Map Thread XX
- Thread starter Balkanized U.S.A
- Start date
- Status
This map is map of the setting of my current Superhero Story
It has been a hundred years since the Second World War and the 20 and 21st centuries that followed the horrific stalemate was nothing more than one tragedy after another culminating in the period known as the horrors an era of apocalyptic collapse, disasters, and conflicts. From the fourth world war that killed more than the last three combined, the outbreak of the new plague other wise known the white death, the great comet which help cause “The Flood” along with global ice melting, the countless nuclear wars, the wide spread use of biological & chemical weapons, and the still on going civil conflicts in many parts of the world. The horrors may be on paper over the world still lay on the edge of chaos as the world powers are locked in a new Cold War over the remaining resources.
It has been a hundred years since the Second World War and the 20 and 21st centuries that followed the horrific stalemate was nothing more than one tragedy after another culminating in the period known as the horrors an era of apocalyptic collapse, disasters, and conflicts. From the fourth world war that killed more than the last three combined, the outbreak of the new plague other wise known the white death, the great comet which help cause “The Flood” along with global ice melting, the countless nuclear wars, the wide spread use of biological & chemical weapons, and the still on going civil conflicts in many parts of the world. The horrors may be on paper over the world still lay on the edge of chaos as the world powers are locked in a new Cold War over the remaining resources.
- United States of America: an aging power plagued by corruption, crime, and insurgency all the while clinging desperately to it title as a Superpower with it being the head of Alliance of Free Nations, but this too is being threatened as many of the AFN members have vastly different interests.
- The United Socialist Pact is what remain of the communist rumps states post world three and again further weakened by the collapse of China and the break of Soviet Russia. In 2038 it reorganized it self it to a single global socials state, but still a economic and political troubles rocks the nation the future seen bleak for Marx’s dream.
- The Russian “Empire” is a pariah breakaway state not recognized by any one of the major and constantly in a state of war with the Soviets, still with it vast nuclear and military arsenal it remains a threat to it neighbors.
- Legion: is the most mysterious as even it origins is unknown with debate rather “The Party” came into being before or after the war and with the even the Propaganda recovered from Legion controller areas being contradictory at best. Legion is still far isolationist preferring to fund rebel groups rather do the fighting themselves not much is known about their military or even political Ideology, but with what is estimated as the largest military (at least in raw numbers) most nation steer clear of Legions and her’s allies borders.
*A map request of the world in the dystopian movie "Children of Men"
The point of departure of this TL is intermediate but started with an era of far-worse religious fundamentalist terrorist attacks taking place all across the globe. This all started in 2001 when the 9/11 attacks were far worse, involving tactical nukes and other nasties like that. The War on Terror turned into a far bigger debacle not only involving Islamic Fundamentalism but the rise of other religious fundamentalism and xenophobia across the world. Things turn from bad to worse when nearly all of humanity begins to go infertile in 2009, causing demographics to collapse and a collapse in society.
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The United States is a hollow shell of the world superpower that it was at the dawn of the 21st century. Things went south back in 2001 after a dirty bomb went off at New York City and DC which turned the government near totalitarian in making sure something on a similar scale does not happen again. This caused anti-government unrest to break out across the USA and eventually, the seeds were sown to the Second American Civil War. The election of 2016 saw political strife reach its maximum and the military decided to pick a side of the conservatives. Liberal states refused to obey the military-conservative regime in power and rebelled. Other factions sprung up and soon, the entire country was up in flames.
Currently the military-conservative regime is the most powerful of the factions, holding control of the majority of the former USA’s land and cities. They place less emphasis on imposing conservative values and are more focused on a restoration of order. By the 2020s, the government is essentially controlled by a clique of police officers, generals, and collaborators. For the opposition, it’s broadly a coalition of liberals, socialist-democrats, and anti-government militias. Their control over the former USA is tenuous at best since the military regime cuts off the factions from each other. Nevertheless they sustain the war using guerilla tactics and support from their Northern neighbor to keep their war support going. In opposition held territory, there is really no centralized authority like in the military regime and it’s mostly controlled by militias and bandits who roam the land and have broad loyalties.
The Holy States of America can trace its origins back in 2001 that saw the rise of Islamophobia and the popularity of Christian fundamentalism to counter their Islamic counterparts. Once the Second Civil War broke out in 2016, they were initially on the side of the military-conservative regime but after they were more focused on order and not imposing the word of God they rebelled in 2018 and carved out their own faction. Life is hard in HSA held territory, what little food is stolen by HRE troops and anyone suspected of Islamic and Atheist tendencies are to be shot on site if seen so. Their ideology is “Religious Rationalism” and they heark to return to the days of 1950’s America but as a theocracy. Any pop-culture and trends are forbidden and the only thing you can read are religious texts. On the side note, they aren’t racist enough to block African-American fundamentalists from joining their side. Another scary, although weak, faction is the New America Movement which is a collection of Neo-Nazi held territories troughout the USA. By far the scariest, they don’t hold much power and are hated by all factions alike so their time is to be short lived.
Other factions include breakaway states such as California, Texas, and Vermont who wanted to sit out the shitshow.
Mexico still technically had a government but only as a concept. Mexican states run their own affairs and day by day, the central government is slowly getting chipped at. In the North cartels-turned-warlords carved out their own states while the far-left Zapatistas took over Yucatan but are modest about expansion. In Central America, most of the states are under juntas of some kind and feat the communist Central America Union, funding guerillas in Guatemala and El Salvador, although this time, there is no USA to back the juntas up.
South America suffered from political turbulence in the 2010s and suffered from revolutions, coups, and civil wars after things turned worse for the world. From fascist governments in Brazil and Paraguay to the communists of Peru and Venezuela, the promise of a better South America in the 21st century fell flat. Leader of the Bolivarian League is the “Bolivarian Socialist Union”, a typical socialist totalitarian state that turned to the worse when the global oil market collapsed, sending their economy down with it. The government survived though, under an expansionist dictatorship that wanted to impose the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” in all of South America. Brazil is somewhat functional in the East, although under a clerical-fascist dictatorship allied to Paraguay and Bolivia to fight back communism and to stabilize their states.
Meanwhile in Europe, the European Union at first had a promising future, a dream of a united Europe one day stretching from Lisbon to the Urals under peace and democracy. As the 21st century turned out not to be the century of peace and prosperity, things were going to be hard for the European Union. In the early 2000s, European cities were constantly attacked by Islamic terrorists, with the worst ones being the Copenhagen 2011 Attacks and the Munich 2016 Attacks. Eastern Europe experienced an anti-Islamic reaction and were opposed to any type of foreign immigration that the EU was doing. In 2016, Christian Fundamentalists and other far-right politicians formed their own personal union within the EU but did not formally leave. Although, after the Brexit War they took their chance and left the EU all at once, uniting into the Visegrad Union. The EU was rapidly on the downfall to collapse and in a final act of survival, the French and German governments united to form the European Federation.
The European Federation today is a wobbly superstate only holding together with force and the police as the last bastion of the old liberal order. Although battered by terrorist attacks by all sides, they miraculously withstood into the 2020s but things are not looking bright for them. Italy’s collapse into civil war and the Neo-Nazi putsch in East Germany showed that Brussels is not 100% in charge. Riots rock cities every week and gas shortages are a part of normal life. With the expansion of the IS into North Africa and Turkey, the EF did not want Islamists on the steps of Madrid and the Balkans so decided to intervene, sending troops to anti-Islamist countries. With both the IS and EF nuclear powers, time would tell before all of North Africa goes up into nuclear hellfire.
In Eastern Europe, the Visegrad Union stands as the premier power of Eastern Europe. Things are troublesome though, the demographic collapse due to infertility has caused their population to plummet to the point where they force immigrants and other non-Slavic Europeans to assimilate into their culture just to survive. Nationalist militias patrol the streets for the nightly curfew and the law is the bible. They are good friends with the United Kingdom, even making a deal to deport the UK’s Polish population back to Poland. After the Eurasian War, the Visegrad Union does no longer have to worry about the Russian menace but are always paranoid about the threat of the IS, a new crusade being declared against all Muslims in Europe is seriously considered in Warsaw.
The United Kingdom saw the writing on the wall for the European Union and a legacy of anti-EU sentiment and their policies towards immigration caused a surge of nationalism. Nationalist parties won UK elections and without a referendum, they pulled out of the EU. The EU was not happy about this, fearing the UK would inspire other nationalists to split with Brussels so they decided to take action against the UK, sponsoring a pro-EU coup in Scotland and invading from the North. Due to the sheer instability of the EU, the invasion was a disaster and the UK defended itself against the EU but also bombed Paris and bluffed with atomic destruction if Brussels doesn’t stop now. With Eastern Europe also calling quits with Brussels, the EU agreed to a reluctant peace that saw a buffer zone established from Brest to Belgium. The UK today is an authoritarian democracy under a Norsefire-esque regime that survives off of the sheer hatred of foreigners, kinda like a European North Korea of sorts.
In Eurasia, the 21st century saw the rise, and fall, of two superpowers. The first was the People’s Republic of China in East Asia and the resurgent Russian, later Eurasian, Federation. As the old liberal order of the 1990s crumbled as the years passed by, the Russians and Chinese took advantage of it and expanded their own nations. The Russians annexed Belarus, half of Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2015, and bits of pieces of Georgia. The Chinese asserted control over the South China Sea. After the USA crumbled into civil war, the Russo-Chinese alliance fell apart with it and both turned against each other. In Central Asia, both China and Russia vied for influence and after Russia sent troops to depose the pro-Chinese president in Kazakhstan, war broke out. The so called “Eurasian War” was the worst of the wars the 21st century would ever see with chemical, biological, nuclear, and cyber weapons all used. The war saw the destruction of China and Russia into feuding warlords, anarchy, wastelands, and rump governments.
The former People’s Republic of China has been shattered by the Eurasian War and the ensuing onslaught of plagues, famines, radiation, and warlords. In the Northeast stands the former People’s Republic of China, a rump tinpot dictatorship on the likes of their DPRK allies next door. They reversed most of the post-Mao reforms and turned back inwards into a strange form a Neo-Maoist nationalism that idealizes the Chinese as the master race and should be the only one standing. Most Russians and other minorities were killed outright or used as slave labor with the former Russian far-east being filled with Chinese refugees. In the Western borderlands is controlled by a junta regime that tried to depose the CCP in a post Eurasian War civil war under the pretense of “stability”. They failed in their objective in seizing control of all of China but held onto the Western borderlands. They are even more xenophobic and are waging wars of extermination against non-Chinese minorities, hence the Tibetan and Uigur insurgencies. In the South is the “Republic” of China and is not the democratic-loving society that it wants everyone to think they are. The neo-KMT are not shy from outright fascism and, no surprise, are just as hostile to foreigners as their communist enemies. The Taiwanese are nominally allied to the neo-KMT but refuse to join their state due to not wanting to get involved in the mess that is the mainland.
The once resurgent Russian Federation is nothing more than a squandered post-industrial crapsack warlord-ridden wasteland. Siberia is reaching population levels so low that centralized governments don’t even exist and surviving local communities run their own affairs. In European Russia, there is still civilization but just as bad as in Siberia. The Russian Democratic Republic (don’t get fooled by the name) is the remnants of the Russian Federation still ruled dictatorially by the old pre-war political party. Their leadership switches between ex-secret service agents to aging military men every month or so and the situation is looking worse day by day and time would only tell until they break up into warlords like the rest of Russia. The fertility crisis has also caused the Russian population to drop three-fourths, and they are not for long in this world. In the Urals stands the mysterious “Church of Siberia'' formed in the apocalyptic aftermath of the Eurasian War. The Church of Siberia is a theocratic state running on a different branch of Orthodox Christianity and they believe the apocalypse has begun, and rightfully so. They seek to “purify” the population and reunite the Russian lands under their rule in the second coming of Christ.
In Southeast Asia, theocracy found ideal roots to spread from. In Thailand, the military allied with Buddhist theocrats and took over the government, installing a puppet king. Going against the peaceful origins of Buddhism, they declared all Muslims enemies of the state and wanted to expand their domain into all Buddhist nations to prepare for the incoming apocalypse as things get ever worse. War is just about to begin between Nustantra and Thailand over border disputes in Malaysia, this can only go down so well. In the former Indonesia, stretches the Caliphate of Nusantara, a state inspired by the IS to spread Islamism across all of Southeast Asia and “liberalist” the Muslims from Infidels. They are paranoid of an invasion by Australia and Thailand and are trying to make nukes and were able to get some from the black market.
North Korea also took the opportunity amidst the chaos to invade South Korea, forcing the South Koreans to flee to Jeju.
Australia and New Zealand managed to survive under authoritarian democracies and avoided falling under totalitarian governments. They are still xenophobic to all immigrants though but are fairly isolationist in the international scene, only maintaining influence over the Pacific Island nations and funding rebel groups in Nustantra. Climate changes has caused entire Pacific Nations to sink below the sea while Australia and New Zealand house refugees in more-or-less internment camps. Otherwise, Australia and New Zealand are doing better compared to the rest of the world in the 21st century.
Figured I'd pos tthis here.
I got sort of OCD with the 'Redraw the States' site and ended-up making an infographic map in the U.S. Polichat thread, however I also kept a blank version and I figure I'd post it here.
I got sort of OCD with the 'Redraw the States' site and ended-up making an infographic map in the U.S. Polichat thread, however I also kept a blank version and I figure I'd post it here.
Sultanate of Fakfak - Islamic Papua
Introduction
The Sultanate of Fakfak, also known as Pakpak Darusallam, is one of the most powerful countries in Oceania. Despite its small stature, the country is both economically and militarily powerful and is considered to be a regional power rivaling the Positivist Technate of Darwin. They run under a quasi-absolutist monarchy backed by the Fakfak Majelis, an advisory board composed of Muslim religious authorities known as Ustads. They’re a byproduct of the Iskandar Muda’s conquest of the entire archipelago, with their national language being a synthesis of both Acehnese and the local dialect of many Papuan languages. This legacy also explains its large Muslim population, which encompasses 94 percent of the population. Fakfak is a state unified by both religious uniformity and common language, which is the result of extensive literary campaigns and missionary efforts.
However, before their rise to prominence, Western Papua was once a collection of warring princely states and feeble city-states. The Acehnese have left a legacy of both religious and cultural magnitude, with many Papuan tribes adopting the traditions and faiths of their foreign rulers. Many chieftains turned monarchs turned their sights beyond their shores, seeking prosperous trade from powerful empires and embracing the affluent migration of both the Arabs and Indians. The region has also experienced the benefits of high civilization, with silk and gunpowder funneling into their world while they share the splendors of their exotic animals and produce. Roads were constructed from the shores to even the thickest highlands, connecting the region into a greater whole. Extensive clearings of thick rainforest over the flatlands allowed them to develop a massive network of rice paddies, allowing the local population to grow and encourage many to urbanize; thus creating a new class of craftsmen and merchants. Compared to their relatively humble brothers from the east, the people of the west have molded their own identity of prosperity and civilization.
History of Fakfak
Despite being the largest city in Western Papua, they’re the subjects of many suzerains. From the Acehnese to the recently-formed Kingdom Manokwari, the city is vital as its developed ports and industry are instrumental for trade and their galleys. The kingdom held the city for decades, but it wasn’t until the inconvenient demise of the dynasty that their rule over Fakfak was short-lived. Their demise has given the path to a vacuum, a dysfunctional interregnum where many took advantage. Some tried to usurp the throne, to claim the titles and lands as their own, while others splintered from the kingdom to form their own polities.
But Fakfak didn’t form into an actual state until 1703 when Nurul Mahmoodi, a local Hulubalang ruling under the suzerainty of Manokwari, revolted over the matters of cumbersome taxing and the destruction of their Grand Mosque in 1693. The event did not go unnoticed, however, as many kingdoms, including the Sultanate of Babo, tried to take control of the city but failed as their resistance became even more fierce. It wasn’t until five years later where he began to plot his own campaign for expansion, capturing the city of Babo as they were weakened by the punitive raids against their northern neighbors. By the time of his death, he had ruled a large swath of land stretching from Samoera to Babo.
Fakfak experienced its first and grandest epoch in 1733 when Mohamad III took over after his father abdicated. He ordered the construction of an extensive wall protruding over 20m tall, covering the neck of the Bomberai Peninsula to be garrisoned by a thousand men. Its completion led him to set his sights on conquering his neighbors by sea, wielding a large flotilla of galleys inherited from the leftovers of the Acehnese arsenal. He hopped from city to city, first capturing Bira and eventually the strategic port of Sorong. He reinstated conquered monarchs to serve as local Hulubalang, ruling their respective lands under his suzerainty. The fall of Manokwari in 1749 marked the unification of the Western Papua, finally consolidating the integrity of his dominion as he shifted his ambitions for more peaceful prospects. Mohammed III later passed away in 1753 after an accident was struck in the Great Library of Fakfak, slipping over a series of stairs and receiving a fatal blow to his neck.
The sultanate experienced relative peace and prosperity, with the next line of sultans being content over their current position of hegemonic prowess. Many merchants and emissaries continued to flow into the great capital, offering tributes of gold and marble to secure their mercantile interest over the eastern corners of the archipelago. In 1757, English envoys handpicked by the Seventeenth Lord Protector were missioned to have an audience with Mahmood IV in the hopes of establishing a trading post, with the sultan agreeing to the prospect under the terms that his officials were allowed to supervise their every accord through extensive bookkeeping.
However, Fakfak began to set their ambitions beyond their domain by the dawn of the 19th Century. In 1801, Fakfak joined Gowa-Talloq and the Acehnese during the Great Nutmeg War - a contentious series of conflicts between the local sultanates against the Spanish viceroyalty of the Philippines. And in 1844, they launched their largest territorial expansion since Mohammed III’s campaign across Western Papua, conquering the lesser polities Arae, Nabire, Noeboai, and lastly the confederal chiefdoms of Mbambawa. The celebration of their triumph was short-lived, however, as they led a punitive campaign against the sultan in 1845. Despite their massive numbers, the French Expeditionary Army faced a consequential blunder in the Battle of Sorong due to the harassment of their logistical fleet and the Columbian ultimatum demanding their withdrawal. They became a de jure protectorate of the Great Commonwealth of Columbia, albeit still able to exercise their own domestic and foreign ambitions. It wasn’t until 1915 when they became formally independent.
Fakfak, like the rest of the Muslim world, remained unaffected by the Diogenic Revolution in 1927, when most of the modern world faced massive waves of both reformist aspirations and extreme uprisings. And after the Second Great War, also known as the Alexandrian Wars, the nation became the subject of interest for both Positivist France and Columbia. When a massive mineral reserve was discovered in the remote areas of the Papuan highlands, the latter took the initiative to invest and initiated an economic aid program in 1953 while France tried to organize a Positivist uprising against the religious-minded government. This eventual uprising resulted in the massacre of the Fakfak Positivist Assembly in 1958 when their plot to overthrow the ruling monarch was exposed by the Fakfak National Army. The ruling government also faced the threat of Islamic Republicanism, with the Great Imam of Sorong serving as the sole personality of the movement. It eventually waned after the 90s when both parties began to compromise, which led to the formation of the Fakfak Majelis.
