Map Thread XII

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B_Munro

Random Cuba wank because why not?

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Medibee

Medibee

Saladan said:
here is a sneak preview of a Qbam for darkest hour's famous Kaiserreich: legacy of the weltkrieg map I've been working on forever.
i still gotta fix some internal and external borders and add territorial claims not just to Europe but a host of other places. Plus fill in nation colors.

So far the vast bulk of borders are done though Asia, specifically China and Mongolia, are kicking my @$$ hard atm so progress has been rather stalled.
I gotta say, Naples' color makes for a perfectly distinct Commine/syndie/rad left Italy color.
Click to expand...

Very rice, but shouldn't A-H be somewhat split up?
 
Arkocento

Arkocento

Donor
Iserlohn said:
Since it hasn't generated any attention the last time I posted this, here's my most recent worlda WiP, this time showing a world with a Socialist revolution in Great Britain in the 1920s (the POD is a more "costly" WW1, btw). A good chunk of the former British Empire either broke away or was annexed by other powers. A British Empire-in-exile still exists, with the dominions of Australia, New Zealand and Rhodesia trying their best to keep the remaining thing together. Canada, Ireland and South Africa (the same goes for Newfoundland, which put itself under the American umbrella) certainly can't be bothered...

The map is of course heavily inspired by EdT's "Fight and Be Right" and Lord Brisbane's "Bayonets Won't Cut Coal", with a few personal ideas thrown in here and there. The current year would be 10 years after the revolution in the former UK.

EDIT: Make Newfoundland independent-ish again.
Click to expand...
Explain the united Transcaucasian Republic
 

dreadnought jenkins

Successful Crusades World

So this was partly inspired by the successful crusades map a little while ago.

This one.https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=9612812&postcount=5763

This is my second attempt at a B Munro like map.

Anyways, here is the scenario.

The basic POD is that the Crusades are that much more successful for the Christians. Saladin takes an arrow to the knee, it gets infected, and his days as a conqueror (let alone a living, breathing person) are over. The Crusaders retake Jerusalem and things go better for them, all round. This snowballs into better attempts to retake Egypt.

Now, all of this is still pretty tentative for the Crusaders. Things really change when they get hit by the sack of hammers that is the Mongols. Of course, in going with the nature of the scenario, these aren’t your grandma’s Mongols, no sir. No, these are your aunt’s Mongols. You know, the classic alternate history Nestorian Mongols. Or at least, Mongols with Nestorian sympathies.

Anywhoooo, there is no Ain Jalut equivalent in this world. The Mongols lay the smack down all the way to Egypt, and establish a Khanate in the Middle East. Now due to their Nestorian sympathies, and the dominant Christian position along the coast, the Mongols eventually opt for Christianity as the dominant religion among themselves in their Middle Eastern Khanate. Of course, as was common with the Mongols, the Muslim majority and Jews and other minorities are mostly left alone, but their conversion to Christianity rankles.

The coastal Christian holdings are absorbed as tributaries to the Khan.

A little under a century later, things take a turn for the worse for the Christian Mongol Khanate. Increasingly listening to Christian fanatics, some Khan or another takes a more hardnosed turn against the Muslim population. It predictably blows up in his face, and a bunch of shit goes down.

And it goes down for a while.

The eventual end result is a rump Khanate in Egypt and the Levant, and a brief Muslim state in opposition. The rump Khanate continues to decay, and eventually the Christian tributaries along the coast (now rather established) appeal to the only authority they think can save them.

If you are thinking it’s the Byzantines, shame on you. Thinking this would be another Byzantine Empire survives and prospers timeline. It would be so stereotypical that…

OK, I can’t go on. Of course it’s the Byzantines. What more do you want from me?

The Romans have done well by themselves, having successfully avoided anything close to the 4th Crusade, and are ready to reform the Empire of Justinian. And for the most part, they kinda do.

They retake the Levant, then Egypt, and give the smack to the large Muslim state on their border which collapses into feuding sultanates and emirates. The Bizzies are quite content with that, as their business is now elsewhere. Namely Italy and North Africa.

By the middle of the 15th Century, Muslims in the Mediterranean world are beginning to feel the squeeze. The Spanish Reconquista goes more or less apace, though with a few more setbacks than OTL, and the Byzantines continue to make inroads into North Africa.

The discovery of the Americas is delayed by about 40 years, what with a Christian power still in control of the routes to the Orient. But as Byzantine conquests continue, they decide to jack up taxes (conquest is expensive don’tcha know) and economics forces force the western Europeans to look for other routes.

That and religion. The 15th and 16th centuries end up being a bit of a rough bit batch between the Byzantines and the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Roman emperor’s authority returning to Italy in force comes at a rather delicate time for Western Christendom.
Needless to say, it eventually gets resolved peacefully (for a rather generous definition of peacefully… what’s a few dozen thousand dead between friends eh?) with “auto-cephalous Churches for everybody!” (And heresy for others… damn Scandinavians and Scots).

But during that period of intra faith “discussion”, the Western Europeans go out exploring. The first ones to do so are the Portuguese, ala OTL. The second, and bigger power to do so, are the Anglo-French Empire (though the Burgundians do challenge the claim of ruling all of France).

It’s the English who stumble into Mesoamerica and again (like OTL’s Spanish), luck their way into conquest.

Of course, it’s not just Christians doing exploring. The Granadans (a bit bigger than OTL), replete with exiles from Egypt and North Africa, also sends out some explorers to try and counteract Christian expansion.

They briefly make a go of contesting some of the Carribean, but they really luck out when of all things, one of their more astounding adventurers conquers the Incas. He kinda blows everyone’s minds (the English conquest of Mexico was more complicated and involved more compromises with the native ruling class). Unfortunately, the Granadans still get fucked royally when Portugal and Castile unite, and they are conquered. This bleeds off even more refugees to head to the Americas and the Muslim empire there. Muslim Beru, as it is eventually called, proves a harder nut to crack and the Europeans never subjugate it.

Eventually, all of North Africa is conquered by Christian powers, and Muslims are eventually expelled or choose to leave. Many try their hands at heading South across the Sahara, where Muslim kingdoms still exist (others again head to Beru). This leads to interesting developments with the Songhai Empire, who get a bit of a naval tradition started themselves.

…

And the world spins madly on.

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I will post the map after I have finished uploading a brief gazeteer of the world in the year in which the map is set (1851). For now, it can be seen at deviantart page: http://dnjenkins.deviantart.com/art/A-Successful-Crusades-World-487320603?ga_submit_new=10%253A1412837741&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1&ga_recent=1

I will post the map on the website after the short gazeteer.
 
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dreadnought jenkins

Three hundred years later and the year is now 1851, and the world is in the midst of the Industrial revolution. The nations of Europe are the dominant players on the world stage, but there are others.

EUROPE

Within Europe, there are four Great Powers: Hispania, the Union of England and France, Poland Lithuania, and the Byzantine Empire. A new, relatively untested Great Power, Germany, can also be counted. Other European states worth mentioning are Bohemia, Denmark-Norway, Hungary and the league of Avignon, which includes Aragon, Burgundy, and Carthage.

England-France is an Empire on which the sun never sets. With holdings on nearly every continent, it is and has for a long time been a force to be reckoned with. But it is deeply troubled. Industrialisation continues apace within England, but the England’s absolute monarchy and her corrupt Church are proving illsuited to controlling and meeting the needs of the populace. Revolution is in the air.

Buoyed by Atlantean Gold and Silver, the English monarchy never had to stoop to asking Parliament for funds and was able to crush any incipient form of democracy in the bud. Parliament hasn’t met in over a century and a half, and it never achieved anything close to the heights it achieved OTL even when it did exist. England-France is an absolute monarchy to the core, but its colonial holdings in the America’s are relatively decentralised.

England-France, despite being called that, is actually composed of three crowns, the third being Ireland. Along with that, England also directly controls the Netherlands and Antwerp is one of the premier cities of the Empire (though it chafes at the favouritism thrown towards London). Because of its holdings in the Netherlands, England is one of the claimants (along with Bohemia) to the title of Western/Holy Roman Emperor, much to the annoyance of Constantinople.

London is the capital and commercial centre of the Empire. The continent was never secure enough to move the capital there, and English remains the language of the elite (though French is widely spoken throughout the colonial holdings). In fact, the royal government has allowed the Irish, French, and Netherlanders to play an increasingly large role in the Empire at large, which has brought much needed vitality to it, but this has rankled nativist’s in England.

Despite some problems with the economy during the late 17th and 18th centuries, reforms and easy access to coal and minerals have allowed industrialisation to take off within England none the less. The institutional church, however, has proven to be ill equipped to dealing with the new realities of industrialised towns. Hundreds of thousands of workers now go without regular contact with a priest, and this had made the proletariat susceptible to Communarian preachers. This problem with the Communarians has been exacerbated by food shortages in England and especially Ireland.

A famine has struck Ireland. The potato blight has arrived, but its effects are slightly less severe due to the altered nature of how Ireland is governed, but it is still severe none the less. The same bad weather conditions that hit Ireland have also hit England, and there have been riots. And in Scotland, revolutionaries are gathering. A thing to note about Ireland is that it is fairly loyal to the crown itself. A lack of a protestant reformation and a different re-conquest of Ireland allowed for the maintenance of much of the old Hiberno-Norman elite. This has meant that Gaelic is still spoken among the elite (though English still takes top spot, and is the language of Parliament) and the lords have more in common with their tenants.

Scotland is a revolution waiting to happen. When Europe had its (much smaller) Protestant reformation, the Scottish were one of the ones that reformed. They later entered an alliance with fellow Protestants Denmark (and an even looser one with Catholic Burgundy) to help keep England at bay, but when Germany crushed Denmark, England conquered Scotland. It is now repressively ruled by a cadet branch of the Angevin royal family, and the Inquisition is alive and well. It is now bleeding exiles to New Caledonia, Scotland’s former colony.

In contrast to the Absolutist English Empire, Hispania is by the measures of this world, fairly democratic. Denied New World gold, Hispania has followed the path of the Portuguese, remaining primarily a trading Empire. However, being stronger than OTL’s Portuguese, and lacking Dutch rivals, Hispania has gone from strength to strength. The gained a number of successful settler colonies on four different continents, and their closest OTL parallel at this point is the British Empire.

