New Reality Seeds

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I suspect the transition would involve some pyrotechnics. Weird weather, a burst of solar activity.

Sure, that probably happened yes.

[Phantasm]

Convoy-2 - Follows the events of Convoy-1, except that the Rubber Duck and his convoy of a thousand trucks - and eleven long-haired Friends of Jesus in a chartreuse MicroBus - got trapped by the police on the eastern shore of Long Island instead of the convoy turning towards DC.

In a panic, the MicroBus charges into the ocean... and to the surprise of everyone starts driving on the surface! Feeling inspired, Rubber Duck yells, "Praise the Lord and Mr. Ford, and follow that MicroBus!" into his CB.

About 890 of the trucks managed to replicate the feat, and most of them crossed the Atlantic to land in England. From there, the convoy crossed the English Channel before hitting the Autobahn and then crossing into the Soviet Union. After receiving an ultimatum from the Soviet Secret Police ("Comrade Duck, you have until daybreak in Berlin to get your cotton-picking trucks out of the USS of R. YOU WILL COPY!"), the convoy crossed over into Japan, and was last seen headed for the Australian Outback before disappearing from the public eye.

The year is now 1980, and the over-the-seas trucking industry is taking off as many folks realize that so long as they believe they can, their cars and trucks can drive on water. The Rubber Duck Convoy is a legend akin to the Flying Dutchman - no one has heard from the Rubber Duck, his buddy Pigpen, or Southbuster (the driver of the MicroBus) in years, though every so often there is a rumor of them appearing in some out of the way locale (the most recent has them driving down the Congo River in Africa).


( Yes, this is turning the sequel song, "'Round the World With the Rubber Duck", off C. W. McCall's Rubber Duck album, into a timeline. )

[Astromancer]

A quick WWII parallel because you guys like those. Barbarossa-1 is an alternate WWII were it's October 1942 and the success of Operation Barbarossa was a source of new headaches for the Nazis.

Sure, they collapsed the USSR, but the remnants of the Red Army are fighting as groups of partisans all over the Western third of the USSR and the competing Soviet Governments in exile are doing just fine far behind the Urals. Sure the Russians are being killed by the hundred thousands, but the slow steady loss of so many good troops is bleeding Germany too.

Sure the captured Baku and the oil. But the Reds blew up the oil fields and the Brits wont let the Germans ship any oil home. Trucking the oil to Germany overland uses more oil than it delivers and the trains tracks aren't in place yet!

Basically this is a nastier WWII. Sure the Red Army is gone, which means the Western allies will have to crush the Wehrmacht themselves. However Hitler is still way overextended and unable to make up the vast productive advantages of the Western Allies.

Japan in this parallel chose to exploit the USSR's misery. Instead of Pearl Harbor the Japanese invaded the USSR. Still Hitler blundered into a nasty incident with an American ship in the Atlantic and the USA was at war with Germany by March 1942.

Where the war goes from here would be up to your taste. Remember, if the USSR isn't one of the victors, or they're busy with internal civil wars when the allies win the war (Hitler was too overstretched to sustain the war effort needed for victory unless the allies attacked him only one at a time) then its totally up to the USA and Britain to define the post war world.

Note, Britain and the USA had radically different views of what a just world would look like.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

To keep it interesting there would need to be both resupply and training operations, and obviously both Partol and Interworld are probably trying to capture some of these.

What if it's not an intentional exporting of modern weapons & training, but accidental, Banestorm-style? Only, for some reason, the only modern people & stuff transported to this world are military.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

A quick WWII parallel because you guys like those. Barbarossa-1 is an alternate WWII were it's October 1942 and the success of Operation Barbarossa was a source of new headaches for the Nazis.

Sure, they collapsed the USSR, but the remnants of the Red Army are fighting as groups of partisans all over the Western third of the USSR and the competing Soviet Governments in exile are doing just fine far behind the Urals. Sure the Russians are being killed by the hundred thousands, but the slow steady loss of so many good troops is bleeding Germany too.

