Map Thread XIV
- Thread starter MorningDew
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Castilian... do you perhaps mean Catalonian? OTL Spanish is literally "Castellano" in Spain.
Trajan would have wept x)
Here's a moderately insane ASB setting which I'm referring to as "Voodoopunk", "-punk" in the sense that I'm taking a time period's cliches and anxieties and rabidly over-exaggerating. This is the sort of setting where plausibility is not nearly as important as the Rule of Cool.
The PoD here is that the vodou ceremony that kicked off the Haitian Revolution in 1791 actually really summoned the loa (vodou deities) to reality, and they lend their magical strength to the Haitian Revolution. Subsequently, all sorts of magic starts working across the world, although it works better the closer you get to Haiti (and therefore works best in the America), and, perhaps due to the loa's influence and grudges, seems to work best for blacks, Indians, and anyone else fighting against European domination. Haiti conquers the whole Caribbean with curses, zombi armies, and good old-fashioned slave revolts while Europe is distracted by the French Revolutionary Wars, helps install friendly revolutionary regimes in Latin America, and fractures the slave regimes of the United States and Brazil by invading them. At the same time, indigenous peoples are able to use their shamanic traditions (with more than a few new twists) against the interlopers encroaching on their land. By 1848, the Americas are a bizarre, enchanted patchwork simmering with revolution, shifting alliances, and the always unpredictable forces of magic.
It's moderately possible that I might eventually do other parts of the world in this setting. Let's just say France is a little crazy...
Yes! Give us more!
If the Loa coming to this world kicked out magic and all that (With the Aztec Gods coming back, it's just taking a while to do it to me.) What of places like Egypt, Nordic Lands, Asia , and on top, Africa? Those places got to be loaded with magic and Gods.
If the Loa coming to this world kicked out magic and all that (With the Aztec Gods coming back, it's just taking a while to do it to me.) What of places like Egypt, Nordic Lands, Asia , and on top, Africa? Those places got to be loaded with magic and Gods.
Thanks for the enthusiasm!
I haven't thought about the rest of the world in anything resembling depth. I think that while there are certainly a lot of spirits and stuff roaming around, the loa are probably the only actually godlike beings on earth, so far. That said, there certainly would be a lot of magic in Africa, African powers like Asante and Dahomey and the Zulu and so on will be doing a lot better at fending off colonization. And I can certainly imagine there's magical activity in Egypt - the French expedition there would have had an entirely different purpose, and contributed significantly to the neo-classical shenanigans that I imagine the French are up to - I'm thinking of them as continuing to be under a republican revolutionary regime, that worships the loa in the guise of the Olympians or something like that as an analog to OTL's Cult of Reason / the Supreme Being, and controlling a big chunk in the middle of Europe, while surrounding them is the "Holy Alliance" that opposes them and the unholy forces of magic in general (which doesn't exactly help them win anything). Magic isn't particularly strong in Asia due to its distance from the source of magic in Haiti - it is there, and getting stronger as it is all over the world, but it hasn't been nearly influential in changing history as the distraction and weakening of European colonial powers from elsewhere has been. Like Egypt and the Amazon and so forth, though, the jungles of India and Indochina and mountains of China and Tibet and so on are bound to have plenty of buried secrets to uncover.
And we thought the Anti-Masonic Party was silly.
Here's a moderately insane ASB setting which I'm referring to as "Voodoopunk", "-punk" in the sense that I'm taking a time period's cliches and anxieties and rabidly over-exaggerating. This is the sort of setting where plausibility is not nearly as important as the Rule of Cool.
The PoD here is that the vodou ceremony that kicked off the Haitian Revolution in 1791 actually really summoned the loa (vodou deities) to reality, and they lend their magical strength to the Haitian Revolution. Subsequently, all sorts of magic starts working across the world, although it works better the closer you get to Haiti (and therefore works best in the America), and, perhaps due to the loa's influence and grudges, seems to work best for blacks, Indians, and anyone else fighting against European domination. Haiti conquers the whole Caribbean with curses, zombi armies, and good old-fashioned slave revolts while Europe is distracted by the French Revolutionary Wars, helps install friendly revolutionary regimes in Latin America, and fractures the slave regimes of the United States and Brazil by invading them. At the same time, indigenous peoples are able to use their shamanic traditions (with more than a few new twists) against the interlopers encroaching on their land. By 1848, the Americas are a bizarre, enchanted patchwork simmering with revolution, shifting alliances, and the always unpredictable forces of magic.
