Map Thread XXI
- Thread starter fluttersky
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That'd be the "States" one, which, while it has plenty of detail, is somewhat lacking in some portions.
So I posted this over in the alternate armoured vehicles thread in Post-1900, but after seeing water123's guide for WorldA maps and it's rule 6 (don't worry too much about ASBs), I feel a hell of a lot more cosy with the idea of posting in this thread, and a lot less afraid of being crucified on the spot for not being slavishly obedient to every exact plausibility 
So, have my first real AH map - bear with me a little, as I'm super-duper inexperienced when it comes to this, but I really did try:
You can tell at a glance that Europe looks rather...different from how it should be in 1917, and there's a very good reason for this: this map is effectively the result of multiple PoDs going back all the way to the aftermath of the fall of Rome - their history branched from ours as early as about 400AD, sending the world hurtling into a radically different direction...but despite that, a lot of familiar players are still here. If history could be likened to a theatre stage, then the same "actors" are on the board, but in different roles and costumes than you might be familiar with. Some groups migrated into different locations, some had a hell of a lot more luck than they did historically, others underperformed, and after over a millenia and a half, Europe looks so very familiar, and yet so very different at the same time. Though history mightn't repeat itself, it sure does rhyme, and in 1917, Europe finds itself poised on the brink of calamity, as the great powers are set to have the mother of all show downs, and bring forth a new era of industrialized warfare. There's two critical blocks in this conflict, and they are the Wittenberg Pact (led by Great Mossavia) and the Western Powers (led by Rhenland), and if the two fight, then the very future of Europe as they know it hangs in the balance.
But who are these major players? We'll start from the top:
Great Mossavia, or just plain Mossavia, can be inferred to be a Bohemia that went on a radically different course compared to its historical counterpart - its very name, Mossavia, is a bastardized version of Moravia, which was the dominant part of the realm for some time - the seed of what might've become Bohemia got smashed early in history, and the result was a union not so much of Bohemia-Moravia, but Moravia-Bohemia, the former dragging around the latter's crippled husk. Eventually overtime, the Bohemian component eventually began to get back on its feet thanks to silver mining and general recovery as a whole, but by then, Moravia had effectively become the dominant part of the union, and had heavily influenced its western counterpart, both in structure and in culture. In their timeline, the realm that might simply be referred to in ours as Bohemia was in theirs just Moravia, and in a certain fluke of history (believed to be either the result of a king with a speech impediment or certain lingual influences from neighbouring realms), Moravia became Mossavia, a thing that occured within the last five hundred or so years. It is those centuries that have made Great Mossavia a reality, as it inherited Styria (ATL Austria) through marriage and absorbed that realm into itself, and with steady supplies of coin owing to its vast mines, a strongly defensive position to fall back to in times of war, Great Mossavia has steadily grown into the size and shape that we see today.
Unfortunately for Great Mossavia, however, the situation has gotten awfully complicated since the dawn of the nineteenth century. The disparate Deutscher princedoms to the northwest rallied together after the bloodbath that was the War of the North, which began as a colonial conflict between the Angelcynn and Daneland that saw armies marching through what would one day become Rhenland, and the spread of that funny idea known as "nationalism" added fuel to the fire, and the result was that Europe went up like a tinderbox. By the time that the war ended, the seed of Rhenland had been planted. At this time, Rhenland is probably no more than sixty years old, but has seriously upended the balance of power, and the result is...complicated. The most critical complication of them all comes in the south and east of the Rhenish lands, territories that had once been client states of Mossavia and the Wends, but goes beyond them into the primarily Deutscher regions on both sides of the border, which increasingly yearn to join Rhenland. Having some experience with how to settle these questions due to lessons taken in their regular punching matches with the Occitans of Aquitainia, which sees both states holding large amounts of territory outside the reach of the Papal State, the Mossavians constructed a pseudo-independent client state to their northwest, which has done much to diffuse the issue on their side.
Unfortunately, over in the Wendish Empire, the old autocratic ways of its leaders decided on a rather simpler method of dealing with insurrectionists and agitators, which was to have them shot. The largest power in Europe (other than the nation of the Turks to their east - this is a surviving Khazaria which destroyed the proto-Rus, and goes well past the east of the map to about the eastern border of Kazakhstan, though tends to be more "western" orientated in recent years, which could be thought of as the engine room of the modern nation due to the rich chernozem soils of the region having allowed for massive development there), the Wendish Empire is one of the oldest nations to be able to claim some form of continuity and officially places its birthdate in the early ninth century; it is surpassed in that area solely by the claim of the Merovingian Franks, who although having long since lost their founding dynasty centuries ago, still tie the origin of their state to 486 AD, when Clovis I conquered the Kingdom of Soissons. Unfortunately for the Wends, however, they have been something of a victim of their own success: whereas the divorce of Neustria and Aquitaine was so terrible for the former as to give them a rude wake up call (and to forsake that particular name forever as being cursed, as nothing good happened to the realm when it had it, and saw people want to go back to the "good old days" of the Merovingian realm) , the Wendish Empire is considered to have one of the strongest aristocratic structures anywhere, and it was only about thirty years ago that they finally abolished serfdom.
Historically speaking, the Wends have little love for Mossavia, with whom they have fought more than once...but the rise of Rhenland has changed calculations a great deal - although there are those who are still confident that Wendish steel and courage can carry the day, they have a poor industrial backbone, one of the lowest rates of literacy in Europe, and a generally underperforming economy. Rhenland, on the other hand, is an increasingly industrialized powerhouse built around the massive Rhine river system, and there are serious concerns as to what could happen to the Empire in the event of an armed conflict. That said, it is a conflict that the Empire may very well have blundered itself into - its heavily aristocratic officer corps can often run their regiments like petty kingdoms in their own right, and the western territories of the Empire have always been home to large Deutscher populations. When a few soldiers got drunk in a bar and ended up in a brawl that got five men killed, the actions of local commanders afraid that this could be a prelude to a Rhenish attack saw one act with the desire to cut things off at the head by gathering up believed Rhenish sympathizers and agitators. This, looking like a pogrom in the making, galvanized resistance, which in turn seemingly validated military concerns, which caused a full crackdown. The result is a spiraling conflict on the border, outrage on the floor of the Rhenish Republikstag, and what very much looks like an armed uprising with guns crossing the river into Wendish territory from the eastern states of Rhenland, triggering riots and strikes in Great Mossavia's own Deutscher territories.
The result is effectively a powder keg waiting to go off. If a grand European war is to start again, it's going to be there.
And if that war is going to start, then Rhenland is ready to fight it. It is the view of more than a few Rhenish that this war was an inevitability, and one that has been brewing for centuries. The German people that other realms refer to as little more than "Deutschers" have had an awful time of it for centuries: there was no great Empire to protect their princedoms, for the Merovingians of old took the head of one Charles Martel, and ended a lineage of legends before they could even begin. Austrasia was the first part of the old Frankish realm to fall apart, and of all the realms of yore, mighty Saxony had been the last. They had not gone quietly into the night. The bonds of kinship were strong amongst them, and when they called, the tribes of the Angelcynn came, forging a friendship that has lived to the present, but their cause was doomed - with the Danelanders bearing down from the north, the Wends from the east and turncloak Franks to the west, tribal Saxony burnt in fire, and its fall marked the end of the great kingdoms of old. For nearly a millennium, the German people had no great nation to protect them, and were little more than dozens of squabbling princedoms, pawns in the games of others. The taxes they paid with their honest trade went to fund castles and halls that they were not their own, and they fought and died for nations that cared not for the blood they shed. For years did they suffer, a people without a country to call their own.
But in the dawning days of the nineteenth century, the gears of change began to turn, and in their favour for the first time for so long. War had come to the region as it so often had, but new ideas came with it. Individually, the towns and cities of all that was left of Old Germania were little more than a flea in the coat of the true great powers...but when they began to work together, when they forged alliances, they began to forge a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts. Although caught on both sides of the fighting, the region was the home of the heaviest conflict between the Angelcynn and the Danelanders, old friends on one side and old foes on another, but although German men fought for both sides, it sparked critical changes, and in a feat that surprised many at the time, more and more began to rally beneath the banner of a newborn Rhenish Confederacy, banding together into a common cause. It was this organization that shattered the grip of the Danelanders over the northeastern territories, driving them back at the tip of a bayonet. In that, the Confederacy had shown one critical thing: divided, the city states were vulnerable, but united...
The gears had set into motion, and in fifty years, a thing came to be that had not been for a thousand years: a German nation. The Bundesrepublik Rhenland is a young nation, but a powerful one, built around the twin engines of the Ruhr Valley and the Rhine itself, and one whose mere existence has upended the balance of power in Europe. It is a nation of strong ideals, and chief amongst them is that it is the solemn protector of the German people, both within and without the nation, and will not let them be abused as they have been for so long. Wendish misdeeds have gone on long enough - already, an ultimatum is being drafted to demand that they leave the "Deutscher" territories of the west and plebiscites held for immediate referendums on independence or integration into the Republik. If they will not, then Rhenish arms are ready to show them that the German people are not pawns in this game, but kings.
And if they go to fight, the Angelcynn are bound to be right behind them. Though the land proper might be known as Anglaland, the nation is that of the Anglekin, and their history begins in the dawning days of the great migrations that followed the fall of Old Rome...but it is in more recent history that things become more interesting. Smashed by a storm that seemed as if to have been delivered by the hands of God himself, the great Danish invasion was killed before it could truly even begin, and paved the way for a unification of the four great realms of the Anglo-Saxons beneath a single banner in response to the great threat of the east: that of the white draca! From there, the path for their rise as a major power seemed secure, but the Angelcynn were a nation on the outskirts of Europe, and though they could boast of peaceful lands, they were far removed from the action and bustle of the continent. It was a place from which they had grown apart over the years, separated from by their channel of water, but amongst a sea of strangers, there was an island of familiarity - Old Saxony, of which they themselves could certainly trace some descent, was the most notable of these, and something of an ally...especially when the reprisals against Danelander raids began, and Saxon ships tipped their sails for the east. Alas, Saxony was destroyed in battle, overwhelmed by too many enemies on too many fronts, but the bond remains strong. Alliances with the mainland German statelets had been necessary to protect the trade ports that connected the Angelcynn to the mainland and served as critical markets for their goods, and the two have fought side by side on many occasions; more still, intermarriage was common between their nobility, and wandering theatres and poets often crossed from one side of the sea to the next, altering the wordhoard of the Anglecynn over time - even today, Englisċ is almost mutually intelligible with Rhenish German, though jokes abound as to both parties needing to be drunk if they are to properly understand.
But it is not to the continent alone that the Angelcynn look now, but to certain far flung holdings around the world, and most especially, those across the great Atlantic Ocean. When the Arabs and the Moors found their way to the new world under the leadership of the legendary explorer, Ahmad ibn Mājid, whose name is born by the southern half of the continent that he discovered (Majīda, or the Glorious, supposedly the first word that he uttered upon sighting the eastern shores), the Angelcynn were keen to seek out this land for themselves, and succeeded in founding great colonies in its north...and waging regular war against the Danelands, ultimately dislodging them from the eastern seaboard of Feorlond after a series of bloody campaigns that ended with the Dane colonists forced into the frozen north. Feorlond has turned into a thriving part of the realm in its own right, and its resources have made the fleet of the Angelcynn second to none in Europe - even their old Danelander rivals would struggle to match them there, even with the power of their Skandi puppet states to the north. Protecting their far flung empire may not be easy, but the promise is made and the oath is sworn: should the Wendish refuse to back down, then the Angelcynn will follow Rhenland to war. Already, their dreadnoughts load their bunkers with coal, and combat squadrons move into ready positions across the known world.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, is that this means that Daneland is watching events unfold very, very closely. Once one of the greatest powers in Europe, Daneland is a realm that has seen better days: feared in the distant past as the Viking raiders of yore, and again in closer centuries for the strength of their ships and the courage of their armies, the Kingdom of the Danes has been increasingly outclassed by its enemies ever since the turn of the eighteenth century, where the limits of their land and numbers began to show. Considered by more than a few to be the "sick man" of Europe, Daneland has had dark times aplenty. Repeated wars with the Anglecynn very nearly shattered Daneland, and the trade of colonies overseas for the ability to maintain order at home and suppress Skandi uprisings was considered a bargain at the time, but the consequences were a loss of much needed incomes to sustain Daneland and the remnants of its empire. For all that the Angles have tried to do, Vinland yet holds on the north, though Feorlond eyes it hungrily, and the various lesser Danelander possessions around the rest of the world are dangerously exposed. This was all bad enough as it was, but then the Northern War came, and saw them lose yet another precious possession, and one of the most valuable yet - a major piece of Old Saxony, Bremen and the rest of the Weserlands may have been home to a great deal of Deutschers, but was also a major piece of Daneland's core at home in Europe, a vital source of resources and income, but also manpower...and as if that was not bad enough already, the territory was quickly absorbed into the newborn Bundesrepublik, a new power on the continent, a rising star, and a dangerous ally for Anglaland.
