Map Thread XXI

Status
Not open for further replies.
Reader mode
Kingdom of Pryddain, by Sārthākā
  • Index
    • Sarthak

    Sarthak

    KIDtVvb.png

    ​
    My mapping take on a what if on what if historical Arthur actually succeeded in pushing the Anglo-Saxons out and kept Britain brythonic, and later re-unified it into one coherent entity. The coat of arms of the nation and the house of pendragon are not mine and are from here and here respectively. Thoughts and comments?
     
  • Index

    • B_Munro

    If not a major sub-kingdom, what is the realm of Pen Draig? (That's some interesting territorial distribution there.) And what do the two (three?) lighter shades of grey-green represent?
     
    Epicmonkeys&apes

    Epicmonkeys&apes

    The People's Republic of China and all its claimed territory is ISOT'd to a virgin earth, hijinks ensue.
    chinacliaimsisot.png


    Beijing, the center of the world, is doing surprisingly relatively well keeping a hold of their empire. Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong were recognized as independent states almost immediately to avoid continued conflict. Beijing has been surprisingly diplomatic in handling separatists and other rebellious groups. Some even plan to completely pull out of any non-Han territory, just to keep the peace at home. Soon after the event internal strife racked the members of the CCP, mainly divided on religion and democracy. Xin Jinping and his hardline communist authoritarian allies were arrested by the military, largely controlled by the more liberal and democratic, though still communist, if less so, members of the CCP. Christians, Muslims, and liberal corporate types were allowed to create their own parties. Liberalizing has been a bit of a mess with various parties and administrations being extremely independent from Beijing. Most nowadays want more democracy but no one wants to destabilize things further. Before the event China was dependent on natural resources from across the world. Without them Chinese industry has dried up completely. Mass famine is setting in across the world as tens of millions lack food and work. Until now Beijing was strict enough (and enacted some questionable emergency laws on which ethnic groups are of most importance) to provide food for the country, though some of the biggest city's collapse, sending refugees across the world. In the shadiest corners of government some have even began planning which areas to purge and loot for food.
    Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong were given independence almost immediately. Tibet is torn between those who want to keep low and plan for the long run by colonizing, and those who want to use this time of turmoil to convert all of China. All agree though that for now there in no place to challenge Beijing. Even without direct Tibetan interference Buddhism has become the one of the largest religions in the world, second only to Taoism.
    Tuva is currently in strife between Moscowphiles, ultra-nationalists, and various religious groups. Old Believers see the event as a gift from God, that holding on to their faith for so long has given them the bounty of Russia. Most of them want to go off and form their own nation, though some are more pragmatic and want Tuva to keep the Russian Federation alive. Most Tuvans have the common idea that Tuva is now independent, though the Chairman doesn't want to incite conflict by actually declaring it. The roughly thirty thousand atheists in the country have converted to Shamanism, Buddhism, or Old Belief.
     

    Attachments

    • chinacliaimsisot.png
      chinacliaimsisot.png
      12.7 KB · Views: 797
    Last edited:

    alexffnet

    Epicmonkeys&apes said:
    The People's Republic of China and all its claimed territory is ISOT'd to a virgin earth, hijinks ensue.
    View attachment 718182

    Beijing, the center of the world, is doing surprisingly relatively well keeping a hold of their empire. Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong were recognized as independent states almost immediately to avoid continued conflict. Beijing has been surprisingly diplomatic in handling separatists and other rebellious groups. Some even plan to completely pull out of any non-Han territory, just to keep the peace at home. Soon after the event internal strife racked the members of the CCP, mainly divided on religion and democracy. Xin Jinping and his hardline communist authoritarian allies were arrested by the military, largely controlled by the more liberal and democratic, though still communist, if less so, members of the CCP. Christians, Muslims, and liberal corporate types were allowed to create their own parties. Liberalizing has been a bit of a mess with various parties and administrations being extremely independent from Beijing. Most nowadays want more democracy but no one wants to destabilize things further. Before the event China was dependent on natural resources from across the world. Without them Chinese industry has dried up completely. Mass famine is setting in across the world as tens of millions lack food and work. Until now Beijing was strict enough (and enacted some questionable emergency laws on which ethnic groups are of most importance) to provide food for the country, though some of the biggest city's collapse, sending refugees across the world. In the shadiest corners of government some have even began planning which areas to purge and loot for food.
    Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong were given independence almost immediately. Tibet is torn between those who want to keep low and plan for the long run by colonizing, and those who want to use this time of turmoil to convert all of China. All agree though that for now there in no place to challenge Beijing. Even without direct Tibetan interference Buddhism has become the one of the largest religions in the world, second only to Taoism.
    Tuva is currently in strife between Moscowphiles, ultra-nationalists, and various religious groups. Old Believers see the event as a gift from God, that holding on to their faith for so long has given them the bounty of Russia. Most of them want to go off and form their own nation, though some are more pragmatic and want Tuva to keep the Russian Federation alive. Most Tuvans have the common idea that Tuva is now independent, though the Chairman doesn't want to incite conflict by actually declaring it. The roughly thirty thousand atheists in the country have converted to Shamanism, Buddhism, or Old Belief.
    Click to expand...
    I’m mostly curious why Guangdong of all provinces is the thorn in democratic & liberalizing China’s side. If any Chinese province in the PRC was going to yeet itself headfirst into democratic rule like your scenario implies it’d be Guangdong.

