Some TLs I'd like to see

Hello, I'm new here. I'd just like to contribute to the webiste by showcasing some TLs I'd like to see.

1. Roman Empire during Its early stages begins to make the Sahara green. The Sahara goes to the point where the desert is only in fringe areas around the core. The rest becomes a steppe where the Tuareg become a nomadic people similar to the Huns. The aftermath of this means that the empire expands south and the enormous breadbasket causes an industrial revolution sized population explosion in the empire. The empire's power grows even more powerful instead of less powerful as it fights several bloody wars with Barbarian invaders.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volin
Volin leads a Anarcho-Communist revolution which beats the reds and whites. He makes an alliance with Rosa Luxemburg and works together with her to lead a global revolution.

3. Ethiopian TL during 4th century. Ethiopia conquers the entire Swahili coast and establishes a empire streaching from the Sudan to Mozambique.

4. Charlemagne's empire doesn't collapse into a big mess (Bad memories from CK2) and charles the bald effectively takes over and becomes Caesar. He goes on to slay pagan slavs and his decendants conquer all the way to modern Ukraine and Belarus.

5. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Aurion (ASOIAF TL*)
Aurion, one of the last dragonlords to survive the doom is not a moron and stays in his aboud in Qohor. There he declares himself Emperor of Valyria and fills in the vacuum left after the fall of the Freehold. He uses his army of 30,000 and his dragon to take back all the free cities and makes a temporary capital in Volantis. He establishes contact with the Targeryens and their underlings and intermingle with them. The New Valyrian empire brings the Dothraki to their knees and aborts the bleeding years.
 
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The third and fourth ones sound especially interesting. Eventually I'd say Charlemagne's Empire would collapse, but not until a while later.
 
(2) sounds very cool but difficult to achieve. I recommend Reydan's excellent Alternate Paris Coomune TL for starters.
)1) sounds ASB because precipitations just weren't sufficient. Some of the oasis-dwelling cultures had very sophisticated solutions but even they couldn't do anything about it. Also, the Romans were very big in degrading their own soils, with a terrible ecological record. Not exactly pioneers of sustainability. How would you change that?
(3) is interesting, too, although I am told that the East African seaboard was Not yet sufficiently developed in that Time period.
 
Here's a pretty good idea about number 1 (my first time doing a map EVER).

(Rome is the enormous blob in the middle. While Moor and Tuareg kingdoms border it. The Tocharians and Alanians also forge a vast empire in the enormous forests that were once the Scythian steppes.)

The world's climate is completly different. There is no Amazon rainforest!

BaseMapSPLR.png
 
(2) sounds very cool but difficult to achieve. I recommend Reydan's excellent Alternate Paris Coomune TL for starters.
(1) sounds ASB because precipitations just weren't sufficient. Some of the oasis-dwelling cultures had very sophisticated solutions but even they couldn't do anything about it. Also, the Romans were very big in degrading their own soils, with a terrible ecological record. Not exactly pioneers of sustainability. How would you change that?
(3) is interesting, too, although I am told that the East African seaboard was Not yet sufficiently developed in that Time period.

(1) Thats why the Caesars use canals instead. (This would require some pretty deep changes in the nature of the empire). However if the constructed just a few of these. There is also the fact that Rome has access to intellectual pools of Alexandria and Athens. I think a focus on natural sciences and especially fertilizer could change the relations between the intellectuals and the emperors. I think that after a few centuries of Emperors (take Caligula and Nero away) competing for a greater lake could effectively change the Sahara into a Steppe.

(2) Could just need some different leadership in the revolution. Potentially, Lenin and Trotsky have a strange tasting mushroom soup, given by Uncle Volin! ;)

(3) There must've been at least some fishing towns across the coast for the Axumites/Ethiopians to establish a stronghold on. Then they could go like the Romans and establish cities themselves.

(4) I'd give it a few centuries. The interesting thing though would be what a Latinized eastern Europe would look like. The landscape of the place (city names etc.) would be completely different. Maybe a new charismatic member of the French aristocracy takes the place of the Carolingians in the vacuum?

(5) One of you guys better make that TL.....
 
(1) Thats why the Caesars use canals instead. (This would require some pretty deep changes in the nature of the empire). However if the constructed just a few of these. There is also the fact that Rome has access to intellectual pools of Alexandria and Athens. I think a focus on natural sciences and especially fertilizer could change the relations between the intellectuals and the emperors. I think that after a few centuries of Emperors (take Caligula and Nero away) competing for a greater lake could effectively change the Sahara into a Steppe.

(2) Could just need some different leadership in the revolution. Potentially, Lenin and Trotsky have a strange tasting mushroom soup, given by Uncle Volin! ;)

(3) There must've been at least some fishing towns across the coast for the Axumites/Ethiopians to establish a stronghold on. Then they could go like the Romans and establish cities themselves.

