Disclaimer: I'm currently working out of a laptop with just a trackpad, that's why there aren't any maps or graphics in this post. This is also mostly going to be a sort of "thinking out loud" post, the ideas here require a bit more fleshing out before I'm sure of them, but the end result is probably going to be somewhat similar, unless someone here can give me a good reason that this definetly doesn't work.
India:
India turned out to be a lot easier of a fix than I had feared. As far as I can tell, the Pratihara dynasty rose to prominence primarily because of their success in fighting off the Arab invaders in the 8th century, after the conquest of Sindh and the destruction of the Hindu Chacha dynasty. No Arab conquest of Persia means no Arabs in Sindh in the 8th century means no one for the Pratiharas to get rich defeating. No Pratiharas means no challenger to the Pala capture of Kannauj, who thus expand their rule across the entire Gangetic Plain by the middle of the 8th century.
I can't really find specifics about how or why exactly the Rashtrakuta dynasty that ruled Deccan came to prominence. Their first ruler was a general of the Chalukyas who overthrow the Maharaja in 753 CE after helping defeat the Arab invaders. If someone knows more about this then do sound off, but as far as I can tell their rise also hinged on fighting off Arab invaders, so they're at least going to be weaker ITTL than they were IOTL, which means even less challenges for the Pala.
So, all in all, we end up with a big ol' Buddhist-preference (they also patronized Shaivism but the Pala kings were afaik almost all Buddhists) empire dominating the entire Gangetic Plain, from their border with the Shahis of Kabul in the west to Bengal and Assam in the east. They'll definetly be able to check the advance of the Kabulis , and once they're in charge of the richest part of India I don't see much purpose to them attempting to tangle with empires further south, so establishing dominance over the Tibetans and Burmese and expanding Buddhist influence might be their primary goal. Maybe they grow more exclusivist regarding their Buddhism and stop patronizing Hinduism, although I think that's a lot less likely. So, a mostly Buddhist mandala emanating out from Bengal across the Gangetic Plain, up the Tibetan Plateau, and down into Indochina and Nusantara?
The Oghuzes
As of the last WIP post (i.e 930 CE), the Oghuzes are a mostly irrelevant confederation of tribes just east of the Caspian Sea ruled by a Yabghu. However, with the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate and the establishment of the Western Uyghur Khanate in the Balkash basin, and the growing ambitions of the Varazids of Samarkand, things are about to change. By the 970s, the Western Uyghurs have subjected the tribes of the OTL Kazakh Steppe - the Kimeks and Cumans and Kipchaks and such - and are pressuring the Oghuzes, while the Varazids have crossed the Oxus river, defeating the Ispahbudhanids and relegating them to a small territory south of the Great Wall of Gorgan. The Oghuzes are at this point still mostly Steppe pagans, but some of the clans had been convinced by missionaries from Persia to convert to Christianity, specifically of the East Syriac variety. After a brief conflict regarding the succession of the Yabghu, most of the Oghuzes decide to seize the opportunity of a weakened Khazar Khaganate to the west (due to Rus' incursions) and migrate. In 981, the Khazar capital of Atil is sacked, and the rulers flee to Sarkel. Sarkel is then subsequently sacked the following year, and the Khaganate's rulers are captured and executed. With their state effectively decapitated, the Khazars fracture into a conglomeration of fiefdoms in the north Caucasus. This display of force by the newborn Oghuz Khanate convinces the Pechenegs - located around the lower Dnieper, east of the Magyar-controlled Etelköz, and until then tributaries of the Khazars - to unite under the former's banner, forming the Khaganate of the Twenty Arrow People, referring to the twenty tribes of the Oghuzes and Pechenegs now under their banner, also called the Oghuz Khaganate or the Yeva Khaganate, after the ruling Yıva clan. The Yıva were one of the Turkic tribes to convert to Christianity, which means that this state is from birth at least nominally Christian.
In 1000 CE, the Yeva Khaganate sack the great trade city of Kiev, until then controlled by the Rus' peoples. This is a crucial turning point in the history of the steppe, as the enormous wealth flowing north along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes by way of the Rus' is now rerouted. Expelled from their fairly recently-conquered capital of Kiev, the Rus' become isolated further north and, much like the Khazars, reduced to a collection of squabbling princedoms. The developing core of the Rus kingdom shifts away from Kiev back to Smolensk, Novgorod and Polotsk, and many of the east Slavic peoples move along with it to escape the raids of the Turks.
The Turks grow to be allies of the Romans, due to both good relations built by the trans-Black Sea trade, as well as a wide array of common enemies; Bulgars, Magyars and Slavs. Already having a large Christian population, most significantly the ruling class, also helps relations between the two. The Yeva rulers agree to allow Roman missionaries to begin work with other tribes; by 1021 the Roman Orthodox bible is translated into the Oghuz language (known as the Oghuz or Turkoman bible), and by 1084, Kiev is granted the status of a Metropolis within the Orthodox Church, autonomous under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, while the Khagan Temür II (aka. Temür Khilij) proclaims Roman Orthodoxy the official faith of the Oghuz state, and adopts a system of double naming and titulature, becoming both Khagan Temür II and Emperor Thomas I (chosen due to A) Temür and Thomas kinda sound the same and B) the original christian faith of the Oghuz was that of the Church of the East, whose traditional founder and patron saint was Thomas the Apostle, who is thus also the patron saint of the Christian Turks). This results in dissatisfaction among some more pagan tribes, but the integrity of the empire is not significantly threatened, as the majority of the state's subjects already had within them significant Orthodox leadership, or at least Christian.
Soon after arriving in eastern Europe, the Turks come into conflict with the Moravian Kingdom over sovereignty of the western Slavic peoples, many of whom, like the east Slavs, begin to migrate away from the Turks, moving further west and putting pressure on the Germanic Frankish Empire, opening up a new front in the Papist-Eastern conflict.
