New Reality Seeds

[David Johnston2]

The Crosstime Traffic realities

Schlieffen: Russia was slow to mobilize, Germany had bit more troops to throw into the Schlieffen Plan and Kaiserine Germany ended up dominating Europe and following a war with the United States in the 50s that ended with the eastern seaboard getting nuked, Germany ended up dominating the world with its nuclear arsenal, although China is covertly building up to challenge their dominance. German dominance has retarded technological advancement somewhat so the world is basically TL 7 but with Germany being advanced in military technology.

Agrippa: Rome never fell and advances at a snails pace. Highly bureaucratic. About TL 5. It's significant neighbours are Persia and Lietuva, but China is the only nation which is as powerful.

Henri: A more devastating Black Death leads to Europe being sidelined with southern Europe being under the rule of the Muslims while farther north the primitive backwater Europeans follow a new Christianity centered around God's "second son" a prophet named "Henri". Technologically paralytic, frozen at TL 4.

Confederation: The United States never consolidated and neither did the Germanies. The result is a setting where slavery was much more slowly abandoned in the southern states or rather nations and a world in which the greatest powers are California (which still broke off from Mexico as American settlers came in), Prussia and the United Kingdom. Quite advanced seeing as how California and Prussia made it to Mars.

Lenin-?: The United States folded during the Cold War and the whole world went Communist but now China is in a cold war with Russia. Another oddly technologically frozen setting

[AlexanderHowl]

Yellowstone-1

A VEI-7 eruption in Yellowstone around 1000 AD plunged the Earth back into another Ice Age. Shifting rain patterns brought back the Green Sahara and Green Arabia, and the Europeans migrated to a greening North Africa and Southwest Asia. While the Kuroshio Current prevent Japan and Korea from being buried by glaciers, northern China and Manchuria were abandoned. In the Americas, glacial sheets forced the mass migration of the Algonquin and the Iroquois south and expanding glaciers killed the civilizations of the Andes.

It is now 1500 AD, and the most powerful nations are the Saharan-European nations (which embraced religious and racial tolerance), the Mayans (who were renewed and defeated the Aztecs), the nations of South Asia, Japan, and the Algonquin-Iroquois Confederation of Southeast North America. The only thing that really makes Yellowstone-1 unusual is the existence of Path/Book Ritual Magic, which seemed to have been rediscovered in the last five hundred years. A Q5 world, it is a popular destination for scientists, though Homeline restricts travel to the uninhabited regions.

[Astromancer]

One interesting possibility is altering who comes to the English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America. Propose the Ottomans have a late resurgence and expand into Italy and Austria in the late 17th century. Large numbers of displaced Italians and Southern French need new land. Spain's tight control on her colonies makes them limited in appeal. But the English king's lands in America are good for farming and largely tolerant.

Have large groups of French and Italian refugees come to early 18th century America along with a much expanded German migration. You'd get a less unified and otherwise divergent America.

If your game is set in the 1770s, then it's likely the dominant groups would still ally to fight for independence. But events afterwards could be radically different.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Delaware-1

In Delaware-1 (a Q7 world), the Lenape (also known as the Delaware Indians) rescued a Martian who crashed off the coast of what is New Jersey on Homeline during a scientific scouting mission in 1000 AD. With their help, the Martian constructed a primitive radio device and managed to communicate with a survey spacecraft that rescued her. In exchange for their assistance, the Martian Empress established a trading mission in the territory of the Lenape, allowing the Lenape to trade Earth goods for Martian technology. The Lenape conquered the entirety of North America over the next five centuries and easily repulsed the European invasion thanks to Martian medicine. It is now 1750 AD and Homeline and Centrum are both carefully exploring the timeline of Delaware-1, where Martian psychic priestesses consort with the elites of the Lenape Empire.

Would the Lenape have conquered South America, or at least protected it from European conquest? North America was quite minor in early European imperialism, compared to South America, Caribbean, Africa, or India.


Given their technological advantage, it seems like the Lenape would have 'discovered' Europe. The Martians would have known that there are other continents, so it would have been easy for the Lenape to make first contact with the Old World (likely via north Atlantic, so Western Europe or maybe Morocco).

Maybe the Lenape would hold off until they knew they could handle Old World diseases (if they/Martians knew enough to predict that threat), but still seems likely they would be first.


Also, calling the world "Delaware-1" is a little rich - are there other timelines where the Lenape are so important, so many that there has to be numbered designations? Indeed, Infinity would like to keep the whole world secret, and so not as part of any scale.


If it is known about on Homeline, Delaware could be a political issue in America & Canada, promoted by Native Americans.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

One interesting possibility is altering who comes to the English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America. Propose the Ottomans have a late resurgence and expand into Italy and Austria in the late 17th century. Large numbers of displaced Italians and Southern French need new land. Spain's tight control on her colonies makes them limited in appeal. But the English king's lands in America are good for farming and largely tolerant.

Going after Italy in the late 17th century means fighting Spain, which with that global empire is probably the only European state that can pay for an army to rival the Ottomans, and probably wouldn't be shutting its colonies to fleeing Italians either.

Any major population movement or colonization is a potential radical change point, but the European settlement of North America seems to get a disproportionate amount of the attention. I suppose because Americans care about that one a lot, but there surely are other options. Where are the timelines build around the South Indian colonization of Australia, or the Turks going somewhere other than Anatolia, or somebody other than the Bantu expanding into southern Africa, or other than the Polynesians taking up long distance maritime colonization? Though I guess there are some alternate histories written with the Vikings in that last slot.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Would the Lenape have conquered South America, or at least protected it from European conquest? North America was quite minor in early European imperialism, compared to South America, Caribbean, Africa, or India.


