New Reality Seeds

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Katalysator-1 (Q5, current year 1977) diverged on March 27th, 1945

This is excellent stuff, but ...

In 1954, Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of the Dominion of Hannover.

This doesn't make much sense. If the divergence is 1945, the Hanoverian monarchy had ended when it was conquered by Prussia in 1866. It had separated from the British monarchy in 1837, because women could not inherit the throne.

The USA, France, the USSR, almost all Germans and many of the British would have objected to making the British Zone of Occupation in Germany into a Dominion of the British Empire, and it covered more than just Hanover. This doesn't seem to be important to the main development of the worldline, and it would probably be easier to just drop it.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This is excellent stuff, but ...

This doesn't make much sense. If the divergence is 1945, the Hanoverian monarchy had ended when it was conquered by Prussia in 1866. It had separated from the British monarchy in 1837, because women could not inherit the throne.

I picked Hannover because it needed a name and Hannover was historically associated with Britain, not because it was only the Hannover region. I have tried to come up with a better name, but all I've gotten so far was 'Dominion of Northwest Germany,' which doesn't sound great. Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by johndallman

The USA, France, the USSR, almost all Germans and many of the British would have objected to making the British Zone of Occupation in Germany into a Dominion of the British Empire, and it covered more than just Hanover. This doesn't seem to be important to the main development of the worldline, and it would probably be easier to just drop it.

I did make note of the objections (outside of Britain and Germany, where the relative lack of objection is an artifact of the AU that Infinity may or may not be interested in) in the text, and why they didn't get anywhere.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I did make note of the objections (outside of Britain and Germany, where the relative lack of objection is an artifact of the AU that Infinity may or may not be interested in) in the text, and why they didn't get anywhere.

I think you've drastically underrated the likely scale of US objections. The ending of the European colonial empires was a secondary aim of WWII for quite a lot of the US political establishment; the European powers tried to ignore this until the Suez crisis, which was what finally killed the empires, and this move seems likely to cause that earlier.

You don't seem to have explained that the North Germans wanted Dominion status - which seems highly unlikely - apart from "while the British Occupation Zone was leaning closer to Britain" but I may have missed something - it's a lot of text.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I think you've drastically underrated the likely scale of US objections. The ending of the European colonial empires was a secondary aim of WWII for quite a lot of the US political establishment; the European powers tried to ignore this until the Suez crisis, which was what finally killed the empires, and this move seems likely to cause that earlier.

You don't seem to have explained that the North Germans wanted Dominion status - which seems highly unlikely - apart from "while the British Occupation Zone was leaning closer to Britain" but I may have missed something - it's a lot of text.

At the time in our timeline, "Dominion" status was much, much better than "occupied nation" status - it was essentially self-rule in all but name. Why wouldn't they want Dominion status?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by robkelk

At the time in our timeline, "Dominion" status was much, much better than "occupied nation" status - it was essentially self-rule in all but name. Why wouldn't they want Dominion status?

Because it ties them to an alien power, with no explicit way back to being an independent nation. They'd want to reunite Germany again, as happened so rapidly after the fall of the USSR historically.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

You don't seem to have explained that the North Germans wanted Dominion status - which seems highly unlikely - apart from "while the British Occupation Zone was leaning closer to Britain" but I may have missed something - it's a lot of text.

Yeah, I think I wanted to make it clearer, but had other things that needed to be in, and I thought I was getting close to the character limit, rather than already over it.

I know GURPS has rules for Social Engineering, but I'm not sure we have much detail on large-scale, psi-assisted social engineering. Basically, a number of psis (primarily precogs, telepaths, and probability alterers) for a number of reasons either wanted Germany, or some part thereof, to remain close to Britain after the occupation inevitably ended, or didn't strongly object to that but wanted something else and arranged a quid pro quo with other in the group (some of them just did it FOR SCIENCE!... or what they imagined science was, because these are mostly not sane people we're talking about). There were psis who objected, but not so many or so organized.

For the US specifically, they had less to pressure the British with, and it really did look like the result of an honest democratic process (partly because their intelligence organs were rather strongly focused on the USSR by this point).


EDIT: Anyone have suggestions for a better name than 'Hannover' (inaccurate) or 'Northwest Germany' (descriptive but dull) for the region under discussion?

[patchwork]

One could go with Rheinland, or maybe even Nuestria, but honestly, I think people would go with Hanover. It allows them to pretend they're doing something old-fashioned and traditional, rather than embarking on something unprecedented. People like pretending that.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I hate the character limit.

(Unknown to Infinity, most intelligence services are aware that they've been visited by agents seemingly arriving from the future, or possibly from alternate worlds - the latter is believed to be less likely - and their respective governments have had high-level meetings about it. Worse from Infinity's PoV, some Gadgeteers in this worldline have been trying to reverse-engineer the conveyors from what little their Espers have been able to determine about them, and are making progress.)


I've got three other Katalysator worldlines as works in progress, and a fifth that the Cabal has been studying, but Infinity has yet to discover (and I'll try to keep them at one post, each; they're smaller than this was, at least). I also have a more detailed write-up on the variant catalyst drug these worldlines are named for, but to summarize it: the bigger the dose, the more power you tend to have on average (and the more likely you are to die of an overdose), but for every ten points of psi abilities or skills you get from the experience, you get an average of -1 points of mental or psionic disadvantages. A minor problem if you only have 25-50 points of power, but if you're empowered on the scale of a four-colour super, you tend to be very nuts.



Looking at Midgard-1, that looks like a place for various disaster relief or even interworld transport groups.

Grand is the word for it. And I think that, if the British Occupation Zone embraced joined the UK, Hanover would be the name to use. Besides the House of Hanover is still held to exist, it just doesn't have any real or official role.

[Astromancer]

The "Ideal" of empire has only been out of fashion for a few generations. So a world where Empire is a hot idea like Communism, Theocracy, Nationalism, or Democracy, makes sense.

The relationship between the Brits and the USA would be very complex in this world. The Brits in our own world have both needed a close alliance with the USA and needed to excoriate America at every chance. We are both too close and too far away. With a Hostile France and a more powerful USSR threatening then, the Brits would need/loathe America with a far more passionate intensity.

As America doesn't need the idea of Empire, and since even the most important Marxist Historians in Britain have had to admit that Empire was never something the USA got into much, America can be anti-Imperial very easily. Britain lives or dies by Empire, as would several other powers in this parallel. They would all need to scream loudly about American hypocrisy at every turn in order to deal with their own internal contradictions.

[Astromancer]

Among Louis XIV many military mistakes was letting his overwhelming jelousy of his younger brother, Philippe keep him from using a talented general.

Picture a world where Louis swallowed his jelousy and let his younger brother lead the armies on a regular basis. France might have taken large areas of Europe and gained the status of total dominance Louis craved.

Any ideas on a reality Philippe?