Recently, the government launched an ambitious infrastructure ranging from the well-known Iskandarian HIghway to the series of renovations made over the old roads paved during the 17th century; installing modern construction techniques to mitigate the need for frequent maintenance. Politically, the government seems stable in the eyes of the public, but factionalism between the absolutist supporters and those seeking constitutionalist reforms are frequent among the sphere of the military and even the royal family. Fakfak is currently part of the Ma Republic’s Eurasian Trading Initiative and rejoined the Assembly of Sovereign Nation 50 years after their departure.
Tell us MOOOORE
(those kazakh and katangan borders btw... and biafra...)
Believe it or not, this was supposed to be a simple thing: quickly draw a country on a worlda then write a couple sentences on that nation's history. Three months after I started, this is what I have. Just over 10,000 words covering only 15 countries. Most of the nations featured here are ones I thought up at random moments and wanted to use but could not come up with enough ideas to do a full world map for. As an example, the idea for the Women's Republic came to me when I saw the OTL suffragette flag and thought it looked like a national flag. On the other hand, the lunar Confederacy idea is inspired by a bit from Futurama.
1) Occupation Zone Nord-Ameriko (1962 AD) - Europe in the 1920s was a continent in turmoil. After the devastation of the Great War, radical ideologies like fascism and communism were on the rise. The ideology that came to be dominant came into existence last: in 1923, a chance encounter in Nice brought together the men that would become the three of the most important figures of the age: Meinhard Bormann, a former German army colonel, Drago Mihajlović, a Yugoslav businessman, and Tito Farruchi, an Italo-French union leader. Also present was Dr. Anastas Ciobotariu, a Romanian philosophy professor. These four met at a hotel bar and spoke late into the night. Their talk formed the basis of the ideology of Trigonism. Trigonism, as expounded by Dr. Ciobotariu, was a social and political system designed to fix the problems of the 20th century. It was given its name because, as the founders believed, society was divided into three vital bodies: military, capital, and labor. The present troubles in Europe stemmed from the fact each of the ideologies present (democracy/monarchy, fascism, and communism) each focused to heavily on the supremacy of one of the bodies whereas a proper government would balance the three. In addition, the Trigon symbol represented the three races of Europe: German, Latin, and Slav. Though Ciobotariu's initial tract on Trigonism named 'On an Industrial Government' was first printed in French in 1924, Esperanto became the language of the movement several months later. Trigonist parties quickly sprouted up across Europe. With Mihajlović's money and Farruchi's influence within his union, Trigonism spread quickly. In many countries, it made a bid to attract centrists afraid of either communist or fascist dominance. The first Trigonist-ruled state was Czechoslovakia, in which the Trigonists came to power democratically in 1928. The Trigonists would see similar successes in France, Germany, Poland in the next decade. In 1938, the First of the Trigonist Wars of Expansion began when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini escalated a crisis that began when Trigonists deposed the Albanian monarchy. The Wars of Expansion came to an end in 1948 with all of Europe but Iberia and Scandinavia under Trigonist rule. Among these conquests included Russia, where the deeply unpopular military government of Yukhym Medvedev was decapitated and a Trigonist state established and left to its own devices. With Europe still under occupation, the Trigonists invaded Britain. With all the forces of Europe arranged against it, Britain was quickly defeated. The Trigonists spent the next few years building up their military and infrastructure while providing aid to Russia. The Trigonists attempted to pacify the provinces of Northern and Western Africa into their state, but left Southern Africa and Australia to their own devices. In 1957, the Trigonists launched the largest, longest invasion in the history of mankind. A fleet carrying millions of men departed European ports and attacked the United States and its Canadian protectorate. The first few days of the invasion were bloody. Europeans fell by the thousand on the beaches of the Carolinas and New Jersey but when the smoke cleared, the Trigonists had established beachheads. The Trigonists managed to conquer all of America within three years and forced the surrender of the US military in early 1960. With the United States defeated, Occupation Zone Nord-Ameriko was established. The Occupation Zone was established as a temporary measure and the higher echelons of the Trigonist Party fervently believe that one day North America will be integrated into a Trigonist World State. Many North Americans have different opinions. Millions of Americans fight on against the Trigonist invader and believe the stars and stripes will fly once more.
2) Ayanid Caliphate (1917 AD) - The Turkish conquest of the Balkans was notable for both its speed and the degree to which conquered people were Islamized. Though Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Magyars alike all converted to Islam, proselytization was most successful among the Serbian speakers of the Morava basin. Under Ottoman dominance, 15th and 16th century, Serbian-speaking administrators were in high regard throughout the Balkan vilayets. Serbian cavalry, known as Konjaniks, could be found in Ottoman armies ranging across the Near East, and in the wake of victory, Konjanik settlements sprung up. By 1600, Serbian was the second language of the Empire and in parts of Europe, was even more dominant than Turkish. Because of the stronghold of Anatolia controlling the eastern approaches to the Balkans, the Serbian-led vilayets were largely insulated from the early years of the sudden rise of the self-proclaimed prophet Chekesh Kahda and the Tuazan faith. As Chekesh Kahda (whose assumed name meant 'Hammer of God') and his armies smashed the central Asian kingdoms and marched into the Ottoman Empire, business as usual continued in the Balkans. As the armies of the Harmonious Empire entered Anatolia, Serbian levies fought alongside Turks and Greeks to defend Kostantiniyye. Though the city itself could not be held, an army comprised largely of Serbs decisively defeated the armies of the Chekesh Khada at Ambar Creek east of Türbedere. Attempts to retake Kostantiniyye failed and a shaky peace was agreed to in 1688. The Sultan settled in Sultanboul (formerly Belgrade) to lead an empire in exile. Turks made up less than 10% of the population, and Serbian became the language of the court and government within two generations. In 1763, Sultan Murad IV passed away with no living heirs. After a brief struggle, a cousin took the throne. This cousin, crowned as Hamid II, had been raised speaking Serbian and his ascent to the throne marked the end of the rule of the mainline House of Osman. The cadet House of Kladovo ruled for the next hundred years; their reign was marked by a shift away from the earlier belief that Konstantiniyye and the Asian provinces would someday be recaptured. In the 1780s, an intinerent preacher in the Serbianizing district of Pleven began to make the claim that the people of the Balkans were chosen and it was up to them to defeat the Tuazanites that occupied the Holy Land. Alaintiqamism, the Islamic sect that arose espousing this belief, grew in popularity throughout the Ottoman realm. As nationalism emerged onto the scene as a result of the industrial revolution and Holy English Empire's years of terror, Serbian-speakers in the Balkans came to view themselves as Serbs rather than subjects of a Turkish Sultan. Though there were some secular or mainline nationalists, Serbian nationalism came to be synonymous with Alaintiqamism. The Serbian Revolts of 1838 and 1843 attempted to depose the monarchy and install an Alaintiqamist commonwealth failed, driving nationalists underground. In 1862, a minor noble named Ayan Lazarović raised his standard in revolt. Though he took up arms in opposition to taxes he felt were onerous, he collected nationalists around himself and what began as anger at high rates of taxation turned into a national war for liberation. In 1868, the nationalists would sack Sultanboul and capture Muhammad III as he attempted to flee the city dressed as a maid. The Sultan's capture took the will to fight out of the royalist movement, and most royalists put down their arms leaving various regional nationalist groups including Christian Greeks and the Albanians alone. Lazarović, who had now proclaimed himself Sultan Ayan, mopped these rebels up quickly. Returning to Sultanboul in December of 1869, Ayan had the title of Caliph bestowed upon him by a group of prominent clerics. Immediately, the Caliph was greeted with invasions by the Hungarians, Bavarians, and Russians, all of which he defeated. In 1873, with the Balkans at peace for the first time in a decade, Caliph Ayan implemented a series of reforms, including universal education and a limited democracy. A new national flag was adopted, combining the yellow and red color scheme of Stefan Dušan's banner as well as the star and crescent. For nearly 50 years, Ayan and his successors have focused on turning the Caliphate into a military powerhouse. Now, with Europe distracted by the Universal War, Caliph Amir considers an attack on the Tuazanite states of Anatolia and Palestine.
3) Republic of China (2061 AD) - In a sane world, the Qmintang would not exist. The fact that the Qmintang not only exists but thrives is a good sign that this is not a sane world. QAnon, a system of beliefs predicated on the existence of a deep state of Satan-worshipping child predators that controls the world, was born in the fall of 2017 when a poster on 4Chan calling himself ‘Q’ predicted the impending mass arrest of members of this cabal by allies of US President Donald Trump. This and later messages (known as Q drops) became the nucleus of an internet community that came to take Q’s revelations on the state of the world and predictions as gospel. Though QAnon believers were initially focused on the United States, QAnon became a worldwide phenomenon during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. QAnon received support from politicians in the United States and Germany, but experienced the most success in Taiwan. There, in the mid-2020s, an anonymous online poster calling himself 公民 (Citizen) surfaced. Citizen portrayed himself as a high-level government official in communication with Q. Citizen occasionally posted statements in which he railed against the global elite, arguing that the Peoples Republic of China was an evil state ruled by this elite. Elements of the Kuomintang embraced this rhetoric, and a symbiotic relationship emerged in which KMT officials raised awareness of QAnon while Citizen and his followers endorsed the party. The first KMT majority government in nearly two decades came to power in 2034. Three years later, after decades in which China had more males than females, the PLA rose in revolt. Several years of war followed. Because of the nuclear arsenal possessed by CCP loyalists, foreign powers did not directly intervene though many volunteers from Taiwan went to the mainland to fight on the side of the rebels. When the war finally came to an end, a conference was held in Beijing in which the future of China was decided. Rather than join the Republic of China, a federal state, the Chinese Federation, was founded. This was met with anger in Taiwan. Why should a new state be created when there is already a perfectly good claimant? Citizen had an answer: the Chinese Federation was just the PRC in different clothing. Though by all rights, the KMT should have been voted out at the next election, they performed well because they went all-in on embracing Citizen's theory. The next decade saw the KMT become increasingly illiberal and isolated from the rest of the world. At the 29th National Conference of the Kuomintang in June 2049, the by now fully-Qpilled party renamed itself the Qmintang. The Republic of China spent the 2050s diving deeper into authoritarianism and became an outright pariah state. At the start of the 2060s, the RoC has few ties to the international community. The state has fully accepted QAnon as an unofficial state religion, and belief in there being a global ring of child-eating pedophiles is near-universal. Notably, child molesters are put to death by being put into woodchippers publicly. Understandably, most of the rest of the world wants absolutely nothing to do with the RoC and, aside from several fringe parties in various countries across the world, everyone thinks the place is a madhouse. Governments take much the same view and might have attempted to the force the current regime out a decade ago if not for the Taiwanese nuclear arsenal and the fact the country has been preparing to defend against an invasion for over a century. Interestingly, recent investigations by American academics indicate Citizen's original postings might have come from inside the Kuomintang's headquarters in the Zhonghsan District of Taipei.
4) State of Guantanamo Bay [United States] (2028 AD) - If not for the fact it was such an obvious powergrab, the fact that Guantanamo Bay got statehood before DC and Puerto Rico did not would be absolutely hilarious. The concept of Guantanamo Bay statehood began as a joke. During the Cheney Administration's ramping up of the War on Terror in the late 2000s, the inmate population of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay surged. American servicemen joked that the population of the base was more than that of a small state, and so the statehood joke began. It achieved notoriety in 2011, when a photograph of a group of Marines wearing 'Guantanamo Bay for 51st State' t-shirts made it onto the front page of the New York Times. The joke was taken surprisingly seriously by Republicans in the upper echelons of government. In early 2013, following the inauguration of the third president Bush, a report circulated among high-ranking RNC members about the possibility of admitting Guantanamo Bay as a state. The report reasoned that soldiers stationed there would overwhelmingly vote Republican, guaranteeing the GOP three more electoral votes, two Senators, and a Representative. The report was taken well, and the push towards Guantanamo Bay statehood began in earnest. Four years later, the statehood bill was passed and Guantanamo Bay became the 51st state of the union. Unique among the states in that its territory is comprised wholly of a military base, Guantanamo Bay has a unique system. A governor is popularly elected, as well as a cabinet. The state has no legislature and only a barebones judicial system, as most crimes are referred to the military justice system. The State of Guantanamo Bay is the least democratic (both upper and lowercase D) of all the US states. In the eleven years since statehood, Democrats have not won a single election and have appeared on the ballot only about half the time. Both national parties are technically legal there, but senior officers and Republican-aligned enlisted men make it difficult for Democrats to get on the ballot by harassing people gathering signatures for petitions. There is, however, widespread discontent with the state of affairs: turnout for elections is low, and a considerable number of voters simply write candidates in. Since the 2020 presidential election, when write-ins for various terrorist leaders detained at the base actually outran Republican nominee James, write-ins are required to file in advance of the election to get their votes counted. Since the inauguration of President Edwards in 2021 and the national rebirth of the Democrats, there have been calls to revoke Guantanamo Bay's statehood. These propositions have been met with violent opposition from Speaker McGrath and the Republican caucus. Some hope that after this year, liberal Senator Philips of Minnesota will be President and the wrongs at Guantanamo Bay will be righted and the War on Terror will finally draw to a close.
5) Albanian Empire (1625 AD) - The appearance of the Mongols on the stage in Southwest Asia in the mid-13th century was quickly followed by a bout of plague. The plague killed millions in the Middle East, but was most deadly in Europe where it spread like wildfire in the unsanitary, crowded conditions of European towns and villages. One of the unlikely beneficiaries of this was the the small Principality of Arbanon. Arbanon, an Albanian-speaking statelet centered around the town of Krujë had been made a vassal of the Byzantine Empire in 1215 and as things were going before the arrival of the plague, it appeared as if Arbanon might have been annexed soon. With the plague-weakened Byzantine Empire under pressure from the Turks, who were in turn under pressure from the Mongols, the ambitious Greco-Albanian lord of Arbanon Gregorios Kamonas declared his independence. He was met with support from Albanian-speakers and, through Kamonas' marital ties with the Serbian monarchy, Arbonon was wildly successful. By the time of the agining Gjergj I (as he would later be known) died in 1259, Arbanon had carved out a piece of territory from Shëngjin in the north and Vlorë in the south. The rulership of the principality passed to Gjergj's son-in-law, Golem, who continued to expand his realm and crowned himself King of Albania in 1275. With Byzantium on the decline and the Serbs threatened by the Mongols in Pannonia, the Albanians were able to expand to control Greece and then much of the Balkans south of the Danube in the following century. Byzantium, the once-master of Albania, was reduced to a city-state and vassal of the Albanians until 1403, when it was finally defeated. The Albanian Conquest of Byzantium forced the Mongol, Turk, and Arab powers of the Near East to recognize the Alabanians as a major power and the following years saw the Albanians have to fight these invaders off. Against all odds, the Albanians were victorious. They succeeded in conquering Anatolia and after aligning themselves with the pagan Muman Dynasty in Persia to crush to Muslim Arabs took the Holy Land in 1521. As the premier Christian power of the eastern Mediterranean, Albania was military aligned with the Western Christians, but a target neighboring Muslim entities. This necessitated the creation of strong alliances, and the Albanians cultivated those with the Armenians and Ethiopians. In 1599, these alliances were put to the test as all of the Muslim states bordering Albania attack it. The more organized and technologically more advanced Albanians defeated the invasion and marched into Egypt, which they split with the Ethiopians. Now, several decades after that war, Albania has nearly doubled in size (even if most of its new territory is uninhabitable desert) Emperor Nikollë II rules over a multinational empire where Christians make up a plurality of the population. The Patriarch of Constantinople is an Albanian-speaker (as are most people in the city known within the Empire as Kostandinopoja) and that language is used by goernment officials from Split to Aswan. Religious liberty has been extended in some provinces of the Empire, but Muslims are treated poorly throughout most of the empire. The future of the empire is by no means set. The ethnoreligious tensions within it could lead to civil war and the end of empire but, if it has good leadership in these critical years, it might cement its position and become one of the great empires of history.
6) Third Confederate Republic (2101 AD) - Unlike the first and second Confederacies which were on Earth, the Third Confederate Republic is based on the Moon. Even after the defeat of the first Confederacy in 1865, the American south remained an underdeveloped, conservative region. It consistently sent hardcore conservatives to the US Congress and voted for many losing staunch conservative candidates for President. This trend continued into the 21st century even as other parts of America became very socially liberal. After the loss of President Trump in 2020, the possibility of secession was hinted to by more than a few state Representatives across the South. Similar things transpired after every subsequent Republican election loss but bills advocating secession actually made it onto the floor of state houses in the 2040s. In 2051, after a surprisingly good showing for the Democrats in the midterms, a bill putting a national tax on sodas was passed by Congress and signed into law by Democratic president Barkley. The vote narrowly passed and was staunchly opposed by Southerners and the rumblings of secession that had been growing for decades burst onto the public stage. Whether this was the doing of soda companies hoping to create outrage to get the bill repealed or whether it was indeed an organic movement is often debated. Within weeks, thing deteriorated to the point of war. Pro-soda militias roamed the south with tacit support from state governments. It was in late October 2051 when twelve states voted to secede and founded the Free American Republic based out of Jacksonville, Florida. Though money came from America's enemies (and allegedly soda producers including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Lindley, and A.G. Barr) the FAR was ground down by the American military. It was in 2054 that the FAR launched Operation Exodus, a mass evacuation of their territory for the Moon. Using NASA and SpaceX ships captured from Cape Canaveral, the Southrons launched several thousand people into orbit after the sack of Hattiesburg in 2054. These pioneers established Port Lee on the Ocean of Storms on the Moon. From Hattiesburg, federal forces drove north to Jackson, which, when captured, split the FAR in two. As FAR negotiators worked out a ceasefire, thousnads more southerners were ferried to the Moon. Eventually, an agreement was made under the table in which southerners would receive assistance in migrating to the Moon in exchange for an end to hostilities on Earth. Obviously, there were many that opposed this agreement and kept fighting (The Free Southern Brotherhood and Georgia Devils were among the most prominent) but a great many of the original supporters of secession that had lived through the war chose to leave Earth. New arrivals settled in the underground Port Lee settlement, though more than a few went farther afield and established small bases that became the nuclei of the later Republic's cities. By 2059, the survivors of the FAR's government had made it to Port Lee and carried out their duties from there. They were widely unpopular and blamed for losing the war on Earth. In a nearly-bloodless act of revolt, the citizens of Port Lee stormed the government chambers where they called for a constitutional convention. Out of the chaos of 2059 came the Third Confederate Republic. The Port Lee Constitution set up a unitary state with a strong legislature and weak, popularly elected, president. The army was abolished and replaced with a gendarme force called the Home Guard. Now, in 2101, the Third Confederate Republic is impoverished and only propped up by imports of food from the Earth. Its main products include small quantities of rare earth elements and though the TCR produces many potatoes (they're easy to grow in sublunar bases), they are not exported to Earth. Though numerous plans for lunar resorts for upper class Earth-dwellers have been proposed over the decades, few of these have panned out and there is only a small trickle of visitors each year. The dominant Party of National Glory attempts to rules with an iron fist, and banners (printed on potato-paper of course) extolling the regime are ubiquitous. There is, however significant discontent and there are many threats to the current regime. The Home Guard has considerable authority and in some areas operates as a protection racket. Its leaders are ambitious, but focused more on making money and getting power than any reconquest of the Old South. There are also large street gangs that operate in the cities of the Confederacy. They have become increasingly bold in recent years and practically control whole neighborhoods. The Confederate Republic must reform if it is to survive but unfortunately, it does not appear there are enough resources to save it.
