New Reality Seeds

[Micah Davis]

Fremont-1 is named for John C. Fremont, who led the Radical Democracy Party - In Homeline’s history, a forgettable spoiler run against Lincoln but a prominent player in Union politics in the post war years of Fremont. Fremont diverged with a series of inconvenient military losses leading to Lincoln’s defeat in the election of 1864 by General McClellan. McClellan, in turn, suffered an assassin’s bullet and George Pendleton, an opponent of the war, became president and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The Confederacy escaped Union rule in 1866, less nearly half of its able-bodied white men under forty, a weary, barely stitched together wreck. The North spent its unvented fury on every plausible internal target for its loss - The presidency, the spoils system, and even its venerable constitution. In 1880, a war between a reformed, mobilized USA and the perpetually poor, agrarian backwater of the CSA ended with massive slave revolts breaking out across the CSA and the USA burned Richmond to the ground. The USA re-wrote the CSA’s constitution in line with its own and forbade slave holders from ever voting again. White emigration to the USA and Canada rendered the soon-to-be-rechristened Free Republic of Dixie majority black, while land reform and an intelligent industrial policy set the agrarian South on the path to industrialization decades earlier than Homeline.

Fremont is in TL8 in 1994 and has one of the largest branches of White Star on any timeline, which has been embedded for nearly two decades selling clean energy systems and buying up cultural products from the FRD. Much of the patrol's work lies in thwarting Homeline Black nationalists from sharing the Secret with the FRD (many of America’s most famous Black leaders have politically active “twins” in the FRD) and Argentinian nationalists (Argentina avoided the Argentine Riddle in Fremont). Some patrolmen question the wisdom of this - The fiercely egalitarian and democratic FRD and USA lead a world alliance of democratic nations as powerful as any on Homeline.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Micah Davis

Fremont-1 is named for John C. Fremont, who led the Radical Democracy Party - In Homeline’s history, a forgettable spoiler run against Lincoln but a prominent player in Union politics in the post war years of Fremont. Fremont diverged with a series of inconvenient military losses leading to Lincoln’s defeat in the election of 1864 by General McClellan. McClellan, in turn, suffered an assassin’s bullet and George Pendleton, an opponent of the war, became president and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The Confederacy escaped Union rule in 1866, less nearly half of its able-bodied white men under forty, a weary, barely stitched together wreck. The North spent its unvented fury on every plausible internal target for its loss - The presidency, the spoils system, and even its venerable constitution. In 1880, a war between a reformed, mobilized USA and the perpetually poor, agrarian backwater of the CSA ended with massive slave revolts breaking out across the CSA and the USA burned Richmond to the ground. The USA re-wrote the CSA’s constitution in line with its own and forbade slave holders from ever voting again. White emigration to the USA and Canada rendered the soon-to-be-rechristened Free Republic of Dixie majority black, while land reform and an intelligent industrial policy set the agrarian South on the path to industrialization decades earlier than Homeline.

...how? With the educated population leaving in droves that doesn't bode well for a transition away from agrarian backwater.

[AlexanderHowl]

It also does not make much sense to stop the war in 1866, since it had been basically won by the time that Lincoln would have left office in March of 1865 (the Republican controlled Congress would have impeached any President for treason who would have attempted to stop the progress of the war at that point). In addition, the South would have suffered mass famine had the war continued any longer, especially with Sherman burning and looting the South, likely doubling the fatalities among the Southern men serving in the army.

[Micah Davis]

Gonna start this post off by saying that Fremont is not, like, a high probability timeline - But Dixie-1 is also hideously unrealistic for a dozen reasons.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

...how? With the educated population leaving in droves that doesn't bode well for a transition away from agrarian backwater.

Reconstruction educational policies were good. Better than either pre-War or post-Reconstruction south, which wasn't fond of public education because it was a reactionary hellhole, and there's a much larger supply of Yankee radicals interested in supporting FRD educational projects. The North is also trying to return escaped slaves to the South, trying to arrange a Pakistan-India style population dump.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It also does not make much sense to stop the war in 1866, since it had been basically won by the time that Lincoln would have left office in March of 1865 (the Republican controlled Congress would have impeached any President for treason who would have attempted to stop the progress of the war at that point). In addition, the South would have suffered mass famine had the war continued any longer, especially with Sherman burning and looting the South, likely doubling the fatalities among the Southern men serving in the army.

The course of the war is going worse in this timeline, which is why they lost the election to the Democrats in the first place, but it's not a case where this makes good strategic sense - Pendleton opposes the war and the Congress basically fails to stop him. The response to this in timeline is very severe and the Confederacy does indeed collapse into mass famine.

[Micah Davis]