    I’m not gonna argue about the impending famine part - while China is reasonably food self sufficient (they’re a net importer but afaik a large chunk of that is in luxury foodstuffs), whether or not their agricultural system will hold up when international supply chains vanish overnight is entirely up in the air.

    Still, with no other states on the coast ISOT’d i’m wondering why they aren’t just going balls deep on fishing. It’s not like they lack the boats.

    And speaking of coastal ISOTs, Taiwan reunifies with Beijing but they somehow give up HK?
     
    Sarthak

    Sarthak

    Alternate A-H.png

    ​
    A little what if on what if a Rump Austria-Hungary survived after WW1 by managing to at least keep the central government together. Thoughts and Comments?
     
    Epicmonkeys&apes

    Epicmonkeys&apes

    alexffnet said:
    I’m mostly curious why Guangdong of all provinces is the thorn in democratic & liberalizing China’s side. If any Chinese province in the PRC was going to yeet itself headfirst into democratic rule like your scenario implies it’d be Guangdong.

    I’m not gonna argue about the impending famine part - while China is reasonably food self sufficient (they’re a net importer but afaik a large chunk of that is in luxury foodstuffs), whether or not their agricultural system will hold up when international supply chains vanish overnight is entirely up in the air.

    Still, with no other states on the coast ISOT’d i’m wondering why they aren’t just going balls deep on fishing. It’s not like they lack the boats.

    And speaking of coastal ISOTs, Taiwan reunifies with Beijing but they somehow give up HK?
    Click to expand...
    I may not have known about Guangdong's economic/political importance when I made this :p searched it up tho and will edit it
    Every state with a coast would probably be fishing their ass off. The PRC and the new ROC don't want to sell fish to the mainland though, it's the only thing keeping their heads above water. Without fully stable governments I'd imagine building a fishing industry could be tricky, though a lot of people would voluntarily, it's better than starving. Fish also tends to stay in the coastal towns, or sent to the biggest cities.
    The ROC renamed itself the Republic of Taiwan. The mainland republic is unrelated. Ive changed the colors to be more distinct though :p
    ill add more to the write up l8r today
     
    DUWANG

    DUWANG

    wildviper121 said:
    2037: The Saudi Civil War


    Saudi Arabia, once a regional powerhouse, collapsed before the mid-point of the century. While the monarchy in Riyadh had once been able to successfully repress all opposition to its reign, a variety of factors weakened its hold on power.

    THE PROBLEMS:

    Saudi Arabia was running on borrowed time for decades by the time it collapsed.

    For one, the kingdom was a rentier state: state-owned companies extracted oil, made a profit on the international market, and funneling that money into domestic powerholders to satiate complaints against the regime. A rentier state, of course, needs to continue making profit to survive. As the demand for oil declined in the second quarter of the 21st century as alternative fuel sources became cheap, Saudi Arabia needed to diversify.

    Because of the nature of the Saudi economy, nearly half of the country’s citizens did not work and were not looking for work in the year 2037. Dependent on dwindling government support and too proud to join the Saudi workforce (which consisted of a large number of foreign workers from South Asia), these unemployed masses had both the time and motivation to take up arms against the government, if it stopped supporting them.

    As a rentier kingdom, the Saudi royal family held all key positions in government and most key positions of power in the country. Any king would be challenged by a large number of possible rivals. This was especially the case for King Muhammad bin Salman, who ascended to the throne in 2025. The first grandson of King Abdulaziz (Ibn Saud) to hold the throne, King Muhammad faced a legitimacy crisis despite his efforts to purge all rivals to his power.