7) Federal States of America (1849 AD) - It is fitting that the most influential man in 19th century America was the son of an immigrant. Marc Isambard Brunel, a French engineer and son of a well-to-do farmer, fled Revolutionary France and moved in the United States in 1793. Within just months, his entry for the design of the new US Capitol was selected for construction by a panel of judges. Brunel fell in love with the United States, and settled permanently in Philadelphia. Thirteen years later, a son was born to Marc and his wife, the English-born Sophia Kingdom. This son, Isambard Washington Brunel, was born an engineering and technical genius. He attended some of the most prestigious schools in America, but left them to join his father's firm. Though Brunel got his start assisting in the construction of the Potomac and Ohio Canal and major canals throughout the southwest, he became fascinated with weapons and in 1829, founded his own company devoted to armaments. Brunel Firearms churned out breech-loading muskets, and created repeating rifles. As a side project, Brunel himself pioneered the clockwork man, a sort of robot that could be used in combat provided it was aligned so that the enemy army was in front of it. However, as Isambard Washington Brunel's career was on the rise, tensions in the United States were also increasing. The industrialized north came to staunchly oppose slavery, while the southern states became equally set in their ways. With the annexation of Northern Mexico and parts of the Spanish Caribbean, the southerners became stronger than the northern states. In 1844, archconservative Virginian Nathaniel Beverly Tucker was elected President of the United States. His fiery pro-slavery remarks made him impossible to stomach for northerners, and, in December and January of 1844, a number of northern states seceded from the union and declared themselves Federal States of America. The south would not allow this to occur peacefully and sent an army north. The War of Northern Secession had begun. Brunel Firearms had negotiated a similar contract with the FSA's military as it had with the US military, but following the burning of a Brunel plant by southern forces outside Philadelphia, the angered Isambard Washington Brunel vowed to do everything he could to aid the northern army. It took nearly a year for Brunel to reconfigure his plants to produce enough weapons for the Federal States Army, but when he did, it had become the finest fighting force in the world. Armed with breech-loaders and repeaters, the FSA pushed the US army south and eventually, past the Mason-Dixon line back into Maryland, where they were greeted by abolitionist militias. Brunel weapons were smuggled to Texas, where Governor Houston rose against the US, and some of the Spanish-speaking states of the Caribbean. In the summer of 1849, representatives of the various factions met in Richmond, Virginia, where the US agreed to recognize the existence of the nations that had risen against them. When news of the Peace of Richmond came to the north, people in the FSA were jubilant and entered the streets cheering Brunel and the army. The surprising victory of the FSA over the USA has shocked the world, especially given the widespread adoption of cutting-edge technologies among Federal States troops. Brunel himself has realized that, with his immense popularity and technological prowess, he can shape the future of the world.
8) Royal Republic of New Guinea (2065 AD) - Everyone thought the Kamula stories about the American veteran Rambo brokering an end to the Bougainville conflict and having sex with Elizabeth II's daughter were nothing but distorted understandings of popular culture that had been incorporated into the culture of a barely industrial country on the fringe of the world. Papua New Guinea stayed neutral as relations between the United States and Russia soured in the early 2020s, and when World War Three broke out between the Western Bloc and the Shanghai Pact they stayed out. After Indonesia entered on the Eurasian side in the last year of the war, the Papuan military was forced to defend its neutrality against the Indonesian occupation of Western Province meant to give a staging area for the invasion of Australia. Then came the use of an American nuclear warhead against the Russians at Helsinki. The Russians escalated with a strike on American forces at Navahraduk. And the rest is history: back and forths on increasingly major targets until the limited exchange of June 24, 2027. Dozens of missiles were launched and, thanks to social media, people across the world were aware within minutes. The government of Papua New Guinea was in panic. Surely, the reasoned, the Indonesian forces on Papua New Guinean territory would be struck, and they would be subject to the possibility of missiles launched from the seas around the island falling short. History records that in a bunker north of Port Moresby Prime Minister Holloway was weeping in front of his cabinet as Defense Minister Debege explained the extent of projected damage to the country when a muscular white man in a black tank top and red headband suddenly appeared. Several guards opened fire at the man with automatic rifles, but the bullets did not hit him. He spoke to the shocked cabinet. The man introduced himself as John Rambo and told the Prime Minister that he had returned to save Papua New Guinea from destruction. He then disappeared in just as mysterious a way as he arrived. In the next few hours, as states around the world saw their cities go up in mushroom clouds, not a single warhead struck New Guinean land or territorial waters. Exactly how this occurred, no one is quite sure, though more than a few New Guineans reported seeing a man flying through the air and deflecting missiles with his bare hands. At the same time, Indonesian troops occupying the Western Province reported seeing a 50 foot tall man telling them to leave the country, something that prompted a full-scale retreat of every Indonesian soldier in New Guinean territory. In the aftermath of the Exchange, as if under human command, prevailing winds shifted away from Papua New Guinea, and fallout that might have hit the country ended up elsewhere. Rumors of Rambo's appearance at the bunker immediately before the Exchange spread like wildfire and jubilant Papua New Guineans celebrated Rambo. Five days after the exchange a man fitting Rambo's description appeared in a field in downtown Port Moresby. Though initially denounced as a man in a costume, this Rambo attracted a crowd, which followed him in march on Parliament House. He arrived there with with several thousand people behind him and entered asking to see the Prime Minister. In front of the crowd, Rambo announced he had saved Papua New Guinea from the nuclear exchange and asked for permission to settle in the country and live out his days there. Amidst cheers, the Prime Minister told Rambo he was welcome to live wherever he wished and would be the recipient of a large pension for his actions in defense of the nation. Rambo settled down in the Eastern Highlands region, buying a cottage there and marrying a local woman. Papua New Guinea found itself with the opportunity for expansion. People streamed across the border into the Indonesian province of Papua while ambitious fishermen and traders sailed south to devastated Australia. Rambo himself was crowned King of New Guinea (replacing the British monarchy, which had been nearly wiped out in the Exchange and was by then being led by a former anti-trafficking activist), though in an interesting twist, since Rambo refused to be anything but a ceremonial monarch, a presidency was also establish, thus, the Royal Republic of New Guinea. Under King Rambo, the country expanded on all sides and with the aid of emigrant inventors and entrepreneurs from war-torn nearby states, developed into a green, productive paradise. It is now 2065, and King Rambo is aging. With no heirs, no one is quite sure the future of the Royal Republic. The King is worshiped as a God on Earth, and if he dies, there are many possibilities for this now-powerful state. 9) Grayshirt State (1952 AD) - In the aftermath of the Great War, in which the Confederate States was on the defensive for three years before being saved from total defeat by its European allies, there was considerable anger in the south. Though the CSA had come out on the winning side in the largest war in the history of the world, it had gained no territory and its enemy, the United States, seemed just as powerful as it had before the war. Unsurprisingly, many Southrons looked for somewhere to place blame. There were many suitable scapegoats: the rich planter class, that seemed to come out of the war unscathed, the border staters, who had long been secretly pro-unionist, and, of course, the Confederacy's significant black population. In 1918 and 1919, veterans organizations sprung up. Many of them were purely fraternal groups, but others were focused on the restoration of Confederate national glory. Fascism is first recorded in the CS in July of 1920, when a South Carolinian veteran named Clinton Brimsley founded the Charleston Fascisti. The Fascisti, a paramilitary group, aligned themselves with small business owners, and took it upon themselves to engage in street fights with the powerful multiracial Stevedores Union. The success of the Charleston Fascisti opened to the door to Fascism in the South. In the fall of 1922, Dr. T.E.J. Nicholls of Richmond, Virginia, presided over the formation of the Fascist Party of the Confederate States of America. In the next decade, the FPCSA's influence waxed and waned. They did not win the presidency, but starting in 1923 began to send a sizable contingent to Congress. Fascists even controlled entire states, and were most powerful in Louisiana and Florida. There were, however, many Southrons that felt the fascists did not go far enough. Clement Sigwald, a former CS Army officer from South Carolina, was one of them. Sigwald, the descendant of a soldier from the War of Southern Independence, had plans to attend a seminary, but when war broke out, he enlisted to defend his country. Sigwald came out of the war a fervent Confederate patriot. His experiences made him believe the war could have been won but for a black and upper Southern fifth column. Sigwald came to lead a group called the League of Southern National Restoration. Owing to its founder's religious interests, the LSNR was radically Protestant. It had meetings and rituals, and the sense of being in a secret society increased the group's appeal. Through Sigwald's connections, the LSNR spread like wildfire through the Confederate military. Both enlisted men and working class Southrons joined the Grayshirts, their paramilitary wing. The Grayshirts did not immediately dominate the streets, but they acquired a reputation for belligerence. Within five years of the LSNR's founding, it had eaten up enough minor right-wing groups to be second only to the Fascist Party. Then came the Depression. The LSNR grew by leaps and bounds as Southrons soured on the traditional Democratic Party. In 1931, the joint Fascist-League candidate for president, Hampton Fernsby, was narrowly defeated. Claims of ballot-stuffing by the traditional Democratic machines were widespread. In June of 1933, the Grayshirts (with Fascist support) stormed the Confederate capitol and White House in Richmond, Virginia. The coup went off smoothly as Grayshirt and Fascist-aligned commanders outside Richmond created enough confusion to allow the new government time to get settled in the capital. As Emergency President, Clement Sigwald ordered massive government investment in industry to get the South back to work. Quickly, a rift developed between LSNR factions that supported government intervention in the economy and the ones that didn't. Sigwald took the side of the former, which made as his enemy the traditionalist planters that had joined the LSNR hoping that it would restore glory to the defeated CSA, but not drastically change the economic system. Another major point of contention between the two groups was the status of blacks: the middle class-working class consensus was that they took jobs and should be eliminated, while the wealthy plantation-owners argued they were needed as agricultural laborers. The implementation of the destruction of the Southern black population, Operation Hittite, nearly caused a major break within the party before Sigwald agreed to extend the deadline for total annihilation. In 1940, having created a personality cult around himself, Sigwald purged the planter faction from his government. As expected, this set off a civil war. The planter faction was quickly defeated, and Sigwald began his project to cement himself as supreme leader. Opposition parties were banned and all members were forced to register with the government. The Confederacy itself was replaced by the Grayshirt State, and Sigwald named himself Commandant-General of the State. It has now been twelve years since the purge of the planters and the establishment of the Grayshirt State. The State has become a pariah in the world. The still-democratic United States is terrified of it, but with both nations possessing nuclear weapons, there is no chance of any resolution that does not end in making North American uninhabitable. The State itself hopes to flex its muscle elsewhere in the world, and has covertly offered support to the white minority colonies of Africa that see majority rule on the horizon.
10) Union of Robot Counties (1683 AD) - Being a peasant has never been a good gig. Since time immemorial, peasants have worked the Earth and provided the essential foodstuffs for human civilization. Peasants had grown tired of their lot from time to time and on occasion this dissatisfaction boiled over into outright revolt. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century was no exception from this rule. All members of the large agricultural class, though divided into freeholders and outright peasants, came to be known as robots, a pan-Slavic term that had initially referred to peasants bound to the land. In 1629, Daniel Asimoff, the child of a Jewish peasant family that had improved their station, began to write treatises while receiving an education. From the perspective of a traveler in his writings, Asimoff described a society in which individuals received a voice in government proportional to the amount of work they did. His description of the imaginary Kingdom of the Robots struck a chord in the society of Poland-Lithuania, where the franchise was only extended to the nobility, yet the state prided itself on freedom. Asimoff's tracts spread widely within Poland-Lithuania. In every village of the country there was typically at least one educated, literate person, and as the tract spread, these people became valued because they read the tract to the illiterate peasants. The new system of political beliefs, generally known as Robotism, had widespread appeal because of the fact it actually embraced the dominant beliefs of Sarmatism and Golden Liberty and the ideology's proponents simply portrayed themselves as expanding those ideals to all the people of the Commonwealth. Though Asimoff would stop writing in 1637 and joined his family business, Robotism marched on as others wrote tracts of their own. Between 1629 and 1650, Robotism grew by leaps and bounds in popularity and by the end of that period, every peasant in the Commonwealth had at least some knowledge of rule by Robots. In the summer of 1653, fighting broke out between Sweden and Poland. Sweden, on the rise since the early days of Gustavus Adolphus' reign, renewed the long stagnant war against the Poles. The Russians soon joined in, while the Zaporozhian Host took the opportunity to rise against the Commonwealth. The Polish-Lithuanian armies were no match for invaders from all sides. However, because of the vast size of the Commonwealth and the invaders exhaustion from other recent conflicts, the war dragged on for several years. As with all wars since the dawn of man, the peasants suffered the most as armies marched back and forth across Eastern Europe. At the Emergency Sejm of 1655, a massive increase in taxation was passed by deputies to finance the war effort. This was the final straw for many peasants. Legend has it that in the early autumn, as government officials arrived in the town of Sandomierz to collect the new taxes at harvest time, peasants threw the tax collectors into the Vistula River before declaring themselves a Free Robotic County for the duration of the war. Inspired by the success of the Sandomierz Revolt, peasants throughout the Commonwealth rose up against a regime they considered oppressive. The winter of 1655-6 was terrible for the Poles, who lost ground across the country to the coalition of peasant rebels. By 1656, the newly-established Union of Robot Counties had transformed itself into a fighting force to be reckoned with. In 1657, King Karol sued for peace with the invaders, which he received, believing that he would be able to mop up the peasant rebels. He was entirely wrong. The Robots had aligned themselves with the educated burghers of the cities and built themselves an army. The armies of the Commonwealth were easily beaten and, in May of 1658, the Robot army was at the gates of Warsaw. In a show of royalist solidarity, a Russian army marched from the newly-conquered city of Brest, but was forced to turn back because of Robotist uprisings in Russia itself. With no chance of relief, Warsaw surrendered after several minor attacks by the Robots. The old Commonwealth was declared defunct with the King forced to abdicate on his knees with a system of government based on direct democracy and delegates elected to various legislatures that would eventually elect a head of state. The surrender of Warsaw and deposing King Karol before the city gates deeply disturbed governments across Europe. Within a year, several small armies from the League of Prague were defeated and the Swedes forced on the defensive by peasant uprisings in East Prussia and Western Pomerania. These external threats would not vanish. Not less than twelve times over the next two decades did the Robot Union have to fight off foreign invaders. Twenty-five years after the victory at Warsaw, the Union seems to have been given a respite from the constant attacks by royalists. Though the monarchs of Europe still detest the Robots, they realize they are here to stay. The Robots might have been willing to live in peace, but the years of war from the outside has hardened their will to export robot revolution to all the kingdoms of the continent. In an interesting turn of fate, Daniel Asimoff, the man that first theorized robot rule, lives in exile in Hamburg. After 1637, Asimoff became a wealthy merchant, and when the Revolt of 1655 began, his properties were threatened and he fled Poland and has become an advocate of absolute government.
2) Ayanid Caliphate (1917 AD) - The Turkish conquest of the Balkans was notable for both its speed and the degree to which conquered people were Islamized. Though Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and Magyars alike all converted to Islam, proselytization was most successful among the Serbian speakers of the Morava basin. Under Ottoman dominance, 15th and 16th century, Serbian-speaking administrators were in high regard throughout the Balkan vilayets. Serbian cavalry, known as Konjaniks, could be found in Ottoman armies ranging across the Near East, and in the wake of victory, Konjanik settlements sprung up. By 1600, Serbian was the second language of the Empire and in parts of Europe, was even more dominant than Turkish. Because of the stronghold of Anatolia controlling the eastern approaches to the Balkans, the Serbian-led vilayets were largely insulated from the early years of the sudden rise of the self-proclaimed prophet Chekesh Kahda and the Tuazan faith. As Chekesh Kahda (whose assumed name meant 'Hammer of God') and his armies smashed the central Asian kingdoms and marched into the Ottoman Empire, business as usual continued in the Balkans. As the armies of the Harmonious Empire entered Anatolia, Serbian levies fought alongside Turks and Greeks to defend Kostantiniyye. Though the city itself could not be held, an army comprised largely of Serbs decisively defeated the armies of the Chekesh Khada at Ambar Creek east of Türbedere. Attempts to retake Kostantiniyye failed and a shaky peace was agreed to in 1688. The Sultan settled in Sultanboul (formerly Belgrade) to lead an empire in exile. Turks made up less than 10% of the population, and Serbian became the language of the court and government within two generations. In 1763, Sultan Murad IV passed away with no living heirs. After a brief struggle, a cousin took the throne. This cousin, crowned as Hamid II, had been raised speaking Serbian and his ascent to the throne marked the end of the rule of the mainline House of Osman. The cadet House of Kladovo ruled for the next hundred years; their reign was marked by a shift away from the earlier belief that Konstantiniyye and the Asian provinces would someday be recaptured. In the 1780s, an intinerent preacher in the Serbianizing district of Pleven began to make the claim that the people of the Balkans were chosen and it was up to them to defeat the Tuazanites that occupied the Holy Land. Alaintiqamism, the Islamic sect that arose espousing this belief, grew in popularity throughout the Ottoman realm. As nationalism emerged onto the scene as a result of the industrial revolution and Holy English Empire's years of terror, Serbian-speakers in the Balkans came to view themselves as Serbs rather than subjects of a Turkish Sultan. Though there were some secular or mainline nationalists, Serbian nationalism came to be synonymous with Alaintiqamism. The Serbian Revolts of 1838 and 1843 attempted to depose the monarchy and install an Alaintiqamist commonwealth failed, driving nationalists underground. In 1862, a minor noble named Ayan Lazarović raised his standard in revolt. Though he took up arms in opposition to taxes he felt were onerous, he collected nationalists around himself and what began as anger at high rates of taxation turned into a national war for liberation. In 1868, the nationalists would sack Sultanboul and capture Muhammad III as he attempted to flee the city dressed as a maid. The Sultan's capture took the will to fight out of the royalist movement, and most royalists put down their arms leaving various regional nationalist groups including Christian Greeks and the Albanians alone. Lazarović, who had now proclaimed himself Sultan Ayan, mopped these rebels up quickly. Returning to Sultanboul in December of 1869, Ayan had the title of Caliph bestowed upon him by a group of prominent clerics. Immediately, the Caliph was greeted with invasions by the Hungarians, Bavarians, and Russians, all of which he defeated. In 1873, with the Balkans at peace for the first time in a decade, Caliph Ayan implemented a series of reforms, including universal education and a limited democracy. A new national flag was adopted, combining the yellow and red color scheme of Stefan Dušan's banner as well as the star and crescent. For nearly 50 years, Ayan and his successors have focused on turning the Caliphate into a military powerhouse. Now, with Europe distracted by the Universal War, Caliph Amir considers an attack on the Tuazanite states of Anatolia and Palestine.
