MotF 117: False Friends

Krall · May 17, 2015

False Friends

The Challenge
Make a map showing a place, event, organisation, or similar thing from an ATL that shares a name - but little else - with a place or event from OTL.

The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when your PoD or map may be set. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed, but blatantly implausible (ASB) maps are not.

The alternate place/event/organisation/other should be significantly different from the OTL place/event/organisation/other in at least one manner. In cases where the Contest Overseer (me) is not sure whether the place/event/organisation/other is different enough then it is assumed to be acceptable.

If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me.

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The entry period for this round shall end when the voting thread is posted on Sunday the 31st of May.

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THIS THREAD IS FOR ENTRIES ONLY.

Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread then you will be asked to delete the post. If you refuse to delete the post, post something that is clearly disruptive or malicious, or post spam then you may be disqualified from entering in this round of MotF and you may be reported to the board's moderators.

Remember to vote on the previous round of MotF!

zalezsky · May 22, 2015

Battle of Waterloo

The Natives have had enough! No longer will the British and French yolk pretend upon their ancestral lands!
Thanks to the Genoese traders in the region large sums of Beaver furs paid for mass stockpile of arms and armour. Now the Natives take back their lands!
The League of the Defiant grows in manpower and zeal.

PS: I know that most of the cities are unlabeled (its supposed to be that way since they're insignificant states/cities)

PPS: My old family home is in Waterloo, Canada

Martin23230 · May 24, 2015

On 12 February 1950, 23 European broadcasters met in Torquay to form the European Broadcasting Union. Although originally envisioned as a cooperative organisation, it soon drew the attention of national security services who saw the control of radio and television as an important interest during the Cold War. As such the EBU began to divert from its intended course, plans for pan-European cultural projects were shelved and instead cooperation and standardisation turned towards control and censorship....

This is a darker world than ours. Powerful EBU-sponsored propaganda made Western Europe far more paranoid and isolationist than previously, and this had a knock-on effect in the East. When their citizens finally had enough and rose up in revolt communism did not go quietly into the night. The European Liberation Wars which followed resulted in victory for the forces of `democracy', and in the fires of Europe the European Union was re-forged in the the European Confederation, a powerful super-state stretching from Iceland to the Urals.

The Confederation became heavenly centralised in the newly-rebuilt city of Prague, and ruled with an iron fist. The European populations became xenophobic and isolationist, combined with feelings of superiority from defeating communism without the help of the United States. All this was played up by the all-powerful EBU, which heavily censored newspapers, broadcasters and access the Global Internet.

It is the year 2015. The European Confederation is the most powerful state in the world, both externally and internally. Its citizens have a reasonable quality of life but at the cost of their freedoms.

Most powerful of the security services are the eyes and ears of Europe, who see and hear everything that occurs within the Confederation. It is organised into regional blocks so as the better pool resources and focus on different parts of the world, there have recently been talk of including Australia in order to focus on the growing Asia-Pacific region but many see that as only a temporary possibility. It operates under a name as feared by the populace as that of the KGB or the Stasi, the one thing that unites Europeans more than anything. It is...

Gwrtheyrn Annwn · May 24, 2015

Here's my entry, most of the inforamtion is on the map. If you want any extra clarification either PM me or post it on the main thread.

Tsar of New Zealand · May 25, 2015

An alternate Nova Scotia:

A Brief History of New Zealand said:
With the beginning of British colonisation of New Zealand in 1818, Scottish intellectuals and adventurers began to wonder if they might stand to gain from the best chance of a colonial pressure valve they had had since the abortive Acadian colony two centuries earlier (which itself had seen immigration of Irish moving to neighbouring Nova Hibernia, the new ‘Ireland-in-America’ [1]), and promptly formed the Alba Association.

The Royal New Zealand Company, pleased at the prospect of a quick influx of capital, gladly allowed the Alba Association to purchase a large portion of the South Island below the Rangitata River which was to be the new colony of Nova Scotia (Gaelic: Alba Nuadh), a home for the masses of Scots who felt there was nothing left for them in Scotland proper. With the issuing of Letters Patent in 1838 the nascent colony was separated from the rest of New Zealand, as the English in the north feared being overwhelmed by ‘Jocks,’ and the Scots in turn tired of funding English wars against the restive Maori of the Colony of New Zealand (who had some words to say about being evicted from their ancestral lands). The English had good reason to fear being outnumbered: by 1853 there were 30,000 Scottish settlers in the colony, aided by a Church mission to establish Presbyterian missions in the new lands.

The Nova Scotian Gold Rush of the 1860s was integral to securing the colony’s success, and towns sprouted across the Otago Highlands as Dunedin became the largest city in New Zealand and Nova Scotia put together, with the colony’s population rising above 80,000 by 1864 – it is no coincidence that the majority of Scottish emigration remained consistently directed to Nova Scotia – and although the gold rush had largely died down by 1867, the majority of Scots in particular stayed in a colony which seemed – and indeed, was – tailored to their kind.

Of course, the boom didn’t last forever; as emigration began drying up with the continued industrialisation of Scotland the motivation to make the long voyage south was less and less appealing. Still, by 1871 the population of Nova Scotia was about fifty-four percent Scottish or of Scottish origin [2], with Gaelic widely spoken as a first or second language, especially in County Wallace and the Otago Highlands (many placenames today are simple transliterations of the Gaelic). The largely democratic principles espoused by the Alba Association also helped to retain settlers, as the contrast with the increasingly baronial system of landholdings in the Province of Canterbury over the border made Nova Scotia seem wonderful in comparison.

