An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
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Evilprodigy
Donor
It might have been about expedience. You can only sell so long as there is demand and only at the rate said demand exists for. With poison that can theoretically kill as quickly as they make it. If you combine the two it may be even faster. Which is, in and of itself, a reprehensible concept to even consider.
Too be 100% clear I’m not in favor of gassing anyone. But since we’re discussing this Im gonna try to look at this from the inventors perspective. I think the creators concept was more based on efficiency than logic or morals. I mean the gas quickly, cleanly, and permanently gets rid of a problem population. No restlessness, no revolts, no integration time. You just clear out the “undesirables” and move in ready made loyal citizens from “somewhere” with only a small blip in the economy of the area.
Obviously that’s not how any of this works. There would be massive outrage from your own population if you killed enemy civilians after the fact for the sake of easiness that would more than outweigh any benefit. And that’s the same place where I think D3’s horror came from. What D3 did to the Muslim Syrians was not in any way alright. But From his perspective they had significant time to integrate but instead decided to have a major revolt every generation or so for centuries. They were a constant enemy for centuries. So he decided to end that cycle in a brutal and viscous way. And while murders and massacres of towns happen in wars, they are simply a side effect of the conflict and not the main goal. But killing with gas is mechanical and relentless. It’s goal isnt to conquer and profit but exterminate. And stuff like that is disgusting to even an Emperor.
Obviously that’s not how any of this works. There would be massive outrage from your own population if you killed enemy civilians after the fact for the sake of easiness that would more than outweigh any benefit. And that’s the same place where I think D3’s horror came from. What D3 did to the Muslim Syrians was not in any way alright. But From his perspective they had significant time to integrate but instead decided to have a major revolt every generation or so for centuries. They were a constant enemy for centuries. So he decided to end that cycle in a brutal and viscous way. And while murders and massacres of towns happen in wars, they are simply a side effect of the conflict and not the main goal. But killing with gas is mechanical and relentless. It’s goal isnt to conquer and profit but exterminate. And stuff like that is disgusting to even an Emperor.
Names for Mosul: Thanks for all the suggestions. I didn’t realize that ‘Nineveh’ was a viable option but I like it. It has that antiquarian flair that is very OTL Byzantine. On the other hand, the name is tied in with the battle against Iskandar. And, more significantly, Nineveh would give the city too much association with the Assyrian Christians. Now there are Assyrians in communion with the Orthodox Church, but the Orthodox are skeptical of the genuineness of their Orthodoxy, and there are many Assyrian Christians still not in communion. Mosul, because of its strategic significance, is a place the Romans would very much emphasize as one that is theirs and nobody else’s, and to secure that city it would be the center of colonization-resettlement efforts. Considering all that, Mepsila is the best fit.
Some of the other names might be used for surrounding towns or cities. Because of its strategic importance, the White Palace will want it populated with a lot of people it can trust absolutely.
I have ideas for them, although at this point those ideas are still well down the road since they’re still pretty small. But that the first in-depth look introduced TTL Puritans was deliberate.
Had to go back and check. The Assyrian Church recently entered communion with the Orthodox Church, so those Assyrians who follow that new lead are no longer considered heretics, although the Romans are skeptical of their orthodoxy. There are Assyrian Christians that aren’t following the new line, so still viewed as heretics and definitely not in a protected category.
There is no mention of the Syriac Christians entering communion though, so they’re still considered heretics, but they are a ‘noble heretic’ protected category.
That’s a good name, but definitely belongs out east. Naming a city that is hundreds of miles inland after an island just feels wrong.
It’ll be really obvious when it happens. This was setting up the mental landscape, the ‘background noise’, that going to be running throughout the events in the upcoming updates.
Those are all coming up very shortly. But I wanted to establish Demetrios’ mental state before describing them, since it informs his reactions to them.
Hello! Thank you very much for your support and this very informative post. You definitely know much more about this field than I (got an A+ in high school chemistry but nothing beyond that).
I was wondering how effective and practical a 17th century gas chamber would be compared to a 20th century one, and was suspecting it wouldn’t be nearly as “good” (from a purely technical point of view). I figured there’d be technical issues but didn’t know what those technical issues would be.