For the Danes, the feeling of many is that they have been backed into a corner. The Anglecynn have took their hard earned possessions and income overseas, and the Rhenish are hungrily eying their lands in Europe. The Skandi are not nearly as quiet as they had once been, but the Dane grip still holds...but if it is to maintain the remnants of its empire and perhaps climb out of this decline and return once more to the path of glory that had been trod by their forefathers, then they must quell the threat at their border. The Wendish are strange bedfellows, but they and Mossavia may yet force the Rhenish star to set early, and if so, such could be the path for the Danes to reclaim the lost Weserland, obtain precious reparations, and give the Skandi a victory to rebuild confidence in their union. If all that can be done, then perhaps Daneland might yet recover. They will make their contribution to war on land, but it is at sea that they must make their biggest role known. Against Anglelander dreadnoughts, things will surely be dangerous, but the Danes have seen promising tests of their new undervandsbåd, or submarines...
...but the naval war is not something that they must conduct alone, for they have an unlikely ally in that regard: Vascony. Perhaps not merely the oldest nation in Europe, but even the oldest culture, Vascony (or the Basques, depending on one's place of origin and spelling) can trace its history in an unbroken line back to the Vascones, a tribe that inhabited the same lands before the birth of even the Roman Empire. Vascony is an ancient nation, with an ancient history. They have seen empires rise and fall. They saw the Visigoths come and take Hispania as their own, and then fail. They have seen the Arabs of the Umayyad Caliphate come, and then fail. They have seen Christian realms rise, and then fail. It is said that the soil of old Hispania is stained red from the sheer number of wars and killings that have taken place in that land, the terra rossa that has drank the blood of armies for a thousand, thousand years, fighting for an advantage that no one was ever able to hold. The Vascones have seen it all. They have endured it all, and where other nations named "Castille" or "Al-Andalus" might have ended up as little more than names in the dustbin of history, Vascony has survived, grown, and expanded. They cannot claim to control all of Hispania (though if they did, such would be a bigger shake up for Europe than the founding of Rhenland!), but inheritance through marriage, diplomacy and the occasional war has seen them establish a modest empire in the Mediterranean, and in the near abroad (the island of Koabana is a proud possession of Vascony, especially famous for its Koabanan tobacco), and they possess well developed insutries, and more than that, very well protected ones. With the rest of Hispania consisting of little more than some dozen Christian or Muslim statelets, Vascony sits with strongly protected borders: it would take a great coalition from the south to do them harm, and to the north sits the Pyrenees Mountains, and now as they were two thousand years ago, these mountains serve as a very strong defensive bulwark, one that has seen the people of Vascony thrive behind their protections, beneath the shining sun that is marked on their flag in the form of the lauburu.
All this means that Vascony is a stronger nation than its size might imply, and one that must be considered a credible threat...but history does not begin in 1917. Much as the Anglecynn might be old friends of Rhenland, Mossavia and the people of Vascony have a historical alliance, and one that came as a result of shared interests, for between the two of them lies a shared enemy: the realm of Aquitaine. A powerful kingdom, Aquitaine and Vascony have quarreled more than once, just as Aquitaine and Mossovy have quarreled over control of the north Italian city states and their great game of central Europe. Alliance between Mossavia and Vascony has seen both prosper from the arrangement; an attempt by Aquitaine to seize the island of Corsica as part of a grander strategy to control Italian trade was foiled in 1680, when galleys from Vascony struck at sea just as Mossavian troops pushed in from the east. Their defensive interests are tied together, and it is that which brings Vascony into alliance eagerly - though they have no quarrel with Rhenland, they will fight to support Mossavia, so as to maintain the balance of power on the continent, a balance that sees them live in peace. With such defensive terrain serving as much as an impediment to attack as it does a boon to defense, Vascony has built a mighty fleet of their own, a steel bulwark to protect their otherwise vulnerable shores, and maintain the security of their Mediterranean empire. They do not want a war, and have done much to try and diffuse the situation...but if the Wends refuse the ultimatum of the Rhenish, then Rhenland will go to war, and Mossavia will join the Wends, and the Angelcynn will declare war on the both of them, and the Danelands will follow against the Angelanders, and so it would go. A great conflagration is poised to devour Europe in industrialized warfare, and it is one that the people of Vascony do not want.
But if the Basques must fight, then they will fight.
And their familiar foe, Aquitaine, is just as ready to make war. Ever since they had been unshackled north in the Great Frankish Dissolution, Aquitaine and Occitania have been one of the most powerful states in Western Europe, a powerhouse built on the back of its fertile soil and mines, complemented by strong trade, and became stronger still with the power of its colonial empire, especially the crowning jewel of it in Nòva Aquitània. One of the strongest new world states, and one born from the conquest of a number of native realms such as those of the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs, the loss of Nòva Aquitània to an independence movement in 1786 was a serious setback for Aquitania, one that had been "assisted" by supplies of weaponry and gunpowder from Vascony and other realms interested in a weaker Aquitaine, but not a fatal one, and the imperial project of Aquitaine's overseas expansion has recently found a pleasant new locale in the form of two great islands in the southeast of Asia - the eastern islands of Nòva Marselha and the vast continent of Nòva Bordel are both welcome additions to their patrimony, especially since agreements have been made with the Anglecynn to settle their shared interests in the Indonesian region, and instead work together to corner that market. All this together makes Aquitaine a major player in Europe still, and although their industry is not quite so strong as that of Rhenland or Mossavia, they are still ready to stare their eastern rivals down. Mossavia is an old foe of Aquitaine, one that goes back to well after the Dissolution saw Aquitaine free itself of the then seemingly corpse-like throne of Neustria, both had a shared interest in the future of the Italian city states north of the Holy Realm of the Pope in Rome, a thing that had led the both of them to blows more than once, and on occasion to blows with the Pope himself, but making it worse is how Aquitaine can often find itself facing both a sword to the front and another to the rear - Mossavia to the east wants them driven out of Italy, and Vascony to the south would love nothing more than a weak Aquitaine to remove them as a threat completely and ensure their own total security. The centuries have cooled the fire that had burnt between them and Merovingia, who tends to be a more amicable neighbour than not, but the defensive position of Aquitaine can often feel...untenable.
The creation of Rhenland, then, seemed a gift straight from the hands of God, for it has presented the great game of Europe iwth a new player eager for allies, and one with shared interests for the throne of Aquitaine - Rhenland wants the German people under its banner out of Mossavia and the Wendish Empire, and Aquitaine would love nothing more than to see one of the two threats to its defensive position weakened. If Mossavia could be crippled, then the Basques could be isolated, and their empire dismantled: with no further threats to their security, Aquitaine would be free to continue its arrangement of Italy as a natural part of its sphere of influence, with client states on Corsica and Sardinia, and more, to perhaps allow them to choke Mossavia out of Italy entirely, and even force them into a landlocked state.
Fro this reason, for the future development of Aquitaine's empire and for the security of what they already have, they are eager to join the Rhenish in cutting down some shared enemies, and commence a glorious new age for the empire.
Such is the will and whim of the great powers of Europe. There are other states, stood on the sidelines. Merovingia, preoccupied with internal problems and in no state at all for a fight. The Turks in the east, who might see any redeployment by the Wends as a portent of opportunity, either of peace or of war. The Avars and Keszthely eye know that the gaze of Praha is to the west, and they are gaining an ever more free hand in the Balkans. Romania and Hungary prepare to bunker down to face the worst. The Irish Confederacy bites down, grimly, hoping only that the struggle will not spill into their newborn nation. Mighty Armenia rebuilds its strength after the early disasters of the twentieth century, and far Arabia slumbers, content more to work in peace than to seek battle as they ponder the great fields of black gold that seem to bubble beneath their feet.
There are countless nations in Europe, countless nations in their world, but it takes but a handful to decide history. The great powers are at an impasse, and the tools of diplomacy are beginning to reach their exhaustion. A storm is brewing on the horizon, and its dark clouds are all too quickly drawing near. It can be felt in the air of any city and any street. Unease. Uncertainty. A tension, waiting to be broken.
It is 1917.
And the Great War is coming.
/end scenario.
Hopefully that's interesting to at least one person Basically, this scenario was a spur of the moment thing - I was designed tanks for the AFV thread, and just really wanted to branch away from the OTL to an entirely new continuity of history to give me a free hand to differ vastly from the historical record, and that led to naming factions, naming vehicles, and the rest just sort of snowballed together and we ended up with this. I'm going sort of by vehicular era here, so if things are popular, I might actually do another map showing how the Great War developed and the post war world, or something along that line. It's all work in progress stuff, with lots of things up in the air, but I think it's a fun enough scenario to be worth posting
Edit: I'm not sure if this thread's a bit different when it comes to asking for feedback, but just in case, feedback on any part of this would be super-duper welcome. I want to get better at this, so I'd love some advice on my mapping, too, and where I might improve
So, have my first real AH map - bear with me a little, as I'm super-duper inexperienced when it comes to this, but I really did try:
But who are these major players? We'll start from the top:
Great Mossavia, or just plain Mossavia, can be inferred to be a Bohemia that went on a radically different course compared to its historical counterpart - its very name, Mossavia, is a bastardized version of Moravia, which was the dominant part of the realm for some time - the seed of what might've become Bohemia got smashed early in history, and the result was a union not so much of Bohemia-Moravia, but Moravia-Bohemia, the former dragging around the latter's crippled husk. Eventually overtime, the Bohemian component eventually began to get back on its feet thanks to silver mining and general recovery as a whole, but by then, Moravia had effectively become the dominant part of the union, and had heavily influenced its western counterpart, both in structure and in culture. In their timeline, the realm that might simply be referred to in ours as Bohemia was in theirs just Moravia, and in a certain fluke of history (believed to be either the result of a king with a speech impediment or certain lingual influences from neighbouring realms), Moravia became Mossavia, a thing that occured within the last five hundred or so years. It is those centuries that have made Great Mossavia a reality, as it inherited Styria (ATL Austria) through marriage and absorbed that realm into itself, and with steady supplies of coin owing to its vast mines, a strongly defensive position to fall back to in times of war, Great Mossavia has steadily grown into the size and shape that we see today.
Unfortunately for Great Mossavia, however, the situation has gotten awfully complicated since the dawn of the nineteenth century. The disparate Deutscher princedoms to the northwest rallied together after the bloodbath that was the War of the North, which began as a colonial conflict between the Angelcynn and Daneland that saw armies marching through what would one day become Rhenland, and the spread of that funny idea known as "nationalism" added fuel to the fire, and the result was that Europe went up like a tinderbox. By the time that the war ended, the seed of Rhenland had been planted. At this time, Rhenland is probably no more than sixty years old, but has seriously upended the balance of power, and the result is...complicated. The most critical complication of them all comes in the south and east of the Rhenish lands, territories that had once been client states of Mossavia and the Wends, but goes beyond them into the primarily Deutscher regions on both sides of the border, which increasingly yearn to join Rhenland. Having some experience with how to settle these questions due to lessons taken in their regular punching matches with the Occitans of Aquitainia, which sees both states holding large amounts of territory outside the reach of the Papal State, the Mossavians constructed a pseudo-independent client state to their northwest, which has done much to diffuse the issue on their side.
