MotF 36: They Arrived

Here’s the background of the map which is in the following post. TL;DR at the end.

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Interdimensional travel has been discovered in tens of thousands... no, hundreds of thousands... no, millions of universes. And they all think they’re the first.

And they always screw up their first trip.

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In the Year of Our Lord 2030, the United Kingdom of England and Pictland was in a tough situation. At war with the Khalifate of All Ottomania, who had occupied the UK’s allies Castilla and Portucal, its economy was strained, and its military had seen heavy losses. In November, the Ottomans began an invasion of the United Kingdom’s very own territory.

It was pointless to try and fight back. The Ottoman menace had destroyed all Christian nations in the Old World. Their army, consisting of soldiers recruited all throughout the Islamic world, from places like Granada to places like Khandesh, was unstoppable. Their airships were deadly and efficient war-machines, and their navy was an unstoppable wood-and-iron wall.

But the United Kingdom still had hope.

On the 14th of November, Constantine Churchill, General of the 1st Army, and 80,000 soldiers prepared to enter the Portal, an experimental device to travel through time and space--essentially, a time machine. The United Kingdom planned to destroy the Ottoman Khalifate back when it was a small Beylik in northwestern Anatolia.

“Time target set,” announced a voice. The announcer was the inventor of the machine.

“Portal to open in five...”

“...four...”

“...three...”

“...two...”

“...one...”

The Portal created a fierce, fiery-looking orb whose appearance could only be described as the eye of Hell. But it was actually cold, and perfectly safe to go through.

The troops and General Churchill had been educated about the Portal and they knew that this was a safe thing to do. So they walked calmly into the maelstrom.

It took about 20 minutes for all of the soldiers to make it through the Portal. Once the last man stepped through, the Portal simply disappeared.

Were they stranded?

No, it seemed, as a few minutes after its disappearance, it reappeared. The King, John XVI von Habsburg, the entirety of Parliament, the Prime Minister George Washington, and about 500 ordinary civilians exited from the wormhole, the civilians running frantically and tripping over each other. As the 500th civilian passed through the Portal, the Portal abrupty closed and ripped him in half.

After a few minutes had passed and everyone had calmed down, the Prime Minister walked up to the General.

“I have news to share with you,” said the Prime Minister to the General, but directed toward everyone, “And it’s bad news. We will never get back to England.”

He continued, “Two days after you travelled back in time, the Ottomans announced to us that they had created ‘a weapon more powerful than any ever before’. An atomic bomb. They launched one first at Devon. Then at Oxford. Then finally our radar detected a gigantic bomber airship over Norfolk. It was almost certainly the carrier of an atomic bomb. So Parliament, the King, and I set the Portal to about half an hour after the date you were all sent to, and we entered it to escape to safety. And some civilians tagged along,” said the Prime Minister, pointing at the crowd.

“The reason that poor man was ripped apart by the Portal is because Norfolk was nuked and destroyed right that second. And the United Kingdom is being invaded by the Ottomans. And... we’re never getting back.”

But the English had not just travelled back in time. They had travelled to an alternate universe. A universe that was recipient to dozens of accidental interdimensional transfers. The planet Earth in particular had also received, and would continue to receive, a multitude of visits from alien beings

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By 97 A.P. (After Portal), the English had conquered a large chunk of the Balkans and Anatolia. In 85, King John VIII of England-in-exile declared himself Emperor John I of the Anglo-Byzantiumite Empire.

The Anglo-Byzantiumite Empire was already a very multiethnic one. In the east were the Turks. In Greece and the very coast of Anatolia were... well, Greeks, except for in Peloponnesus. There lived Jewish Spaniards who had immigrated to the Empire seeking freedom--which they did get, by serving as mercenaries for the Imperial army. In the far northwest were Croats, and in the milder northwest, north of Greece, lived Serbs. Semi-Slavic Greeks who called themselves Mackedonians lived in the area called Mackedonia, and Bulgarians lived to the northeast of them and north of the capital. In the northernmost reaches of the Empire lived Wallo-Bulgs, Bulgarians who spoke a Romance language. Lastly, English people lived in the center of the empire and all throughout as administrators. As time passed, English spread outward from the capital and spread down the social classes. Eventually the ethnic groups called the Anglo-Bulgarians, Anglo-Byzantiumites, Anglo-Romans, and Anglo-Turks would appear, all speaking English, all practicing some aspects of English culture, and all having some English ancestry; however, they kept regional peculiarities that differentiated them.

Starting 100 A.P., a series of... ‘visits’ (strandings, really) would occur, which would vastly increase the amount of ethnicities in and around the Empire... non-human ethnicities. Some of which lived underwater around the Empire.

The first ‘visit’ was that of the Jupitorians. Jupitorians are insectoid alien beings: tall and skinny, they have four legs positioned nearly-upright but facing slightly outward from their body, two arms, large multi-lensed eyes, and large mandibles. In 54 B.P. (Before Portal), the great King Zz’klvang of the Jupitorian Empire, which possessed four systems on the other side of the galaxy and had its capital at the city of Jupitoria Ga-Ztzt on the planet Juptioria, commissioned an expedition to the Far Side--our side. 154 years later, the members of that expedition woke up from their cryogenic sleep to discover that the back half of their ship had been completely destroyed in a massive explosion that, if the airlocks in the ship’s middle and front had not contained it, might have destroyed the rest of the ship as well. Their vessel was in the proximity of a blue planet and tumbled down, with most of the thrusters gone. It crashed into the area called Serbia in 100 A.P, killing and displacing many Serbs to the south, who eventually adopted some Greek customs.