In light of this information, the way I see it is the discoverer got overly excited about using his new invention for killing people and rushed off a proposal to the Emperor without thinking through most of the details, at which point Demetrios III killed the project. He’d be very happy to hear it wasn’t practical though.
I am interested in staggering out inventions, although there’s the issue that innovations in X tend to spur innovations in closely related field Y. I’m thinking antiseptics and anesthetics might come earlier than fertilizers or high explosives (those seem too closely linked for it to be feasibly to stagger them too much).
The reason that I say that is your comment about staggering inventions to break out of the Malthusian Trap got me thinking. I want a lower global population but without a dystopia, which a nuclear war would be, especially since I don’t want to ruin technological progress.
The thought I had: If sanitation and medicine improved so that people lived longer, less people got sick and died, and many more children survived infancy and childhood, but food production didn’t go up drastically from lack of fertilizers, populations would grow some but soon hit a cap. People having 6 kids would suddenly have all 6 not get fatally sick, but then 3 starve for lack of food. So people would start having less kids because they don’t need to have a ton to ensure at least some make it, but the initial boom is a small one. Then, when people are in the habit of having smaller families, fertilizers are introduced and food production kicks up, but there isn’t a huge surge because families aren’t having tons of children that are now suddenly mostly all making it through the deadly first 5-10 years.
To get this, sanitation is an engineering issue and doesn’t require industrial technology. Smallpox variolation is going to get going sooner than OTL, because it was practiced in the Ottoman Empire well before western Europeans started doing it. That could lead to vaccinations appearing on the horizon before the Agricultural Revolution starts to kick off.
I remember that from the olden days. That part I’m seriously considering cutting from the new version in Not the End. I feel that I didn’t properly follow through the implications because, as you pointed out, it should’ve led to population growth. Meanwhile I’m 95% sure I’ve been under-stating TTL Europe’s population compared to OTL. London, Paris, and Constantinople are all somewhere around half their OTL size at this point in history. Something is off here, and it’s entirely because I didn’t plan this area out properly. So it seems easier to just cut it.
Pre-modern medicine is interesting. We tend to make fun of them, but they weren’t stupid. They were ignorant of a lot of things, but that’s different than being dumb. How would you explain germ theory to someone who lived 3 centuries before the microscope was invented? The ‘bad air’ idea is pretty good for someone who has no clue germs existed; the medieval issue is that they often tried to counteract the bad air by producing other smells. Hence you have medieval Europeans trying to protect themselves from the plague with really pungent perfumes.
Demetrios III’s reaction: There is hypocrisy in Demetrios’ reaction at the evil. He, after all, orchestrated mass atrocities against Syrian Muslims already, and killing someone with a bullet or sword as opposed to poison gas doesn’t mean the victim is less dead. His horror comes from three places.
Firstly, the novelty of the means of killing. Killing lots of people with steel and lead is normal in this time period, so more of that is just ‘that’s how the world is’. Evil can be banal after all. Killing with gas is something completely outside of what Demetrios considers normal, hence his strong reaction. We do this all the time. For one example, note how the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima is brought up far more often than the conventional firebombing of Tokyo, even though the dead of both were equally dead. But conventional bombing was normal for the time and still regularly used if not on the same scale, while the use of atomic weaponry is very much abnormal (thankfully).
Secondly, the Roman goal isn't genocide for the sake of genocide, but getting rid of the Syrian Muslims and absolutely not caring about being kind about it. The Great Crime will look more like the Spanish expulsion of the Jews and Muslims or the Trail of Tears than twentieth century genocides. There will certainly be elements of that: "this village is being difficult-just kill them all then, we don't have time for this" or "they've fallen behind the refugee column-kill them as an example to any other stragglers". It is a monstrous atrocity, but "wipe them out, all of them" isn't the goal.
Third, the harvesting of the bodies aspect. Mass murder may be ‘normal’, but that aspect ups the sadistic creep factor by at least an order of magnitude.
