Map Thread XVIII
- Thread starter FesteringSpore
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Where's the capital? i assume it could be London only ceremonially, considering the unsafe position for the Parliament with such a French power in Europe, but it's much more likely to be in India. Where would it be then? Or is that giving away too much info.?
I would love to see more in this universe. A suggestion: have one of the lifebaring planets be Jupiter or Saturn itself, with the native lifeforms being giant floating creatures like this:
zhropkick
Banned
This is pretty much ASB and ahistorical instead of allohistorical, but I was extremely bored and felt like making a cool (in my opinion anyway) scenario.
In another time and another place, Europe is entering an age of industry. In the sweatshop factories of Lunden and the textile mills of Brugge one can hear the constant whizzing, grinding and clanking of machines and powered looms as labourers spend their days working at an assembly line. Europe, moreso around the shores of the North Sea than anywhere else, is being transformed from a land of green and pleasant countryside to a land of dark mills, steel boilers and wrought iron machinery. This new era has brought new challenges, but it has also brought the world new marvels and opportunities.
Beyond the shores of the North Sea, not all of Europe has entered this age of industry at the same pace. South of the Loire, the Alps and the Po Valley lies a land more set in its old ways. Here life is more relaxed and more rural. It is a common sight to find agricultural labourers idly slumped at the base of a tree at midday, resting in the shade to avoid the heat of the Mediterranean sun. In this land you will hear the strumming of guitars and a more lively variety of the Romance tongue as you walk down a crowded street, and if you gaze up above you will see neoclassical minarets and marble pillars on buildings. The Islamic call to prayer that echoes through the streets of towns and cities in this land is in a Latinate language, but that same Latinate language is written with an Arabic-derived script.
The law of the land is different here as well. With its own school of Fiqh informed by old Latin law and compiled in documents with stylised Latin-language, Arabic-script calligraphic titles, the nature of law south of the Loire is distinctly different from the non-Islamic, Germanic-influenced style of law that is adhered to in the north. It should come as no surprise that these two lands are governed differently as well; The lands south of the Loire are governed by a Caliph who rules from the walled city of Carcassona, whereas the lands to its north are governed by an Emperor, anointed by God and crowned by the Christian Pope in Aachen, who rules from the port city of Calés (situated on the southern shore of the Engelisc Channel). The Caliphate of Carcassona (as it officially calls itself) is a very centralised state, whereas the Holy Roman Empire to its north has a plethora of autonomous duchies and bishoprics within it, along with a parliament to guide the actions of its supposedly God-annointed ruler and (increasingly) a quasi-democratic, managerial political process heavily influenced by the whims of new-age chivalric orders and industrial union representatives.
The rest of Northwestern Europe outside of the Caliph of Carcassona's reach is similar to the Holy Roman Empire culturally, religiously and politically.
In the northern third of the Iberian peninsula, where a strategic assortment of rivers and mountains has blocked the expansion of Islamic rule northwards for over a millennia, the Christian Latinate kingdom of Galicia has grown rich and prosperous from its colonial escapades in Africa and Asia. The Basques of Biscay, who speak a language quite unlike the Latin tongue but are just as fervently-Christian as their Galician neighbours, have been governed for the past fifty years by a board of bureaucrats after their king was deposed.
In Europe's chilly northeast is a collection of Baltic, Germanic, West Slavic and Finnic nations slowly awakening from the slumber of feudalism. Leading the way is Nordland, a beacon of peace and prosperity in the far north ever since it reconquered Jutland from the Holy Roman Empire two centuries ago and took steps towards abolishing serfdom shortly thereafter. Many nations, such as the Duchy of Prussia and Livonia, are ruled by an absolute monarch but have begun a slow transition to limited government using local representative institutions that have existed for centuries.
Further to the east, beyond the jurisdiction of the Latin Christian Church, lies the Eastern-Christian, Byzantine "Eurasian" cultural sphere. United under the banner of Orthodox Christianity and Greek high culture, the Eurasian cultural sphere continues to push east and includes an increasingly-significant Turkic and Slavic contingent. Over the course of the past few centuries this region has come under the rule of the conniving House of Vlastos, which rules the two main political entities of the region (the Eastern Roman Empire and the Slavo-Turkic Tsardom of Scythia) as one decentralised Empire. Further adding to the decentralised nature of the Vlastos domains is the Eastern Roman Empire's plethora of vassal states, many of which (such as the Gothic Principality situated on the Volga, the Eastern Romance-speaking states of Wallachia and Moldavia, the Slavic States of Serbia and White Serbia (south and north of the Danube respectively), Georgia, Circassia and Armenia) don't even speak Greek (although one, the Despotate of Attica, does speak Greek, and several of the aforementioned Roman vassal states still use Greek as a secondary administrative language). The Eastern Christian cultural sphere is more reactionary than either the Western Christian or Western Muslim ones, with absolutism and rigid traditionalism being the norm for politics and culture (although Attica has come under the rule of a liberal Despot recently and may change things there unless the Emperor in Constantinople can stop him).
Together, these European nations have spread their grip across the world over the course of the past few centuries. Western Christianity and Islam continue to battle for supremacy in Africa, Asia and the Hesperides, whereas the Orthodox world has pushed east into Central Asia and has recently established a firm foothold in Africa (by way of Ethiopia).
The Northern Hesperide is a continent of intrepid pioneers, industrious settlers, and fierce Indians. Most of the continent is Holy Roman Territory, with everything from cotton farming to the fur trade nearly monopolised by the HRE on this continent. In southern Mesohesperidia and on the Eastern coast of the Northern Hesperide exist autonomous colonies, their political processes controlled by either landowning aristocratic plantation owners and yeomens' friendly societies depending on whether or not the particular colony in question comprises a major cotton-producing region. One collection of Mesohesperidian colonies broke off from the colonial yoke nearly a century ago and established the Federation of The Hesperides, with its capital being Newe Henfford (built over the ruins of the indigenous city of Tenochtitlan, which was sacked by an anti-Nahuatl coalition of native tribes during a smallpox-induced wave of social collapse that rippled through Mesohesperidia several decades before the HRE conquered the region). The Federation of the Hesperides, unlike OTL Mexico, is a nation of European settlers, and its large indigenous population is confined to several self-governing Indian territories which have no say in the direction of national policy. The Federation is quite racist and African slavery is still used on the country's eastern coast to harvest cash crops (primarily sugarcane), but its small government sustained only through tariffs and not income tax makes it a pretty alright place to live if you're White. Andrew Jackson would have liked the place.
In the far west of the Northern Hesperide is an assortment of native tribes, scattered Holy Roman settlements and pioneer associations. The Peninsular Haudenosaunee (pushed out of their original homeland by Holy Roman settlers, ended up peacefully assimilating the Wyandot), the Great Sioux, the Illiniwek and the Navajo all continue to resist European settlement, using the horse and firearms in their struggle against White encroachment upon their lands. Although they will probably be defeated eventually, it hasn't stopped any of them from giving Calés and New Henfford headaches. Especially intense is the conflict between the Illiniwek and settlers in the Great Lakes region, with formal military intervention by the Holy Roman Empire only managing to clear the Illiniwek from the banks of the Ohio River. The Holy Roman Empire is also powerless to enforce its rule in the Westmorland Territory (OTL California region on the map, south of the OTL Columbia River), where settlers pledge allegiance to the Sovereign Settlers' Association (they'd be called geo-mutualists in OTL) and the Empire of Laurentia (imagine Emperor Norton was from Picardy and liked the idea of enlightened absolutism, but was unable to enforce it on the American frontier). Holy Roman Control on the western coast of the Northern Hesperide is limited to OTL Washington and Vancouver. The Empire of Japan, a recently-modernised rising power in East Asia, has managed to gain international recognition of its colony in Arasuka, with the HRE ceding the claimed territory in the region.
In the northeast of the Northern Hesperide exist the Vinlandic peoples, who have become very unlike their meatball-eating cousins in Europe since arriving on the Northern Hesperide during the Middle Ages. Genetically, the Vinlanders are about as Nordic as they are Algonquin or Inuit, their language has about as much native influence as OTL English has Romance influence, and their religion is a highly syncretic mix of Norse Mythology, indigenous religion and Christianity (although many local rulers are beginning to abandon the old religion for Latin Christianity as Holy Roman Influence grows). The King of Vinland rules over much of OTL Eastern Canada from his capital on the Saint Lawrence River, although in practice much of his domain garners him little tax revenue and is ruled by local Jarls (a blanket term: many Jarls are just as likely to style themselves using as some derivation of "Sagamore" or "Ogimà" instead of "Jarl"). In the Maritimes Vinlandic peoples pledge allegiance to the "Vestrhafþing" ("West Sea Assembly"), which acts as a confederal parliamentary government for the Vinlanders of the Maritimes. The Vestrhafþing has caused a great deal of trouble for European attempts to control the Maritimes, with Vinlanders in OTL Labrador refusing to pay taxes to the Holy Roman colonial administration and Vinlanders in New Navarre (OTL Newfoundland) waging guerilla war against the Basque colonial government of the island. Because of their enhanced immunity to European diseases and familiarity with European warfare, the Vinlandic peoples have managed to resist political domination by European colonial Empires despite their strategic location on the Northern Hesperide's coast. As Holy Roman influence grows and incremental territorial concessions (such as the cession of the Arctic coast to the HRE) continue to be forced upon the Vinlandic peoples they face an uncertain future, but one thing that cannot be disputed is that they will not go down without a fight.