    There was also the issue of religion. Since its very beginnings, Saudi Arabia was based off an alliance between the Saudi royal family and the ulema clerics, led by the Wahhabi Grand Mufti and his Al Ash-Sheikh religious family. At times, Saudi kings had tried to limit the power of the clerics—claiming the power to appoint the Grand Mufti and the Council of Senior Scholars, for example—but clerics had always been a source of conservative agitation against the government.

    Saudi Arabia also had a large minority of Shia Muslims, who were discriminated against as second-class citizens in the Sunni-controlled country. The Shia, who made up a large portion of the population in the east (where most of the oil was) and the southwest (on the tumultuous border with Yemen), were also a source of agitation against the government.

    THE RESPONSE:

    The Saudi royal family was well aware of these issues. In the early years of his reign, King Muhammad bin Salman sought to bolster other areas of the economy, chiefly technology and trade. He also sought to replace declining oil revenues with international investment, but in order to do that, he needed to modernize the country: he brought women into the workforce, granted noncitizens special legal privileges, and decriminalized adult alcohol consumption. In the political realm, he granted a 2/3 veto power to the Consultative Assembly and created a lower house to be elected throughout the counties (though parties were still banned, and the king still held significant legislative powers). At the centerpiece of King Muhammad’s modernization plans was Neom, an urbanization project in the northwest of the country which included construction of a 100-mile linear city stretching from the coast through inland mountains—with a price-tag in the 100’s of billions of dollars.

    King Muhammad’s modernization agenda was celebrated by the country’s progressives and its international allies. However, the conservatives of the country, led by the Council of Senior Scholars and the Grand Mufti were a constant source of whispered objections. Seeking to satiate the clerics and conservatives, King Muhammad returned to beating the dead horse of Yemen. In a series of military campaigns, King Muhammad created a Saudi puppet-state in Hudaydah, western Yemen—which failed to garner international recognition and became a drain on Saudi Arabia’s resources.

    Saudi Arabia’s meddling abroad, however, only served to anger the country’s large Shia minority, inciting a state suppression campaign. Those Shias in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region had cross-border connections with the Zaidi Shias of Yemen and took to the streets to protest King Muhammad’s war. In Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, Shias too protested. These protests, however, died down and failed to attract international intention.

    As the Yemen disaster drained the country’s national bank, raised taxes, and shook the country, the Consultative Assembly voiced its objections to the King—who promptly suspended the lower chamber. Leading critics fled to Qatar and Iran. With his authority waning, however, King Muhammad sought to reclaim the loyalty of his country by going after the clerics, who had shut up as of late but might soon turn on him too. He abolished the position of Grand Mufti (as his uncle had done in 1969) and began issuing fatwas of his own from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Grand Mufti Muhammad Al ash-Sheikh, not wanting to be assassinated, found refuge in Qatar, though continued to whisper support to the country’s Salafists.

    Briefly, it seemed as though King Muhammad had solidified his rule. Elections were held again for the Consultative Assembly, with loyalists again winning the supermajority, while Shia protesters returned to their quiet grumblings.

    A series of events in the second half of the 2030’s changed that.

    • 2036 Israel-Lebanon War: Israel launched a war against Islamist-controlled Lebanon, forcing the Islamist Group and Hizbullah into exile. While Israel’s war was controversial in the rest of the world (the ruling Islamist Group was considered a terrorist organization by the West), it was despised in the Muslim World, triggering widespread protests and riots. Many Sunni states, who had pragmatically made alliances with Israel and mostly turned a blind eye to the war, were confronted by religious conservatives who demanded action. This left lasting legitimacy issues for many regimes in the Middle East.
    • Whistleblowers revealed the Neom Project’s vast corruption, mismanagement, and abuses of workers during the past decades of the project. While King Muhammad attempted to censor news of the misspent hundreds of billions, he failed to cease its spread.
    • Revolutions of 2037: Over the course of a few months, massive protests proliferated across the Arab world. Their origins began in Egypt against the regime of President Muhammad Farid Hegazy, which ultimately led to his assassination in a military coup. In Morocco, protests forced King Muhammad VI out of power, leaving the parliament to declare a successor. Major protests also erupted in Jordan against King Hussein II, and in the UAE where South Asian workers marched to demand greater rights.
    With the Muslim world again rising in revolution, those in Saudi Arabia who were dissatisfied with the status quo—from modernizers to Shias to Salafists—took to the streets as well.

    Here's the map at the peak of fighting, in May of 2039. At this point, the rival King Khalid has lost his legitimacy and is facing a widespread Islamist revolt, centered in Buraydah and 'Unayzah. Meanwhile, anti-Saudi rebels have claimed Ha'il, Military City, and Jiddah. Shia revolutionaries are expanding in Dammam and Khamis Mushayt, while Neom has fallen to a workers' revolt. The government of King Muhammad is beginning to rely on foreign aid for its survival -- the allied Gulf states, as well as Jordan, Iraq, and the United States.

