Something about this reminds me of OTL Fiji, although it could just be the 'former British colony with Indian population transplant for plantation labor' bit.A quick one:
Hawaii in Giant Canada World, part of the broader Anglo-Pacific world by way of volumes of immigrants from India and the Mediterranean. Sadly the Hawaiian monarchy didn't survive the scheming of British sugarcane planters and the Royal Navy in the late 1800s, by which time the British public wanted their canned pineapple and didn't much care how they got it. GCW Hawaii is less wealthy than OTL, with its politics partially divided into ethnic blocs. More of the archipelago is owned by the public after various buyouts from rich fruit company heirs over the years. The Canadian and British Navies still park in Pearl Harbour (with a U) because Hawaii isn't exactly a military powerhouse beyond a few coastal patrol boats. Hawaii's one of those places that gets some advantage from the Second Empire trade pact that the British Empire has evolved into: A lot of people from the bigger Pacific and North American parts of the Anglosphere show up here in winter because the customs barriers to traveling within the pact countries are quite low.
Also whoever put down their coffee on the map, I'm gonna drink it. I'm gonna drink it all up.
Map Thread XXII
- Thread starter Balkanized U.S.A
- Start date
Planet of Hats
Donor
Fiji was very influential on how I brainwaved this, yes, but I figured the Hawaiian monarchy would eventually get shuffled out by the fruit-grower class - the Claudonia Fruit Company is this universe's analogue to Dole and still shows up on modern canned pineapple labels in supermarkets across Giant Canada World. Descendants of plantation labourers from northern India are a major demographic slice in GCW Hawaii. Portuguese and Greek labourers also turn up, hence you get a lot of mixed-race people who have a little Mediterranean and a little native Hawaiian and a little North Indian. A lot of the "Hindi" dialect there actually comes the Awadh region because one of the fruit growers set up a really successful hiring operation in British-annexed Oudh.
The food scene in GCW Hawaii is accordingly fun. If you like pineapple curry, Pacific codfish vindaloo, tandoori chicken gyros and really delicious street food, you'll have fun in GCW Hawaii. Doubly so if you like really colourful religious buildings - GCW Hawaii has a lot of colourful Hindu temples and fancy Catholic and Orthodox churches. (The Anglican ones are old and boring.)
I’ve never given a damn about being a Marylander until I just saw this - now my Chesapeake sensibilities are all flustered
Well, mayhaps I'll stretch/skew this one to 200% size in paint. But I'll wait until I see how many likes I get on the smaller version.
Might help if you set the font to a larger one but also didn't bold it, I've found that making text bold makes it harder to read at smaller sizes when making stuff.
My newest map. Some of the ideas are taken from a COAW game.
In the 8th century, the Mandean faith of Mesopotamia underwent a revival, with increased proslytization by members. Rather than recognize them as a people of the book, the Umayyad Caliphate declared them to be unbelievers. The First Mandean Revolt occurred in toward the end of that century, and though it was unsuccessful, it triggered a surge in new converts to the gnostic faith. The Second and Third Revolts were more successful and an independent Mandean kingdom was carved out by 850. This radically changed the direction of Islamic growth, with an emphasis on expansion by means of individual prosyletizers rather than armies. In the following centuries, Islam would be brought by devout merchants to strange shores; to India, to East Africa, and farther afield to China and even the Atlantic Coast of Africa. In the modern day, Islamic states can be found on nearly every continent, from the mercantile states of the new world to the nuclear-armed ex-Somali colony of Dhulka Duyyulu Boodboodaya. Islam has, in this world, shed some of its Arabic heritage. Politicians from Islamic countries generally communicate in Indian Ocean Creole, a mixture of Arabic, Somali, Malay, and various Chinese dialects. Clerics in their home countries pray, preach, and read the Quran in their local tongues but communicate in Arabic with Muslims from abroad. In the Middle East, Islam was forced on the back foot as the Mandeans waged wars of conquest, eventually achieving their goal of conquering the Holy Land. The Mandeans aligned with the Christian Armenians, forging a dual empire that has survived the centuries and still lives on.