Sure the captured Baku and the oil. But the Reds blew up the oil fields and the Brits wont let the Germans ship any oil home. Trucking the oil to Germany overland uses more oil than it delivers and the trains tracks aren't in place yet!

Basically this is a nastier WWII. Sure the Red Army is gone, which means the Western allies will have to crush the Wehrmacht themselves. However Hitler is still way overextended and unable to make up the vast productive advantages of the Western Allies.

Japan in this parallel chose to exploit the USSR's misery. Instead of Pearl Harbor the Japanese invaded the USSR. Still Hitler blundered into a nasty incident with an American ship in the Atlantic and the USA was at war with Germany by March 1942.

Where the war goes from here would be up to your taste. Remember, if the USSR isn't one of the victors, or they're busy with internal civil wars when the allies win the war (Hitler was too overstretched to sustain the war effort needed for victory unless the allies attacked him only one at a time) then its totally up to the USA and Britain to define the post war world.

Note, Britain and the USA had radically different views of what a just world would look like.

I like the 'be careful what you wish for' aspect of the Nazi victory over the Soviets.

If it was a Nazi incident that brought the U.S. into the war, the 'Europe First' policy would still be enforced (would Japan even declare war on America?).


Put the world on Quantum 5, and make it a political issue in the Security Council. Homeline Russia wants a big commitment to support Siberian Russia, but even Homeline Moscow can't decide which faction to support. Homeline China wants support of the (weaker than in Homeline history) Chinese Communists - but not Nationalists. Even Homeline U.K. & U.S. have different ideas about how to progress (particularly after beating the Axis).

Meanwhile, there are scurrilous rumors on alt-right Homeline message boards that Infinity actually caused the sinking of the American ship in the Atlantic, to bring the U.S. into the war.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by fchase8

What if it's not an intentional exporting of modern weapons & training, but accidental, Banestorm-style? Only, for some reason, the only modern people & stuff transported to this world are military.

Yeah that was definitely one of the possibilities I was imagining.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I like the 'be careful what you wish for' aspect of the Nazi victory over the Soviets.

If it was a Nazi incident that brought the U.S. into the war, the 'Europe First' policy would still be enforced (would Japan even declare war on America?).


Put the world on Quantum 5, and make it a political issue in the Security Council. Homeline Russia wants a big commitment to support Siberian Russia, but even Homeline Moscow can't decide which faction to support. Homeline China wants support of the (weaker than in Homeline history) Chinese Communists - but not Nationalists. Even Homeline U.K. & U.S. have different ideas about how to progress (particularly after beating the Axis).

Meanwhile, there are scurrilous rumors on alt-right Homeline message boards that Infinity actually caused the sinking of the American ship in the Atlantic, to bring the U.S. into the war.

Nicely evil twist at the end.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Sure, they captured Baku and the oil. But the Reds blew up the oil fields and the Brits wont let the Germans ship any oil home. Trucking the oil to Germany overland uses more oil than it delivers and the trains tracks aren't in place yet!

The Germans don't remotely have the trucks for that. One way to ship oil back to Germany from the Caucasian region is to mend the pipelines from Baku to Batumi, on the Black Sea, and Grozny to Tuapse, also on the Black Sea. Then you use barges to transport it round the northern coast of the Black Sea to the mouth of the Danube, and then up-river to Germany.

The Soviets used that route, but went up the Don or the Dnieper rivers. They also shipped oil from Baku across the Caspian Sea and up the Volga into the centre of European Russia. That made cutting off Volga transport a sensible thing for the Germans to do, and, hey, Stalingrad is on the most accessible part of the Volga!

If the Germans of this world control the Caspian and the Volga, they can use that route into Russia, and then use the railway routes from there back to Germany. But it's easier to take the oil by barge to Sevastopol or Odessa on the Black Sea and use the railway from there back to Europe.