The Caribbean is split between the Holy Roman Empire and the Caliphate of Carcassona, and it serves as a vital source of cash crop revenue for both empires.
The Southern Hesperide is a continent of nations old and new. European colonial control is restricted to Carcassonan Nova Andalusia (OTL Venezuela and some more, self-governing), Galician Guayana and Holy Roman Southland (OTL Patagonia, an autonomous colony controlled by religious fanatics and radical trade unionists, used as a dumping ground for dissidents, will probably end up being the next Federation of the Hesperides but less populous and crazier ideologically). The majority of the continent's land area is taken up by three independent nations - Peçonia, Meridia and Tawantinsuyu. Tawantinsuyu, which has managed to drive away several botched invasion attempts by the Carcassonans and the Galicians over the past few centuries, is modernising fast. The Incas have managed to preserve and modernise their traditional religion as well, although that hasn't stopped some nobles on the fringes of the empire from converting to Christianity or Islam.
Peçonia is a noisy, vibrant multiracial republic, formerly Galician but with a large Muslim minority in its south, that resembles Brazil. The country's residents address eachother as "citizen", and Phygrian caps have come to be included in Peçonia's national symbology. Peçonia abolished slavery and removed racial discrimination from its legal code immediately after independence, and its government parrots a mantra of Jacobin-style fervently-liberal civic nationalism. Peçonian politicians like to talk about "the revolution", and particilarly bellicose ones often talk about spreading it (although that seems to be mostly talk so far). Peçonia has universal male suffrage, and is in all likelihood not far off from allowing female suffrage as well. Its state religion is a deist Cult of the Supreme Being analogue, but in practice the Republic of Peçonia exercises religious tolerance. Having divided up the Amazon with the Incas in a very peaceable manner, the only country the Peçonians have beef with are Galicia (whose holdout colony in Guyana they claim as their own) and the Meridians (who claim a chunk of majority-Muslim territory in southern Peçonia, around what is in OTL Rio de Janiero, but couldn't be bothered to go to war over it).
In the Meridian-Incan border region of OTL Paraguay the indigenous Guarani people, converted to Islam by settlers from Meridia, have proclaimed their own Emirate, although it lacks international recognition and controls mostly the more marginal parts of OTL Paraguay.
Meridia is an independent former settler colony of the Caliphate of Carcassona which broke off after a bloody coup against its colonial governor. Meridia is now ruled by an Emir whose power is kept in check by fourteen local governors (whose position, like the Emir's, is hereditary). Although it lacks the constitutional political system of other former settler colonies in the Hesperides such as the Federation and Peçonia, Meridia is actually quite a decent place to live and along with Peçonia is a popular destination for migrants from across the Mediterranean (including Christians and Jews, they just have to pay Jizya when they come to Meridia).
A major source of immigrants to Meridia is North Africa, which deserves to be talked about on its own. What is called the Maghreb in OTL was taken over by European Muslims near the end of the first millennium. At the same time, Islamic Europe was experiencing an extensive revival of Latinate language and culture (not unlike what happened to Persia centuries after it was conquered by Muslims). Latin, in both its literary and vulgar form, began to be written in an Arabic script, and took over Arabic-speaking institutions from the bottom-up quite quickly. Arabic remained an important language for the educated, especially in religious settings, and an Arabic-speaking minority would persist in Andalusia and Southern Italy until the present day, but Arabic would never again become the dominant language of Islamic Western Europe. Outside of Morocco, A Romance-speaking Islamic Western Europe conquering the North African coast reinvigorated African Romance, allowing it to survive as a language along with Maghreb Arabic and various Berber dialects. The Caliphate of Carcassona's territories in North Africa are vibrantly diverse, both linguistically (Berber, African Romance, Arabic dialects, Islamo-European Romance) and religiously (Majority Sunni but with sizeable Shi'a, Latin Christian and even Donatist Berber minorities). As in OTL, African Romance is most similar to the variety of Romance spoken in Sardinia. Morocco exists as a nominally self-governing client state of the Caliphate of Carcassona, but aside from continuing to have its own sultan, the country possesses very little actual autonomy.
The Middle East (Egypt, Cyrenaica+ Southwest Asia) is majority Shi'a after centuries of Shi'a rule over Iran, Egypt and the Levant. When Turkic peoples repeatedly ravaged the Middle East during and after the end of the first millennium, sacking Bagdhad a few times and leaving the Turkoman state of Fırat along the upper Euphrates in their wake, they too converted to Shi'asm and were a lot more serious about conversion than most Fatmid-style Shi'ite states were previously (even if it means mainstream Shi'a doctrine in this scenario is a little different from the OTL thing). Persia is currently ruled by a dynasty of Azeri descent, the Alid sultanate are Egyptian Shi'a Arabs who recently finished conquering the Arabian peninsula (it worked this time mostly because they had access to a large amount of imported firearms from Europe). Relations between the Shi'a world and the Eastern Roman Empire/Scythia aren't fantastic, most notably because the ERE has been propping up the Sultanate of Fırat (which the Alids would very much like to conquer). For the past thousand years the Eastern Roman Empire has repeatedly attempted to reconquer the Levant from the Arabs, managing to push as far as Jerusalem several times but inevitably getting pushed back whenever the Empire went through another period of internal instability. As the world enters the industrial era the Byzantines seem to have given up on invading the Levant, but are still very vocal about protecting the rights of Orthodox Christian pilgrims to the holy land (as Russia was in OTL), which may or may not cause a war at some point in the future. The Holy Roman Empire has possession of several ports in Yemen and the Persian gulf, which it uses as resupply points for ships sailing from India to Europe.
Sub-Saharan Africa is divided up between the spheres of influence of four major powers - the Eastern Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Galicia, the Holy Roman Empire, and The Caliphate of Carcassona.
Galicia dominates the southern tip of Africa, having originally claimed the entire continent south of the equator and gotten away with most of its former claims. Galician Africa's more marginal territories are dominated by numerous Christianised Bantu states, such as the Matabele Kingdom, the Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho states of South Africa and a number of petty principalities that retained their independence when the Galicians decided to enforce the authority of the central government on the Kingdom of Kongo. Centers of culture, commerce and administration in Galicia's vast African domains include Mozambique, the Cape and Angola. Angola is dominated by fervently-Christian Congolese loyalists, with some Galician settlement in the mostly-free Angolan highlands. The Cape is a vibrantly multiracial region, full of Whites, East Indian Imports, Bantus, Khoikhoi people and everything in-between; it's also prime shipping real estate (the Suez Canal doesn't exist yet) and has been gold rush country for centuries. Unlike the VOC, the administrators of the Galician cape have been very relaxed when it comes to immigration to the Cape, meaning South Africa resembles Brazil more than it does OTL South Africa ethnically. Mozambique is a center for spices, gold prospecting and cash crop plantations, which has made the Galicians extremely rich over the past few centuries relative to their small size in Europe. Recently the Holy Roman Empire has settled the coast of Namibia, but the colony lacks international recognition and it waits to be seen whether the international community will eventually recognise the HRE's encroachment on Galician territory or force it to withdraw its administration from the region.
Holy Roman Africa is a strip of territory generally referred to in contemporary atlases as "Greater Guinea" or "Guinea-Loango". It stretches thousands of kilometres from the southwestern coast of West Africa (OTL Guinea/Sierra Leone) to the Congo Basin. Holy Roman Africa is divided up into several de-jure non self-governing colonies, although one colony, the Grain Coast, has still developed its own lively internal political process, built around trade unionism from black labourers who have been repatriated from the HRE's possessions in the Americas (The colony is basically super-Liberia). The repatriation has mostly occurred so far from areas around Carolina and the Chesapeake bay, where tobacco is an important trade good along with cotton, providing the Grain Coast colony with a disproportionate number of relatively-skilled (in comparison to people who work on cotton fields, because of the nature of tobacco cultivation) agricultural workers that has accelerated a rise of friendly societies and agricultural unionism in the colony. Many in the colony are agitating for self-government, and as indigenous and repatriated residents of the colony both band together for the cause of autonomy it only seems like a matter of time until the dream of self-government is realised. Once the Grain Coast achieves self-government, autonomy movements will likely appear across the rest of Guinea-Loango and eventually they will succeed, turning the Holy Roman's African possessions into a series of autonomous, self-governing dominions. Nobody in Calés will admit this is inevitable because they're a bunch of stodgy colonialists, but it does mean that Holy Roman Africa will probably get more opportunity to develop than it did in OTL.
Northwest Sub-Saharan Africa is the domain of Muslim states, largely the Caliphate of Carcassona but also several small African Muslim states. The Second Mali Empire and a recently-established Hausa Caliphate control the banks of the River Niger, their centralisation and willingness to adopt western warfare tactics acting as something of a bulwark against Holy Roman expansion into the Sahel. Recently, as the Carcassonans have expanded their territories in the Sahel and even taken the legendary city of Timbuktu from its previous Tuareg nomad rulers, Carcassonan influence in the Sahel has grown. The Second Mali Empire and the Hausa Caliphate will eventually become client states of the Caliphate of Carcassona, retaining their nominal independence but becoming colonies of the Caliphate in all but name.