Poison gas chambers: Because it’s been a big topic of discussion (not surprising) I thought I would explain where the idea originated. Quite a while back I was reading Peter Wilson’s book on the Thirty Years War and near the beginning he was talking about the development of gunpowder weaponry. He was describing the various types appearing and in the list he mentioned poison gas weaponry. Annoyingly, he didn’t go into more detail or provide a reference for that bit.
However it got me thinking and wondering if it was feasible ITTL at this point. Research led me to the chlorine gas method in the update. Originally I was planning for it to be a weapon that the Romans develop to counter Vauban’s siege train. Using it from fortresses would be much easier than as a field weapon. But I held back because (1) delivery method just wasn’t working and (2) on second thought I was debating whether I wanted to open this can of worms.
Obviously I didn’t use it then, but I kept it in reserve, perhaps as something developed by the Lotharingians to use on the Triunes or for the Ottomans to use on the Romans. It wouldn’t have turned the tide in either case, but I’d already sunk the time into figuring out this much and didn’t want it all to be of waste. But I still held back because of those 2 issues.
Now come up to not that long ago. The idea of the Great Crime is well in the works. I look back on the gas and wonder how the people would know it works to go to the effort of developing it as a weapon. Obviously it would have to kill people and they would need to test it to see that it does. Otherwise just load the cannons with the usual gunpowder and metal. The best way to do that would be to herd people into a room and expose them. I realized that I’d created a 17th century version of Auschwitz.
That had not been the plan; it was originally supposed to be a way for the Romans to kill well-entrenched Triune artillerymen (and to jab at the conceit that modernity is, in all ways, an improvement on earlier times; note how ‘medieval’ is an insult). I did not want this, especially since this was originally supposed to be a Roman invention and particularly in the context of the Great Crime.
But I’d created a monster. It was in private, but I wanted to take it out and kill it publicly. Firstly to make me feel better but also, to be honest, I still didn’t want that initial time investment to go to waste.
Poison gas chambers won’t be appearing for at least a couple of centuries, only once we’re well into the industrial age. But I wanted to take this precocious pre-industrial jab at an industrial horror and smash it to bits first.
Some of the other names might be used for surrounding towns or cities. Because of its strategic importance, the White Palace will want it populated with a lot of people it can trust absolutely.
I have ideas for them, although at this point those ideas are still well down the road since they’re still pretty small. But that the first in-depth look introduced TTL Puritans was deliberate.
Had to go back and check. The Assyrian Church recently entered communion with the Orthodox Church, so those Assyrians who follow that new lead are no longer considered heretics, although the Romans are skeptical of their orthodoxy. There are Assyrian Christians that aren’t following the new line, so still viewed as heretics and definitely not in a protected category.
There is no mention of the Syriac Christians entering communion though, so they’re still considered heretics, but they are a ‘noble heretic’ protected category.
That’s a good name, but definitely belongs out east. Naming a city that is hundreds of miles inland after an island just feels wrong.
It’ll be really obvious when it happens. This was setting up the mental landscape, the ‘background noise’, that going to be running throughout the events in the upcoming updates.
Those are all coming up very shortly. But I wanted to establish Demetrios’ mental state before describing them, since it informs his reactions to them.
Hello! Thank you very much for your support and this very informative post. You definitely know much more about this field than I (got an A+ in high school chemistry but nothing beyond that).
I was wondering how effective and practical a 17th century gas chamber would be compared to a 20th century one, and was suspecting it wouldn’t be nearly as “good” (from a purely technical point of view). I figured there’d be technical issues but didn’t know what those technical issues would be.
In light of this information, the way I see it is the discoverer got overly excited about using his new invention for killing people and rushed off a proposal to the Emperor without thinking through most of the details, at which point Demetrios III killed the project. He’d be very happy to hear it wasn’t practical though.
I am interested in staggering out inventions, although there’s the issue that innovations in X tend to spur innovations in closely related field Y. I’m thinking antiseptics and anesthetics might come earlier than fertilizers or high explosives (those seem too closely linked for it to be feasibly to stagger them too much).
The reason that I say that is your comment about staggering inventions to break out of the Malthusian Trap got me thinking. I want a lower global population but without a dystopia, which a nuclear war would be, especially since I don’t want to ruin technological progress.