The second ‘visit’ was done by the Martians. In an alternate universe, Mars was colonized by humanity in the 2300s. Mars was ‘halfway terraformed’ as many called it, in the process of being shaped like Earth since the 2060s, with air that was breathable for several hours (after which you’d have to go back into base and receive regular air), many lakes, grass, some trees, many research bases and terraforming bases, and a large completely-terraformed dome called New America with a full ecosystem and a city called New Washington. In all, the population of Mars was 10,000, with most of them residing in New Washington. In 2385, however, an amphibious alien race who the humans called the ‘Ghosts’ invaded the solar system... or, well, they tried. A gigantic weapon, called Goliath, that orbited the Earth and had previously protected it from an asteroid impact in 2130, destroyed their ship. But within the Ghosts’ ship was a core that contained a light speed core, interdimensional core, a hyperintelligent AI that controlled the ship, and the high-ranking military officers who commanded the ship before its destruction. The core survived. Too small to be targeted by the Goliath superweapon, it rocketed towards the planet Mars and crashed into New America, breaking it. Simultaneously, the cracked New America dome as well as half of Mars was transported to the alternate universe of the Anglo-Byzantiumites.

This had rather dangerous consequences for the citizens of New America, and not just the fact that the Ghosts’ ship’s core crashed into the city. Half of the planet Mars was transported along with the remnants of the dome, but the rest of Mars was completely barren and... Martian. The atmosphere was rapidly equalizing. Therefore the Martians used the spacecraft that remained to escape to Earth. Unfortunately, only 1,000 Martians could be accommodated, even stuffing each spacecraft to the absolute limit. The 9,000 Martians remaining on Mars dug underground tunnels and tried to bring whatever they could salvage from the surface underground. A new, much smaller, dome was built to keep the air in, and the oxygen scrubbers and atmospheric generators sustained said air. Perhaps 8,000 Martians died, but it is thought that Martians still survive today, restricted to their small dome. Meanwhile the 1,000 Martians who headed towards Earth were granted a surprise. The Ghosts, in the frantic retreat underground, made themselves hidden somewhere, perhaps in a Martian lake. After the last of the Martian spacecrafts had exited the atmosphere of Mars, the Ghosts’ ship’s core launched into space and followed the fleet of refugees. When the Martian ships were in close proximity to Earth, the core shot most of them down. The largest of the ones that were not shot down made a strategic shot at the core disabling it and sending it tumbling down to Earth. In 104 A.P., the Ghosts crashed into the Adriatic and most of the Martians crashed in southern Hungary and northern Bosnia. The Ghosts made their home under the sea and built up quite a reputation for fierceness. The Martians became loyal subjects of the Anglo-Byzantiumites and intermingled with the Bulgars and Croats. A new hybrid people emerged, called the Martio-Bulgars, and they soon became the Jupo-Martio-Bulgars after adopting the language of the Jupitorians.

The third ‘visit’ was by the Galactanteans, a culture composed of the Atlantean, Galactan, Norisian, and Vultraxian alien races, as well as the enslaved Plutonians. Each of the peoples mentioned evolved on the same world, Galactantis, except for the Plutonians, who derived from Galactantia’s moon Ux. All of the peoples mentioned also dwelled underwater. In 80 A.P., President Yb Ougivdzk of the Galactantean Empire deported a group of political opponents, as well as slaves that had participated in a revolt, into space, course set for the Galactantean system’s sun. This band of misfits, however, managed to gain control of their ship and save themselves. Returning to Galactantis was obviously not an option, so they voyaged into deep space in hope of finding a watery world to settle. They arrived upon Earth--or Water, as they called it. As Galactanteans preferred to live in bodies of water between landmasses, they chose the Mediterranean to settle. And they prospered in their united ‘underwater empire’. Well, not completely united, for a small group of Vultraxians headed south and split ties with the Galactanteans, and the Plutonian slaves all escaped to the east. By 120 A.P., the various Galactantean peoples had spread to the areas they now live in.

The fourth ‘visit’ was by the Automatons. In one alternate universe, the human race became gradually more and more addicted to cybernetic augmentation--by 2140, the average human was 95% artificial.

In the universe of the Automatons, interdimensional travel was invented in 2150. A group of ten automatons tested it for the first time in November that year. However, in a situation similar to that of the Anglo-Byzantiumites, their world fell to nuclear war soon after their travel through time, space, and universe. As a result they never made their way back, but formed a sphere of influence in western Anatolia and became the subjects of the Anglo-Byzantiumites.

The last ‘visit’ was by the Neptunian Fish-Race. Since time immemorial, there has been an interdimensional gate under the Black Sea. Until 130 A.P., it had not been activated since the extinction of the dinosaurs. And starting late 130 A.P. and ending 132 A.P., it, activated, emitting strange finned creatures from their dimension’s version of the planet Neptune. Since the closing of the Portal, the Fish-Race, split into the Neptomarians and Neptopiscians, Neptunian ethnicities differing slightly in appearance and majorly in culture and religion, has been infighting with itself so much that it has not set foot on... or, rather, placed fin into the waters of, any body of water other than the Black Sea.

Now it is 300 A.P. The Anglo-Byzantiumite Empire is more backwards than you’d expect for an empire founded by interdimensional travellers and populated half by peoples and aliens from space. Of course, all of said travellers and all of said aliens were small in number when first arriving. And time leads to the forgetting of old ways.

TL;DR

Alternate UK was being invaded by an alternate Ottoman Empire in a world similar to World War Two, but with the Ottomans instead of the Nazis conquering Europe. The Brits sent people back in time to destroy the Ottoman Empire when it was still tiny, but they actually sent them to an alternate universe--an alternate universe that almost all interdimensional travellers from any universe end up in. The Brits form an Anglo-Byzantiumite Empire and soon receive a multitude of alien visits.

