Inspired by
this page of the ASB map thread, I created my own stab at an Earth with Warhammer 40k-ish factions:
Turquoises and blues: The
American Empire is a regional power in world geopolitics, in spite of a cold war with the Eurafrican Imperium (that some elements on both sides generally ignore). The American Empire consists of a homeland (two shades of greyish-blue representing the Western Sept of Hispanic origin and Eastern Sept of Anglo-Saxon origin) as well as several vassals, these consisting of the Cajun State (formerly Texas) and the Indian State (formerly Mexico) as well as various puppets and minor nations in Central America. The Cajun State is known for its mercenaries but also for its widespread ritual cannibalism and general backwardness. The US' long civil wars were resolved by the adoption of "Manifest Destiny" as a higher goal and the establishment of a rigidly enforced caste system that assigns occupation based on ancestry, with the Colonial Gentry at the top and the Crackers, Half-Breeds, Blacks, and Asians each having their defined and demarcated responsibilities. The difficulties of the Imperium in administering Western Canada have led to two provinces defecting en masse to become American Allies (AA's), although the Imperium views them as traitors to the Eurafrican cause. However, the American Empire is itself in the midst of a defection crisis and a frozen conflict. Alaska and Hawaii have split off into the
Faraway Alternative, which rejects the current Gentry Senate even though they respect the greater good of the Manifest Destiny. The Empire and the Alternative are involved in a vicious propaganda war, with the Alternative accusing the Empire of being naive liars that would rather brainwash their people than let them know of the existence of the Asiatic Horde, the Commonwealth of Pirates, and the cruel training that Cracker Warriors go through, while the Empire accuses the Alternative of being, in the worlds of Gentry Senator Chesterfield Lestrange IV, "f*cking paranoid bloodthirsty savages". However, the two sides have not come to blows because of the vast Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea that separates them as well as the skill of Alternative Brigades in defeating Horde and Piratical warriors before they reach the Empire proper.
Yellow: The
Eurafrican Imperium is a modern feudal empire; every patch of land has its own laws and lords, and pretty much every fief can do as it wishes so long as it recognizes the superiority of the Eurafrican Pontificate, an office composed either of a 231-year-old lord (according to official propaganda) or a string of elderly appointed leaders (what most people believe). The Eurafrican Imperium is probably a bit better to live in than the American Empire (known as "the Blues") but it's a huge case of YMMV. For every well-governed fief, there are five or ten that range from corrupt to dystopian hellholes. Interestingly, the Eurafrican fiefs can set their own foreign policy to a limited extent, meaning that the continental European and West African fiefs are somewhat tolerant of immigrants and foreigners ("xenos" they call them) while many others are officially at war with all non-Eurafricans, the legacy of the brutal war of independence that they fought. The Imperium suffered a great technological decline during the war of independence and the following civil war with the Dark Church, and only now are their engineers moving beyond stopping technological rot to rediscovering and even, occasionally, innovating.
Dark Red: The
Elders of the Amazon are the remnants of the powerful Tenth Brazilian Republic. After extreme wealth and vice caused societal collapse and rampant violence, Brazil's elite turned on each other. A few million old-guard Brazilians still hide out in the Amazon, riddled with bizarre cults that combine African and Native American superstition with European spiritism. The Elders still greatly resent all the other civilizations of the Western Hemisphere and have vowed to annihilate them all - someday. The good news is that they have strong environmental preservation laws and excellent craftsmen.
Light Red: The
Commonwealth of Pirates, also known as the Dark Elders, is a sect of South Americans that split off from their masters to pursue piracy, the slave trade, and other dark industries that most Brazilians didn't want to touch. Their lengthy coastline means that they are among the greatest maritime raiders and traders the Earth has ever seen, but also has enabled them to learn new forms of cruelty and torture. Their largest city is not on land but instead is a permanently moving flotilla based off the coast of Argentina.
Black and Purple: The
Technocracies of the Indian Ocean, also known as the "Tomb World", are a bloc of high-technology urbanized states stretching from the Mediterranean to the mountains of New Guinea. Their relentless pursuit of technology has resulted in massive extinctions of native life and widespread sterility among the population, meaning that the number of citizens each technocracy can muster is gradually declining. To make up for that, they have embraced robotics and technologies that are mysterious to all others, and dream of someday restoring their fertility and dominating over the "savages" that surround them.
Greens: The
Oceanic Regional Councils (ORCs) are exactly what they sound like, primitive and savage warriors who speak a deformed version of English and love their unrelenting military campaigns, with a thirst for blood forged from growing up on remote Australian Outback sheep stations and the most remote valleys of New Zealand. The ORCs periodically will launch a new military campaign, or GREAT WAR, to expand their influence; they recently secured Madagascar and have begun the trade of Malagasy slaves, who they insulting call "Gretchens" after the name of the first female Malagasy to arrive in Perth.
Orange: The
Diocese of the Dark Church is also known as the Realm of Chaos. An occult and extremely nihilistic offshoot of Russian Orthodoxy, the Dark Church spread throughout the former Soviet Union during the difficult 2020s and 2030s. The Dark Church has adopted the most fearsome and mysterious attributes of Lamaism, shamanism, Sufism, and Neopaganism and devotes a great amount of influence to evangelism in the Imperium and elsewhere, a process known to outsiders as Corruption. Corruption is the most central doctrine of the Dark Church and involves being indoctrinated into their gnostic belief system, aided with the use of copious quantities of vodka and hallucinogenic drugs. Several scores of Eurafrican Marines are believed to have been Corrupted by the Dark Church.
Pink: The tyrannical
Asiatic Horde is a force centered on one thing - translated by George Orwell as "the annihilation of the self." An extreme interpretation of certain Buddhist and, to a lesser extent, Hindu doctrines, the Horde has aimed at creating a hive mind out of humans, turning them into starving killing machines whose sole concern is increasing their population and biomass. In a world divided among feudalism, strict casteism, organized piracy, organized resentment and irredentism, and mindless war, the Asiatic Horde manages to be the most terrifying faction that exists. They literally breed like rabbits and are able to send massive and disciplined human waves - with mysterious weaponry to boot - at any army or navy that attempts to resist. There have been some rumors from within the Alternative that the Horde has been able to muster armies of wild animals to assist in their conquests, including a coordinated shark attack that sunk an Alternative battleship and videos showing an army of Eurasian bears, holding what appear to be firearms, marching through the streets of Yakutsk.
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