Hispania has had settler colonies on both South and North Atlantis, has settled South Africa and Western Australia, has extensive holdings in India and Indonesia, and has bloodied China’s nose in order to get China to trade with them. The Hispanian armada is the strongest fleet in the world, and she even has her version of the United States of America, the Federated Atlantean Kingdoms, though in this world the divorce was voluntary. This voluntary divorce is a result of the current Hispanian political situation.

As mentioned above, Hispania never got its hands on that sweet, sweet (poisoned) chalice of Atlantean Gold, and its proto-democratic institutions developed accordingly as the King always sought more funds and the Cortes took advantage of him. This relationship went on and on until one unfortunate King decided that enough was enough and tried launching a coup.

Lead by the King’s cousin, the Hispanians experienced what they would later call the Glorious Revolution. They booted the King out of Hispania, and taking a page out of Poland’s book, elected the King’s cousin the new King of Hispania. The old King fled to the Southern Atlantean colonies, where he ruled for a few years before he pissed everyone off and they booted the bum out. However, the Atlanteans took the chance for independence and elected a different royal cousin King. The Hispanian were mostly okay with this, and relations and trade between Hispania and her former colony are excellent.

The whole separation between Hispania and the FRA (the Federated Atlantean Kingdoms) is called the “Amicable Divorce.” Both the Amicable Divorce and the Glorious Revolution has alarmed Constantinople, but has brought it closer to Poland-Lithuania.

In terms of sheer bigness, few can beat Poland-Lithuania. While the Federated Atlantean Kingdom is the closest equivalent to OTL’s USA, Poland-Lithuania is the inspiration for most of the world’s elective monarchies. Poland-Lithuania is big and it’s very functional. Unlike poor, poor Hungary in this world, Poland has avoided anything even remotely resembling the Liberum Veto. Despite the name of Poland-Lithuania, it is much more than that. Its eaten the northern Russian states, incorporated some of the old Baltic Crusaders into the Commonwealth, and is expanding across central and Eastern Asia, though the Japanese beat them to America.

Administratively, it seems relatively simplistic from far away, but there are enough exceptions to make it much more complex at the ground level. Traditionally, the Commonwealth is divided into Poland and Lithuania. As the dominant partner, Poland has annexed the lands south and east of Kiev, while everything north was mostly given over to Lithuania. Siberia is technically allocated to Poland, but it is mostly run by corporate interests and anyone from the Commonwealth can find advancement there. Both Lithuania and Poland are divided into smaller sections, such as Tver and Novgorod in Lithuania, or New Poland in Poland. These are then subdivided into smaller provinces ruled by Sejms or whatever the local equivalent is. Each Sejm sends members to a larger Regional Sejm (for example, Tver’s) which then sends members to the Sejm in Warsaw. At the local level, it gets varied fast. There are more than enough free cities, Kozacy Hosts, and autonomous settler colonies to shake a stick at, along with more traditional provinces. While Courland and the Livonian Knights (rulers of Estonia and Finland) are technically vassals, they are considered part of the Commonwealth and are subjects to the Polish crown. All of them send representatives.

The Sejm in Warsaw is big and boisterous, though still mostly subordinated to the King whom it elects. These days though, the Speaker (the leader of the biggest party) has gained a lot of power and the King knows he has to work with the Sejm. The King, or Queen (Poland has had enough good Queens in its history to make them favourable towards them) is elected from among the now quite expanded royal family (if you can trace lineage back to a King four hundred years ago, you can stand for election). While there isn’t any term limits on how long the King rules for, they don’t rule forever. The Poles have added a retirement age of sixty five to the Royal crown.

The franchise in Poland is quite large. A common quotation heard in Poland is that “In Poland, everyone is noble.” It’s not true of course, but strong Kings in Poland’s past broke the back of big magnates, and the definition of nobility is such that it’s basically a property qualifier (the middle class is almost by definition considered nobility) these days, but it has some exceptions. For one, the hereditary nobility is still around, and quite a few of them are very poor (and I actually mean poor) (OTL Poland had one of the biggest noble populations in Europe) while others are obviously very wealthy. Members of Kozacy hosts also get to vote almost en masse for their representatives and Free Cities also count their franchises differently. Common soldiers get the right to vote after finishing their term of service, and new settlers (provided they meet certain qualifications) also get the right to vote. All in all, Poland’s franchise includes almost 60% of the population. Women can vote, but the circumstances for such are still restricted.

The Commonwealth’s two official languages are Polish in Poland and Ruthenian in Lithuania (Lithuanian and Russian being a peasant tongues), though German occupies a third space as another Lingua Franca in the Commonwealth. German is widely spoken in the cities, and the Poles have given a lot of special rights to groups resembling OTL’s Volga Germans, and even to others. Far eastern Poland (called New Poland) is replete with little Bohemias, Germanys, and the like.

The Commonwealth has generally good relations with its European neighbours. Hungary is an old ally, and there hasn’t been a war with Bohemia in over two hundred years. In fact, there has been a lot of movement between the two Slavic countries as Poland and Bohemia both industrialise like mad. The one exception to these good relations is the Roman Empire. As later historians will point out, the growing conflict between these two states will be one of the defining events of the next century. At the moment though, relations are merely bad. Hungary is a point of contention.

After over two thousand years of existence, the Roman Empire is somehow still going strong. Because of this, the Byzantines have come up with some … interesting ideas about their place in the world. Still, no other modern state can really compare to Byzantium (with perhaps China as the exception), so the Romans can be forgiven a little for their arrogance. They’ve almost earned it at this point.

Still, by this point in time, the Romans are feeling good about themselves, and that period of weakness 800 years ago is mostly forgotten. Manzikert is not talked about much. Not because it didn’t happen, but because the Empire has recovered to such an extent that it is merely an important battle among many.

The Mediterranean is almost once again a Roman lake, and despite Polish challenges, the Black sea basically is. The major challenger for Roman rule in the Mediterranean is the League of Avignon, composed of Aragon, Burgundy, and Carthage. There have been at least three neo-Punic wars, all of them inconclusive. The League has become such a nuisance that the Byzantines are planning to annex them once they get the chance, and they dream of really reforming the old Roman Empire. The League also has these dreams, but they don’t call them dreams…

Other Roman rivals include Poland-Lithuania and Persia. Poland-Lithuania is a new and ideologically (to Roman mind’s) dangerous but the Persian rivalry is almost as old as the Empire itself. For the Byzantines, a Persian war is like slipping on a comfortable sweater. Both Persia and Constantinople have an understanding, and the presence of each helps keeps Byzantium’s Levantine vassals and Persia’s Arab vassals in line. A minor war every couple of years keeps the locals on their toes (or hanging from a rope) so to speak.

Weirdly enough, the Roman Empire is beginning to hate Poland and her ilk more than the surrounding Muslims, and that is because Constantinople is all about that absolutism. They have taken it to an art form, and after 1800 years of Imperium, they have truly refined it. The Emperor’s rule is absolute (though aided by an efficient bureaucracy), and he is God’s emissary on Earth. The Sun King wishes he had a state like this. The idea of electing a King is to them, one big insult to God’s natural order, and as such they have been fucking around with Hungary to prove a point.

Despite the absolutist nature of the Empire, some parts are given slightly more leeway. The old Crusader states, having somehow survived everything the world has thrown at them, are well assimilated into their localities and the elites speak Greek. They still maintain their own church structure though. Some of the border lords in Serbia and Bosnia are also given a lot of slack, but things are changing for them as Imperial attention is drawn north. Armenia and Georgia are premier vassals, and daughters from their ruling families are almost always married into the Imperial family. The Italian vassals (with the exception of Rome) are a bit of an oddball in that some of them are republics. In an Empire increasingly against such things, this hasn’t yet come to the Emperor’s attention. But when it does…

The Byzantines have some old allies too. Ethiopia is about as solid an ally a country could hope for. England, despite its annoying claims to the title of Holy Roman Emperor, have proven useful in countering the Burgundians. The Hispanians were similarly useful in countering Aragon until the Glorious Revolution happened. Their relationship with Kongo could be better, if they didn’t think Kongolese Christianity was so weird. Ditto for Japan. The final ally is China. Despite the differences in religion, China and Rome have come to see each other as counterpoints in the world. After much discussion, the Chinese don’t call the Romans barbarians, and Byzantine merchants have always found China a relatively friendly place. Trade is booming, and the Romans are helping China modernise.

The Chinese alliance can sometimes be considered all the weirder for how religious the Empire is these days. And I mean, it is very religious. The very idea of separation of Church and state is alien to the Empire, and the Emperor has a direct influence in all the Empire’s various churches. All five Patriarchs and all the Metropoles jump when the Emperor says “Frog.” This goes both ways though, and the Emperor himself is deeply religious. The Empire, has unfortunately, taken a bit of a hard line against certain aspects of science. Astronomy isn’t a problem, but geology has run into some problems and biology is starting to go places the Emperor deems they shouldn’t.

While we are on the topic of Roman Empires, let’s take a look at the former Holy Roman Empire. States that hold territory in the former Empire include Denmark, England, Burgundy, Byzantium, Savoy, Venice, Bavaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, and of course, Germany. The Holy Roman Empire doesn’t exist anymore, and it died in an alternate version of the Thirty Years War. The Protestant side lost, but in the whole kerfuffle the Byzantines were able to get the whole thing abolished. These days, there are usually four states considered the successors to the HRE: Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bohemia. The others nibbled at the corpse, despite England’s claim to the contrary.

Of all the successor states, Bohemia has the most prestige (Germany has the most power) and it is still ruled by the same family that used to be Holy Roman Emperors. Prague has a reputation similar to Paris of OTL. Thus their claim to the old title is considered the best, and the Bohemians still bring it out whenever it tickles their fancy or they are particularly annoyed at Constantinople. The crown is actually elective, but by convention members are picked from the immediate family of the last King/Emperor. Still, being oldest is no guarantee of being picked to be King.