The Martians are human colonists from an alternate universe’s Mars who arrived along with the Ghosts. The Galactanteans and their sub-ethnicities (which includes the Plutonians) are from a faraway planet.

The Jupo-Martio-Bulgars are actually genetically just Martio-Bulgars.

The Automatons are technically cyborgs.

The Fish-Race of Neptune are self-explanatory. They are fishlike beings from an alternate universe’s Neptune.

And here's the actual map:

Here is a map entry:

The aliens were not what anyone expected. For one, the best description anybody can agree to is that they look like a cross between a large dog and a beetle. Secondly, they appear to be adapted to desert environments. Their ships came down in the Sahara and they eventually began settling there, ignoring large human settlements. Thirdly their psychology is totally alien. They don't appear to understand concepts like leaders, private property, or even ownership of land, which makes them very hard to deal with. The first and last attempt at diplomacy failed when no spokes-alien could be identified, and the one they eventually picked and dragged in front of the General Assembly simply complained about the humidity whenever anyone tried to talk to it.

General opinion is that Earth is now home to some sort of race of space-drifters. This perception comes in part from their "thievery" (due to their lack of the private property concept), and in part from the fact that they appear to be technologically backwards in many fields, have low intelligence in general, and are ravaged by disease and parasites. There is speculation that they once had a leadership caste which died off before they reached Earth, leaving only the drone-like worker caste. Others think they're just an inherently lowly race, and many humans believe some nasty stereotypes regarding the xenospaients (the PC term).

In any case, at least we're not openly at war with them. However, their arrival displaced a lot of people and generally caused chaos. New warzones have popped up across Africa, as well as new alliances. The Cairo League is leftist-democratic, descended from the Arab Spring movement. The Rabat Treaty is a pro-American alliance. The African Jihad is rightist/Islamist.

The original landing was in October, 2011. It's now February.

And the map:

Sapient Simions from a timeline where Monkeys became the dominate primate species, instead of humans, developed Wormhole technology and found our planet on the other side. Several Thousand Individuals emerged on the otherside in three Regions: Western Germany, Syria, and Belarus. The date they arrived in was 1590. Soon after the departure, the Worm Hole plants were destroyed in a Nuclear War, but they were closed at that time.

The Monkeys from Western Germany were part of one of the stronger states in there world: Wesfalia, and Nation that rule over half of the New World and Western Europe. By conisidence, the region they landed in was Westphalia. They conquered Much of Western Germany and Benelux for there King, but the unity of there Viceroyalty ended when the Wormhole crashed.

It collapsed, with large German States forming in its aftermath. Only Westphalia and Hannover is still under control of the Monkeys in 1710.

In Syria, the Ichkari were a very Warrior culture, and they also did what the Wesfalians did, but much more vigorously. There Great War-Khan, Aplonion, did not accept the rule of his home nation, and the Aplonion umpire was created. This Nation cracked the Ottoman Empire, which is on the edge of distruction.The Aplonion umpire is still conquering in 1710.

In Belarus, the Cosmonkians (as they are called by the Polish) were much more peaceful than there brethren in Syria and Germany. They slowly intregrated into the polish society till 1653, when the demanded there own state in the commonwealth, and Poland-Lithuania-Cosmonkia was established.

Alot of Technology from the Aliens was partially lost or integrated into the European society, but the technology levels are only around 1820-1850.

Well,here's my first entry on this sort of thing: (The map is based on NG-Entropy of Empires)

The first signs of the invasion were detected in 1989 when strange radio signals were heard from the edges of the Solar System, but they were ignored as the ever present threat of nuclear war always occupied the news. However when contact was lost with the few settlements and outposts in Mars the Invasion Fleet couldn't be ignored anymore, while a few governments tried to make a peacefull first contact with the Aliens most nations simply mobilized their forces and waited.

A few weeks later the lumbering space vessels reached Earth's orbit and immediately launched thousands of smaller crafts upon Central Africa,North America,South America,Central Russia,Western China and Europe. In the intial days of the invasion several major cities fell, such as Paris,Amsterdan,Edimburg,London,Tehran and human armies were in dissaray, the situation looked so grim that the government of Swahililand simply surrender without much fight, however....

To the despair of the Bug-like Aliens(humanoid bugs) who called themselves "The Race", the steam of their assault ended in just a few weeks;they found out of the worst possible manner that the human superpowers had near technological parity with them when most of their fleet was destroyed by the combined missile arsenals of Earth, things only went downhill to the Race from then:

in Europe their armies were beaten back at the gates of Cordoba by hordes of Fanatical Jihaddists and the armies of France and Austria-Hungary are ready to liberate Netherlands.

In Africa the sheer brutality of the Roman(South Africa) counter-attack (chemical,biological and nuclear weapons) made any resistance useless, and now they are "liberating" the rest of Africa and punishing the Traitors of Human Race(Swahili genocide) with the help of the Niger Islamic Republic.

In Middle East, after centuries divided along ethnical and political lines the local nations are finally fighting together against the "Infidels from beyond the Stars".

In Central Russia the lack of central authority allowed greater advances,but the Korean-Chinese counter-offensive is quickly gaining ground and the Novgorodian Army is putting strong resistance

In North America, the highly fortified frontier between Gran Columbia(Mexico) and Amerique(Black nation) actually benefited both as the Aliens were unable to break it and link up.Quebec's army is still reeling from the early defeats but is holding the line

In South America, the Caliphate forces have defeated and killed the bulk of the Alien forces while the Acadians are marching with nearly no opposition.


