Rememberences of Map Contests Past

[B_Munro]

Jman:

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.

[B_Munro]

TurkishCapybara:

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.

[B_Munro]

(Suddenly too sleepy to continue. Will resume tomorrow).

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Beedok:


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.

[B_Munro]

Beedok's Map:

[B_Munro]

TheLoneAmigo:

In our timeline, the US Army's post-Vietnam interest in the paranormal lead to nothing more than a few "enhanced interrogation techniques" and a few crazy LSD-ridden vets.

In this world, the world was not so lucky.

-------

The US Army Psychic Observatory was the brainchild of Jim Channon, a Vietnam vet who was able to convince much of the Army's top brass of the value of research into paranormal and extranormal human abilities. He'd traveled through California in the mid-'70s, coming into contact with many of the weirder and more bizarre off-shoots of the New Age movement. Somewhere along the way, he'd glimpsed the edge of something enormous, something amazing, and with the resources of the US Army behind him, he believed he could use it to empower America to lead a new age of global peace.

The hippies who'd been striving to commune psychically with the children of the stars were an unfocused bunch, most of them more interested in the sex, drugs, and parties that consumed the California communes. The serious young army recruits Jim Channon brought into the USAPO were anything but unfocused, and they made rapid progress. At first, they made a few minor advances in the realm of clairvoyance and predictive cognition... but in 1981, a group of USAPO psychics lead by Channon pierced the interstellar void and made contact with a psychic entity from beyond our galaxy. Codenamed DAWNING EYE, the entity was friendly from the beginning, offering to share advanced technology and psychic techniques with the USAPO officers. Behind classified curtains, Channon and his staff learned a vast array of techniques from DAWNING EYE - remote viewing, telepathic communication, psychokinesis, direct neural suggestion, and other more obscure disciplines.

During the Nicaraguan operation, the USAPO were able to prove their worth. Providing advanced psychic intelligence on the movements of government troops and the inner thoughts and feelings of government and military leaders, USAPO operatives worked with the CIA to lead the Contras to overthrow the Sadinista government in 1982. Buoyed by their success, billions of dollars from the black budget were poured into the psychic research program. Jim Channon, however, fell out of favour in Pentagon politics, and was dismissed from command of new US Psychic Operations Command; afterwards, he drifted back into the Californian fringe community, becoming an important member of the Scientologist organisation. Under the new order, the Psychic Operations Command oversaw a swathe of black operations across the globe - from Columbia to Cambodia, USPOC operatives, or "Spocks", lead American forces to covert victory after covert victory. New means of warfare were being dreamed up, and without the assistance of DAWNING EYE, the fledgling Soviet psychic program could be no more than clever charlatans. In a defining victory, a covert Spock operation took out the senior Cuban leadership and ensured that the incoming administration welcomed American "advisors" with open arms.

The Second Cuban Crisis set the superpowers at the boiling point, as the Kremlin considered an all-out invasion of Western Europe in response. As the world drifted closer to nuclear annihilation, the US Psychic Command developed a new program under the guidance of DAWNING EYE - Operation MIND EATER, an immense psychic amplifier that would theoretically give the US Army the power to take direct psychic control of the entire Soviet strategic force, and prevent a Soviet nuclear strike. Deep in the New Mexico desert, the MIND EATER array took shape, powered by a seismic generator of alien design that drew power directly from the Mohovic discontinuity.

In reality, the "psychic amplifier" was a psychic gate, designed to allow DAWNING EYE to pull itself fully through onto Earth, rather than merely touch a few minds from galaxies away. Its goal was nothing less than the total subjugation of the human race. Having compromised the senior leadership of the American military, it had no difficult securing the resources needed to construct such a device. All it needed was for someone to turn the key, and the planet would be within its grasp. Its opportunity came in June, 1988, as Soviet tanks poured through the Fulda Gap into Western Europe, giving the USPOC-controlled shell that was once Ronald Reagan the impetus to activate MIND EATER. With the turn of a key, a surge of seismic energy rolled across the globe, destabilising the San Andreas fault, and setting whole continents quivering. The damage that resulted was immense, but it was far from the worst thing to happen.

As MIND EATER sprang into action, psychic energy pulsed across the Southwest and then around the world, shattering minds and reforming them into something entirely more alien. Ultimately, however, the device had failed to allow DAWNING EYE to fully traverse the interstellar void - miscalculations lead to its psyche being shattered into a billion fragments. The effect was instead to shove shards of an immense alien intelligence into human brains unsuited for the task.