3) Republic of China (2061 AD) - In a sane world, the Qmintang would not exist. The fact that the Qmintang not only exists but thrives is a good sign that this is not a sane world. QAnon, a system of beliefs predicated on the existence of a deep state of Satan-worshipping child predators that controls the world, was born in the fall of 2017 when a poster on 4Chan calling himself ‘Q’ predicted the impending mass arrest of members of this cabal by allies of US President Donald Trump. This and later messages (known as Q drops) became the nucleus of an internet community that came to take Q’s revelations on the state of the world and predictions as gospel. Though QAnon believers were initially focused on the United States, QAnon became a worldwide phenomenon during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. QAnon received support from politicians in the United States and Germany, but experienced the most success in Taiwan. There, in the mid-2020s, an anonymous online poster calling himself 公民 (Citizen) surfaced. Citizen portrayed himself as a high-level government official in communication with Q. Citizen occasionally posted statements in which he railed against the global elite, arguing that the Peoples Republic of China was an evil state ruled by this elite. Elements of the Kuomintang embraced this rhetoric, and a symbiotic relationship emerged in which KMT officials raised awareness of QAnon while Citizen and his followers endorsed the party. The first KMT majority government in nearly two decades came to power in 2034. Three years later, after decades in which China had more males than females, the PLA rose in revolt. Several years of war followed. Because of the nuclear arsenal possessed by CCP loyalists, foreign powers did not directly intervene though many volunteers from Taiwan went to the mainland to fight on the side of the rebels. When the war finally came to an end, a conference was held in Beijing in which the future of China was decided. Rather than join the Republic of China, a federal state, the Chinese Federation, was founded. This was met with anger in Taiwan. Why should a new state be created when there is already a perfectly good claimant? Citizen had an answer: the Chinese Federation was just the PRC in different clothing. Though by all rights, the KMT should have been voted out at the next election, they performed well because they went all-in on embracing Citizen's theory. The next decade saw the KMT become increasingly illiberal and isolated from the rest of the world. At the 29th National Conference of the Kuomintang in June 2049, the by now fully-Qpilled party renamed itself the Qmintang. The Republic of China spent the 2050s diving deeper into authoritarianism and became an outright pariah state. At the start of the 2060s, the RoC has few ties to the international community. The state has fully accepted QAnon as an unofficial state religion, and belief in there being a global ring of child-eating pedophiles is near-universal. Notably, child molesters are put to death by being put into woodchippers publicly. Understandably, most of the rest of the world wants absolutely nothing to do with the RoC and, aside from several fringe parties in various countries across the world, everyone thinks the place is a madhouse. Governments take much the same view and might have attempted to the force the current regime out a decade ago if not for the Taiwanese nuclear arsenal and the fact the country has been preparing to defend against an invasion for over a century. Interestingly, recent investigations by American academics indicate Citizen's original postings might have come from inside the Kuomintang's headquarters in the Zhonghsan District of Taipei.
4) State of Guantanamo Bay [United States] (2028 AD) - If not for the fact it was such an obvious powergrab, the fact that Guantanamo Bay got statehood before DC and Puerto Rico did not would be absolutely hilarious. The concept of Guantanamo Bay statehood began as a joke. During the Cheney Administration's ramping up of the War on Terror in the late 2000s, the inmate population of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay surged. American servicemen joked that the population of the base was more than that of a small state, and so the statehood joke began. It achieved notoriety in 2011, when a photograph of a group of Marines wearing 'Guantanamo Bay for 51st State' t-shirts made it onto the front page of the New York Times. The joke was taken surprisingly seriously by Republicans in the upper echelons of government. In early 2013, following the inauguration of the third president Bush, a report circulated among high-ranking RNC members about the possibility of admitting Guantanamo Bay as a state. The report reasoned that soldiers stationed there would overwhelmingly vote Republican, guaranteeing the GOP three more electoral votes, two Senators, and a Representative. The report was taken well, and the push towards Guantanamo Bay statehood began in earnest. Four years later, the statehood bill was passed and Guantanamo Bay became the 51st state of the union. Unique among the states in that its territory is comprised wholly of a military base, Guantanamo Bay has a unique system. A governor is popularly elected, as well as a cabinet. The state has no legislature and only a barebones judicial system, as most crimes are referred to the military justice system. The State of Guantanamo Bay is the least democratic (both upper and lowercase D) of all the US states. In the eleven years since statehood, Democrats have not won a single election and have appeared on the ballot only about half the time. Both national parties are technically legal there, but senior officers and Republican-aligned enlisted men make it difficult for Democrats to get on the ballot by harassing people gathering signatures for petitions. There is, however, widespread discontent with the state of affairs: turnout for elections is low, and a considerable number of voters simply write candidates in. Since the 2020 presidential election, when write-ins for various terrorist leaders detained at the base actually outran Republican nominee James, write-ins are required to file in advance of the election to get their votes counted. Since the inauguration of President Edwards in 2021 and the national rebirth of the Democrats, there have been calls to revoke Guantanamo Bay's statehood. These propositions have been met with violent opposition from Speaker McGrath and the Republican caucus. Some hope that after this year, liberal Senator Philips of Minnesota will be President and the wrongs at Guantanamo Bay will be righted and the War on Terror will finally draw to a close.
5) Albanian Empire (1625 AD) - The appearance of the Mongols on the stage in Southwest Asia in the mid-13th century was quickly followed by a bout of plague. The plague killed millions in the Middle East, but was most deadly in Europe where it spread like wildfire in the unsanitary, crowded conditions of European towns and villages. One of the unlikely beneficiaries of this was the the small Principality of Arbanon. Arbanon, an Albanian-speaking statelet centered around the town of Krujë had been made a vassal of the Byzantine Empire in 1215 and as things were going before the arrival of the plague, it appeared as if Arbanon might have been annexed soon. With the plague-weakened Byzantine Empire under pressure from the Turks, who were in turn under pressure from the Mongols, the ambitious Greco-Albanian lord of Arbanon Gregorios Kamonas declared his independence. He was met with support from Albanian-speakers and, through Kamonas' marital ties with the Serbian monarchy, Arbonon was wildly successful. By the time of the agining Gjergj I (as he would later be known) died in 1259, Arbanon had carved out a piece of territory from Shëngjin in the north and Vlorë in the south. The rulership of the principality passed to Gjergj's son-in-law, Golem, who continued to expand his realm and crowned himself King of Albania in 1275. With Byzantium on the decline and the Serbs threatened by the Mongols in Pannonia, the Albanians were able to expand to control Greece and then much of the Balkans south of the Danube in the following century. Byzantium, the once-master of Albania, was reduced to a city-state and vassal of the Albanians until 1403, when it was finally defeated. The Albanian Conquest of Byzantium forced the Mongol, Turk, and Arab powers of the Near East to recognize the Alabanians as a major power and the following years saw the Albanians have to fight these invaders off. Against all odds, the Albanians were victorious. They succeeded in conquering Anatolia and after aligning themselves with the pagan Muman Dynasty in Persia to crush to Muslim Arabs took the Holy Land in 1521. As the premier Christian power of the eastern Mediterranean, Albania was military aligned with the Western Christians, but a target neighboring Muslim entities. This necessitated the creation of strong alliances, and the Albanians cultivated those with the Armenians and Ethiopians. In 1599, these alliances were put to the test as all of the Muslim states bordering Albania attack it. The more organized and technologically more advanced Albanians defeated the invasion and marched into Egypt, which they split with the Ethiopians. Now, several decades after that war, Albania has nearly doubled in size (even if most of its new territory is uninhabitable desert) Emperor Nikollë II rules over a multinational empire where Christians make up a plurality of the population. The Patriarch of Constantinople is an Albanian-speaker (as are most people in the city known within the Empire as Kostandinopoja) and that language is used by goernment officials from Split to Aswan. Religious liberty has been extended in some provinces of the Empire, but Muslims are treated poorly throughout most of the empire. The future of the empire is by no means set. The ethnoreligious tensions within it could lead to civil war and the end of empire but, if it has good leadership in these critical years, it might cement its position and become one of the great empires of history.
6) Third Confederate Republic (2101 AD) - Unlike the first and second Confederacies which were on Earth, the Third Confederate Republic is based on the Moon. Even after the defeat of the first Confederacy in 1865, the American south remained an underdeveloped, conservative region. It consistently sent hardcore conservatives to the US Congress and voted for many losing staunch conservative candidates for President. This trend continued into the 21st century even as other parts of America became very socially liberal. After the loss of President Trump in 2020, the possibility of secession was hinted to by more than a few state Representatives across the South. Similar things transpired after every subsequent Republican election loss but bills advocating secession actually made it onto the floor of state houses in the 2040s. In 2051, after a surprisingly good showing for the Democrats in the midterms, a bill putting a national tax on sodas was passed by Congress and signed into law by Democratic president Barkley. The vote narrowly passed and was staunchly opposed by Southerners and the rumblings of secession that had been growing for decades burst onto the public stage. Whether this was the doing of soda companies hoping to create outrage to get the bill repealed or whether it was indeed an organic movement is often debated. Within weeks, thing deteriorated to the point of war. Pro-soda militias roamed the south with tacit support from state governments. It was in late October 2051 when twelve states voted to secede and founded the Free American Republic based out of Jacksonville, Florida. Though money came from America's enemies (and allegedly soda producers including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Lindley, and A.G. Barr) the FAR was ground down by the American military. It was in 2054 that the FAR launched Operation Exodus, a mass evacuation of their territory for the Moon. Using NASA and SpaceX ships captured from Cape Canaveral, the Southrons launched several thousand people into orbit after the sack of Hattiesburg in 2054. These pioneers established Port Lee on the Ocean of Storms on the Moon. From Hattiesburg, federal forces drove north to Jackson, which, when captured, split the FAR in two. As FAR negotiators worked out a ceasefire, thousnads more southerners were ferried to the Moon. Eventually, an agreement was made under the table in which southerners would receive assistance in migrating to the Moon in exchange for an end to hostilities on Earth. Obviously, there were many that opposed this agreement and kept fighting (The Free Southern Brotherhood and Georgia Devils were among the most prominent) but a great many of the original supporters of secession that had lived through the war chose to leave Earth. New arrivals settled in the underground Port Lee settlement, though more than a few went farther afield and established small bases that became the nuclei of the later Republic's cities. By 2059, the survivors of the FAR's government had made it to Port Lee and carried out their duties from there. They were widely unpopular and blamed for losing the war on Earth. In a nearly-bloodless act of revolt, the citizens of Port Lee stormed the government chambers where they called for a constitutional convention. Out of the chaos of 2059 came the Third Confederate Republic. The Port Lee Constitution set up a unitary state with a strong legislature and weak, popularly elected, president. The army was abolished and replaced with a gendarme force called the Home Guard. Now, in 2101, the Third Confederate Republic is impoverished and only propped up by imports of food from the Earth. Its main products include small quantities of rare earth elements and though the TCR produces many potatoes (they're easy to grow in sublunar bases), they are not exported to Earth. Though numerous plans for lunar resorts for upper class Earth-dwellers have been proposed over the decades, few of these have panned out and there is only a small trickle of visitors each year. The dominant Party of National Glory attempts to rules with an iron fist, and banners (printed on potato-paper of course) extolling the regime are ubiquitous. There is, however significant discontent and there are many threats to the current regime. The Home Guard has considerable authority and in some areas operates as a protection racket. Its leaders are ambitious, but focused more on making money and getting power than any reconquest of the Old South. There are also large street gangs that operate in the cities of the Confederacy. They have become increasingly bold in recent years and practically control whole neighborhoods. The Confederate Republic must reform if it is to survive but unfortunately, it does not appear there are enough resources to save it.
7) Federal States of America (1849 AD) - It is fitting that the most influential man in 19th century America was the son of an immigrant. Marc Isambard Brunel, a French engineer and son of a well-to-do farmer, fled Revolutionary France and moved in the United States in 1793. Within just months, his entry for the design of the new US Capitol was selected for construction by a panel of judges. Brunel fell in love with the United States, and settled permanently in Philadelphia. Thirteen years later, a son was born to Marc and his wife, the English-born Sophia Kingdom. This son, Isambard Washington Brunel, was born an engineering and technical genius. He attended some of the most prestigious schools in America, but left them to join his father's firm. Though Brunel got his start assisting in the construction of the Potomac and Ohio Canal and major canals throughout the southwest, he became fascinated with weapons and in 1829, founded his own company devoted to armaments. Brunel Firearms churned out breech-loading muskets, and created repeating rifles. As a side project, Brunel himself pioneered the clockwork man, a sort of robot that could be used in combat provided it was aligned so that the enemy army was in front of it. However, as Isambard Washington Brunel's career was on the rise, tensions in the United States were also increasing. The industrialized north came to staunchly oppose slavery, while the southern states became equally set in their ways. With the annexation of Northern Mexico and parts of the Spanish Caribbean, the southerners became stronger than the northern states. In 1844, archconservative Virginian Nathaniel Beverly Tucker was elected President of the United States. His fiery pro-slavery remarks made him impossible to stomach for northerners, and, in December and January of 1844, a number of northern states seceded from the union and declared themselves Federal States of America. The south would not allow this to occur peacefully and sent an army north. The War of Northern Secession had begun. Brunel Firearms had negotiated a similar contract with the FSA's military as it had with the US military, but following the burning of a Brunel plant by southern forces outside Philadelphia, the angered Isambard Washington Brunel vowed to do everything he could to aid the northern army. It took nearly a year for Brunel to reconfigure his plants to produce enough weapons for the Federal States Army, but when he did, it had become the finest fighting force in the world. Armed with breech-loaders and repeaters, the FSA pushed the US army south and eventually, past the Mason-Dixon line back into Maryland, where they were greeted by abolitionist militias. Brunel weapons were smuggled to Texas, where Governor Houston rose against the US, and some of the Spanish-speaking states of the Caribbean. In the summer of 1849, representatives of the various factions met in Richmond, Virginia, where the US agreed to recognize the existence of the nations that had risen against them. When news of the Peace of Richmond came to the north, people in the FSA were jubilant and entered the streets cheering Brunel and the army. The surprising victory of the FSA over the USA has shocked the world, especially given the widespread adoption of cutting-edge technologies among Federal States troops. Brunel himself has realized that, with his immense popularity and technological prowess, he can shape the future of the world.