And here is the map.Three months after the intial attacks

Alright, my entry will be in the next post, but first, Le Wall O' Text:

It all started in 1969. That was the year that a small ship carrying a dozen or so Kodlarian rebels crash landed in Siberia. The Soviets were initially wary of these aliens, but before too long they realized that mutualy benefits could be acheived by working together. The deal they negotiated was basically as follows: The rebels introduce the Soviets to advanced technology. The Soviets then mass produce enough of that technology to arm both the Soviet war machine and the small band of ragtag rebels. The aliens will also be allowed to set up several bases deep in Siberia where nobody really lives (the Kodlarians always prefered the cold anyway, in fact, some even complained Siberia was a bit too warm for their tastes) to use as staging grounds for their terrorist attacks *ahem* sorry, "glorious freedom fighting campaigns." Anyway, the Soviets manage to keep the whole thing secret for over a year while they are arming themselves. NATO notices the buildup and is concerned, but the Soviets are remarkably good at disguising this new technology as low-tech stuff. Finally, in the summer of 1970, the Soviets, armed with alien technology, start WW3. It started out conventional. Well, if you want to call guys with plasma weapons and anti-grav vehicles mowing down standard 1970s soldiers "conventional." NATOs worst nightmares came true. Western Europe was overwhelmed in a matter of weeks. France fell before they even had time to use their nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the overconfident Soviets launched simultaneous invasions into Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Japan, and the biggest target of all, China. Yet the Red Army just could not be slowed down. Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan fell in rapid succession. China was a bloodbath, holding out only due to sheer numbers. Some opportunistic nations took advantage of the situation. Iraq grabbed a piece of Iran before they surrendered, and annexed Kuwait. With the US distracted, Israel was defeated and partitioned between Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Tibet took this opportunity to reassert their independence from China. The Soviets also assisted the DPRK in uniting the Korean Peninsula.

Things looked bleak. By the fall of 1972, the Soviets ruled most of Eurasia. Troops were massing on the English Channel to invade the British Isles, Beijing was surrounded, and Soviet troops landed in Alaska. Finally, the US, UK, and China decided to take the inevitable step. The three countries launched a coordinated nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. But the USSR had one last trick in their bag. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, the Soviets had received a missile sheild from the aliens. Every last missile was brought down long before reaching its target. Then came the Soviet retailiation. They hit London, Beijing, Washington, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They then demanded the immediate unconditional surrender of all US, UK, and Chinese military forces or else they would keep nuking more cities. The USSR could hit anything on the planet, and nothing could hit them back. Realizing the game was up, President Nixon, from his bunker in West Virginia was preparing to surrender.

But then the tables turned. The Kodlarian government pulled a Seal Team Six style mission which killed the alien terrorists hiding in Siberia. They then apologized profusely for any trouble that their rebellious countrymen had caused and asked if there was anything they could do to set things right. President Nixon kindly pointed out that if it weren't for the rebel Kodlarians, the USSR wouldn't be on the verge of world domination and politely requested that they correct the matter. Whether what happened next was due to the vague nature of Nixon's request, a mistranslation, or simply a random violent urge on the part of the Kodlarian commander will probably never be known. But what is known is that it altered the world irrevocably. The Kodlarians proceeded to bombard the entirety of the USSR from orbit until it was a lifeless wasteland.

In the aftermath of what would come to be known as the "Kodlarian Intervention," Earth was thrown into chaos. There were Soviet soldiers all over the world with no way of resupplying and no "home" to return to. Eventually, the Warsaw Pact command withdrew their forces in western Europe back to behind the iron curtain, leaving chaos in their wake. The forces in East Asia most defected to either the DPRK or the Mongolian People's Republic. The PRC fell apart when their entire government was killed in the bombing of Beijing, thus beginning what would become known as the Second Warlord Era. Some of these warlords were local government officials, some were military types, some were even Soviet officers that chose to try to hold on to their occupied territory instead of returning "home" to eastern Europe. Some Red Army groups did similar things in Central Asia. Speaking of Central Asia, it is a mess. Rump Iran is a Fascist dictatorship which goes around massacreing non-Persians. We've also got a Baluchistan nationalist state and three countries (Afghanistan, Sindh, and Punjab) which are run by Soviet army officers who got stuck there when the USSR was destroyed. All of them have gone native to a greater or lesser degree. What's left of the Warsaw Pact (plus Yugoslavia, where Tito was deposed by the Soviets during the war) united for its own safety, forming the Federation of Socialist Republics. The only thing keeping it going is its nuclear deterrent. The vast emty area that used to be the Soviet Union is just beginning to be recolonized. It's not radioactive or anything, just . . . empty. The FSR is moving east, and even set up a small settlement and a monument where Moscow once stood (or so the cartographers say, they couldn't actually find any ruins. The Kodlarians were very thorough). Turkey is moving into the Caucasus. DPRK has annexed Manchuria from the chaos in PRC and has now started moving into the former Vladivostok area. Japan is grabbing Sakhalin and the US is moving into the Russian Far East.

However, the most important development of this world is the Union of Free Nations. This Union was formed immediately following the war. It initially consisted of the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. As the Soviets pulled back, the various Western European nations reasserted themselves and each joined in turn. Turkey has considered joining, but is still on the fence about it. The Union is fully federal. It grew out of the post-war "hang together or hang separately" mentality. There are associate members who are in full economic, but not yet political union. The US is the most important member, but after the hits it took from Soviet nukes, it is definitely more of a "first among equals" situation. It will be almost a century before the world is rebuilt. This map is from 1982, the day that the Galactic Community (think UN in space) recognized the UFN as the "sole legitimate government of the planet known to its inhabitants as Earth" and its admission into the community has been approved pending a successful faster than light test flight (a condition for membership in the GC). A bit premature? Perhaps. But a Unified Earth Government is the UFN's goal and every day more nations join. Now if they could just get that stupid warp drive working . . .

