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

Who is the oldest monarch in this world? And are there any royals who became republican heads of state?

 

[Peppe]

Who is the oldest monarch in this world? And are there any royals who became republican heads of state?

Until his death Philip I of Pontus was the oldest monarch in the world, the one currently is Erediawa, 39th Oba of Benin, who has held the position since 1979 and was born in June 22nd, 1923.. This is for a monarch ruling a sovereign state, if we start speaking of subnational monarchs the position probably goes to Kunihide, Prince of Ijokō (the bit of Luzon that Japan annexed in the 60s), since although he is only a figurehead nowadays (having passed his powers to his son in 2004) he is still de jure the domain's ruler and was born in May 16th, 1910 (there may be one or two subnational monarchs who are older, but lack of documentation makes verifying their age practically impossible).

About royals being the heads of state of republics I admit I hadn't though about that (outside of the founding king of El Salvador) so I'm not actually capable of answering your question, it is a possibility, though, so who knows.