The syncretic religion of Chrislam emerged out of post-Umayyad Hispania. Taking pieces of both its parent religions, Chrislam believed in both Jesus and Muhammad as important prophets and that the majority of both the New Testament and Quran are true. At first, the Christlamic Andalusian Emirate faced war with both Christian and Muslim powers, but it slowly came to dominate its neighbors, then all Hispania. In the 10th century, it launched wars of conquest north of the Pyrenees. The empire is now over 1000 years old but it has changed considerably since the early days. Feudalism in Europe has given way to a fairly equal society. Its soldiers, the fathidurs, spearheaded an age of transatlantic imperialism though Andalusia has since become a more peaceful state and is more interested in expansion into space than expansion at the expense of its neighbors. Chrislam is labelled as heretical by Christian and Muslim alike and it has had limited growth outside of Andalusia and what growth it has had has been in states that have not previously practiced Abrahamic faiths.
Eurasia was once dominated by a Mongolic state, the Great Uls and its successors are still quite powerful. The Great Uls was founded in the mid 12th century by Eldegai, a speaker of a Mongolic language that was adopted by Qipshak Turks after a period of slavery in Tibetan mines. Eldegai reshaped the steppe into his personal domain and a massive military camp, harnessing the Turks and Mongols as instruments to take revenge on those that had done him wrong. His new state was named for the eagle, becoming the Uls. Eldegai's successors continued his conquests and his grandson, Altun Ashugh, converted himself and his empire to Buddhism, allowing that religion to gain dominance over nearly all of northern Eurasia. The Eldegid Dynasty became extinct in the 16th century, leading to a series of massive, bloody civil wars and the establishment of a series of local kingdoms, the Chakrvates, across the once-mighty empire. A nominal emperor remained but in practice, the regional Chakravates held power. The end of the Great Uls came in the 18th century, as a Christian army from Europe launched an invasion of the westernmost Chakrvate, the Great Western Uls. The metropolis of Narjimarty was sacked despite the presence of warriors from across the entirety of the Uls cultural sphere. This set in motion a series of wars that would not end until the entire old empire was destroyed with no chance of further unity. The actions of the Great Uls have come to define much of a continent. Buddhism, brought to the empire by Altun Ashugh from southeast Asia, bloomed into the dominant faith of numerous peoples. The Mongol tongue spoken by Eldegai lives on and has been adopted far beyond its original home.
Being surrounded on all sides by unfriendly heretics (Buddhists, Chrislamics, and the Armeno-Mandeans) early modern Christian Europe developed a siege complex that has remained in place to the present. This tendency is most pronounced in the actions of the League of the Banner of Saint Barbara, which launched savage wars against the Great Western Uls and followed up that victory with wholescale ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe. The Christian states of Europe no longer talk as eagerly of holy war as they once did but they are insular states that do not enjoy open and friendly relations with other faiths.
Africa has been shaped from the south and east by Islam and from the north and west by Chrislam and Christianity. Enterprising Arabs and Somalis brought their faith to the Cape, where it was picked up by the Khoisan peoples. Some of them founded the Imperium of the People That Pick Things Up, which became a massive empire, expanding across the Atlantic and deep into the African interior. Along the Indian Ocean coast, mixed Arab-Bantu-Somali states have flourished. From the Atlantic, European fathidurs established themselves along the coast, creating settler colonies and enslaving the local populations. This prompted the creation of large, centralized states in Africa, many of which are further protected by "leagues" explicitly designed to keep out potential European conquerors. One of the peoples that was unable to fight off the Europeans, the Igbo, converted to Buddhism, and their state, which eventually threw off the Norse, remains Buddhist to the present. To the northeast, the Kingdom of God exists, practicing a new religion syncretizing Islam, Buddhism, and native beliefs under the name of Spiritism.