And the map:

My entry is based on terraforming gone wrong. Countless millenia ago, an alien races many nations struck out across the void into space. They colonised many worlds, bringing crops and cattle from their homeworld. But a time of crisis has come. In a war against the Multiple-Tentacled Frenzy Horde of Kastrakhan Beta, their sun became permanently unstable. There is little worry about their own survival as most of the population lives in various countries colonies. But what they were worried about was the survival of their planets life. Little effort had been made to export many of the diverse and wonderful creatures of their planet.

So, in their stars dying days, they constructed twelve great fleets, filled with the seed of countless animals and plants, equipped with terraforming devices, and staffed with warden-robots. These fleets were to go to uninhabitable worlds outside of the Extrasolar Communities jurisdiction. These worlds would be close to inhabited worlds, so that the wardens could enlist the help of the intelligent species there to help them nurture these new worlds. The reason for sending the Fleets outside of the EC, was because most of the planets in the EC had already been terraformed. And the terraforming process posed a terrible threat to the population of those planets.

Most importantly, one fleet was targeted to terraform the planet known as Mars. The wardens would enlist the help of the nearby humans, and help nurture their new world. Unfortunately, while passing through the asteroid belt, the navigating system was badly damaged and rather than land on Mars, the fleet landed on Earth in 1914.

The terraforming process began before the wardens became active, and a new continent was raised from the Indian Ocean. Hundreds of thousands of people died, as the fleets programming continued regardless. Gas meant to create an atmosphere was jetissoned into one that was already there. Alien plants and bizarre animals crawled from artificial wombs, and great rains meant to fill seas began all over the globe.

Tensions in Europe rapidly collapsed, as issues more important than imperialism and war came to the fore. Whole swathes of land had been drowned under a vast sheet of water, that only increased as a sweltering atmosphere melted the ice caps.

The wardens helped as best they could, trying to eject as much new atmosphere as possible, but it was too late. Whole countries had been devoured, and empires crumbled as the world entered the 1920's.

More stuff and a map coming soon.

Thirty-thousand years ago the Kadari began evacuating their Solar System as the imminent danger to life their became clear,
thousands of ships of various size fled the planets and Moons over a century, going in various directions for a myriad of reasons,
however a large portion of the ships from several of the polities of the Kadar System headed towards Kal-Anar (roughly New Hope),
a System they had discovered decades before to have atleast one planet capable of supporting life as well as several other planets,
including some Jovians that were thought to themselves have many planetary moons, that could be colonized.

The journey would last nearly a millenia (it was'nt a straight shot), as the great ships with their combined several million inhabitants
in stasis trekked across space.

The fleet would finally arrive in the Human year 272 CE, however do to the discovery of intelligent life the Fleet Council (who had
been awoken a few months before entering the star system) chose not to awaken the refugees, rather setting up a long term plan
for the future of their people.
　

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In early 2005, sixty years after the first Nuclear test was detected the plan began to start, across the planet the ships that remained
began to come online and start surfacing (in some cases, literally).

It was soon discovered that not everything had gone to plan, while all of the Ka'na-class ships, the ships that held the bulk of the Kadari
had come online at the same time it was discovered that some 36% of the smaller ships had left over the nearly two millenia since
the fleet arrived.
In Summer of 2012 the Kadari presence became known across the world, sooner than many had wanted, as the ships of the Zak'ta soon awoke.

While the Kadari ships landed across the globe most of them had landed in the Western hemisphere, and the largest amount (10 of the
12 Ka'na class ships) had landed in northern South America.
　
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It's been 16 years since the 'Awakening', as Humanity has come to call it, and the world has changed greatly.

Guyana and Suriname, the countries in which most of the fleet landed were quick to embrace the Kadari once they realized they were
not only peaceful, but showed a great enthusiasm in helping the people their.
As a result of the Kadari there having been from the same polity they did not want to be separated, thus after two months of negotiations
the Guiana-Kadari Federation was born.

Several months later the Brazilian state of Roraima joined the federation after the Kadari negotiated a referendum of all the Kadari and
Humans living their in exchange for providing Brazil with advanced technologies and signing a mutual defence agreement.

Carried on from previous post. The year is 1940. Britain, France and Japan are the world's Great Powers. France is primarily based in Corsica, Southern France and Northern Africa, and Corsican is becoming the lingua franca of the French. Following the Flood, refugees entered North Africa. The Sahara is now lush grassland.

Spain and Portugal escaped relarively unharmed and have become Great Powers once again and have re-extended their empires, though both are unpleasantly fascist and have some internal issues.

The Belgian, Dutch and German empires have largely collapsed. German East Africa remains, under a harsh military dictatorship. The Dutch managed to evacuate to Indonesia with British help. The Belgians were less lucky and has been annexed by various countries.

Due to the costs of rebuilding their empires, France and Britain have withdrawn from a lot of protectorates and colonies.

Britain managed to re-establish governance in Edinburgh, and shed its less important colonies, while consolidating the more important ones. By the 30's the British Imperial Confederation had been established, based primarily in Canada, the Caribbean, South Africa, India and Oceania.

