Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
Answer to Q4
Availability has already been mentioned, Another note is the consistent quality of the fuel: its a biological product, not a geological one. That means it burns hotter and requires less management.
Setting Question 5
How did the scramble for Africa turn out? same as our timeline? One power took all? Africa is still open for the taking? Different powers conquered? Independent but still european controlled nations?
EDIT: Wait, Combat Medic was the first to do this game on this forum, before I showed up? I had no idea. Thanks for the links!
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Answer to Q5
Conflict is good in any RPG setting, so the fight for Africa is even more violent and it remains ongoing.
The key area of concern is the Congo basin, as the presence of petrol reefs in close proximity to a large, navigable waterway makes it, and not South Africa, the crowning prize of the continent.
However, it's a poisonous jewel. The rampant diseases in the area bring death to Europeans and their horses and cattle, so colonial powers send in small groups of special operatives to work through local tribal proxies to fight vicious little wars throughout the thick, steaming jungle and across winding, intertwined waterways plied by armed and armored steamboats.
Tiny Belgium never had a chance, here, and shifted its attention to the Swahili Coast, where it remained true to form. Belgian colonial officials work through comprador-class soldiers to keep their boots on the throats of locals forced to grow coffee and tea, and hunt elephants for valuable ivory. Bloody uprisings, and even more brutal suppression, are the mark of Belgian rule.
In South Africa, British distraction in the Congo basin leaves the Boers to impose a brutal apartheid society dependent upon what is effectively slave labor in the diamond fields and gold mines. The British have seized the cape as a vital refueling station, just as they did in our world, but haven't pushed hard into the interior
The British cape faces a constant threat of Boer raids, armed and funded by gold and diamonds shipped out via freight dirigible from Johannesburg. Meanwhile the Zulu, who have benefited from the butterfly flaps, realize the
impis, armed with shield and
iklwa, cannot prevail, and work with anyone willing to provide them with modern arms and training. They pay in cattle, women, and stolen diamonds and gold, and the rare dirigible smuggler willing to brave the crags of the Drakensburgs with a cargo of breech-loading rifles or powder can make a killing -- at least, as long as he or she manages to avoid British navy patrols and merciless Boer
kommando raiders.
The fuse is long, but that explosion will rock the world if it's allowed to burn.
In the Congo basin, itself, France supplanted the Portuguese 250 years ago, and now the empire fights desperately against British and German opportunistic efforts to pry the prize away.
None of that matters much to the men in the jungle, though. Alliances shift as often as river channels in the rainy season and, regardless of the side to which a neighbor may have formally pledged, money rules all. The knife across one's throat may come from someone who called himself a comrade, a month ago.
(NOTE: I had originally meant the reefs to have evolved to take advantage of petroleum produced by natural geological processes, but I
really like how that idea morphed. It makes jungles, marshes and moors into gold mines that reek of rotten eggs, once the digging starts, and that's in
addition to the regular deposits of petroleum, which also appear in reefs. Bravo!)
Question 6
In addition to Britain, France and Germany, who are the major industrial powers of this world and how did they achieve that status?