MIND EATER varied in its intensity with distance from the gate. Within ten kilometres, every human brain was reduced to pulp as the neural surge destroyed their synapses. Within a hundred kilometres, perhaps half were reduced to pulp, a third became functional hosts to shards of DAWNING EYE, and the remainder survived the initial pulse with their psyche at least somewhat intact, if severely damaged. Within a thousand, only a quarter died, with the remainder evenly split between functional hosts and survivors. Across the globe as a whole, perhaps 10% of the population were killed instantly, 5% hosting shards of the DAWNING EYE entity, and another 20% suffered severe psychological damage.

Those who died instantly were at least spared the horrors of the aftermath. Hosts of DAWNING EYE shards, who would become known as Mindeaters after the weapon that created them, had their psyches replaced entirely by angry shards of a dead alien god. Roving bands of psychic sociopaths took to the streets, slaughtering with abandon. With their language centres destroyed, there was never hope for negotiation or bargaining. Worse yet, with prolonged exposure, they could replicate the effect that had created them, killing or converting all but the most strong-willed humans.

Across most of the world, the Mindeater outbreaks were relatively small, and eventually contained by local governments, though some African nations collapsed into total anarchy. In Europe, the pulse lead to a rapid ceasefire between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with the Red Army pulling back to defend the motherland from packs of savage psychics. North America bore the brunt of DAWNING EYE's death cry. The western states were lost within weeks to the Mindeater onslaught due to sheer numbers. The solitary holdout was California, where, thanks to Jim Channon, most Scientologists had managed to survive the psychic onslaught untouched. Trained to high Thetan levels, the Scientologists were able to build a strong resistance to the gangs of Mindeaters that roamed the shattered ruins of LA and San Francisco.

Along the Eastern Seaboard, the shattered remnants of the United States drew together to battle the Mindeater onslaught. Armies of mass conscripts battled insane psychic warriors from New York to Atlanta. What remained of the USPOC developed a regime of psychoactive drugs that could improve the resistance of American minds to psychic control, which eventually tipped the balance east of the Mississippi and enabled the American remnant to regain basic control over the course of several years.

Though the Mindeater outbreak was eventually contained, the world was forever changed, and not for the last time. The death throes of DAWNING EYE had awakened the psionic potential of humanity, and cast an immense psychic beacon across the galaxy. More visitors would come following its trail...

------

It's 2001, 13 years after the world went mad.

DAWNING EYE wasn't the last alien to touch Earth. Since MIND EATER, a few alien travelers have visited Earth. It turns out the quickest way to travel around the galaxy is by psychic warp. Most visitors have been more along the line of tourists or pilgrims than conquerers, with alien psychologies that render communication difficult. The most troubling arrivals are the spores of the organisms that have consumed most of Earth's tropical regions - non-sapient psychic super-kudzu that chokes out whole ecosystems in short years. Its ambient psionic field means most humans can't even bring themselves to damage it, although Fortress Singapore still survives within the Saigon organism thanks to powerful psychic defenders that keep the Straits of Malacca open to human shipping. When the spores touched down in Caracas in the late '90s, Brazil wasn't going to let itself suffer the way Africa and Southeast Asia had; they razed the entire Amazon rainforest to the ground instead.

In Europe, the geopolitical map shifted when a East German general decided he was the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler in the immediate aftermath of MIND EATER, and developed the psychic chutzpah to back it up. Hitler 2 is probably the most powerful human telepath alive, and certainly one of the more insane. The Fourth Reich is a nightmarish state of industrial death, but with an impossibly charismatic dictator; like North Korea run by Charles Mason, radical '60s decor with a side helping of famine and murder. Hitler 2 is held in check by the immense nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union on one side and the European Defense League on the other, and an uneasy peace is holding at the moment.

The world has adapted to the rise of psychic warfare in a variety of ways. In the American and Canadian remnants, the American Psychiatric Association are empowered with the privileges of a police force, and administer a psychoactive drug regime that would make the Beatles choke to every citizen. It might reduce range of emotional and creative expression, but it seems a necessary evil in a region where Mindeater raids are still a threat. The EDL and most American allies take similar, if less drastic pharmaceutical steps, backed up by homegrown psi-ops forces. The Soviets take the cheaper approach of issuing lead-lined skullcaps to every soldier and important government official, which is surprisingly effective.