[Apollonian]

Interesting problems here, then: How has the North African front gone, and where does Turkey stand in relation to the rival powers?

From your description, quick victory in Russia doesn't help on the African front all that much; many of the divisions that would be useful in Africa are tied up in counter-insurgency operations instead. (Maybe that's what really lets the Russian Resistance get off the ground: flush with victory, the Germans transfer more troops than they should to Africa, and are forced to recall them later...)

If they're worried about Nazi Germany replacing Russia as their great threat across the Black Sea, they might let the Allies take some liberties - nothing like allowing warships through the Bosphorous, but perhaps looking the other way at special ops or raiding to cripple the oil barges.

On the other hand, Turkey might throw its hand in with the Axis. While it probably won't contribute a lot of firepower, it turns the Black Sea and maybe the Eastern Med into an Axis lake; no problem with oil supply there, since you can ship it to the Balkans, Italy, maybe even Marseille.

Of course, both the Allies and Axis are going to be keenly aware of these possibilities, so Ankara and Istanbul are going to be very interesting places to set an espionage game...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The Germans don't remotely have the trucks for that. One way to ship oil back to Germany from the Caucasian region is to mend the pipelines from Baku to Batumi, on the Black Sea, and Grozny to Tuapse, also on the Black Sea. Then you use barges to transport it round the northern coast of the Black Sea to the mouth of the Danube, and then up-river to Germany.

The Soviets used that route, but went up the Don or the Dnieper rivers. They also shipped oil from Baku across the Caspian Sea and up the Volga into the centre of European Russia. That made cutting off Volga transport a sensible thing for the Germans to do, and, hey, Stalingrad is on the most accessible part of the Volga!

If the Germans of this world control the Caspian and the Volga, they can use that route into Russia, and then use the railway routes from there back to Germany. But it's easier to take the oil by barge to Sevastopol or Odessa on the Black Sea and use the railway from there back to Europe.

I knew that trucking the oil wasn't viable, you simply added more reasons. Between the distance and the Russian partisans, I don't think useful amounts of oil would vet through. Plus trying to hold Russia and crush the Red governments in Siberia would use the extra oil up away.

[AlexanderHowl]

Lovecraft-3

Sonia Greene, H.P. Lovecraft's wife, becomes a successful pulp writer and sells her hat shop. Without their financial difficulties, Sonia does not suffer from health problems caused by stress and, under her encouragement, H.P. Lovecraft writes pulp mysteries, becoming a successful and prolific mystery writer as well as a pulp horror writer. With the support of his wife, he convinces their friend, Robert E. Howard, to move from Texas to New York, and they help publicize his stories, allowing him to see enough success to prevent him from committing suicide (he moves to Arizona in 1945 because of his tuberculosis but H.P. and Sonia visit him every winter).

In 1936, Sonia introduces H.P. and Robert to the Kabbala and, after a year of dabbling in Kabbala, they stumble upon the secrets of ritual magic (specifically Energy Accumulation Book Magic). The three of them share their discovery of ritual magic with their circle of pulp writers, creating the Mythos Society in 1939 using their books as inspiration for their Book Magic. They become disenchanted with human society because of World War Two and use their ritual magic to open gateways to other timelines.

By 1945, the Mythos Society has visited dozens of timelines and take advantage of different exchange rates of gold and silver between the timelines to become quite wealthy. The members of the Mythos Society still write pulp fiction to disguise the source of their wealth. The current year is 1960 and pulp fiction is still a popular genre due to the continued writings of H.P., Robert, Sonia, and the rest of the Mythos Society.

Since it is a Q7 timeline, Lovecraft-3 is known to both Centrum and Homeline, and the newer works of the members of the Mythos Society have found their way to Homeline (secretly published in Homeline by the Mythos Society after they discovered the existence of Homeline). The Mythos Society is quietly stealing technology from Homeline to patent in their timeline.