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Old 11-19-2018, 02:06 PM   #3791
fchase8
 
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
While looking up the phrase "Pyrrhic Victory" I noticed that there was an interesting little-known change point involved in that phrase.
Shikaku-Mon's big twentieth century world war was known as the "Pyrrhic War" thanks to the victors doing worse than the losers. Though I imagine that name was only applied later, like how The Great War later became World War One.

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Christianity is one of several different faiths including ancient forms of paganism.
Would Christianity have even developed, without some serious historical inertia (or divine intervention)? It was halted on Roma Aeterna with a divergence point just years before Christ's birth (prisoner release to celebrate Germanicus' rise to Emperor may have included "a certain Galilean preacher").

Divergence centuries before 0 A.D. would mean that Jesus likely was never born, that even Mary was never born. And without Roman rule over Palestine, no Pontius Pilate, no crucifying.

Maybe a different, Christianity-like religion spun off of Judaism, with its own 'son of God' messiah.
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Old 11-19-2018, 04:02 PM   #3792
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Originally Posted by fchase8 View Post
Would Christianity have even developed, without some serious historical inertia (or divine intervention)? It was halted on Roma Aeterna with a divergence point just years before Christ's birth (prisoner release to celebrate Germanicus' rise to Emperor may have included "a certain Galilean preacher").

Divergence centuries before 0 A.D. would mean that Jesus likely was never born, that even Mary was never born. And without Roman rule over Palestine, no Pontius Pilate, no crucifying.

Maybe a different, Christianity-like religion spun off of Judaism, with its own 'son of God' messiah.
A lot of people include Christianity, Islam, or both out of sheer cultural inertia (it's just sort of... there, without thinking about why), even in timelines where they really should have been butterflied away. Also, some of the people posting in this forum may well be sincere Christians or Muslims, and include it because they think 'God wills it.'
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Old 11-19-2018, 04:20 PM   #3793
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I generally avoid 'historical inertia' in my games, and I tend to find the idea to smack of deus ex machina. If a divergence occurs before a religion would have been founded, then it does not exist in my settings.
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Old 11-19-2018, 05:29 PM   #3794
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Honestly religious history is a whole mess that it's normally not worth getting involved in.

Separately, I think inertia is more an emergent phenomenon than a force. Worldlines that stay close to Homeline's history remain close to homeline. Those with a substantially different past (or future) end up on increasingly distant quanta. That makes sense because

uh

relativity, sunspots, and compound interest.

This also explains why there's so few parallels with aliens. In most worldlines, virtually the entire universe is the same, and it's only Earth and its region which is at all different.
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Old 11-20-2018, 09:14 AM   #3795
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Originally Posted by fchase8 View Post
Would Christianity have even developed, without some serious historical inertia (or divine intervention)? It was halted on Roma Aeterna with a divergence point just years before Christ's birth (prisoner release to celebrate Germanicus' rise to Emperor may have included "a certain Galilean preacher").

Divergence centuries before 0 A.D. would mean that Jesus likely was never born, that even Mary was never born. And without Roman rule over Palestine, no Pontius Pilate, no crucifying.

Maybe a different, Christianity-like religion spun off of Judaism, with its own 'son of God' messiah.
You're right, "Christianity" if it happened at all, would be radically different. Messianic faiths were growing in importance though.
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Old 11-20-2018, 11:21 PM   #3796
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Paradoxically, I think that such faiths were growing in popularity because of the seemingly indomitable Roman Empire (and the Roman Empire definitely allowed the faiths to spread very quickly). If Rome had been destroyed by the Gauls during the Battle of Allia rather than just sacked (such as if the Gauls had pursued the routed Romans to Veii, perhaps allying with the Etruscan enemies of Rome, and then sacked Rome), you would have likely never had the creation and/or spread of the Messianic faiths centuries later. It makes you wonder why there are not more timelines with the Battle of Allia as the divergence...
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Old 11-21-2018, 06:46 AM   #3797
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You're right, "Christianity" if it happened at all, would be radically different. Messianic faiths were growing in importance though.
Would it? The details of the theology might be fairly different, but then many of them are pretty divergent between nominally Christian sects even now, never mind in the 1st to 3rd centuries, and there are a fair number of supposedly important points I'm pretty doubtful Joshua ben Joseph would have agreed with. And most of the impact of Christianity doesn't seem to be all that heavily dependent on the details of the theology, it's the fairly basic salvational message that let it (and several other competitors at the time, like say the cult of Isis) fill emotional needs the official Roman religion wasn't, and it's organizational and educational structure that let the bishops take over administrative duties from less effective civil governments, that really mattered.

As you point out, Messianic movements weren't exactly new or uncommon. This is probably normal, from the admittedly not dense evidence we have there were lots of gurus running around 6th and 5th century BC India, and appear to have been several prophets in 6th-8th century Arabia too. Right now for example there are lots of small religious movements that would insist they have nothing to do with each other but can nevertheless be grouped into broadly similar categories from the standpoint of outsiders - new age, UFO cults, evangelical Christian, Islamic fundamentalist, ethnic based polytheistic reconstructionist, apocalyptic, Chinese salvationist.... - if one of those became a major world religion in a century or two I'm not sure how much it would *really* matter which of them was claimed as the formal ancestor of that new faith.
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Old 11-21-2018, 08:05 AM   #3798
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The Kingdom of Hungary was powerful and wealthy in some parts of the medieval period. However, like most medieval Kingdoms, they often went after costly irrelevant goals that, even if achieved, would only weaken the kingdom. The pointless strife with Joanna I, at a time when the steady collapse of Byzantium threatened to close the Danube.

