Map Thread VI

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Amazing map, however if they've got (barely) industrial tech will they not have explored more than that. Or are the zombies really, really good ate killing humans?

Well the human zombies are pretty nasty, frequently moving in packs, but it's the zombie wolves, moose, deer and especially rats that are the real problem. And most people prefer to stay in the walled cities rather than risk going out, making there very few explorers.
 
This is a redo (hopefully improved) of an old map, showing the world of "Fate and the Firelance", a short story spin-off of Stephen Baxter's "Time's Tapestry" series.

In this world the Byzantines got ahold of gunpowder much earlier than any European nation OTL, and kicked much ass...

In the current year of 1914, the Roman Empire is the world's greatest power. Under a Serbian ruling dynasty, the Empire is an autocratic police state, conservative and religiously Orthodox, if a bit besotted with retro-Romanism (togas for politicians and pseudo-Centurion outfits for army men are the thing for ceremonial occasions, although in everyday life dress is more similar to western Europe). After several decades of off-again, on-again warfare, they have recently inflicted a crushing defeat on the Chinese, engineered the breakaway of Tibet, and annexed pretty much all of China not allready stuffed full of Han. In the later phases of the war, to overcome dug-in Chinese, they developed their own version of the circa 1918 OTL tank, which the other powers are now scrambling to duplicate. The Empire is generally a leader in gas-powered vehicles, being the world's largest producer of that magical fluid (the Empire of Mejico is number 2).

Allies include Abyssinia, modernizing with Roman help, Thibet, liberated from heavy-handed Chinese dominance, and Tunis-Tripoli, fearful of possible absorbtion by either the French or the Mamluks.

The Chinese are still struggling to put down the revolts that forced them to sue for peace, brought on by harsh wartime taxes, mass conscription, food shortages and a general sense that the Mandate of Heaven had been lost by the current leadership. The Romans had arrived on their northern frontiers more than a century before OTL Russians, and with a more powerful state behind them had been a worry from the start - China has in result worked rather harder to modernize its military, at least, than OTL over the last century and a half, and although rather backwards is strong enough that the Romans never seriously considered invading its heartlands.

With a rather different era of Mongol invasions and aftermath, the House of Osman never ended up in Anatolia, and that talented family instead ended up state-building in OTL Afghanistan and at one time ruled from Bangladesh to Iraq, although there has been some contraction and loss of outlying areas. Although they've lost some battles of their own in Central Asia, scorched earth tactics made the last Roman invasion of Iran a bit of a botch (there are no Safavids in this TL, and Iran is majority-Sunni), and their control remains strong in the core Punjab-Afghanistan (rather more urban and developed than OTL 1914) area. Currently they are allied with the French to contain any further Roman expansion, and stir up trouble for them in Mesopotamia when they can. It is also a not insignificant naval power, with a strong presence in East Africa.

Africa has been carved up into colonial territories in the last few decades, with the British getting some of the best bits and Swahili slavers and adventurers carving out some islamic statelets in the east with Osmanli support. European control remains patchy in some areas, and the Great Lakes area is still a bit politically "fluid", while the Dafuri Emirs retain a precarious independence based on the Mamluks and the British not wanting the other guy to have it.

France is rather different from OTL, centuries of off-and-on warfare against the Byzantines making France into a more militarized and brutally efficient state than OTL - a bit like Prussia, and about as democratic as that state before 1848. The French King has given up the title of Holy Roman Emperor as part of the negotiations which have maintained the peace with Rome for most of a human lifetime, but still dominates most of Germany and Italy, and with its powerful Slavic ally dominates the non-Roman parts of continental Europe. With OTL Belgium and the Rhinelands long ago annexed, France is an industrial power rivalling the British: however, the need to maintain massive forces in Europe has prevented France from winning the colonial contest big-time, although it still has managed to gain some territorial pelf. Louisiana is a bit of a headache, given those damn British ex-colonials and their attempts to nab French territory on three seperate occasions. They've never won, but there remains a great deal of bad feeling, and there are import bans on several US products, including tobacco (of which the US is the world's greatest producer). Making a virtue of the thing, the French proclaim smoking to be a filthy US habit, and few smoke in French-dominated Europe.