Unfortunately, over in the Wendish Empire, the old autocratic ways of its leaders decided on a rather simpler method of dealing with insurrectionists and agitators, which was to have them shot. The largest power in Europe (other than the nation of the Turks to their east - this is a surviving Khazaria which destroyed the proto-Rus, and goes well past the east of the map to about the eastern border of Kazakhstan, though tends to be more "western" orientated in recent years, which could be thought of as the engine room of the modern nation due to the rich chernozem soils of the region having allowed for massive development there), the Wendish Empire is one of the oldest nations to be able to claim some form of continuity and officially places its birthdate in the early ninth century; it is surpassed in that area solely by the claim of the Merovingian Franks, who although having long since lost their founding dynasty centuries ago, still tie the origin of their state to 486 AD, when Clovis I conquered the Kingdom of Soissons. Unfortunately for the Wends, however, they have been something of a victim of their own success: whereas the divorce of Neustria and Aquitaine was so terrible for the former as to give them a rude wake up call (and to forsake that particular name forever as being cursed, as nothing good happened to the realm when it had it, and saw people want to go back to the "good old days" of the Merovingian realm) , the Wendish Empire is considered to have one of the strongest aristocratic structures anywhere, and it was only about thirty years ago that they finally abolished serfdom.
Historically speaking, the Wends have little love for Mossavia, with whom they have fought more than once...but the rise of Rhenland has changed calculations a great deal - although there are those who are still confident that Wendish steel and courage can carry the day, they have a poor industrial backbone, one of the lowest rates of literacy in Europe, and a generally underperforming economy. Rhenland, on the other hand, is an increasingly industrialized powerhouse built around the massive Rhine river system, and there are serious concerns as to what could happen to the Empire in the event of an armed conflict. That said, it is a conflict that the Empire may very well have blundered itself into - its heavily aristocratic officer corps can often run their regiments like petty kingdoms in their own right, and the western territories of the Empire have always been home to large Deutscher populations. When a few soldiers got drunk in a bar and ended up in a brawl that got five men killed, the actions of local commanders afraid that this could be a prelude to a Rhenish attack saw one act with the desire to cut things off at the head by gathering up believed Rhenish sympathizers and agitators. This, looking like a pogrom in the making, galvanized resistance, which in turn seemingly validated military concerns, which caused a full crackdown. The result is a spiraling conflict on the border, outrage on the floor of the Rhenish Republikstag, and what very much looks like an armed uprising with guns crossing the river into Wendish territory from the eastern states of Rhenland, triggering riots and strikes in Great Mossavia's own Deutscher territories.
The result is effectively a powder keg waiting to go off. If a grand European war is to start again, it's going to be there.
And if that war is going to start, then Rhenland is ready to fight it. It is the view of more than a few Rhenish that this war was an inevitability, and one that has been brewing for centuries. The German people that other realms refer to as little more than "Deutschers" have had an awful time of it for centuries: there was no great Empire to protect their princedoms, for the Merovingians of old took the head of one Charles Martel, and ended a lineage of legends before they could even begin. Austrasia was the first part of the old Frankish realm to fall apart, and of all the realms of yore, mighty Saxony had been the last. They had not gone quietly into the night. The bonds of kinship were strong amongst them, and when they called, the tribes of the Angelcynn came, forging a friendship that has lived to the present, but their cause was doomed - with the Danelanders bearing down from the north, the Wends from the east and turncloak Franks to the west, tribal Saxony burnt in fire, and its fall marked the end of the great kingdoms of old. For nearly a millennium, the German people had no great nation to protect them, and were little more than dozens of squabbling princedoms, pawns in the games of others. The taxes they paid with their honest trade went to fund castles and halls that they were not their own, and they fought and died for nations that cared not for the blood they shed. For years did they suffer, a people without a country to call their own.
But in the dawning days of the nineteenth century, the gears of change began to turn, and in their favour for the first time for so long. War had come to the region as it so often had, but new ideas came with it. Individually, the towns and cities of all that was left of Old Germania were little more than a flea in the coat of the true great powers...but when they began to work together, when they forged alliances, they began to forge a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts. Although caught on both sides of the fighting, the region was the home of the heaviest conflict between the Angelcynn and the Danelanders, old friends on one side and old foes on another, but although German men fought for both sides, it sparked critical changes, and in a feat that surprised many at the time, more and more began to rally beneath the banner of a newborn Rhenish Confederacy, banding together into a common cause. It was this organization that shattered the grip of the Danelanders over the northeastern territories, driving them back at the tip of a bayonet. In that, the Confederacy had shown one critical thing: divided, the city states were vulnerable, but united...
The gears had set into motion, and in fifty years, a thing came to be that had not been for a thousand years: a German nation. The Bundesrepublik Rhenland is a young nation, but a powerful one, built around the twin engines of the Ruhr Valley and the Rhine itself, and one whose mere existence has upended the balance of power in Europe. It is a nation of strong ideals, and chief amongst them is that it is the solemn protector of the German people, both within and without the nation, and will not let them be abused as they have been for so long. Wendish misdeeds have gone on long enough - already, an ultimatum is being drafted to demand that they leave the "Deutscher" territories of the west and plebiscites held for immediate referendums on independence or integration into the Republik. If they will not, then Rhenish arms are ready to show them that the German people are not pawns in this game, but kings.
And if they go to fight, the Angelcynn are bound to be right behind them. Though the land proper might be known as Anglaland, the nation is that of the Anglekin, and their history begins in the dawning days of the great migrations that followed the fall of Old Rome...but it is in more recent history that things become more interesting. Smashed by a storm that seemed as if to have been delivered by the hands of God himself, the great Danish invasion was killed before it could truly even begin, and paved the way for a unification of the four great realms of the Anglo-Saxons beneath a single banner in response to the great threat of the east: that of the white draca! From there, the path for their rise as a major power seemed secure, but the Angelcynn were a nation on the outskirts of Europe, and though they could boast of peaceful lands, they were far removed from the action and bustle of the continent. It was a place from which they had grown apart over the years, separated from by their channel of water, but amongst a sea of strangers, there was an island of familiarity - Old Saxony, of which they themselves could certainly trace some descent, was the most notable of these, and something of an ally...especially when the reprisals against Danelander raids began, and Saxon ships tipped their sails for the east. Alas, Saxony was destroyed in battle, overwhelmed by too many enemies on too many fronts, but the bond remains strong. Alliances with the mainland German statelets had been necessary to protect the trade ports that connected the Angelcynn to the mainland and served as critical markets for their goods, and the two have fought side by side on many occasions; more still, intermarriage was common between their nobility, and wandering theatres and poets often crossed from one side of the sea to the next, altering the wordhoard of the Anglecynn over time - even today, Englisċ is almost mutually intelligible with Rhenish German, though jokes abound as to both parties needing to be drunk if they are to properly understand.
But it is not to the continent alone that the Angelcynn look now, but to certain far flung holdings around the world, and most especially, those across the great Atlantic Ocean. When the Arabs and the Moors found their way to the new world under the leadership of the legendary explorer, Ahmad ibn Mājid, whose name is born by the southern half of the continent that he discovered (Majīda, or the Glorious, supposedly the first word that he uttered upon sighting the eastern shores), the Angelcynn were keen to seek out this land for themselves, and succeeded in founding great colonies in its north...and waging regular war against the Danelands, ultimately dislodging them from the eastern seaboard of Feorlond after a series of bloody campaigns that ended with the Dane colonists forced into the frozen north. Feorlond has turned into a thriving part of the realm in its own right, and its resources have made the fleet of the Angelcynn second to none in Europe - even their old Danelander rivals would struggle to match them there, even with the power of their Skandi puppet states to the north. Protecting their far flung empire may not be easy, but the promise is made and the oath is sworn: should the Wendish refuse to back down, then the Angelcynn will follow Rhenland to war. Already, their dreadnoughts load their bunkers with coal, and combat squadrons move into ready positions across the known world.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, is that this means that Daneland is watching events unfold very, very closely. Once one of the greatest powers in Europe, Daneland is a realm that has seen better days: feared in the distant past as the Viking raiders of yore, and again in closer centuries for the strength of their ships and the courage of their armies, the Kingdom of the Danes has been increasingly outclassed by its enemies ever since the turn of the eighteenth century, where the limits of their land and numbers began to show. Considered by more than a few to be the "sick man" of Europe, Daneland has had dark times aplenty. Repeated wars with the Anglecynn very nearly shattered Daneland, and the trade of colonies overseas for the ability to maintain order at home and suppress Skandi uprisings was considered a bargain at the time, but the consequences were a loss of much needed incomes to sustain Daneland and the remnants of its empire. For all that the Angles have tried to do, Vinland yet holds on the north, though Feorlond eyes it hungrily, and the various lesser Danelander possessions around the rest of the world are dangerously exposed. This was all bad enough as it was, but then the Northern War came, and saw them lose yet another precious possession, and one of the most valuable yet - a major piece of Old Saxony, Bremen and the rest of the Weserlands may have been home to a great deal of Deutschers, but was also a major piece of Daneland's core at home in Europe, a vital source of resources and income, but also manpower...and as if that was not bad enough already, the territory was quickly absorbed into the newborn Bundesrepublik, a new power on the continent, a rising star, and a dangerous ally for Anglaland.
For the Danes, the feeling of many is that they have been backed into a corner. The Anglecynn have took their hard earned possessions and income overseas, and the Rhenish are hungrily eying their lands in Europe. The Skandi are not nearly as quiet as they had once been, but the Dane grip still holds...but if it is to maintain the remnants of its empire and perhaps climb out of this decline and return once more to the path of glory that had been trod by their forefathers, then they must quell the threat at their border. The Wendish are strange bedfellows, but they and Mossavia may yet force the Rhenish star to set early, and if so, such could be the path for the Danes to reclaim the lost Weserland, obtain precious reparations, and give the Skandi a victory to rebuild confidence in their union. If all that can be done, then perhaps Daneland might yet recover. They will make their contribution to war on land, but it is at sea that they must make their biggest role known. Against Anglelander dreadnoughts, things will surely be dangerous, but the Danes have seen promising tests of their new undervandsbåd, or submarines...
...but the naval war is not something that they must conduct alone, for they have an unlikely ally in that regard: Vascony. Perhaps not merely the oldest nation in Europe, but even the oldest culture, Vascony (or the Basques, depending on one's place of origin and spelling) can trace its history in an unbroken line back to the Vascones, a tribe that inhabited the same lands before the birth of even the Roman Empire. Vascony is an ancient nation, with an ancient history. They have seen empires rise and fall. They saw the Visigoths come and take Hispania as their own, and then fail. They have seen the Arabs of the Umayyad Caliphate come, and then fail. They have seen Christian realms rise, and then fail. It is said that the soil of old Hispania is stained red from the sheer number of wars and killings that have taken place in that land, the terra rossa that has drank the blood of armies for a thousand, thousand years, fighting for an advantage that no one was ever able to hold. The Vascones have seen it all. They have endured it all, and where other nations named "Castille" or "Al-Andalus" might have ended up as little more than names in the dustbin of history, Vascony has survived, grown, and expanded. They cannot claim to control all of Hispania (though if they did, such would be a bigger shake up for Europe than the founding of Rhenland!), but inheritance through marriage, diplomacy and the occasional war has seen them establish a modest empire in the Mediterranean, and in the near abroad (the island of Koabana is a proud possession of Vascony, especially famous for its Koabanan tobacco), and they possess well developed insutries, and more than that, very well protected ones. With the rest of Hispania consisting of little more than some dozen Christian or Muslim statelets, Vascony sits with strongly protected borders: it would take a great coalition from the south to do them harm, and to the north sits the Pyrenees Mountains, and now as they were two thousand years ago, these mountains serve as a very strong defensive bulwark, one that has seen the people of Vascony thrive behind their protections, beneath the shining sun that is marked on their flag in the form of the lauburu.
