New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Instead of fleeing to England, Mary of Scotland goes to Ireland in 1568. Mary landed in the territory and power of Gráinne Ní Mháille who knew a serious threat when she saw one. Gráinne Ní Mháille sweetly promised to take Mary to England and then took her to Viigo and dumped Mary there.

Now Phillip of Spain had her, and he wanted her less than Elizabeth, and like Elizabeth, he couldn't let her go either. Phillip couldn't use Mary of Scotland as a pawn but his enemies could.

So Phillip sent Mary to an isolated castle in Extremadura far from the sea or borders. There Mary of Scotland waited a prisoner as in Homeline History but in a warmer dryer climate. It was good for Mary's health if not her patience.

In the 1580's, John Dee, the Cabalistic Grandmaster not the local guy realized there would be no Armada in this world. Phillip wouldn't want Mary of Scotland on the Scots throne, he saw her as unreliable in the extreme. And as long as Mary lived Phillip couldn't put anyone reliable on that throne.

The Cabalistic Grandmaster John Dee has sent agents to get Phillip to attack England, but attack in such a way as Phillip still fails. Centrum has got wind of this and wants the Spanish attack to succeed! And thus purge England of Elizabeth, Nationalism, and any and all tendencies to democracy. Homeline is unwilling to allow either plot to progress because White Star Trading is making big bucks on this world, both because it is much richer in cultural artifacts than most late 16th century Earths (and that across the board) and because of Quantum anomalies in the Celtic lands.

In every Celtic land on this Q6 low manna world, there are Q5 normal manna areas. White Star Traders makes greatly enhanced profits because of the lower expense of operation. Homeline is simply terrified of Centrum gaining easy access to Q5 and is determined to keep both Cabalistic and Centrum influence down to a minimum on this parallel.

Basically, a low magic historical Swasher spy story.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

A noble, Trygve Haraldson, who in most worlds had far better opportunities in Norway than England, contacted Edward III in 1352 and told him of lands west of Greenland. Lands that extended beyond anything claimed by the Norse kings.

The pigs aren't the worst here. This is an especially bad moment of contact from the Americans perspective, because Norway lost about a third of its population to the Plague between 1348 and 1350, and while it died down quite a bit on the Continent thereafter, a major second wave of it swept England in 1361-1362. In this timeline, it's not stopping there.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Leibowitz-5

The Leibowitz worlds (from A Canticle for Leibowitz) are words where there was a massively destructive World War III in the twentieth century. There is a movement to reclassify this world.


In this Q5 world, Stalin lived about three years longer than in Homeline history. Stalin saw the events of the Korean war as proof of Western decadence and weakness. In our Homeline history, Stalin's death prevented his planned attack on Western Europe. In this parallel Stalin launched his planned attack on schedule.

The war was brutal and nasty, Europe took another brutal bloodletting less than a decade after WWII. The war also empowered right-wing paranoia in America. But as much damage as the war did to the West, Russia and China had both been through massively destructive wars only a few years earlier. Neither nation could sustain a long war. In the end, the simple fact that the American heartland was never a battle zone decided the war.

After the war, America once again rebuilds Europe and also Russia, China, and Korea. But as the destruction was more brutal in effect, coming as it did only a few years after WWII. And Russia and China are different issues altogether. So, unlike the Marshall Plan, which was basically a well-timed and designed economic stimulus, this time it really is rebuilding.

Homeline is deeply worried about Swagmen on this world. Large numbers of Right-wing swagmen seem to like this world. Homeline fears they plan to build a power base and use the parallel to attack Homeline or at least provide both material support and safe havens for the hard right.

Separate from the political extremists a group of purely economically focused swagmen have built large businesses based on introducing late TL7 and early TL 8 technologies into this parallel's USA, Australia, and Canada. Thus, although this world's technology should be behind where Homeline was in the early 1960s because the war inhibited science except in limited areas, in fact, it at the edge of TL8. Still, these technologies aren't yet integrated into daily life, which makes this parallel in 1962 seem more like 1952 technologically.
Thus, once the new tech gets brought out to the consumers, technology will seem to leap forward faster than in Homeline history.

Basically, this is a hardboiled detective setting whether your hunting swagmen in the ruins of Europe and Asia, the bustling cities of North America and Australia, or the small towns of the same. The mood is very much drawn from Film Noir (and don't ignore that darkest of proto-Noir films Shadow of a Doubt for the darkness of small towns.). The disparity between the actual tech level and the daily tech level people live at creates a certain sort of twenty-minutes into the future type of sci-fi typical of the Twilight Zone. Add in both the fact that the PCs and the Swagmen are extradimensional aliens and the Twilight Zone parallels become far stronger.