In fact, life in the Soviet Union these days is surprisingly pleasant, at least compared to parts of the world where your life is threatened by psychic weeds, telepathic dictators, mindeaters, or ecological collapse on a daily basis. Seismic generation technology based on stolen MIND EATER plans provides immense amounts of cheap, clean energy, while the Soviet occupation of the Middle East means plentiful oil as well. Consumer goods are finally returning to Moscow shops after years of wartime-level production, and the Soviet space program has become the first to manage psychic warp techniques.

The Middle East is a mess; Israel figured it might as well take all its enemies out if the balloon was going up, and is currently surrounded by razed atomic wastelands and total anarchy. Rumours abound that an alien prophet is travelling through the ruins of Mecca and Medina, speaking of Allah and Muhammed and raising a new army to retake Jerusalem. They're probably just rumours.

South Africa has preserved apartheid, if somewhat altered; a combination of "advanced neural pacification technology", a psychic puppet Mandela, and wartime conditions with the advancing Congo Organism keep the black population under control. Most of Africa that isn't under South African control or the Green Menace is totally anarchic, with psychic warlords and even the occasional Mindeater tribe running wild in the continent's interior.

After China's seizure of Taiwan and Korea after MIND EATER, Japan is feeling increasingly isolated. A fascist party has seized control of the Japanese Diet, while technology stolen from an alien warpship wreck has helped Japan increase its technological lead. With by a resurgent and isolated Japan on one side, and the expanding Saigon Organism on the other, the PRC is living through interesting times. An atomic-enhanced firebreak in the Brazilian model is hoped to slow the Organism's progress, but it continues to creep up through the South Japan Sea.

Lying only a few hundred miles from the heart of MIND EATER, the Dianetic Republic of California is a vigilant garrison state, still ruled by Jim Channon. It boasts the most psychically active population in the world, with the most advanced training techniques. Privileges and rights are based on one's Operating Thetan level, with humble OT1 citizens regarded suspiciously as weak-minded potential targets for Mindeater infestation and OT8 citizens being the social elite. Still, it's hard to argue with results, and Channon's welding together of the Scientologists and the Human Potential movement seems to offer a promising model to many for the future of the human race...

[B_Munro]

TheLoneAmigo's Map:

[B_Munro]

Analytical Engine:

Fairly self-explanatory, I think, but I might as well give a brief discription.

This map is from my still-in-progress Star Trek TL (the same one as with the map of Vulkan I posted a few MoFs ago).

Basically, WWIII has been over for a while now, so most of the more advanced nations have recovered enough to be (mostly) stable. However, there is still a lot of trouble in the world.

I've ret-conned the Eugenic Wars to being after WWIII, since that would make more sense.

Anyway, the United Earth is still an alliance (think NATO spliced with the EEC), rather than a proper world government-y thing. They are very friendly with the Vulkans. Our elvin-eared friends are encouraging global unification as part of their reconstruction assistace.

However, some countries have banned the UE movement (I've had to use a lot of artistic licence based on what Q said in Encounter at Farpoint)

They are also providing a global anti-nuke umbrella, though they said that they'd shoot down any nuke used in agression, regardless of side.

Anyway, as per the film First Contact, there is a remnant of ECON, controlled by the Kunming clique, which is still rather dangerous.

Oh, and by the way, that country that looks like uber-Israel, isn't - Israel got pwned during the war. It is the "Levantine Federation", which was formed from Israel (which annexed the Sinai again, but before WWIII), Palestine and Lebanon. It was designed to be a country for the benefit of all the people who live there - however, the UE are very insistant that they get along, or no more reconstruction Euros/Dollars for you...

And the light grey colour indicates no overall affiliation - basically, the people living there just want to be left alone...

[B_Munro]

Ephraim Ben Raphael:


Loosely Inspired by Turtledove's "Vilcabamba"
----------------------------------------------

Little did we know that in the days of the early twenty-first century intelligences cold and hostile to our own were surveying the earth. The Krolp were a technologically advanced civilization- if not a morally advanced one- and they considered humanity to be little more than uncivilized savages. The first ships were met with joyful greeting parties that were mercilessly gunned down as the Krolp invaded Earth in the name of civilization. We weren't completely helpless, the combined human militaries managed to kill a handful of Krolp before succumbing, but with a casualty ratio of over twenty thousand to one we didn't last very long.