All this means that Vascony is a stronger nation than its size might imply, and one that must be considered a credible threat...but history does not begin in 1917. Much as the Anglecynn might be old friends of Rhenland, Mossavia and the people of Vascony have a historical alliance, and one that came as a result of shared interests, for between the two of them lies a shared enemy: the realm of Aquitaine. A powerful kingdom, Aquitaine and Vascony have quarreled more than once, just as Aquitaine and Mossovy have quarreled over control of the north Italian city states and their great game of central Europe. Alliance between Mossavia and Vascony has seen both prosper from the arrangement; an attempt by Aquitaine to seize the island of Corsica as part of a grander strategy to control Italian trade was foiled in 1680, when galleys from Vascony struck at sea just as Mossavian troops pushed in from the east. Their defensive interests are tied together, and it is that which brings Vascony into alliance eagerly - though they have no quarrel with Rhenland, they will fight to support Mossavia, so as to maintain the balance of power on the continent, a balance that sees them live in peace. With such defensive terrain serving as much as an impediment to attack as it does a boon to defense, Vascony has built a mighty fleet of their own, a steel bulwark to protect their otherwise vulnerable shores, and maintain the security of their Mediterranean empire. They do not want a war, and have done much to try and diffuse the situation...but if the Wends refuse the ultimatum of the Rhenish, then Rhenland will go to war, and Mossavia will join the Wends, and the Angelcynn will declare war on the both of them, and the Danelands will follow against the Angelanders, and so it would go. A great conflagration is poised to devour Europe in industrialized warfare, and it is one that the people of Vascony do not want.
But if the Basques must fight, then they will fight.
And their familiar foe, Aquitaine, is just as ready to make war. Ever since they had been unshackled north in the Great Frankish Dissolution, Aquitaine and Occitania have been one of the most powerful states in Western Europe, a powerhouse built on the back of its fertile soil and mines, complemented by strong trade, and became stronger still with the power of its colonial empire, especially the crowning jewel of it in Nòva Aquitània. One of the strongest new world states, and one born from the conquest of a number of native realms such as those of the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs, the loss of Nòva Aquitània to an independence movement in 1786 was a serious setback for Aquitania, one that had been "assisted" by supplies of weaponry and gunpowder from Vascony and other realms interested in a weaker Aquitaine, but not a fatal one, and the imperial project of Aquitaine's overseas expansion has recently found a pleasant new locale in the form of two great islands in the southeast of Asia - the eastern islands of Nòva Marselha and the vast continent of Nòva Bordel are both welcome additions to their patrimony, especially since agreements have been made with the Anglecynn to settle their shared interests in the Indonesian region, and instead work together to corner that market. All this together makes Aquitaine a major player in Europe still, and although their industry is not quite so strong as that of Rhenland or Mossavia, they are still ready to stare their eastern rivals down. Mossavia is an old foe of Aquitaine, one that goes back to well after the Dissolution saw Aquitaine free itself of the then seemingly corpse-like throne of Neustria, both had a shared interest in the future of the Italian city states north of the Holy Realm of the Pope in Rome, a thing that had led the both of them to blows more than once, and on occasion to blows with the Pope himself, but making it worse is how Aquitaine can often find itself facing both a sword to the front and another to the rear - Mossavia to the east wants them driven out of Italy, and Vascony to the south would love nothing more than a weak Aquitaine to remove them as a threat completely and ensure their own total security. The centuries have cooled the fire that had burnt between them and Merovingia, who tends to be a more amicable neighbour than not, but the defensive position of Aquitaine can often feel...untenable.
The creation of Rhenland, then, seemed a gift straight from the hands of God, for it has presented the great game of Europe iwth a new player eager for allies, and one with shared interests for the throne of Aquitaine - Rhenland wants the German people under its banner out of Mossavia and the Wendish Empire, and Aquitaine would love nothing more than to see one of the two threats to its defensive position weakened. If Mossavia could be crippled, then the Basques could be isolated, and their empire dismantled: with no further threats to their security, Aquitaine would be free to continue its arrangement of Italy as a natural part of its sphere of influence, with client states on Corsica and Sardinia, and more, to perhaps allow them to choke Mossavia out of Italy entirely, and even force them into a landlocked state.
Fro this reason, for the future development of Aquitaine's empire and for the security of what they already have, they are eager to join the Rhenish in cutting down some shared enemies, and commence a glorious new age for the empire.
Such is the will and whim of the great powers of Europe. There are other states, stood on the sidelines. Merovingia, preoccupied with internal problems and in no state at all for a fight. The Turks in the east, who might see any redeployment by the Wends as a portent of opportunity, either of peace or of war. The Avars and Keszthely eye know that the gaze of Praha is to the west, and they are gaining an ever more free hand in the Balkans. Romania and Hungary prepare to bunker down to face the worst. The Irish Confederacy bites down, grimly, hoping only that the struggle will not spill into their newborn nation. Mighty Armenia rebuilds its strength after the early disasters of the twentieth century, and far Arabia slumbers, content more to work in peace than to seek battle as they ponder the great fields of black gold that seem to bubble beneath their feet.
There are countless nations in Europe, countless nations in their world, but it takes but a handful to decide history. The great powers are at an impasse, and the tools of diplomacy are beginning to reach their exhaustion. A storm is brewing on the horizon, and its dark clouds are all too quickly drawing near. It can be felt in the air of any city and any street. Unease. Uncertainty. A tension, waiting to be broken.
It is 1917.
And the Great War is coming.
/end scenario.
Hopefully that's interesting to at least one person
Basically, this scenario was a spur of the moment thing - I was designed tanks for the AFV thread, and just really wanted to branch away from the OTL to an entirely new continuity of history to give me a free hand to differ vastly from the historical record, and that led to naming factions, naming vehicles, and the rest just sort of snowballed together and we ended up with this. I'm going sort of by vehicular era here, so if things are popular, I might actually do another map showing how the Great War developed and the post war world, or something along that line. It's all work in progress stuff, with lots of things up in the air, but I think it's a fun enough scenario to be worth posting Edit: I'm not sure if this thread's a bit different when it comes to asking for feedback, but just in case, feedback on any part of this would be super-duper welcome. I want to get better at this, so I'd love some advice on my mapping, too, and where I might improve
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"Somebody stole my comically large baguette, can't have shit in Détroit..."Map of a surviving New France that evolved into the Republic of Canada, the namesake country of my timeline A Few Acres of Snow:
"You gotta lose your baguette in Detroit, Roche Cite!"
(Yes, I should be hanged for that, I know...)
Love
really like the work here - I have a similar like our world but different world building project on going using the worldanvil tool - https://www.worldanvil.com/w/novaterra-millsian. In my world the united provinces of burgundy are the new power in north west aliaeuropa . My planned timeline is mid 1910s equivalent.So I posted this over in the alternate armoured vehicles thread in Post-1900, but after seeing water123's guide for WorldA maps and it's rule 6 (don't worry too much about ASBs), I feel a hell of a lot more cosy with the idea of posting in this thread, and a lot less afraid of being crucified on the spot for not being slavishly obedient to every exact plausibility
So, have my first real AH map - bear with me a little, as I'm super-duper inexperienced when it comes to this, but I really did try:
You can tell at a glance that Europe looks rather...different from how it should be in 1917, and there's a very good reason for this: this map is effectively the result of multiple PoDs going back all the way to the aftermath of the fall of Rome - their history branched from ours as early as about 400AD, sending the world hurtling into a radically different direction...but despite that, a lot of familiar players are still here. If history could be likened to a theatre stage, then the same "actors" are on the board, but in different roles and costumes than you might be familiar with. Some groups migrated into different locations, some had a hell of a lot more luck than they did historically, others underperformed, and after over a millenia and a half, Europe looks so very familiar, and yet so very different at the same time. Though history mightn't repeat itself, it sure does rhyme, and in 1917, Europe finds itself poised on the brink of calamity, as the great powers are set to have the mother of all show downs, and bring forth a new era of industrialized warfare. There's two critical blocks in this conflict, and they are the Wittenberg Pact (led by Great Mossavia) and the Western Powers (led by Rhenland), and if the two fight, then the very future of Europe as they know it hangs in the balance.
But who are these major players? We'll start from the top:
Great Mossavia, or just plain Mossavia, can be inferred to be a Bohemia that went on a radically different course compared to its historical counterpart - its very name, Mossavia, is a bastardized version of Moravia, which was the dominant part of the realm for some time - the seed of what might've become Bohemia got smashed early in history, and the result was a union not so much of Bohemia-Moravia, but Moravia-Bohemia, the former dragging around the latter's crippled husk. Eventually overtime, the Bohemian component eventually began to get back on its feet thanks to silver mining and general recovery as a whole, but by then, Moravia had effectively become the dominant part of the union, and had heavily influenced its western counterpart, both in structure and in culture. In their timeline, the realm that might simply be referred to in ours as Bohemia was in theirs just Moravia, and in a certain fluke of history (believed to be either the result of a king with a speech impediment or certain lingual influences from neighbouring realms), Moravia became Mossavia, a thing that occured within the last five hundred or so years. It is those centuries that have made Great Mossavia a reality, as it inherited Styria (ATL Austria) through marriage and absorbed that realm into itself, and with steady supplies of coin owing to its vast mines, a strongly defensive position to fall back to in times of war, Great Mossavia has steadily grown into the size and shape that we see today.
Unfortunately for Great Mossavia, however, the situation has gotten awfully complicated since the dawn of the nineteenth century. The disparate Deutscher princedoms to the northwest rallied together after the bloodbath that was the War of the North, which began as a colonial conflict between the Angelcynn and Daneland that saw armies marching through what would one day become Rhenland, and the spread of that funny idea known as "nationalism" added fuel to the fire, and the result was that Europe went up like a tinderbox. By the time that the war ended, the seed of Rhenland had been planted. At this time, Rhenland is probably no more than sixty years old, but has seriously upended the balance of power, and the result is...complicated. The most critical complication of them all comes in the south and east of the Rhenish lands, territories that had once been client states of Mossavia and the Wends, but goes beyond them into the primarily Deutscher regions on both sides of the border, which increasingly yearn to join Rhenland. Having some experience with how to settle these questions due to lessons taken in their regular punching matches with the Occitans of Aquitainia, which sees both states holding large amounts of territory outside the reach of the Papal State, the Mossavians constructed a pseudo-independent client state to their northwest, which has done much to diffuse the issue on their side.
Unfortunately, over in the Wendish Empire, the old autocratic ways of its leaders decided on a rather simpler method of dealing with insurrectionists and agitators, which was to have them shot. The largest power in Europe (other than the nation of the Turks to their east - this is a surviving Khazaria which destroyed the proto-Rus, and goes well past the east of the map to about the eastern border of Kazakhstan, though tends to be more "western" orientated in recent years, which could be thought of as the engine room of the modern nation due to the rich chernozem soils of the region having allowed for massive development there), the Wendish Empire is one of the oldest nations to be able to claim some form of continuity and officially places its birthdate in the early ninth century; it is surpassed in that area solely by the claim of the Merovingian Franks, who although having long since lost their founding dynasty centuries ago, still tie the origin of their state to 486 AD, when Clovis I conquered the Kingdom of Soissons. Unfortunately for the Wends, however, they have been something of a victim of their own success: whereas the divorce of Neustria and Aquitaine was so terrible for the former as to give them a rude wake up call (and to forsake that particular name forever as being cursed, as nothing good happened to the realm when it had it, and saw people want to go back to the "good old days" of the Merovingian realm) , the Wendish Empire is considered to have one of the strongest aristocratic structures anywhere, and it was only about thirty years ago that they finally abolished serfdom.
