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#11 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Try this, in Homeline history, after Kara Mustafa failed to take Vienna in 1687, the Trukish court and elites entered into a sixty year long power struggle of each against all. When Turkey, still a powerful state recovered, improvements in nautical technology had finally rendered the overland trade routes that were the basis of Turkey's wealth and power irrelevant.
Now, let us embrace our inner Alien Fruit Bats for a moment. Allow someone in the 1690s to win the fratracidal struggles in Istanbul. And since we are going full AFB here, allow them to realize that basing the entire Turkish military exclusively in and around Istanbul had limited western expansion. So this new Grand Visir creates forward bases. This Grand Visir also licenses printing presses and mandates the study of Western techniques. (Yes I know that in real History the Turks fought tooth and nail against that sort of thing well into the 19th century. AFB remember.) Have Vienna taken in 1709, and Bavaria conquered two years later. King Louis XIV sees the Turks based on the Rhine. He ends the Wars with other Europeans and begs for a coalition to turn back the Turks. This gives you a glamorous and lively setting that can go in many directions. As a straight military adventure setting with espionage and swashbuckling it's fun. Toss in Path/Book magic of several flavors (aren't all powerful Grand Visirs supposed to be evil sorcerers?) and you get a different flavor. The Barbary Corsairs, still an active threat in the early 1710s (ship were captured and their crews and passengers captured for the slave markets in the English channel, in sight of land, as late as the 1740s) could attack in the Caribbean, the Spanish Main (Spanish speaking Latin American coastal areas) and the British North American colonies. Pirates versus corsairs to the death!!!
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
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