The King has lost a fair amount of power to its house of nobles and due to popular pressure, there is even a house of common people. Still, in the end, it is the King who mostly calls the shots. And he calls those shots in Czech. German is widely spoken in Southern Bohemia (Northern Austria) and in Brandenburg but in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia Czech is the language of choice. Still, you can live easily in any city if you speak German. A long alliance with Poland has had both of them reaffirming their Slavic roots.

Bavaria and Saxony are both minor states, but strong enough so far to guard their independence. Both are fairly absolutist, but its Saxony that feels the most threatened. Bavaria’s border with Hungary and Venice, and its outlet to the sea has given it the breathing space that Saxony lacks.

Finally, there is Germany, a country whose power has been on the up and up for a while now and is only going to go up. Originally a confederation of minor states in the old Holy Roman Empire joining together for defence against predatory powers, it has grown tremendously in the last two centuries. Under constant stress to perform, its army has outperformed all its rivals and it has brought most of the former Empire under its control.

Still, the country has stayed true to its roots and it features a lot of local government. Taking a leaf out of Poland’s book, Germany is a functional elective monarchy, with perhaps the largest potential pool of potential candidates out of all the states with this system. Anyone of noble blood can stand for election, and this has led to some rather competitive races for the Kingship. There are no term limits to holding the crown, but Germany has some very simple ways of politely deposing Kings who have lost the mandate. This has been helped by the fact that some of the very early Kings in the formative years stepped down voluntarily when asked. The franchise itself is a bit of a hit and miss, but the vote isn’t simply limited to the nobility. The franchise depends on the local government. Some states, one man gets one vote, while in other cities the franchise is quite large. As a result of this disparity, there are quite a few suffrage movements throughout Germany.

A thing to point out is that German identity is very nebulous in this world. German speakers have found themselves in prominent positions in Burgundy, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, all four of those states have significant population of Germans, especially Poland. Poland has been encouraging German settlers to move out East and groups resembling OTL’s Volga Germans are common and more self-governing. As such, German is actually a very practical lingua franca, at least among traders. German trading companies have also developed a very good pragmatism towards Muslims and are trading with them (Germany is the Beruvian Empire’s closet European allies).

Germany has also started to gather a nice little colonial empire, mostly nabbed at Danish expense. Denmark has, because of its large and brutal role in this TL’s version of the Thirty Years War, been Germany’s favourite punching bag. These punches have had a profound influence on Denmark, as well as India. Denmark’s holdings in India were seized, and the German’s, finding themselves in a region of India much like Germany (ie. Full of little feuding states) has been setting up the India Confederation, a state built upon Germany’s own model of government.

Denmark-Norway is Europe’s premier Protestant power (which isn’t saying much these days), and so far the only Communarian state, which is a lot like religious communism, mixed with Cromwell’s Commonwealth (think Tony Jone’s, but with more communal ownership). The state used to be a moderately powerful colonial power, especially after they knocked down Sweden for good, but Germany’s rise knocked the stuffing out of them. After one hit too many, the state underwent its revolution and its religion has taken a very hard biblical literalist turn. They are not going all Old Testament though (New Testament still gets priorty… so no stonings), and mostly they want to be left alone these days. But some are taking an interest in the revolution brewing in England…

As for Gotland and Sweden, the Danes have long played divide and conquer. Religious differences have only helped the Danes in this. If Denmark has been Germany’s punching bag, these two states are Denmark’s stress ball.

Another state in a bad way right now is Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary used to be rather powerful, and an old rival of the Roman Empire. These days … its not. Centuries of increasing noble power has left it with a Liberum Veto, and the idea of elective Kingship is doing well in this timeline, Hungary shows how not to do it.

Byzantium has designs on this large Kingdom and they are not friendly. Consequently they have been buying votes and basically making the system even more moribund. Hungary’s old ally Poland is aware of this, and at the moment is trying to preserve Hungary. Unfortunately, they are doing the same thing as the Romans are in terms of vote buying and all that jazz. Civil war between the pro Polish and pro Byzantine side has broken out and Hungary’s doom is fast approaching.

A group whose doom isn’t approaching fast enough in Roman opinion is the League of Avignon. The League, composed of three states in an anti-Roman alliance, is Byzantium’s greatest challenger in Constantinople’s quest for Mediterranean domination. The Mediterranean itself is mostly Christian these days, but in the interior the Tuaregs, Berbers, and Arabs still remain determinedly Muslim. Unfortunately for them, they are too poor to be anything but a nuisance. The states that form the League of Avignon are Carthage, Burgundy, and Aragon.

Carthage is the newest of the states, and was actually set up by a Roman army conquering its way across North Africa. That proved a bit of overstretch at the time, and they took on a lot of Burgundian and Aragonese mercenaries. Things went ploin shaped, and the Aragonese ended up in control of Roman Carthage. Well… not Roman Carthage anymore. Things have progressed from there, and these days Carthage is heavily militarised and very much anti-Roman. It’s ruled by a cadet branch of the Aragonese Royal family, and it’s all but a part of Aragon in terms of trade and language (though there are a lot more Arabic loan words).

Aragon itself hasn’t done too badly, and is sort of like OTL’s Portugual, but with a much smaller colonial Empire (though it does possess one). It has pursued a much more active Africa policy than either Spain or Portugal ever did, and these days its African provinces are well integrated. It is also a bit of a political oddball in that it has developed something close to what we would recognize as a Constitutional Monarchy in the British sense. Without New World gold, the monarchs were made dependent on their Cortes, but unlike the Elective Monarchs, the Aragonian monarchy is still very much hereditary.

And then there is Burgundy. An absolutist monarchy, the royals here still hasn’t given up their claim to the throne of France, but these days Burgundian French and Northern French are rather different. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy, and Burgundy’s got both. Burgundy is powerful, but not as powerful as OTL’s France. She is too hemmed in, and has had to focus on keeping a decent army to fend off the English and a good navy to fend off the Byzantines. Most of the money has gone to her army, and it really is one of the best. A cadet branch of the Burgundian family rules in Savoy, but Savoy is not in the League so as to keep a convenient buffer between Burgundy and Roman Italy. That excuse is rapidly wearing thin though. Avignon as well is independent, and is still ruled by the Church.

ATLANTIS

In this world, the Americas are called Atlantis (yes I know, so original…), and like the Americas, they are known as North and South Atlantis. By this point in world history, the northern continent is still dominated by colonial interests, with only a few independent nations existing in its eastern half. The southern continent, by contrast, is mostly composed of independent states with the exception of two colonies along the Caribbean coast.

North Atlantis is dominated by the English empire, and their territory extends from the gulf of Saint George (the Saint Laurence) to the Isthmus of Panama. The territory is divided into eight Viceroyalties: Meshko, Kanada, Henrietta, Nova Hibernia, Texas, Mayaland, Anchorage, and Kuba. The administration in the viceroyalties is almost totally run by locals at this point in time, though the Viceroy’s themselves are still sent over from England. There are no democratic bodies outside of the local cities, but inspired by the Hispanians, there are quite a few democratic movements floating around beneath the surface.

The totality of English Atlantis is called “New England,” much to the annoyance of both the French and the Irish. Two cities in New England stand preeminent: Meshko city and Mount Royal. Both are the capitals of the continent’s two original Viceroyalties, Kanada and Meshko, the rest having been broken off from the original two.

The English colonial mentality has been a bit of a mix between OTL’s French, Spanish, and English. The English have always been sending settlers to Atlantis in large numbers, and have been fairly non-discriminatory in who can go, leading to large areas with a white majority. However, they have claimed such a large area of land that they have always been reliant on native cooperation, especially in such locations as Meshko. Intermarriage between English and natives has always been much encouraged, leading to a large mixed population that can be found in all levels of the social stratum.

Due to a very different conquest of Meshko by the English (it was much more tenuous at first), the old nobility was coopted in and they weren’t ever truly discriminated against. Following this old precedent, the English made a habit of ennobling chiefs and confederation leaders (along with their families) during their colonization of Atlantis. Almost all of those houses, by this point in time, have some degree of European blood in them. This holds true houses imported over from Europe as well, where if they are not first generation, they probably aren’t totally lily white either. Thus New England has its own local homegrown nobility found throughout, who can trace descent back before the English conquered the area, along with nobility imported from England, France, and Ireland.

Out of all the Viceroyalties, the most prestigious is probably Meshko. Kanada comes in at a close second, and the two Viceroyalties were created at the same time. But ever since England’s conquest of Meshko, it has been the destination where any aspiring English nobleman really wanted to go. Thus the capital, Meshko city, is awash with old nobility who can trace lineages all the way back to the two conquests that matter to the English. This characteristic has made Meshko quite the stratified society, and social mobility is at a bit of a lowpoint. Lineage is everything. There are some places that buck this trend, and the twin merchant cities on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts are home to a vibrant mercantile and entrepreneurial society with much more social mobility. They are of course looked down upon as upstarts by the old nobility.

The other oldest Viceroyalty, Kanada, is a much more rough and tumble kind of place. The nobility here is a smaller percentage of the populace and they tend towards smaller estates. Unlike Meshko, social mobility here is growing. The capital, Mount Royal, built upon an island in the Saint George River, is a booming city built upon trade going to and from the Great lakes. Millions of new immigrants have passed through the city over the years as they move into the continent’s interior, giving the city an international air as opposed to old (and majestic) purely English-Meshkan nature of Meshko city. While Mount Royal isn’t a new city, it has only recently experienced such exponential growth that has allowed it to compete with Meshko city. There are quite a few merchants and businessmen in Kanada interested in the industrial potentials of the region, and are also looking at Christian’s land as something to be either bought or conquered.

Despite Kanada’s and Meshko’s claims to seniority, the people of Kuba will often say that their Viceroyalty is the oldest. To the insult of others, you will often hear a Kuban noble express that Kanada was nothing but a barely settled frozen wasteland and Meshko filled with murdering pagans when their colony was founded. But Kuba is like that. Where there is little social mobility in Meshko, there is none in Kuba. New Harbour, the capital, is a city of stunning inequalities. Slavery, was until recently, still legal, and there are enough laws in place that in practice, it still is. The nobility is almost purely of European stock, and they live their lives between their vast estates and court season in New Harbour. They have a bit of a mercantile character to them though, and they have deep connections to merchant interests.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Kuba, there is Nova Hibernia. It is the newest Viceroyalty, proud of it, and has by far the lowest percentage of nobility in its population in the whole of New England. Granted over to Irish administration as a sop to Irish lords, the Viceroyalty has expanded amazingly fast as gold has been found time and time again in its regions. St. Francis on the Bay (SanFran for short) is a beautiful capital city, but its original Irish flavour is being washed away in a flood of immigrants. Doesn’t make it any less beautiful though. The Gold rushes have lent the Viceroyalty a vibrant, often chaotic feel and it is viewed as “the land of opportunity.” The recent imposition of royal control is resented in many areas.