The thought I had: If sanitation and medicine improved so that people lived longer, less people got sick and died, and many more children survived infancy and childhood, but food production didn’t go up drastically from lack of fertilizers, populations would grow some but soon hit a cap. People having 6 kids would suddenly have all 6 not get fatally sick, but then 3 starve for lack of food. So people would start having less kids because they don’t need to have a ton to ensure at least some make it, but the initial boom is a small one. Then, when people are in the habit of having smaller families, fertilizers are introduced and food production kicks up, but there isn’t a huge surge because families aren’t having tons of children that are now suddenly mostly all making it through the deadly first 5-10 years.
To get this, sanitation is an engineering issue and doesn’t require industrial technology. Smallpox variolation is going to get going sooner than OTL, because it was practiced in the Ottoman Empire well before western Europeans started doing it. That could lead to vaccinations appearing on the horizon before the Agricultural Revolution starts to kick off.
I remember that from the olden days. That part I’m seriously considering cutting from the new version in Not the End. I feel that I didn’t properly follow through the implications because, as you pointed out, it should’ve led to population growth. Meanwhile I’m 95% sure I’ve been under-stating TTL Europe’s population compared to OTL. London, Paris, and Constantinople are all somewhere around half their OTL size at this point in history. Something is off here, and it’s entirely because I didn’t plan this area out properly. So it seems easier to just cut it.
Pre-modern medicine is interesting. We tend to make fun of them, but they weren’t stupid. They were ignorant of a lot of things, but that’s different than being dumb. How would you explain germ theory to someone who lived 3 centuries before the microscope was invented? The ‘bad air’ idea is pretty good for someone who has no clue germs existed; the medieval issue is that they often tried to counteract the bad air by producing other smells. Hence you have medieval Europeans trying to protect themselves from the plague with really pungent perfumes.
Demetrios III’s reaction: There is hypocrisy in Demetrios’ reaction at the evil. He, after all, orchestrated mass atrocities against Syrian Muslims already, and killing someone with a bullet or sword as opposed to poison gas doesn’t mean the victim is less dead. His horror comes from three places.
Firstly, the novelty of the means of killing. Killing lots of people with steel and lead is normal in this time period, so more of that is just ‘that’s how the world is’. Evil can be banal after all. Killing with gas is something completely outside of what Demetrios considers normal, hence his strong reaction. We do this all the time. For one example, note how the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima is brought up far more often than the conventional firebombing of Tokyo, even though the dead of both were equally dead. But conventional bombing was normal for the time and still regularly used if not on the same scale, while the use of atomic weaponry is very much abnormal (thankfully).
Secondly, the Roman goal isn't genocide for the sake of genocide, but getting rid of the Syrian Muslims and absolutely not caring about being kind about it. The Great Crime will look more like the Spanish expulsion of the Jews and Muslims or the Trail of Tears than twentieth century genocides. There will certainly be elements of that: "this village is being difficult-just kill them all then, we don't have time for this" or "they've fallen behind the refugee column-kill them as an example to any other stragglers". It is a monstrous atrocity, but "wipe them out, all of them" isn't the goal.
Third, the harvesting of the bodies aspect. Mass murder may be ‘normal’, but that aspect ups the sadistic creep factor by at least an order of magnitude.
Poison gas chambers: Because it’s been a big topic of discussion (not surprising) I thought I would explain where the idea originated. Quite a while back I was reading Peter Wilson’s book on the Thirty Years War and near the beginning he was talking about the development of gunpowder weaponry. He was describing the various types appearing and in the list he mentioned poison gas weaponry. Annoyingly, he didn’t go into more detail or provide a reference for that bit.
However it got me thinking and wondering if it was feasible ITTL at this point. Research led me to the chlorine gas method in the update. Originally I was planning for it to be a weapon that the Romans develop to counter Vauban’s siege train. Using it from fortresses would be much easier than as a field weapon. But I held back because (1) delivery method just wasn’t working and (2) on second thought I was debating whether I wanted to open this can of worms.