The first transatlantic voyages were by Norse seamen, who sailed from their homeland to the volcanic island of Mundspallheim, the frigid island of Nifollheim, and then to the continent known as Turtle Island, which was called Sukhavati by the devout Buddhist seafarers. The Norse carved out an empire in the west, but intermarried with the native peoples while encouraging the spread of Buddhism. Disease ravaged the continent, but the Norse were few on the ground and gradually, populations rebalanced with the surviving natives adopting the most useful technologies of the newcomers to their shores. To the south, the Imperium of the People That Pick Things Up crossed the Atlantic, and built an empire in a similar way while native empires also grew. Finally, from the western ocean came Japanese refugees from the Uls conquest of the archipelago. They established Kinyama, a series of heavily populated coastal settlements that still dream of their lost homeland. The Andalusian, Engelish, and Irish fathidurs came to the hemisphere later on, seeking to build settler colonies and exploit the natives. They were able to establish beachheads but could not push very far inland as they faced well-armed and disease-resistant native armies. The natives of the interior founded the Turtle Island Confederacy, a massive, continent-spanning federation of diverse native groups aligned to prevent their conquest from outside the continent. This nation has survived several hundred years due to its vibrant democracy, though it has undergone several civil wars that threaten to tear the country apart but somehow never do. The Confederacy's thinkers established the Turtle Island Church in a bid to build continental unity through a single religious body to formalize a thousand forms of religious practice. The church has caught on in a number of parts of the Confederacy but is not practiced by anywhere near a majority of Turtle Islanders.
Technologically, this world is slightly ahead of OTL and can best be described as vaguely cyberpunk. Computing and biotech have far surpassed OTL, while urban sprawl is found all over the world. A switch to green technologies came earlier, so there is considerably less pollution than OTL. There is no single global culture, and different internets dominate different regions of the globe with little cross-communication between these subcultures. Part of the issues lies in the use of different scripts across the world: in Europe, Latin predominates, while much of Eurasia uses a form of the Old Uyghur alphabet later influenced from Southeast Asia and formalized by the Great Uls. Arabic script is also widespread, while Turtle Island uses a form of the Latin alphabet that is nearly incomprehensible to other states using that alphabet. Humans have walked on the Moon, Mars, and a number of other asteroids and satellites. The Moon has a number of scientific bases, while Martian colonies are sprouting up quickly.
In the 8th century, the Mandean faith of Mesopotamia underwent a revival, with increased proslytization by members. Rather than recognize them as a people of the book, the Umayyad Caliphate declared them to be unbelievers. The First Mandean Revolt occurred in toward the end of that century, and though it was unsuccessful, it triggered a surge in new converts to the gnostic faith. The Second and Third Revolts were more successful and an independent Mandean kingdom was carved out by 850. This radically changed the direction of Islamic growth, with an emphasis on expansion by means of individual prosyletizers rather than armies. In the following centuries, Islam would be brought by devout merchants to strange shores; to India, to East Africa, and farther afield to China and even the Atlantic Coast of Africa. In the modern day, Islamic states can be found on nearly every continent, from the mercantile states of the new world to the nuclear-armed ex-Somali colony of Dhulka Duyyulu Boodboodaya. Islam has, in this world, shed some of its Arabic heritage. Politicians from Islamic countries generally communicate in Indian Ocean Creole, a mixture of Arabic, Somali, Malay, and various Chinese dialects. Clerics in their home countries pray, preach, and read the Quran in their local tongues but communicate in Arabic with Muslims from abroad. In the Middle East, Islam was forced on the back foot as the Mandeans waged wars of conquest, eventually achieving their goal of conquering the Holy Land. The Mandeans aligned with the Christian Armenians, forging a dual empire that has survived the centuries and still lives on.