Denmak-Sweden is something of a British ally and a prosperous constitutional monarchy. The northern Russians managed to stay out of the Roman maw when Constantinople "liberated" southern Russia from Khans and Lithuanian kings, but remain to some extent in the Roman "sphere of influence" and acknowledge the Emperor as the leader of Orthodox Christendom. It's not like they'll fight for him, though.

Spain never came under Habsburg rule or picked up Habsburg commitments, and has done a bit better than OTL: although still losing control of Latin America in the 19th century, they did manage to leave a few royal family butts sitting on American (not call that this ATL) thrones, and holds some other colonial territory here and there. Still, they are no longer considered a truly first-rank power.

Neither is the US, but some think it may become one someday. With a small territorial base, and less immigration (no Wide-Open frontier like OTL, chances of war with France, and a more regimented society) it lacks the manpower and resources to compete on a truly global level: still, it is already a major industrial power and does attract immigrants, and the population grows healthily: many predict the US will become a major player in the 20th century, especially after the last war with France, in which they actually got back at the negotiation table the territory they had lost to France in the previous war. Slavery, sans westward routes for expansion, went out with gradually with a wimper rather than a bang, the last slaves gaining their freedom in 1911.

The Brits are the most modern of nations. Largely shut out of a Europe dominated by France and the Romans, they have invested and developed their colonies more than OTL, and as the largest possessors of democratically run natives-cleansed colonial territory, they have attracted more settlers to their posessions than OTL after 1776. Parliamentary rule is as strongly in place as OTL 1914, although due to there never having been a period of unchallenged dominance comparable to OTL 1815-circa 1880s, the standing military is rather more formidable. The state is rather more interventionist, especially when it comes to investing in education and scientific research. Although they follow their own semi-Catholic "Anglicanism", the current royal house is that of Bourbon (the Valois run France and don't like their cousins much). Currently the leadership is worried about the implications of an increasingly oil-dependent military in a world where the Romans and the Osmanlis dominate some of the largest sources of supply (as yet it is not known just how huge the Persian gulf reserves are), and some in the leadership think some real possibilities might arise out another major war...

Islam has a bit more respect in european eyes than OTL, what with the house of Osman being an ally against the Romans and and no important Islamic incursions into Europe since the 13th century in Spain. Muslims in French Africa generally have comparable (rather limited, in other words) rights to Christians. It's a generally somewhat less racist world than OTL at the time, although black Africans, alas, still remain beyond the pale. Romans have a somewhat undeserved reputation in the western states as backwards and corrupt, (well, they are corrupt, but not cripplingly so) which perhaps leads to some underestimation of the stregnth of the Empire.

Bruce

TimesTapestryAgain.png
 
Well the human zombies are pretty nasty, frequently moving in packs, but it's the zombie wolves, moose, deer and especially rats that are the real problem. And most people prefer to stay in the walled cities rather than risk going out, making there very few explorers.

Have you read Feed by Mira Grant? No zombie rats (frankly, I doubt we'd survive that), but any animal over 40 pounds can become infected...

Bruce
 

Thande

Donor
Another attempt at a B_Munroesque map.

Messing around with Dark Ages stuff - current year is 1600 AD.

Another BMunroesque2.png
 
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Another attempt at a B_Munroesque map.

Messing around with Dark Ages stuff - current year is 1600 AD.
I don't see the motivation behind breaking at the Atlantic, particularly when your pieces come from an Atlantic-centered Robinson projection.
 

Thande

Donor
I don't see the motivation behind breaking at the Atlantic, particularly when your pieces come from an Atlantic-centered Robinson projection.

(a) to be different and (b) because I forgot to put labels on the Americas first so making it Pacific-centred means they read in a vaguely alphabetical order :p
 
Still I must say that this map is really awesome. I especially like the alternative spellings, like "Hairisc", "Franklund" or "Tlaltec".

Also, it's fresh to see Kingdoms of Aquitaine or Bourgogne.

The atlantic break might have a wrong projection, but o well, I don't care. It looks interesting, although I don't see a real reason that might've forced you to do this.
 
