- Location
- Croydonburg, Arquesenia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, I think we should have maps as of 2092 and 2110 AD.
Al la Steloj: The Rise, Fall, and Death of the Second Human Ecumene
- Thread starter vilani99
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi Future
-
- Tags
- original sci-fi space opera
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A 2110 map is well on the way.
- Location
- Croydonburg, Arquesenia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If the map is finished, what would an ideal quote be?
Anyways, how would the fate of the Apollo, Chang'e, Artemis, and other Moon landing sites will be which would affect the future of IWF's space exploration decisions?
- Location
- Rex, NC, USA
I gotta admit, this bit is pretty damn funny, in a black comedy sort of way.
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That was the intention lmao. In fairness to the Economist (never thought i'd say that), that missile and the rest of the strikes that cause the Indo-Pac Crisis to go nuclear were external to that crisis. Although, North America as a whole and the Dominionists specifically had been a constant blindspot for the Powers That Be in the post-American system, and the Heavenly Government had been consistently underestimated and ignored by these types. So theres a lot of blame to go around here.
1. Theres a reason this is a gigadeath event by the time the dust settles
2. The Jordan Valley flooding like that might just be an artifact of how that map calculates things, I'll have to double check but for the moment its still above water on the 2110 map.
3. Whose to say theres a single Japanese government? The Brokenback Wars arent also called the World Warlord Period for nothing.
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From what I saw the City of Peace itself still above water, which makes sense given how like a lot of ancient cities it's built on a hilly area. Also do I even want to know what happened to the Japanese Imperial family?
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Most of 'em are either incinerated by the Easter Nuke or drowned in the flood. A distant cousin survives and ends up as the figurehead of a post-2092 shatterling state based around Takasaki. He eventually cedes power to a coalition of Socialist and Anarchist municipal federations and aligned warlords backed by the IWF.
As old wounds are reopened, the great Yamato clan dies in agony, and Jimmu-Tenno weeps so that the whole world may drown in his grief
- Location
- Croydonburg, Arquesenia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
After the Easter Attacks, what would the fates of the House of Windsor, the Pope, and the leaders of the PRC be?
I think the First Globalnet has been a marvelous technological device that was used to connect endlessly to the whole world through websites and was used to communicate with someone from farther places such as social media platforms or binge on entertainment through VOD/streaming platforms plus the first Globalnet was a place for social gathering among friends.
However, with the Kesslerization of the 2090s (which could destabilize the Starlink network) and the Worm's cyberpandemic would bid its farewell to the First Globalnet and worse though, the Easter Attacks and the Global Warlord Period would even lead to a possible decentralization or the EMPs from the Easter Attacks together with chaos could make efforts to restore the GlobalNet/Internet, a tougher nut to crack which means it would take time for most websites archived in the archiving machine (i.e. Wayback) will be retrieved, depending on server's resilience from EMP-generated Easter Attacks and warlords. What would a revived internet will be for the Second Ecumene?
Origins Sidebar: Historical Comparisons
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
From the 372 [2341] Sitting of the Vilnius Regional Exam of the Eurasian Historical Society
Anonymous Answer to Short Essay Prompt: "Compare the Brokenback Wars of 113-146 to West Eurasian Late Antiquity (-1560 to -1260), and/or the Thirty Years War (-351 to -321)"
The Exam Societies of Mid-Ecumene Eurasia were an interesting holdover of pre-Ecumenical educational practices. They were a recreational and holisticized version of the exams that formed the cornerstone of older methods of pedagogical assessment. Essentially a combination of writing club, essay contest, and bar trivia, contestants would submit essays and quizes to Regional Exam Boards, who would select three Regional Winners which would then be sent to the All-Eurasian Board in Sofia, where a final six all-Eurasian Champions would be selected. They would fall out of favor over the beginnings of the late-Ecumenical period, and it is noted that by the time of the Commanders Putsch and the Serviceperson's War, that years Exam Sitting was cancelled due to a lack of submissions.
[AN: From here on years will be given in the Gregorian Counting, but that is Translation Convention for my ease and yours]
The period from [2092] through [2115] is often described as either the Dark Ages or post-Roman Late Antiquity with Kalashnikovs, depending on the degree of academic rigor being aspired to. In both cases such a statement is both incredibly reductive and catastrophically inaccurate. This analogy first fails in its assessment of time: at best the period the World Warlord Period is being compared to lasted roughly two centuries. The post-Monsoon systemic anarchy left by the death of the industrial-capitalist world-system "only" lasted roughly 20 years.