(4) I'd give it a few centuries. The interesting thing though would be what a Latinized eastern Europe would look like. The landscape of the place (city names etc.) would be completely different. Maybe a new charismatic member of the French aristocracy takes the place of the Carolingians in the vacuum?

(5) One of you guys better make that TL.....
Canals may not be quite the perfect solution. Throughout most of the Sahara, the equation runs: No rain = dry canals. The only river which provides enough water is the Nile; but you can only go so far with Nile water solutions. The lake map you provide is impssible to achieve through human action with the technologies of antiquity (and even with our modern day technologies). It would work if you change the climate beforehand, but that`s by definition ASB.

Leninism is not my favourite brand to be sure, but there`s a reason why it prevailed: it offered a realistic recipe for revolutionary warfare and state-building: the cadre party and its equation with both the working class and the state. More anarchist groups always had insurmountable problems with coordination and control.
 
I have to agree... But I have to disagree on the Leninism part. I agree that anarchist organizations are too decentralized to fight of bourgeois counterattacks (Thats what we have Left Communism for). However, politics aside.... What do you guys think about the last one. I for one would love to see that but can't write it since I neither have the will or writing skills.
 
(2) sounds very cool but difficult to achieve. I recommend Reydan's excellent Alternate Paris Coomune TL for starters.

Thank you for that. What a nice thing to say!

Leninism is not my favourite brand to be sure, but there`s a reason why it prevailed: it offered a realistic recipe for revolutionary warfare and state-building: the cadre party and its equation with both the working class and the state. More anarchist groups always had insurmountable problems with coordination and control.

I have to agree with this - its something I've been wrestling with in my own timeline.

(2) Could just need some different leadership in the revolution. Potentially, Lenin and Trotsky have a strange tasting mushroom soup, given by Uncle Volin! ;)

(3) There must've been at least some fishing towns across the coast for the Axumites/Ethiopians to establish a stronghold on. Then they could go like the Romans and establish cities themselves.

2 - Problem is that you would need thousands and thousands of people to die before Volin could come to power. Also your scenario relies on a successful Rosa Luxemburg - also a tough one to achieve. Maybe if Volin threw in his lot with the Social Revolutionaries and they resist the lure of the Bolsheviks that split their party OTL....

3. I think its possible. Its not a period I know much about, but it seems as though pre-Islam the Ethiopians might have had more luck at pushing against disunited Somalians (their main blocker when it came to southwards expansion).

I have to agree... But I have to disagree on the Leninism part. I agree that anarchist organizations are too decentralized to fight of bourgeois counterattacks (Thats what we have Left Communism for). However, politics aside.... What do you guys think about the last one. I for one would love to see that but can't write it since I neither have the will or writing skills.

Afraid I can't comment on the last one, as I'm not a GOT fan. Sorry!
 
I'd love to see 1), given your map sketch. At first I thought it was a 'Romans can do anything' kind of a wank, but I like the fact you thought out the environmental consequences.
 
I don't think you can green the Sahara with human effort, and if it was green for ASB reasons that somehow butterfly-netted the rise of Rome, I think the indigenous civilizations are still going to be sufficiently powerful that Rome will struggle to penetrate that far from the Mediterranean basin in a similar way that the Parthians resisted long-term Roman occupation.

Also a green Sahara means that Egypt will never really become as popular - there will be LOADS of Egypts down south. ;)
 
I don't think you can green the Sahara with human effort, and if it was green for ASB reasons that somehow butterfly-netted the rise of Rome, I think the indigenous civilizations are still going to be sufficiently powerful that Rome will struggle to penetrate that far from the Mediterranean basin in a similar way that the Parthians resisted long-term Roman occupation.

Also a green Sahara means that Egypt will never really become as popular - there will be LOADS of Egypts down south. ;)

Ok lets say this.
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A renaissance man (Full Roman) is born in Meninx to a bureaucratic family. During the early years of his life he witnessed the importance of water in relation to climate and plant-life especially since his island was flourishing. He grows up to be a sort of proto-scientist in Alexandria. There he teaches in the buildings that survived Caesar's sacking. He learns about the Pharaoh's plan to canal the Nile to the Red sea. Seeing the legitimacy of such a achievement he remembers about the Chott el-jerid which is only a few kilometers from the sea. Struck by the idea, he rushes to tell his colleges about it. Most of the find it preposterous however one told him that the ambitious Princeps could be interested. Seizing the opportunity, the man leaves to Rome to convince Augustus the use of this canal. Augustus was cynical at first, but after a long rant about the many advantages and the fact that the Chott is only a few kilometers from the sea convinced him. Augustus launched his project and soon enough, Lake Augusta was made.

