I've noticed something, though - some regions of the world are not under any nation at all, with forts and the like being the only listed signs of human presence. Since Chernobyl's one of them, are they regions where, for some reason or another, human beings can't set foot? If it's radiation in Chernobyl, Amazonia and the Congo might've been left alone due to their environmental importance, with only pre-state native peoples being allowed. Kind of like how India treats the Sentinelese, but on a global scale.
This is a reference to League of Nations mandates and certain temporary UN territorialities in the mid 20th century, but here, the
Society of Nations is a US-backed LoN analogue that came out of WW1 like the UN came out of WW2, and WW2 was fought like the Korean War between a
SoN coalition and the Axis. I believe I expand a bit more about this point in the Reddit comment thread. Anyway, in the interwar period, apart from Chernobyl, those territories you mentioned are kind of big debacles (Amazon rubber boom atrocities and Belgian congo), so there's a plausible way of the
SoN stepping in in a pragmatic sort of way and taking the territories out of the nation-state system and keeping them as reserve-type lands, kind of like how, say, Virunga and many African countries' park systems in OTL are supported by international efforts, and how FUNAI treats the pockets of protected areas in the Amazon. I admit, my imagination was captured when I saw videos of FUNAI in the rainforest, especially those accidental contact videos with uncontacted tribes. In my backstory, there are kind of
long patrol (Redwall reference btw) rangers that work in these kinds of territories.
Another reason I had these territories was because I just couldn't plausibly invent ways to map the diversity of languages and cultures onto the nation-state model. I know it sounds funny, because this is all ASB anyway, but I'm working with degrees of possibility here... Nomadic hunter-gatherers, "pygmy" peoples, uncontacted tribes...plus dozens of small language families and isolates.
I'm also curious about the Italian states, since Trent seems to be the capital of a Rhaeto-Romance state, while the Istriot language (
very minor in OTL) basically replaced Venetian.
And the alternate Ryukyu island chain that looks suspiciously like Hatsunia - I wonder what other references are there.
I just googled "Hatsunia." It does have a resemblance to what I have going on here, but I think the coincidence may be from basing the alternate geography on real submerged landmasses and ocean ridges! A clear AH reference is the trope of Deseret, though here I have them as a means of, first of all, giving their unique-looking script to the Arizonan pueblo culture, and second, be leveraged by a non-settler focused British continental policy of containing US expansion. Another reference that you might appreciate was carried over from my more immature stage of working on this project, and that is Galatia, which puts on the map the only
conlang in this world. All the other languages are real and in existence or in the process of being revived
or hypothetical
creoles (when I'm trying to grab to efficient represent too many unique languages in a region; mainly the Caledonia here, along with the dominions of California). There are tons more... This map is one giant easter egg hunt. You'll just have to start digging the etymology or wait as I publish the content!
It'll be for another day, then - but I think you'll be able to make enough money to expand your range pretty soon, anyway.
Thanks! But I can tell you now there's no profit to be had from this haha. People have been telling me to try to monetize it, which I am trying to in a way, but this is 10 years of a side project that can't be compensated that way. I'm sure all the other AH timeline writers feel the same way.
Oh, one more note on getting physical prints. I'm not trying to blatantly self promote, but there are ways for you to get print-ready high-resolution graphics of this project (including the full chorographical one) through
my Patreon. So you could print it yourself and do away with the shipping issue.