Furthermore, the period being referred to, or rather the historical phenomena, only really applied to West Eurasia during the period, as opposed to the truly global nature of the Brokenback Wars. The only real similarity between the two appears in the role of migration as a causative element. Up to a third of the human population moved across entire continents over the middle decades of the [21st] Century. This played a significant role in the creation of the social forms that would truly spring to life after [2092], most notably in the Kazakh and Uighur post-Chinese States, the role of Mekong Delta refugees in post-[2092] Southeast Asia, the Bengali-Burmese Warlords, the Mayan Revolution in Guatemala and Mexico, and the role the encroaching Levantine Death Zone had in the final end of the last remnants of Israeli Apartheid, the short-lived Palestinian Confederation, and the Second Diasporae. This is also in part the core reason why the cultural barriers of the last century seem so alien to us: the concept of Madrid without Arabic signage, Prague without maafe, and Vilnius without Portuguese seems as odd to us today as Moscow without Russian. But these apparent constants are all extremely new in the historical view, and are all direct results of the massive migrations that occurred over the 21st century. Of course, this is primarily applicable to the decades prior to the Brokenback Wars, and are, in the author's opinion, out-of-scope of reference to the World Warlord Period.
Another rather spurious (if less so than the former, as detailed below) comparison is to the Thirty Years War that capped off the European Wars of Religion of the [16th] and [17th] Centuries. While the conditions experienced by the average person in the parts of the planet that experienced the worst of the period (primarily in the Americas and Africa) during the Brokenback Wars are certainly comparable to those experienced by the German peasantry from [1618-1648], the comparison loses steam as one begins to assume a larger perspective. The primary difference between the Thirty Years War and the Brokenback Wars is the presence or absence of "base-regions" of relative stability that provided a support base and logistical rear for the forces operating in the war-torn Holy Roman Empire; notably France, Spain, Sweden, and to a lesser extent the Habsburgs lands within the HRE. There were no such substantive "base-regions" in the Brokenback Wars, at least not initially. Areas of relative stability did exist, but for the first decade or so they were islands in a sea of chaos. Most were focused more on surviving than accomplishing grand strategic goals by sending armies into the surrounding morass.
However, I believe that the comparison to the Thirty Years War holds more water than the comparison to Late Antiquity. Most notably in the last decade and change of the Brokenback Wars. The emergence of large, contiguous base-areas allowed for a similar dynamic to that of the warring Dynasts of the Thirty Years War, and the period from about [2105-2114] is defined by increasingly grand strategy and broader reach on the part of emerging states (or recovering "survivor regimes" in the case of South Africa and much of Old Europe). As these states begin to cohere into diplomatic-military-economic blocs, we see the emergence of our International Workers Front and what would become the Bipartite Pact (as well as the less savory actors in Europe) as truly global actors over this period, ultimately culminating with the War of the Punjab Commune and the Wellington Conference in [2115].
Anonymous Answer to Short Essay Prompt: "Compare the Brokenback Wars of 113-146 to West Eurasian Late Antiquity (-1560 to -1260), and/or the Thirty Years War (-351 to -321)"
The Exam Societies of Mid-Ecumene Eurasia were an interesting holdover of pre-Ecumenical educational practices. They were a recreational and holisticized version of the exams that formed the cornerstone of older methods of pedagogical assessment. Essentially a combination of writing club, essay contest, and bar trivia, contestants would submit essays and quizes to Regional Exam Boards, who would select three Regional Winners which would then be sent to the All-Eurasian Board in Sofia, where a final six all-Eurasian Champions would be selected. They would fall out of favor over the beginnings of the late-Ecumenical period, and it is noted that by the time of the Commanders Putsch and the Serviceperson's War, that years Exam Sitting was cancelled due to a lack of submissions.
[AN: From here on years will be given in the Gregorian Counting, but that is Translation Convention for my ease and yours]
The period from [2092] through [2115] is often described as either the Dark Ages or post-Roman Late Antiquity with Kalashnikovs, depending on the degree of academic rigor being aspired to. In both cases such a statement is both incredibly reductive and catastrophically inaccurate. This analogy first fails in its assessment of time: at best the period the World Warlord Period is being compared to lasted roughly two centuries. The post-Monsoon systemic anarchy left by the death of the industrial-capitalist world-system "only" lasted roughly 20 years.