Historically speaking, the Wends have little love for Mossavia, with whom they have fought more than once...but the rise of Rhenland has changed calculations a great deal - although there are those who are still confident that Wendish steel and courage can carry the day, they have a poor industrial backbone, one of the lowest rates of literacy in Europe, and a generally underperforming economy. Rhenland, on the other hand, is an increasingly industrialized powerhouse built around the massive Rhine river system, and there are serious concerns as to what could happen to the Empire in the event of an armed conflict. That said, it is a conflict that the Empire may very well have blundered itself into - its heavily aristocratic officer corps can often run their regiments like petty kingdoms in their own right, and the western territories of the Empire have always been home to large Deutscher populations. When a few soldiers got drunk in a bar and ended up in a brawl that got five men killed, the actions of local commanders afraid that this could be a prelude to a Rhenish attack saw one act with the desire to cut things off at the head by gathering up believed Rhenish sympathizers and agitators. This, looking like a pogrom in the making, galvanized resistance, which in turn seemingly validated military concerns, which caused a full crackdown. The result is a spiraling conflict on the border, outrage on the floor of the Rhenish Republikstag, and what very much looks like an armed uprising with guns crossing the river into Wendish territory from the eastern states of Rhenland, triggering riots and strikes in Great Mossavia's own Deutscher territories.
The result is effectively a powder keg waiting to go off. If a grand European war is to start again, it's going to be there.
And if that war is going to start, then Rhenland is ready to fight it. It is the view of more than a few Rhenish that this war was an inevitability, and one that has been brewing for centuries. The German people that other realms refer to as little more than "Deutschers" have had an awful time of it for centuries: there was no great Empire to protect their princedoms, for the Merovingians of old took the head of one Charles Martel, and ended a lineage of legends before they could even begin. Austrasia was the first part of the old Frankish realm to fall apart, and of all the realms of yore, mighty Saxony had been the last. They had not gone quietly into the night. The bonds of kinship were strong amongst them, and when they called, the tribes of the Angelcynn came, forging a friendship that has lived to the present, but their cause was doomed - with the Danelanders bearing down from the north, the Wends from the east and turncloak Franks to the west, tribal Saxony burnt in fire, and its fall marked the end of the great kingdoms of old. For nearly a millennium, the German people had no great nation to protect them, and were little more than dozens of squabbling princedoms, pawns in the games of others. The taxes they paid with their honest trade went to fund castles and halls that they were not their own, and they fought and died for nations that cared not for the blood they shed. For years did they suffer, a people without a country to call their own.
But in the dawning days of the nineteenth century, the gears of change began to turn, and in their favour for the first time for so long. War had come to the region as it so often had, but new ideas came with it. Individually, the towns and cities of all that was left of Old Germania were little more than a flea in the coat of the true great powers...but when they began to work together, when they forged alliances, they began to forge a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts. Although caught on both sides of the fighting, the region was the home of the heaviest conflict between the Angelcynn and the Danelanders, old friends on one side and old foes on another, but although German men fought for both sides, it sparked critical changes, and in a feat that surprised many at the time, more and more began to rally beneath the banner of a newborn Rhenish Confederacy, banding together into a common cause. It was this organization that shattered the grip of the Danelanders over the northeastern territories, driving them back at the tip of a bayonet. In that, the Confederacy had shown one critical thing: divided, the city states were vulnerable, but united...
The gears had set into motion, and in fifty years, a thing came to be that had not been for a thousand years: a German nation. The Bundesrepublik Rhenland is a young nation, but a powerful one, built around the twin engines of the Ruhr Valley and the Rhine itself, and one whose mere existence has upended the balance of power in Europe. It is a nation of strong ideals, and chief amongst them is that it is the solemn protector of the German people, both within and without the nation, and will not let them be abused as they have been for so long. Wendish misdeeds have gone on long enough - already, an ultimatum is being drafted to demand that they leave the "Deutscher" territories of the west and plebiscites held for immediate referendums on independence or integration into the Republik. If they will not, then Rhenish arms are ready to show them that the German people are not pawns in this game, but kings.
And if they go to fight, the Angelcynn are bound to be right behind them. Though the land proper might be known as Anglaland, the nation is that of the Anglekin, and their history begins in the dawning days of the great migrations that followed the fall of Old Rome...but it is in more recent history that things become more interesting. Smashed by a storm that seemed as if to have been delivered by the hands of God himself, the great Danish invasion was killed before it could truly even begin, and paved the way for a unification of the four great realms of the Anglo-Saxons beneath a single banner in response to the great threat of the east: that of the white draca! From there, the path for their rise as a major power seemed secure, but the Angelcynn were a nation on the outskirts of Europe, and though they could boast of peaceful lands, they were far removed from the action and bustle of the continent. It was a place from which they had grown apart over the years, separated from by their channel of water, but amongst a sea of strangers, there was an island of familiarity - Old Saxony, of which they themselves could certainly trace some descent, was the most notable of these, and something of an ally...especially when the reprisals against Danelander raids began, and Saxon ships tipped their sails for the east. Alas, Saxony was destroyed in battle, overwhelmed by too many enemies on too many fronts, but the bond remains strong. Alliances with the mainland German statelets had been necessary to protect the trade ports that connected the Angelcynn to the mainland and served as critical markets for their goods, and the two have fought side by side on many occasions; more still, intermarriage was common between their nobility, and wandering theatres and poets often crossed from one side of the sea to the next, altering the wordhoard of the Anglecynn over time - even today, Englisċ is almost mutually intelligible with Rhenish German, though jokes abound as to both parties needing to be drunk if they are to properly understand.
But it is not to the continent alone that the Angelcynn look now, but to certain far flung holdings around the world, and most especially, those across the great Atlantic Ocean. When the Arabs and the Moors found their way to the new world under the leadership of the legendary explorer, Ahmad ibn Mājid, whose name is born by the southern half of the continent that he discovered (Majīda, or the Glorious, supposedly the first word that he uttered upon sighting the eastern shores), the Angelcynn were keen to seek out this land for themselves, and succeeded in founding great colonies in its north...and waging regular war against the Danelands, ultimately dislodging them from the eastern seaboard of Feorlond after a series of bloody campaigns that ended with the Dane colonists forced into the frozen north. Feorlond has turned into a thriving part of the realm in its own right, and its resources have made the fleet of the Angelcynn second to none in Europe - even their old Danelander rivals would struggle to match them there, even with the power of their Skandi puppet states to the north. Protecting their far flung empire may not be easy, but the promise is made and the oath is sworn: should the Wendish refuse to back down, then the Angelcynn will follow Rhenland to war. Already, their dreadnoughts load their bunkers with coal, and combat squadrons move into ready positions across the known world.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, is that this means that Daneland is watching events unfold very, very closely. Once one of the greatest powers in Europe, Daneland is a realm that has seen better days: feared in the distant past as the Viking raiders of yore, and again in closer centuries for the strength of their ships and the courage of their armies, the Kingdom of the Danes has been increasingly outclassed by its enemies ever since the turn of the eighteenth century, where the limits of their land and numbers began to show. Considered by more than a few to be the "sick man" of Europe, Daneland has had dark times aplenty. Repeated wars with the Anglecynn very nearly shattered Daneland, and the trade of colonies overseas for the ability to maintain order at home and suppress Skandi uprisings was considered a bargain at the time, but the consequences were a loss of much needed incomes to sustain Daneland and the remnants of its empire. For all that the Angles have tried to do, Vinland yet holds on the north, though Feorlond eyes it hungrily, and the various lesser Danelander possessions around the rest of the world are dangerously exposed. This was all bad enough as it was, but then the Northern War came, and saw them lose yet another precious possession, and one of the most valuable yet - a major piece of Old Saxony, Bremen and the rest of the Weserlands may have been home to a great deal of Deutschers, but was also a major piece of Daneland's core at home in Europe, a vital source of resources and income, but also manpower...and as if that was not bad enough already, the territory was quickly absorbed into the newborn Bundesrepublik, a new power on the continent, a rising star, and a dangerous ally for Anglaland.
For the Danes, the feeling of many is that they have been backed into a corner. The Anglecynn have took their hard earned possessions and income overseas, and the Rhenish are hungrily eying their lands in Europe. The Skandi are not nearly as quiet as they had once been, but the Dane grip still holds...but if it is to maintain the remnants of its empire and perhaps climb out of this decline and return once more to the path of glory that had been trod by their forefathers, then they must quell the threat at their border. The Wendish are strange bedfellows, but they and Mossavia may yet force the Rhenish star to set early, and if so, such could be the path for the Danes to reclaim the lost Weserland, obtain precious reparations, and give the Skandi a victory to rebuild confidence in their union. If all that can be done, then perhaps Daneland might yet recover. They will make their contribution to war on land, but it is at sea that they must make their biggest role known. Against Anglelander dreadnoughts, things will surely be dangerous, but the Danes have seen promising tests of their new undervandsbåd, or submarines...
...but the naval war is not something that they must conduct alone, for they have an unlikely ally in that regard: Vascony. Perhaps not merely the oldest nation in Europe, but even the oldest culture, Vascony (or the Basques, depending on one's place of origin and spelling) can trace its history in an unbroken line back to the Vascones, a tribe that inhabited the same lands before the birth of even the Roman Empire. Vascony is an ancient nation, with an ancient history. They have seen empires rise and fall. They saw the Visigoths come and take Hispania as their own, and then fail. They have seen the Arabs of the Umayyad Caliphate come, and then fail. They have seen Christian realms rise, and then fail. It is said that the soil of old Hispania is stained red from the sheer number of wars and killings that have taken place in that land, the terra rossa that has drank the blood of armies for a thousand, thousand years, fighting for an advantage that no one was ever able to hold. The Vascones have seen it all. They have endured it all, and where other nations named "Castille" or "Al-Andalus" might have ended up as little more than names in the dustbin of history, Vascony has survived, grown, and expanded. They cannot claim to control all of Hispania (though if they did, such would be a bigger shake up for Europe than the founding of Rhenland!), but inheritance through marriage, diplomacy and the occasional war has seen them establish a modest empire in the Mediterranean, and in the near abroad (the island of Koabana is a proud possession of Vascony, especially famous for its Koabanan tobacco), and they possess well developed insutries, and more than that, very well protected ones. With the rest of Hispania consisting of little more than some dozen Christian or Muslim statelets, Vascony sits with strongly protected borders: it would take a great coalition from the south to do them harm, and to the north sits the Pyrenees Mountains, and now as they were two thousand years ago, these mountains serve as a very strong defensive bulwark, one that has seen the people of Vascony thrive behind their protections, beneath the shining sun that is marked on their flag in the form of the lauburu.
All this means that Vascony is a stronger nation than its size might imply, and one that must be considered a credible threat...but history does not begin in 1917. Much as the Anglecynn might be old friends of Rhenland, Mossavia and the people of Vascony have a historical alliance, and one that came as a result of shared interests, for between the two of them lies a shared enemy: the realm of Aquitaine. A powerful kingdom, Aquitaine and Vascony have quarreled more than once, just as Aquitaine and Mossovy have quarreled over control of the north Italian city states and their great game of central Europe. Alliance between Mossavia and Vascony has seen both prosper from the arrangement; an attempt by Aquitaine to seize the island of Corsica as part of a grander strategy to control Italian trade was foiled in 1680, when galleys from Vascony struck at sea just as Mossavian troops pushed in from the east. Their defensive interests are tied together, and it is that which brings Vascony into alliance eagerly - though they have no quarrel with Rhenland, they will fight to support Mossavia, so as to maintain the balance of power on the continent, a balance that sees them live in peace. With such defensive terrain serving as much as an impediment to attack as it does a boon to defense, Vascony has built a mighty fleet of their own, a steel bulwark to protect their otherwise vulnerable shores, and maintain the security of their Mediterranean empire. They do not want a war, and have done much to try and diffuse the situation...but if the Wends refuse the ultimatum of the Rhenish, then Rhenland will go to war, and Mossavia will join the Wends, and the Angelcynn will declare war on the both of them, and the Danelands will follow against the Angelanders, and so it would go. A great conflagration is poised to devour Europe in industrialized warfare, and it is one that the people of Vascony do not want.