Carcassonan East Africa includes the Swahili Coast, used by the Carcassonan crown to monopolise the slave trade in the Indian ocean (the Caliphate of Carcassona hasn't abolished slavery yet because, as OTL historian Bernard Lewis put it, "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire") and to extract other valuable goods from the East African coast. As is the case in Namibia, unlawful settlement by the Caliphate of Carcassona further inland (in the Great Rift Valley) threatens to cause international crisis in the near future. The Colony of Tabora, officially claimed by the Holy Roman Empire, is not recognised by the colonial governor on the island of Zanzibar and treated by his administration as an integral part of the Carcassonan Swahili Coast. Several internationally-unrecognised forts and settlements have already been established by the Carcassonans in de-jure Tabora. Carcassonan control over East Africa extends north to the client state of Mogadishu
The Eastern Roman Empire, by way of establishing Vlastos family control over the Eastern-Christian realm of Ethiopia, has managed to carve out a chunk of the Horn of Africa. Unlike the Holy Roman Empire, the Eastern Romans have no real border disputes with the Caliphate of Carcassona in their African possessions. They have mostly been concerned with Christianising the natives so far. Eastern Roman court officials have floated the idea of building a canal through the Suez to get easier access to their African possessions, but relations with the Alid sultanate make this impossible for now.
The Merina Kingdom of Madagascar has successfully modernised recently, managing to keep its traditional religion (like the Incas have) in the process. Attempts by colonial powers to establish any overbearing kind of influence over the island have failed, having served only to expose the Merina Kingdom to a greater deal of modern technology and scientific thinking from Europe. As an indigenous scientific-academic body and momentum for technological progress develops, the Merina Kingdom has set its sights on achieving equal footing with European colonial powers. Time will tell if this dream if able to be realised.
The Indian subcontinent is a mix of colonial powers' holdings and disparate independent holdouts. The most powerful of these holdouts is the unconquerable Panjabi Empire, whose Emperors have personally lead raids into Carcassonan Sindh with no successful retribution so far (The Panjabis didn't like Muslims invading their subcontinent before and they sure as Hell don't like it now either) The Panjabi Empire has some of the fiercest troops on the planet, recruited both at home and from its vassal states, and is modernising fast to avoid conquest by European powers. As imported agricultural techniques cause its population to boom it seems more and more likely that the Panjabis could have a shot at liberating their fellow Indians at some point in the future.
If the Panjabis were to liberate India, their first destination would probably be the Holy Roman Northern Territories. Governed by what is essentially a military administration, riots and civil disorder is common in the Holy Roman Northern Territories. Attempts by the Holy Roman Government to undermine the Indo-Gangetic Plain's huge textile cottage industry to give cotton mills in Europe more power is going a lot less smoothly than many thought it would (and rightly so, people aren't going to willingly give up an integral part of their livelihoods).
The Southern cone of the Indian subcontinent (if you want to call it that) is controlled mostly by the Holy Roman Empire. The Deccan Federation, a colonial administrative state whose autonomy is largely legal fiction (basically the Northern Territories but less dysfunctional) governs everything south of Goa and north of Travancore, whereas other areas of Holy Roman India are divided between central government control and autonomous Indian principalities (Princely States are cool, every dodgy unoriginal ATL should have them)
The Sultanate of Bengal, which is rapidly industrialising using coal from the Ganges Delta and local cottage industries, has accepted the status of Carcassonan client state as a necessary evil to avoid direct colonisation. In practice, the Sultanate of Bengal is mostly self-governing and the extent of Carcassonan dominion over Bengal is mostly geopolitical power projection done in an attempt to one-up the Holy Roman Empire. The Sultanate of Bengal's non-Islamic tributary states of Arakan and Assam (ruled by Buddhists and Hindus respectively, although Islamic settlement has been growing in these regions) are in theory Carcassonan client states by proxy, but in practice they are mostly ruled from Lakhnauti. To the North, the sleepy kingdoms of Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet have avoided colonisation due to their unwelcoming geography. Their state of affairs is, and will be kept as, business as usual.
The East Indies are divided between the Caliphate of Carcassona and the Kingdom of Galicia. A great deal of the colonies here are actually self-governing, autonomous nations of their own which are only really under colonial rule as far as economic output and foreign policy goes. These autonomous nations are Malaya (which shares a ruler with the Caliphate of Carcassona but has its own government) and Floresia (which is ruled by a cadet branch of the Galician royal family). The Moluccas and Western New Guinea are under direct Portuguese colonial administration though, as is Carcassonan Palau (not a huge place but prime naval base real estate). Northern Southeast Asia is divided between Holy Roman colonial rule over Siam and Burma (with an autonomous Christian kingdom in Yangon) and the two culturally-Sinicised Bhdduist states of Dai Nam and Lusong (Vietnamese and Tagalog-speaking respectively, with both using Chinese as a court language) that are fiercely independent and rapidly industrialising.
Dai Nam's domains extend further north than Vietnam's do in OTL, with the Vietnamese having established a new northern border on the Pearl River. The local Cantonese and other South Chinese groups, who share long-standing cultural ties with the Vietnamese, have been smoothly integrated into the Vietnamese realm. The Vietnamese have as of late established diplomatic ties with both the Holy Roman Empire and the Japanese, demonstrating their ability to modernise and be accepted into the new international community of great powers.
China is not in a good way. After failing to recover a series of invasions by Altaic Buddhists and Muslims a few centuries prior, China has experienced a sharp decline militarily, economically and culturally. The Southern Jin, a dynasty descended from Jurchens, have narrowly managed to hold onto the south of China. Shanghai, Foochow, Hong Kong, Macau, Hainan and the Luichow Peninsula have all been turned into european-controlled port cities, with the Caliphate of Carcassona and the Holy Roman Empire having agreed on designated spheres of influence along the Yangtze and Pearl rivers respectively.
While Europeans have and are continuing to milk China economically, they are also in many ways propping it up against a far more serious threat to the north- the Empire of Japan. The Empire of Japan in its current form is regarded in TTL to have been something of an inevitability- as the country, which was highly urbanised to begin with, began industrialising, the process was quick and smooth enough for there to be a relatively-smooth (there was still a brief war) transition from the traditional military government of the shogunate to a centralised, modernised absolute monarchy. Japan in TTL differs from OTL Japan in its ideological extremism - Japan is not democratic in any sense of the word, but the political climate of its royal court is heavily influenced by the country's intelligentsia.
It is safe to say that Europe in TTL is a bit less liberal than Europe was in real life during this era, and that has certainly rubbed off on Japan. Japan's intellectual climate has taken Darwinism and run with it to some pretty nutty places, specifically racist ones. In the eyes of the Japanese, China was the cradle of eastern, Confucian civilisation thousands of years ago, and that the spark that lead to them creating civilisation was a racial one. After being invaded by countless waves of Turkic, Tungusic and Mongolian nomads from the Eurasian steppe a great deal of mixing occurred, and at this point no pure members of the Chinese race are left in China. Viewing the decline of China for the past half millennium through a racial lens, the Japanese see the modern Chinese as mongrels who, after having their blood tainted again and again by steppe barbarians, are no longer capable of maintaining the high culture and civilisation their predecessors created. Japan, which was saved from nomad invasion by the Korea Strait, along with (to a lesser extent) Korea and Vietnam, which are racially Northeast Asian but did not experience the same amount of invasion and foreign admixture as the Chinese did, are seen as the last hope for civilisation in Northeast Asia. Along with this idea, the Japanese have developed a concept of lebensraum on their crowded islands and look to mainland Asia for new living-space.
Japan has pretty bad relations with the powers of Western Europe, but its two main enemies are the Scythians (Turko-Slavic steppe mongrels, along with the Eastern Roman Empire which has degenerated racially from its Graeco-Roman past in a similar manner to China) and the Chinese (self-explanatory). Half a century ago the Japanese invaded China, driving out the Jin Dynasty and the Turks that were invading it at the time, and established a zone of occupation from Manchuria to the Yangtze. Korea was also invaded, but was given self-government as a protectorate of the Japanese Empire (ironically, the Japanese are better to the Koreans in TTL than they were in OTL, but mostly because they see them as junior allies in a struggle against the mongrelised Chinese). Since the invasion of Northern China and Korea, the Japanese have attempted to settle northern China with some degree of success - the Chinese have been expelled from low population-density regions of Manchuria and inner Mongolia, allowing for Japanese settlement and the establishment of civilian administration). The Han Chinese, Mongols and Tungusic Jurchens have been concentrated into zones of military occupation, with each region's military occupation zones being controlled by a Governor-General. Here whole villages are often set alight for minor acts of resistance to Japanese occupation, and the Japanese have become world leaders in practical chemistry as they try to develop gas weapons to use on Chinese resistance fighters. Slowly but surely, the Japanese military is attempting to drive China's undesirables south to clear the way for Japanese settlement. Places like Beijing and urban Manchuria have presented serious logistical road-blocks to Japan's ethnic cleansing attempts, but it hasn't stopped them from trying will not stop them from continuing to try in the future.
Funnily enough, although the Japanese don't like anybody who has anything to do with the steppe, anyone who has a history of not establishing what they deem to be a "high culture" and any group of people who they believe to be mongrels, they are alright with a number of ethnic groups who aren't Northeast Asian (including the Jews, the Arabs, Western Europeans and the Quechua, a pretty arbitrary combo but this is 19th century racial science). The Japanese also practice social Darwinism at home, not even bothering to pull the populist class equality card like the NSDAP did. Public schooling is designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, the disabled and mentally-challenged are sterilised, and successful (wealthy and high social status) people are rewarded by the government for having lots of children. Japan is ahead of its time, but not in a good way.
