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Old 01-14-2019, 08:10 PM   #3931
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Hm:
Could go with Franklin, though maybe with hidden documents and plans that came to save the day. Or maybe Edison, who also experimented with electricity. Given great power Canada, maybe Alexander Graham Bell, who emigrated to Canada in 1870. Or maybe Tesla emigrated early.
If you just want a famous name, maybe George Westinghouse. Historically he didn't do electrical stuff for several more decades, but he actually served in the Civil War, and his first patent is 1865.
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Old 01-14-2019, 10:11 PM   #3932
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Hm:
Could go with Franklin, though maybe with hidden documents and plans that came to save the day. Or maybe Edison, who also experimented with electricity. Given great power Canada, maybe Alexander Graham Bell, who emigrated to Canada in 1870. Or maybe Tesla emigrated early.
Or you could say that in a world where Queen Victoria is destroying armies with her super-powers, that a teenage Nikky Tesla is doing a Tony Stark.
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Old 01-17-2019, 10:42 AM   #3933
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Or you could say that in a world where Queen Victoria is destroying armies with her super-powers, that a teenage Nikky Tesla is doing a Tony Stark.
Marvel would totally do an AU like that - though there'd still be a Spider-Man and a Captain America, of course. (Not that it needs to be all that Marvelesque, but your comment lead my mind in that direction.)
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Old 01-17-2019, 02:15 PM   #3934
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Try this one...

Due to Kara Mustafa's being able to listen to criticism his plan to attack Vienna got shelved for a plan to attack Italy, specifically the Kingdom of Naples. The attack caught Europe off guard and as Spain was a seriously declining power and short of allies, the Kingdom of Naples was held.

During the Nine Years War as one of France's only allies, the Turks managed to take Sicily and Italy up to Rome. They stubbornly kept what they got.

Now a new war over who shall claim the Spanish throne is looking likely. The Turks are clearly eyeing, Rome, Venice, and Vienna. If the allies focus on fighting France, the Turks will rule Eastern Europe and then march West when they're strong enough. If the allies focus of fighting the Turks France will claim the Spanish throne and be the permanent dominant power placing its yoke over all of Europe.

This is a swashers campaign with Arabian Nights flavorings. Centrum wants the allies to focus on the Turks so that Louis can create a stable world order based on Absolute Monarchy. An order Centrum can take over.

Homeline wants peace. That way none of the powers is destroyed.

The Cabal sees the Ottoman state as decaying. Even a massive conquest can't save it. But the Cabal wants the Ottomans to take Rome so that the Cabal could gain control of certain catacombs controlled by the Vatican. They also see a Britain more focused on Europe as maintaining a longer period of benign neglect of America. Thus maintaining Masonic links longer. That would make several plans of the cabal's so much easier.
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Old 01-19-2019, 03:00 AM   #3935
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Move the discovery of gold in California ahead by ~30 years. That puts it in the early 1800s. This might accelerate the Mexican-American war, but it would also give Mexico liquid cash and an influx of skilled tradesmen.

Alternatively, take the gold away. The colonizers come more slowly; even centuries later, the nation would be firmly unbalanced to the east, and WWII would probably be much different.
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Old 01-19-2019, 06:59 AM   #3936
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Move the discovery of gold in California ahead by ~30 years. That puts it in the early 1800s. This might accelerate the Mexican-American war, but it would also give Mexico liquid cash and an influx of skilled tradesmen.

Alternatively, take the gold away. The colonizers come more slowly; even centuries later, the nation would be firmly unbalanced to the east, and WWII would probably be much different.
Moving the discovery of gold in California to 1818 (thirty years before 1848) would mean that Spain would have additional reasons to strive to hold California. Mexico wasn't independent until 1820. Perhaps the gold could finance revolt?

Remember, that until almost 1850, who had rights to the interior of North America was very up in the air. Both Spain and Mexico as late as the 1830s stated that they were the rightful owners of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. Britain and Russia both had eyes on California from the 1780s to the 1840s. An early discovery of California gold could get either or both countries to act on their desires.
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Old 01-20-2019, 08:08 AM   #3937
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Try this one...

In this Q6 world, the physical layout of the Rocky Mountain West is different. The great basin drains into the Colorado River. The Great Salt Lake isn't salt at all because it drains into the Colorado.

The Native American tribal groups that lived by the river engaged in trade and were more influenced by the outside world. Still, the Mormons were a surprise. But they were customers and they farmed and left their neighbors in peace. So it seemed to be good.

The Mormons grew quickly in numbers and prosperity. With good river connections to the Gulf of California Brigham Young's settlement in the wilderness swiftly grew into Deseret. And dreams of independence grew.

The California Gold Rush threatened the stability of Deseret by bringing infidels into their lands. The Federal Law let them settle where they would and follow any Godless drivel they called "Faith." There were even Irish people with Catholic Priests!

Now, back east there is a Civil War. Maybe Deseret should leave the Union as well. Not to favor slavery, a truly godless obscenity, but to secure a godly future for Deseret!