But if the Basques must fight, then they will fight.
And their familiar foe, Aquitaine, is just as ready to make war. Ever since they had been unshackled north in the Great Frankish Dissolution, Aquitaine and Occitania have been one of the most powerful states in Western Europe, a powerhouse built on the back of its fertile soil and mines, complemented by strong trade, and became stronger still with the power of its colonial empire, especially the crowning jewel of it in Nòva Aquitània. One of the strongest new world states, and one born from the conquest of a number of native realms such as those of the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs, the loss of Nòva Aquitània to an independence movement in 1786 was a serious setback for Aquitania, one that had been "assisted" by supplies of weaponry and gunpowder from Vascony and other realms interested in a weaker Aquitaine, but not a fatal one, and the imperial project of Aquitaine's overseas expansion has recently found a pleasant new locale in the form of two great islands in the southeast of Asia - the eastern islands of Nòva Marselha and the vast continent of Nòva Bordel are both welcome additions to their patrimony, especially since agreements have been made with the Anglecynn to settle their shared interests in the Indonesian region, and instead work together to corner that market. All this together makes Aquitaine a major player in Europe still, and although their industry is not quite so strong as that of Rhenland or Mossavia, they are still ready to stare their eastern rivals down. Mossavia is an old foe of Aquitaine, one that goes back to well after the Dissolution saw Aquitaine free itself of the then seemingly corpse-like throne of Neustria, both had a shared interest in the future of the Italian city states north of the Holy Realm of the Pope in Rome, a thing that had led the both of them to blows more than once, and on occasion to blows with the Pope himself, but making it worse is how Aquitaine can often find itself facing both a sword to the front and another to the rear - Mossavia to the east wants them driven out of Italy, and Vascony to the south would love nothing more than a weak Aquitaine to remove them as a threat completely and ensure their own total security. The centuries have cooled the fire that had burnt between them and Merovingia, who tends to be a more amicable neighbour than not, but the defensive position of Aquitaine can often feel...untenable.
The creation of Rhenland, then, seemed a gift straight from the hands of God, for it has presented the great game of Europe iwth a new player eager for allies, and one with shared interests for the throne of Aquitaine - Rhenland wants the German people under its banner out of Mossavia and the Wendish Empire, and Aquitaine would love nothing more than to see one of the two threats to its defensive position weakened. If Mossavia could be crippled, then the Basques could be isolated, and their empire dismantled: with no further threats to their security, Aquitaine would be free to continue its arrangement of Italy as a natural part of its sphere of influence, with client states on Corsica and Sardinia, and more, to perhaps allow them to choke Mossavia out of Italy entirely, and even force them into a landlocked state.
Fro this reason, for the future development of Aquitaine's empire and for the security of what they already have, they are eager to join the Rhenish in cutting down some shared enemies, and commence a glorious new age for the empire.
Such is the will and whim of the great powers of Europe. There are other states, stood on the sidelines. Merovingia, preoccupied with internal problems and in no state at all for a fight. The Turks in the east, who might see any redeployment by the Wends as a portent of opportunity, either of peace or of war. The Avars and Keszthely eye know that the gaze of Praha is to the west, and they are gaining an ever more free hand in the Balkans. Romania and Hungary prepare to bunker down to face the worst. The Irish Confederacy bites down, grimly, hoping only that the struggle will not spill into their newborn nation. Mighty Armenia rebuilds its strength after the early disasters of the twentieth century, and far Arabia slumbers, content more to work in peace than to seek battle as they ponder the great fields of black gold that seem to bubble beneath their feet.
There are countless nations in Europe, countless nations in their world, but it takes but a handful to decide history. The great powers are at an impasse, and the tools of diplomacy are beginning to reach their exhaustion. A storm is brewing on the horizon, and its dark clouds are all too quickly drawing near. It can be felt in the air of any city and any street. Unease. Uncertainty. A tension, waiting to be broken.
It is 1917.
And the Great War is coming.
/end scenario.
Hopefully that's interesting to at least one person
Edit: I'm not sure if this thread's a bit different when it comes to asking for feedback, but just in case, feedback on any part of this would be super-duper welcome. I want to get better at this, so I'd love some advice on my mapping, too, and where I might improve
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https://www.worldanvil.com/w/novaterra-millsian - created using azgaars fantasy map generator and then heavily modified to fit my proposed narrative arc.
I feel without the seizure of Austria and Czechia, the Lithuanians would not have been scared enough to give up Memel and basically their entire export economy to Germany. I for one think having the Faeroe Islands as an Imperial Russian rump state is the height of originality. If you do do a sexual, I would suggest Negev goes from Britain to Egypt, and the remaining British area in the north goes to a giant skate park. Though given the shade for Hong King, perhaps you decided to put it there. Less space sure, but the jumps between ramps on buildings would be all the more impressive.
So I posted this over in the alternate armoured vehicles thread in Post-1900, but after seeing water123's guide for WorldA maps and it's rule 6 (don't worry too much about ASBs), I feel a hell of a lot more cosy with the idea of posting in this thread, and a lot less afraid of being crucified on the spot for not being slavishly obedient to every exact plausibility
So, have my first real AH map - bear with me a little, as I'm super-duper inexperienced when it comes to this, but I really did try:
It is 1917.
And the Great War is coming.
/end scenario.
Hopefully that's interesting to at least one person
Edit: I'm not sure if this thread's a bit different when it comes to asking for feedback, but just in case, feedback on any part of this would be super-duper welcome. I want to get better at this, so I'd love some advice on my mapping, too, and where I might improve
I really, really enjoy this.
Just a few things.
What's the story behind Armenia? Did the Armenians take the place of the Canon Turks and conquered the Eastern Romans?
The same for Arabia and what''s the story behind them.
Wendish Empire is definitely an Tsarist Russia stand in. The same for Daneland is the stand in Ottoman Empire and stuff like that.
Few changes:
- France instaured a new number base the dozenal base that uses X and Y as numbers for 10 and 11 during the French Revolution. Now the entire world counts in base 12.
- In consequence X and Y have been removed from the french alphabet (somes cities got removed)
- The religious and nobility references have been removed from city names.
- Belgium, Luxembourg, Zeeland Flanders, Monaco, Saarland and the Anglo-Normand isles are now French.
Population: 23 406 Y1X (81 628 870 in decimal) hab.
Surface Area: 241 853 (583 551 in decimal) km²
After WW2: Germany was divided in 3, the Federal Republic of Prussia , the Bavarian Kingdom (Hessen, Baden-Würtemberg, Bavaria and Austria) and the European Rhine-Republic.
You are off to a brilliant and wonderful start with maps, @Fisch ! A very interesting scenario, including the French Republican Calendar which I so love and a truly revolutionary innovation with the duodecimal (dozenal) system!
Does France, does the whole world also calculate with dozenal weeks, for example? What else has been dozenalised, @Fisch ?
EDIT: I think four weeks of six days each are most likely and would be most practical? Am I right?
Also, what is the state of religion(s) in this timeline's (TTLs) France?
EDIT: I think four weeks of six days each are most likely and would be most practical? Am I right?
Also, what is the state of religion(s) in this timeline's (TTLs) France?
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I suspect it is an Armenianised Turkic or other steppe nomad dynasty.
Wouldn't it be better to have dedicated digits for 10 and 11, like the Pitman digits ↊ ↋ (turned two and turned three)?
Dozenal ? I would've expected vicesimal before dozenal as an alternate decimalisation method...
I can only imagine that this is a South Africa that is Nazi-adjacent in both its style of rule and opinions on race but I have to say that I love this map, specifically how it tricks the eye into being drawn away from incredibly interesting other information and forces you to really think about the details of this world and how it came to be.
Bantustans outside of South Africa are not labelled.
In any event, I hope at least comparably better days are ahead for this universe's South Africa. Well done!
Well, they still have the problem with the Poles. Also my the late 40s they become a democracy again. That mixed with Germany's stronger position made them give up Memel back after a referendum, but with a guarantee of Lithuania being allowed to use the harbour for trade.
The Faeroe Islands are just independent.
Negev would probably go to Palestine, which will maybe look for unification with Jordan/Jordan-Iraq.
The northern part to Israel.
Jerusalem remains a LOG protectorate.
And Hong Kong...
Is just Quarter Bam being Quarter Bam.
Just curious as to what constitutes the Austronesian Federation. Are the Philippines included?The Malaya-Sunda Land Bridge
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The Malaya-Sunda Land Bridge, also known as the Great Land Bridge or the Pan-Nusantara Line, is an ongoing joint infrastructure project by the Lakanate of Panyupayana, The Sultanate of United Sumatra, the Republic of Japan (former), Germany, Burgundy, the United Kingdom, and China. The Project's goal is to connect the Malay Peninsula to the Islands of Sumatra, Java, and the Lesser Sunda as part of Panyupayana and Nusantara's goal to politically and "physically" connect the majority of the Major Islands of the Nusantaran and Panyupayanan Archipelago. The Project was first proposed in 1966 by Panyupayanan Prime Minister Apo Lakay and spearheaded by Ministry of Public Works and Highways. The project was then signed the following year by Apo Lakay, the newly-elected Nusantaran Prime Minister Koesno Hatta, and several other organizations such as the Japanese National Railways, the West German Bundesbahn, and the Burgundian-Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.
The Project was originally set to begin on August 1973, but was postponed indefinitely due to expensive oil prices when the First Gulf War erupted between the United Arab Republics and the Persian Empire. Attempts to start work the following years were delayed due to budgetary reasons until finally in March 1977, a year after the unification of Panyupayana and Nusantara into the Federation of Austronesia, that work began with the expansions of the Pan-Sumatran lines and the Malayu National Rail. This also involves widening the existing railways to accommodate High Speed Trains such as Panyupayana's experimental version of Japan's Shinkansen 0 series Trains. On 1981, work began on the expansion of Java's existing rail network as well as the Riau-Lingga Land Bridge, which connected the Malay Peninsulu and Sumatra through Singapore and the Riau Islands. In 1987, work also began on the construction of the Southern Nusantara National Rail, but on 1991 nearly all constructions on the Southern rail stopped when the Economic bubble of Austronesia and Japan burst, leading to Asian Financial Crisis and the lost decade. All of Japan's investments on the project were pulled out, and the project was once again left postponed indefinitely until 2000 when the Austronesian Government ordered the continuation of the construction of the Trans-Java Bridge, the Riau-Lingga Land Bridge, and the Bangka Bridge, albeit the progress was slow as Austronesia was still recovering from its near-total economic collapse. In 2008, a new cooperation was signed between Austronesia and the Chinese Federation, which led to work on the bridges returning back to its normal pace in the 1980s. On September 2010. the Riau-Lingga Land Bridge is officially opened to the public, taking the title of the longest bridge in the entire world. This is then followed by the opening of the Trans-Java Bridge in the following year, and the Bangka Bridge on April 2013. On 2016, Work was continued on the Southern Nusantara National Rail, with the Bali Metro being completed first in January 2017 as it was the closest one to completion. As of today the Mataram-Bima line is at 89% completion, but rising tensions between Austronesia and Japan forced work to temporarily stop indefinitely once more.
Not much feedback on how to improve my map layout, but I'll take that as a positive sign that there isn't much to improve on other than raw aesthetic I think something I'd do in the future is replace the "white space" on the map proper with more content; right now it's basically a placeholder for various states and statelets that really should be on the map.