Like Nova Hibernia was originally handed over to Irish interests, Texas (actually called Tayshas) was handed over to French ones. Unlike Nova Hibernia however, Texas has maintained that Frenchness. Texan’s are known for their frank, are oftimes considered rude nature, and to the opinion of the Meshkan’s, the local nobility are too fond of mixing with the lower classes. The capital, Nouvelle Rouen is a city of big fights and even greater romances. The French nature of the Viceroyalty tends towards the ‘passionate’ end of the spectrum, and this has made stories happen. If people go to Nova Hibernia to make it rich, people go to Texas to make a legend.

Henrietta, the Viceroyalty covering the Mississippi river basin, mirrors many of the other Viceroyalties. Much like Nova Hibernia or Texas, it is filling up with settlers, but they tend to be of the quieter sort as people come there to farm. Relations with the natives, usually good, have been deteriorating as the nomadic nature of many of the tribes clashes with the farming objectives of the new settlers. Massacres have taken place on both sides, and in some areas, lawlessness prevails. Nestled near the exit of the Mississippi, Henrietta’s capital New York is a vibrant melting pot, as people move through it on their way to the interior (sort of like Mount Royal). Another point of trouble in the Viceroyalty is the Uhio region, which is coveted by a number of neighbouring countries, and even the people in Kanada. Henrietta’s long border with foreign nations sometimes produces many troubles for the Viceroyal government.

Meanwhile, Anchorage, the southernmost Viceroyalty, has very little border troubles, despite sharing a border with the Muslim Beruvia. The smallness of the border, and its tight control, has kept problems to a minimum. The Viceroyalty is often forgotten about when people talk about the Viceroyalties, and Manaqua is a very sleepy kind of capital. It has, in recent years, entered a bit more of the spotlight as the idea of a canal through the Viceroyalty is being bandied about more and more these days. The people here tend to be very religious.

Finally, there is the last of the viceroyalties, Mayaland. Mayaland is run much differently from the rest of the viceroyalties, and is much more decentralized. The viceroyalty doesn’t even have a formal capital. Instead, the Viceroy acts as a King of old, and moves from city province to city province governing the place. Each city administers itself and its hinterland, and the whole area is very fiercely independent in many ways. They took a long time to conquer, and even after the conquest, the English hand is light. There are probably the fewest Europeans here out of all the Viceroyalties.

The rest of North Atlantis is home to much smaller European colonies and independent nations. Four other nations have colonies on North Atlantis, and these countries are: Japan, Denmark-Norway, Germany, and Hispania. In addition to the colonies, there are three independent nations: New Caledonia, the Cherokee Nation, and the Mohawk Kingdom.

Denmark-Norway holds two separately administered colonies on the continent: New Scania and Christian’s Land. New Scania is what remains of Denmark’s previously larger Atlantic holdings. It’s heavily populated, but rather quiet. Despite antipathy towards the Germans, they’ve had to make do seeing as how they are surrounded by them. The colony is quite secure however, as the German’s have showed no interest in the place. Christian’s Land, which controls the drainage basin leading into Harold’s Bay, is a colony increasingly in trouble. Once quite profitable due to the fur trade, it has fallen on hard times. The booming fur business was decades ago usurped by Kanadian traders operating out of Mount Royal, and now the southern bits of the territory are being settled with Kanadians. Not to mention the growing political awareness of the local Anglo-Native community (think English speaking Metis), who are agitating away from Danish control. Plans have been drawn up to drive out the English and settle the region themselves, but logistics are interfering. If New England ever attacks, the colony will almost certainly fall.

The other northern colony in Atlantis is Arasuka, controlled by the Japanese. A bad turn of events have made the colony a byword for ‘horrible luck’ and ‘eaten by bear’ back in Japan. Despite the claims on maps, Japanese control is nominal. They are currently in talks about settling the place to the Nova Hibernians.

While Arasuka is being ignored, Hispania’s colonies on the continent, the Philippines (composed of North, Middle, and South) wishes they were being ignored by the home country. The Phillippines are increasingly seen as being as an embarrassment back in Hispania, and the colonial governor and the local planter class are becoming increasingly at odds, though everyone is still being polite about it. Chattel slavery is still a big thing in the Phillipines, and Hispania’s interference in how they run their affairs is an increasing source of resentment. They believe it is giving the slaves “ideas.”

Two colonies that have great relationships with the motherland are New Braunschweig and Powhatan, Germany’s colonies on Atlantis’ Atlantic coast. Seized from the Danish, the old settlers were given the option of submit or be expelled. About half did, and the other half were expelled to New Scania. In the time since the seizure, Germany has done its best to develop the colonies. It could even be debatable to call them colonies anymore, since for the last twenty years, the two regions have been sending members to the Diet.

Cleaving Germany’s Atlantean holdings in two is the independent nation of New Caledonia. Formerly Scotland’s colony in Atlantis, the colony has been independent since Scotland was conquered by the English. The English weren’t able to conquer it due to supply lines and foreign intervention. The country is currently ruled by a Duke, but the Duke has the claim of being King of Scotland. To say that New Caledonians would to understate it a little. The country is very active in trade and is prosperous, and it intends to use that prosperity to fund the liberation of the motherland. It’s currently the seat of Scottish culture and language, and is really the only other Protestant country of any siginificant power in the world besides Denmark. It currently has designs on the Uhio territory.

New Caledonia’s ally against the English is the Mohawk Kingdom. The old Iroquois confederacy got smashed by the English and their native allies (different English colonial policy helped the Huron fight back). Things got a little vicious by the end… to put it politely. New Caledonian aid kept it from being a total extinction event, but Haudenosaunee society never truly recovered. A charismatic preacher, using a syncretic mix of Christianity and older beliefs, reforged it into a Kingdom under Mohawk domination, who were the least devastated tribe. Like their Scottish Neighbours, they also hate the English soooo much.

The Cherokee Nation, by contrast, are ambivalent to the English, and have tried to maintain good relations to both of their European neighbours. However, the Cherokee do look at some parts of Uhio as very desirable real estate. This, along with other factors, have always made them more sympathetic to the Hispanians. The Cherokee act a lot like Europeans these days, and to a slave a Cherokee master is much the same as a European one. Still, despite the heavy influence, the Cherokee have maintained their culture and are basically seen as equals by their neighbours.

The Caribbean is still mostly a mess of European and Male colonies. There is currently only one independent nation in the sea, though there used to be a few more. The continued presence of an African colonial power in the region has made for some interesting dynamics. Islam is the major religious influence in all the islands, even the European ones. This has lead, especially in the European dominated colonies, to the development to a number of syncretic Christian-Islamic religions with heavy African influences. Very fascinating stuff.

That one independent country mentioned earlier is the Sultanate of Ajiti. The island used to be divided into two halves, but a hilarious thing happened to rectify that. One half came under the control of the Songhay, while the other half was under control of the Hispanians. One bright Hispanian soul, in search of a cure for the labour shortage, began shipping over Muslims captured from North Africa to be used as slaves along with Sub Saharan African slaves. They helped propagate Islam to their fellow slaves, and when the Hispanians realised that they were cultivating a Muslim slave population right next to a Muslim colony, they cracked down. This had the effect of triggering exactly what they were fearing (that being a Muslim rebellion), and the Male intervened, thus helping themselves gain the whole Island. Hispania is still kicking itself over this. Of course, when the Songhay were consumed in revolution, the Island made a go of being independent, and with Beruvian aid, this has stuck. Other Songhay colonies also tried this, but they were too small and they got reconquered (thus those ones are the Former Island Emirates).

Germany’s colonies include Jamaika and the Miskito Kingdom. Like Germany’s North Atlantean colonies, these two also send members to the German Diet. The Miskito Kingdom was a close German ally before asking to join the country (the better to protect themselves from the English) and no one quite understands why the Miskito like the German’s so much. Still, by this point, the German’s have reciprocated. Jamaika is a bit more troublesome, as it is about to experience an uprising against the rather harsh regime in place there.

South Atlantis is actually mostly composed of independent states, of which the two dominant ones are the Beruvian Empire and the Federated Atlantean Kingdoms. There is an assorted motley of independent states in the Amazonian basin, and the league of Avignon also has a colonial presence. The independent country of Brazil is relatively small, but is an intellectual powerhouse.

Conquered by Muslim adventurers centuries ago, the Beruvian Empire is a rising power, and a standard bearer of Islam in the world. It has had a long history being active in the Pacific Ocean, and its silver mines have helped make it rich on trade. Some internal troubles made it a bit late to the Great power game, but has now entered full force extending their reach across the Pacific where they are playing merry hell with European interests in Indonesia. There are two blends of Islam within the Empire, the more ‘pure’ Islam of the upper classes and the heavily syncretic form of the lower classes. However, to OTL Muslim eyes, the ‘pure’ Islam of the upper class is still very weird. Saying that to their face however, would get your face punched in. The culture of the Empire is a strong mix between the Muslim invaders and the old culture. Most of the invaders married into the aristocratic families, and the language of the state is Quechua. A lot of the old Incan government system and ways have been kept (albeit they have evolved over time).

The Beruvia has been creating a series of alliances ranging from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. This alliance includes Ajiti, and there are talks with some central African states against the Male. But to European eyes, Beruvia is becoming increasingly present in the West Pacific. The Sultanates of Brunei, Sulu, Aceh, and others have all been helped by Beruvia, in exchange for trade. Southern Vietnam, after a revolt erupted among Muslim aligned merchants, is now a Beruvian colony. The Malay sultanates are also a colony, but less repressively so. The Emperor in Beruvia is the overlord of the various Malay states. The Straits themselves remain enticingly just out of Beruvian control.