8) Royal Republic of New Guinea (2065 AD) - Everyone thought the Kamula stories about the American veteran Rambo brokering an end to the Bougainville conflict and having sex with Elizabeth II's daughter were nothing but distorted understandings of popular culture that had been incorporated into the culture of a barely industrial country on the fringe of the world. Papua New Guinea stayed neutral as relations between the United States and Russia soured in the early 2020s, and when World War Three broke out between the Western Bloc and the Shanghai Pact they stayed out. After Indonesia entered on the Eurasian side in the last year of the war, the Papuan military was forced to defend its neutrality against the Indonesian occupation of Western Province meant to give a staging area for the invasion of Australia. Then came the use of an American nuclear warhead against the Russians at Helsinki. The Russians escalated with a strike on American forces at Navahraduk. And the rest is history: back and forths on increasingly major targets until the limited exchange of June 24, 2027. Dozens of missiles were launched and, thanks to social media, people across the world were aware within minutes. The government of Papua New Guinea was in panic. Surely, the reasoned, the Indonesian forces on Papua New Guinean territory would be struck, and they would be subject to the possibility of missiles launched from the seas around the island falling short. History records that in a bunker north of Port Moresby Prime Minister Holloway was weeping in front of his cabinet as Defense Minister Debege explained the extent of projected damage to the country when a muscular white man in a black tank top and red headband suddenly appeared. Several guards opened fire at the man with automatic rifles, but the bullets did not hit him. He spoke to the shocked cabinet. The man introduced himself as John Rambo and told the Prime Minister that he had returned to save Papua New Guinea from destruction. He then disappeared in just as mysterious a way as he arrived. In the next few hours, as states around the world saw their cities go up in mushroom clouds, not a single warhead struck New Guinean land or territorial waters. Exactly how this occurred, no one is quite sure, though more than a few New Guineans reported seeing a man flying through the air and deflecting missiles with his bare hands. At the same time, Indonesian troops occupying the Western Province reported seeing a 50 foot tall man telling them to leave the country, something that prompted a full-scale retreat of every Indonesian soldier in New Guinean territory. In the aftermath of the Exchange, as if under human command, prevailing winds shifted away from Papua New Guinea, and fallout that might have hit the country ended up elsewhere. Rumors of Rambo's appearance at the bunker immediately before the Exchange spread like wildfire and jubilant Papua New Guineans celebrated Rambo. Five days after the exchange a man fitting Rambo's description appeared in a field in downtown Port Moresby. Though initially denounced as a man in a costume, this Rambo attracted a crowd, which followed him in march on Parliament House. He arrived there with with several thousand people behind him and entered asking to see the Prime Minister. In front of the crowd, Rambo announced he had saved Papua New Guinea from the nuclear exchange and asked for permission to settle in the country and live out his days there. Amidst cheers, the Prime Minister told Rambo he was welcome to live wherever he wished and would be the recipient of a large pension for his actions in defense of the nation. Rambo settled down in the Eastern Highlands region, buying a cottage there and marrying a local woman. Papua New Guinea found itself with the opportunity for expansion. People streamed across the border into the Indonesian province of Papua while ambitious fishermen and traders sailed south to devastated Australia. Rambo himself was crowned King of New Guinea (replacing the British monarchy, which had been nearly wiped out in the Exchange and was by then being led by a former anti-trafficking activist), though in an interesting twist, since Rambo refused to be anything but a ceremonial monarch, a presidency was also establish, thus, the Royal Republic of New Guinea. Under King Rambo, the country expanded on all sides and with the aid of emigrant inventors and entrepreneurs from war-torn nearby states, developed into a green, productive paradise. It is now 2065, and King Rambo is aging. With no heirs, no one is quite sure the future of the Royal Republic. The King is worshiped as a God on Earth, and if he dies, there are many possibilities for this now-powerful state. 9) Grayshirt State (1952 AD) - In the aftermath of the Great War, in which the Confederate States was on the defensive for three years before being saved from total defeat by its European allies, there was considerable anger in the south. Though the CSA had come out on the winning side in the largest war in the history of the world, it had gained no territory and its enemy, the United States, seemed just as powerful as it had before the war. Unsurprisingly, many Southrons looked for somewhere to place blame. There were many suitable scapegoats: the rich planter class, that seemed to come out of the war unscathed, the border staters, who had long been secretly pro-unionist, and, of course, the Confederacy's significant black population. In 1918 and 1919, veterans organizations sprung up. Many of them were purely fraternal groups, but others were focused on the restoration of Confederate national glory. Fascism is first recorded in the CS in July of 1920, when a South Carolinian veteran named Clinton Brimsley founded the Charleston Fascisti. The Fascisti, a paramilitary group, aligned themselves with small business owners, and took it upon themselves to engage in street fights with the powerful multiracial Stevedores Union. The success of the Charleston Fascisti opened to the door to Fascism in the South. In the fall of 1922, Dr. T.E.J. Nicholls of Richmond, Virginia, presided over the formation of the Fascist Party of the Confederate States of America. In the next decade, the FPCSA's influence waxed and waned. They did not win the presidency, but starting in 1923 began to send a sizable contingent to Congress. Fascists even controlled entire states, and were most powerful in Louisiana and Florida. There were, however, many Southrons that felt the fascists did not go far enough. Clement Sigwald, a former CS Army officer from South Carolina, was one of them. Sigwald, the descendant of a soldier from the War of Southern Independence, had plans to attend a seminary, but when war broke out, he enlisted to defend his country. Sigwald came out of the war a fervent Confederate patriot. His experiences made him believe the war could have been won but for a black and upper Southern fifth column. Sigwald came to lead a group called the League of Southern National Restoration. Owing to its founder's religious interests, the LSNR was radically Protestant. It had meetings and rituals, and the sense of being in a secret society increased the group's appeal. Through Sigwald's connections, the LSNR spread like wildfire through the Confederate military. Both enlisted men and working class Southrons joined the Grayshirts, their paramilitary wing. The Grayshirts did not immediately dominate the streets, but they acquired a reputation for belligerence. Within five years of the LSNR's founding, it had eaten up enough minor right-wing groups to be second only to the Fascist Party. Then came the Depression. The LSNR grew by leaps and bounds as Southrons soured on the traditional Democratic Party. In 1931, the joint Fascist-League candidate for president, Hampton Fernsby, was narrowly defeated. Claims of ballot-stuffing by the traditional Democratic machines were widespread. In June of 1933, the Grayshirts (with Fascist support) stormed the Confederate capitol and White House in Richmond, Virginia. The coup went off smoothly as Grayshirt and Fascist-aligned commanders outside Richmond created enough confusion to allow the new government time to get settled in the capital. As Emergency President, Clement Sigwald ordered massive government investment in industry to get the South back to work. Quickly, a rift developed between LSNR factions that supported government intervention in the economy and the ones that didn't. Sigwald took the side of the former, which made as his enemy the traditionalist planters that had joined the LSNR hoping that it would restore glory to the defeated CSA, but not drastically change the economic system. Another major point of contention between the two groups was the status of blacks: the middle class-working class consensus was that they took jobs and should be eliminated, while the wealthy plantation-owners argued they were needed as agricultural laborers. The implementation of the destruction of the Southern black population, Operation Hittite, nearly caused a major break within the party before Sigwald agreed to extend the deadline for total annihilation. In 1940, having created a personality cult around himself, Sigwald purged the planter faction from his government. As expected, this set off a civil war. The planter faction was quickly defeated, and Sigwald began his project to cement himself as supreme leader. Opposition parties were banned and all members were forced to register with the government. The Confederacy itself was replaced by the Grayshirt State, and Sigwald named himself Commandant-General of the State. It has now been twelve years since the purge of the planters and the establishment of the Grayshirt State. The State has become a pariah in the world. The still-democratic United States is terrified of it, but with both nations possessing nuclear weapons, there is no chance of any resolution that does not end in making North American uninhabitable. The State itself hopes to flex its muscle elsewhere in the world, and has covertly offered support to the white minority colonies of Africa that see majority rule on the horizon.
10) Union of Robot Counties (1683 AD) - Being a peasant has never been a good gig. Since time immemorial, peasants have worked the Earth and provided the essential foodstuffs for human civilization. Peasants had grown tired of their lot from time to time and on occasion this dissatisfaction boiled over into outright revolt. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century was no exception from this rule. All members of the large agricultural class, though divided into freeholders and outright peasants, came to be known as robots, a pan-Slavic term that had initially referred to peasants bound to the land. In 1629, Daniel Asimoff, the child of a Jewish peasant family that had improved their station, began to write treatises while receiving an education. From the perspective of a traveler in his writings, Asimoff described a society in which individuals received a voice in government proportional to the amount of work they did. His description of the imaginary Kingdom of the Robots struck a chord in the society of Poland-Lithuania, where the franchise was only extended to the nobility, yet the state prided itself on freedom. Asimoff's tracts spread widely within Poland-Lithuania. In every village of the country there was typically at least one educated, literate person, and as the tract spread, these people became valued because they read the tract to the illiterate peasants. The new system of political beliefs, generally known as Robotism, had widespread appeal because of the fact it actually embraced the dominant beliefs of Sarmatism and Golden Liberty and the ideology's proponents simply portrayed themselves as expanding those ideals to all the people of the Commonwealth. Though Asimoff would stop writing in 1637 and joined his family business, Robotism marched on as others wrote tracts of their own. Between 1629 and 1650, Robotism grew by leaps and bounds in popularity and by the end of that period, every peasant in the Commonwealth had at least some knowledge of rule by Robots. In the summer of 1653, fighting broke out between Sweden and Poland. Sweden, on the rise since the early days of Gustavus Adolphus' reign, renewed the long stagnant war against the Poles. The Russians soon joined in, while the Zaporozhian Host took the opportunity to rise against the Commonwealth. The Polish-Lithuanian armies were no match for invaders from all sides. However, because of the vast size of the Commonwealth and the invaders exhaustion from other recent conflicts, the war dragged on for several years. As with all wars since the dawn of man, the peasants suffered the most as armies marched back and forth across Eastern Europe. At the Emergency Sejm of 1655, a massive increase in taxation was passed by deputies to finance the war effort. This was the final straw for many peasants. Legend has it that in the early autumn, as government officials arrived in the town of Sandomierz to collect the new taxes at harvest time, peasants threw the tax collectors into the Vistula River before declaring themselves a Free Robotic County for the duration of the war. Inspired by the success of the Sandomierz Revolt, peasants throughout the Commonwealth rose up against a regime they considered oppressive. The winter of 1655-6 was terrible for the Poles, who lost ground across the country to the coalition of peasant rebels. By 1656, the newly-established Union of Robot Counties had transformed itself into a fighting force to be reckoned with. In 1657, King Karol sued for peace with the invaders, which he received, believing that he would be able to mop up the peasant rebels. He was entirely wrong. The Robots had aligned themselves with the educated burghers of the cities and built themselves an army. The armies of the Commonwealth were easily beaten and, in May of 1658, the Robot army was at the gates of Warsaw. In a show of royalist solidarity, a Russian army marched from the newly-conquered city of Brest, but was forced to turn back because of Robotist uprisings in Russia itself. With no chance of relief, Warsaw surrendered after several minor attacks by the Robots. The old Commonwealth was declared defunct with the King forced to abdicate on his knees with a system of government based on direct democracy and delegates elected to various legislatures that would eventually elect a head of state. The surrender of Warsaw and deposing King Karol before the city gates deeply disturbed governments across Europe. Within a year, several small armies from the League of Prague were defeated and the Swedes forced on the defensive by peasant uprisings in East Prussia and Western Pomerania. These external threats would not vanish. Not less than twelve times over the next two decades did the Robot Union have to fight off foreign invaders. Twenty-five years after the victory at Warsaw, the Union seems to have been given a respite from the constant attacks by royalists. Though the monarchs of Europe still detest the Robots, they realize they are here to stay. The Robots might have been willing to live in peace, but the years of war from the outside has hardened their will to export robot revolution to all the kingdoms of the continent. In an interesting turn of fate, Daniel Asimoff, the man that first theorized robot rule, lives in exile in Hamburg. After 1637, Asimoff became a wealthy merchant, and when the Revolt of 1655 began, his properties were threatened and he fled Poland and has become an advocate of absolute government.
6) Third Confederate Republic (2101 AD) - Unlike the first and second Confederacies which were on Earth, the Third Confederate Republic is based on the Moon. Even after the defeat of the first Confederacy in 1865, the American south remained an underdeveloped, conservative region. It consistently sent hardcore conservatives to the US Congress and voted for many losing staunch conservative candidates for President. This trend continued into the 21st century even as other parts of America became very socially liberal. After the loss of President Trump in 2020, the possibility of secession was hinted to by more than a few state Representatives across the South. Similar things transpired after every subsequent Republican election loss but bills advocating secession actually made it onto the floor of state houses in the 2040s. In 2051, after a surprisingly good showing for the Democrats in the midterms, a bill putting a national tax on sodas was passed by Congress and signed into law by Democratic president Barkley. The vote narrowly passed and was staunchly opposed by Southerners and the rumblings of secession that had been growing for decades burst onto the public stage. Whether this was the doing of soda companies hoping to create outrage to get the bill repealed or whether it was indeed an organic movement is often debated. Within weeks, thing deteriorated to the point of war. Pro-soda militias roamed the south with tacit support from state governments. It was in late October 2051 when twelve states voted to secede and founded the Free American Republic based out of Jacksonville, Florida. Though money came from America's enemies (and allegedly soda producers including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Lindley, and A.G. Barr) the FAR was ground down by the American military. It was in 2054 that the FAR launched Operation Exodus, a mass evacuation of their territory for the Moon. Using NASA and SpaceX ships captured from Cape Canaveral, the Southrons launched several thousand people into orbit after the sack of Hattiesburg in 2054. These pioneers established Port Lee on the Ocean of Storms on the Moon. From Hattiesburg, federal forces drove north to Jackson, which, when captured, split the FAR in two. As FAR negotiators worked out a ceasefire, thousnads more southerners were ferried to the Moon. Eventually, an agreement was made under the table in which southerners would receive assistance in migrating to the Moon in exchange for an end to hostilities on Earth. Obviously, there were many that opposed this agreement and kept fighting (The Free Southern Brotherhood and Georgia Devils were among the most prominent) but a great many of the original supporters of secession that had lived through the war chose to leave Earth. New arrivals settled in the underground Port Lee settlement, though more than a few went farther afield and established small bases that became the nuclei of the later Republic's cities. By 2059, the survivors of the FAR's government had made it to Port Lee and carried out their duties from there. They were widely unpopular and blamed for losing the war on Earth. In a nearly-bloodless act of revolt, the citizens of Port Lee stormed the government chambers where they called for a constitutional convention. Out of the chaos of 2059 came the Third Confederate Republic. The Port Lee Constitution set up a unitary state with a strong legislature and weak, popularly elected, president. The army was abolished and replaced with a gendarme force called the Home Guard. Now, in 2101, the Third Confederate Republic is impoverished and only propped up by imports of food from the Earth. Its main products include small quantities of rare earth elements and though the TCR produces many potatoes (they're easy to grow in sublunar bases), they are not exported to Earth. Though numerous plans for lunar resorts for upper class Earth-dwellers have been proposed over the decades, few of these have panned out and there is only a small trickle of visitors each year. The dominant Party of National Glory attempts to rules with an iron fist, and banners (printed on potato-paper of course) extolling the regime are ubiquitous. There is, however significant discontent and there are many threats to the current regime. The Home Guard has considerable authority and in some areas operates as a protection racket. Its leaders are ambitious, but focused more on making money and getting power than any reconquest of the Old South. There are also large street gangs that operate in the cities of the Confederacy. They have become increasingly bold in recent years and practically control whole neighborhoods. The Confederate Republic must reform if it is to survive but unfortunately, it does not appear there are enough resources to save it.
7) Federal States of America (1849 AD) - It is fitting that the most influential man in 19th century America was the son of an immigrant. Marc Isambard Brunel, a French engineer and son of a well-to-do farmer, fled Revolutionary France and moved in the United States in 1793. Within just months, his entry for the design of the new US Capitol was selected for construction by a panel of judges. Brunel fell in love with the United States, and settled permanently in Philadelphia. Thirteen years later, a son was born to Marc and his wife, the English-born Sophia Kingdom. This son, Isambard Washington Brunel, was born an engineering and technical genius. He attended some of the most prestigious schools in America, but left them to join his father's firm. Though Brunel got his start assisting in the construction of the Potomac and Ohio Canal and major canals throughout the southwest, he became fascinated with weapons and in 1829, founded his own company devoted to armaments. Brunel Firearms churned out breech-loading muskets, and created repeating rifles. As a side project, Brunel himself pioneered the clockwork man, a sort of robot that could be used in combat provided it was aligned so that the enemy army was in front of it. However, as Isambard Washington Brunel's career was on the rise, tensions in the United States were also increasing. The industrialized north came to staunchly oppose slavery, while the southern states became equally set in their ways. With the annexation of Northern Mexico and parts of the Spanish Caribbean, the southerners became stronger than the northern states. In 1844, archconservative Virginian Nathaniel Beverly Tucker was elected President of the United States. His fiery pro-slavery remarks made him impossible to stomach for northerners, and, in December and January of 1844, a number of northern states seceded from the union and declared themselves Federal States of America. The south would not allow this to occur peacefully and sent an army north. The War of Northern Secession had begun. Brunel Firearms had negotiated a similar contract with the FSA's military as it had with the US military, but following the burning of a Brunel plant by southern forces outside Philadelphia, the angered Isambard Washington Brunel vowed to do everything he could to aid the northern army. It took nearly a year for Brunel to reconfigure his plants to produce enough weapons for the Federal States Army, but when he did, it had become the finest fighting force in the world. Armed with breech-loaders and repeaters, the FSA pushed the US army south and eventually, past the Mason-Dixon line back into Maryland, where they were greeted by abolitionist militias. Brunel weapons were smuggled to Texas, where Governor Houston rose against the US, and some of the Spanish-speaking states of the Caribbean. In the summer of 1849, representatives of the various factions met in Richmond, Virginia, where the US agreed to recognize the existence of the nations that had risen against them. When news of the Peace of Richmond came to the north, people in the FSA were jubilant and entered the streets cheering Brunel and the army. The surprising victory of the FSA over the USA has shocked the world, especially given the widespread adoption of cutting-edge technologies among Federal States troops. Brunel himself has realized that, with his immense popularity and technological prowess, he can shape the future of the world.
8) Royal Republic of New Guinea (2065 AD) - Everyone thought the Kamula stories about the American veteran Rambo brokering an end to the Bougainville conflict and having sex with Elizabeth II's daughter were nothing but distorted understandings of popular culture that had been incorporated into the culture of a barely industrial country on the fringe of the world. Papua New Guinea stayed neutral as relations between the United States and Russia soured in the early 2020s, and when World War Three broke out between the Western Bloc and the Shanghai Pact they stayed out. After Indonesia entered on the Eurasian side in the last year of the war, the Papuan military was forced to defend its neutrality against the Indonesian occupation of Western Province meant to give a staging area for the invasion of Australia. Then came the use of an American nuclear warhead against the Russians at Helsinki. The Russians escalated with a strike on American forces at Navahraduk. And the rest is history: back and forths on increasingly major targets until the limited exchange of June 24, 2027. Dozens of missiles were launched and, thanks to social media, people across the world were aware within minutes. The government of Papua New Guinea was in panic. Surely, the reasoned, the Indonesian forces on Papua New Guinean territory would be struck, and they would be subject to the possibility of missiles launched from the seas around the island falling short. History records that in a bunker north of Port Moresby Prime Minister Holloway was weeping in front of his cabinet as Defense Minister Debege explained the extent of projected damage to the country when a muscular white man in a black tank top and red headband suddenly appeared. Several guards opened fire at the man with automatic rifles, but the bullets did not hit him. He spoke to the shocked cabinet. The man introduced himself as John Rambo and told the Prime Minister that he had returned to save Papua New Guinea from destruction. He then disappeared in just as mysterious a way as he arrived. In the next few hours, as states around the world saw their cities go up in mushroom clouds, not a single warhead struck New Guinean land or territorial waters. Exactly how this occurred, no one is quite sure, though more than a few New Guineans reported seeing a man flying through the air and deflecting missiles with his bare hands. At the same time, Indonesian troops occupying the Western Province reported seeing a 50 foot tall man telling them to leave the country, something that prompted a full-scale retreat of every Indonesian soldier in New Guinean territory. In the aftermath of the Exchange, as if under human command, prevailing winds shifted away from Papua New Guinea, and fallout that might have hit the country ended up elsewhere. Rumors of Rambo's appearance at the bunker immediately before the Exchange spread like wildfire and jubilant Papua New Guineans celebrated Rambo. Five days after the exchange a man fitting Rambo's description appeared in a field in downtown Port Moresby. Though initially denounced as a man in a costume, this Rambo attracted a crowd, which followed him in march on Parliament House. He arrived there with with several thousand people behind him and entered asking to see the Prime Minister. In front of the crowd, Rambo announced he had saved Papua New Guinea from the nuclear exchange and asked for permission to settle in the country and live out his days there. Amidst cheers, the Prime Minister told Rambo he was welcome to live wherever he wished and would be the recipient of a large pension for his actions in defense of the nation. Rambo settled down in the Eastern Highlands region, buying a cottage there and marrying a local woman. Papua New Guinea found itself with the opportunity for expansion. People streamed across the border into the Indonesian province of Papua while ambitious fishermen and traders sailed south to devastated Australia. Rambo himself was crowned King of New Guinea (replacing the British monarchy, which had been nearly wiped out in the Exchange and was by then being led by a former anti-trafficking activist), though in an interesting twist, since Rambo refused to be anything but a ceremonial monarch, a presidency was also establish, thus, the Royal Republic of New Guinea. Under King Rambo, the country expanded on all sides and with the aid of emigrant inventors and entrepreneurs from war-torn nearby states, developed into a green, productive paradise. It is now 2065, and King Rambo is aging. With no heirs, no one is quite sure the future of the Royal Republic. The King is worshiped as a God on Earth, and if he dies, there are many possibilities for this now-powerful state. 9) Grayshirt State (1952 AD) - In the aftermath of the Great War, in which the Confederate States was on the defensive for three years before being saved from total defeat by its European allies, there was considerable anger in the south. Though the CSA had come out on the winning side in the largest war in the history of the world, it had gained no territory and its enemy, the United States, seemed just as powerful as it had before the war. Unsurprisingly, many Southrons looked for somewhere to place blame. There were many suitable scapegoats: the rich planter class, that seemed to come out of the war unscathed, the border staters, who had long been secretly pro-unionist, and, of course, the Confederacy's significant black population. In 1918 and 1919, veterans organizations sprung up. Many of them were purely fraternal groups, but others were focused on the restoration of Confederate national glory. Fascism is first recorded in the CS in July of 1920, when a South Carolinian veteran named Clinton Brimsley founded the Charleston Fascisti. The Fascisti, a paramilitary group, aligned themselves with small business owners, and took it upon themselves to engage in street fights with the powerful multiracial Stevedores Union. The success of the Charleston Fascisti opened to the door to Fascism in the South. In the fall of 1922, Dr. T.E.J. Nicholls of Richmond, Virginia, presided over the formation of the Fascist Party of the Confederate States of America. In the next decade, the FPCSA's influence waxed and waned. They did not win the presidency, but starting in 1923 began to send a sizable contingent to Congress. Fascists even controlled entire states, and were most powerful in Louisiana and Florida. There were, however, many Southrons that felt the fascists did not go far enough. Clement Sigwald, a former CS Army officer from South Carolina, was one of them. Sigwald, the descendant of a soldier from the War of Southern Independence, had plans to attend a seminary, but when war broke out, he enlisted to defend his country. Sigwald came out of the war a fervent Confederate patriot. His experiences made him believe the war could have been won but for a black and upper Southern fifth column. Sigwald came to lead a group called the League of Southern National Restoration. Owing to its founder's religious interests, the LSNR was radically Protestant. It had meetings and rituals, and the sense of being in a secret society increased the group's appeal. Through Sigwald's connections, the LSNR spread like wildfire through the Confederate military. Both enlisted men and working class Southrons joined the Grayshirts, their paramilitary wing. The Grayshirts did not immediately dominate the streets, but they acquired a reputation for belligerence. Within five years of the LSNR's founding, it had eaten up enough minor right-wing groups to be second only to the Fascist Party. Then came the Depression. The LSNR grew by leaps and bounds as Southrons soured on the traditional Democratic Party. In 1931, the joint Fascist-League candidate for president, Hampton Fernsby, was narrowly defeated. Claims of ballot-stuffing by the traditional Democratic machines were widespread. In June of 1933, the Grayshirts (with Fascist support) stormed the Confederate capitol and White House in Richmond, Virginia. The coup went off smoothly as Grayshirt and Fascist-aligned commanders outside Richmond created enough confusion to allow the new government time to get settled in the capital. As Emergency President, Clement Sigwald ordered massive government investment in industry to get the South back to work. Quickly, a rift developed between LSNR factions that supported government intervention in the economy and the ones that didn't. Sigwald took the side of the former, which made as his enemy the traditionalist planters that had joined the LSNR hoping that it would restore glory to the defeated CSA, but not drastically change the economic system. Another major point of contention between the two groups was the status of blacks: the middle class-working class consensus was that they took jobs and should be eliminated, while the wealthy plantation-owners argued they were needed as agricultural laborers. The implementation of the destruction of the Southern black population, Operation Hittite, nearly caused a major break within the party before Sigwald agreed to extend the deadline for total annihilation. In 1940, having created a personality cult around himself, Sigwald purged the planter faction from his government. As expected, this set off a civil war. The planter faction was quickly defeated, and Sigwald began his project to cement himself as supreme leader. Opposition parties were banned and all members were forced to register with the government. The Confederacy itself was replaced by the Grayshirt State, and Sigwald named himself Commandant-General of the State. It has now been twelve years since the purge of the planters and the establishment of the Grayshirt State. The State has become a pariah in the world. The still-democratic United States is terrified of it, but with both nations possessing nuclear weapons, there is no chance of any resolution that does not end in making North American uninhabitable. The State itself hopes to flex its muscle elsewhere in the world, and has covertly offered support to the white minority colonies of Africa that see majority rule on the horizon.