My problem with THIS Pacific-centered map is that simple cut and glue got half of said ocean swallowed.
i was just about to point that out myself. perhaps a good format would be to set it up so that the americas are slanted a bit, using alaska's proximity to russia as a basis. breaking at the pacific, though, is arguably the easiest way, though, because it allows the viewer a bit of imagination as to how big the ocean there is

yknow, it occurs to me: does anyone have a blank map with national and territorial borders in this format?:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Dymaxion_map_unfolded.png
 

Thande

Donor
Ugh, I thought that Pacific looked too small. I was matching the Aleutians on the extreme left with those on the right, so I guess something must have been drawn in wrong on the Worlda basemap at some point.
 
An FH map of the world 100 years from now...


2110. Humanity has spread into space; Earth’s orbit is clogged with space junk, countless satellites, and dozens of inhabited space stations, orbital factories, and tourist stations. Luna is a colony of the Eurasian Union (more on that later) with the exception of one Noram city (Armstrong) and scattered bases owned by major-to-middle powers and transnational corporations. All three major powers have landed on Mars, although only the Eurasians have a permanent, inhabited surface base on the red planet. Robotic ships regularly tow asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter to be mined in Earth-orbit.

The largest power is not the USA (or its successor, Noram), nor is it China, as many in the early 21st century predicted. Instead it is the Eurasian Union. In the early 21st century, the EU consolidated in the face of an aggressive, nationalist Russia, and in the middle of the 21st century, it covertly sponsored a popular uprising against the immensely corrupt, increasingly authoritarian regime in Moscow. After that, Brussels extended an offer of membership in the EU to Russia and it was accepted. Now the Eurasian Union proper stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific (not to mention the moon), has allies across the world, and has taken up the burden of peacekeeping and development in the Third World. Politically, it’s a democracy in theory and a massive bureaucracy in practice, with citizens voting on broad referenda determining policy and letting the technocrats figure out the details. Economically, labor-saving technology has largely made questions of “capitalism” vs. “socialism” obsolete in developed nations like Eurasia. Doubtless, megacorporations have immense power and consumerism is still going strong, but it’s so cheap to give everyone free healthcare, education, and if needed a small income, that Eurasia does it without a second thought. It’s not quite post-scarcity in the developed world, but it’s damned close.

Noram, short for the North American Union, would be a… strange place to visit for someone from the early 21st century. American Exceptionalism, a.k.a. Amero-Nationalism, a.k.a. New Patriotism is a mix of religion, politics, and culture. The developed world is largely post-religious, and outside of Utah and Appalachia, America is no exception, but Christianity has left something of a void, and New Patriotism fills it. It can perhaps be summed up as the belief that “The Union”, which encompasses all of North America, is “historically destined” to lead the world. Practically, this translates as trade protectionism and attempted self-sufficiency (which is nearly unheard of in this long-globalized world), a permanent draft, natalism including tax breaks for large (working) families, a basic welfare system (because it’s shameful to have Americans go hungry or even uneducated), a very nationalist educational system with heavy emphasis on civics, a population highly engaged in politics on every level from the municipal to the Presidency, and the unofficial “cult of the Union”. The “cult”, as outsiders call it, is an extreme reverence for national symbols, including laws against flag-burning and other “desecration” of national symbols, an upswing in pilgrimage-like family vacations to national landmarks, and lots and LOTS of flags, bumper stickers, and flag pins on lapels. “Cleaverism”, named for the family from “Leave it to Beaver”, is a new trend from the heart of New Patriotism, and entails a 1950’s-eque style of dress and speech and an attempt to have the “perfect” American family. Cleaverist suburbs of identical houses can be found from Alaska to the Yucatan, and it is by no means a strictly white phenomenon (in fact, Noram is nearly post-racist, because “we’re all Americans”). Overall, outside observers conclude, this somewhat creepy Exceptionalism is a reaction to America’s fall from superpower status in the middle of the 21st century, and the retreat inside the continent’s borders and back into the 1950s is a psychological retreat of an entire culture. Exceptionalism is not without its internal opponents, although all of them from Great Plains libertarian militias to Zapatistas are labeled as “liberals”, that small but diverse group not happy with hyper-nationalist isolationism, for whatever reason.

