Rememberences of Map Contests Past

[B_Munro]

The victor (by a big 'ol margin) was Nymain1, with Jman and Thande a distant second and third.

Bye, thread! See you in May!

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Back again.

(No interest in this thread? A distinct lack of comments last time...)

MOTF 32: NEVER AGAIN

Your challenge is to make a map depicting all or part of a war from the point of view of someone from 10 years before the war starts. Said person has been informed that such a war will start in 10 years, but has otherwise only been provided with the vague location and nature of the war.


The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when your map may be set - future maps are allowed. Nothing clearly ASB is allowed, but there is some leeway on this point as these maps are not meant to depict the actual situation but a person's biased perception of it.

The war may be a real war from OTL or it may be a war from an ATL as it would look to someone from a decade beforehand. Your map may depict only one theatre of the war, or the situation prior to or after the war, or a military campaign of the war and so forth, but it must depict part of the war in some way.

The war itself must be a shooting war (or a stabbing war, as the case may be), not just a peaceful conflict. The war does not need to be a recognised war between countries - it may be a major internal conflict such as a civil war or revolution, or a conflict that does not necessarily involve governments - but it must be a significant or major conflict and it must be violent to some degree.

[B_Munro]

Beedok:

OTL, 1929 informed about a War centered around Poland. We asked an American what he thought would happen. The map may suffer from the fact we accidentally gave him a map of the ethnicities of the USSR from the 1970s, not the 1920s. This however is likely of minimal concern. . . We hope.

[B_Munro]

Jman:

In 2010, a Florida pastor named Larry Wilson, through some sort of glitch in reality, experiences an extremely realistic dream (which he will later describe as a vision) of the very real Arab-Israeli Conflict of 2020. The Conflict is actually a significant but very local conflict between Israel and its left-leaning (since the Arab revolutions of 2011) neighbors. The causus belli involves water drilling rights in the quickly-depleting aquifers of the Middle East, and although politicians on both sides invoke great ideals, the war is not really about politics or religion.

Wilson, however, gets only a vague sense of the scale and nature of the war. The one detail that sticks out in his mind is a battle between Jordanian-Palestinian and Israeli forces at a place called Megiddo. Wilson, an evangelical Christian who has read the Left Behind series and has some interest in the End Times, identifies this as the Battle of Armageddon from the Book of Revelations.

Over the next ten years Wilson attracts a modest following among both evangelicals and paranoid survivalists, and some media attention due to his bold claims. When the actual Arab-Israeli conflict breaks out, Wilson actually travels with a group of his followers to Israel to welcome the return of Christ and fight on His side. Arrested by Israeli authorities while trying to reach Megiddo, Wilson's group is discovered to be carrying illegal firearms.

A joint US-Israeli investigation of Wilson's group, now considered possible terrorists, leads the FBI to raid his home and discover, among other documents, this map, drawn in 2010, showing what Wilson imagined the alliances fighting at Megiddo to be.

A note attached to the map explains that dark blue nations are the "True Christian Alliance" which will be led by Christ himself at Megiddo, while the light blue are either secularized or Catholic Christians who will continue to trade with the Alliance but will not send troops themselves. The American left would apparently cause some trouble but eventually the "silent majority" of conservatives would push the US into the Alliance. Both these factions would evidently fight a Third World War against an alliance of radical Muslims (the Caliphate) and Russian and Asian neo-Communists. While there would be fronts in Africa, Eastern Europe, Korea and the Pacific, the decisive battle would be at Megiddo, where Christ would return to lead the Alliance and the leader of the enemy coalition would be revealed as the Antichrist.

Needless to say, Wilson made his map more and more modest every year that passed without a revived USSR or a Caliphate, until in 2018 he stopped drawing his maps all together.

Map to follow.

[B_Munro]

Jman's Map:

[B_Munro]

Japhy:

Operation Polo from 1938

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In 1938 we approached an British Political Officer in India and informed him that in 1948 there would be a war between the Indian Union and the Princely State of Hyderabad with an invasion referred to as Operation Polo. With only those details to go on, we sat back and watched the man paint a picture of the world a decade hence.