The syncretic religion of Chrislam emerged out of post-Umayyad Hispania. Taking pieces of both its parent religions, Chrislam believed in both Jesus and Muhammad as important prophets and that the majority of both the New Testament and Quran are true. At first, the Christlamic Andalusian Emirate faced war with both Christian and Muslim powers, but it slowly came to dominate its neighbors, then all Hispania. In the 10th century, it launched wars of conquest north of the Pyrenees. The empire is now over 1000 years old but it has changed considerably since the early days. Feudalism in Europe has given way to a fairly equal society. Its soldiers, the fathidurs, spearheaded an age of transatlantic imperialism though Andalusia has since become a more peaceful state and is more interested in expansion into space than expansion at the expense of its neighbors. Chrislam is labelled as heretical by Christian and Muslim alike and it has had limited growth outside of Andalusia and what growth it has had has been in states that have not previously practiced Abrahamic faiths.
Eurasia was once dominated by a Mongolic state, the Great Uls and its successors are still quite powerful. The Great Uls was founded in the mid 12th century by Eldegai, a speaker of a Mongolic language that was adopted by Qipshak Turks after a period of slavery in Tibetan mines. Eldegai reshaped the steppe into his personal domain and a massive military camp, harnessing the Turks and Mongols as instruments to take revenge on those that had done him wrong. His new state was named for the eagle, becoming the Uls. Eldegai's successors continued his conquests and his grandson, Altun Ashugh, converted himself and his empire to Buddhism, allowing that religion to gain dominance over nearly all of northern Eurasia. The Eldegid Dynasty became extinct in the 16th century, leading to a series of massive, bloody civil wars and the establishment of a series of local kingdoms, the Chakrvates, across the once-mighty empire. A nominal emperor remained but in practice, the regional Chakravates held power. The end of the Great Uls came in the 18th century, as a Christian army from Europe launched an invasion of the westernmost Chakrvate, the Great Western Uls. The metropolis of Narjimarty was sacked despite the presence of warriors from across the entirety of the Uls cultural sphere. This set in motion a series of wars that would not end until the entire old empire was destroyed with no chance of further unity. The actions of the Great Uls have come to define much of a continent. Buddhism, brought to the empire by Altun Ashugh from southeast Asia, bloomed into the dominant faith of numerous peoples. The Mongol tongue spoken by Eldegai lives on and has been adopted far beyond its original home.
Being surrounded on all sides by unfriendly heretics (Buddhists, Chrislamics, and the Armeno-Mandeans) early modern Christian Europe developed a siege complex that has remained in place to the present. This tendency is most pronounced in the actions of the League of the Banner of Saint Barbara, which launched savage wars against the Great Western Uls and followed up that victory with wholescale ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe. The Christian states of Europe no longer talk as eagerly of holy war as they once did but they are insular states that do not enjoy open and friendly relations with other faiths.
Africa has been shaped from the south and east by Islam and from the north and west by Chrislam and Christianity. Enterprising Arabs and Somalis brought their faith to the Cape, where it was picked up by the Khoisan peoples. Some of them founded the Imperium of the People That Pick Things Up, which became a massive empire, expanding across the Atlantic and deep into the African interior. Along the Indian Ocean coast, mixed Arab-Bantu-Somali states have flourished. From the Atlantic, European fathidurs established themselves along the coast, creating settler colonies and enslaving the local populations. This prompted the creation of large, centralized states in Africa, many of which are further protected by "leagues" explicitly designed to keep out potential European conquerors. One of the peoples that was unable to fight off the Europeans, the Igbo, converted to Buddhism, and their state, which eventually threw off the Norse, remains Buddhist to the present. To the northeast, the Kingdom of God exists, practicing a new religion syncretizing Islam, Buddhism, and native beliefs under the name of Spiritism.