This could go two ways, a multifaction Civil War in the west during the ACW. France and Britain both wanted California and France had troops in Mexico. This could even lead to European invasions and given Europe's politics fighting in Europe is possible too.

Centrum wants to mess up the USA, Germany, France, and Russia. A messier longer Civil War could take down the USA. The Prussian King hates the CSA, slavery literally makes him sick to his stomach. A Franco Prussian War with England and Austria backing France could prevent German reunification for a generation or two. Russia could lose her fleet and gain a series of European foes to bottle them up.

Homeline wants to prevent a Centrum dominated Britain from owning the planet. Similarly, the Cabal doesn't want a Centrum owned world, but a Homeline patroled world isn't their dream either.
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Old 01-25-2019, 07:11 AM   #3938
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This Q6 world is attractive to both Homeline and Centrum because it is researching psionics but it's at an early level of discovery/research. In this world, the Rhine Experiments were both more impressive and taken more seriously.

The local year is 1969, Humphrey won the election. Vietnam is far less of an issue because Wolf Ladejinsky's land reforms were enacted under heavy US pressure in 1962, the Viet Cong was kicked out of the South by the Vietnamese peasantry by 1964, ending the war with a stalemate like Korea.

This is a far more optimistic and hopeful version of the 1960s. The Flower Child side of the sixties is far stronger. It's stronger because several things that caused pain and bitterness are either missing or weaker because there was time and attention to deal with real problems more effectively.

Homeline sees this world as dreamy and a good source of artistic licences and tech info on Psi. The Cabal sees a world smoothy turning into a Popluxe/Raygun Gothic world. The Flower Children make excellent recruits for the cover groups the Cabal uses and surprisingly large numbers of locals are gifted in either magic, psi, or both! Centrum sees an egalitarian mess. Sure, it makes it easier to steal psionic data and tech. And this culture is making better progress on issues of race, gender, sex, class, and sexual orientation, that most Americas in this period. The problem is that this world isn't easy to take over or run, Maybe they'll need to destroy this world in order to save it. Biological warfare is looking interesting.

Of course, both Homeline and the Cabal will try to stop them.

This is basically a 1960s SuperSpy SpyFy game in a happy hippy 1960s. Rewatch both The Avengers and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the over the top spy stuff. Also, find Baffled! and The Horror at 37,000 feet for occult twists.

This is a low manna world with small areas (from the size of a house to a few square miles) of normal manna scattered around the planet. There are areas were a skilled use of sacred architecture can turn a house or occasionally a house and its lands into a normal manna area. This world is TL7^. Weird Science can allow you to exceed the tech level in ways typical of 1960s super spy films.
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Last edited by Astromancer; 01-25-2019 at 11:23 AM.
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Old 01-25-2019, 06:37 PM   #3939
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While thinking of the previous post, I remembered the The President's Analyst. Which leads to some fun. The world of the film would be a Myth Parallel with TL7^ technology. Part of that supertechnology sets up an interesting adventure, with serious problems for the Icops.

In the movie, the final and truest villain was the...Phone Company!!! The evil scheme was to inject microscopic phones into everybody's brains and force people to switch their names for numbers and to always answer the phone!

The film's EVIL plot has long had me joking that these days people would line up for injectable cell phones. You couldn't keep the crowds away. Which pleases an intelligence agency. As written, I pick the Chinese, but any one of the five members of the security council would work.

The intelligence agency wants the technology to sell on Homeline. They plan to have a backdoor in the phone's hardware. This means they could find every human on Earth. Maintain records on every phone call on the planet. listen in to any phone call on Earth. And later they hope to use the eyes and ears of everybody on Earth as bugs to spy with. Still, later they hope to be able to hack memories both to read everybody on Earth's secrets and later to reshape anyone's memories they choose.

The monstrosity of this threat, especially coming from people the Icops have no authority over and many Icops might be loyal to, should be obvious. It would be a scary change of threat campaign. For heightened scares, let either Centrum or the Cabal figure the plot out and go after the tech themselves.
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Old 01-26-2019, 12:23 AM   #3940
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Move the discovery of gold in California ahead by ~30 years. That puts it in the early 1800s. This might accelerate the Mexican-American war, but it would also give Mexico liquid cash and an influx of skilled tradesmen.

Alternatively, take the gold away. The colonizers come more slowly; even centuries later, the nation would be firmly unbalanced to the east, and WWII would probably be much different.
Yeah, the Russians didn't abandon Fort Ross until 1841. (it's not named for some Scottish guy named Ross.) With Mexico in the middle of its rebellion, that gold isn't going to either side, it's going to the Russians, who will be sending a lot more people (and no way they sell Alaska for cheap in this TL, they're going to need it as a waystation). They're still at the very end of their supply line, but I suspect no one (not even Britain) wants the gold fields bad enough to go to war with Russia over them, so soon after the Napoleonic wars. So....no idea how, or if, a Mexican-American War goes in this timeline.
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