    View attachment 718005

    And here's a video of the course of the whole civil war. Make sure to get full screen / hd so you can see the city names.

    Click to expand...
    Oh God. I don't want to imagine how "ISN" controlled Mecca and Medina would look like.
    Would most Muslims even dare to do theHajj? Or are these the kind of extremist who would destroy the holy places?
     
    wildviper121

    wildviper121

    DUWANG said:
    Oh God. I don't want to imagine how "ISN" controlled Mecca and Medina would look like.
    Would most Muslims even dare to do theHajj? Or are these the kind of extremist who would destroy the holy places?
    Click to expand...
    Good q's --

    The clocktower is coming down. It's damaged in the fighting and the Islamists of the setting find such a modern structure overshadowing the Kaaba to be an insult. Western businesses are getting shuttered as well--no more Meccan starbucks, for example. I imagine no non-Muslims would be permitted to enter the whole of the country, so that means a whole bunch of migrant workers are being forced out.
    But besides that the holy places are staying intact, except for those damaged in the fighting and the bombing. Non-Muslim sites are a different case -- as far as I know there are currently none in Saudi Arabia, but if MBS allows the construction of a few (to attract Western investment maybe) than those are getting dynamited quickly.

    Regarding the Hajj, there's a huge pause for a number of years as the city is hotspot in the war. After the war, I'd say there's probably a widespread boycott among moderate/liberal Muslims for a number of years as the Caliphate of Arabia fails to garner international recognition. Pilgrimage to other sites would increase -- the Umayyad Mosque in Syria, al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. After, it depends on how successful the Caliphate's diplomacy is. I think Islam as a whole is going to have a major identity crisis. While only 10% of Muslims have been on Hajj, the seizure of the most holy place by fundamentalists is schism-levels of disaster.
     
    SoManyMistakes

    SoManyMistakes

    Clandango said:
    Two things you may want to keep in mind. It is spelled as ‘Reich’ and Finland is going to be rather unlucky if they have such an Israeli looking color in such a world. Also, you probably were thinking of Angola when you showed Namibia as unaligned. Anyways, congrats on your first map.
    Click to expand...
    Ah.
    Thanks
     
    Marc Anthony

    Marc Anthony

    wildviper121 said:
    2037: The Saudi Civil War


    Saudi Arabia, once a regional powerhouse, collapsed before the mid-point of the century. While the monarchy in Riyadh had once been able to successfully repress all opposition to its reign, a variety of factors weakened its hold on power.

    THE PROBLEMS:

    Saudi Arabia was running on borrowed time for decades by the time it collapsed.

    For one, the kingdom was a rentier state: state-owned companies extracted oil, made a profit on the international market, and funneling that money into domestic powerholders to satiate complaints against the regime. A rentier state, of course, needs to continue making profit to survive. As the demand for oil declined in the second quarter of the 21st century as alternative fuel sources became cheap, Saudi Arabia needed to diversify.

    Because of the nature of the Saudi economy, nearly half of the country’s citizens did not work and were not looking for work in the year 2037. Dependent on dwindling government support and too proud to join the Saudi workforce (which consisted of a large number of foreign workers from South Asia), these unemployed masses had both the time and motivation to take up arms against the government, if it stopped supporting them.

    As a rentier kingdom, the Saudi royal family held all key positions in government and most key positions of power in the country. Any king would be challenged by a large number of possible rivals. This was especially the case for King Muhammad bin Salman, who ascended to the throne in 2025. The first grandson of King Abdulaziz (Ibn Saud) to hold the throne, King Muhammad faced a legitimacy crisis despite his efforts to purge all rivals to his power.

    There was also the issue of religion. Since its very beginnings, Saudi Arabia was based off an alliance between the Saudi royal family and the ulema clerics, led by the Wahhabi Grand Mufti and his Al Ash-Sheikh religious family. At times, Saudi kings had tried to limit the power of the clerics—claiming the power to appoint the Grand Mufti and the Council of Senior Scholars, for example—but clerics had always been a source of conservative agitation against the government.

    Saudi Arabia also had a large minority of Shia Muslims, who were discriminated against as second-class citizens in the Sunni-controlled country. The Shia, who made up a large portion of the population in the east (where most of the oil was) and the southwest (on the tumultuous border with Yemen), were also a source of agitation against the government.