Beruvian influence is now being felt in the Indian Ocean as well, and Beruvia is in talks with both the Yemeni, the Persians, and the Afghans. However, Beruvian calls for a pan-Islamic alliance are not being heeded. The Yemeni and the Persians contest influence in Arabia, and the border between Persia and the Afghan border is heavily contested. Relations between Shia’s and Sunni’s is also taking a bit of a downward turn at this time, and the Beruvian’s are sticking their foot in it.

Within the Beruvian Empire itself back in Atlantis, there exists a bastion of “not-muslimness.” That is the state of New Judah. Founded by Jewish exiles near the same time as Muslims were conquering Beruvia, it is based along what OTL calls the Magdalena River and is called in this timeline the Miriam River. It is extremely religious and very resentful of Beruvian interference in their country. The New Judeans are a rather militarized, deeply Orthodox breed of Judaism. They are quite honestly the Zealots come again. Nowhere is this more evident when they actually tried launching an attack on Brazil for their supposed Godlessness. This prompted a Beruvian invasion and a couple executions. Good news for the Beruvians is that the New Judeans don’t care about Brazil anymore; bad news is that they care a whole lot on getting revenge on the Beruvians. They are currently shopping around for a foreign ally. The FRA is a popular choice.

The Federated Altantean Kingdoms (the acronym is actually FRA in Hispanian), also sometimes called The Atlantean Empire by locals, is Beruvia’s primary rival. The country is one of the two closest expies this world has to the United States of America. Unlike OTL’s USA, the FRA did not have a violent revolution to overthrow Hispanian rule. Rather, they separated from Hispania in what is called the Amicable Divorce.

When Hispania had her Glorious Revolution, the deposed King fled to his Atlantean holdings. There he governed for a little while and plotted to take back Hispania. There actually was fighting between Hispania and the FRA (not called such at the time) but it was minor. Thus, when the Atlantean King proved to be as much as an ass to the Atlanteans as he was to Hispanians, they booted him out and handed him over to the Hispanians. That, and a few negotiations later, and the Atlantean colonies went their own way. The whole actually having fought some battles is swept under the rug in the current historiography.

Still, the point is that Hispania and the FRA are on good terms, and despite being separate countries, still have heavy ties (and institutions also cross national boundaries). Both have helped each other out, most notably Hispania aiding the FRA in securing her Pacific Coast. This is as much for practical reasons as for anything else; anywhere the FRA controls is friendly to Hispanian business.

Besides her expansion on the Pacific Coast, the FRA is also trying to secure the interior of the continent and the far southern cone. Both expansions have met fierce resistance from the locals. While trying to secure the interior, the FRA did negotiate a partition of the area with the Beruvians. Unfortunately, both sides won’t cooperate and keep helping the other sides rebels, who in return help those rebelling against them. All in all, the situation is a mess. In the south, the Mapuche and others have so far held out thanks to Beruvian aid, but time is running out.

The country, like Poland-Lithuania, Germany, or Hispania, is an elective monarchy. While the country is called the Federated Kingoms, there is only one King. The Kingdoms in question function as states. So the King’s title has gotten a little long (whichever Kingdom he is currently in, that name takes pre-eminence in his title) so people usually just call him the Emperor of Atlantis. The FRA actually has gone and developed term limits for its Kings, but the term limit is twenty years long, and a King can be elected for more than one term.

To the north of the FRA, there exists a multitude of independent countries, of which the important one is Brazil. Brazil is a state which has changed hands far too many times, and this has left its mark on its character. Founded by the Danish, it was seized by the English, who lost it to the Songhay, who had it retaken from them by the English, who then lost it to the Danish, who later lost it to the Songhay. When the Songhay collapsed in revolution and became the second Male Empire, Brazil went independent, along with her neighbours in the Amazon. There is some debate as to whether Brazil caused the revolution, as by that point she was in open revolt against Songhay when Songhay collapsed. Since independence, Brazil has sought closer ties to both Germany, and with some trepidation, the FRA.

Due to Brazil’s history, she has a significant population of Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims all living in the same country (and at one point, a large population of Jewish people moved in). After a series of oppressive Danish, English, and Songhay rulers who all saw the colony as a motley of mongrels to be purified, the country’s rebellion included all three factions. The country’s ideology is explicity Deist, and it is ruled by an elected Triad who respond to an elected assembly. Currently, all religions are tolerated in Brazil as long they agree there is ‘one’ God (after some persuasive arguments, Hindu’s have been stated to be monotheists as well). As time has gone on, what is defined as God is getting looser and looser.

The Brazilians are big on freedom of speech and on freedom of religion. Really big on it. This has allowed a flourishing of ideas in Brazil that has proven hard to express in other countries. This had led to the ideology of “Freethinkerism” which basically states that people should be free to express and think whatever they want (to the current generation, they mean it “within reasons” [ie. Atheism isn’t reasonable] but later generations will take it to the logical conclusion).

Because of Brazil’s Freethinker ideology, the country is awash in exiled expatriates from other countries and many philosophers of many stripes, including many scientists. This has basically made Brazil the world’s premier hotspot of intellectual innovation. Many expatriates, exiled for their political opinions, continue to produce works of art that the authorities in their home countries would find objectionable. The same goes for scientists. Among many developments, the theory of Evolution was just recently conceptualized in Brazil. “On the Development of Species” is currently making the rounds in many translations around the world, to the fury of many.

Brazil is a very exciting place to live, but to many more conservative countries, it is a dangerous. Brazil even got invaded by New Judah (or raided to be precise). New Judah took issue with some of the new books being published by the liberal Jewish elements in the country, and smuggled in a large group of armed men. In a running battle with the local constabulary, they tried seizing capital building and attacking the local universities. They never made it to the Capital building, but they did succeed in burning down some of the buildings (though they failed to get any of the libraries).

The Judean raid has actually galvanized Freethinkerism into taking a more international stance, and it has found friendly ears in places as diverse as Poland, Germany, Hawaii, Mysore, and more. However, as Brazil exports its ideology more and more, it will garner an even more adverse reactions from other countries.

Beyond Brazil, there are a number of Muslim states in the Amazon basin. Collectively referred to as the Amazonian Emirates, these are a collection of native states, former rebel slave collectives, and more old school former colonies, that have declared their independence from Songhay and have staved off Male reconquest. An attempt at uniting them all under one Sultan failed. Their different origins make them hard to stereotype, though most are fiercely independent, even from each other, and are not big on authority. Increasing influence from Beruvia in the Western emirates has led to increased concern over Beruvian intentions in the region.

To the north of the Amazonian Emirates are the colonies of Guyenne and Paysbas, belonging to Burgundy and Aragon respectively. They are the league of Avignon’s primary holdings outside the Mediterranean and at this point in time, are heavily focused on making money to fund the metropole. They are very intolerant towards the surrounding Muslim populations.
 
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dreadnought jenkins

AFRICA

As befits the world’s second largest continent, Africa is quite the diverse place. We have already covered its Mediterranean coast, which is mostly divided into the holdings of Byzantium and the league of Avignon, so the next part will focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. This region is dominated by a number of African and non-African powers. The three major African powers are Ethiopia, the Male Caliphate, and Kongo (more appropriately called the Triple Kingdom). The Yemeni Caliphate is a major power on the Indian coast, and Africans play such a large role in the Caliphate that it can almost qualify (but not quite) as a native power. In the far south, England, Germany, and Hispania all have large holdings. There is also a smattering of European colonies along Africa’s Atlantic coast and many minor African powers throughout the continent.

Two of Africa’s premiere powers border on the Atlantic. The one that went out and colonised parts of Atlantis was the Songhay Empire, which no longer exists. Its replacement, the Male Caliphate, has taken over most of Songhay’s former colonies in the Caribbean, but has been unable to retake either Ajiti or the Amazonian emirates.

The nation shares much with its predecessor. In fact, it shares almost everything from similar borders to the same ethnicities living within it. But the ruling class, and through them, the character of the nation, has changed. Where before Songhay had been outward looking into the Atlantic and not entirely focused on the faith of its people, the revolution has changed that. The nation still favours merchants and commercial endeavour, but there is a back to basics kind of Islam common among the new ruling class that eschews the old syncreticisms of the past. And with the loss of the majority of Songhay’s old colonies, the Male Empire has put renewed focus on the East and South, with a few glances across the Sahara.

It has been trying to build better relations with the Amazonian Emirates, but its puritanical zeal has only won it so many friends in Atlantis. Where its presence is felt more is in its neighbours. It has been funding missionaries to preach against pagan and idolatrous innovations in its neighbours, and it has been propping up states friendly to her. The further you are from the Male, the friendlier she is; the closer, and the more her friendliness begins to take on a predatory vibe. They have a big plans. For the Mossi states to the south, there isn’t the pretention of friendliness at all. This has garnered reactions from her neighbours, but not all hostile.

The Asante, for one, have been making a secret alliance with the Male. They could care less about Islam, of any variety, but they couldn’t care more about her immediate neighbours. The Asante Hene resents the presence of the Danes and the Burgundians denying him access to the sea, and he looks hungrily at the Mossi Kingdoms. He wants to expand, and a Male alliance seems to be the way to go. Whether or not such an alliance is short sighted remains to be seen. For now, both nations see profit in cooperation.

Another nation that is growing close to the Male is Bornu. It has become frighteningly aware that the Ethiopians are moving West, and that nations such as Fur are increasingly under Ethiopian control. As such, it has made sure to ally itself with the only Muslim power worth the name. Now if only the Fulani would get with the program.

A nation that sees no profit in cooperation with the Male is the Fulani Sultanate. It sees the growing influence of the Male in Borgu, Adamwa, Bornu and the small states to its North, and it knows what is coming. They have caught a number of Male rabble rousers in its Western territory talking about breaking off and joining the Male. Thus, it is trying to build an alliance of other states opposed to the Male, but the Male money, combined with a very persuasive brand of Islam, is surpisingly hard to counter. Thus, unthinkably, the Fulani are turning south for aid. Fulani ambassadors now walk in the halls of the Kings of Benin and Oyo, and speak of the Male threat. To the Hispanian governor of the Niger colony, the ambassador speaks of commercial considerations in return for help modernising. These diplomatic missions are all very hush-hush at the moment. They have even sent ambassadors further south, to the Triple Kingdom.

