New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

Unfortunately, it's not enough for the CSA to "not loose". Time is not on their side. The imperatives of each side; CSA survival and USA restore the union, are pretty much exclusive.

Given time, ie the CSA simply not loosing, the USA would build up enough arms, manpower and logistics to completely crush the CSA. To a degree, this is what happened IRL. If the CSA is not aggressive, the USA can do it without suffering losses and discontent. So long as the USA desires to reclaim the CSA, the CSA cannot let the USA have time to build a military machine. The industrial and population imbalance is to large.

The only way the CSA can win, is to deal a crippling blow to its will to fight. The CSA lacks the material or manpower to strike deep enough to deal serious long lasting damage to USA industrial power, much less occupy territory. "Sap the will to fight" is the best course of action. So the CSA has to find targets that are within reach of it's limited power.

The focus on Virginia was with good cause. Look at the positions of the two national capitals. Richmond and Washington are about 100 miles from each other, all through northern Virginia. If either side takes the other's capital, it would vastly shorten, if not end, the war. Battles were fought within earshot of Washington DC on more than one occasion and several runs were made on Richmond.


If your Centrum agent wants to weaken the powers that emerge from the ACW, he should probably target the Union side. The Union is the much bigger threat to establishing an industrial continental scale powerhouse. The only thing the USA lacks to project power, if the ACW draws, is New Orleans and perhaps some natural resources. What's worse, if the idea of a United States stays alive, the two countries probably do an East/West Germany thing in a few generations. Possibly just in time for WWII.
Keeping the CSA alive only does part of the job. Breaking the Union is the real task to tackle. If you're going to assassinate anyone, there are fewer Union generals that are both competent at war and willing to go to the wall for Lincoln and The Union. This, or more draft riots. Killing Lincoln might do it too.
This gets you a loose Confederacy in the South, and with a bit more pushing, possibly a few other fragments out of the Union. Multiple weaker states seems the best option.
I still think you get a reunification in under a hundred years. The rivers and trade of resources seems to make that the easiest path.

Given how unpopular the ACW was in the North, the CSA only needed to wait out the North's will to fight. Lee bleed the CSA dry and brought the South to an early ruin. Now, if the CSA had gained independence, there would have been more wars with the USA, both for control of the West and to force the USA out of Latin American markets. Heck, the two nations would have come to blows over navigation rights to the Mississippi and the Chesapeake. So yes the fights would have continued. The CSA could never have been stable, it would have destroyed itself through class and race warfare.

[PTTG]

Speaking of the civil war, have Henry Clay die before he gets a chance to broker a ceasefire between North and South. Tweak a few other things and the civil war could have come 40 years earlier.

[Gedrin]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Given how unpopular the ACW was in the North, the CSA only needed to wait out the North's will to fight. Lee bleed the CSA dry and brought the South to an early ruin. Now, if the CSA had gained independence, there would have been more wars with the USA, both for control of the West and to force the USA out of Latin American markets. Heck, the two nations would have come to blows over navigation rights to the Mississippi and the Chesapeake. So yes the fights would have continued. The CSA could never have been stable, it would have destroyed itself through class and race warfare.

At the start of the ACW the armies were about equal at 200k men.
At the end of the ACW, the Union, with all the riots, defeats, and unpopularity, had an army of 600k. This was about twice the size of the CSA's army. This is number of soldiers, and does not account for industrial capacity. When the Union had the greater capacity to mint soldiers and guns, and the greater ability to increase their own war industry, I don't see how avoiding action would have been better. This, of course, presumes that avoiding action is even possible. It wasn't. The USA attacked Richmond early and repeatedly.

At the end of the ACW, the Union had enough men to park a force 100% the size of the entire CSA army days from Richmond, entrenched under massive defenses in garrison conditions...and still have forces 100% the size of the CSA army roaming around the South.

Even against this imbalance of forces, the CSA inflicted more battle casualties on the USA's army than they suffered. The non-combat losses are similarly proportioned. Total CSA casualties ~450k. Total USA casualties: ~650k.

When outnumbered, out supplied, and outgunned, these are not numbers that count as a failure on the behalf of the field generals.

If you want the CSA to win, I really think there are much better targets for assassination than the CSA field generals. Maybe you could get Forest in charge, and shift tactics to raiding, but Forest wasn't what I'd call "less aggressive".

[Gedrin]

Misfire 1-X

With Homeline and Centrum scattering agents across the cosmos, plotting to destabilize and realign history, sometimes their plans don't quite go as expected. Worlds that have been proven to be the targets of Centrum plots, and subsequently gone completely amok, are classified as Misfires. All known Misfire worlds are believed to be in Quantums inaccessible to Centrum. Backfire is the designation for worlds where Homeline plots fail dramatically.

Misfire 1

A Centrum plot assassinates General Washington as he is about to meet with his officers, and talk them down from a mutiny against the Congress. This tactic had been used successfully on other worlds, crippling the fledgling country. The Centrum assassin proclaims that the Congress will not tolerate men such as Washington. The anticipated mutiny goes off as expected, but the fledgling Americans are as horrified as the officers by the seeming betrayal of the nation's great hero general. Unexpected numbers side with the mutiny. Even stranger, unexpected numbers of the mutineers simply continue on with the work the now dead Congress had been doing. The resultant changes in the Constitution, such as a military service requirement to serve in Congress, yield a much more aggressive USA than Homeline's, though the nation is still an "open" society by the standards of 1800's Homline. Centrum's efforts to quash the burgeoning continental power fail in the war of 1810, and the USA siezes control of the Canadian territories. By 1850, Europe had abandoned North America completely. Currently, it is 1858, California and Texas are full States and US forces move to end the Mexican civil war and add a few more States. Slavery is still contentious, but a bizarre array of methods to phase out the institution are in place, though many are only lip service attempts. With Europe preoccupied by the rise of a powerful German state, low population seems to be the only force containing the imperial United States of America.