Nonetheless, by the 1890s the viability of the colony had been called into question and, forced to decide between union with the rest of New Zealand as an influential province or with Australia as an uninfluential sheep farm, Nova Scotia’s legislature entered into negotiations with the Colonial Legislature of New Zealand, with canny Treasurer Julius Vogel helping persuade the ‘Jocks’ to vote for union on June 7, 1893 – a date since celebrated as Union Day.

While Nova Scotia’s existence was relatively brief, its major role in New Zealand’s early history and colonial period is not to be understated; today there are as many speakers of Gaelic in Nova Scotia as in Scotland, and cultural ties remain strong. Union also brought a major shift in the culture of New Zealand as the incorporation of tens of thousands of independent-minded Nova Scotians led to a period of democratic upheaval and – just as importantly – resulted in the relocation of the colonial capital from Auckland to the small regional port of Wellington [3]. Although the twentieth century would open Nova Scotia up to increased immigration and diversity, evidence of its Scottish heritage is still clear: from stately Dunedin to booming Kinloch, icy Invercargill to slightly-less icy Invercullen, and throughout the patchwork of small towns from Winton to Selkirk to Peebles to Geraldine, the Scottish spirit lives on at the bottom of the world.

[1] OTL Nova Scotia/New Brunswick. The neighbouring province of Avalon has remained largely English since the expulsion of the French Acadians in the 1760s.
[2] Followed by English settlers (including Australians), Irish, and sizable numbers of Welsh around Pembroke and Croats near Lochinvar.
[3] Although it must be said that many of the more hardcore Presbyterians were somewhat shocked at the idea of adopting female suffrage, which New Zealand had adopted in 1887.
Flag credit goes to Martin23230

Guildencrantz · May 26, 2015

This didn't really turn out the way I wanted to, since about halfway through, I realized that a tourism brochure for Bermuda of all places isn't really necessary since, well, it's Bermuda. But dang it! I spent all that time and brain power to try to shoe horn Brazilian things into an Anglo-Bermudian context and I figured that this would be the best way to do it.

Some notes of clarification:
As noted, England got her colony on Brasil just like they did IOTL. Except ITTL, the British sailor who wrecked on shore wasn't a Dorsetman, but an Anglo-Irishman. So instead of being named the Somers Isles, Bermuda got named after the mythological island of Hy-Brasil

The British Empire is still chugging along and kept control over the United States. This caused Brasil to have a much higher population than OTL Bemuda.

The Great War went on from 1927 to 1935 and was fought between Britain and France with . The British Isles were briefly invaded. During the invasion, the king and queen were killed in a bombing raid. By that point, their children had already left on a boat bound for the American colonies. However, due to bad weather and the French navy, the new queen Anne II and her sisters had to hole up in Brasil for a few years.

The Amazon is a really big statue of a woman holding a sword.

Almain is what English speakers ITTL call Germany.

General Mosh · May 28, 2015

The California islands, as seen shortly after Spanish decolonization.

Aven · May 31, 2015

Green Ukraine

Here we see an map of the Far Eastern State of Cossacks, Buryats and Ukrainians, also known as "Green Ukraine" during the Ukrainian Crisis. The Russian Federation has been rocked by instability after instability since the Second Russian Civil War which ended the failed communist "utopia" that was the USSR. The UN ban on fossil fuel cars and the subsequent fall of oil exports to almost zero was the last straw as the government suddenly found its coffers dry and was unable to fund any but the most basic social programs. All major cities were experiencing protests, rioting and looting and the police was doing all it could to stop a complete collapse of order. That was when the Ukrainian Home Militias started popping up all over the ethnically Ukrainian areas in the Far East. Some wondered how they managed to get their hands on armored vehicles and even attack helicopters. Russian allegations towards the Federal Ukrainian State, independent since WWI and thriving on the bio-fuels produced on their great plains, were brushed off as lacking any evidence. They very quickly declared themselves an independent country from Russia. By the time the Russians organized any sort of coherent military front, they were met by the advancing militias. The organized power of the Russians has proven to be a bonus over the rebels and they were pushed to the Amur where they only just managed to hold the line with various cities and towns like Blagoveschenck coming under siege by the Russians. The area threatened to turn into a humanitarian crisis when Russia cut off all water and power to the region. However western Ukrainian State declared it could not stay idle during such a time as this and have been regularly sending naval convoys to deliver humanitarian aid to their eastern brethren. The rebels, probably due to the high quality Ukrainian food deliveries, quickly regained their strength and have pushed the Russians back. They even managed to stage a successful landing in the north (though due to their lack of naval capacity, it is still a mystery how they achieved this) and have since managed to cut off a sizable portion of the Russian army in the east. The Russian Navy, diminished to a minimum over the years of chaos, can't stop the Ukrainian convoy and is doing all it can to evacuate the Russian soldiers from the enclave. The fighting has recently stalled in the north as it moves back up into the highlands. With both sides exhausted, and with the nearing winter, an armistice has been agreed to and an artillery-demilitarized zone set up. Some say that this is just a ploy on the rebel side to resupply and start anew in the spring. Well, who knows?

(larger version: http://sta.sh/01natrfnhx63)