Given their technological advantage, it seems like the Lenape would have 'discovered' Europe. The Martians would have known that there are other continents, so it would have been easy for the Lenape to make first contact with the Old World (likely via north Atlantic, so Western Europe or maybe Morocco).

Maybe the Lenape would hold off until they knew they could handle Old World diseases (if they/Martians knew enough to predict that threat), but still seems likely they would be first.


Also, calling the world "Delaware-1" is a little rich - are there other timelines where the Lenape are so important, so many that there has to be numbered designations? Indeed, Infinity would like to keep the whole world secret, and so not as part of any scale.


If it is known about on Homeline, Delaware could be a political issue in America & Canada, promoted by Native Americans.

The Lenape would have South America within their sphere of influence through diplomacy and trade, and they would have protected it from the Europeans in order to protect their influence. The key areas of conflict between the Europeans and the Lenape would have been within the Lenape possessions of the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico (all of which are within North America). Without the Caribbean, the European powers would find invading the Americas quite difficult. Without the gold and silver of the Aztecs of Mexico, the Europeans would not have had much reason to invade South America in search of gold and silver.

The Lenape would have been aware of the other continents, but they would have lacked the incentive to visit them. With controlling North America, they would have reached the limits of their control. With trade with South America, they would have received anything that they wanted. When you combine that with superior technology to the rest of the world, they would have literally needed nothing from the Old World. The major trade item until the 1800s from the Old World to the New World that was not immediately repackaged for Old World customers was African slaves and, without sugar plantations, the Lenape would have no reason for African slaves.

There would be other Delawares, Delaware-1 would have been named before Homeline discovered that it possessed psychic Martian priestesses. Other Delawares would refer to other events dealing with the Delaware River or the state of Delaware. In Delaware-2, George Washington drowned when his boat sank while crossing the Delaware, meaning that the British won the American Revolution. In Delaware-3, the Three Counties refused to join the Revolution and remained a British Colony surrounded by a hostile USA and served as the beachhead for the successful British invasion of the USA during the War of 1812.

[TGLS]

So how advanced are the Lenape relative to everyone else? I can't see the Lenape building a powerful empire without a horse analog (motorized or otherwise)

Why are Martians not trading with other countries? Do they want for nothing from Earth and they are propping up the Lenape as a client state? It's hard to see why they haven't started trading years before...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Going after Italy in the late 17th century means fighting Spain, which with that global empire is probably the only European state that can pay for an army to rival the Ottomans, and probably wouldn't be shutting its colonies to fleeing Italians either.

Historically Castile (a deeply important part of Spain) closed its colonies to Aragon (another vital part of Spain). So, yes Spain might close its colonies to the Italians. They were ultra picky about which Spanish people they let in.

Any major population movement or colonization is a potential radical change point, but the European settlement of North America seems to get a disproportionate amount of the attention. I suppose because Americans care about that one a lot, but there surely are other options. Where are the timelines build around the South Indian colonization of Australia, or the Turks going somewhere other than Anatolia, or somebody other than the Bantu expanding into southern Africa, or other than the Polynesians taking up long distance maritime colonization? Though I guess there are some alternate histories written with the Vikings in that last slot.

Because the USA is profoundly important to world events, in a way that many other worthy nations aren't for reasons that have nothing to do with their virtues or lack thereof, what happens to the USA is a big deal.

Think about this, picture Sweden really putting in effort to colonize the Delaware valley. Removing or reducing Quaker influence on the USA. Although Sweden has many fine virtues and excellent civil liberties in the present, reducing or removing Quaker influence on the USA would likely eliminate democracy and restrict the Scots enlightenment influence on the USA drastically. Property rights would still count, but human rights would be removed or reduced drastically as an issue. Slavery might be unchallengable in such an America.

A USA were slavery couldn't be ended because only property rights count and human rights are an abstraction at best moves the whole of Earth in another direction. Who settles in America counts.

[mr beer]

The US doesn't exist in a vacuum and slavery is considered morally reprehensible in every nation on Earth. Every Western nation eliminated it* a long time ago. It's difficult to imagine a world that looks like ours except the US still has slaves.

*official slavery, I know criminals still practice it.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by TGLS

So how advanced are the Lenape relative to everyone else? I can't see the Lenape building a powerful empire without a horse analog (motorized or otherwise)

Why are Martians not trading with other countries? Do they want for nothing from Earth and they are propping up the Lenape as a client state? It's hard to see why they haven't started trading years before...

Empire is used it the correct definition of the term, where the primary state uses its influence to dominate secondary states through diplomacy and trade (the Lenape were not conquerors). Since the Lenape had an exclusive monopoly over Martian imports, they would have leveraged that monopoly to force other tribes into submission. Just because the Lenape would not Martian technology to conquer your tribe did not means that one of their secondary tribes would not use Martian technology to conquer your tribe. With trade comes roads and, with technological innovation, roads become railroads. By the 15th century, the Lenape could have had steam engines pulling trains across North America, making them TL5 when the Europeans discover them.

The Martians are a matriarchal culture in this setting, and the Lenape were matriarchal society (women often made the decisions around inheritance, marriage, and war), which were becoming quite rare by 1000 AD (the Minangkabau would also have been a sympathetic culture, so it would have just been a lucky break for the Lenape). The Martians would honestly not want much from the Earth since they could mine the Main Belt, the Lenape received a trading center as a reward rather than for economic reasons, but I would not be surprised if it ended up a good location to exile problematic Martians. With Martian exiles providing technical support, the Lenape could reach TL6 by the 18th century. While they would likely only have TL4 weaponry, they would have very advanced medicine. Just a thought...