The first transatlantic voyages were by Norse seamen, who sailed from their homeland to the volcanic island of Mundspallheim, the frigid island of Nifollheim, and then to the continent known as Turtle Island, which was called Sukhavati by the devout Buddhist seafarers. The Norse carved out an empire in the west, but intermarried with the native peoples while encouraging the spread of Buddhism. Disease ravaged the continent, but the Norse were few on the ground and gradually, populations rebalanced with the surviving natives adopting the most useful technologies of the newcomers to their shores. To the south, the Imperium of the People That Pick Things Up crossed the Atlantic, and built an empire in a similar way while native empires also grew. Finally, from the western ocean came Japanese refugees from the Uls conquest of the archipelago. They established Kinyama, a series of heavily populated coastal settlements that still dream of their lost homeland. The Andalusian, Engelish, and Irish fathidurs came to the hemisphere later on, seeking to build settler colonies and exploit the natives. They were able to establish beachheads but could not push very far inland as they faced well-armed and disease-resistant native armies. The natives of the interior founded the Turtle Island Confederacy, a massive, continent-spanning federation of diverse native groups aligned to prevent their conquest from outside the continent. This nation has survived several hundred years due to its vibrant democracy, though it has undergone several civil wars that threaten to tear the country apart but somehow never do. The Confederacy's thinkers established the Turtle Island Church in a bid to build continental unity through a single religious body to formalize a thousand forms of religious practice. The church has caught on in a number of parts of the Confederacy but is not practiced by anywhere near a majority of Turtle Islanders.
Technologically, this world is slightly ahead of OTL and can best be described as vaguely cyberpunk. Computing and biotech have far surpassed OTL, while urban sprawl is found all over the world. A switch to green technologies came earlier, so there is considerably less pollution than OTL. There is no single global culture, and different internets dominate different regions of the globe with little cross-communication between these subcultures. Part of the issues lies in the use of different scripts across the world: in Europe, Latin predominates, while much of Eurasia uses a form of the Old Uyghur alphabet later influenced from Southeast Asia and formalized by the Great Uls. Arabic script is also widespread, while Turtle Island uses a form of the Latin alphabet that is nearly incomprehensible to other states using that alphabet. Humans have walked on the Moon, Mars, and a number of other asteroids and satellites. The Moon has a number of scientific bases, while Martian colonies are sprouting up quickly.
@Yorel , after reading up on the spread of proboscideans (elephants and their closest relatives) through the world, would it be okay if I made further edits to your fantasy map? The map will still be recognisable (I especially love the fictional islands), but could I maybe make some further geographical edits than just the Isthmus of Panama?
For example, I would love to prevent full closure of the Tethys Sea via changes to the OTL Middle East (and maybe other parts of Eurasia)...
For example, I would love to prevent full closure of the Tethys Sea via changes to the OTL Middle East (and maybe other parts of Eurasia)...
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This is such good stuff. I love when political maps are accompanied by religious and/or linguistic maps.My newest map. Some of the ideas are taken from a COAW game.
In the 8th century, the Mandean faith of Mesopotamia underwent a revival, with increased proslytization by members. Rather than recognize them as a people of the book, the Umayyad Caliphate declared them to be unbelievers. The First Mandean Revolt occurred in toward the end of that century, and though it was unsuccessful, it triggered a surge in new converts to the gnostic faith. The Second and Third Revolts were more successful and an independent Mandean kingdom was carved out by 850. This radically changed the direction of Islamic growth, with an emphasis on expansion by means of individual prosyletizers rather than armies. In the following centuries, Islam would be brought by devout merchants to strange shores; to India, to East Africa, and farther afield to China and even the Atlantic Coast of Africa. In the modern day, Islamic states can be found on nearly every continent, from the mercantile states of the new world to the nuclear-armed ex-Somali colony of Dhulka Duyyulu Boodboodaya. Islam has, in this world, shed some of its Arabic heritage. Politicians from Islamic countries generally communicate in Indian Ocean Creole, a mixture of Arabic, Somali, Malay, and various Chinese dialects. Clerics in their home countries pray, preach, and read the Quran in their local tongues but communicate in Arabic with Muslims from abroad. In the Middle East, Islam was forced on the back foot as the Mandeans waged wars of conquest, eventually achieving their goal of conquering the Holy Land. The Mandeans aligned with the Christian Armenians, forging a dual empire that has survived the centuries and still lives on.