Obviously I didn’t use it then, but I kept it in reserve, perhaps as something developed by the Lotharingians to use on the Triunes or for the Ottomans to use on the Romans. It wouldn’t have turned the tide in either case, but I’d already sunk the time into figuring out this much and didn’t want it all to be of waste. But I still held back because of those 2 issues.
Now come up to not that long ago. The idea of the Great Crime is well in the works. I look back on the gas and wonder how the people would know it works to go to the effort of developing it as a weapon. Obviously it would have to kill people and they would need to test it to see that it does. Otherwise just load the cannons with the usual gunpowder and metal. The best way to do that would be to herd people into a room and expose them. I realized that I’d created a 17th century version of Auschwitz.
That had not been the plan; it was originally supposed to be a way for the Romans to kill well-entrenched Triune artillerymen (and to jab at the conceit that modernity is, in all ways, an improvement on earlier times; note how ‘medieval’ is an insult). I did not want this, especially since this was originally supposed to be a Roman invention and particularly in the context of the Great Crime.
But I’d created a monster. It was in private, but I wanted to take it out and kill it publicly. Firstly to make me feel better but also, to be honest, I still didn’t want that initial time investment to go to waste.
Poison gas chambers won’t be appearing for at least a couple of centuries, only once we’re well into the industrial age. But I wanted to take this precocious pre-industrial jab at an industrial horror and smash it to bits first.
How would the ottomans figure out creating a poison gas wep? I'd figure it would be places where really education is spread out to a good portion of general population. I can see that it's possible for the lotharingians to develop it seeing their in a position, where the flow of intel and trade are coming.
Can this be one of the reason they can hold off the triunes for a significant amount of time?
I'm pretty sure I've said this like twice now but fuck it I wanna express a huge thank you to @Basileus444 for his amazing world building and work ethic along with his amazing community engagement (especially for answering my flurry of questions). I am beyond proud to be supporting this work of art on patreon. With quarantine and stuff life has been kinda shitty but I will always have an update to look forward to and that seriously helps me push through. I also wish to extend a thank you for the entire community of this thread for both educating me and having such interesting discussions about things I've never considered when thinking about alternate history of the Roman empire, like the caloric value of potatoes 
. When times are tough it always helps to escape to the age of miracles. I love all you guys.
. When times are tough it always helps to escape to the age of miracles. I love all you guys.Honestly if I were you'd I'd just say mea culpa and retcon the unreasonably low population numbers since they haven't had much of an impact on the story thus far, and having a more populous TTL Europe rather paradoxically helps both your goal of a less dominant western Europe and a lower global population by delaying mechanization. The classical Romans (as I'm sure you know) invented a steam engine, but didn't bother to develop it as more than a curiosity because labor was cheap and plentiful, and if that's the case in TTL Europe thanks to earlier improvements in sanitation* and a lucky guess by some pre-modern physicians about the cause of the bubonic plague, I'd expect labor saving devices to be much less sought after.
It's important to note that the reduced rates of malnutrition as a consequence of agricultural advances were a very important part of why infant mortality rates dropped, since proper nutrition early in life is crucial to the development of the immune system. With that said, fertilizers were just one part of the paradigm shift in agriculture during the industrial revolution, mechanization and electricity were equally important in sustaining the population boom into the 20th century. The Haber process used for the production of ammonia is extremely energy intensive and accounts for about 2% of all global energy consumption today. Meanwhile phosphorous fertilizers are extracted from phosphorous bearing rocks using sulfuric acid, the production of which is also fairly energy intensive. Both phosphorous and potash (the major source of potassium for agriculture) are mined out of the ground, and thus benefit tremendously from mechanized mining, so 3/3 of the major macronutrients for fertilizer are in some way limited by mechanization or technologies that inherently depend on mechanization to keep up with rising demand.
* to the extent that such measures could be successful with no germ theory.
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Collections: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?
This week, we’re going to talk briefly about why ‘we’ – and by ‘we’ here, I mean the top-tier of modern militaries – have generally eschewed the systematic…
acoup.blog
Since we're discussing poison gasses this might be interesting (even though it doesn't fit the time period).