The Triple Kingdom of Kongo, Andongo, and Sango, is Africa’s premier Catholic power. It has only recently been recognized as a great power, but it has always had a large influence. The Kongo Kingdom forms the core, and it has had a much better history than ours ever did. Part of this was the greater success of the Andongo to the south, who were able to keep the Hispanians out. When a Kongo King married an Andongo queen and brought the two nations together, and Andongo into the Catholic fold, it was heralded as an event akin to the joining of Poland and Lithuania. Sango was added to the mix later.

The Triple Kingdom, after a slow growth, is about to enter a period of rapid expansion but one in which few outsiders fully grasp the scale. The Triple Kingdom lays claim to the whole Congo River basin and is well placed to take control of most of it, along with areas outside it. This will make the Triple Kingdom larger than the whole of Western Europe, and it might soon rival the size of the old Roman Empire, with quite the large population to match. The Triple Kingdom is already a localised power, but if it harnesses the resources of the Congo area, its rise has the potential to be meteoric. It has already established a very firm presence in the Chokwe, Lunda, and Luba Kingdoms. The Kazembe have recently thrown off the Kongo yoke, much to the ManiKongo’s ire in M’Banza.

Culturally speaking, the country is very influential, even outside Africa. It is the seat of its own auto-cephalous Church within Africa, with the purview to convert a truly vast area of land. Its close ties to Hispania have has led to a very interesting cultural exchange, and its new ties to Germany have has created a whole new avenue of exchange. The country is also notably hard on slavery. Neither it nor Andongo tolerated, and as it expanded northwards it cut down on slavery in the region and on the slave trade. This has the unfortunate side effect of kickstarting the Muslim slave trade. With Kongo slowly cutting off access to prime slave gathering areas, the shortfall in workers encouraged the Europeans to start enslaving recalcitrant Muslims in their North African territories and shipping them off to Atlantis. Probably Kongo’s greatest influence has been in getting most Catholic nations to again abolish slavery within their territories. Some have been more honest about it than others, but it is widely credited to Kongo influence.

The one nation that even sort of contests Kongo’s claim to the vast reaches of the Congo River basin is the Yemeni Caliphate, but even they are not really doing it. They have more pressing matters that surround them. For one, there is the very intense enmity with the Ethiopians. The conflict rages with them across many fronts, from the waters of the Red Sea to the dry wastes of Somalia to the endless plains of the Serengeti, the Yemeni and the Ethiopians stare each other down. This competition have made the Yemeni Caliphate lean and mean. Within the tribes and incipient statelets of the Great Lakes region and Serengeti, Ethiopia and Yemen are basically at war. The whole are is in either a state of conflict or near conflict. Further south, Yemeni influence is greater and has extended a little into the Congo area, but here it is contested by the English as well.

The Yemeni also feels threatened on a religious level from two different sources. The closer is the Arabs of the interior. They have become heavily influenced by a group similar to OTL’s Wahhabis and the Yemeni are having none of it. They don’t appreciate being called Idolaters, and the Wahhabi destruction of sacred sites rankles. The Wahhabis are raiding more and more into the Hejaz and have tried more than once to conquer the area. More distantly problematic, but equally problematic is the new Male claim to being Caliph. The Yemeni are not amused.

The Yemeni state is quite large, and the majority of it lies in Africa. They were able to beat down the Omani, and they have developed a fairly competitive navy. The African dog has yet to waive the Yemeni dog yet, but give it a few more years and it will happen. Native Africans are already finding their way up the entire administrative ladder, and their voice is getting louder.

Their rivals, the Ethiopian Empire, is also quite large. With a renewed Christian Egypt, later under Roman rule, Ethiopia has done really well by itself and has been on the up and up for a while now. It is actually run on looser lines, and three major lords govern the Empire in the name of their sovereign. They each run fairly independent foreign and domestic policies, but they are surprisingly in sync. They are agreed on a number of things, such as: Ethiopia needs to get bigger; the Church is important; the Yemeni are bastards to be fought; and the Romans are our BFFs. Two of the states within the Empire are expanding in different directions, south and west (the south being more conquest, the west being more vassalage), with different policies dictating the way the expansion is done. The northern state is mostly concerned with relations with Egypt and with Constantinople.

Other Christian powers in Africa include the colonial holdings of European powers. The most extensive holdings lay in the southern end of the continent. German Natal has finished all expansion and is being developed into a full on settler colony and functions as the stopping point for German shipping moving into the Indian Ocean. It is quite the cosmopolitan place, and the Germans have been very welcoming of immigrants from other European nations. English Mussalbik is quite aggressively expansionist. It has recently been promoted to Viceroyalty status, and it is currently engaging in expansion into the interior. There is a very sizable English-African mixed community, and they are currently working their way up the ranks. Hispanian South Africa is the oldest colony of the three, having been established early on in Hispania’s exploration of the world. It is also expansionist, but less so than Mussalbik. Due to its age, it is very established but still remarkably loyal to Hispania proper. All three colonies have very sizeably Indian communities, but each colony’s Indian community comes from a different part of India and there is very little pan-Indian identity in the colonies.

There is of course a plethora of other states and colonies within Africa.

ASIA

Moving into the Middle East, the obvious dominant Muslim Power is Persia. Persia has come to a kind of understanding with Rome at the moment, in that wars are to be waged and not fought. It has become quite the rival to the Poles, as they contest Poland both in the Caucasus and in the Central Asian plains. Currently, their support for Muslim rebels in the Caucasus is more open. It should also be noted that Persia is NOT Shia. With the Safavids having been butterflied, the Iranian peoples remain for the most part Sunni. Still, the Persian government isn’t picky over what kind of Islam you adhere to, so the Beruvian brand of Islam still makes them a little leery. They are richer than OTL, and well-armed.

Moving eastwards towards India, we have the Afghan Empire. It peaked in power just a little while ago, but it is definitely a force to be reckoned with. It is also Sunni, but it has taken a more hardline turn about it. The existence of the Hinduvati League has made the Afghan’s more oppressive against their Hindu subjects, and trouble is brewing.

The Hinduvati League, composed of the three states of Baster, Gwalior, and Hyderabad, is the current boogeyman for all the colonial powers in India. Though the states are nominally independent of each other, the Princes are being increasingly sidelined in favour of a new administration of generals, priests, and administrators who function throughout the League as a single unit. A product of a series of wars which allowed the League to assert its independence, the Hinduvati League is a group with a very specific goal: “All foreigners out of India.” Unfortunately for the man on the ground, their definition of foreigner is very broad and it is getting distressingly broader. Any Muslim and Christian, no matter the length of their sects existence in India, is a foreigner to them. Hindu people who have been educated in the West are foreigners as well. They’ve been tainted. Even more worryingly, their definition of Hindu is getting increasingly narrow, and those that don’t get fit get placed under the corrupted category. Currently, the colonial powers believe that the League is contained, but the increasingly unstable English Empire is about to provide the League with a path to expansion, and from there, into the nightmares of the World.

The rest of India is mostly under European colonial control. Technically, the Indian Confederation is independent, but it is heavily supported by German companies and German arms. German advisors also have a lot of “influence” in the courts of the princes who make up the Confederation. Ajmer is aligned with the Confederation, but the German in court is no more than an ambassador. Genocidal nastiness went down in Roman India in the quest for religious conversion, and though the Romans eventually stopped, very bad blood remains between those who converted and those who did not. English India is ruled out of Karikal and is about to become very unstable. In Hispanian Bengal, the taxman is the most hated man in the popular consciousness. But it’s not really his fault; Hispania wants those taxes to pay for Hispanian needs. OTL’s British Raj would be proud.

The one other Indian state that has really managed to retain its independence is Mysore. Having fended off all comers, their independence is at the moment secure. With their maintained independence, they have modernised to the point that the equal of any moderately sized European country. The Maharaja’s decision to favour men from Brazil to help them keep parity has won them no favours with the Hinduvati League.

Moving further Eastwards into South East Asia and Oceania, the whole area is the playground of three world powers: Beruvia, Hispania, and England. Some areas have yet to go unmolested. For a while, the two big dogs in town were the English and the Hispanians, but the arrival of the Beruvians shook things up a bit. Many Muslim sultanates sought alliances with the Beruvians, but have now found that their alliances come with quite a few strings. Still, for many, an unfair alliance with the Beruvians is better than then domination by infidels.

The one group unhappy with the Beruvians are the Vietnamese. The southern Vietnamese state had a growing presence of Muslims and Beruvian merchants, and the government felt threatened. When they cracked down, Beruvia intervened and Vietnam is now at the moment Beruvia’s one overt colony in the area.

Moving north, there is the Chinese Empire. China is ruled by a native Chinese dynasty, and no Manchu’s ever really got into power. Thus the Hanfu is still the clothing of choice for the Chinese. After having been kicked in the teeth twice by the Europeans, and once by the Japanese, and another time by the Beruvians (there are a lot of Muslim and Christian missionaries running around getting angry at each other), the Chinese are reforming and starting to pull what we might recognize as something approaching a Meiji. That being said, it’s not the same as a Meiji seeing as how the societal developments within society are different. For one thing, the Chinese aren’t trying to adopt Western norms. They are being aided in this modernisation by the Roman Empire, who see them as their traditional counterpart in the East. Still, the government is getting much better and the nation is industrializing. Neighbours beware, China knows it has a place in this world, and they want it back.

The Chinese attitudes of adopt the tech and other useful bits and shun anything else is no doubt inspired by the Koreans. The Korean Empire is determinedly isolationist, and well-armed to boot. It is not ruled by the Joseon dynasty at this point. They existed, but a number of invasions by the Japanese eventually allowed for a successful general to take the throne and supplant the Joseon dynasty. His dynasty was also eventually supplanted by another. These coups were mostly bloodless (mostly being a relative term here) and the continuous influx of competent men into positions of power has kept Korea powerful, if a little unstable. However, it has proven hard for Japan to take advantage of period of Korean weakness, since at this point Korean national and religious identity partly revolves around sticking it to Japan. The suppression of Buddhism ended when the Joseon fell, and Korea is at this point very Buddhist. Militantly so. They are also very xenophobic, especially towards any nation that has an Abrahamic religion as its creed. This has lead Korea to be very isolationist, but very devoted towards technological advancement to keep the Japanese at bay.