The Pacific Union started life as a free trade zone for the booming Asian economies of the Pacific Rim in the early 21st century. By the midpoint of the century, it became a mutual defense league against a collapsing mainland Asia, and eventually a full political union of the model of Noram and Eurasia. Noram’s increasingly ridiculous tariffs led the bloc, formerly dependant on American markets, to draw up and sign the World Trade Pact, an agreement among a wide variety of states to not engage in protectionism and to adhere to the basic precepts of free trade. The Pacific Union is nearly as in love with capitalism as Noram is with nationalism, and more than anywhere else, megacorporations rule. The Pacific Union is also the heaviest user of the MetaSphere, a virtual reality projected on top of the physical world to those wearing special contacts lenses. This virtual display allows users to call up information out of thin air about anything they see in the real world, and to see virtual features (from physically impossible sculptures to flying popup ads) imposed on the real world. To an outside observer, though, it looks like a bunch of idiots waving their fingers through the air and starting at nothing. The MetaSphere is universal in the Pacific Union proper and it’s almost unheard of not to be logged in, whereas in Eurasia it’s merely popular, and in Noram and the undeveloped world, non-existant.

The undeveloped/developing world is not as miserable as it was in the early 21st century, but it’s nowhere nearly the technological level of the three major powers. The “Developmentalists”, led by Brazil, are interested, as the name suggests, in economic development, but also in social justice and the elimination of poverty. Turkey and the Islamo-nationalists are secular by 2010 standards but seen as backwards by the three great powers for wishing to preserve any religion at all. Then, of course, there are the fringe groups, the theocracies and the neo-communists. The theocracies range from the New Islamic Caliphate in post-oil Arabia, to Lamaist Tibet, to the fire-and-brimstone Christian League of Africa. The neo-communist countries are nasty places of perpetual revolution and ideological purity enforced by machete, where those left behind by technology rage against the developed world.

Overall, as long as you live in the developed world, Earth and its colonies are a nice place to live, with very high standards of living compared to 2010. But even after all this scientific progress, there are still some strange ideologies and nasty people in the world.

(EDIT: Almost forgot, Pakistan had a civil war that went nuclear, now the whole area's a Eurasian peacekeeper-guarded no-go zone)

Map to follow.
 
Ugh, I thought that Pacific looked too small. I was matching the Aleutians on the extreme left with those on the right, so I guess something must have been drawn in wrong on the Worlda basemap at some point.
It's just a Curve the Borders problem. The original map has meridians like this:

((|||))

And yours has them like this:

||))((|

So aligning the pieces based on something up north will mess up the middle latitudes. That map (EDIT: I mean Worlda) really shouldn't be rectangular.
 
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A map to celebrate my return to AH.com after long months of exile to study for exams, which I passed today!

This is something I had in-progress when I went away; I've forgotten whatever detailed scenario I had for it, but here's the basics:

-the POD is that Weimar Germany somehow pulled itself together
-Anschluss happened democratically in the mid-Thirties
-in 1940 the German Reich fought a war against France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Hungary came in as a German ally and gobbled up a chunk of Romania, apparently.
-Britain stayed neutral in the Danzig War.
-Europe in 1960 is in a four-way cold war between 4 power blocs:
1. The British Empire
2. The Franco-Italian Fascist bloc, allied against German expansion in the west. Romania and Poland are friendly to this bloc, but have to careful about being too open about it.
3. The German Reich, most powerful of the four. It is allied to Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland, and the Baltic states, and has puppetized Bohemia and Slovakia.
4. The Soviet Union, which none of the other three trust.

The main geopolitical flashpoint is the increasingly-unstable Kingdom of Yugoslavia, whose government is riven by factions favoring alliance with France (royalists), Germany (Croat nationalists, for convenience) and the Soviet Union (communists).

old_world_1938_subdivisions.png
 
Another attempt at a B_Munroesque map.

Messing around with Dark Ages stuff - current year is 1600 AD.

Pretty nice: what's the POD, if any in particular?

What's the story with the new "Roman Empire?"

To-Bodd, Tibet, presumably: Hindu, Buddhist, or...?

What happened to the Vietnamese?

What is "u" in North America?

One quibble: the Khazars are going to have some difficulties keeping the line of communications open through Kurdistan. Have they converted to Islam in this TL? That would help.

Any thoughts on my latest?

best,
Bruce
 
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