10) Union of Robot Counties (1683 AD) - Being a peasant has never been a good gig. Since time immemorial, peasants have worked the Earth and provided the essential foodstuffs for human civilization. Peasants had grown tired of their lot from time to time and on occasion this dissatisfaction boiled over into outright revolt. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century was no exception from this rule. All members of the large agricultural class, though divided into freeholders and outright peasants, came to be known as robots, a pan-Slavic term that had initially referred to peasants bound to the land. In 1629, Daniel Asimoff, the child of a Jewish peasant family that had improved their station, began to write treatises while receiving an education. From the perspective of a traveler in his writings, Asimoff described a society in which individuals received a voice in government proportional to the amount of work they did. His description of the imaginary Kingdom of the Robots struck a chord in the society of Poland-Lithuania, where the franchise was only extended to the nobility, yet the state prided itself on freedom. Asimoff's tracts spread widely within Poland-Lithuania. In every village of the country there was typically at least one educated, literate person, and as the tract spread, these people became valued because they read the tract to the illiterate peasants. The new system of political beliefs, generally known as Robotism, had widespread appeal because of the fact it actually embraced the dominant beliefs of Sarmatism and Golden Liberty and the ideology's proponents simply portrayed themselves as expanding those ideals to all the people of the Commonwealth. Though Asimoff would stop writing in 1637 and joined his family business, Robotism marched on as others wrote tracts of their own. Between 1629 and 1650, Robotism grew by leaps and bounds in popularity and by the end of that period, every peasant in the Commonwealth had at least some knowledge of rule by Robots. In the summer of 1653, fighting broke out between Sweden and Poland. Sweden, on the rise since the early days of Gustavus Adolphus' reign, renewed the long stagnant war against the Poles. The Russians soon joined in, while the Zaporozhian Host took the opportunity to rise against the Commonwealth. The Polish-Lithuanian armies were no match for invaders from all sides. However, because of the vast size of the Commonwealth and the invaders exhaustion from other recent conflicts, the war dragged on for several years. As with all wars since the dawn of man, the peasants suffered the most as armies marched back and forth across Eastern Europe. At the Emergency Sejm of 1655, a massive increase in taxation was passed by deputies to finance the war effort. This was the final straw for many peasants. Legend has it that in the early autumn, as government officials arrived in the town of Sandomierz to collect the new taxes at harvest time, peasants threw the tax collectors into the Vistula River before declaring themselves a Free Robotic County for the duration of the war. Inspired by the success of the Sandomierz Revolt, peasants throughout the Commonwealth rose up against a regime they considered oppressive. The winter of 1655-6 was terrible for the Poles, who lost ground across the country to the coalition of peasant rebels. By 1656, the newly-established Union of Robot Counties had transformed itself into a fighting force to be reckoned with. In 1657, King Karol sued for peace with the invaders, which he received, believing that he would be able to mop up the peasant rebels. He was entirely wrong. The Robots had aligned themselves with the educated burghers of the cities and built themselves an army. The armies of the Commonwealth were easily beaten and, in May of 1658, the Robot army was at the gates of Warsaw. In a show of royalist solidarity, a Russian army marched from the newly-conquered city of Brest, but was forced to turn back because of Robotist uprisings in Russia itself. With no chance of relief, Warsaw surrendered after several minor attacks by the Robots. The old Commonwealth was declared defunct with the King forced to abdicate on his knees with a system of government based on direct democracy and delegates elected to various legislatures that would eventually elect a head of state. The surrender of Warsaw and deposing King Karol before the city gates deeply disturbed governments across Europe. Within a year, several small armies from the League of Prague were defeated and the Swedes forced on the defensive by peasant uprisings in East Prussia and Western Pomerania. These external threats would not vanish. Not less than twelve times over the next two decades did the Robot Union have to fight off foreign invaders. Twenty-five years after the victory at Warsaw, the Union seems to have been given a respite from the constant attacks by royalists. Though the monarchs of Europe still detest the Robots, they realize they are here to stay. The Robots might have been willing to live in peace, but the years of war from the outside has hardened their will to export robot revolution to all the kingdoms of the continent. In an interesting turn of fate, Daniel Asimoff, the man that first theorized robot rule, lives in exile in Hamburg. After 1637, Asimoff became a wealthy merchant, and when the Revolt of 1655 began, his properties were threatened and he fled Poland and has become an advocate of absolute government.
7) Federal States of America (1849 AD) - It is fitting that the most influential man in 19th century America was the son of an immigrant. Marc Isambard Brunel, a French engineer and son of a well-to-do farmer, fled Revolutionary France and moved in the United States in 1793. Within just months, his entry for the design of the new US Capitol was selected for construction by a panel of judges. Brunel fell in love with the United States, and settled permanently in Philadelphia. Thirteen years later, a son was born to Marc and his wife, the English-born Sophia Kingdom. This son, Isambard Washington Brunel, was born an engineering and technical genius. He attended some of the most prestigious schools in America, but left them to join his father's firm. Though Brunel got his start assisting in the construction of the Potomac and Ohio Canal and major canals throughout the southwest, he became fascinated with weapons and in 1829, founded his own company devoted to armaments. Brunel Firearms churned out breech-loading muskets, and created repeating rifles. As a side project, Brunel himself pioneered the clockwork man, a sort of robot that could be used in combat provided it was aligned so that the enemy army was in front of it. However, as Isambard Washington Brunel's career was on the rise, tensions in the United States were also increasing. The industrialized north came to staunchly oppose slavery, while the southern states became equally set in their ways. With the annexation of Northern Mexico and parts of the Spanish Caribbean, the southerners became stronger than the northern states. In 1844, archconservative Virginian Nathaniel Beverly Tucker was elected President of the United States. His fiery pro-slavery remarks made him impossible to stomach for northerners, and, in December and January of 1844, a number of northern states seceded from the union and declared themselves Federal States of America. The south would not allow this to occur peacefully and sent an army north. The War of Northern Secession had begun. Brunel Firearms had negotiated a similar contract with the FSA's military as it had with the US military, but following the burning of a Brunel plant by southern forces outside Philadelphia, the angered Isambard Washington Brunel vowed to do everything he could to aid the northern army. It took nearly a year for Brunel to reconfigure his plants to produce enough weapons for the Federal States Army, but when he did, it had become the finest fighting force in the world. Armed with breech-loaders and repeaters, the FSA pushed the US army south and eventually, past the Mason-Dixon line back into Maryland, where they were greeted by abolitionist militias. Brunel weapons were smuggled to Texas, where Governor Houston rose against the US, and some of the Spanish-speaking states of the Caribbean. In the summer of 1849, representatives of the various factions met in Richmond, Virginia, where the US agreed to recognize the existence of the nations that had risen against them. When news of the Peace of Richmond came to the north, people in the FSA were jubilant and entered the streets cheering Brunel and the army. The surprising victory of the FSA over the USA has shocked the world, especially given the widespread adoption of cutting-edge technologies among Federal States troops. Brunel himself has realized that, with his immense popularity and technological prowess, he can shape the future of the world.
8) Royal Republic of New Guinea (2065 AD) - Everyone thought the Kamula stories about the American veteran Rambo brokering an end to the Bougainville conflict and having sex with Elizabeth II's daughter were nothing but distorted understandings of popular culture that had been incorporated into the culture of a barely industrial country on the fringe of the world. Papua New Guinea stayed neutral as relations between the United States and Russia soured in the early 2020s, and when World War Three broke out between the Western Bloc and the Shanghai Pact they stayed out. After Indonesia entered on the Eurasian side in the last year of the war, the Papuan military was forced to defend its neutrality against the Indonesian occupation of Western Province meant to give a staging area for the invasion of Australia. Then came the use of an American nuclear warhead against the Russians at Helsinki. The Russians escalated with a strike on American forces at Navahraduk. And the rest is history: back and forths on increasingly major targets until the limited exchange of June 24, 2027. Dozens of missiles were launched and, thanks to social media, people across the world were aware within minutes. The government of Papua New Guinea was in panic. Surely, the reasoned, the Indonesian forces on Papua New Guinean territory would be struck, and they would be subject to the possibility of missiles launched from the seas around the island falling short. History records that in a bunker north of Port Moresby Prime Minister Holloway was weeping in front of his cabinet as Defense Minister Debege explained the extent of projected damage to the country when a muscular white man in a black tank top and red headband suddenly appeared. Several guards opened fire at the man with automatic rifles, but the bullets did not hit him. He spoke to the shocked cabinet. The man introduced himself as John Rambo and told the Prime Minister that he had returned to save Papua New Guinea from destruction. He then disappeared in just as mysterious a way as he arrived. In the next few hours, as states around the world saw their cities go up in mushroom clouds, not a single warhead struck New Guinean land or territorial waters. Exactly how this occurred, no one is quite sure, though more than a few New Guineans reported seeing a man flying through the air and deflecting missiles with his bare hands. At the same time, Indonesian troops occupying the Western Province reported seeing a 50 foot tall man telling them to leave the country, something that prompted a full-scale retreat of every Indonesian soldier in New Guinean territory. In the aftermath of the Exchange, as if under human command, prevailing winds shifted away from Papua New Guinea, and fallout that might have hit the country ended up elsewhere. Rumors of Rambo's appearance at the bunker immediately before the Exchange spread like wildfire and jubilant Papua New Guineans celebrated Rambo. Five days after the exchange a man fitting Rambo's description appeared in a field in downtown Port Moresby. Though initially denounced as a man in a costume, this Rambo attracted a crowd, which followed him in march on Parliament House. He arrived there with with several thousand people behind him and entered asking to see the Prime Minister. In front of the crowd, Rambo announced he had saved Papua New Guinea from the nuclear exchange and asked for permission to settle in the country and live out his days there. Amidst cheers, the Prime Minister told Rambo he was welcome to live wherever he wished and would be the recipient of a large pension for his actions in defense of the nation. Rambo settled down in the Eastern Highlands region, buying a cottage there and marrying a local woman. Papua New Guinea found itself with the opportunity for expansion. People streamed across the border into the Indonesian province of Papua while ambitious fishermen and traders sailed south to devastated Australia. Rambo himself was crowned King of New Guinea (replacing the British monarchy, which had been nearly wiped out in the Exchange and was by then being led by a former anti-trafficking activist), though in an interesting twist, since Rambo refused to be anything but a ceremonial monarch, a presidency was also establish, thus, the Royal Republic of New Guinea. Under King Rambo, the country expanded on all sides and with the aid of emigrant inventors and entrepreneurs from war-torn nearby states, developed into a green, productive paradise. It is now 2065, and King Rambo is aging. With no heirs, no one is quite sure the future of the Royal Republic. The King is worshiped as a God on Earth, and if he dies, there are many possibilities for this now-powerful state. 9) Grayshirt State (1952 AD) - In the aftermath of the Great War, in which the Confederate States was on the defensive for three years before being saved from total defeat by its European allies, there was considerable anger in the south. Though the CSA had come out on the winning side in the largest war in the history of the world, it had gained no territory and its enemy, the United States, seemed just as powerful as it had before the war. Unsurprisingly, many Southrons looked for somewhere to place blame. There were many suitable scapegoats: the rich planter class, that seemed to come out of the war unscathed, the border staters, who had long been secretly pro-unionist, and, of course, the Confederacy's significant black population. In 1918 and 1919, veterans organizations sprung up. Many of them were purely fraternal groups, but others were focused on the restoration of Confederate national glory. Fascism is first recorded in the CS in July of 1920, when a South Carolinian veteran named Clinton Brimsley founded the Charleston Fascisti. The Fascisti, a paramilitary group, aligned themselves with small business owners, and took it upon themselves to engage in street fights with the powerful multiracial Stevedores Union. The success of the Charleston Fascisti opened to the door to Fascism in the South. In the fall of 1922, Dr. T.E.J. Nicholls of Richmond, Virginia, presided over the formation of the Fascist Party of the Confederate States of America. In the next decade, the FPCSA's influence waxed and waned. They did not win the presidency, but starting in 1923 began to send a sizable contingent to Congress. Fascists even controlled entire states, and were most powerful in Louisiana and Florida. There were, however, many Southrons that felt the fascists did not go far enough. Clement Sigwald, a former CS Army officer from South Carolina, was one of them. Sigwald, the descendant of a soldier from the War of Southern Independence, had plans to attend a seminary, but when war broke out, he enlisted to defend his country. Sigwald came out of the war a fervent Confederate patriot. His experiences made him believe the war could have been won but for a black and upper Southern fifth column. Sigwald came to lead a group called the League of Southern National Restoration. Owing to its founder's religious interests, the LSNR was radically Protestant. It had meetings and rituals, and the sense of being in a secret society increased the group's appeal. Through Sigwald's connections, the LSNR spread like wildfire through the Confederate military. Both enlisted men and working class Southrons joined the Grayshirts, their paramilitary wing. The Grayshirts did not immediately dominate the streets, but they acquired a reputation for belligerence. Within five years of the LSNR's founding, it had eaten up enough minor right-wing groups to be second only to the Fascist Party. Then came the Depression. The LSNR grew by leaps and bounds as Southrons soured on the traditional Democratic Party. In 1931, the joint Fascist-League candidate for president, Hampton Fernsby, was narrowly defeated. Claims of ballot-stuffing by the traditional Democratic machines were widespread. In June of 1933, the Grayshirts (with Fascist support) stormed the Confederate capitol and White House in Richmond, Virginia. The coup went off smoothly as Grayshirt and Fascist-aligned commanders outside Richmond created enough confusion to allow the new government time to get settled in the capital. As Emergency President, Clement Sigwald ordered massive government investment in industry to get the South back to work. Quickly, a rift developed between LSNR factions that supported government intervention in the economy and the ones that didn't. Sigwald took the side of the former, which made as his enemy the traditionalist planters that had joined the LSNR hoping that it would restore glory to the defeated CSA, but not drastically change the economic system. Another major point of contention between the two groups was the status of blacks: the middle class-working class consensus was that they took jobs and should be eliminated, while the wealthy plantation-owners argued they were needed as agricultural laborers. The implementation of the destruction of the Southern black population, Operation Hittite, nearly caused a major break within the party before Sigwald agreed to extend the deadline for total annihilation. In 1940, having created a personality cult around himself, Sigwald purged the planter faction from his government. As expected, this set off a civil war. The planter faction was quickly defeated, and Sigwald began his project to cement himself as supreme leader. Opposition parties were banned and all members were forced to register with the government. The Confederacy itself was replaced by the Grayshirt State, and Sigwald named himself Commandant-General of the State. It has now been twelve years since the purge of the planters and the establishment of the Grayshirt State. The State has become a pariah in the world. The still-democratic United States is terrified of it, but with both nations possessing nuclear weapons, there is no chance of any resolution that does not end in making North American uninhabitable. The State itself hopes to flex its muscle elsewhere in the world, and has covertly offered support to the white minority colonies of Africa that see majority rule on the horizon.