The Japanese Empire is Catholic, and this has made them rather unpopular with their neighbours. Well, that and Japanese imperialism. Without something approximating a Protestant reformation, Japan was successfully converted to Christianity… but it took a long time and it’s considered slightly weird by everybody around (think of them as the Christian version of Beruvia). The bloody civil wars to establish Christian rule really put the kibosh on any kind of Japan wank, and without the period of isolation under the Tokugawas, Japanese culture is nigh unrecognizable to OTL. Despite Japanese internal problems, Japanese merchants have been very active, and they are now as much globe trotters as the Europeans. There is a very large Japanese diaspora around the Pacific Ocean, from New Hibernia to Hawaii to Beru. Still, now after all these wars, Japan is finally mostly Catholic and is slowly expanding.

It should be noted that Taiwan was never nabbed by the Chinese in this world, and the European colonists in the area used a lot of Japanese labourers before the Japanese seized the island. Thus there is a very old and established Japanese population there. Of course, China is too close not to have a population on the Island, but they were eventually forced/encouraged to convert. On top of that, when the Japanese took over, they never expelled the Europeans and it continued to be a source of immigration. And of course, there is still also the indigenous Taiwanese. The area is very cosmopolitan, but the language of all three groups is increasingly Japanese.

LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

The English language of this world is actually slightly understandable to us, but it has some rather noticeable differences. These differences manifest in orthography, vowel sounds, the word “you”, dialects, and swear words, among others (I am not a linguist, so I only thought of these for fun… so if something is blaringly wrong, forgive me).

English orthography in this world is totally different from ours. I mean, there are still a number of similar points, but there are major differences that would make it look like another language at first glance. For one, there is even more French influences, if that is possible, in English spelling. However, due to the existence of something akin to the French Academy, English spelling actually happens to be more consistent. It’s just not anything we’d really be familiar with. The letter thorn is also still in use.

English, like many other European languages, has maintained its distinction between the formal and informal “you.” The formal one is “You” and the informal one is “thou.” However, at this point, “thou” is pronounced “thu” (a hard u).

Swear words still have a very religious bent to them, rather than the “bodily function” ones we have these days. It doesn’t mean they don’t exit. They still do, but the religion based ones are still considered worse. So, oaths such as “God’s Hooks” and the like are still very prevalent.

Certain vowel sounds and accents are obviously different too. More importantly, there exists within English a number of dialects that are rather distinct. These include Irish English, Meshkan English, and Scots English.

The lack of a Protestant ascendancy in Ireland has had a deep linguistic effects there. For one, there is less English spoken in Ireland. Out of a country of eight million, three million speak English. The language of government is English, but many of the upper class, especially those from Western Ireland, have Irish as their first language. Even among those who don’t have Irish as their first language, they often speak a form of English that is heavily influenced by Gaelic. Irish has maintained a certain status among the elite that it lost OTL, so that it has led to even more bleed between the two tongues. Since even the elites of Ireland speak the Irish-English dialect, it has found itself being codified in literature.

Meshkan English can also almost be considered a dialect in and of itself, if the Meshkans didn’t insist it was just plain, accented English. The heavy influx of native nobility into the ruling elite and the lack of discrimination against Nahua has resulted in a language with a hefty amount of loanwords and other influences (for example, certain common phrases are just direct translations from Nahua, English grammar be damned).

Currently however, the King’s English is still in favour in both of these areas, and both Irish English and Meshkan English maintain the same orthography. Still, on the streets, a number of innovations have crept in. A place where English orthography isn’t used is Scotland and New Caledonia.

The Scottish speak English… sort of. To linguists of this world, they speak a West Germanic language closely related to English; it’s called Scottis (or Scots) and it’s considered a separate language from English in this world. There was no Protestant reformation in England, and though vernacular bibles were printed by this world’s Catholic Church, the Protestant Scots sure as hell weren’t using them. Thus while the Scots of New Caledonia might be considered to speak English by us, they use a different orthography (different bibles) and their formal language is very much in tune with Scots English. With no Act of Union, the London/English accent was never the prestige accent for the Scots. This emphasis away from England has been going on for a while, and the two dialects are very distinct. They are mutually intelligible in some ways, but both sides treat them like separate languages (so, maybe a little like Portuguese and Spanish OTL, or maybe Norwegian to Danish… I don’t know, I’m not a linguist!). Scots English is currently being suppressed in Scotland proper.

While England has a large French vocabulary, it has also influenced the French language in a number of ways. The Northern French tongue in this world lacks a French Academy and spelling is a little more hit and miss. The maintenance of English as the language of governance has made northern French develop in different ways. Ironically enough, even as English has kept the informal “thou,” Northern French has dropped theirs. The northern French no longer use “tu” and the people only use “vous.” The intense English influence has also led to gendered language being dropped. Northern French now only uses “la” in speech, for example. On the other hand, Burgundian French has maintained both its formal and informal “you” and has kept gendered language. Like Scots English, Northern French and Burgundian French are considered close but separate Romance languages.

Meanwhile, the Japanese language is also slightly different. In this world, the Kansai dialects (Osaka, Kyoto, etc) have maintained top spot in terms of prestige for Japanese speakers (not the Edo dialect as OTL). Thus the suffix “-han” is most common (Yoshimoto-han is here to see you), not “–san.” Or to more properly explain, the other dialects are still using their different suffixes and other grammar forms, but the elites all across the Japanosphere are intentionally mimicking the Osakans. This will only accelerate once more modern media show up.

Other languages are obviously different, but those three are the only languages I know anything about.

RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD

Most of the religions of the world are fairly recognizable, but most of them have experienced changes due to the long time period between the current date and the POD. Initially of course, it was Islam and Christianity that felt the greatest changes, but those changes have now affected other faiths as well. These other faiths include Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. A number of syncretic faiths have popped up as well.

The success of the Crusades and the reconquest of the Mediterranean by Christian forces has had a profound effect on Islam. Islam is still one of the dominant world religions, and it divided largely into two spheres. One sphere centered on the Indian Ocean, and the other centered on Africa and Atlantis. However, those spheres are once more starting to merge as Beruvia develops into a Pacific power and is reaching into the Indian Ocean.

Sunni Islam is much more dominant in this world. While it has lost the Meditterranean, it has gained in other areas. This timeline lacked the Safavids and so Persia has remained predominantly Sunni. As well, without the Safavid persecution of Sunni’s and the wars with the Ottomans, Sunnis and Shias remain on much better terms, as they were before the arrival of the Safavids. Thus Muslims in this world are mostly very accepting of the various Islams of this world. This is especially important in regards to Western Islam, who are also mostly Suffi but with a number of Amerindian and African innovations.

West Africa was Islamified even faster than OTL; the heavy influx of refugees from the North African states have helped speed things along. However, at most levels, West African Islam has in many areas a very syncretic feeling. In the modern period, a recent trend, exemplified by the Male, has been a turn towards a more ‘pure’ form of Islam. This has gained popularity in some parts of Africa, but in other parts many are content with their form of Islam.

Unlike the Male, the Muslims of Atlantis have so far shunned any kind of purism, and many Sufi strains have nearly mainstream appeal throughout the continent and the Caribbean. This has caused new syncretic faiths to arise, as well as innovations within Atlantean Islam itself. Beruvian Islam is considered odd in many ways by other Islamic powers, but they are still considered Islamic.

Christianity is, at least on the surface, rather more united in this world than in ours. The Catholic Church holds sway over most of the Christian world, from Jerusalem to the Carolinas (OTL’s Philippines). However, that unity is mostly on the surface. The compromises that eventually reunited Eastern and Western Catholicism didn’t really please anybody, and caused the creation of autocephalous Churches throughout Western and Northern Europe.

The Western Catholic Churches at this point do Mass both in Latin and in the Vernacular. While the Churches are mostly autonomous, the Pope still has a rather large role. While the Churches are mostly governed along state lines, there are quite a few transnational Catholic organizations and religious societies that the Roman Church oversees.

Catholic Christianity is also a fare bit more bellicose than OTL. The success of the Crusades and the driving of Protestants from Germany has given the Church a fair degree of confidence. The conversion of the Japanese and most of Atlantis has only furthered this confidence.

A form of Protestantism exists in this world, and it is deeply divided. Ironically, there are fewer variations of Protestantism in this world than in ours. The greatest flourishing was in Germany, and when they were crushed, their few refuges demanded that they toe the party line in terms of doctrine. Thus there are only a few Protestant Churches, and they are not fond of each other.

Another thing to add is that Catholic Christianity is still, especially outside the Empire, more concerned with conversion than Orthodoxy. The smaller Protestant heretical threat and the greater Muslim presence in the Atlantic has had Western Catholicism prioritize getting people to identify as Christian rather than Muslim. This has caused quite a few interesting groups to develop within Catholicism. Even a a number of the religious orders that operate on the frontiers of Christianity have made due by preaching in the local vernacular and framing the Christian message in forms the locals would understand. This has led to some interesting innovations and has had long term effects. For the most part, these are tolerated.

Judaism has suffered in this world. Whether Jews have suffered more than OTL’s Jews is up for debate however. There are two current developments within modern Judaism right now. The first one is growing in Poland, and the other in New Judah.

Poland has always been tolerant towards the Jews, and has been the end point for a lot of refugees at this point. The Polish Jews are developing something akin to Reform Judaism, except much more conservative. It stresses interacting and living with the Gentile and engaging themselves in the civic life of Poland, but it also stresses Jewish identity by maintaining traditions that OTL’s Reform Judaism has abandoned.

New Judah is other end point for Jewish immigration. It is even more conservative, and more to point, aggressive. They are very Orthodox, if but for a few changes. For one thing, New Judah’s origin as the product of a small band of Jews conquering the area has made them more accepting of conversion. Thus New Judah is a little like Israel, without Palestinians. The locals have all been converted by this point. It is also very aware of its status as the only Jewish state in the world. It is currently aligned with the Beruvians, but they aren’t fond of them at all. They are also very intolerant of certain ideas coming out of Brazil.