As you'd imagine, a lot of people in China have gotten angry at the Japanese. Not just angry enough to engage in minor acts of dissent, although that gets villages torched anyway- I mean full-blown revolt against Japanese occupation. That's where the National Liberation Army of China, which has risen up in the South of Japan's occupation zone and has been fighting a decades-long bitter guerilla war with the Japanese, comes into the picture. Seeking an end to both imperialism from abroad and tyranny at home, the National Liberation Army wishes to establish a Peçonian-style liberal republic in China. Although they haven't advanced in years, they've also managed to hold their ground quite well. Opposed to all major powers in the region, the National Liberation Army of China will turn China into a warzone until it is either crushed or it succeeds in liberating its country. The Japanese, believing that wasting too many of their own men on the Chinese would kill the strongest and most capable fighters among their people (damaging the gene pool in the process), have taken to using mainly Chinese, Jurchen, Mongol and Korean troops against the mostly-peasant National Liberation Army, creating an inefficient peacekeeping force that is probably to blame for prolonging the conflict for as long as it has been.
Scythia eyes the Japanese with weariness and views its Asian satellite states, Uyghurstan and Mongolia, as its "security belt". If the Japanese ever got their hands on either of these countries, which are sparsely-populated and have propaganda value as nomad invaders, the results would not be pretty.
On a more pleasant note, Oceania is generally seen as something of a colonial frontier region. Colonial powers present here include the Caliphate of Carcassona in parts of Micronesia and Western Australia (still called that, it's the great southern land after all), the Kingdom of Galicia in Western New Guinea and the Holy Roman Empire everywhere else.
Australia is divided between the Carcassonan colonial realm of Cicnea (which owes its name to the OTL Swan River and is centered on the river) in the west, and the Holy Roman colonies of Althorpsland which are situated on the east coast. Cicnea is the less populated of the two colonies, having been settled with the purpose of being a Carcassonan naval base in the southern hemisphere in mind, and managing to export small amounts of Mediterranean crops, lavender, gold and low-quality sandalwood. The two main regions of settlement in Cicnea are the OTL Spencer Gulf and Australia's southwestern tip, but somewhat extensive settlement has also occurred in the OTL Kimberley, Darwin and Roper River regions. Cicnea and the colonies of Althorpsland have a long-standing, unresolved border dispute involving historical claims to the Australian continent. Originally the Holy Roman Empire claimed everything east of the 141st Meridian East, while the Caliphate of Carcassona claimed everything west of the 133rd Meridian East. Eventually the Caliphate of Carcassona claimed the remaining territory in the middle, but in the official statement it claimed everything west of the 133rd Meridian East that was not rendered inaccessible by insurmountable geographical barriers. This clause, added in due to a lack of knowledge on the geography of the Australian interior at the time (in OTL people thought there might have been an inland sea at one point), was used by the Holy Roman Empire as an excuse to expand west of the 133rd Meridian up to certain geographical barriers such as rivers and deserts. The colonial governor of Cicnea claims that this is a violation of their rightful claims, as deserts and mountains are not insurmountable geographical barriers like seas and mountain ranges are, but the representative of the Althorpslander colonies to Calés would like to see him try to swim across the Murry River before making any concessions. Althorpsland is the more developed of the two colonies, with impressive coal deposits for local industry, more fertile land, vast gold fields, sugarcane plantations in the north and one of the largest hemp-growing industries in the Southern Hemisphere. It is home to over a million people, but that number is growing fast due to a high birthrate and immigration from abroad to the newly-cleared fields of southeastern Australia. The OTL Hunter Valley is brimming with orchards and fields of wheat, barley and hemp.
While Australia and parts of Aotearoa are settler colonies, indigenous peoples maintain their old presence and lifestyles in most of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. There are even native polities which have emerged in response to European arrival in the region. These include the United Tribes of Aotearoa, which has thus far refused to submit to Holy Roman colonialism without a treaty that prevents settlers from coming to the islands of Aotearoa, and the Dual Monarchy of Tonga-Samoa, which formed as a result of the Tongan nobility which dominated both islands for centuries attempting to modernise by forming a somewhat centralised monarchy. The king of Tonga and Samoa recently expanded his domains to Fiji, conquering the island with imported firearms after a brief military campaign. Although the Dual Kingdom's escapades are not a cause for Holy Roman concern, the Empire has been making efforts to bring the country into its sphere of influence.
South of the Loire
In another time and another place, Europe is entering an age of industry. In the sweatshop factories of Lunden and the textile mills of Brugge one can hear the constant whizzing, grinding and clanking of machines and powered looms as labourers spend their days working at an assembly line. Europe, moreso around the shores of the North Sea than anywhere else, is being transformed from a land of green and pleasant countryside to a land of dark mills, steel boilers and wrought iron machinery. This new era has brought new challenges, but it has also brought the world new marvels and opportunities.
Beyond the shores of the North Sea, not all of Europe has entered this age of industry at the same pace. South of the Loire, the Alps and the Po Valley lies a land more set in its old ways. Here life is more relaxed and more rural. It is a common sight to find agricultural labourers idly slumped at the base of a tree at midday, resting in the shade to avoid the heat of the Mediterranean sun. In this land you will hear the strumming of guitars and a more lively variety of the Romance tongue as you walk down a crowded street, and if you gaze up above you will see neoclassical minarets and marble pillars on buildings. The Islamic call to prayer that echoes through the streets of towns and cities in this land is in a Latinate language, but that same Latinate language is written with an Arabic-derived script.
The law of the land is different here as well. With its own school of Fiqh informed by old Latin law and compiled in documents with stylised Latin-language, Arabic-script calligraphic titles, the nature of law south of the Loire is distinctly different from the non-Islamic, Germanic-influenced style of law that is adhered to in the north. It should come as no surprise that these two lands are governed differently as well; The lands south of the Loire are governed by a Caliph who rules from the walled city of Carcassona, whereas the lands to its north are governed by an Emperor, anointed by God and crowned by the Christian Pope in Aachen, who rules from the port city of Calés (situated on the southern shore of the Engelisc Channel). The Caliphate of Carcassona (as it officially calls itself) is a very centralised state, whereas the Holy Roman Empire to its north has a plethora of autonomous duchies and bishoprics within it, along with a parliament to guide the actions of its supposedly God-annointed ruler and (increasingly) a quasi-democratic, managerial political process heavily influenced by the whims of new-age chivalric orders and industrial union representatives.
The rest of Northwestern Europe outside of the Caliph of Carcassona's reach is similar to the Holy Roman Empire culturally, religiously and politically.
In the northern third of the Iberian peninsula, where a strategic assortment of rivers and mountains has blocked the expansion of Islamic rule northwards for over a millennia, the Christian Latinate kingdom of Galicia has grown rich and prosperous from its colonial escapades in Africa and Asia. The Basques of Biscay, who speak a language quite unlike the Latin tongue but are just as fervently-Christian as their Galician neighbours, have been governed for the past fifty years by a board of bureaucrats after their king was deposed.
In Europe's chilly northeast is a collection of Baltic, Germanic, West Slavic and Finnic nations slowly awakening from the slumber of feudalism. Leading the way is Nordland, a beacon of peace and prosperity in the far north ever since it reconquered Jutland from the Holy Roman Empire two centuries ago and took steps towards abolishing serfdom shortly thereafter. Many nations, such as the Duchy of Prussia and Livonia, are ruled by an absolute monarch but have begun a slow transition to limited government using local representative institutions that have existed for centuries.
Further to the east, beyond the jurisdiction of the Latin Christian Church, lies the Eastern-Christian, Byzantine "Eurasian" cultural sphere. United under the banner of Orthodox Christianity and Greek high culture, the Eurasian cultural sphere continues to push east and includes an increasingly-significant Turkic and Slavic contingent. Over the course of the past few centuries this region has come under the rule of the conniving House of Vlastos, which rules the two main political entities of the region (the Eastern Roman Empire and the Slavo-Turkic Tsardom of Scythia) as one decentralised Empire. Further adding to the decentralised nature of the Vlastos domains is the Eastern Roman Empire's plethora of vassal states, many of which (such as the Gothic Principality situated on the Volga, the Eastern Romance-speaking states of Wallachia and Moldavia, the Slavic States of Serbia and White Serbia (south and north of the Danube respectively), Georgia, Circassia and Armenia) don't even speak Greek (although one, the Despotate of Attica, does speak Greek, and several of the aforementioned Roman vassal states still use Greek as a secondary administrative language). The Eastern Christian cultural sphere is more reactionary than either the Western Christian or Western Muslim ones, with absolutism and rigid traditionalism being the norm for politics and culture (although Attica has come under the rule of a liberal Despot recently and may change things there unless the Emperor in Constantinople can stop him).
Together, these European nations have spread their grip across the world over the course of the past few centuries. Western Christianity and Islam continue to battle for supremacy in Africa, Asia and the Hesperides, whereas the Orthodox world has pushed east into Central Asia and has recently established a firm foothold in Africa (by way of Ethiopia).
The Northern Hesperide is a continent of intrepid pioneers, industrious settlers, and fierce Indians. Most of the continent is Holy Roman Territory, with everything from cotton farming to the fur trade nearly monopolised by the HRE on this continent. In southern Mesohesperidia and on the Eastern coast of the Northern Hesperide exist autonomous colonies, their political processes controlled by either landowning aristocratic plantation owners and yeomens' friendly societies depending on whether or not the particular colony in question comprises a major cotton-producing region. One collection of Mesohesperidian colonies broke off from the colonial yoke nearly a century ago and established the Federation of The Hesperides, with its capital being Newe Henfford (built over the ruins of the indigenous city of Tenochtitlan, which was sacked by an anti-Nahuatl coalition of native tribes during a smallpox-induced wave of social collapse that rippled through Mesohesperidia several decades before the HRE conquered the region). The Federation of the Hesperides, unlike OTL Mexico, is a nation of European settlers, and its large indigenous population is confined to several self-governing Indian territories which have no say in the direction of national policy. The Federation is quite racist and African slavery is still used on the country's eastern coast to harvest cash crops (primarily sugarcane), but its small government sustained only through tariffs and not income tax makes it a pretty alright place to live if you're White. Andrew Jackson would have liked the place.