Since I've mostly been posting short timelines, here are some reality seeds that might be fun from my actual areas of knowledge about history:
• In 1896, Argentina was perhaps the richest country in the world on a per capita basis, but in 2020, it's on the developing countries list. Obviously, many things contribute to this situation, but one plausible cause is the 1930 coup d'état. Under this theory, without democratic accountability, the country's wealth was funneled to rent seeking elites. If that's true, defeating the coup might be a plausible emergency mission on a recently shifted echo or a common intervention that Alternate Outcomes carries out for Homeline's Argentina.
• In 1521, Martin Luther left the Diet of Worms stripped of all legal rights, including legal protection from murder. His patron had him "kidnapped" on the road and Luther spent the next six months in hiding, translating the Bible into German (and thereby codifying the German language). If Luther were killed before this kidnapping, the Reformation could spin out in basically any direction - Fury at Luther's death would probably radicalize many Reformation-leaning people, but the more mellow and (relatively) humanist Melanchthon would be the most likely to replace Luther in Wittenburg. Melanchthon and Zwingli were both substantially more humanist than Luther, so it's possible to imagine a more conciliatory Reformation that spreads further in Europe. It's equally possible that Luther's death would spark a spiral of radicalization and reprisal that ends with much of the Reformation's heirs as a larger but still marginalized form of staff (pacifist) Anabaptists and the Catholic Church triumphant in Europe. Protecting Martin Luther from Centrum assassins would be a fairly standard adventure.
• The U.S. Presidential Election of 1884 was a narrow victory for the Democrats and there was a plausible, more popular candidate for the Republicans - Chester A. Arthur, the sitting President. On Homeline, Arthur's poor health led him to spend relatively little effort trying to win the nomination - The Republicans instead nominated James G. Blaine, who was beaten in narrow election by Grover Cleveland because of concerns over corruption. A healthier Arthur, or simply a less circumspect one, might go on to win re-election and pass it off to a successor. A Republican administration might be more willing to do something (anything) to stop the election suborning in the South but even if it didn't, the spoils system sticking with the Republicans would empower the Readjusters of Virginia.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

After the Indian Mutany of 1857 control of india was transfered from the British East Indian Company to the English government. This in many ways facilitated the Indian Independence movement.

Among the many causes of the Mutany was the adoption of Romanticism in European thought. This led to the Church of England developing a new missionary zeal which alienated both Hindus and Muslims, the intensification of Racism and ethnonationalism, and the rejection of the idea of "Brown Englishmen" or co-opting talented Indians into the government.

However, in this Q6 low manna parallel, John Company remains an outpost of the Enlightenment in a Romantic world. The CofE is discouraged from annoying the locals. "Brown Englishmen" is the ideal and intermarrige between English men and Indian women becomes and stays commonplace. All of the key figures in Homeline's Indian Independence movement are working for John company in this parallel.

The local year is 1898, Queen (not Queen-Emperess) Victoria reigns over an India totally content to stay British. Centrum loves this world, this British Empire has staying power. Meanwhile, Homeline wants to know how this all came about and why is India in this world swaming with Cabalists? Centrum knows its rivals are fascinated with India and wants to thwart whatever they're doing.

[TGLS]

That's perhaps overly kind to the EIC. Probably have to keep Hastings in charge longer.

--

Medieval (Q4, Year Unknown)

This one's kind of weird. Each country in the world seems to echo an idealized past, but it rhymes, not repeats. So England gets King Arthur, France gets Matter of France, Japan gets Sengoku (without guns), China gets Romance of Three Kingdoms mashed up with the other chaotic periods, etc. The real strange part is that not only are most states at a very uniform TL3, there are states with no analogies in regions that didn't reach TL3 before 1500.

[Micah Davis]

Originally Posted by TGLS

The real strange part is that not only are most states at a very uniform TL3, there are states with no analogies in regions that didn't reach TL3 before 1500.

You picturing this one as, "There are totally unique cultural TL3 cultures" or "Aztecs but TL3"?

[AlexanderHowl]

In Hamlin-3, Abraham Lincoln died if the same fever which killed his third son, though he lingered until March of 1862. His Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin (also known as HH) was sworn into office in late March and, as a former member of the Democratic Party, pursued the Civil War with a zeal made Abraham Lincoln seem weak by comparison. In 1863, he pushed Congress to seize slaves in the rebellious states as property of the US government and issued an order to automatically emancipate any slave caught by the Union Army or found within Union territory. He also convinced Congress to pass laws that allowed African American to join the US military and, after negotiating the the participation of the Native American tribes in the Civil War on the side of the Union, convinced Congress to establish two Indian states (Oklahoma and Colorado).

Like Lincoln in OTL, he joined the National Union Party for the 1864 electionand accepted Andrew Johnson as his VP. Unlike Lincoln though, he did not attend the theater on April 15, 1865, so John Wilks Booth was forced to attempt a more distance shot during a public event a week later, which only grazed HH. With the attempted assassination, HH pushed for harsher terms against the South and successfully pushed Congress to pass the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments. While the 13th-15th Amendments were functionally equivalent to the 13th-15th Amendments of OTL, the 16th Amendment changed to number of Senators to twice the number of Representatives.

While the adoption of the 16th Amendment, the Union effectively stripped the Southern States of their executive and legislative power in future elections. In addition, the two Indian states became firmly Republican states, and their influence was felt throughout subsequent elections. In general though, the result of a more majoritarian Senate (and, therefore, a more majoritarian Electoral College) has been a fairer and more just USA.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In the Real Old West, witchcraft beleifs were widespread among all the groups that lived there. The people of New Mexico went through a major witchcraft hysteria in the decade after the Salem trials. As one Indian Woman put it, "Everytime a Spanish woman is sick she says she's bewitched." The Native Americans had their own occult beliefs. All the groups that moved into the Old Wild West had their own well attested and documented witch beleifs.

So this world is a very small twist in that magic is real. I'd use Path/Book Magic with multiple styles of magic. After all there are 500 or so Native American groups, Spanish, English, Irish, German, Chinese, Japanese, African-American, and Afro-Carribean, witch beleifs are all different. I'd go with a sort of semi-secret magic setting. Assume that magic practitioners avoid the authorities and often pose as quacks and montebanks to hide in plain sight.