Furthermore, the period being referred to, or rather the historical phenomena, only really applied to West Eurasia during the period, as opposed to the truly global nature of the Brokenback Wars. The only real similarity between the two appears in the role of migration as a causative element. Up to a third of the human population moved across entire continents over the middle decades of the [21st] Century. This played a significant role in the creation of the social forms that would truly spring to life after [2092], most notably in the Kazakh and Uighur post-Chinese States, the role of Mekong Delta refugees in post-[2092] Southeast Asia, the Bengali-Burmese Warlords, the Mayan Revolution in Guatemala and Mexico, and the role the encroaching Levantine Death Zone had in the final end of the last remnants of Israeli Apartheid, the short-lived Palestinian Confederation, and the Second Diasporae. This is also in part the core reason why the cultural barriers of the last century seem so alien to us: the concept of Madrid without Arabic signage, Prague without maafe, and Vilnius without Portuguese seems as odd to us today as Moscow without Russian. But these apparent constants are all extremely new in the historical view, and are all direct results of the massive migrations that occurred over the 21st century. Of course, this is primarily applicable to the decades prior to the Brokenback Wars, and are, in the author's opinion, out-of-scope of reference to the World Warlord Period.
Another rather spurious (if less so than the former, as detailed below) comparison is to the Thirty Years War that capped off the European Wars of Religion of the [16th] and [17th] Centuries. While the conditions experienced by the average person in the parts of the planet that experienced the worst of the period (primarily in the Americas and Africa) during the Brokenback Wars are certainly comparable to those experienced by the German peasantry from [1618-1648], the comparison loses steam as one begins to assume a larger perspective. The primary difference between the Thirty Years War and the Brokenback Wars is the presence or absence of "base-regions" of relative stability that provided a support base and logistical rear for the forces operating in the war-torn Holy Roman Empire; notably France, Spain, Sweden, and to a lesser extent the Habsburgs lands within the HRE. There were no such substantive "base-regions" in the Brokenback Wars, at least not initially. Areas of relative stability did exist, but for the first decade or so they were islands in a sea of chaos. Most were focused more on surviving than accomplishing grand strategic goals by sending armies into the surrounding morass.
However, I believe that the comparison to the Thirty Years War holds more water than the comparison to Late Antiquity. Most notably in the last decade and change of the Brokenback Wars. The emergence of large, contiguous base-areas allowed for a similar dynamic to that of the warring Dynasts of the Thirty Years War, and the period from about [2105-2114] is defined by increasingly grand strategy and broader reach on the part of emerging states (or recovering "survivor regimes" in the case of South Africa and much of Old Europe). As these states begin to cohere into diplomatic-military-economic blocs, we see the emergence of our International Workers Front and what would become the Bipartite Pact (as well as the less savory actors in Europe) as truly global actors over this period, ultimately culminating with the War of the Punjab Commune and the Wellington Conference in [2115].
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vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Also, here's a little Map Preview that should also give y'all an idea of what I meant by "less savory actors in Europe."
(I know PiS is probably out of power after this weeks election but cmon this is 90+ years and a few gigadeaths from us a LOT can go wrong politically)
(I know PiS is probably out of power after this weeks election but cmon this is 90+ years and a few gigadeaths from us a LOT can go wrong politically)
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh boi, finally an update! I do wonder who are the Hitlerites in question though. Fascist EU vs Fascist Visegrad?
- Location
- Illinois
Germany got split between two blocs again! Honestly I'm a bit surprised it ended up being Germany instead of France or something.
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Kinda? They're basically the last of the pre-2092 states where Warlords/Neo-Aristos run everything from townsships up. And since those warlords are basically petty bourgeois and landlords with private armies, that pushes their politics extremely far right in a fascist-adjacent way. I say kinda because while everyone is more or less on the same team and a degree of resource sharing is going on, its closer in function to the high-medieval HRE or pre-Fronde France.
- Location
- Washington, DC
A quick question on the dating: am I correct in assuming that the New Style dates use 1968 as "Year Zero"? If so, is that linked to the global "year of revolt" or something else?
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
1969 was the original intention, but a dual meaning with the Long '68 as Year Zero and the Moon Landing as Year One actually works really well
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Trying to figure this one out is giving me radiation poisoning. At least Florida is gone.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Some guessing.A much more substantive Map Preview
Orange: Canadian "legitimate" Government (occupying parts of Washington and Michigan state)
St Lawrence burgundy: Quebec secessionists
Great Lakes burgundy: Left-wing rebels
Green and teal: Rival claimants to being the rightful US government
Dark green: Mexican "legitimate" government
Dark blue: Some sort of neoreactionary redneck movement
Blood red inside the dark blue: White supremacist rebellion
Grey: Some horrible narco-state thing
EDIT: Reading the actual updates, Dark Blue is probably Dominionists.
...Where the fuck does Christian Dominionism come from anyway? A quick look online suggests they're merely garden-variety theocrats, definitely bad but not uniquely so. Yet whenever an alt-his or future history story is writting involving 21st century America they turn into at best ultraradical racial supremacist killpeopleists who give the Nazis a run for their money, and at worst (as in TTL) a shameless apocalypse cult with nuclear ambitions. How did things get this bad?