In the far west of the Northern Hesperide is an assortment of native tribes, scattered Holy Roman settlements and pioneer associations. The Peninsular Haudenosaunee (pushed out of their original homeland by Holy Roman settlers, ended up peacefully assimilating the Wyandot), the Great Sioux, the Illiniwek and the Navajo all continue to resist European settlement, using the horse and firearms in their struggle against White encroachment upon their lands. Although they will probably be defeated eventually, it hasn't stopped any of them from giving Calés and New Henfford headaches. Especially intense is the conflict between the Illiniwek and settlers in the Great Lakes region, with formal military intervention by the Holy Roman Empire only managing to clear the Illiniwek from the banks of the Ohio River. The Holy Roman Empire is also powerless to enforce its rule in the Westmorland Territory (OTL California region on the map, south of the OTL Columbia River), where settlers pledge allegiance to the Sovereign Settlers' Association (they'd be called geo-mutualists in OTL) and the Empire of Laurentia (imagine Emperor Norton was from Picardy and liked the idea of enlightened absolutism, but was unable to enforce it on the American frontier). Holy Roman Control on the western coast of the Northern Hesperide is limited to OTL Washington and Vancouver. The Empire of Japan, a recently-modernised rising power in East Asia, has managed to gain international recognition of its colony in Arasuka, with the HRE ceding the claimed territory in the region.
In the northeast of the Northern Hesperide exist the Vinlandic peoples, who have become very unlike their meatball-eating cousins in Europe since arriving on the Northern Hesperide during the Middle Ages. Genetically, the Vinlanders are about as Nordic as they are Algonquin or Inuit, their language has about as much native influence as OTL English has Romance influence, and their religion is a highly syncretic mix of Norse Mythology, indigenous religion and Christianity (although many local rulers are beginning to abandon the old religion for Latin Christianity as Holy Roman Influence grows). The King of Vinland rules over much of OTL Eastern Canada from his capital on the Saint Lawrence River, although in practice much of his domain garners him little tax revenue and is ruled by local Jarls (a blanket term: many Jarls are just as likely to style themselves using as some derivation of "Sagamore" or "Ogimà" instead of "Jarl"). In the Maritimes Vinlandic peoples pledge allegiance to the "Vestrhafþing" ("West Sea Assembly"), which acts as a confederal parliamentary government for the Vinlanders of the Maritimes. The Vestrhafþing has caused a great deal of trouble for European attempts to control the Maritimes, with Vinlanders in OTL Labrador refusing to pay taxes to the Holy Roman colonial administration and Vinlanders in New Navarre (OTL Newfoundland) waging guerilla war against the Basque colonial government of the island. Because of their enhanced immunity to European diseases and familiarity with European warfare, the Vinlandic peoples have managed to resist political domination by European colonial Empires despite their strategic location on the Northern Hesperide's coast. As Holy Roman influence grows and incremental territorial concessions (such as the cession of the Arctic coast to the HRE) continue to be forced upon the Vinlandic peoples they face an uncertain future, but one thing that cannot be disputed is that they will not go down without a fight.
The Caribbean is split between the Holy Roman Empire and the Caliphate of Carcassona, and it serves as a vital source of cash crop revenue for both empires.
The Southern Hesperide is a continent of nations old and new. European colonial control is restricted to Carcassonan Nova Andalusia (OTL Venezuela and some more, self-governing), Galician Guayana and Holy Roman Southland (OTL Patagonia, an autonomous colony controlled by religious fanatics and radical trade unionists, used as a dumping ground for dissidents, will probably end up being the next Federation of the Hesperides but less populous and crazier ideologically). The majority of the continent's land area is taken up by three independent nations - Peçonia, Meridia and Tawantinsuyu. Tawantinsuyu, which has managed to drive away several botched invasion attempts by the Carcassonans and the Galicians over the past few centuries, is modernising fast. The Incas have managed to preserve and modernise their traditional religion as well, although that hasn't stopped some nobles on the fringes of the empire from converting to Christianity or Islam.
Peçonia is a noisy, vibrant multiracial republic, formerly Galician but with a large Muslim minority in its south, that resembles Brazil. The country's residents address eachother as "citizen", and Phygrian caps have come to be included in Peçonia's national symbology. Peçonia abolished slavery and removed racial discrimination from its legal code immediately after independence, and its government parrots a mantra of Jacobin-style fervently-liberal civic nationalism. Peçonian politicians like to talk about "the revolution", and particilarly bellicose ones often talk about spreading it (although that seems to be mostly talk so far). Peçonia has universal male suffrage, and is in all likelihood not far off from allowing female suffrage as well. Its state religion is a deist Cult of the Supreme Being analogue, but in practice the Republic of Peçonia exercises religious tolerance. Having divided up the Amazon with the Incas in a very peaceable manner, the only country the Peçonians have beef with are Galicia (whose holdout colony in Guyana they claim as their own) and the Meridians (who claim a chunk of majority-Muslim territory in southern Peçonia, around what is in OTL Rio de Janiero, but couldn't be bothered to go to war over it).
In the Meridian-Incan border region of OTL Paraguay the indigenous Guarani people, converted to Islam by settlers from Meridia, have proclaimed their own Emirate, although it lacks international recognition and controls mostly the more marginal parts of OTL Paraguay.
Meridia is an independent former settler colony of the Caliphate of Carcassona which broke off after a bloody coup against its colonial governor. Meridia is now ruled by an Emir whose power is kept in check by fourteen local governors (whose position, like the Emir's, is hereditary). Although it lacks the constitutional political system of other former settler colonies in the Hesperides such as the Federation and Peçonia, Meridia is actually quite a decent place to live and along with Peçonia is a popular destination for migrants from across the Mediterranean (including Christians and Jews, they just have to pay Jizya when they come to Meridia).
A major source of immigrants to Meridia is North Africa, which deserves to be talked about on its own. What is called the Maghreb in OTL was taken over by European Muslims near the end of the first millennium. At the same time, Islamic Europe was experiencing an extensive revival of Latinate language and culture (not unlike what happened to Persia centuries after it was conquered by Muslims). Latin, in both its literary and vulgar form, began to be written in an Arabic script, and took over Arabic-speaking institutions from the bottom-up quite quickly. Arabic remained an important language for the educated, especially in religious settings, and an Arabic-speaking minority would persist in Andalusia and Southern Italy until the present day, but Arabic would never again become the dominant language of Islamic Western Europe. Outside of Morocco, A Romance-speaking Islamic Western Europe conquering the North African coast reinvigorated African Romance, allowing it to survive as a language along with Maghreb Arabic and various Berber dialects. The Caliphate of Carcassona's territories in North Africa are vibrantly diverse, both linguistically (Berber, African Romance, Arabic dialects, Islamo-European Romance) and religiously (Majority Sunni but with sizeable Shi'a, Latin Christian and even Donatist Berber minorities). As in OTL, African Romance is most similar to the variety of Romance spoken in Sardinia. Morocco exists as a nominally self-governing client state of the Caliphate of Carcassona, but aside from continuing to have its own sultan, the country possesses very little actual autonomy.
The Middle East (Egypt, Cyrenaica+ Southwest Asia) is majority Shi'a after centuries of Shi'a rule over Iran, Egypt and the Levant. When Turkic peoples repeatedly ravaged the Middle East during and after the end of the first millennium, sacking Bagdhad a few times and leaving the Turkoman state of Fırat along the upper Euphrates in their wake, they too converted to Shi'asm and were a lot more serious about conversion than most Fatmid-style Shi'ite states were previously (even if it means mainstream Shi'a doctrine in this scenario is a little different from the OTL thing). Persia is currently ruled by a dynasty of Azeri descent, the Alid sultanate are Egyptian Shi'a Arabs who recently finished conquering the Arabian peninsula (it worked this time mostly because they had access to a large amount of imported firearms from Europe). Relations between the Shi'a world and the Eastern Roman Empire/Scythia aren't fantastic, most notably because the ERE has been propping up the Sultanate of Fırat (which the Alids would very much like to conquer). For the past thousand years the Eastern Roman Empire has repeatedly attempted to reconquer the Levant from the Arabs, managing to push as far as Jerusalem several times but inevitably getting pushed back whenever the Empire went through another period of internal instability. As the world enters the industrial era the Byzantines seem to have given up on invading the Levant, but are still very vocal about protecting the rights of Orthodox Christian pilgrims to the holy land (as Russia was in OTL), which may or may not cause a war at some point in the future. The Holy Roman Empire has possession of several ports in Yemen and the Persian gulf, which it uses as resupply points for ships sailing from India to Europe.
Sub-Saharan Africa is divided up between the spheres of influence of four major powers - the Eastern Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Galicia, the Holy Roman Empire, and The Caliphate of Carcassona.