    THE RESPONSE:

    The Saudi royal family was well aware of these issues. In the early years of his reign, King Muhammad bin Salman sought to bolster other areas of the economy, chiefly technology and trade. He also sought to replace declining oil revenues with international investment, but in order to do that, he needed to modernize the country: he brought women into the workforce, granted noncitizens special legal privileges, and decriminalized adult alcohol consumption. In the political realm, he granted a 2/3 veto power to the Consultative Assembly and created a lower house to be elected throughout the counties (though parties were still banned, and the king still held significant legislative powers). At the centerpiece of King Muhammad’s modernization plans was Neom, an urbanization project in the northwest of the country which included construction of a 100-mile linear city stretching from the coast through inland mountains—with a price-tag in the 100’s of billions of dollars.

    King Muhammad’s modernization agenda was celebrated by the country’s progressives and its international allies. However, the conservatives of the country, led by the Council of Senior Scholars and the Grand Mufti were a constant source of whispered objections. Seeking to satiate the clerics and conservatives, King Muhammad returned to beating the dead horse of Yemen. In a series of military campaigns, King Muhammad created a Saudi puppet-state in Hudaydah, western Yemen—which failed to garner international recognition and became a drain on Saudi Arabia’s resources.

    Saudi Arabia’s meddling abroad, however, only served to anger the country’s large Shia minority, inciting a state suppression campaign. Those Shias in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region had cross-border connections with the Zaidi Shias of Yemen and took to the streets to protest King Muhammad’s war. In Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, Shias too protested. These protests, however, died down and failed to attract international intention.

    As the Yemen disaster drained the country’s national bank, raised taxes, and shook the country, the Consultative Assembly voiced its objections to the King—who promptly suspended the lower chamber. Leading critics fled to Qatar and Iran. With his authority waning, however, King Muhammad sought to reclaim the loyalty of his country by going after the clerics, who had shut up as of late but might soon turn on him too. He abolished the position of Grand Mufti (as his uncle had done in 1969) and began issuing fatwas of his own from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Grand Mufti Muhammad Al ash-Sheikh, not wanting to be assassinated, found refuge in Qatar, though continued to whisper support to the country’s Salafists.

    Briefly, it seemed as though King Muhammad had solidified his rule. Elections were held again for the Consultative Assembly, with loyalists again winning the supermajority, while Shia protesters returned to their quiet grumblings.

    A series of events in the second half of the 2030’s changed that.

    • 2036 Israel-Lebanon War: Israel launched a war against Islamist-controlled Lebanon, forcing the Islamist Group and Hizbullah into exile. While Israel’s war was controversial in the rest of the world (the ruling Islamist Group was considered a terrorist organization by the West), it was despised in the Muslim World, triggering widespread protests and riots. Many Sunni states, who had pragmatically made alliances with Israel and mostly turned a blind eye to the war, were confronted by religious conservatives who demanded action. This left lasting legitimacy issues for many regimes in the Middle East.
    • Whistleblowers revealed the Neom Project’s vast corruption, mismanagement, and abuses of workers during the past decades of the project. While King Muhammad attempted to censor news of the misspent hundreds of billions, he failed to cease its spread.
    • Revolutions of 2037: Over the course of a few months, massive protests proliferated across the Arab world. Their origins began in Egypt against the regime of President Muhammad Farid Hegazy, which ultimately led to his assassination in a military coup. In Morocco, protests forced King Muhammad VI out of power, leaving the parliament to declare a successor. Major protests also erupted in Jordan against King Hussein II, and in the UAE where South Asian workers marched to demand greater rights.
    With the Muslim world again rising in revolution, those in Saudi Arabia who were dissatisfied with the status quo—from modernizers to Shias to Salafists—took to the streets as well.

    Here's the map at the peak of fighting, in May of 2039. At this point, the rival King Khalid has lost his legitimacy and is facing a widespread Islamist revolt, centered in Buraydah and 'Unayzah. Meanwhile, anti-Saudi rebels have claimed Ha'il, Military City, and Jiddah. Shia revolutionaries are expanding in Dammam and Khamis Mushayt, while Neom has fallen to a workers' revolt. The government of King Muhammad is beginning to rely on foreign aid for its survival -- the allied Gulf states, as well as Jordan, Iraq, and the United States.

    View attachment 718005

    And here's a video of the course of the whole civil war. Make sure to get full screen / hd so you can see the city names.

    Click to expand...
    i just watched your video, i liked but you have only one. i really hope you maks some more
     
    Reader mode
    Top
    Status
    Not open for further replies.
    Top