As Neville Chamberlain is currently blinking in his staring contest with Hitler over Czechoslovakia, it is easy to imagine that as long as the Conservatives are in power appeasement will continue to be the national policy. France will abandon Britain for a new partnership with Germany, Italy will bully the British into handing over large portions of Somaliland, Spain and Portugal will join the New European Order dominated by Berlin drawing nations like the Netherlands into its orbit. With the support of the New Europe, the KMT will do marvelously well against the Japanese and the Warlords, it will take time but by 1948 the Japanese will be almost pushed off of mainland Asia, to appease them the British will abandon Hong Kong, Shanghai and the rest of the concessions. In Mandatory Palestine, once the Arab Revolt currently underway is crushed the Jews are bound to try and take over the place. Most likely Chamberlain or Atlee whomever wins the 1940 Elections will let them go. As a result of this Transjordan will separate too, and most likely have a dynastic war with the Saudis. Both Judah and Arabia are likely to find support from the Germans. More influence to the Germans in Persia, and those blasted SS-Archeologists in Tibet are bound to be setting up some major influence there. By 1948 The Nazi’s and their allies will have covered just about every angle around the Raj, and secret support to subversives will be unpreventable.

By 1948 Labour is bound to have won an election either in 1940 or 1945, they’re bound to try to make a Dominion out of India, thus the nonsense about it being a Union. Once that happens, our Political notes, things are bound to go terribly. Chaos, riots, agitation by like likes of Bose across the subcontinent leading to Imperial troops being under fire a lot. He even suggests it could be like a second mutiny, even if it’s not that bad it will be rough.. Things would be so bad that by 1948 yes, Hyderabad would easily be taken over by Nazi’s armed with weapons from Mauser by way of Iran, the Portuguese and French Goa, Ethiopia, or Java. The Hyderabadi Nazis are bound to push for the coasts to cut India in two and to secure continuing supplies from their European supporters. With Dominion Status for India the army would be in a sad state, there weren’t enough Kings Indian Commissioned Officers to fill in a whole army so the new Army would be poorly organized by too small an officer’s corps with too few volunteers. They’d probably not be able to hold them. He’s not sure if enough British and Commonwealth troops can make it to stem the tide before the Nizam’s troops make it to French or Portugese Goa. He is certain though that if the Nazi’s can’t be stopped the entire Subcontinent will collapse into complete anarchy and be grabbed up by its neigbors.

Here's the map:

[B_Munro]

TurkishCapybara:

Who would think, In 1927, that Japan could take China?

[B_Munro]

Japhy was first, followed by TurkishCapybara in second, and Beedok as third.

[B_Munro]

MOF 33:

The Pilgrimage

The Challenge
Your challenge for this round is to make a map showing a pilgrimage route and/or the holy sites of a certain religion in an alternate timeline.


The Restrictions
The religion may be an OTL religion, a modified form of an OTL religion, or an entirely new ATL religion. The pilgrimage route may be a common pilgrimage route that many people take, or the route of a famous figure within that religion. If you choose to make a map that shows the religion's holy sites then you may show one or several holy sites, but they must have been the destination of a pilgrimage at one point or another.

[B_Munro]

Iserlohn:

My first ever MotF entry, in a slighty edited version.

The map at hand showcases the Holy Route of Vareshava, a pilgrimage route of Zoroastrian faith, on which the believers follow the way of religious reformer Vareshava who, among other things, introduced Monasticism in 240 AD.

[B_Munro]

Tormsen:

A quick and simple one. The holy centres of a Chola-colonized Tamil Madagascar.

[B_Munro]

Big Tex:

Something I cooked up from the Ameriwank universe that I thought would be fun.

[B_Munro]

Analytical Engine:

This has been ok'd by Krall

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Come, take the path of Surak as he preached the path of logic to the war-torn peoples of Vulcan.