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I can't answer for @vilani99's thoughts on this but the trend of left-wing American future histories started with Christian Nation about a decade ago, which depicted a Dominionist takeover of the United States after which they've have sort of become a stock villain. IMO its easy to see why - they are mainstream enough to be a plausible threat without alienating too broad an audience. I have some issues with how often they come up to be honest (and Christian Nation pretty much embodies a lot of those objections) but I think its fine with this timeline where developing an original doomsday cult that only exists in what is effectively the prologue would be a waste of resources.
And to be fair, we don't know exactly what happened in the run up to and aftermath of the Staffers Putsch, only a rough outline. I think its fair to say that probably American state power had been declining for some time and from the articles in chapter 2, it seems that things don't immediately collapse into total breakdown right away. I can imagine that there is a period of escalating conflict between more conventional political factions coupled with breakdown of state authority in face of the civil war and mounting climate crisis. Perhaps like the Taliban in the 1990s, this version of the Dominionists emerged as a response to state breakdown in the interior and as a way of bringing the warlords to heel. I might be reading too much into it but its also even possible that the Dominonists who acquired nuclear weapons in the late 2080s had more conventional ideas about how they should be used and it was the chaos caused by the Worm that allowed the apocalypist faction of the movement to seize control. (This isn't to say that the more conventional Domionists were good... just that it might have taken a bit of a shove to move them from North-Korea-with-a-cross to fullblown Doomsday cult.)
One other thing I was going to mention @vilani99 - did you read A Short History of the Future by Warren Wagar - the broad outline of this timeline feels like a spiritual successor/modern update to that work.
vilani99
POSTING HAGUE INMATE
- Location
- the Salish Sea
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In my case it's looking at the rising millenarianism in the American Christian Right (or the Right in general) and some of the apocalyptic fervor you see in some evangelicals and projecting it through 70+ years of slow-motion climate apocalypse (that big dark gray splotch? That's an area that's basically uninhabitable because your liable to be cooked alive during the afternoon) and political instability. The Heavenly Government is the descendants of the freaks who support Israel because they think that it will cause the rapture.
I'll have to check this out - my initial intention was for this to be a riff on Star Trek's Eugenics Wars-WW3-Post Atomic Horror origin story but reflected through 2023 anxieties about system collapse instead of 1960s and 1980s ones. The Star Trek influence should make more sense once I get to breaking of the light barrier and astro-politics.
EDIT: You more or less got it yeah. Also an idea I've been kicking around is that these type of far-right, post-Q types end up being a sort of American version of the Yellow Sands Society. The idea of there being people holed up in the rockies and talking about like, the Deepstate and Whitehats and weird messianism around Trump when there's torchships and interstellar travel and aliens living on earth is very funny to me for some reason.
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Where the fuck does Christian Dominionism come from anyway? A quick look online suggests they're merely garden-variety theocrats, definitely bad but not uniquely so. Yet whenever an alt-his or future history story is writting involving 21st century America they turn into at best ultraradical racial supremacist killpeopleists who give the Nazis a run for their money, and at worst (as in TTL) a shameless apocalypse cult with nuclear ambitions. How did things get this bad?
[/QUOTE]
I mean ultimately that initial overlook isn't enough to really get into how fucked up American far-right Dominionism is. Conservative Christians started amassing politically with Bob Jones University v. United States, which was entirely about a private Christian college's "right" to stay segregated and receive federal funding. These guys also believe that the literal gathering of the Jewish people in Palestine is a prerequisite for Jesus Christ coming back and ending the world. And that's not even getting into the IBLP and Bill Gothard, which is fully a decentralized fascist Christian cult (who's most famous members are the Dugger family of 19 Kids and Counting fame) and the broader quiverfull movement it swims in. So it's not like being racist killpeopleists is totally unexpected, some might argue it's the logical conclusion of their ideology....sniff
[/QUOTE]
I mean ultimately that initial overlook isn't enough to really get into how fucked up American far-right Dominionism is. Conservative Christians started amassing politically with Bob Jones University v. United States, which was entirely about a private Christian college's "right" to stay segregated and receive federal funding. These guys also believe that the literal gathering of the Jewish people in Palestine is a prerequisite for Jesus Christ coming back and ending the world. And that's not even getting into the IBLP and Bill Gothard, which is fully a decentralized fascist Christian cult (who's most famous members are the Dugger family of 19 Kids and Counting fame) and the broader quiverfull movement it swims in. So it's not like being racist killpeopleists is totally unexpected, some might argue it's the logical conclusion of their ideology....sniff
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ah yes, Lebanon. The famous measurment unit of how fucked up a situation is.