10) Union of Robot Counties (1683 AD) - Being a peasant has never been a good gig. Since time immemorial, peasants have worked the Earth and provided the essential foodstuffs for human civilization. Peasants had grown tired of their lot from time to time and on occasion this dissatisfaction boiled over into outright revolt. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century was no exception from this rule. All members of the large agricultural class, though divided into freeholders and outright peasants, came to be known as robots, a pan-Slavic term that had initially referred to peasants bound to the land. In 1629, Daniel Asimoff, the child of a Jewish peasant family that had improved their station, began to write treatises while receiving an education. From the perspective of a traveler in his writings, Asimoff described a society in which individuals received a voice in government proportional to the amount of work they did. His description of the imaginary Kingdom of the Robots struck a chord in the society of Poland-Lithuania, where the franchise was only extended to the nobility, yet the state prided itself on freedom. Asimoff's tracts spread widely within Poland-Lithuania. In every village of the country there was typically at least one educated, literate person, and as the tract spread, these people became valued because they read the tract to the illiterate peasants. The new system of political beliefs, generally known as Robotism, had widespread appeal because of the fact it actually embraced the dominant beliefs of Sarmatism and Golden Liberty and the ideology's proponents simply portrayed themselves as expanding those ideals to all the people of the Commonwealth. Though Asimoff would stop writing in 1637 and joined his family business, Robotism marched on as others wrote tracts of their own. Between 1629 and 1650, Robotism grew by leaps and bounds in popularity and by the end of that period, every peasant in the Commonwealth had at least some knowledge of rule by Robots. In the summer of 1653, fighting broke out between Sweden and Poland. Sweden, on the rise since the early days of Gustavus Adolphus' reign, renewed the long stagnant war against the Poles. The Russians soon joined in, while the Zaporozhian Host took the opportunity to rise against the Commonwealth. The Polish-Lithuanian armies were no match for invaders from all sides. However, because of the vast size of the Commonwealth and the invaders exhaustion from other recent conflicts, the war dragged on for several years. As with all wars since the dawn of man, the peasants suffered the most as armies marched back and forth across Eastern Europe. At the Emergency Sejm of 1655, a massive increase in taxation was passed by deputies to finance the war effort. This was the final straw for many peasants. Legend has it that in the early autumn, as government officials arrived in the town of Sandomierz to collect the new taxes at harvest time, peasants threw the tax collectors into the Vistula River before declaring themselves a Free Robotic County for the duration of the war. Inspired by the success of the Sandomierz Revolt, peasants throughout the Commonwealth rose up against a regime they considered oppressive. The winter of 1655-6 was terrible for the Poles, who lost ground across the country to the coalition of peasant rebels. By 1656, the newly-established Union of Robot Counties had transformed itself into a fighting force to be reckoned with. In 1657, King Karol sued for peace with the invaders, which he received, believing that he would be able to mop up the peasant rebels. He was entirely wrong. The Robots had aligned themselves with the educated burghers of the cities and built themselves an army. The armies of the Commonwealth were easily beaten and, in May of 1658, the Robot army was at the gates of Warsaw. In a show of royalist solidarity, a Russian army marched from the newly-conquered city of Brest, but was forced to turn back because of Robotist uprisings in Russia itself. With no chance of relief, Warsaw surrendered after several minor attacks by the Robots. The old Commonwealth was declared defunct with the King forced to abdicate on his knees with a system of government based on direct democracy and delegates elected to various legislatures that would eventually elect a head of state. The surrender of Warsaw and deposing King Karol before the city gates deeply disturbed governments across Europe. Within a year, several small armies from the League of Prague were defeated and the Swedes forced on the defensive by peasant uprisings in East Prussia and Western Pomerania. These external threats would not vanish. Not less than twelve times over the next two decades did the Robot Union have to fight off foreign invaders. Twenty-five years after the victory at Warsaw, the Union seems to have been given a respite from the constant attacks by royalists. Though the monarchs of Europe still detest the Robots, they realize they are here to stay. The Robots might have been willing to live in peace, but the years of war from the outside has hardened their will to export robot revolution to all the kingdoms of the continent. In an interesting turn of fate, Daniel Asimoff, the man that first theorized robot rule, lives in exile in Hamburg. After 1637, Asimoff became a wealthy merchant, and when the Revolt of 1655 began, his properties were threatened and he fled Poland and has become an advocate of absolute government.
11) Independent Republic of Oaxaca (2009 AD) - Under normal circumstances the Oaxaca commune would have been ground into the dust, its leaders carried away to secret federal prisons and the teachers Union forcibly dismantled. But 2006 was not a normal time. In Oaxaca, after years of corruption by the ruling party and a particularly tyrannical governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Oaxacans took the street led by the teachers union demanding their governor's resignation. A series of informal councils and indigenous communes, collectively known as APPO, were the vanguard of the movement. In Mexico City, Vicente Fox, the first non-PRI president since the party's foundation 75 years earlier, governed the country while the anti-establishment Governor of the Federal District Andrés Manuel López Obrador had become a vocal thorn in the side of the neo-liberal establishment. Polling for the 2006 election showed the election neck and neck between the PAN's Calderón and the PRD's López Obrador. A second consecutive sexenio for the PAN would be problematic for the PRI. A sexenio for for the PRD would be a disaster. Given this background it was no surprise that ballot boxes were stuffed against the PRD and the sudden arrival of many thousands of votes for the PAN just as it appeared AMLO was on the brink of victory destroyed public confidence in the election. As the Federal Electoral Institute declared Felipe Calderón the duly-elected President of Mexico, AMLO fought back on a vote-by-vote basis against an election his supporters argued was fraught with fraud. This initiative quickly failed as the Electoral Institute did not cooperate with AMLO's supporters. Rumors spread that he would declare himself President and that civil war was coming. Though no one really wanted a civil war, the actions of many groups drove the country to war. The first shots were fired in late August of 2006, and within weeks the entire country was in a war pitting the backers of the PRD against those of the PRI and PAN. Throughout the post-election crisis, most of Mexico had forgotten about the turmoil in Oaxaca but protests had continued and an increasingly-desperate state police brutalized APPO members. As protesting and rioting turned to fighting elsewhere across Mexico, the same thing happened in Oaxaca. Because the Oaxacans hated their PRI governor, Ruiz Ortiz, they were forced to align with AMLO and his faction. The Oaxaca commune, as it was colloquially named, was not the only minor faction in the war. Aside from the PAN-PRI (commonly referred to as the liberals) and PRD (nationalists), players included the drug cartels, who fought for whichever side they felt advanced their aims. Oaxaca and the Popular revolutionary Army fought alongside the nationalists. The Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ), who had been under arms since 1994, found themselves vaguely aligned with the nationalists but not actual allies. In March of 2007, the Independent Republic of Oaxaca was declared when the governing Oaxacan councils decided to create a formal government to receive foreign recognition and aid. This new government was highly decentralized, and retained the council-based governance of APPO. It was inevitable that the United States would get involved with the Mexican Civil War. The Bush administration sent support to the liberals throughout 2006, but after the brutal killing of a prominent Bell Gardens-based AMLO supporter by a liberal-aligned cartel, the US was forced to intervene (ironically, on the side of the liberals) Starting in late spring of 2007, liberal forces were increasingly well-armed and received American air support. Though the Mexico City government deemed the nationalists the largest threat, and were focused on fighting primarily between the Valley of Mexico and Veracruz, liberal holdouts in Oaxaca were well-armed and had sufficient supplies to defend strips along the coasts. Though American weapons began to turn the tide, an influx of Chinese support as well as "volunteers" from the pink tide states were enough to help the nationalists and their co-belligerents hold their own. Late 2007 and 2008 were absolute messes in Mexico. With the PAN-PRI unable to win the war quickly, rifts developed between them and the cartels while the same occurred between the PRD and allied cartels and the left. The PAN and PRI alliance became fraught, and there was a serious possibility of civil war within the liberal faction while fighting spilled over into the American southwest. It is now January 1, 2009. Oaxaca has been lucky to be far from the major battles between the liberals and nationals, but has still seen its share of fighting with the Army and Naval Infantry around Salina Cruz. Its decentralized government has largely functioned as intended, though military commanders are alleged to have an outsized influence in districts where liberal forces are still active. Though Oaxaca is internationally unrecognized, it has under the table relations with Bolivia and China. Many fear change is on the way. In the United States, the 2008 presidential election was won by Democrat Wesley Clark, a general promising to bring swift ends to the War on Terror and Intervention in Mexico. Though his aims sound good, he has been the subject of serious criticism since election day when he has advocated for internment camps along the Southern border to stop fighting in the Mexican-American community. His exact plans are unknown, but everyone agrees that when he takes office US policy towards Mexico will see some drastic changes.
12) Righteous Protectorate (1865 AD) - Republicanism in 17th century England might have been doomed but the Cromwell dynasty and the Puritans was not. The Commonwealth of England lasted less than a decade before its replacement by the unitary republic that was the Protectorate. The two decades following the establishment of the Protectorate were spent eliminating any royalist and Catholic sentiment in the Protectorate, and by 1680, the Protectorate was ready to look outwards. The American colonies had, despite their royalist sympathies, sworn fealty to Parliamentarians in the early 1650s. Between the 1650s and 1680s, much had changed. The colonials had heard reports of massacres of Irish and royalist nobility at home, and by 1680, with the exception of New England, the colonies were in various stages of revolt. To rectify this, then-Lord Protector Richard Cromwell dispatched the largest army ever sent across the Atlantic. Under General James Holborne and Admiral William Penn the Younger, this force first entered the Caribbean. The colonies there were quickly occupied and garrisons left there. The North American colonies proved a much tougher nut to crack. They had become a haven for Catholics and royalists fleeing England, and were filled with not only these anti-Protectorate settlers but their neighbors, the settlers that had been led to believe the Protectorate was a thoroughly evil regime. The fleet sailed north and dropped its army off in the Carolana Colony, and launched a combined assault on Port St. George. The local garrison fought well, but was ultimately overwhelmed. Holborne's army marched north, seeing heavy losses from New World diseases and irregular militias. Holborne and his forces met their end at James River Falls in Virginia, where the young, avowedly royalist commander Nathaniel Bacon defeated his army with a mixture of militias from the various colonies. The rout at James River Falls was the end of Holborne's expedition. What remained of his army fled with its tail tucked between its legs and left the midatlantic colonies to their own devices. They would continue on their pseudo-independent path until 1748, when the exiled James IV, scion of the Stuarts, would take up residence in St. Mary's City. The Protectorate set its sights on Europe. Its increasingly fanatical leaders believed it had the duty to destroy Catholicism and spread Protestantism to all of Europe. This undertaking has been a slow one, as seen by the fact that, 180 years later, only France and the Low Countries have come under English control. The Righteous Protectorate (they wanted a name more palatable for non-Englishmen) does the best it can to thoroughly Anglicize and Protestantize the new territories. All of Ireland and the Channel provinces speak only English, and all Catholic Churches have been razed. Of course, there is resistance in the so-called Unpurified Provinces. People there dream of one day restoring France and kicking out the genocidal English. Popular opinion in Europe has begun to grow against the Protectorate, and despite its vast resources from its North American, African, and Asian colonies, it might one day face a challenge to big for it to overcome.
13) European Dirigist Republic (2050 AD) - If I had a nickel for every time a fringe internet ideology was adopted by an actual government I'd only have one nickel, but it's still pretty weird I'd even have one. That was about what everyone was thinking in the year 2050 (though people probably wouldn't be thinking of nickels what with their withdrawal from circulation twenty years earlier) Dirigism, a fringe, far-right ideology, first appeared in 2016 when a user calling himself Vivaporius posted his own views of politics and society online. His views, which were described as anti-democratic and "virtually Naziism without anti-semitism" were quickly dismissed. No one thought much about dirigism for years, until r/Dirigism was created. r/Dirigism and its offshoots survived four years, but were deleted by reddit mods in the aftermath of the 2028 presidential election. In those four years, however, Dirigism's reach grew by leaps and bounds. The ten-pointed star and eye became ubiquitous at far-right rallies and minor Dirigist parties were founded in Europe. New Ideas, the Polish dirigist party, came to notoriety in 2025, when it railed against the Russian annexation of Belarus in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election there. This came in the aftermath of that year's Polish presidential election, so New Ideas' first test came in the 2027 Sjem and local elections. The party did not fare especially well because of its percieved strength on foreign policy and lack of focus on internal affairs. Still, New Ideas gained seats in the eastern voivodeships where fear of the new Ruso-Belarusian Union State was large. The party spent the next few years developing its platform, and did astonishingly well in the 2030 presidential election. From 2031 onwards, New Ideas sent a delegation of several dozen Members to the Sejm. Throughout the decade, which saw the faltering of Law and Justice and rise of the Democratic Left, a coalition of far-right parties gained momentum. Though New Ideas entered as a junior partner, it quickly came to lead this group. The Pathfinders, the paramilitary wing of New Ideas, became common on the street. Rather than simply beating opponents, the Pathfinders involved themselves in community activities including helping the elderly, covering up graffiti, and even performing community watch services. Through this they endeared themselves to the Polish population and got their message out by constantly passing out pamphlets. New Ideas' time came around in 2039: after the start of a worldwide depression, new elections were called and the Right Alliance, led by New Ideas, won a majority. In power, they took steps to solidify their control. Minor right-wing parties were purged or infiltrated so as to become puppets of the Dirigists. Of course, Dirigist ideals were made policy: work credits were put into place by the government, interest was banned, and schools were purged of influences deemed destructive by the party. Women were marginalized and forced out of the public sphere (of course, there was pushback and the March 8, 2041 marches were some of the largest in history) while minorities were registered by the new internal security apparatus. Though all of the Dirigist party's reforms were met with international condemnation, the most controversial of them was the implementation of what Vivaporious called a caste system. People of different social stratas would be placed in different castes, which would have assigned neighborhoods and tasks. Children would be given a caste on their sixteenth birthday, which would not necessarily be the same one as their parents. While hardline Dirigists advocated to push this plan through to completion quickly, moderates and pragmatists within the party prevailed and the caste plan was set to be fully implemented in 2072 to allow a generation to ease into the new system. The Polish military had been expanding since the 2010s, but under the Dirigist regime it grew massively in both size and firepower (part of this growth was due to the use of military labor battalions for construction projects) When the Union State imploded in the aftermath of the burst of the filament bubble in 2046, the Dirigists seized the opportunity. Partly as a way to distract the public from their rather controversial internal social policies, the Polish military entered Kaliningrad Oblast and Western Belarus as a "precautionary measure" to create a buffer between possible fighting and the Polish homeland. This temporary occupation quickly turned into a permanent one and in 2049, the regions were annexed. In Warsaw, Premier Kędzior announced the formation of the European Dirigist State as massive crowds celebrated. Midway through the 21st century, the EDR appears to be on the rise. Their conquest of Kaliningrad and Western Belarus has proven to be a major propaganda victory. Dirigist parties have sprung up across the world, and in Eastern Europe, have nearly come to power in Slovakia and Moldova. Of course, there is pushback within Poland itself, including the large Anti-Box movement, which opposes the caste system, as well as significant anti-Dirigist sentiment among the LGBT and immigrant communities within the country, though anti-government protests have been increasingly hard to organize and get permits for. Though unknown to the man on the street, numerous international intelligence organizations have come to the conclusion that the EDR is in the process of building an atomic bomb. It is unknown how far along this project is, and, if successful, world geopolitics would be dramatically reshaped.
14) Womens Republic of Britain (1934 AD) - The start of the World War in 1914 put a damper in the women's suffrage movement. Leading suffragettes, including Emmeline Pankhurst, pressured organizations to cease agitating for the duration of the war and back the war effort against imperial Germany. For the first several years of war, this policy was upheld by all but the most radical suffragettes. But, as the war dragged on, opposition grew. It should be noted that the membership of suffragette organizations skewed towards the upper class and many of the pre-war suffragettes were not impacted by the trend towards female workers replacing male ones in factories. Women participated in the strikes and even revolts of 1919 in Britain, but to a lesser degree than British men. After the communist revolts were mercilessly put down by the Emergency Government of Douglas Haig, female activists in British factories began to organize under the aegis of the Union of Female Factory Workers (UFFW). UFFW members, who were primarily working-class (though more than a few upper class women joined), advocated for increased wages, better working conditions, and, above all, the franchise. As the 1920s rolled around, the UFFW had begun to gather up steam. UFFW rallies gathered thousands, and many men wore ribbons showing their sympathy with the movement. The UFFW, however, met a violent end when it joined in the left-wing putsch of 1923. Female militias fought valiantly in the fight for London, but ultimately failed. In the mid-1920s, Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union was revived as an anti-war and pro-suffrage pressure group. After Pankhurst's death, the more radical Margaret Haig Mackworth took control of the organization and took it underground. After years of organization and minor attacks on government facilities, the WSPU rose in revolt against the United Kingdom in the summer of 1931. The weakened British government was unable to fight back in strength, and was forced to recall troops from Europe, most of who mutinied in the English Channel. The WSPU received support from a variety of groups, ranging from the successors of the pre-war socialist parties, Bolshevik sympathizers, and even the Radical Liberal Party. Similar organizations rose up in most of the white dominions, while anti-colonial groups rose in many native-majority ones. In September of 1931, the Women's Republic was declared. The colonies of the former empire were granted independence. Most went to nationalist governments, while others became fellow Women's Republics. As expected, there was some pushback to the idea of a government comprised overwhelmingly of women, but in the aftermath of a war spanning decades, most British men simply accepted the new government. It is now 1934, and the Women's Republic has been in place for over two years. The World War continues on the continent, where Germany and Austria-Hungary keep on fighting France. Britain has attempted to broker a peace, but all negotiations have fallen through. More promising, though is the scheme of the Women's Republic's intelligence service, which plans to organize revolutionary cells and incite the women of Europe to revolt.
15) Federal Republic of Ubangi-Shari (2003 AD) - France gave Ubangi-Shari independence in the late 1950s at the same time that it was winding down its colonial activities worldwide. The newly-independent state went through several different governments, successively pro-Western and pro-Soviet. Wars raged between the two Cold War factions in nearby African states, but the sheer uselessness of Ubangi-Shari on any strategic level meant it avoided the devastation suffered by the Congolese during the Jackson administration. In 1986, a group of pro-Soviet junior officers deposed the pro-American government of Ubangi-Shari. This particular group, Officers for Popular Government, had aligned itself with radical Stalinist groups, including the Central African Red Guards, and after the coup, these groups attempted to storm the American embassy. The embassy guards were able to repel the attackers, but suffered heavy losses. The Red Guards prepared for a second assault and were only stopped by the intervention of recently-declared Vice President and former Air Force mechanic Réxford Lakoué. Unsurprisingly, the attack on the embassy led to a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Ubangi-Shari (and by extension, the Union of Eurasian Soviet Republics) President Kerr privately called for a retaliatory strike and tensions were only defused by the youthful Secretary of State Bill Clinton. Ubangi-Shari languished in poverty for the next decade and a half. It turned out the UESR was willing to back a fellow communist state threatened by the US, but was unwilling to devote serious resources to developing its economy. Since the late 1970s, the foreign policy community in the United States had been divided into two camps. One of these was the Rooseveltian internationalists, who were willing to go to war to halt the spread of communism, but generally advocates of a liberal approach to international relations. They largely remained in the shadows of the great Secretaries of State of the 1940s and 1950s and were in some senses a dying breed. On the other hand were the neoconservatives: their roots were in the 1970s and they believed in the use of military strength and outright intervention to spread democracy and American liberalism. In 1992, Democratic primary-voters narrowly selected the youthful Baltimore-based Senator John Bolton for president. Bolton, a staunch neoconservative, brought many like-minded thinkers into the cabinet. In 2001, the US had elected its second consecutive neoconservative president, while Ubangi-Shari was still mired in poverty. Newly-elected President Rahall was pressured by the neoconservative brain trust to start a war, and so he invaded Ubangi-Shari, against which America still had some resentment. The invasion of Ubangi-Shari began and ended quickly: within seven days of American forces leaving their bases in the Congo, American forces had captured Bangui and faced only small holdouts in areas far removed from the capital. In November 2001, after several months of an interim administration, the Federal Republic was established. The new republic is now thirteen months old. Eurasian-backed communist militias have resurfaced across the country, leaving the undermanned and undertrained army with a nearly impossible task. American energy is now focused in "liberating" the states of West Africa at the cost of neglecting Ubangi-Shari. US aid comes, but at a slower rate than necessary, and the number of American advisors and soldiers on the ground is pitifully low. Many in the country wonder if they have just traded one neglectful master for another.