Italy decayed and was replaced as major minor power by Austria and Turkey. Russia collapsed, replaced by Trotsky's Socialist Republic of Sovdepia, and Kolchak's Siberian Khanate. Japan dominates East Asia.

Egypt is an Ottoman vassal once again, and old kingdoms have arisen again from the ashes of Africa.

The Siamese Empire forms a buffer state between the British and Japanese.

America suffered from a severe refugee issue, and was forced to relocate a lot of refugees to Central America. The puppets were directly incorporated into the United States. Currently, the Americans enact a kind of apartheid caste system upon the races of their nation.

Portugal and Spain, in a new position of power look to reclaim their former empires in the Americas, and the instability of that region has allowed them to conquer quite handily.

Britain, France and Japan are allied in the Anglo-Franco-Japanese Entente. There is friendly rivalry in the alliance. All three are thriving, as former wastelands are turned into lush, farmable grassland.

The continent of Lemuria is full of alien wildlife, and is monitored by the Wardens. They have allowed Britain and France to claim swathes of land, and the Wardens have also begun monitoring Earth's biodiversity.

Wardentech is widepread, and has allowed the Entente to ensure their hegemony and begin the first tentative steps into space. The Wardens are tailoring a fleet after the example of the Terraforming Fleets, ready to settle the Moon.

In August 2010, something big was spotted orbiting Earth. It was huge. Easily a quarter the size of the moon. Somehow, through whatever technology it's creators possessed, it was not disturbing the gravitational field of other planetary bodies around it.
However, when they landed they did not seem all that more advanced than us. Same basic body plan. Gold, hard, skin, no apparent sensory organs, stood about 5 and a half feet tall, clawed hands and feet, legs and arms in pairs. (2 to be precise.) They used gunpowder-like weaponry, drove vehicles with engines based on principles not all that different from our own.
They landed in seven locations. Galica in Spain, London, Rome, D.C., Vladivostok, Peru, and a seemingly random spot in Saharan Africa. All based on guesses on the part of the invaders.

After peace had been declared it was revealed that half a million years ago, the "Cessanonans" had pretty much nuked their planet into oblivion. However, help came in the form of a deserted mega-ship that had orbited their homeworld since time immemorial. As their planet slipped over into complete inhospitibility, they discovered all they needed to send themselves with the mega-ship, christened "Cessanona" (hence the human term for them) to a possibly habitable planet, while in "stasis". Finding it already inhabited, their heirarchy pretty much had a seizure and invaded in a fierce fight for their species survival.

Their initial success was scarred by countless setbacks, but were eventually able to get some territory at the treaty of Rome, including the centre of London, which they narrowly got. Britain has estranged herself from Europe because of this.

Several "rascist" idealogies popped up. The map is kinda styled after one of these parties propaganda sites. I'm actually a little scared, it's the kind of party I'd get in tow with if that actually happened.

(Just so it's a little clearer - The box with Victory shows Humans retaking land, and defeat shows two initial attacks by the Cessanonans.)

Map later.

WARNING - VERY BIG

Remember to scroll right as well!

2014 CE

The Vanadarian's arrive in the Sol System, and promptly begin the settling of Earth, with blatant disregard for the indigenous population. As ships land, and no attempt to contact any existing government is made, the nations of the world, in response to Vandarian expansionism, prepared for war.

A nuclear holocaust like no other was unleashed, smashing already landed Vandarian ships into rubble, and targeting the orbiting fleet. The Vandarians responded in kind, unleashing their own attacks on the people of Earth, smashing cities and militaries.

In the end, both sides had smashed eachother to bits, and a new era of reconstruction began.

2381 CE (206 Years Since the End of the Days of Fire and Ice)

In the lands of Tis'Umbia, the Humans and Vandarians have begun a time of peace, after decades of conflict. The Humans of the Kingdom of Toria and the Vandarians of the Kingdoms of T'Orge and Couver, have signed a peace treaty. This treaty is in the wake of the threats of the Yanquis Barbarian tribes which are beginning to move into the area.

Based on the "Mars Attacks" cards... ( http://www.bubblegum-cards.com/Mars-Attacks/ )

In a world not too dissimilar to our own, where China did not go Red (although Cuba still did), any chance of a Cuban Crisis taking place was averted when the Martians invaded in the spring of ’62. They really needed to, after all: a new technology gone wrong had led to an irreversible chain reaction within the planetary interior, and would before long crack Mars in half. If Earth was too hot, humid and heavy in gravity to be pleasant, the rest of the solar system was worse.

So the Martians invaded, with their saucers, their disintegrator rays, their force rays, their energy-draining or “freeze” rays, their giant robots, and their hordes of fast-reproducing genetically engineered war-bugs. It was unfortunate about the humans, but a reasonable space would be set aside for reservations for them.

Unfortunately, the humans were rather excessively attached to their planet, and when guns and bombs didn’t do the trick, moved to use atomic weapons with a lavishness that astonished the Martians. Still, the Martians plugged away, and probably would have eventually won, except that the reaction within the interior of Mars sped up unexpectedly, and Mars blew into three large and a great many small chunks while much of the Earth was still unconquered, leaving the Martian forces with a huge number of refugees often with no more than the shining metallic diapers on their hips, and a terrible supply problem: Martian Von Neumann machines were doing the best they could, but between human attacks and lack of easily accessed raw materials, local manufacturing of more weapons, giant robots, etc. was well below specs. The giant bugs were still merrily multiplying away, but they could hardly win the war on their own. They could still just blow up the planet, but they needed it for themselves.

So – the armistice of ’63. Martians withdrew from the major nations still in the fight, and later further concentrated their forces by withdrawing from tropical and/or densely populated lands more trouble to govern than they were worth. Both sides set to preparing for the next round.