Note, the Cabal can easily be brought into this world. Along with sorcery, the Cabal is profoundly gifted at conspiracy. This shattered and wounded world is perfect for then.

Just to finish up. This is a Q5 low manna world on the border between Tech Levels 7 and 8 but seeming more like early TL7 for economic and social reasons. Swagmen might introduce anomalous technologies like fusion.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Leibowitz-5

In this Q5 world, Stalin lived about three years longer than in Homeline history. Stalin saw the events of the Korean war as proof of Western decadence and weakness. In our Homeline history, Stalin's death prevented his planned attack on Western Europe. In this parallel Stalin launched his planned attack on schedule.

Homeline is deeply worried about Swagmen on this world. Large numbers of Right-wing swagmen seem to like this world. Homeline fears they plan to build a power base and use the parallel to attack Homeline or at least provide both material support and safe havens for the hard right.

Separate from the political extremists a group of purely economically focused swagmen has built large businesses based on introducing late TL7 and early TL 8 technologies into this parallel's USA, Australia, and Canada.

This is a Q5 low manna world on the border between Tech Levels 7 and 8 but seeming more like early TL7 for economic and social reasons. Swagmen might introduce anomalous technologies like fusion.

There seems to be a basic split among the Swagmen that infest this world. Most of the Right-Wing Racist Swagmen tend to go to Europe. The British Isles don't seem to be attractive to them nor do they bother with the Nordic countries which were far less disrupted in the last war than most of Europe, But the rest of continental Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals is swarming with them. Politically Right-Wing Asian gangs, whose main focus is crime and the profits thereof, are swarming into East Asia. Individual swagmen that focus on illegally importing out time technology and building business empires or just huge fortunes mainly go to North America or Australia.

In North America and Australia, the Cabal mainly uses UFO cults for their fronts. In most of the rest of the planet, they use cults based on the rejection of the modern world.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Leibowitz-5

In this Q5 world, Stalin lived about three years longer than in Homeline history. Stalin saw the events of the Korean war as proof of Western decadence and weakness. In our Homeline history, Stalin's death prevented his planned attack on Western Europe. In this parallel Stalin launched his planned attack on schedule.

Homeline is deeply worried about Swagmen on this world. Large numbers of Right-wing swagmen seem to like this world. Homeline fears they plan to build a power base and use the parallel to attack Homeline or at least provide both material support and safe havens for the hard right.

Separate from the political extremists a group of purely economically focused swagmen have built large businesses based on introducing late TL7 and early TL 8 technologies into this parallel's USA, Australia, and Canada.

This is a Q5 low manna world on the border between Tech Levels 7 and 8 but seeming more like early TL7 for economic and social reasons. Swagmen might introduce anomalous technologies like fusion.

This world's WWIII begins in May 1953. The ending is harder to place. Most of the Eastern European states surrendered by 1958. The U.S.S.R., China, and North Korea, more or less simply collapsed into chaos and banditry. There were no significant battles after 1960, but peace isn't a good description of conditions in large areas of Eurasia.

Many areas of Asia that were invaded by the Soviets or the Chinese have no functional government in most of their territories. On the other hand, Africa and Latin America are doing fairly well. Latin America has been selling food, raw materials, and manufactured goods to Europe and Asia. In spite of serious attempts by Left-wing guerrillas to start revolutions they simply weren't ready to strike. Africa is also doing well selling food and raw materials. Colonialism simply collapsed during the war. Britain has retained Empire in name, but the substance is long gone. In the Congo Lumumba has ruled Congo from 1955 on and has built a stable government with US aid.

[AlexanderHowl]

In 1483, a Portuguese caravel ends up wrecking up against the shores of the Kingdom of Kongo. When the crew was taken to see Nzinga-a-Nkuwu, the ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo, they demanded the resources to repair their ship and for a cargo hold full of ivory and gold and attempted to kidnap the king when he refused them. The Portuguese underestimated the fighting ability of the people of Kongo though and were captured before they could harm the king.

After impaling the captain and making his crew watch as the scavengers ate him alive, Nzinga-a-Nkuwu granted the rest of the survivors crew clemency in exchange for service to him. He married them off to unmarried noblewomen and granted them modest estates, but they were forbidden from leaving his kingdom. Instead, they taught the people of Kongo how to build and operate caravels and firearms.