The newly conquered Earth was placed under colonial administration as Krolp investors sought to plunder the planet for its resources. Far more geologically active than the Krolp homeworld, Earth boasted significant mineral deposits but mining was only an incidental bonus of colonization (they could always mine asteroids after all). The primary economic activity that made colonial Earth profitable was plantation farming, valuable crops such as snarfar and tflin fetch high prices as luxury or industrial goods on the Krolp homeworld. While growing Krolp crops is easy- they grow like weeds and can outcompete native plants if given a chance to spread- harvesting them is another matter. Tough and thorny, harvesting say...snarfar, is killing work. While the Krolp have machines capable of doing the harvesting for them, it's cheaper to just conscript the native labour as slaves on massive plantations. After all, the slaves are introduced to civilization and converted to the Krolp religion, so it's in their own benefit, right?

But not all human were conquered. In the mountains of North America a rump United States survives by virtue of not being worth the trouble to conquer, their military strengthened by captured Krolp weaponry. In the far north where the cold makes it uneconomic to grow crops, fragile human states survive largely ignored by their world's conquerors. Originally unified in the face of the alien threat, the past three hundred years have begun to make the northerners complacent as they start to fight among themselves for power and personal gain. Recently a civil war began in what was once Canada between both sons of the dead Governor of Nunavut for his position. After asking the Krolp to arbitrate, the winner declared himself Governor-General of Canada- a position left vacant for the past three hundred years- in a worrying display of insolence towards the official government in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Speaking of government, the human states have begun to increasingly imitate Krolp practices of leadership and culture. The Krolp place considerable value on heredity- they themselves are ruled by an Emperor and a nobility- and the colaborators they use to administrate the Earth are for the most part descendents of members of the original human governments three centuries previously. These practices are by now almost universal in what remains of the Free World, the President of the United States is a member of the Moffat Dynasty (originally founded by the former Secretary of the Interior) and his cabinet are also hereditary positions.

Unlike the northern states the rump USA has remained strong, surrounded by the Krolp they've stolen and bought various bits of Krolp technology while also playing host to Krolp renegades and criminals whose technical expertise has proven invaluable in advancing human technology. While the Moffat Presidents occiasionally turn out to be self-interested fops who care more for partying than they do governing, the current President (19th of the line) is a capable individual whose careful politicking with his relatives among the quislings who run the colonial government have provided conduits of valuable intelligence and helped to further a few cautious assainations among the particularly brutal Krolp.

Recently though it's beginning to look as if some of these machinations might pay off. In the aftermath of the last major human rebellion fifty years ago the Krolp struck back in a disease that wiped out thirty percent of the remaining human population to make them more manageable. This resulted in an untintentional shortage of labour to work on the Krolp plantations and considerably reduced crop production. The fall in production combined with a fresh wave of taxes from the Krolp Emperor have put a significant financial pinch on Krolp colonial elite- enough so that some private Krolp have taken to raiding free human territories for additonal slaves while clamping down on their collaborationist overseerers to increase production. Nevertheless the Krolp colonists are growing restless and agitated particularly in the wake of the Emperor refusing to meet with the representative they sent to complain about the most recent taxes.

Could war between the Krolp be looming on the horizon? There could be opportunities for mankind if we can just take advantge of them...

[B_Munro]

Ephraim Ben Raphael's Map:

[B_Munro]

Mine own:

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).

[B_Munro]

My map:

[B_Munro]

Petros >Peter Fergus<:

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

[B_Munro]

Petros >Peter Fergus<'s Map:

[B_Munro]

Mumby:

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.

[B_Munro]

Mumby's Map:

(And some more talking)

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.

[B_Munro]

KCammy:

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.)



WARNING - VERY BIG

Remember to scroll right as well!

[B_Munro]

TheLoneAmigo won this, with myself in second, and Kcammy a' huggin' third.

Bruce

[B_Munro]

MoTF 37: Melting Pot


The Challenge
Create a map showing ethnic, racial or national heritage in a "nation of immigrants".


The Restrictions
Technically every nation's population are the descendants of immigrants, but this round's challenge concerns a nation whose population is made up mostly of immigrants or the descendants of people who immigrated within recent history, like the USA in OTL.

The immigrants in question should come from a variety of different nations, rather than just one country - the idea is for the "nation of immigrants" to be diverse.

There are no restrictions on when or where the map can be set. Future maps are allowed, but try to keep implausibility to a minimum in all cases.

You do not need to show the entire nation - you may show a region, a single state or province, or even a single city if you so desire. Similarly you may show the ethnic, racial and national heritage of the nation in question and every neighbouring state, or every country on the continent and so forth.

[B_Munro]

Lyly:

The latest census data from the Republic of Texas reflects the nation's diverse cultural heritage. This map illustrates each county's largest ancestral group as reported in the census.