Galicia dominates the southern tip of Africa, having originally claimed the entire continent south of the equator and gotten away with most of its former claims. Galician Africa's more marginal territories are dominated by numerous Christianised Bantu states, such as the Matabele Kingdom, the Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho states of South Africa and a number of petty principalities that retained their independence when the Galicians decided to enforce the authority of the central government on the Kingdom of Kongo. Centers of culture, commerce and administration in Galicia's vast African domains include Mozambique, the Cape and Angola. Angola is dominated by fervently-Christian Congolese loyalists, with some Galician settlement in the mostly-free Angolan highlands. The Cape is a vibrantly multiracial region, full of Whites, East Indian Imports, Bantus, Khoikhoi people and everything in-between; it's also prime shipping real estate (the Suez Canal doesn't exist yet) and has been gold rush country for centuries. Unlike the VOC, the administrators of the Galician cape have been very relaxed when it comes to immigration to the Cape, meaning South Africa resembles Brazil more than it does OTL South Africa ethnically. Mozambique is a center for spices, gold prospecting and cash crop plantations, which has made the Galicians extremely rich over the past few centuries relative to their small size in Europe. Recently the Holy Roman Empire has settled the coast of Namibia, but the colony lacks international recognition and it waits to be seen whether the international community will eventually recognise the HRE's encroachment on Galician territory or force it to withdraw its administration from the region.
Holy Roman Africa is a strip of territory generally referred to in contemporary atlases as "Greater Guinea" or "Guinea-Loango". It stretches thousands of kilometres from the southwestern coast of West Africa (OTL Guinea/Sierra Leone) to the Congo Basin. Holy Roman Africa is divided up into several de-jure non self-governing colonies, although one colony, the Grain Coast, has still developed its own lively internal political process, built around trade unionism from black labourers who have been repatriated from the HRE's possessions in the Americas (The colony is basically super-Liberia). The repatriation has mostly occurred so far from areas around Carolina and the Chesapeake bay, where tobacco is an important trade good along with cotton, providing the Grain Coast colony with a disproportionate number of relatively-skilled (in comparison to people who work on cotton fields, because of the nature of tobacco cultivation) agricultural workers that has accelerated a rise of friendly societies and agricultural unionism in the colony. Many in the colony are agitating for self-government, and as indigenous and repatriated residents of the colony both band together for the cause of autonomy it only seems like a matter of time until the dream of self-government is realised. Once the Grain Coast achieves self-government, autonomy movements will likely appear across the rest of Guinea-Loango and eventually they will succeed, turning the Holy Roman's African possessions into a series of autonomous, self-governing dominions. Nobody in Calés will admit this is inevitable because they're a bunch of stodgy colonialists, but it does mean that Holy Roman Africa will probably get more opportunity to develop than it did in OTL.
Northwest Sub-Saharan Africa is the domain of Muslim states, largely the Caliphate of Carcassona but also several small African Muslim states. The Second Mali Empire and a recently-established Hausa Caliphate control the banks of the River Niger, their centralisation and willingness to adopt western warfare tactics acting as something of a bulwark against Holy Roman expansion into the Sahel. Recently, as the Carcassonans have expanded their territories in the Sahel and even taken the legendary city of Timbuktu from its previous Tuareg nomad rulers, Carcassonan influence in the Sahel has grown. The Second Mali Empire and the Hausa Caliphate will eventually become client states of the Caliphate of Carcassona, retaining their nominal independence but becoming colonies of the Caliphate in all but name.
Carcassonan East Africa includes the Swahili Coast, used by the Carcassonan crown to monopolise the slave trade in the Indian ocean (the Caliphate of Carcassona hasn't abolished slavery yet because, as OTL historian Bernard Lewis put it, "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire") and to extract other valuable goods from the East African coast. As is the case in Namibia, unlawful settlement by the Caliphate of Carcassona further inland (in the Great Rift Valley) threatens to cause international crisis in the near future. The Colony of Tabora, officially claimed by the Holy Roman Empire, is not recognised by the colonial governor on the island of Zanzibar and treated by his administration as an integral part of the Carcassonan Swahili Coast. Several internationally-unrecognised forts and settlements have already been established by the Carcassonans in de-jure Tabora. Carcassonan control over East Africa extends north to the client state of Mogadishu
The Eastern Roman Empire, by way of establishing Vlastos family control over the Eastern-Christian realm of Ethiopia, has managed to carve out a chunk of the Horn of Africa. Unlike the Holy Roman Empire, the Eastern Romans have no real border disputes with the Caliphate of Carcassona in their African possessions. They have mostly been concerned with Christianising the natives so far. Eastern Roman court officials have floated the idea of building a canal through the Suez to get easier access to their African possessions, but relations with the Alid sultanate make this impossible for now.
The Merina Kingdom of Madagascar has successfully modernised recently, managing to keep its traditional religion (like the Incas have) in the process. Attempts by colonial powers to establish any overbearing kind of influence over the island have failed, having served only to expose the Merina Kingdom to a greater deal of modern technology and scientific thinking from Europe. As an indigenous scientific-academic body and momentum for technological progress develops, the Merina Kingdom has set its sights on achieving equal footing with European colonial powers. Time will tell if this dream if able to be realised.
The Indian subcontinent is a mix of colonial powers' holdings and disparate independent holdouts. The most powerful of these holdouts is the unconquerable Panjabi Empire, whose Emperors have personally lead raids into Carcassonan Sindh with no successful retribution so far (The Panjabis didn't like Muslims invading their subcontinent before and they sure as Hell don't like it now either) The Panjabi Empire has some of the fiercest troops on the planet, recruited both at home and from its vassal states, and is modernising fast to avoid conquest by European powers. As imported agricultural techniques cause its population to boom it seems more and more likely that the Panjabis could have a shot at liberating their fellow Indians at some point in the future.
If the Panjabis were to liberate India, their first destination would probably be the Holy Roman Northern Territories. Governed by what is essentially a military administration, riots and civil disorder is common in the Holy Roman Northern Territories. Attempts by the Holy Roman Government to undermine the Indo-Gangetic Plain's huge textile cottage industry to give cotton mills in Europe more power is going a lot less smoothly than many thought it would (and rightly so, people aren't going to willingly give up an integral part of their livelihoods).
The Southern cone of the Indian subcontinent (if you want to call it that) is controlled mostly by the Holy Roman Empire. The Deccan Federation, a colonial administrative state whose autonomy is largely legal fiction (basically the Northern Territories but less dysfunctional) governs everything south of Goa and north of Travancore, whereas other areas of Holy Roman India are divided between central government control and autonomous Indian principalities (Princely States are cool, every dodgy unoriginal ATL should have them)
The Sultanate of Bengal, which is rapidly industrialising using coal from the Ganges Delta and local cottage industries, has accepted the status of Carcassonan client state as a necessary evil to avoid direct colonisation. In practice, the Sultanate of Bengal is mostly self-governing and the extent of Carcassonan dominion over Bengal is mostly geopolitical power projection done in an attempt to one-up the Holy Roman Empire. The Sultanate of Bengal's non-Islamic tributary states of Arakan and Assam (ruled by Buddhists and Hindus respectively, although Islamic settlement has been growing in these regions) are in theory Carcassonan client states by proxy, but in practice they are mostly ruled from Lakhnauti. To the North, the sleepy kingdoms of Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet have avoided colonisation due to their unwelcoming geography. Their state of affairs is, and will be kept as, business as usual.
The East Indies are divided between the Caliphate of Carcassona and the Kingdom of Galicia. A great deal of the colonies here are actually self-governing, autonomous nations of their own which are only really under colonial rule as far as economic output and foreign policy goes. These autonomous nations are Malaya (which shares a ruler with the Caliphate of Carcassona but has its own government) and Floresia (which is ruled by a cadet branch of the Galician royal family). The Moluccas and Western New Guinea are under direct Portuguese colonial administration though, as is Carcassonan Palau (not a huge place but prime naval base real estate). Northern Southeast Asia is divided between Holy Roman colonial rule over Siam and Burma (with an autonomous Christian kingdom in Yangon) and the two culturally-Sinicised Bhdduist states of Dai Nam and Lusong (Vietnamese and Tagalog-speaking respectively, with both using Chinese as a court language) that are fiercely independent and rapidly industrialising.
Dai Nam's domains extend further north than Vietnam's do in OTL, with the Vietnamese having established a new northern border on the Pearl River. The local Cantonese and other South Chinese groups, who share long-standing cultural ties with the Vietnamese, have been smoothly integrated into the Vietnamese realm. The Vietnamese have as of late established diplomatic ties with both the Holy Roman Empire and the Japanese, demonstrating their ability to modernise and be accepted into the new international community of great powers.
China is not in a good way. After failing to recover a series of invasions by Altaic Buddhists and Muslims a few centuries prior, China has experienced a sharp decline militarily, economically and culturally. The Southern Jin, a dynasty descended from Jurchens, have narrowly managed to hold onto the south of China. Shanghai, Foochow, Hong Kong, Macau, Hainan and the Luichow Peninsula have all been turned into european-controlled port cities, with the Caliphate of Carcassona and the Holy Roman Empire having agreed on designated spheres of influence along the Yangtze and Pearl rivers respectively.
While Europeans have and are continuing to milk China economically, they are also in many ways propping it up against a far more serious threat to the north- the Empire of Japan. The Empire of Japan in its current form is regarded in TTL to have been something of an inevitability- as the country, which was highly urbanised to begin with, began industrialising, the process was quick and smooth enough for there to be a relatively-smooth (there was still a brief war) transition from the traditional military government of the shogunate to a centralised, modernised absolute monarchy. Japan in TTL differs from OTL Japan in its ideological extremism - Japan is not democratic in any sense of the word, but the political climate of its royal court is heavily influenced by the country's intelligentsia.