The syncretic religion of Chrislam emerged out of post-Umayyad Hispania. Taking pieces of both its parent religions, Chrislam believed in both Jesus and Muhammad as important prophets and that the majority of both the New Testament and Quran are true. At first, the Christlamic Andalusian Emirate faced war with both Christian and Muslim powers, but it slowly came to dominate its neighbors, then all Hispania. In the 10th century, it launched wars of conquest north of the Pyrenees. The empire is now over 1000 years old but it has changed considerably since the early days. Feudalism in Europe has given way to a fairly equal society. Its soldiers, the fathidurs, spearheaded an age of transatlantic imperialism though Andalusia has since become a more peaceful state and is more interested in expansion into space than expansion at the expense of its neighbors. Chrislam is labelled as heretical by Christian and Muslim alike and it has had limited growth outside of Andalusia and what growth it has had has been in states that have not previously practiced Abrahamic faiths.
Eurasia was once dominated by a Mongolic state, the Great Uls and its successors are still quite powerful. The Great Uls was founded in the mid 12th century by Eldegai, a speaker of a Mongolic language that was adopted by Qipshak Turks after a period of slavery in Tibetan mines. Eldegai reshaped the steppe into his personal domain and a massive military camp, harnessing the Turks and Mongols as instruments to take revenge on those that had done him wrong. His new state was named for the eagle, becoming the Uls. Eldegai's successors continued his conquests and his grandson, Altun Ashugh, converted himself and his empire to Buddhism, allowing that religion to gain dominance over nearly all of northern Eurasia. The Eldegid Dynasty became extinct in the 16th century, leading to a series of massive, bloody civil wars and the establishment of a series of local kingdoms, the Chakrvates, across the once-mighty empire. A nominal emperor remained but in practice, the regional Chakravates held power. The end of the Great Uls came in the 18th century, as a Christian army from Europe launched an invasion of the westernmost Chakrvate, the Great Western Uls. The metropolis of Narjimarty was sacked despite the presence of warriors from across the entirety of the Uls cultural sphere. This set in motion a series of wars that would not end until the entire old empire was destroyed with no chance of further unity. The actions of the Great Uls have come to define much of a continent. Buddhism, brought to the empire by Altun Ashugh from southeast Asia, bloomed into the dominant faith of numerous peoples. The Mongol tongue spoken by Eldegai lives on and has been adopted far beyond its original home.
Being surrounded on all sides by unfriendly heretics (Buddhists, Chrislamics, and the Armeno-Mandeans) early modern Christian Europe developed a siege complex that has remained in place to the present. This tendency is most pronounced in the actions of the League of the Banner of Saint Barbara, which launched savage wars against the Great Western Uls and followed up that victory with wholescale ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe. The Christian states of Europe no longer talk as eagerly of holy war as they once did but they are insular states that do not enjoy open and friendly relations with other faiths.
Africa has been shaped from the south and east by Islam and from the north and west by Chrislam and Christianity. Enterprising Arabs and Somalis brought their faith to the Cape, where it was picked up by the Khoisan peoples. Some of them founded the Imperium of the People That Pick Things Up, which became a massive empire, expanding across the Atlantic and deep into the African interior. Along the Indian Ocean coast, mixed Arab-Bantu-Somali states have flourished. From the Atlantic, European fathidurs established themselves along the coast, creating settler colonies and enslaving the local populations. This prompted the creation of large, centralized states in Africa, many of which are further protected by "leagues" explicitly designed to keep out potential European conquerors. One of the peoples that was unable to fight off the Europeans, the Igbo, converted to Buddhism, and their state, which eventually threw off the Norse, remains Buddhist to the present. To the northeast, the Kingdom of God exists, practicing a new religion syncretizing Islam, Buddhism, and native beliefs under the name of Spiritism.