His first journey to his fellow peoples around the Sea of T'karr and the rivers that feed it, to his incarceration at Shun'a for "sedition".

His second journey to the canyon cities along the great River Shokk, and thence along the caravan train to Senhir, and his great ministry there.

His third journey to the peoples of the Great Sea and the lakes surrounding it.

His fourth journey to the nomads of the northern desert.

His fifth journey along the caravan path of the west to his final resting place. There, at the monestary of T'Chir he spent his last years, sending his prime disciples out to the world as his health failed.

[B_Munro]

Gryphon:

When a map challenge suite my fancy, I occasionally make a quick map of a general idea I have about it. Usually, I don't post those maps, as I tend to think they're terrible (with a few exceptions).

However, since this contest seems to be very lacking in entries, I shall provide you with the quick 'first idea I came up with after reading the challenge description taken to a silly but sort-of satisfying conclusion' map.

The bit-poem is meant to be read- preferably in a very preacher-voicy way- in trochee with a strong ending on every second line (though that does make Jerusalem a bit odd).

Essentially, this is what happens when Christianity takes the lessons it learned with the Germanic tribes in the first few centuries (steal all their ideas and make them your own) of its existence and applies them again around the same time as a much stronger mid-1800s pagan resurgence. (In other words, i made it because it was fun, not because it made sense- again, note I wasn't planning on releasing this for general consumption).

A few notes on the map:
-I have a bad habit of renaming things when there's no particular need.
-'Christianos Athenia' is what outsiders call it- essentially, Athena as Sophia as God.
-'Arabic' is a name for a rather benign crossbreed- think 'Muslims for Jesus.'
-Christianity with Chinese Characteristics. You knew it was coming.
-Imperial- Basically, the Emperor is sort-of an antipope.
-Thoric, Odinic- well. Like I said, increased paganism.
-Presbyterians in Vancouver- Why the heck not.
-Kivatic- Essentially Deism (Kivati was a Puget Sound Indian creator/trickster god who did stuff, then he created the world. Then he decided to sit on a rock and wait until time ended. Because yeah.)
-Contanzistabluzantiumbulople.

[B_Munro]

Big Tex was the winner, with Analytical Engine second and Iserlohn third.

Bruce

[GeneralTigerXVII]

I do love these maps and this thread, there's just no real need to discuss them. I have a feeling other people are doing the same thing.

[B_Munro]

Ok, I have returned.

MOTF 34: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL

The Challenge
Your challenge is to make a map of an uneasy alliance between a generally free, democratic nation and a generally repressive, autocratic nation.


The Restrictions
What constitutes a "generally free, democratic nation" and a "generally repressive, autocratic nation" is open to some interpretation, but the difference between the two nations must be great enough that the alliance between them is controversial, uneasy and mostly only sustained by extenuating circumstances.

Future maps are allowed, but ASB should generally be kept to a minimum. There are no specific restrictions on when or where the map can be set.

[B_Munro]

First, Jman.

2033. The "Arab Spring" of 2011 was not nearly as quick and bloodless as the 1989 collapse of the Warsaw Pact (to which it was compared early on), and for nearly a decade, the cycle of revolution and counter-revolution played out across the Middle East and North Africa. By 2020 things had largely settled down aside from the occasionally terrorist attack in Tripolitania, and the populist-democratic Cairo Treaty Organization (a combination free trade bloc, collective security agreement and monetary union) came to dominate the region. However, the effects of the decade of unrest had spread to the rest of the world.

The US responded at first with police actions intended to depose tenacious dictators, contain Islamic fundamentalism, prevent massacres, and so on, starting with Libya in 2011. These operations were supposed to be quick and painless, but many of them turned into quagmires, and public opinion soon at home turned against foreign entanglements. The American public elected a candidate from a third party (the "Unity Party") to the White House, and he pulled back US troops from around the world and pursued "soft isolationism", under which foreign policy goals were met with aid, arms sales, and UN votes instead of troops. The US disengaged from NATO, but still maintains friendly relations with the Persian Gulf monarchies and the Pacific Rim.

