TSWW UCS Map
tehShifty, Todyo1798 - thanks!
Thanks!
Very nice indeed, very imaginative and creative! So we have three main branches of Christianity - Petrine in the east, Pauline in the Celtic lands, and "Serapist" in the Med. What's with the Ludes that makes them such scary chaps?
Two nitpicks:
1. The bit about the "geriatric disease" seems a bit unecessary, and raises the question of why it doesn't spread to their neighbors
2. Greece seems a bit short on mapower to make themselves masters of India and kick China's ass - not to mention the problem of the Gibraltar bottleneck! Why not Serapist Egypt? They could even build a canal or something...
Bruce
High praise indeed
Only the Irish League practice what we would recognise as Christianity (albeit with a rather nasty racial Dominionist streak). The Petrine branch eventually faded away into what is better termed 'Judaism-lite', which bears strong resemblances to OTL Islam - both venerate Jesus as a divinely created teacher and teach that anyone can gain access to the spiritual benefits of the one true religion, provided they observe a strict set of rules. Serapism was influenced by Christian mysticism ITTL (along with Manichaeism) but is a historic faith based around the Greek-Egyptian god
Serapis.
The Ludes fill the basic 'psychotic maniacs from the frozen north' quotient - most infamously their chosen method of executing prisoners of war is impaling them on multiple pikes and carrying them through the streets like rather grisly parade balloons.
The geriatric plague was introduced in an attempt to give the League some unusual stresses that would justify their intensely militarised society and paranoid fanaticism. The plague spreads throughout Europe to some extent, although the sakoku-style isolationism of the League means they take the brunt of each outbreak. Given that Europe is spared the Black Death and Bubonic Plague in this timeline it's hopefully not too much of a stretch.
The low population of the Navigator states does indeed mean they lose most of their empires once Asia starts catching up techwise. Egypt is already Serapist and has built/re-built a canal. From my copious notes:
"Cush/Ethiopia holds sway at the Horn thanks to Greek trade through Egypt, dominating the small Somali and Amharic states around it. Egypt is prospering as the site of the most holy places in Serapistic mystery religion (think the Hejaz in OTL) and has constructed a *Suez Canal in conjunction with Greek and Gutan commercial interests - the zone around the Canal is under Egyptian sovereignty, but international law takes precedence with regard to a wide range of activities including shipping."
The Gibraltar issue is more problematic for the Claudmontese, and I might end up giving them the Rif.
SRegan, that TL is incredibly awesome. What does the rest of the world look like?
Thanks - Here's the rough UCS map on which I based my rendering of Europe. I've already changed several things (e.g. the Balearics, Guttaland, Suebia) and Khitan is just plain wrong. Not shown here are the "Romantic Empires" - tiny private colonies around the mouth of the Amazon funded by European nobility, primarily so they can claim loftier titles than those to which they would otherwise be entitled. The ex-Greek Indian Carnatic should be a lot more splintered - the Hindush Vjarat to the north has successfully practiced divide-and-rule on the newly independent states. The big grey blob in Occidens Australis/Sud-Gronland is the R.S.G.:
"The Rio de la Plata was settled by German colonists, convicts and political dissidents, who took advantage of the confusion caused by the unification and partial re-fragmentation of the German states to sever ties with Europe. Sitting on a wealth of coal and metal, they are one of the world's first truly industrial nations and their huge ironclad fleet is feared by every power in the New World."