The Great War of my world is quite a bit later than OTL's, so it ends up going into the very early 1920s. Technological progression has been a little bit different (faster in some areas, slower in others) but one of the results there is that the Great War starts out very much like the way it did in OTL with a strong maneuver component, then goes to the stagnant trenches for a year or two, then rapidly starts to shift back into a movement and momentum kind of fighting as armoured vehicles, and an early sort of combined arms warfare, begins to blossom.
As for the tools, I used Photoshop for just about everything - it works wonders for aligning text with the flags at the bottom
Where that leads into Armenia is that a) there was an equivalent to the Crusade era with its own sort of version of the Fourth Crusade, which crippled the Eastern Romans (the existence of "Old Rome" implies "New Rome" existed, and the ERE was seen as said New Rome), but whilst that happened in the west, b) a wave of Turkic migration came out of Khazaria which an independent Armenian kingdom hired as a massive host of mercenaries which then c) resulted in a much larger Armenia carving up the east of Anatolia but eventually getting d) basically coup'd by their own mercenaries before, ultimately, e) absorbing them. With tiny Latin crusader statelets in the west, the rump ERE in the middle and Armenia in the east, you start seeing how we get to this situation, with Armenia basically picking up the pieces. It has had more than a few fights with Arabia and Turkey, but the geography in both means that those fronts have basically died down over recent years; the major Middle Eastern rivers are natural boundaries, and launching offensives through the Caucasus Mountains at an emplaced defender who knows how to make use of the terrain is...not exactly optimal strategy.
For the most part, these fronts have drawn to a close, but for the most part, the Empire is looking to the Balkans. It sees itself as one of the major great powers, but one that needs something of a sphere of influence, and extended defensive boundaries to protect its territories beyond the strait. This puts it into something of a conflict with Mossavia, which sees the Balkan region as being its "backyard" so to speak, but Armenia is far enough from them yet that there's mostly vague political and diplomatic gesturing between the two. If the industrial era hadn't arrived as it did, it could've been possible to see Armenia grow into that region similarly to the way that the Ottomans did.
Some fun facts about Armenia in this timeline:
A) The Hagia Sophia is still around in Bolis, which is Armenian Constantinople, but it has been reconsecrated as part of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Although Etchmiadzin Cathedral remains the dejure mother church of the Armenian Church, being regarded as the Armenian Mecca by more than a few, the Hagia Sophia is both larger and more famous worldwide, and so contains a lot of the bureaucratic/political structure of the Apostolic Church. Because it never became a mosque in this timeline, it looks quite different - it never had the minarets, for example.
B) So far removed from the ocean as to have not been able to play much part in the great game of colonialism, Armenia has still seen waves of colonists end up in the New World here and there. The Armenian diaspora is all over the place in that regard, and in places like Feorlond, you can find Armenian grocery stores here and there. This is especially the case for Nòva Aquitània, which could be thought of as the ATL!United States, centered on Mexico. Feorlond is more like a Canada on steroids in that it has the traditional location of the Thirteen Colonies + Florida up to about the Mississippi, but that situation gets complicated real fast.
C) The nation itself is quite multicultural indeed - it is something of a delicate balancing act to keep every part of it working together, but for the most part Armenia is stable. There's sizeable populations of Greeks and Turks both inside its national borders, as well as Hungarians (that itself is a fun fact - note that Hungary is in the position of Bulgaria; the migration period went differently indeed, as the Bulgarians are much further north, and are mostly under the Wendish Empire. That's where Keszthely comes from, which is referring to the Keszthely culture that doesn't have a proper name), which is running into something of a problem because of the rise of universal education, with standardised textbooks needing a sort of state language. This is giving the government headaches to say the least.
And some details about Turkiyye:
A) Although still heavily quite agrarian, Turkey here is something of a rising star in regards to industry. Long dependence on the sheer fertility of their soils somewhat stunted the rise of industry, but in recent years they've taken to the use of railways with great excitement, as they promise a superb way to tie the massive cities of the west to the eastern frontier that is so far away from the core of modern Turkey. This is one of the greatest expenses of the government of the time which, before recent tensions saw Rhenish industry begin to turn to a more military focus, was eagerly purchasing the necessary rolling stock and locomotives from further west. Although the risk of war in Europe is slowing that particular project down dramatically, it has opened the door for local Turkish industry and entrepreneurs to try and step in and fill the void with their own designs, so it could very well pay off in the long run.
B) Unlike many countries, Turkey doesn't actually have something that might be regarded as a "state religion". Much like the Khazars that came before them, the nation is a multiconfessional mix of Christians, Muslims, Jews and even adherents to much older pagan traditions. The reasons for this are complicated and go much further into the past, but Turkey could be regarded as one of the first secular states in history here, being a mix of a wide variety of religions since as far back as the twelfth century. Because of this, the country actually has one of the largest Jewish populations on the planet, as Jews that were persecuted elsewhere could flee to Khazaria and live there. Overtime, the country started to accumulate a reputation as being a safe haven for them, so many moved there even when there wasn't much persecution at home, just in case. This has actually had quite the repercussion in recent years, as the Wendish Empire (where the term "pogrom" was used in their post for a reason) went to war with the Turks just a few decades before - Jewish regiments fought to the point of fanaticism in defense of Turkey as one of the only nations where they might live in peace and against one that had driven out their grandfathers and great-grandfathers decades before, and the result there is that the Wends got a bloody nose indeed, and were even pushed back over the Dnieper.
C) They're on a good relationship with Armenia. Although there's been years of warfare in their past born of anything from border friction to getting involved in one another's internal affairs, the Turks and Armenians have generally came to a more conciliatory position, and things between them are warmer than they have bene in centuries. There's multiple reasons for this, but the main one is to do with trade - Armenia is sat on the strait that sees so much of Turkish trade flow through it, which although a potential chokepoint for the Turkish economy, is also a valuable chunk of change for the Armenian Empire as well, which charges tariffs and fees for passage through the straits. Although there's some grumbling about this eating into certain profits, the fees are low enough as to not be a serious problem, and tend more to be a part of a double-return on investment inside Turkey - Armenian capital is a good source of investment to the north in their old rival, and generally speaking you could say that the two have a relationship kinda like that of Britain and France today where they take shots at one another as jokes, but are actually on much closer terms than they used to be.
But where that comes to terms in the west is that it means that the Mongols never rose to power, and never hit Arabia - the infamous sack of Baghdad in 1258 never occurred. This doesn't just mean that things like the House of Wisdom remain one of the greatest libraries on the planet and a massive source of information on early history, but that Arabia itself is in superb condition; this isn't an Arabia that is reborn after years of colonial rule or what have you, but an Arabia with an unbroken line of descent to the old Caliphates of the further past. Arabia isn't as large as it once was (certain pieces have fell to the wayside over the years), but the "core" that in OTL would become such nations as Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, that's all tightly integrated under a single banner. If one was to use Vicky 2 terms, Arabia would sit squarely amongst the secondary powers, and probably one of the higher placements, like the tenth or eleventh position. To speak more of general history, I'd imagine that the Abbasids are gone and that their decline marked the time that more territories were lost, particularly in Africa, and that the Sunni-Shia fracture still occurred (though this was not the driving force of Persia/Iran's separation from the Caliphate - that came about as part of the Abbasid decline like in OTL with groups like the Saffarids and Buyids, culminating with the Khwarazmian Empire that didn't get smashed by the Mongols as in OTL), but to speak of the average Arab's life, the Caliphate itself is probably the closest match of any of the powers to general conditions of the core Ottoman Empire. Think Turkey circa 1920, and you'd probably be not that far off. To add onto that, though, the Arabians are also credited with the discovery of the New World; Ahmad ibn Mājid was a real explorer and cartographer who produced a superb book on sea navigation, and in this timeline, he accidentally discovered South America whilst attempting to reach India...but rather than the Columbus method of thinking the globe was smaller than it was, in this case it was an attempt to shorten the journey with more precise navigation and make a straight line voyage from West Africa down to the Cape. That was going well enough and he had made that voyage before, but whilst out of sight of the land, they were hit by a storm that changed their course from an easterly one to west, eventually leading them to what would be Cape Branco in Brazil. Knowing that this was not the Cape, and most certainly not India, he eventually devised a way back and forth, and from Morroco ended up staging a proper exploratory expedition. This would eventually stage the way for colonization of the Americas in the late 1400s, and what in OTL would be South America is a mixture of Berber and Arab states. When the Caliphate went into some decline for a period of time, it didn't take much for these nations to end up independent, but they're still quite closely related to the motherland, and ocean liners packed with pilgrims regularly come into the Middle East so as to complete the hajj.
That said, things are getting especially interesting inside Arabia in recent years. Coal has done much to power the industrial age, but the rise of a new liquid fuel is changing the game entirely - with the rise of the aircraft and the automobile, petroleum is an increasingly valuable commodity, likened to a new form of black gold. The Arabian government have been keenly investigating the sands of their lands, however, and have discovered veritable oceans of it, albeit buried very deeply. Already, though, their engineers are at hard at work on devising drilling machinery able to reach such depths and the pumps to recover it, and a number of small refineries have already been established to process it into a more useful form. If these reserves of oil are as large as the Caliphate hopes they are, and become as valuable as economists think they could be, then the twentieth century could mark the dawn of a new Islamic Golden Age.
), but there's others that take on certain roles and some that slot between.
In this case, here's some quick sort of comparisons, a I should be getting to main story writing
A) Great Mossavia - a sort of stronger version of Austria-Hungary with way less internal issues and a better economy, built around a sort of Czech-Austrian core.
B) Rhenland - the easy comparison would be to Germany, and that's pretty damned close, but its actually sort of between France and Germany in power. It's not an empire, either, but an actual republic, and a rather revanchist one at that. France is probably the best comparison.
C) Vascony - not an easy comparison to make, but possibly a stronger version of someone like Romania or Bulgaria? It could very well be the equivalent of those two rolled into one when it comes to combat power. More than that gets hard to place
D) Anglecynn - the easy comparison would be Britain, and that's pretty much on the money, but it's a weaker version of Britain that lacks much of the empire and hasn't got all of Scotland or Ireland (which is mostly controlled through client statelets), but which on the other hand does have the eastern seaboard of the OTL United States, all bound together as a sort of federal parliamentary constitutional elective monarchy, led by the Witenagemot.
E) Aquitaine - probably the hardest to place out of the lot, it's basically the southern half of France. It could be likened to Italy, but the comparison doesn't feel quite right as it feels like it'd be stronger than Italy due to its overseas territories backing it up. A stronger Italy, then?
I suppose that means that this Great War is a sort of alliance of Austria-Hungary + Russia + Ottomans + Romania-Bulgaria versus France + Britain with a chunk of the US + Italy. That sounds like the recipe for a Great War, so the balance between the factions seems to work for me
I think something I'd do in the future is replace the "white space" on the map proper with more content; right now it's basically a placeholder for various states and statelets that really should be on the map.Thanks for the praise!
The Great War of my world is quite a bit later than OTL's, so it ends up going into the very early 1920s. Technological progression has been a little bit different (faster in some areas, slower in others) but one of the results there is that the Great War starts out very much like the way it did in OTL with a strong maneuver component, then goes to the stagnant trenches for a year or two, then rapidly starts to shift back into a movement and momentum kind of fighting as armoured vehicles, and an early sort of combined arms warfare, begins to blossom.As for the tools, I used Photoshop for just about everything - it works wonders for aligning text with the flags at the bottom
Somebody-Someone has got it quite right here: ever since Khazaria basically destroyed the Kyivan Rus, it has served as the sort of "mothership" for Turkic migrations, a thing made better still by how there was no Mongol Empire in this timeline that could've otherwise dislodged Khazaria from its position. Overtime and with the annexation of so much of what'd be OTL!Ukraine's eastern breadbasket, Khazaria increasingly shifted into more of a "forever-home", becoming more and more the main homeland of the Turkish people. I very nearly actually named it Turkistan for that reason, because the literal meaning of that phrase is "land of the Turks" which in OTL never referred to a singular nation, but does in this one. I thought it could've got confusing, though, and just went with Turkey in general.