But on this Q6 world, a Cabalist of Hungarian heritage decided that things would go differently. By shifting the focus of Charles I of Hungary and his formidable wife Elizabeth away from Naples and toward domination of the Danube he got the Hungarian Kingdom to Dominate the Balkan trade routes.

The local year is 1412. The 1396 crusade led by the Hungarians had far better logistics and intelligence and dealt the Ottomans serious defeats. A marriage alliance between the thrones of Hungary and Constantinople has produced a skilled and capable KingEmperor able to led armies successfully against the Ottomans.

Meanwhile, the still active Cabalist has organized the building of a Rhine/Danube canal. The expanded trade opportunities have made the Hungarian kingdom richer and stronger. Would be crusaders can get to the front far more quickly and easily, and more importantly, needed arms and supplies can get to the front far more quickly and easily.

This is rapidly heating up into being a truly vast and involved war. Both Homeline and Centrum aren't really concerned beyond the simple fact that one Cabalist and a few hired swagmen created big changes. Agents could be sent in to see if it is really the work of a small gang. And more importantly, what the real goals are.
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Old 11-21-2018, 08:10 AM   #3799
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Paradoxically, I think that such faiths were growing in popularity because of the seemingly indomitable Roman Empire (and the Roman Empire definitely allowed the faiths to spread very quickly). If Rome had been destroyed by the Gauls during the Battle of Allia rather than just sacked (such as if the Gauls had pursued the routed Romans to Veii, perhaps allying with the Etruscan enemies of Rome, and then sacked Rome), you would have likely never had the creation and/or spread of the Messianic faiths centuries later. It makes you wonder why there are not more timelines with the Battle of Allia as the divergence...

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Would it? The details of the theology might be fairly different, but then many of them are pretty divergent between nominally Christian sects even now, never mind in the 1st to 3rd centuries, and there are a fair number of supposedly important points I'm pretty doubtful Joshua ben Joseph would have agreed with. And most of the impact of Christianity doesn't seem to be all that heavily dependent on the details of the theology, it's the fairly basic salvational message that let it (and several other competitors at the time, like say the cult of Isis) fill emotional needs the official Roman religion wasn't, and it's organizational and educational structure that let the bishops take over administrative duties from less effective civil governments, that really mattered.

(SNIP)
That may be an interesting set of divergences. The Romans lose even worse at Allia than they actually did, and the Senones followed up their surprise victory energetically. That allows them to get inside Rome and sack and burn it, before disease set in and forced their withdrawal.

It also means they withdraw in good order, so maybe Camillus can't catch them, or he gets too busy fighting off Etruscan opportunists.

So, a burnt and thoroughly sacked Rome never manages to recover to become an empire, so the Mediterranean basin remains divided -- Greece, Macedonians and Ptolemaic Egypt to the East constantly fighting with Carthaginians to the West, while Celts solidify their hold on the northern littoral areas between Iberia and the Aegean.

I think the Carthaginians do pretty well, early on, as long as they stick to a "Southern Strategy" and focus on Egypt and Greece. However, the temptation might be to take on the relatively more primitive Celts, to the north. The problem, there, is they open up a huge flank to constant raids from northern Europe by a people who might have gotten used to winning.

I think that may be my favorite scenario, actually. The Carthaginians get stymied to the East and South, and Hamilcar and Hannibal decide to try for northern territories with raids out of Iberia.

That talented father and son duo make some great gains, but their considerably less-talented successors find themselves constantly fighting off ever-stronger raids by Celts and Germans.

This slowly bleeds Carthage dry, and Egypt and Macedon manage to eventually wreck the city a couple of centuries late, and then threaten Iberia. That forces the Carthaginians to withdraw to protect Iberia, and the Celts scream and leap all along the northern coast.

That divides the Mediterranean basin into feuding camps -- Macedonians and Egyptians (maybe Cleopatra of the House of Ptolemy winds up marrying a Macedonian king named Perseus IV or something like that) rule the east and North Africa as far West as modern-day Libya.

Etruscans rule most of Italy, and turn the Alps into a bastion against the Celts, with whom they nonetheless have an uneasy alliance.

The bitter Carthaginians continue to rule Iberia, the north African Coast west of Libya, and down the coast of Africa as far as Rutubisir (appx Tiza, Algeria).

This makes the Seleucid Empire the main player in the East, especially if they don't have to fight an organized empire with an effective military in the Mediterranean. That allows them to take control of and improve traffic and trade along the Silk Road, and I'd imagine they'd be much more concerned with the rise of the Maurya Empire in India than they would with the chaos of the Mediterranean.
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Old 11-22-2018, 11:10 PM   #3800
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A series of timelines appear to have been echoes that suffered a kind of minor "inertial shift" at some point in history. These Shift Happens worldlines all have the following features in common:

-Strong geopolitical inertia. Despite the other changes, the overall history of the world, down to the outcomes of battles and the positions of buildings, remain the same.

-Strong genopotential inertia. That is to say, the same people are born, and they have the same children with the same people, that they did in homeline.

-Radically shifted microcliodynamic inertia. People have completely different fates in this timeline. An oil tycoon in homeline history is a penniless farmer or a popular schoolteacher. A soldier struck down by disease in a siege is instead of millwright or even a king. A priestess instead became a courtesan.

It's a rich recruiting ground for alternate doubles, since it's very unlikely that any important person on homeline ended up better-off in one of these timeline.

SH-1 is a 2015 no-secret alternate. Almost all the other worldlines are farther back, going as far as 1023 BCE. In every recorded case, the microcliodynamic inertial shift occurred 40 years before the current day.
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