The idea continued to the second Emperor Tiberius, he acted on the Meninx man's last dying wish to create the a lake in the low lying Qattara depression (making lake Tiberius). Which soon began to change the climate of the Sahara.

Later Emperors created a agricultural university in Tripolitania to find new ways of converting desert to the agricultural heartland of Rome (North Africa). Many years of climate change and environmental awareness brought most of the Sahara to becoming similar to the Scythian Steppe. However, the Scythian steppe itself became no more. As more moisture in the Atmosphere turned most of Scythia into a thick siberian forest by the year 120 AD (the university somewhat saw the correlation). The world also got more moisture on average. The Caspian sea slowly started to swell as well. Creating a barrier for Persia against the long gone Steppe tribes.

The Empire's Saharan frontiers also expand as the Sahara slowly begins to disappear and lakes begin to form. The Tuaregs and Moors turn into a steppe people but are pushed south by the Empire. The Empire begins to establish colonies in the coast of the recently discovered lake Fezzan. They bring hundreds of thosands of Germanic/Celtic/Sub Saharan/Scythian slaves along the strange terrain of the vast Saharan grasslands. After the colonization of Fezzan, the Emperor Marcellus finds lake Sulla to the west of lake Fezzan and continues the colonization of what we know as Mauritania and Mali. Marcellus pushes down as far as the coast of lake Chad (lake Finibus) by the year 200 AD.

Most of the Sahara is very Chaotic (quite like the wild west). Roman colonies are few and far between and many undocumented towns begin to appear. The natives already went down south as a result of Rome's tactics.

The Tuaregs continue to conquer the newly founded African city-states which border Rome. Thus, having a strong ally which protects the Romans from the Moors, who fight the Romans in a series of wars which end in a stalemate. The Empire establishes outposts to mark the borders between the Colonies and their nomadic neighbors. Many lakes begin to dot the Sahel as well, although the Empire of Axum also begins to expand as well. The climate opened up the Axumite's trade with West Africa. Resulting in a Colonizing of the Sudan by the Emperors in Axum. by 230 AD, the Empire had defeated the renegade Somalis and pushed south to the coast of the newly found source of the Nile (Lake Origo)
The Axumites establishing colonies across the west African coast.

In India, the climate has much more moisture, to the point where the Subcontinent is almost always raining and the Ganges river overflows on many cities across India. The river is making many think that gods are angered. Especially on the extreme south where the Tamils live, the expanded monsoons were getting worse and the must find a way to religious harmony. That is when news of the lake that gives birth to the great river in the west arrives. A new sect of Hinduism is formed as the southern Indians convert by the thousands. The prophet of this religion was a Hindu Merchant in Sri Lanka who learned sea-faring and had a divine experience as he traveled to the great western river and heard Brahman calling to him, say that the Dravidians are his favored people and their homeland is the origin of the great river. He took many Tamils, Kannada, and some Telugu. On a great voyage similar to Abraham Across the Indian ocean. Their first stop was in Pattala where the Persian Governor was a Nestorian Christian and gave him supplies to leave for Axum. From there the Prophet left to the city of Aden, where he first met Axumite diplomats. They regarded him as a foreigner and originally left him. However the emperor saw how the Dravidians were a people similar to the Jews who fled Egypt after the punishment of god. The emperor let the Tamils in Sarapion where the Tamils marched to the mother lake where they founded the Tamil city of Tayeri by 271 AD. They were settled by the Emperor across the Sudan and were zealously loyal to the Axumite emperor.

To be continued...?
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You do have some quite creative ideas, so why not work with them?
Main problem very early in the chain is that a few small Lakes Won't change the climate of the Sahara sufficiently. Trust me, if that were enough, nothing would have stopped a Nasser or a Gaddafi or some other modern leader of a state with 80% desert surface from implementing it.
you'd need WAY more Water surfaces, more woods wherever possible in surrounding regions... Let's Not forget, there WERE Great Lakes in the Sahara, and the Sahara WAS green, and it desertified because of non-anthropogenic climate change.
 
You do have some quite creative ideas, so why not work with them?
Main problem very early in the chain is that a few small Lakes Won't change the climate of the Sahara sufficiently. Trust me, if that were enough, nothing would have stopped a Nasser or a Gaddafi or some other modern leader of a state with 80% desert surface from implementing it.
you'd need WAY more Water surfaces, more woods wherever possible in surrounding regions... Let's Not forget, there WERE Great Lakes in the Sahara, and the Sahara WAS green, and it desertified because of non-anthropogenic climate change.

Ok I'll start a TL on the ASB forums. However I still think it could be interesting..
 
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