Is this even possible in a world without more modern birth control methods? Latex/rubber condoms that are widespread for all classes are a 19th Century invention, the Pill a mid-20th Century one. Even if you jump-start the technology to invent decent condoms earlier you are running into whatever this timeline's Christian Church thinks about such methods.
Evilprodigy
Donor
Condoms as we understand them them date to the renaissance actually, and originated as a way to prevent the transmission of Syphilis.
Their use increased dramatically come the start of the 17th century and by the 18th they were commonplace enough that legislation started appearing concerning them.
I'm referring to more effective latex/rubber condoms that are cheap enough to be used by the middle/lower classes. Basically the ones we know and use today. Those are from the early 19th century and didn't get widespread use until the middle of the 19th century.
Evilprodigy
Donor
The older ones were effective and accessible as well. Not as much so in either case, as with all things mechanization did a number on every human invention, but you can safely rule out concerns of condoms. The real killer to unplanned families was and is the birth control pill. Regardless, the concept of family planning already exists. That's all that really matters for what B444 was saying.
Family planning could also become a common function much earlier, and possibly tied to the church funnily enough. “God loves all his children and is always happy for more, but he also want you to love the ones you have to the best of your ability. So it’s probably best to stop at 3, or else how would you be able to feed them all properly.”
I have to say, I find the Romans - a culture known for having almost perpetual population shortages, being eager to adopt birth control - rather hilarious.
Evilprodigy
Donor
This is the society that wiped out Silphium because they wanted it for birth control. It does not surprise me at all.
1) Retconning Europe's population to be higher honestly seems like the cleanest solution to me, particularly if it prevents retconning the idea of Roman sanitation and bathhouses.
2) I think this is fine regarding the idea of a less populated world overall. The absolute explosion in population has been in "Third World" countries, and wouldn't happen if they were wealthier and more developed.
To my understanding, that aligns with Basileus' goals too. Instead of Africa having 1.5 billion people and a sorry history of being Europe's plaything for centuries, it's a continent of 500 million that participates in global affairs with more prosperous countries.
2) I think this is fine regarding the idea of a less populated world overall. The absolute explosion in population has been in "Third World" countries, and wouldn't happen if they were wealthier and more developed.
To my understanding, that aligns with Basileus' goals too. Instead of Africa having 1.5 billion people and a sorry history of being Europe's plaything for centuries, it's a continent of 500 million that participates in global affairs with more prosperous countries.
My two cents on the population figures for Europe during the Age of Miracles would be along the lines of 'due to inconsistencies in the data' like a historian copied the wrong numbers at the time of writing if @Basileus444 planned on an update regarding population figures post War of Wrath, otherwise it could be wholly ignored and redone during 'Not the End' rewrite.
About the population figures...
I think the best option would indeed be to retcon every population figure and revise them higher.
I mean, the reason the Balkans were underpopulated IRL was because the whole place would remain a battleground till the 16th century, which isn't really the case here anymore. And with the popularity of books like the Kama Sutra (hehehe) and the explosion in the wealth of the Empire following the reunification under the Laskarids, population growth should correspondingly have been higher.
Like, a plague keeping Antioch's population the same for a century? It isn't that plausible a Watsonian reason because, well, a plague that big would have been mentioned somewhere.
Not to mention that if any place could weather a plague, it would be Antioch, with one of the greatest medical universities in the world.
I think the best option would indeed be to retcon every population figure and revise them higher.
I mean, the reason the Balkans were underpopulated IRL was because the whole place would remain a battleground till the 16th century, which isn't really the case here anymore. And with the popularity of books like the Kama Sutra (hehehe) and the explosion in the wealth of the Empire following the reunification under the Laskarids, population growth should correspondingly have been higher.
Like, a plague keeping Antioch's population the same for a century? It isn't that plausible a Watsonian reason because, well, a plague that big would have been mentioned somewhere.
Not to mention that if any place could weather a plague, it would be Antioch, with one of the greatest medical universities in the world.
I agree with the population gang, it would make sense. Also, now that I'm caught up again (temporarily stopped following in the spring with all the craziness going on) I have to say it's great to be back. Like visiting a friend you haven't seen in a while. Love what you're doing Basileus!