****************************************************

50 years on, neither side has really gained a true advantage. The humans have duplicated few of the Martians superior technologies, but have gained the capacity to rapidly make the planet radioactively uninhabitable for either side: the Martians, on the other hand, have yet to find an adequate mind-control device or doomsday virus that will act fast enough and widely enough to Kill All Humans. Not that the Martians are all that evil: after all, they had not had war for many millennia on their home planet. However, they are rational and don’t tend to suffer from the Pathetic Fallacy: if it’s Them or Us, they will always choose Us, and fifty years of study haven’t improved their opinions on human rationality and common sense. (A lot of atrocity stories came out of the war, but really, drop a raw recruit with a death ray and no combat experience in an uncomfortable exoskeleton on an alien planet, with air often too dense and hot and humid to breathe, under 2.5 gravities, full of aggressive and hideous aliens who want to kill him any way they can, and see if a lot of trigger-happiness doesn’t take place).

Martians are thin, skeletal-faced and have corrugated cranial armor which looks uncomfortably like brains. They come in two sexes, which humans (much to Martian annoyance) cannot tell apart. They have a jolly sense of humor, most of which is untranslatable. From a cold, dry planet, they dislike greatly the hotter, more humid areas of the world, and voluntarily withdrew from much of the tropics. From a planet with a thin atmosphere, air at less than one mile of elevation tends to make them pass out from oxygen narcosis. From a planet with a lower gravity, they tend to use antigravity platforms and robotic exoskeletons to get around.

Or, at least they used to: thanks to Martian bioengineering, the latest generation of Martians, if still more fragile than humans, can get around unassisted in Earth gravity, although the current concentration of Martians at altitude means they are – as yet – not breeding for tolerance of the dense atmosphere of the lowlands. (Besides, Martians have their own kind of macho, and the little air-thinning mask is something of a mark of the Valiant Pioneer).

The Martian held onto the Sahara, too hot, and the Antarctic, with too much ice for their tastes, since they provided enough desolation to carry out induced-vulcanism Deep Mantle mining techniques without covering human cities with schmutz. The Emperor Penguin has suffered badly.

Much to the annoyance of the humans, Martians have largely cleared huge areas of their domains – especially ones with interesting mineral deposits – and moved them into “Human Concentration” areas. Unlike, say, South Africans, Martians have little need for cheap labor – robots and engineered animals do the grunt work – and prefer to have violent, unreasonably strong humans well away from where they live. Provided by the Martians with free electricity from their “lukewarm fusion” plants and free synthetic food, and in some cases piped-in water, the Human Concentration zones are left free to govern themselves and conduct business as they see fit, as long as they don’t develop arsenals of anti-Martian weapons: Martian presence is usually in the form of robotic spy-eyes. Conditions vary from nearly modern to abysmal, governments from democratic to despotic: emigration to the free or neutral nations is encouraged.

******************************************************

Most of independent humanity is part of the Union of Nations, a loose world government arising out of the old UN. It is dominated by the Big Five industrial/military powers: the USSR finally went at least semi-democratic in the late 1990s, the common Martian menace providing something of a unifying glue between its many peoples, while those Europeans not under Martian or Soviet control have unified into a federal state roughly as closely joined as OTL Canada. With Unity of Humanity being the order of the day, a lot of wee little bits of real estate never became independent, while much of post-Martian Africa is still essentially run by the UN. As the Union central government gained some genuine power, the World Assembly was moved from New York to Drogheda in Ireland, since nobody was particularly annoyed at the Irish (well, aside from the Protestant Irish).

Aside from neutrals, a few particularly poor and messed-up nations have become out-and-out Martian puppets, which provides the Martians with some useful “ins” to free human society. The most prominent of these is the one containing the Islamic holy cities: given Islamic sensitivities, this one has to be treated with kid gloves, but things have gone fairly smoothly since the leading clerical figures got their mind-control chips without anyone – least of all themselves – finding out about it.

Liberated not by the armies of Free Humanity but by Martian horror of heat and humidity, the nations of the Southeast Asian Block are quite anti-Martian, but refuse to submit themselves to the leadership of a so-called world government largely run by three white nations and the Japanese (they also don’t particularly like the Chinese, who try to use their overseas Diasporah as an entry lever to the local economies): they follow their own course, and have started to build their own Orion spacecraft.
(An unnecessary cost, in fact: at a UN research lab in Kazakhstan, Martian antigravity propulsion has been duplicated for the first time).

Bruce

And here's the map.

Bruce

The Triffids


The Triffids are the motile stage in the life-cycle of the larger Trifficulture. Wherever it takes hold, it supplants the terrestrial ecosystem almost entirely, leaving only insects and bacteria.

The thick jungles of the Trifficulture are universally hostile to life. Every individual plant has a poison that incapacitates or intoxicates, or a thorn that can spear or harpoon anything that moves, or vines that can snatch and constrict, or something of this sort. But deep in these jungles are the Barreltrunks, full of an oil of much higher quality than any extracted by us from the ground. Not to mention the advances in chemistry that come from studying the plants themselves. Their only weakness is salt water, which they cannot grow near, or survive in, or even cross easily. Though once in place, the roots can survive a prolonged dousing in it.