[PTTG]

I love the concept of backfire worlds. The biggest backfire possible is probably something like that ww3 world I posted a while back, but a Homelike attempt to introduce corporations and the printing press to a TL4 low mana world, in order to make an effective trading partner, ends up triggering a political war of communist Elves against capitalist Dwarves.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Speaking of the civil war, have Henry Clay die before he gets a chance to broker a ceasefire between North and South. Tweak a few other things and the civil war could have come 40 years earlier.

That would lead to a far better chance for an independent CSA.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Speaking of the civil war, have Henry Clay die before he gets a chance to broker a ceasefire between North and South. Tweak a few other things and the civil war could have come 40 years earlier.

Isn't there a canon Dixie like this, where the Civil War started early, California & Texas are independent as well as CSA, and all four are rivals for the West?

Originally Posted by Gedrin

Misfire 1-X

With Homeline and Centrum scattering agents across the cosmos, plotting to destabilize and realign history, sometimes their plans don't quite go as expected. Worlds that have been proven to be the targets of Centrum plots, and subsequently gone completely amok, are classified as Misfires. All known Misfire worlds are believed to be in Quantums inaccessible to Centrum. Backfire is the designation for worlds where Homeline plots fail dramatically.

I like the Misfire idea. Imagine Infinity discovering a timeline in Q5 world that had been an echo (undiscovered by Homeline), where Centrum attempted to move it 'up' the Quantum scale, and misfired? Oh, and it's still unstable like an echo...

Originally Posted by Gedrin

Misfire 1

A Centrum plot assassinates General Washington as he is about to meet with his officers, and talk them down from a mutiny against the Congress. This tactic had been used successfully on other worlds, crippling the fledgling country. The Centrum assassin proclaims that the Congress will not tolerate men such as Washington. The anticipated mutiny goes off as expected, but the fledgling Americans are as horrified as the officers by the seeming betrayal of the nation's great hero general. Unexpected numbers side with the mutiny. Even stranger, unexpected numbers of the mutineers simply continue on with the work the now dead Congress had been doing. The resultant changes in the Constitution, such as a military service requirement to serve in Congress, yield a much more aggressive USA than Homeline's, though the nation is still an "open" society by the standards of 1800's Homline. Centrum's efforts to quash the burgeoning continental power fail in the war of 1810, and the USA siezes control of the Canadian territories. By 1850, Europe had abandoned North America completely. Currently, it is 1858, California and Texas are full States and US forces move to end the Mexican civil war and add a few more States. Slavery is still contentious, but a bizarre array of methods to phase out the institution are in place, though many are only lip service attempts. With Europe preoccupied by the rise of a powerful German state, low population seems to be the only force containing the imperial United States of America.

Wouldn't the attempted intervention be too far from the present on this timeline? Centrum has had parachronics for longer than Homeline, but originally stayed away from inhabited timelines, and only started intervening in echoes after the threat from 'Secundus' was discovered, and Centran scientists determined that moving echoes up would move Secundus down.

'The Dimensional War' has only been going on for like a decade or two, right?


Though it could be the result of some rogue Centran, or a secret experiment gone wrong. Maybe this is how Centrum discovered that timelines could be moved!

That would put an extra impetus behind the original order not to go to inhabited worlds, and explain how Centrum discovered how echoes could move (once they realized that the original Misfire was an echo of Secundus).

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Isn't there a canon Dixie like this, where the Civil War started early, California & Texas are independent as well as CSA, and all four are rivals for the West?

Sort of. GURPS AE, pg 12. Dixie-4, The war started in 1844. But the West is still Mexican.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea in 1639, during the First Bishops War, several angry soldiers shot through King Charles tent to protest the fact they weren't being paid. In a world where someone accidentally killed Charles history would be radically different. Charles II would come to the throne as a child. The unstable politics would likely lead to great swashbuckling.

A realistic twist is that the Stuart line could lose the throne decades early. If this leads to the House of Hanover coming in early or some other history could very wildly.

Note: Killing Charles I early makes a grand Centrum plot. It could throttle democracy in several different ways and look progressive while doing it.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea, it came to me after watching Gothic a film by Ken Russell. About three quarters of the way through the movie my only thought was, "Screw history, screw probability, I want Mary Shelly to deck Byron, tell Percy off, and grab her kid and the others and escape Villa Diodati." This idea comes out of that..

In several worlds the famous events at Villa Diodati work out differently. In all of these worlds a sailor friend of Mary's father teaches Mary self-defense skills as something every woman should know. On the night of June 16 Mary beats the snot out of Lord Byron, tells off her crazed if talented husband, and rescues several people from Villa Diodati. Mary,Claire and Polidori from a team of writters and manage to live by their pens. They write mainly gothic horror, plup thrillers, and proto-sci-fi. Their works are highly popular and promote the kind of radical ideas Percy Shelly promoted in his poetry, but to a far wider audience. In all of the worlds were Mary decks Byron, Britain is a Democratic Republic by 1904, Jim Crow is dead in America by 1915, and democratic socialist societies are the world norm by 1935. Centrum hates this sort of thing.

It has been shown that a parallel is a world were Mary was taught to box, it is June 15, 1815, and Centrum agents are heading to Villa Diodati. Your agents must stop them without derailing history!

Remember, just about everybody in Villa Diodati was nuts, that includes Mary. Byron and Shelly were more dangerous than most gangsters and both men were skilled in the use of swords and guns. Claire and the Doctor weren't pushovers either. Many of the servants are capable in a fight to and others are armed even if they aren't toughs. This is the Napoleonic period, these people are used to violence and quick to defend themselves.

Have fun.