The PRC experienced some turmoil during these years. The Arab Spring produced a few sympathetic protests, which were met with arrests and internet censorship, which led to the Summer Uprising of 2014, a nation-wide wave of protests. When it became evident the Politburo wanted a moderate approach, the army (backed by a number of large corporations) took power in a bloodless coup, then launched a nation-wide crackdown against the protesters. It worked, and by 2020 China was peaceful again, but more authoritarian than in 2011.

Europe went a little crazy. Okay, really crazy. The flood of refugee-immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa during the chaotic 2010s compounded an already growing right-wing, nativist/social conservative movement in Europe. Soon, quasi-fascist paramilitary militias were battling Muslim refugees and leftist university students in the streets. The European Crisis was a series of civil wars, coups, invasions, revolutions, and terrorist campaigns lasting from about 2016-2025. By 2025, most of Europe was firmly in the hands of a fascist/racist movement called the Western Alliance, which claimed to be the defender of Christianity and Western civilization against the Muslim hordes and the postmodern/atheist left. During this time, Russia had exploited the chaos of the war to sell arms and fossil fuels to the Western Alliance, while waging its own war against China and (Green-movement-controlled) Iran in Central Asia, mostly using proxies but occasionally sending Russian troops. The Russian government had also seized emergency powers and abandoned even the pretense of democracy.

After the Crisis more or less ended in 2025, Russia entered into talks with the Western Alliance to forge a union between the two powers, a new superpower which could fight the Chinese and Muslim heathens together. The Western Alliance, still in debt to Russia from the Crisis and needing even more money to rebuild its shattered infrastructure, agreed, and was quickly subsumed into its huge ally. Now known as the Eurasian Union, this new state stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It is especially hostile to the Cairo Treaty Organization and the PRC, and still wages proxy wars against them from time to time in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia. The Eurasian Union also aids a number of African dictators and warlords, mostly black Christians who want to push north against the Muslims. This keeps the CTO's southern border in a state of anarchy and warfare.

The democratic CTO and the authoritarian PRC, in the absence of US hegemony, have formed an uneasy alliance against the Eurasian menace.

Misc. notes:

-Free Greece is an anarcho-syndicalist state run mostly by the angry college students who stormed government buildings during the Crisis and unexpectedly found themselves in power. Its government is a nightmare of committees and popular councils, but for all its bluster it mostly survives off of CTO aid and tourism.

-Free Italy (Sicily to most of the world) is similar, but without the utopian pretensions.

-Korea unified peacefully under Kim Jong-Eun, who decided he'd rather retire to an island somewhere than run a Stalinist hell-state. Following America's turn inward, it fell into the Chinese sphere of influence, although it is still democratic.

-Thailand had another Yellow-Red mess, and the Reds won.

-Israel's had a hell of a time, and a hell of a culture war over what to do about the CTO. The country is extremely polarized (think America under Nixon), and tends to switch geopolitical sides dramatically after elections, with lots of protests from the losing side. In 2033 they're on the right.

[B_Munro]

The Stormlord:

From Global Alliance Systems pre-GW2

There were three large blocs in Europe from the period of 1920-1940. First was the Moscow Pact, dominated by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Second was the Syndicalist Alliance, founded on the success of the 1920's revolutions following the Fall of Warsaw in August 1920. Third and most intriguing was the Democratic Union, in actuality an alliance between the United Kingdom (the one actual democratic nation), Persia (which was an unequal partner), and several Fascist states, most notably Germany under Ludwig Stahlmann's regime, for the purpose of deterring a Syndicalist or Soviet attack. However, this alliance did not last long when the fighting actually, a consequence, some felt, of 'Dancing with one Devil to deter Another'...

[B_Munro]

Mine own:

Hokay.

This takes place in a world where the Mongol hordes swept as far west as the Pyrennes, and managed to hold their empire together in later years, partly through the development of an "official religion" for the ruling classes blending their native shamanism with elements of Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity.