It is safe to say that Europe in TTL is a bit less liberal than Europe was in real life during this era, and that has certainly rubbed off on Japan. Japan's intellectual climate has taken Darwinism and run with it to some pretty nutty places, specifically racist ones. In the eyes of the Japanese, China was the cradle of eastern, Confucian civilisation thousands of years ago, and that the spark that lead to them creating civilisation was a racial one. After being invaded by countless waves of Turkic, Tungusic and Mongolian nomads from the Eurasian steppe a great deal of mixing occurred, and at this point no pure members of the Chinese race are left in China. Viewing the decline of China for the past half millennium through a racial lens, the Japanese see the modern Chinese as mongrels who, after having their blood tainted again and again by steppe barbarians, are no longer capable of maintaining the high culture and civilisation their predecessors created. Japan, which was saved from nomad invasion by the Korea Strait, along with (to a lesser extent) Korea and Vietnam, which are racially Northeast Asian but did not experience the same amount of invasion and foreign admixture as the Chinese did, are seen as the last hope for civilisation in Northeast Asia. Along with this idea, the Japanese have developed a concept of lebensraum on their crowded islands and look to mainland Asia for new living-space.
Japan has pretty bad relations with the powers of Western Europe, but its two main enemies are the Scythians (Turko-Slavic steppe mongrels, along with the Eastern Roman Empire which has degenerated racially from its Graeco-Roman past in a similar manner to China) and the Chinese (self-explanatory). Half a century ago the Japanese invaded China, driving out the Jin Dynasty and the Turks that were invading it at the time, and established a zone of occupation from Manchuria to the Yangtze. Korea was also invaded, but was given self-government as a protectorate of the Japanese Empire (ironically, the Japanese are better to the Koreans in TTL than they were in OTL, but mostly because they see them as junior allies in a struggle against the mongrelised Chinese). Since the invasion of Northern China and Korea, the Japanese have attempted to settle northern China with some degree of success - the Chinese have been expelled from low population-density regions of Manchuria and inner Mongolia, allowing for Japanese settlement and the establishment of civilian administration). The Han Chinese, Mongols and Tungusic Jurchens have been concentrated into zones of military occupation, with each region's military occupation zones being controlled by a Governor-General. Here whole villages are often set alight for minor acts of resistance to Japanese occupation, and the Japanese have become world leaders in practical chemistry as they try to develop gas weapons to use on Chinese resistance fighters. Slowly but surely, the Japanese military is attempting to drive China's undesirables south to clear the way for Japanese settlement. Places like Beijing and urban Manchuria have presented serious logistical road-blocks to Japan's ethnic cleansing attempts, but it hasn't stopped them from trying will not stop them from continuing to try in the future.
Funnily enough, although the Japanese don't like anybody who has anything to do with the steppe, anyone who has a history of not establishing what they deem to be a "high culture" and any group of people who they believe to be mongrels, they are alright with a number of ethnic groups who aren't Northeast Asian (including the Jews, the Arabs, Western Europeans and the Quechua, a pretty arbitrary combo but this is 19th century racial science). The Japanese also practice social Darwinism at home, not even bothering to pull the populist class equality card like the NSDAP did. Public schooling is designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, the disabled and mentally-challenged are sterilised, and successful (wealthy and high social status) people are rewarded by the government for having lots of children. Japan is ahead of its time, but not in a good way.
As you'd imagine, a lot of people in China have gotten angry at the Japanese. Not just angry enough to engage in minor acts of dissent, although that gets villages torched anyway- I mean full-blown revolt against Japanese occupation. That's where the National Liberation Army of China, which has risen up in the South of Japan's occupation zone and has been fighting a decades-long bitter guerilla war with the Japanese, comes into the picture. Seeking an end to both imperialism from abroad and tyranny at home, the National Liberation Army wishes to establish a Peçonian-style liberal republic in China. Although they haven't advanced in years, they've also managed to hold their ground quite well. Opposed to all major powers in the region, the National Liberation Army of China will turn China into a warzone until it is either crushed or it succeeds in liberating its country. The Japanese, believing that wasting too many of their own men on the Chinese would kill the strongest and most capable fighters among their people (damaging the gene pool in the process), have taken to using mainly Chinese, Jurchen, Mongol and Korean troops against the mostly-peasant National Liberation Army, creating an inefficient peacekeeping force that is probably to blame for prolonging the conflict for as long as it has been.
Scythia eyes the Japanese with weariness and views its Asian satellite states, Uyghurstan and Mongolia, as its "security belt". If the Japanese ever got their hands on either of these countries, which are sparsely-populated and have propaganda value as nomad invaders, the results would not be pretty.
On a more pleasant note, Oceania is generally seen as something of a colonial frontier region. Colonial powers present here include the Caliphate of Carcassona in parts of Micronesia and Western Australia (still called that, it's the great southern land after all), the Kingdom of Galicia in Western New Guinea and the Holy Roman Empire everywhere else.
Australia is divided between the Carcassonan colonial realm of Cicnea (which owes its name to the OTL Swan River and is centered on the river) in the west, and the Holy Roman colonies of Althorpsland which are situated on the east coast. Cicnea is the less populated of the two colonies, having been settled with the purpose of being a Carcassonan naval base in the southern hemisphere in mind, and managing to export small amounts of Mediterranean crops, lavender, gold and low-quality sandalwood. The two main regions of settlement in Cicnea are the OTL Spencer Gulf and Australia's southwestern tip, but somewhat extensive settlement has also occurred in the OTL Kimberley, Darwin and Roper River regions. Cicnea and the colonies of Althorpsland have a long-standing, unresolved border dispute involving historical claims to the Australian continent. Originally the Holy Roman Empire claimed everything east of the 141st Meridian East, while the Caliphate of Carcassona claimed everything west of the 133rd Meridian East. Eventually the Caliphate of Carcassona claimed the remaining territory in the middle, but in the official statement it claimed everything west of the 133rd Meridian East that was not rendered inaccessible by insurmountable geographical barriers. This clause, added in due to a lack of knowledge on the geography of the Australian interior at the time (in OTL people thought there might have been an inland sea at one point), was used by the Holy Roman Empire as an excuse to expand west of the 133rd Meridian up to certain geographical barriers such as rivers and deserts. The colonial governor of Cicnea claims that this is a violation of their rightful claims, as deserts and mountains are not insurmountable geographical barriers like seas and mountain ranges are, but the representative of the Althorpslander colonies to Calés would like to see him try to swim across the Murry River before making any concessions. Althorpsland is the more developed of the two colonies, with impressive coal deposits for local industry, more fertile land, vast gold fields, sugarcane plantations in the north and one of the largest hemp-growing industries in the Southern Hemisphere. It is home to over a million people, but that number is growing fast due to a high birthrate and immigration from abroad to the newly-cleared fields of southeastern Australia. The OTL Hunter Valley is brimming with orchards and fields of wheat, barley and hemp.
While Australia and parts of Aotearoa are settler colonies, indigenous peoples maintain their old presence and lifestyles in most of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. There are even native polities which have emerged in response to European arrival in the region. These include the United Tribes of Aotearoa, which has thus far refused to submit to Holy Roman colonialism without a treaty that prevents settlers from coming to the islands of Aotearoa, and the Dual Monarchy of Tonga-Samoa, which formed as a result of the Tongan nobility which dominated both islands for centuries attempting to modernise by forming a somewhat centralised monarchy. The king of Tonga and Samoa recently expanded his domains to Fiji, conquering the island with imported firearms after a brief military campaign. Although the Dual Kingdom's escapades are not a cause for Holy Roman concern, the Empire has been making efforts to bring the country into its sphere of influence.
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zhropkick
Banned
Not a bad idea, edited in one.Holy wall of text Batman!
Spoiler tags are your friend
zhropkick
Banned
How did you convert a rectangular spaceengine exported map into the worlda projection? I absolutely need to know, this looks awesome.
Kolkatta
I'm musing about reviving it as a map series, to make it more manageable to finish.TL 398 strikes again!
Hi, Sorry this is delayed- the Republica de Mexico is a rump left over after a devastating war with the Imperio de America.
Vuu
Banned
An experiment: an ISOT that is not country-based, but language based. Courtesy of the ASBs, all the speakers get concentrated on one area that is designed from scratch - Cardiff looks nothing like it's old counterpart, for example. This is after a century.
1. The Republic of Hawai'i: Extremely isolated, but one of the quickest to stabilize. Claims all of Oceania, no more, no less, though they are in control of only a part (north of the dark blue line). Has a problem with low resources, particularly oil - limiting them to 80's tier technology, which is still impressive. Currently rakes in a lot of cash from shipping between Aymaraland and Japan. Capital in Honolulu, though the government plans to relocate to a more central location, though the two biggest candidate places - Samoa and Fiji, haven't been colonized yet. Started from the Hawai'i Pidgin.
2. In here, lie 3 countries: Korea, Japan, and Ryukyu:
Korea (yes, just Korea): When Koreans found themselves completely mixed between northerners and southerners, in completely new cities, needless to say, things got chaotic. A military junta, led by 3 northern and 2 southern generals, a rather strange combination, took over the country and stabilized it at the cost of extreme repressive measures, that were rescinded after order was restored, and the country became a presidential democracy (interestingly, there was a Kim president twice). Due to that, and the aging population pre-ISOT, there was kind of a population collapse, which is why they haven't colonized much. Technology is that of the 70's, but is rapidly catching up. Currently colonizing Manchuria. Capital is Seoul.