12) Righteous Protectorate (1865 AD) - Republicanism in 17th century England might have been doomed but the Cromwell dynasty and the Puritans was not. The Commonwealth of England lasted less than a decade before its replacement by the unitary republic that was the Protectorate. The two decades following the establishment of the Protectorate were spent eliminating any royalist and Catholic sentiment in the Protectorate, and by 1680, the Protectorate was ready to look outwards. The American colonies had, despite their royalist sympathies, sworn fealty to Parliamentarians in the early 1650s. Between the 1650s and 1680s, much had changed. The colonials had heard reports of massacres of Irish and royalist nobility at home, and by 1680, with the exception of New England, the colonies were in various stages of revolt. To rectify this, then-Lord Protector Richard Cromwell dispatched the largest army ever sent across the Atlantic. Under General James Holborne and Admiral William Penn the Younger, this force first entered the Caribbean. The colonies there were quickly occupied and garrisons left there. The North American colonies proved a much tougher nut to crack. They had become a haven for Catholics and royalists fleeing England, and were filled with not only these anti-Protectorate settlers but their neighbors, the settlers that had been led to believe the Protectorate was a thoroughly evil regime. The fleet sailed north and dropped its army off in the Carolana Colony, and launched a combined assault on Port St. George. The local garrison fought well, but was ultimately overwhelmed. Holborne's army marched north, seeing heavy losses from New World diseases and irregular militias. Holborne and his forces met their end at James River Falls in Virginia, where the young, avowedly royalist commander Nathaniel Bacon defeated his army with a mixture of militias from the various colonies. The rout at James River Falls was the end of Holborne's expedition. What remained of his army fled with its tail tucked between its legs and left the midatlantic colonies to their own devices. They would continue on their pseudo-independent path until 1748, when the exiled James IV, scion of the Stuarts, would take up residence in St. Mary's City. The Protectorate set its sights on Europe. Its increasingly fanatical leaders believed it had the duty to destroy Catholicism and spread Protestantism to all of Europe. This undertaking has been a slow one, as seen by the fact that, 180 years later, only France and the Low Countries have come under English control. The Righteous Protectorate (they wanted a name more palatable for non-Englishmen) does the best it can to thoroughly Anglicize and Protestantize the new territories. All of Ireland and the Channel provinces speak only English, and all Catholic Churches have been razed. Of course, there is resistance in the so-called Unpurified Provinces. People there dream of one day restoring France and kicking out the genocidal English. Popular opinion in Europe has begun to grow against the Protectorate, and despite its vast resources from its North American, African, and Asian colonies, it might one day face a challenge to big for it to overcome.
13) European Dirigist Republic (2050 AD) - If I had a nickel for every time a fringe internet ideology was adopted by an actual government I'd only have one nickel, but it's still pretty weird I'd even have one. That was about what everyone was thinking in the year 2050 (though people probably wouldn't be thinking of nickels what with their withdrawal from circulation twenty years earlier) Dirigism, a fringe, far-right ideology, first appeared in 2016 when a user calling himself Vivaporius posted his own views of politics and society online. His views, which were described as anti-democratic and "virtually Naziism without anti-semitism" were quickly dismissed. No one thought much about dirigism for years, until r/Dirigism was created. r/Dirigism and its offshoots survived four years, but were deleted by reddit mods in the aftermath of the 2028 presidential election. In those four years, however, Dirigism's reach grew by leaps and bounds. The ten-pointed star and eye became ubiquitous at far-right rallies and minor Dirigist parties were founded in Europe. New Ideas, the Polish dirigist party, came to notoriety in 2025, when it railed against the Russian annexation of Belarus in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election there. This came in the aftermath of that year's Polish presidential election, so New Ideas' first test came in the 2027 Sjem and local elections. The party did not fare especially well because of its percieved strength on foreign policy and lack of focus on internal affairs. Still, New Ideas gained seats in the eastern voivodeships where fear of the new Ruso-Belarusian Union State was large. The party spent the next few years developing its platform, and did astonishingly well in the 2030 presidential election. From 2031 onwards, New Ideas sent a delegation of several dozen Members to the Sejm. Throughout the decade, which saw the faltering of Law and Justice and rise of the Democratic Left, a coalition of far-right parties gained momentum. Though New Ideas entered as a junior partner, it quickly came to lead this group. The Pathfinders, the paramilitary wing of New Ideas, became common on the street. Rather than simply beating opponents, the Pathfinders involved themselves in community activities including helping the elderly, covering up graffiti, and even performing community watch services. Through this they endeared themselves to the Polish population and got their message out by constantly passing out pamphlets. New Ideas' time came around in 2039: after the start of a worldwide depression, new elections were called and the Right Alliance, led by New Ideas, won a majority. In power, they took steps to solidify their control. Minor right-wing parties were purged or infiltrated so as to become puppets of the Dirigists. Of course, Dirigist ideals were made policy: work credits were put into place by the government, interest was banned, and schools were purged of influences deemed destructive by the party. Women were marginalized and forced out of the public sphere (of course, there was pushback and the March 8, 2041 marches were some of the largest in history) while minorities were registered by the new internal security apparatus. Though all of the Dirigist party's reforms were met with international condemnation, the most controversial of them was the implementation of what Vivaporious called a caste system. People of different social stratas would be placed in different castes, which would have assigned neighborhoods and tasks. Children would be given a caste on their sixteenth birthday, which would not necessarily be the same one as their parents. While hardline Dirigists advocated to push this plan through to completion quickly, moderates and pragmatists within the party prevailed and the caste plan was set to be fully implemented in 2072 to allow a generation to ease into the new system. The Polish military had been expanding since the 2010s, but under the Dirigist regime it grew massively in both size and firepower (part of this growth was due to the use of military labor battalions for construction projects) When the Union State imploded in the aftermath of the burst of the filament bubble in 2046, the Dirigists seized the opportunity. Partly as a way to distract the public from their rather controversial internal social policies, the Polish military entered Kaliningrad Oblast and Western Belarus as a "precautionary measure" to create a buffer between possible fighting and the Polish homeland. This temporary occupation quickly turned into a permanent one and in 2049, the regions were annexed. In Warsaw, Premier Kędzior announced the formation of the European Dirigist State as massive crowds celebrated. Midway through the 21st century, the EDR appears to be on the rise. Their conquest of Kaliningrad and Western Belarus has proven to be a major propaganda victory. Dirigist parties have sprung up across the world, and in Eastern Europe, have nearly come to power in Slovakia and Moldova. Of course, there is pushback within Poland itself, including the large Anti-Box movement, which opposes the caste system, as well as significant anti-Dirigist sentiment among the LGBT and immigrant communities within the country, though anti-government protests have been increasingly hard to organize and get permits for. Though unknown to the man on the street, numerous international intelligence organizations have come to the conclusion that the EDR is in the process of building an atomic bomb. It is unknown how far along this project is, and, if successful, world geopolitics would be dramatically reshaped.
14) Womens Republic of Britain (1934 AD) - The start of the World War in 1914 put a damper in the women's suffrage movement. Leading suffragettes, including Emmeline Pankhurst, pressured organizations to cease agitating for the duration of the war and back the war effort against imperial Germany. For the first several years of war, this policy was upheld by all but the most radical suffragettes. But, as the war dragged on, opposition grew. It should be noted that the membership of suffragette organizations skewed towards the upper class and many of the pre-war suffragettes were not impacted by the trend towards female workers replacing male ones in factories. Women participated in the strikes and even revolts of 1919 in Britain, but to a lesser degree than British men. After the communist revolts were mercilessly put down by the Emergency Government of Douglas Haig, female activists in British factories began to organize under the aegis of the Union of Female Factory Workers (UFFW). UFFW members, who were primarily working-class (though more than a few upper class women joined), advocated for increased wages, better working conditions, and, above all, the franchise. As the 1920s rolled around, the UFFW had begun to gather up steam. UFFW rallies gathered thousands, and many men wore ribbons showing their sympathy with the movement. The UFFW, however, met a violent end when it joined in the left-wing putsch of 1923. Female militias fought valiantly in the fight for London, but ultimately failed. In the mid-1920s, Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union was revived as an anti-war and pro-suffrage pressure group. After Pankhurst's death, the more radical Margaret Haig Mackworth took control of the organization and took it underground. After years of organization and minor attacks on government facilities, the WSPU rose in revolt against the United Kingdom in the summer of 1931. The weakened British government was unable to fight back in strength, and was forced to recall troops from Europe, most of who mutinied in the English Channel. The WSPU received support from a variety of groups, ranging from the successors of the pre-war socialist parties, Bolshevik sympathizers, and even the Radical Liberal Party. Similar organizations rose up in most of the white dominions, while anti-colonial groups rose in many native-majority ones. In September of 1931, the Women's Republic was declared. The colonies of the former empire were granted independence. Most went to nationalist governments, while others became fellow Women's Republics. As expected, there was some pushback to the idea of a government comprised overwhelmingly of women, but in the aftermath of a war spanning decades, most British men simply accepted the new government. It is now 1934, and the Women's Republic has been in place for over two years. The World War continues on the continent, where Germany and Austria-Hungary keep on fighting France. Britain has attempted to broker a peace, but all negotiations have fallen through. More promising, though is the scheme of the Women's Republic's intelligence service, which plans to organize revolutionary cells and incite the women of Europe to revolt.
15) Federal Republic of Ubangi-Shari (2003 AD) - France gave Ubangi-Shari independence in the late 1950s at the same time that it was winding down its colonial activities worldwide. The newly-independent state went through several different governments, successively pro-Western and pro-Soviet. Wars raged between the two Cold War factions in nearby African states, but the sheer uselessness of Ubangi-Shari on any strategic level meant it avoided the devastation suffered by the Congolese during the Jackson administration. In 1986, a group of pro-Soviet junior officers deposed the pro-American government of Ubangi-Shari. This particular group, Officers for Popular Government, had aligned itself with radical Stalinist groups, including the Central African Red Guards, and after the coup, these groups attempted to storm the American embassy. The embassy guards were able to repel the attackers, but suffered heavy losses. The Red Guards prepared for a second assault and were only stopped by the intervention of recently-declared Vice President and former Air Force mechanic Réxford Lakoué. Unsurprisingly, the attack on the embassy led to a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Ubangi-Shari (and by extension, the Union of Eurasian Soviet Republics) President Kerr privately called for a retaliatory strike and tensions were only defused by the youthful Secretary of State Bill Clinton. Ubangi-Shari languished in poverty for the next decade and a half. It turned out the UESR was willing to back a fellow communist state threatened by the US, but was unwilling to devote serious resources to developing its economy. Since the late 1970s, the foreign policy community in the United States had been divided into two camps. One of these was the Rooseveltian internationalists, who were willing to go to war to halt the spread of communism, but generally advocates of a liberal approach to international relations. They largely remained in the shadows of the great Secretaries of State of the 1940s and 1950s and were in some senses a dying breed. On the other hand were the neoconservatives: their roots were in the 1970s and they believed in the use of military strength and outright intervention to spread democracy and American liberalism. In 1992, Democratic primary-voters narrowly selected the youthful Baltimore-based Senator John Bolton for president. Bolton, a staunch neoconservative, brought many like-minded thinkers into the cabinet. In 2001, the US had elected its second consecutive neoconservative president, while Ubangi-Shari was still mired in poverty. Newly-elected President Rahall was pressured by the neoconservative brain trust to start a war, and so he invaded Ubangi-Shari, against which America still had some resentment. The invasion of Ubangi-Shari began and ended quickly: within seven days of American forces leaving their bases in the Congo, American forces had captured Bangui and faced only small holdouts in areas far removed from the capital. In November 2001, after several months of an interim administration, the Federal Republic was established. The new republic is now thirteen months old. Eurasian-backed communist militias have resurfaced across the country, leaving the undermanned and undertrained army with a nearly impossible task. American energy is now focused in "liberating" the states of West Africa at the cost of neglecting Ubangi-Shari. US aid comes, but at a slower rate than necessary, and the number of American advisors and soldiers on the ground is pitifully low. Many in the country wonder if they have just traded one neglectful master for another.
I've been away from mapmaking for a while what with the lockdown and the loss of my mother-in-law.
To get me back in I used @Ashtagon 's map to produce this;-
One of the most unusual worlds we have found whilst exploring the Multiverse was BIZ 5489721.
Whilst the outlines are somewhat recognizable to those from Prime, BIZ 5489721 seemed to be uninhabited.
However we picked up an unusual form of Radio-activity, seemingly similar to the Sonar system used in the mid-industrial age of Prime.
Our attempts to locate this activity led to the discovery of an unknown civilization based in the Oceans of BIZ 5489721 off of the "Indian Ocean" landmass. The breakthrough was finding evidence of land-based colonies enclosed in a mostly opaque substance which seemed to allow the liquid inside to re-breathe, presumably to create an environment conducive to the sea life found here.
Contact with this civilization is going slow as their speech is pitched higher than our ears can easily manage and whilst the computers can adjust this it does lose a lot of the definition and makes contact long-winded. The civilization seem to be evolved from marine mammals, possibly related to those known as Dolphins on Prime.
Addendum 1; Whilst exploring the "Indian Ocean" sub-continent a detachment was attacked by a semi-civilized band of armoured humanoids weilding spears. Testing of the casualties reveals a 98.7% match to Prime DNA.
It seems the Ocean Civilizations are waging a war of extermination which is driving the humanoids into the hinterlands.
Addendum 2; We have been approached by representatives of both lifeforms for assistance against their enemies. It has been decided to re-locate to the "Atlantic" landmass to avoid violating interference directives.
Addendum 3; Great Dams have been found along the Great Atlantic Valley and we have made contact with what was initially considered to be a land-based offshoot of the Ocean civilization but closer inspection found that the Freshwater peoples are significantly further advanced, work peacefully with the local Humanoids and have little contact with the Oceanics.
Addendum 4; Further civilizations have been found, one, based in the seas surrounding the Caribbean Islands is Reptilian in nature, possibly evolved from what Prime would recognize as Caimans. Another, located in the Antactic Sea appears to be descended from an unknown type of Whale. The Land masses all have Tribal societies, both nomadic and sedentary which are analogous to the extinct Hominid types known from Prime.
The diversity of evolved civilization and proto- civilization on BIZ 5489721 is baffling as experience of other worlds has seen only one species dominant. Study into this world continues.
To get me back in I used @Ashtagon 's map to produce this;-
One of the most unusual worlds we have found whilst exploring the Multiverse was BIZ 5489721.
Whilst the outlines are somewhat recognizable to those from Prime, BIZ 5489721 seemed to be uninhabited.
However we picked up an unusual form of Radio-activity, seemingly similar to the Sonar system used in the mid-industrial age of Prime.
Our attempts to locate this activity led to the discovery of an unknown civilization based in the Oceans of BIZ 5489721 off of the "Indian Ocean" landmass. The breakthrough was finding evidence of land-based colonies enclosed in a mostly opaque substance which seemed to allow the liquid inside to re-breathe, presumably to create an environment conducive to the sea life found here.
Contact with this civilization is going slow as their speech is pitched higher than our ears can easily manage and whilst the computers can adjust this it does lose a lot of the definition and makes contact long-winded. The civilization seem to be evolved from marine mammals, possibly related to those known as Dolphins on Prime.
Addendum 1; Whilst exploring the "Indian Ocean" sub-continent a detachment was attacked by a semi-civilized band of armoured humanoids weilding spears. Testing of the casualties reveals a 98.7% match to Prime DNA.
It seems the Ocean Civilizations are waging a war of extermination which is driving the humanoids into the hinterlands.
Addendum 2; We have been approached by representatives of both lifeforms for assistance against their enemies. It has been decided to re-locate to the "Atlantic" landmass to avoid violating interference directives.
Addendum 3; Great Dams have been found along the Great Atlantic Valley and we have made contact with what was initially considered to be a land-based offshoot of the Ocean civilization but closer inspection found that the Freshwater peoples are significantly further advanced, work peacefully with the local Humanoids and have little contact with the Oceanics.
Addendum 4; Further civilizations have been found, one, based in the seas surrounding the Caribbean Islands is Reptilian in nature, possibly evolved from what Prime would recognize as Caimans. Another, located in the Antactic Sea appears to be descended from an unknown type of Whale. The Land masses all have Tribal societies, both nomadic and sedentary which are analogous to the extinct Hominid types known from Prime.
The diversity of evolved civilization and proto- civilization on BIZ 5489721 is baffling as experience of other worlds has seen only one species dominant. Study into this world continues.
Sorry for late reply, it’s already been removed because of retconning especially the ridiculous project has long distance as the country is located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Something i always wanted to ask. You all use the same map... where is it from?
It is the Worlda map format. There's a whole thread of them here:
The NextGen OTL Worlda Series | alternatehistory.com
No European country would ever let such a situation like this happen. This is just as plausible as Sicily or Albania becoming a US state.
Indeed.
An Axis Spain would lose its colonies, maybe lose Catalonia and/or the Basque Country (or at least have independence referendums), and possibly have some minor border changes with France and Portugal.
I'm not sure there is enough support for an independent Andalusia even in the region itself for such a scenario.
Unless it gets crazy, Spain isn't going to be to be treated all that much worse than Italy was.
Let? Who says it was up to them? Assume Spain joining the Axis, the US push beginning in Spain, some sort of inhuman war crime (Spain uses gas, perhaps), and a major event that has the US population out for blood AND the Spanish people viewing the US army as liberators. At that point, nothing the post-war occupied government complained about would really matter, would it?
A quick sketch I did for a modern fantasy timeline I'm working on.
The wikipedia-style infobox for the country is here.
The wikipedia-style infobox for the country is here.
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