Where that leads into Armenia is that a) there was an equivalent to the Crusade era with its own sort of version of the Fourth Crusade, which crippled the Eastern Romans (the existence of "Old Rome" implies "New Rome" existed, and the ERE was seen as said New Rome), but whilst that happened in the west, b) a wave of Turkic migration came out of Khazaria which an independent Armenian kingdom hired as a massive host of mercenaries which then c) resulted in a much larger Armenia carving up the east of Anatolia but eventually getting d) basically coup'd by their own mercenaries before, ultimately, e) absorbing them. With tiny Latin crusader statelets in the west, the rump ERE in the middle and Armenia in the east, you start seeing how we get to this situation, with Armenia basically picking up the pieces. It has had more than a few fights with Arabia and Turkey, but the geography in both means that those fronts have basically died down over recent years; the major Middle Eastern rivers are natural boundaries, and launching offensives through the Caucasus Mountains at an emplaced defender who knows how to make use of the terrain is...not exactly optimal strategy.
For the most part, these fronts have drawn to a close, but for the most part, the Empire is looking to the Balkans. It sees itself as one of the major great powers, but one that needs something of a sphere of influence, and extended defensive boundaries to protect its territories beyond the strait. This puts it into something of a conflict with Mossavia, which sees the Balkan region as being its "backyard" so to speak, but Armenia is far enough from them yet that there's mostly vague political and diplomatic gesturing between the two. If the industrial era hadn't arrived as it did, it could've been possible to see Armenia grow into that region similarly to the way that the Ottomans did.
Some fun facts about Armenia in this timeline:
A) The Hagia Sophia is still around in Bolis, which is Armenian Constantinople, but it has been reconsecrated as part of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Although Etchmiadzin Cathedral remains the dejure mother church of the Armenian Church, being regarded as the Armenian Mecca by more than a few, the Hagia Sophia is both larger and more famous worldwide, and so contains a lot of the bureaucratic/political structure of the Apostolic Church. Because it never became a mosque in this timeline, it looks quite different - it never had the minarets, for example.
B) So far removed from the ocean as to have not been able to play much part in the great game of colonialism, Armenia has still seen waves of colonists end up in the New World here and there. The Armenian diaspora is all over the place in that regard, and in places like Feorlond, you can find Armenian grocery stores here and there. This is especially the case for Nòva Aquitània, which could be thought of as the ATL!United States, centered on Mexico. Feorlond is more like a Canada on steroids in that it has the traditional location of the Thirteen Colonies + Florida up to about the Mississippi, but that situation gets complicated real fast.
C) The nation itself is quite multicultural indeed - it is something of a delicate balancing act to keep every part of it working together, but for the most part Armenia is stable. There's sizeable populations of Greeks and Turks both inside its national borders, as well as Hungarians (that itself is a fun fact - note that Hungary is in the position of Bulgaria; the migration period went differently indeed, as the Bulgarians are much further north, and are mostly under the Wendish Empire. That's where Keszthely comes from, which is referring to the Keszthely culture that doesn't have a proper name), which is running into something of a problem because of the rise of universal education, with standardised textbooks needing a sort of state language. This is giving the government headaches to say the least.
And some details about Turkiyye:
A) Although still heavily quite agrarian, Turkey here is something of a rising star in regards to industry. Long dependence on the sheer fertility of their soils somewhat stunted the rise of industry, but in recent years they've taken to the use of railways with great excitement, as they promise a superb way to tie the massive cities of the west to the eastern frontier that is so far away from the core of modern Turkey. This is one of the greatest expenses of the government of the time which, before recent tensions saw Rhenish industry begin to turn to a more military focus, was eagerly purchasing the necessary rolling stock and locomotives from further west. Although the risk of war in Europe is slowing that particular project down dramatically, it has opened the door for local Turkish industry and entrepreneurs to try and step in and fill the void with their own designs, so it could very well pay off in the long run.
B) Unlike many countries, Turkey doesn't actually have something that might be regarded as a "state religion". Much like the Khazars that came before them, the nation is a multiconfessional mix of Christians, Muslims, Jews and even adherents to much older pagan traditions. The reasons for this are complicated and go much further into the past, but Turkey could be regarded as one of the first secular states in history here, being a mix of a wide variety of religions since as far back as the twelfth century. Because of this, the country actually has one of the largest Jewish populations on the planet, as Jews that were persecuted elsewhere could flee to Khazaria and live there. Overtime, the country started to accumulate a reputation as being a safe haven for them, so many moved there even when there wasn't much persecution at home, just in case. This has actually had quite the repercussion in recent years, as the Wendish Empire (where the term "pogrom" was used in their post for a reason) went to war with the Turks just a few decades before - Jewish regiments fought to the point of fanaticism in defense of Turkey as one of the only nations where they might live in peace and against one that had driven out their grandfathers and great-grandfathers decades before, and the result there is that the Wends got a bloody nose indeed, and were even pushed back over the Dnieper.
C) They're on a good relationship with Armenia. Although there's been years of warfare in their past born of anything from border friction to getting involved in one another's internal affairs, the Turks and Armenians have generally came to a more conciliatory position, and things between them are warmer than they have bene in centuries. There's multiple reasons for this, but the main one is to do with trade - Armenia is sat on the strait that sees so much of Turkish trade flow through it, which although a potential chokepoint for the Turkish economy, is also a valuable chunk of change for the Armenian Empire as well, which charges tariffs and fees for passage through the straits. Although there's some grumbling about this eating into certain profits, the fees are low enough as to not be a serious problem, and tend more to be a part of a double-return on investment inside Turkey - Armenian capital is a good source of investment to the north in their old rival, and generally speaking you could say that the two have a relationship kinda like that of Britain and France today where they take shots at one another as jokes, but are actually on much closer terms than they used to be.
Arabia's story is one where things went so much better than OTL, and there's no greater sign of that than how Baghdad is a thriving metropolis famous for its world renowned institutes of learning and education. Where did they go better, one might ask? The Mongol Empire effectively died before it was born - in the far east, China (referred to more in the west as Tianxia in this timeline) was on such a roll that it snuffed out the Mongols as a serious threat, and if Gengis Khan was ever born, then he'd have probably died in his teens in battle. China's eastern border here is up in what'd be the Kamchatka peninsula, though Tianxia has seen better days in that it is sort of crumbling under its own weight and certain amounts of separatism in its old sphere of influence. It's still a major power, but it is one in serious struggle, and whilst it won't collapse into warlordism, there's the serious chance it could see great swathes of territory lost; think of the size difference between the WW1 Ottoman Empire and post-war Turkey, and you'd probably get a similar reduction in the size. Even with its internal issues, it's still an absolute beast.
But where that comes to terms in the west is that it means that the Mongols never rose to power, and never hit Arabia - the infamous sack of Baghdad in 1258 never occurred. This doesn't just mean that things like the House of Wisdom remain one of the greatest libraries on the planet and a massive source of information on early history, but that Arabia itself is in superb condition; this isn't an Arabia that is reborn after years of colonial rule or what have you, but an Arabia with an unbroken line of descent to the old Caliphates of the further past. Arabia isn't as large as it once was (certain pieces have fell to the wayside over the years), but the "core" that in OTL would become such nations as Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, that's all tightly integrated under a single banner. If one was to use Vicky 2 terms, Arabia would sit squarely amongst the secondary powers, and probably one of the higher placements, like the tenth or eleventh position. To speak more of general history, I'd imagine that the Abbasids are gone and that their decline marked the time that more territories were lost, particularly in Africa, and that the Sunni-Shia fracture still occurred (though this was not the driving force of Persia/Iran's separation from the Caliphate - that came about as part of the Abbasid decline like in OTL with groups like the Saffarids and Buyids, culminating with the Khwarazmian Empire that didn't get smashed by the Mongols as in OTL), but to speak of the average Arab's life, the Caliphate itself is probably the closest match of any of the powers to general conditions of the core Ottoman Empire. Think Turkey circa 1920, and you'd probably be not that far off. To add onto that, though, the Arabians are also credited with the discovery of the New World; Ahmad ibn Mājid was a real explorer and cartographer who produced a superb book on sea navigation, and in this timeline, he accidentally discovered South America whilst attempting to reach India...but rather than the Columbus method of thinking the globe was smaller than it was, in this case it was an attempt to shorten the journey with more precise navigation and make a straight line voyage from West Africa down to the Cape. That was going well enough and he had made that voyage before, but whilst out of sight of the land, they were hit by a storm that changed their course from an easterly one to west, eventually leading them to what would be Cape Branco in Brazil. Knowing that this was not the Cape, and most certainly not India, he eventually devised a way back and forth, and from Morroco ended up staging a proper exploratory expedition. This would eventually stage the way for colonization of the Americas in the late 1400s, and what in OTL would be South America is a mixture of Berber and Arab states. When the Caliphate went into some decline for a period of time, it didn't take much for these nations to end up independent, but they're still quite closely related to the motherland, and ocean liners packed with pilgrims regularly come into the Middle East so as to complete the hajj.
That said, things are getting especially interesting inside Arabia in recent years. Coal has done much to power the industrial age, but the rise of a new liquid fuel is changing the game entirely - with the rise of the aircraft and the automobile, petroleum is an increasingly valuable commodity, likened to a new form of black gold. The Arabian government have been keenly investigating the sands of their lands, however, and have discovered veritable oceans of it, albeit buried very deeply. Already, though, their engineers are at hard at work on devising drilling machinery able to reach such depths and the pumps to recover it, and a number of small refineries have already been established to process it into a more useful form. If these reserves of oil are as large as the Caliphate hopes they are, and become as valuable as economists think they could be, then the twentieth century could mark the dawn of a new Islamic Golden Age.
There's not quite some clear cut stand ins here, as the whole board is different, but there are definitely certain players that are fulfilling certain "roles" historically speaking. You definitely got one with the Wendish Empire, which is definitely close to the Russian Empire, and the Daneland-Ottoman comparison is a fun one (and now that I think about it more, their situation with the Skandi, ATL!versions of Norway and Sweden, could be said to parallel the Ottoman relationship with the Arabs? Food for thought on that one
), but there's others that take on certain roles and some that slot between.In this case, here's some quick sort of comparisons, a I should be getting to main story writing
A) Great Mossavia - a sort of stronger version of Austria-Hungary with way less internal issues and a better economy, built around a sort of Czech-Austrian core.
B) Rhenland - the easy comparison would be to Germany, and that's pretty damned close, but its actually sort of between France and Germany in power. It's not an empire, either, but an actual republic, and a rather revanchist one at that. France is probably the best comparison.
C) Vascony - not an easy comparison to make, but possibly a stronger version of someone like Romania or Bulgaria? It could very well be the equivalent of those two rolled into one when it comes to combat power. More than that gets hard to place
D) Anglecynn - the easy comparison would be Britain, and that's pretty much on the money, but it's a weaker version of Britain that lacks much of the empire and hasn't got all of Scotland or Ireland (which is mostly controlled through client statelets), but which on the other hand does have the eastern seaboard of the OTL United States, all bound together as a sort of federal parliamentary constitutional elective monarchy, led by the Witenagemot.
E) Aquitaine - probably the hardest to place out of the lot, it's basically the southern half of France. It could be likened to Italy, but the comparison doesn't feel quite right as it feels like it'd be stronger than Italy due to its overseas territories backing it up. A stronger Italy, then?
I suppose that means that this Great War is a sort of alliance of Austria-Hungary + Russia + Ottomans + Romania-Bulgaria versus France + Britain with a chunk of the US + Italy. That sounds like the recipe for a Great War, so the balance between the factions seems to work for me
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