It's moderately possible that I might eventually do other parts of the world in this setting. Let's just say France is a little crazy...
Interesting scenario: what sort of magic do the Masons practice? Is New England still democratic - for anyone not suspected of being a witch, anyway?
(Unless they have a reliable source of human sacrifices, I am highly dubious about the cost-benefit ratio of Mexico's Aztec God Project.
)
(Unless they have a reliable source of human sacrifices, I am highly dubious about the cost-benefit ratio of Mexico's Aztec God Project.
)A map from a timeline I plan on making one of these days (within the next few decades, hopefully). This is only my second map, so please feel free to offer as much constructive criticism as you can. If there's anything you'd like to know about the timeline, go ahead and ask; I can't guarantee I'll have a good answer, though. It's written in German because I originally had an idea to make it look like an actual map, but I aborted that three quarters of the way through.
The crimson countries are the Danubian Entente, made up of Czechoslovakia and a radical, Austromarxist Austria. The striped red countries are occupied by the Entente.
The blue countries are the Western Allies, and light blue are their puppets.
Dark pink is the Soviet Union, and the light pink are Warsaw Pact Members.
A. The Netherlands
B. Belgium
C. Luxemburg
D. Switzerland
E. Sardinia-Piedmont
F. Italian People's Republic
G. Soviet Union
H. Romania
I. Bulgaria
The crimson countries are the Danubian Entente, made up of Czechoslovakia and a radical, Austromarxist Austria. The striped red countries are occupied by the Entente.
The blue countries are the Western Allies, and light blue are their puppets.
Dark pink is the Soviet Union, and the light pink are Warsaw Pact Members.
A. The Netherlands
B. Belgium
C. Luxemburg
D. Switzerland
E. Sardinia-Piedmont
F. Italian People's Republic
G. Soviet Union
H. Romania
I. Bulgaria
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*sticks pins into a HatKirby-shaped doll*'
Maaaaaaaaaybe.
Interesting scenario: what sort of magic do the Masons practice? Is New England still democratic - for anyone not suspected of being a witch, anyway?
(Unless they have a reliable source of human sacrifices, I am highly dubious about the cost-benefit ratio of Mexico's Aztec God Project.
B_Munro thinks my scenario is interesting?!?! *hyperventilates*
Masonic magic is Enlightenment-style pseudo-classicism: lots of Greek and Latin and Hebrew, neo-Platonism and Hermeticism, alchemy and astrology, and so on. At least officially. Black and Indian styles of magic tend to work a lot better, so the ones who really want power try to practice them in secret, since racism would lead to public disapproval.
Democracy in New England is sort of up in the air. Officially, yes, it's governed by town councils and the representatives they elect, but since anyone who votes against what the town elders say must be a witch...
There is indeed a strong possibility that the leaders of Mexico will find themselves on the wrong side of the sacrificial altar.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Magic is overall weaker in Europe, but is European-style ritual magic stronger relative to voodoo in France?
But what's to keep the town elders from being witches?
Gotta be sparing with those accusations, or every discussion of whether to put up a "look out for ye bullock carts" sign on Mather and Edwards turns into a witch hunt ...
Just a bit of semi-nerdy input on my behalf: there are still isolated rural regions in Greece practicing ritual animal (bulls, pigs, lambs mostly) sacrifice and animal parts based divination to this very day and things were even hairier back in the 1840s. The local orthodox priests basically leave the villages for the duration of the "festivities". So -at least mediterranean - european folk magic isn't that much dead, even in 2016. Heck, if you wanna go full dark, there are still today mountaineer families grumbling about how the christian romans forced them to abandon their ancient "house-gods"...
Uhh... I think the word you're looking for here is "Communist"
And you can get some better maps at the AltHistory wiki, so you don't have to keep using crappy Wikipedia maps. Here is a link to said wiki.
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