Empire of Japan: The country got to it's feet remarkably slow, and then found out that the population is unsustainable, cue one of the worst demographic collapses ever and then a minor civil war, which resulted in the emperor putting the foot down and instituting absolute monarchy again. Just got it's part of the Kurils back, their policy is to develop what they have to the max first, then colonize new areas later. Wants to get the Ryukyu back. Capital is Tokyo. Tech ranges from 60's to 80's depending on area. Resembles some sort of pacifistic 1930's Japan.
Ryukyu Free State: Speakers of Central Okinawan suddenly found themselves obviously organized as an independent state. Quickly discovered that Japan is in shambles, struck out on it's own, and now slowly nibbling at Taiwan. Knows they are screwed in the long run, as we speak are preparing to relocate the entire populace to Malaysia, and hand over the territory they own now to the Japs and the Mien (Taiwan and the south Ryukyu already ran as a condominium). Heavily supported in this by Hawai'i, and generally everyone, to secure oil fields of Borneo. Populace isn't very happy, but knows better than complain. The future capital, located where Johor Bahru was, is already in construction, along with other towns and cities, though the area is still completely empty apart from workers.
3. Two "Chinese" states: Mienia and Hlailand. Though they touch, the border hasn't been marked yet.
Federation of Mienia: From the Iu Mien arises this quaint state, with a lot of potential. The origins of the country resulted in it being a rather loose federation of clans-turned-states, but there are boons to this: they have greatly expanded their area, and now under a rather centralizing regime, the state is being stabilized. Though they are expanding quickly, they are pretty poor and undeveloped- technology is that of the 60's. Capital is Hechi.
Hlailand: Formerly based on Hainan, it recently relocated to Zhanjiang. Even more impoverished than Mienia, and led by a North Korea-style dictator. 50's tech. Only one to oppose plans to relocate Ryukyu (they want the oil and Indochina for themselves)
4. Sooo lonely - Chuvashia and to a lesser extent Georgia. Both are reasonably well off, and Georgia is gonna start exporting oil to Europe soon. Chuvashia is doing well for itself, too, and is extremely self-sufficient, with cutting-edge 80's tech.
5. The proper European states are all isolated too, but have contact with each other. Wales is doing excellent, so is Euskaland and Hungary, currently seeking to colonize the rest of the Danube. Wales is 80's, Euskaland and Hungary 70's in most places.
6. Cape Verde is 50's tech merchant state, vital for the Africans, to get stuff (primarily technical stuff) from Europe to them. Started doing some colonizin' of their own too.
7. Hausaland and Zarmaland. Both are 40's in the cities and 30's in the countryside. Rushed to get all the land they could get, unlike everyone else who tries to keep compact. Massive contact zone, yet only started surveying potential borders like not 10 minutes ago. Hausaland is based in Kano and is quite a loose (con)federation, while Zarmaland is based in Niamey and tries to be centralized, which is not so easy due to their empty expanse.
8. Equatoria was only recently discovered, but by some miracle the Sango-based state functions well, though is also kinda expansive but empty. 20's and 30's tier, though a trade route will be broken through soon. Based in Bangui.
9. Aymaraland and Guarania are the opposite of the Africans - they are the kings of compactness, and though 70's tech is considered extreme luxury in both states, they're fabulously wealthy. Nice thing to know: the mines have been restocked too. Aymaraland is based in Puno, and Guarania recently relocated to Rosario.
1. The Republic of Hawai'i: Extremely isolated, but one of the quickest to stabilize. Claims all of Oceania, no more, no less, though they are in control of only a part (north of the dark blue line). Has a problem with low resources, particularly oil - limiting them to 80's tier technology, which is still impressive. Currently rakes in a lot of cash from shipping between Aymaraland and Japan. Capital in Honolulu, though the government plans to relocate to a more central location, though the two biggest candidate places - Samoa and Fiji, haven't been colonized yet. Started from the Hawai'i Pidgin.
2. In here, lie 3 countries: Korea, Japan, and Ryukyu:
Korea (yes, just Korea): When Koreans found themselves completely mixed between northerners and southerners, in completely new cities, needless to say, things got chaotic. A military junta, led by 3 northern and 2 southern generals, a rather strange combination, took over the country and stabilized it at the cost of extreme repressive measures, that were rescinded after order was restored, and the country became a presidential democracy (interestingly, there was a Kim president twice). Due to that, and the aging population pre-ISOT, there was kind of a population collapse, which is why they haven't colonized much. Technology is that of the 70's, but is rapidly catching up. Currently colonizing Manchuria. Capital is Seoul.
Empire of Japan: The country got to it's feet remarkably slow, and then found out that the population is unsustainable, cue one of the worst demographic collapses ever and then a minor civil war, which resulted in the emperor putting the foot down and instituting absolute monarchy again. Just got it's part of the Kurils back, their policy is to develop what they have to the max first, then colonize new areas later. Wants to get the Ryukyu back. Capital is Tokyo. Tech ranges from 60's to 80's depending on area. Resembles some sort of pacifistic 1930's Japan.
Ryukyu Free State: Speakers of Central Okinawan suddenly found themselves obviously organized as an independent state. Quickly discovered that Japan is in shambles, struck out on it's own, and now slowly nibbling at Taiwan. Knows they are screwed in the long run, as we speak are preparing to relocate the entire populace to Malaysia, and hand over the territory they own now to the Japs and the Mien (Taiwan and the south Ryukyu already ran as a condominium). Heavily supported in this by Hawai'i, and generally everyone, to secure oil fields of Borneo. Populace isn't very happy, but knows better than complain. The future capital, located where Johor Bahru was, is already in construction, along with other towns and cities, though the area is still completely empty apart from workers.
3. Two "Chinese" states: Mienia and Hlailand. Though they touch, the border hasn't been marked yet.
Federation of Mienia: From the Iu Mien arises this quaint state, with a lot of potential. The origins of the country resulted in it being a rather loose federation of clans-turned-states, but there are boons to this: they have greatly expanded their area, and now under a rather centralizing regime, the state is being stabilized. Though they are expanding quickly, they are pretty poor and undeveloped- technology is that of the 60's. Capital is Hechi.
Hlailand: Formerly based on Hainan, it recently relocated to Zhanjiang. Even more impoverished than Mienia, and led by a North Korea-style dictator. 50's tech. Only one to oppose plans to relocate Ryukyu (they want the oil and Indochina for themselves)
4. Sooo lonely - Chuvashia and to a lesser extent Georgia. Both are reasonably well off, and Georgia is gonna start exporting oil to Europe soon. Chuvashia is doing well for itself, too, and is extremely self-sufficient, with cutting-edge 80's tech.
5. The proper European states are all isolated too, but have contact with each other. Wales is doing excellent, so is Euskaland and Hungary, currently seeking to colonize the rest of the Danube. Wales is 80's, Euskaland and Hungary 70's in most places.
6. Cape Verde is 50's tech merchant state, vital for the Africans, to get stuff (primarily technical stuff) from Europe to them. Started doing some colonizin' of their own too.
7. Hausaland and Zarmaland. Both are 40's in the cities and 30's in the countryside. Rushed to get all the land they could get, unlike everyone else who tries to keep compact. Massive contact zone, yet only started surveying potential borders like not 10 minutes ago. Hausaland is based in Kano and is quite a loose (con)federation, while Zarmaland is based in Niamey and tries to be centralized, which is not so easy due to their empty expanse.
8. Equatoria was only recently discovered, but by some miracle the Sango-based state functions well, though is also kinda expansive but empty. 20's and 30's tier, though a trade route will be broken through soon. Based in Bangui.
9. Aymaraland and Guarania are the opposite of the Africans - they are the kings of compactness, and though 70's tech is considered extreme luxury in both states, they're fabulously wealthy. Nice thing to know: the mines have been restocked too. Aymaraland is based in Puno, and Guarania recently relocated to Rosario.
-- Description --
Iskandar Muda, through deception and sheer planning, has successfully sieged the entire city and claim it for his dominion. After years of pandering to the will of the Portuguese, he has finally succeeded in surprise them all with the sheer magnitude of his army. Hundreds of galleys and thousands of levees and volunteers fought to drive the Kaffirs out of the city.
And with the city in his grasp, he becomes the grand hegemon over the entire strait; spice and goods flow through to his kingdom, and the rest of the archipelago is his for the taking. Thus, the fall of Malacca has paved a new era of Acehnese glory.
Alternate links for those interested: [DeviantArt] | [Reddit]
Most likely Jupiter, since the artist probably wouldn't have missed the chance to depict the rings across the sky if it had been Saturn.
I've certainly considered Jupiter, honestly. The only problem is that I like using, like, my own images. I'm not too good at photoediting, neither. But yeah, I'll definitely work on some more maps maybe. I admit, though, that it'd be pretty hard to show things like Mars' fungal forests or Jupiter on maps.
You don’t have to use that image, it was just an example of gas giant fauna. You can come up with your own images. As for a map, the best idea I can give you is to use a square map of Jupiter’s cloud patterns. If Jupiter has sentient inhabitants or even just human colonies, have those settlements be floating aerostats and mark their general locations on the cloud map
I'm not sure if this would work for the scenario @Bennett has in mind, but what about organisms so large they can be seen clearly on the map?
That could also work. Or there could be enormous floating “islands” of an organism like kelp or algae. Those are just some ideas
Was also an idea I had, honestly. I'll try brainstorming more soon!
There are places on Saturn where the atmosphere has sea level pressure and the gravity is Earth equivalent. Could be quite a comfortable place in a sealed, lighter-than-air habitat.
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