New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Australia-8

This Q6 Low Mana parallel seems to have had a highly similar history until the early modern period. However the divergence must have been a billion years ago. This world has nan alternate Australia. This "Australia" is larger than Homeline's Australia and further south. It's well watered soils are rich and fertile. It has a vast interior bay that brings seaports deep into its interior. Its vast rivers are deep and navigable.

More later I must go

It's later.

The seabed between New Guinea and this alternate Australia was above the water long enough for mammals to get to this "Australia," but not prehistoric humans. However, many small groups of fisher folk, mainly from Java, did get there. As the Javanese crops were not suitable to temperate climates, the Javanese settlements were restricted to small areas of the far North.

The Dutch discovered this Australia in the 17th century and the British settled it in the late 18th. And in an unlikely piece of historical inertia, with convicts.

In the local year, 1939, this Australia has a population of around eighty million people. Industry is underdeveloped but developing quickly.

Japan has reworked their war aims. If Japan can take Australia, a continent in this parallel as rich as North America, they could build a nation as powerful as the USA. And they could use the combination of Japan and Australia to seize control of all of Asia.

Basically, an alternative WWII with the Pacific theater being as important as the European one.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

It's later.

The seabed between New Guinea and this alternate Australia was above the water long enough for mammals to get to this "Australia," but not prehistoric humans.

Monotremes and Marsupials have presumably always been in Australia, the groups existed before Gondwana broke up. Placental mammals didn't evolve until after Australia/Antarctica had separated from everything, but then there aren't a lot of them in Australia until quite recently geologically, with bats at 12 Ma, and rodents at around 10 Ma. Note that New Guinea is part of the Australian continent until pretty recently too, if Australia is further south, it probably is too. The origins and histories of little islands between the mainlands of Sunda (Java-Bali-Borneo) and Sahul (Australia-New Guinea) shape that radiation. If Sahul is further away, I doubt anything but bats is coming across.

The most logical divergence is ca 90 Ma when Australia/New Guinea broke away from Antarctica/New Zealand. Split that continent somewhere else and you can bring part of the Antarctic landmass north with Australia, making it larger (and further south and west) at a cost of a smaller Antarctica, which is probably not terribly important, though you may need some handwaving to avoid higher sea levels. You might want to pull the Kergulean plateau a bit south and glaciate it as well to compensate for that, and drag the rest of Antarctica further in the direction of Australia, moving the Antarctic peninsula further south for heavier glaciation. Though this makes Antarctica further away from everything, and even more inhospitable than it currently is (possibly with some less hostile terrain in northern Kergulean, which is itself quite isolated), so I guess you lose the secret Nazi UFO bases at the south pole, which likely hasn't been reached yet.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

In the local year, 1939, this Australia has a population of around eighty million people. Industry is underdeveloped but developing quickly.

Japan has reworked their war aims. If Japan can take Australia, a continent in this parallel as rich as North America, they could build a nation as powerful as the USA. And they could use the combination of Japan and Australia to seize control of all of Asia.

Basically, an alternative WWII with the Pacific theater being as important as the European one.

I dunno, I all see is the Axis losing even faster here. 80 million is about 12 times the population of OTL Australia, and about 10 million more than the population of Japan at the time. It still doesn't change the fact that the Americans outproduced the Japanese by a factor of seven, and even underdeveloped, a much larger Australia is probably making a big impact on Allied production. It also doesn't change the fact that the Japanese have the enormous reduplication of effort with their Army's Navy and their Navy's Army.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by TGLS

I dunno, I all see is the Axis losing even faster here. 80 million is about 12 times the population of OTL Australia, and about 10 million more than the population of Japan at the time. It still doesn't change the fact that the Americans outproduced the Japanese by a factor of seven, and even underdeveloped, a much larger Australia is probably making a big impact on Allied production.

Yeah a richer stronger Australia still in the hands of the British Empire does not seem like a more desirable target for Japan than the Asian mainland. Give it to somebody else other than one of the world's superpowers - France, Holland, Spain, an Australia that somehow made independence stick sometime in the 19th century, whatever, and it might be more tempting. Given a choice between fighting 19th or early 20th century China or Korea or Russia vs. the British Empire and, well, it is not a hard decision which way you want to expand.

[Astromancer]

I had been interested in moving the people of Java to this variant Australia. But their crops wouldn't work in a temperate climate. And if appropriate plants and animals for domestication evolved in Australia and the Native Australians develop from scratch, that would require pages of exposition.

[David Johnston2]

Pandora-2: Where Pandora-1 is a jumble of stereotypical alternate history ideas with no clear single point of departure, Pandora-2 is so designated because once against there appear to be multiple points of departure, or butterfly effects so extreme that the original point is unidentifiable. That being said, history up until the 1930s. Then something happened, possibly a reality quake.

In the current year of 2005 the United States has largely disintegrated with a federal government that is now powerless to exert any authority internally, it's only remaining function being to defend the external borders of it's constituent states and to maintain a much diminished nuclear arsenal. Many of the states have become distinctly strange what with black nationalists having taken over Mississippi and Lousiana, Utah having become Deseret, New England having joined Canada, Los Angeles having become a depopulated wasteland, Georgia having become a near theocracy, and organized crime running wild in Florida.