The first sign of Triffids in the larger world came in 1962, when an outbreak occured in England. These plants were smuggled out of the Soviet Union some years before, and were being grown on a test plantation in Wiltshire. The failure of containment systems, and the escape of around a thousand Triffids, was followed by a national emergency, and effort to contain the problem. Throughout the 1960's, similar outbreaks were seen all over the world, though in most cases most of the escaped plants were accounted for. In 1969, the Soviet Union made an announcement in the UN, declaring the Triffids an existential threat to humanity, releasing the reports of the state of the ecosystem within their plantations, the difficulty in containing the Trifficulture, and they then sterilised the area between the Caspian and Aral Sea with nuclear bombardment. This was followed over the next few years by similar, though more limited, operations to contain nascent Trifficultures in England, Brazil, Central America, the Congo, India, Madagascar, Italy and parts of Indochina. In Indonesia, the spread of the culture was too extensive to contain without total nuclear destruction of the islands of Sumatra and Java, and much of the Malay peninsula. So containment became the preferred option.

The people of Sumatra, Java and the Malay peninsula were forced to evacuate, retreating to safer parts of Borneo or Indochina, or into heavily fortified cities or encampments. The United States, and the other signatories of the Triffid Accords, enforced a cordon around the infested islands. But exploitation of the rich, and ever increasing, oil reserves within the Trifficulture, was too tempting to pass up. The Trifficulture was divided up into zones, which were bought by a number of companies, for the right to exploit that zone. They have also been responsible for much research into the nature of the Trifficulture.

Extracting oil from the Trifficulture is the worlds most dangerous job. Prospectors must brave the hostile jungles to find a Barreltrunk, and then another team must follow up with the machinery to fell it, and bring it back to a refinery, or to tap it, and run a pipeline to it. Since the average Barreltrunk, connected as it is by a series of underground roots to other such plants in the area and underground, can provide around a million dollars worth of oil, this is a lucrative enterprise.

The Triffid is the motile stage. It moves quite slowly, slower than walking pace, but keeps going without rest. It is armed with a pollen that sprays out and acts as a mild hallucinogen and soporific. They grow a set of barbs that can be projected out, and which are variously connected to a tough vine that can draw a struggling animal towards the Triffid, and often a paralytic poison that can cause seizures. The Triffid looks for somewhere that it will not be distrurbed, and then plants itself into the ground and begins to spread roots, eventually forming the nucleus of a new Trifficulture.

All of the smaller encampments in Sumatra, Java and the Malay peninsula, resupplied by aircraft or hazardous treks through the Trifficulture, were quickly overrun. Hordes of Triffids poured out of the jungle, easily dispatched so long as supplies hold and patrols are regular. But many of them simply stopped resisting, and went to live in the jungle. Somehow, these people who went native avoid attack by the Triffids or the rest of the Trifficulture, and they have developed a strange cult around the plants. It is not known how exactly this happens, since those who go native rarely survive capture for more than a few hours before succumbing to a violent, mysterious allergic reaction. In recent years, they have begun attacking teams sent into the jungle, with weapons no more sophisticated than clubs and spears, either killing the prospectors, or taking them alive. At least one of these captured 'natives' was in fact a former prospector, and suffered the same fate as the others, dying within hours of removal from the jungle.

A disturbing new development in the Trifficulture jungles is the sighting of what have been termed Stagetrees. These were first recognised as large, bare, obelisks, just like redwoods without leaves. They grow up to a hundred and fifty metres tall. In 1989, the first launch occured. A Stagetree ignited on the island of Java, and launched itself into orbit. A shuttle mission quickly scrambled within the week recovered the pod that was in a degrading orbit, to find that it was heat-shielded, contained large stores of oils, and dozens of small, proto-Triffids. Four more Stagetree's have launched in the last year, none of these making orbit, but landing somewhere on Earth. The Soviet Union has declined to comment on how they first discovered the Triffids.

The smaller islands surrounding the Trifficulture are the site of experiments in containing the threat. Several of them have been cleared with non-nuclear methods, using defoliants, salt-water sprayers, fire, and so on. On a few, the reseeding of terrestrial flora and fauna is showing some promise. However, it seems that the roots of the Trifficulture go deep, and there seems to be no way to stop periodical outbreaks of Triffids, or sporadical eruptions of other plants of the Trifficulture.

In 1982, the number of outbreaks of Triffids in southern Borneo drastically increased. This could only mean one thing, that somewhere a Triffid had taken root, and the Trifficulture was advanced enough to produce Triffids. Thousands of acres of land was burned, a huge multi-national operation began to find the source. The massive exodus of people from the area hampered efforts, and further outbreaks began. Attempts to set up other barriers with controlled burns, walls, checkpoints and so on, all failed. By 1989, it had spread across the southern half of the island, with only a single city holding out. The island is now considered lost, any further barriers simply measures to buy time. There is some tension between the Triffid Accord powers and the companies which exploit Triffid oil, to either destroy the island outright with nuclear weapons, or to allow it to become a Trifficulture, and divide it up as before.

...map follows

And here's the map:

They first arrived in 1720. Their ships crashed into the Hungarian plain, clearly in need of maintenance. The strange snake-like beings seemed mostly lost and confused, and where thus abused by the Austrian nobility for their exceptional endurance and technological marvels. However, by 1750 they had had enough of Austrian tyranny and rebelled. Their advanced weapons allowed them to conquer most of Europe, however they were of fairly limited number (due both to few arriving on Earth and Austrian abuses killing many) and were forced to ally with certain human groups. Still, they were eventually forced to accept peace by the shear numbers of troops Humanity sent against them. In the end they were still left with control of most of Central Europe, along with their puppets of the Ukraine, Rhinia, Greece, Rome, Romania and Belearia.

The year is now 1823 and Humanity is fast catching up to Rauhmlanji in several fields and everyone knows another war looms. The new Human Great Powers are Russia, France, Great Britain, the Geremanic Reich and the Ottoman Empire.