By 1493, the Portuguese found that themselves under attack by the Kingdom of Kongo. Using tactics adapted from traditional hunting practices, the ships of the Kingdom of Kongo would capture Portuguese ships throughout West Africa. By 1503, the Kingdom of Kongo had conquered the Portuguese possessions of the Azores, Madeira, Principle, and Sao Tome and the Spanish possession of the Canary Islands.

It is now 1593, and the Kingdom of Kongo is one of the rising powers of the world, extracting tribute from African nations all along the Atlantic Coast of Africa and any European merchant wishing to trade with Africa or the Americas. The Azores have become nefarious among Spanish merchants because of the taxes extracted by Kongo on any ship seeking to go to the Americas, so the colonization of the New World is progressing quite slowly. Without massive numbers of Spanish colonists, the natives of the Caribbean islands threw off their Spanish oppressors during the 1510s and killed them to a man, though the women survived as wives of the native leaders.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Leibowitz-5


In this Q5 world, Stalin lived about three years longer than in Homeline history. Stalin saw the events of the Korean war as proof of Western decadence and weakness. In our Homeline history, Stalin's death prevented his planned attack on Western Europe. In this parallel Stalin launched his planned attack on schedule.

Homeline is deeply worried about Swagmen on this world. Large numbers of Right-wing swagmen seem to like this world. Homeline fears they plan to build a power base and use the parallel to attack Homeline or at least provide both material support and safe havens for the hard right.

Separate from the political extremists a group of purely economically focused swagmen have built large businesses based on introducing late TL7 and early TL 8 technologies into this parallel's USA, Australia, and Canada.

This is a Q5 low manna world on the border between Tech Levels 7 and 8 but seeming more like early TL7 for economic and social reasons. Swagmen might introduce anomalous technologies like fusion.

Life in the USA lacks the sense of relief that was dominant in late 1945 and 1946. There is a certain realization that wartime austerity is going to last for a while. The war froze many trends of the 1950s. Rock and Roll never took off and Jazz is still the dominant sound. Still Bebop is coming on strong and Rock and Roll is still dance music in this period, so rock and roll is still going to breakthrough, but in the late 1960s. TV shut down for the duration of the war, as it did in WWII. So Radio is still dominant and TV is developing much more slowly. Without TV to compete with and with international competition limited Hollywood is far more active. The "Hollywood Golden Age" looks to last into the 1970s.

Because Truman Integrated the Millitary and the military was the center of US life during the War racial politics are different in this USA. Not advanced on Homeline's 1962, but different. It looks like progress on racial issues after the Early 1960s will be faster. On the issue of Women's rights, WWIII was as corrosive to traditional sex roles as WWII and lasted longer. The war also brought the sexual revolution sooner and disrupted all counter forces deeply. Between the sexual revolution and the practical need for healthy young men for the military, gays have a defacto tolerance. There are public gay rights organizations and right-wing reactions to such. With communism defeated the right-wing finds itself lacking a bogey-man and the presence of neo-fascists in Europe gives the left-wing the chance to label the right-wing disloyal. During the war, both the Railroads and coal mines were nationalized. Medicine was also socialized. Given the stresses of rebuilding Europe and much of the rest of the world, these measures are very likely to stay in place.

These factors make this USA seem very alien to those familiar with Homeline's early 1960s.

[AlexanderHowl]

Without the threat of Communism, socialism would have likely never progressed in the rest of the world. Unions and social safety nets would likely be much weaker, mimicking what occurred from 1990-2020, just a quarter century earlier.

[AlexanderHowl]

Without the threat of Communism, socialism would have likely never progressed in the rest of the world. Unions and social safety nets would likely be much weaker, mimicking what occurred from 1990-2020, just thirty years earlier.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Without the threat of Communism, socialism would have likely never progressed in the rest of the world. Unions and social safety nets would likely be much weaker, mimicking what occurred from 1990-2020, just a quarter century earlier.

Actually, outside of the USA, socialism isn't all that linked to communism. Christian socialism was always strong and in many European nations the socialist are the most consistent anticommunists. Also, key aspects of this world are different because the stresses that broke the Bretton Woods system and flipped it into reverse aren't functioning.

If anything all the players are going to support a system that allows rebuilding.

Also, on this parallel the USA has accepted key aspects of Socialism. Even more importantly, once the nations of Europe are largely rebuilt the need for a vast military will fade quickly. Which will take away a lot of power from big business and any major conservative voices. New forms of conservatism will rise, but it will take time. And although Ayn Rand and Libertarianism were around in 1953, a world war involving big sacrafices is a lousy environment for liberterian thought.

The history of conservatism is complex and conservatism and conservative thought are also products of the times.