Meanwhile in Britain extreme feminists have taken over and imposed increasingly tight restrictions on their male population which include strict curfews enforced by mandatory tracking devices.

France has lost all political stability and currently a restored monarchy is being tried to provide order.

Italy somehow ended up under the direct administration of the Catholic Church.

Germany is under Nazi rule, but a Nazi party that actually stopped before crossing the line into Poland and managed to last this long, although Hitler's successors are losing their grip on a restive population. They did manage later on to get a chunk of Poland but in return Poland managed to get a bigger chunk of what we think of as Russia after the Second Russo-Polish war. The Germans are content to keep Poland in place as a buffer zone between them and the Soviets.

Israel was still founded and is much larger and more populous than it is on Homeline, controlling the area from the Suez Canal to eastern Jordan.

Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Greenland have all united into a single nation in response to the Russo-Finnish War that happened instead of World II. That seems to be going well.

Japan had an even bigger boom followed by an even bigger bust. While Japanese multinationals are huge and span the globe, most of their employees are not in fact Japanese. The demographic decline started earlier and was more severe. The Japanese government has responded with the heavy handed approach of mandating arranged marriages for anyone who is not already married by the age of 21. Meanwhile Japan has a much more diverse population, albeit one in which the immigrants are not citizens and probably never will be.

The Soviet Union is still in place but it's about as healthy as North Korea in our timeline, hanging on through a return to brutal Stalinist oppression with no spare energy for aggression, although the 2nd Union of Kalmar and the Warsaw Pact are constantly on their guard.

The Republic of China beat the Maoists in the Chinese Civil War and reclaimed Manchuria. They are now the most powerful nation in the world and are on surprisingly cordial terms with Japan who allied with them against the Communists.

Korea is united and prosperous.

India is a wreck, ravaged by religious civil war, Pakistan and Bangladesh never having spun off from it.

[Astromancer]

Wonderlands Skerry

This set of thirteen Q6 Low Mana parallels isn't named for events involving Lewis Carroll or his books. It's name comes from the relationship between the thirteen parallels. Wonderlands-1 is a fairly normal early 20th parallel with divergences just beginning to become apparent. It's the 1930s and "Pulp Heroes," magic (Path/Book so far), Psi Powers, and Weird Science, are just beginning to show up. It's the other twelve parallels that earn the name.

People from Wonderlands-1 seem to have regularly gone "Down the Rabbit Hole" to the other parallels of the Skerry since about the year 1500. All of these parallels seem to have been without previous human habitation except for Wonderlands-2 which has ancient Celtic groups and several Greek city states, and Wonderlands-3 which has Chinese city states. All of the Wonderlands parallels except Wonderlands-1 have no signs of human evolution.

The most common way to get from Wonderlands-1 to the other parallels is through a storm at sea. As the peace recent period for such transfers has been the 1650 to 1800 period, the demographics of most of these parallels reflects the people on the ships of that period.

Recently, individuals with the Weird Science skill have begun to contact these other parallels. The techniques used seem to only operate within the Skerry (although many people want confirmation of that). The discovery of twelve new worlds. Often right on the doorsteps of major powers is reopening the scramble for Empire. In the 1930s.

Basically, pulp adventure with lots more up for grabs and genuinely new worlds to conquer. Homeline, Centrum, and the Cabal, all want to know what is going on and preferably to keep the other two from profiting from it.

The pulp heroes don't have the most overwhelming powers yet. There is a Kansas farmboy with amazing strength and durability and a limited ability to fly. This same idealistic young kid wants to be a reporter. Similar parallel, but not identical figures are showing up.

[dcarson]

Those will be very empty worlds I'd think. An occasional colony expedition with both sexes and the right equipment would start a town. Merchant ships and warships will be almost all male and not have the right equipment and supplies. So few domesticated plants, domesticated animals other than chickens and maybe goats and pigs which ships carried for the eggs, milk and eventually fresh meat.

[David Johnston2]

Lothair-1: In this reality, East and West Francia did not agree to divide Central Francia between them because Lothair II managed to father a legitimate heir who was a canny negotiator. Now in the 16th century, Lotharingia is engaged in the latest of several wars it has fought with Normandy and Spain and Austria have been drawn in. England was never conquered by the Normans and remains an Anglo-Saxon nation which has so far stayed more or less neutral although its mercenaries seem to prefer to work for Lotharingia. The colonization of the Americas by Europeans hasn't happened yet, due to butterfly effects.

[malloyd]

Merchant ships and warships will be almost all male and not have the right equipment and supplies

While somewhat true, it's not actually all that big a limitation. You only need to succeed [once]. Once you get a population established for a generation or two it will substantially outnumber any reasonable number of new arrivals from a misplaced ship.

Originally Posted by dcarson

So few domesticated plants, domesticated animals other than chickens and maybe goats and pigs which ships carried for the eggs, milk and eventually fresh meat.

There is actually quite a lot of trade in domesticated plants in forms that are quite capable of growing - fruits, grains, tubers, they'll all sprout if you can find a place to plant them.

And most worlds with anything like geologically recent divergence points will have most of the same ancestors of domestic plants and animals Earth does even if for some reason humans didn't pull through, so a world that has been colonized for a while can occasionally surprise you with the locals having access to something their ancestors didn't bring along.