Hinduism is a vast array of beliefs and is hard to characterise. However, the Hinduvati are increasingly taken issue with that. A result of worse experiences at the hands of dogmatic Christians and Muslims, the Hinduvati have become more puritanical and tyrannical in turn. To the horror of many, the Hinduvati states are becoming increasingly dogmatic over what beliefs constitute true “Hinduism” and are becoming increasingly intolerant of most other interpretations. This will only get worse.

It should be noted that Sikhism doesn’t exist and was butterflied.

Buddhism is much more militarised in this world. This is a result of Catholic Japan. This militarised Buddhism comes in two flavours: Korean and Chinese Buddhism. Well, three if you count the Ghorkas but they don’t happen to really count. They are militarists who happen to be Buddhist/Hindu, not militarists because they are Buddhist.

Korean Buddhism has avoided most of the suppressions of the Joseon. They still happened, but the Joseon lasted for a much shorter period of time in this world and the next dynasty accepted Buddhism. A number of Japanese invasions have left the Koreans as being both very well armed and very Buddhist, and the two have rather dovetailed together. However, this is a rather isolationist brand. They want to be left alone and ignore any foreign elements, besides technology that is.

Chinese militarized Buddhism is actually partly descended from Japanese Buddhist exiles. Japan before Christianization had quite the group of militarized Buddhist monasteries, and though they were eventually destroyed by the Christians over the course of Japan’s civil wars, exiles have continued to exist in China, where they merged with local Chinese brands. Partly in reaction to the presence of Christian and Muslim missionaries, these Chinese Buddhist temples are extremely into evangelism, and are rather unsympathetic to groups who disagree with them. These monasteries have also been pro-modernization and the Chinese government has favoured them in recent years.

There is of course also a number of syncretic faiths that have grown up around the world. The Caribbean and the Amazonian emirates are full of syncretic mixes between Christianity, African beliefs, and Islam. Sub Saharan Africa has also produced some new faiths, as has a number of Native American groups, most notably in the Mohawk Kingdom.

SOCIETY OF THE WORLD

Well, that about covers the countries of the world. Let’s look at the society of this world.

Technology wise, the world is a little ahead of our own. A world more on par with Europe has led to technological development at a slightly faster rate, but only slightly faster. It is probably at most a decade ahead. Notably, a book detailing evolution has just been published in Brazil and is making its way around the world. It has caused quite a stir. The author is wanted for murder in Denmark-Norway after an old priest had a stroke reading it. So while technology and science has advanced ahead of us for now, a number of recent discoveries are about to make a number of groups very uncomfortable.

Ethnic nationalism is not really a thing in this world, at least for the moment. There are too many multi-ethnic empires in both Europe and the rest of the Globe. A few nations do have something approaching it, but it is rare. These nations include the Hinduvati League, Korea, Burgundy, New Caledonia, Denmark-Norway and the Mohawk Kingdom. But for the most part, racial ethnicity is not emphasized by the powerful nations of the world and most political philosophers have dismissed it as counter-productive to a good society.

To accompany this, race based discrimination is less prominent in this world. It’s still there, but it is not the defining hatred of this world at the moment. The world has too many powers on a mostly equal footing with Europeans for Europeans to think all of them are inferior. The development and recognition of African Christian states such as Kongo and Ethiopia, along with Christian Japan that has been in continuous contact with Europe, has thrown a wrench into institutionalised racism. Both Kongolese and Ethiopian princes and princesses have married into European families and vice versa. Even in Atlantis, the native peoples have gotten a less raw deal. It was still bad, but many have been able to move up in society and nations have earned recognition from Europeans. This is because religious and cultural affiliation trumps racial affiliation in this world.

To counter these positive areas, religious hatred is much bigger in this world. Religious freedom is almost non-existent. For Christianity, the Crusades didn’t really end in failure. *Protestants* in Scotland, New Caledonia, and the Scandinavia are hated by and hate in turn Catholics to the South. A different Thirty Years War, which destroyed the Old Holy Roman Empire, didn’t do anything to temper religious hatred. The German protestants were crushed; those who didn’t convert were either killed or fled to Scandinavia and Scotland. Buddhist Korea has a big hate on for Christianity and Islam. Their hatred of Christianity is as old as the Japanese conversion, but the hatred of Islam is newer. The Hinduvati League hates everyone who isn’t a very specific kind of Hindu. This continued religious hatred has had effects throughout the world.

For example, religion based alliances are still politically viable. The most important one being built is the Islamic one. The Beruvians, after having made it into Indonesia and then the Indian Ocean, are busy building an alliance of Muslim states against the Europeans. With the loss of the Mediterranean to Christians, Islam is centered mostly on the Indian Ocean (Muslim Atlantis and West Africa not withstanding). It is currently building steam, though the Yemeni and the Persians remain leary of Beruvian style Islam. Still, they tolerate it, unlike the *Wahhabis* in Arabia who hate them. However, that faction is both isolated and under attack. The growing possibility of this potential alliance materialising keeps the “Muslim Menace” current in the minds of Christians and keeps religious tensions high.

However, in some areas, religious differences are beginning to be subsumed in the interests of realpolitik.

Politically speaking, the world is increasingly becoming divided between two different governmental ideologies: Elective monarchy and Absolute Monarchy. The two standard bearers of these forms of government are Poland-Lithuania and the Roman Empire. At this point in the world, the rivalry hasn’t yet totally entered everyone’s minds, but it is becoming increasingly clear to both Poland and Byzantium that they are espousing politics that are against each other. For the moment, neither side regards the other as their most pressing threat at the moment. But each side is aware of how their values are diverging, and a very black hatred is starting to emerge.

Both these forms of government have been around for a while, but the increasing divide between the two has been in the continued evolution of each political idea. Elective Monarchies are slowly moving towards democracy, albeit democracy with a rather authoritarian flair. The increasingly large electorates and ideologies pushing these reforms are at odds with the political ideas promoted in such states as England and Rome.

Elective monarchies have been developing differently in different countries, with the one constant almost always being the expansion of the electorate over time and the increasing power of elected representatives. Kings (or Queens in the case of Poland) are usually elected for life, though the FRA has introduced the new idea of the Monarch having a term limit (albeit a very large one by our standards). While the election of a Monarch only comes once in a while, the elected bodies are regularly elected and they have seized increasing power to counter the monarch. How much power depends on the country. Corporatist thought plays a big influence as well, and there is a lot of talk about the rights a state should afford to its people, and the duties a people owe to the state.

At the other end, the Absolute Monarchies are becoming increasingly authoritarian. A number of justifications are found for this situation, and this ranges from religion to philosophy. As it is, in many of the countries, the line between church and state has become blurry from even this ATL’s standards. The Divine Right of Kings plays a big part in the ideology of the states. Efficient bureaucracies are seen as a necessity, and they are actually relatively meritocratic. Notably, the Byzantine bureaucracy isn’t that concerned with the nobility of your blood. It is concerned with your loyalty, ideological stance, and religion.

Apart from these two forces, there are two ideologies that are, during this period, still relatively peripheral, but will become increasingly important as the century progresses. They are in many ways incompatible. The two are Freethinkerism and Communarianism.

The current center of Freethinkerism is Brazil, and it is an ideology that is well on its way to being truly secular. It epouses the commonality of man and of the ability of man to think rationally. Currently, the ideology is deist; a man, thinking rationally, should be able to find his own proper way to God. Churches need not play a role, though if a man so chooses, they can. As a result, it is big on science, internationalism, free markets and democracy.

Communarianism finds its home in Denmark-Norway, where it will mostly stay. It has evolved to meet the needs of the Danish-Norwegians, and doesn’t export itself so well. It does however export certain ideas very well. I mentioned earlier that this world doesn’t do ethnic nationalism all that much, and that’s true. But Denmark-Norway does do it, combined with religion. The religious communism of this state is very much ethnic in origin, and it has developed a number of philosophical positions to justify their state of affairs. They are very much against free markets, religious freedom, internationalism (they are isolationist), and some areas of science. They are actually not all that opposed to democracy in and of itself.

Communarisnism has taken root in England, where it is gaining ground among the working class since the established Church isn’t responding to their needs in a newly industrialized society. When the revolution hits, the revolutionaries will attempt to impose the thing whole sale during the radicalist period. However, once that subsides, there will be a return to monarchy. However, it will be a new monarchy, heavily influenced by a number of Communarian ideas.

Already on the streets of England, there is the cry of “One People, One Faith, One Tongue” (the last being a protest against both Latin and foreigners). This cry will carry itself past the revolution. It will carry itself to many parts of the world. It will carry itself and be echoed in places it really shouldn’t be.

It will be a cry that will only end in tears… and nuclear fire.

The Hundred Year War looms.
 
Utgard96

Utgard96

Scots is considered a separate language IOTL, although since the Act of Union there's been a lot of interplay between it and English, and the lines between the two are very blurred. So in a world where a Scottish colony survives it would make perfect sense for it to remain an entirely separate language.

EDIT: And yes, what Si said. This is one of the best things I've seen this map thread.
 

B_Munro

Magnificent, dreadnought jenkins. Perhaps we should start calling them "dreadnought-ist" maps now? :)

(One question: since the POD is well before the OTL 100 years war, I assume the British-French conflict was greatly butterflied and this Burgundy has an entirely different history than the short-lived empire of OTL?)

Bruce
 
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Transparent Blue

Transparent Blue

MasterSanders said:
I've been waiting so long for a Bionicle map on AH.com...
Click to expand...

Yo dawg, I heard you liked worldbuilding and robots so we built worlds inside your worlds and put robots in them and made the worlds robots so you can get confused while you get confused.

With the franchise officially rebooting in 4 hours perhaps it would be an appropriate time to share this map just for you. Being huge, and not AH related, I won't display the whole thing in this post.
 
area11

area11

Transparent Blue said:
Yo dawg, I heard you liked worldbuilding and robots so we built worlds inside your worlds and put robots in them and made the worlds robots so you can get confused while you get confused.

With the franchise officially rebooting in 4 hours perhaps it would be an appropriate time to share this map just for you. Being huge, and not AH related, I won't display the whole thing in this post.
Click to expand...
Wow I had no idea Bionicle had such an interesting looking universe.
 
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