Largely withdrawing from western Europe in the late 1400s, the Mongol Empire remained for long The Evil Enemy of Christendom, replacing the Muslims, which have not have a good 800 years (the Mongol Civil War of the 16th century, in which the Blue Heaven faction smashed the Islamicizers, and its aftermath pretty much finished off Islam as the dominant faith in Persia and points north).

Britain, which like Scandinavia and Iberia remained largely undevastated (there was a 14th century invasion by the Rhine-Khanate, in which the Royal Court was forced to temporarily move to Ireland, but it didn't stick), has long sought to unify western Christianity into a lean, mean, Mongol-fighting machine, but has been hampered in this aim by Hispanya contesting their claim to leadership, and by the continuing post-Mongol occupation breakup of a unified Christianity (The Empire of England and Ireland follows a sort of national Catholicism - see OTL Anglicanism of the muscular variety - but there are currently three contending papacies in Europe, four if you count the former Mongol-approved Pope in Rome, hurriedly relocated some centuries ago to somewhere near OTL Warsaw, and then of course there are those crazy South French....)

The Anglo-Irish Empire is a constitutional monarchy nowadays, the capital having moved to the Americas roughly half a century ago in the face of economic and demographic realities, and is a democratic place by the standards of this TL - they've recently even given women the vote. The Mongol Empire is an elitist military autocracy with laws of terrifying harshness. On the other hand, it is also highly tolerant, the upper classes are always open to new talent, and the ruling classes police themselves quite ruthlessly - it may be a tyranny, but it's a generally lawful one. This has made it open to new ideas to the extent that it has largely kept up with the West Europeans in modernization and technology, much to Anglo-Irish irritation.

The long rivalry and mutual hostility between these Powers is however now being overshadowed by a new menace: the slave-holding theocratic tyranny of La Legua de Los Puros. Descended from Hispanyan colonists in South *America who revolted against the corrupt rule of the Hispanyan Papal/Secular "dual Imperium", the League practices a Puritanical and crusading form of Christianity which however does not prevent them from energetically pursuing profit and technological progress (they have duplicated the Mongol atomic bomb almost as fast as the Anglo-Irish). They are also deeply racist, taking literally the notion that black Africans are "sons of Ham" doomed to forever be slaves (Mongols are the Hordes of Gog and Magog, to be exterminated at the End of Days, which is presumed to be fast approaching). In South America, their rule over the non-free 50% of the population is brutal enough, but in tropical Africa, where they account for less than 10%, the system reached its apex of harshness: the punishments they impose for rebellion squick even the Mongols a little. [1]

If this were not bad enough, they are expanding vigorously against the small and backwards states of Africa, and now threaten Anglo-Irish territories and Mongol vassals: they have also contracted alliances with the Empire of the True Han (the Mongols managed to reconquer the Brightly Shining dynasty after its brief expulsion of Imperial forces south of the Yellow River, but the True Han - a ferociously xenophobic tyranny following the precepts of Neo-Legalism - managed to make their rebellion stick in the 1700s), and with the ethnic salad of pirates/Chinese/Malays/Japanese which is the opportunistic Empire of Kuncun. Attempts to reach out to fellow Christians to join them in an anti-Mongol crusade have been rebuffed, partly because Legua preachers can't help pointing out that as Horrible Heretics, they're target no. 2 for conversion or destruction.

Nauseating in their brutality, alarming in their religious fanaticism, and all too near to Imperial territory, the "Puristas" worry the Anglo-Irish a great deal: although less troubled by their brutality, the Mongols have no love for religious fanaticsm, and can see all too well that the Purista leadership have chosen them as a convenient bogeyman to unify their people behind their expansionary goals. So, in the summer of 2011, ancient enemies (plus representatives from the most immediately threatened, and incidentally the most advanced, of the Muslim powers) met in a city on the edge of the Steppe to begin discussions that would change the world...

Bruce

[1] Yes, South American Puritan Conquistador Draka. Sue me.