The first transatlantic voyages were by Norse seamen, who sailed from their homeland to the volcanic island of Mundspallheim, the frigid island of Nifollheim, and then to the continent known as Turtle Island, which was called Sukhavati by the devout Buddhist seafarers. The Norse carved out an empire in the west, but intermarried with the native peoples while encouraging the spread of Buddhism. Disease ravaged the continent, but the Norse were few on the ground and gradually, populations rebalanced with the surviving natives adopting the most useful technologies of the newcomers to their shores. To the south, the Imperium of the People That Pick Things Up crossed the Atlantic, and built an empire in a similar way while native empires also grew. Finally, from the western ocean came Japanese refugees from the Uls conquest of the archipelago. They established Kinyama, a series of heavily populated coastal settlements that still dream of their lost homeland. The Andalusian, Engelish, and Irish fathidurs came to the hemisphere later on, seeking to build settler colonies and exploit the natives. They were able to establish beachheads but could not push very far inland as they faced well-armed and disease-resistant native armies. The natives of the interior founded the Turtle Island Confederacy, a massive, continent-spanning federation of diverse native groups aligned to prevent their conquest from outside the continent. This nation has survived several hundred years due to its vibrant democracy, though it has undergone several civil wars that threaten to tear the country apart but somehow never do. The Confederacy's thinkers established the Turtle Island Church in a bid to build continental unity through a single religious body to formalize a thousand forms of religious practice. The church has caught on in a number of parts of the Confederacy but is not practiced by anywhere near a majority of Turtle Islanders.
Technologically, this world is slightly ahead of OTL and can best be described as vaguely cyberpunk. Computing and biotech have far surpassed OTL, while urban sprawl is found all over the world. A switch to green technologies came earlier, so there is considerably less pollution than OTL. There is no single global culture, and different internets dominate different regions of the globe with little cross-communication between these subcultures. Part of the issues lies in the use of different scripts across the world: in Europe, Latin predominates, while much of Eurasia uses a form of the Old Uyghur alphabet later influenced from Southeast Asia and formalized by the Great Uls. Arabic script is also widespread, while Turtle Island uses a form of the Latin alphabet that is nearly incomprehensible to other states using that alphabet. Humans have walked on the Moon, Mars, and a number of other asteroids and satellites. The Moon has a number of scientific bases, while Martian colonies are sprouting up quickly.
Historical timeline:
12th century - the Estonian tribes in mainland merge into one country and start acquiring the elements of other European countries at this time. Some ship to the island of Gotland and settle there.
16th century - Estonia is divided under control of many powers, Gotland goes to Sweden
1802 - Russia rents the island of Gotland
1918 - Estonia declares independence and Gotland is kept as integral part of it. As an autonomy it has Swedish as the second official language
1938 - Estonia turns into authoritarian dictatorship
1939 - Estonian authoritarian president Konstantin Päts became the only leader among the Baltic states who declined the Soviet proposal of installing military bases. Soviet Union declares war on Estonia.
1940 - The Soviet troops massively rush into the capital city Tallinn and the president Päts was arrested and deported to Siberia. Meanwhile, the prime minister Jüri Uluots implements a plan of retreating the legitimate government to the island of Gotland which is far away from the USSR. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union establishes Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic in mainland Estonia as a puppet state.
1941 - Gotland (Republic of Estonia) becomes an ally of Germany and joins the plan Barbarossa in an attempt to return the mainland Estonia
1944 - After loosing many battles, Germany is losing the WW2. Estonia accepts the British and American request to switch sides and join the Allied Powers. ESSR becomes part of USSR.
1945 - The WW2 is over. The government of the Republic of Estonia sits in Gotland and keeps its continuity. During WW2, the population increased tremendously due to hundreds of thousands of Estonian refugees from mainland fleeing to Gotland. Uluots maintains his authoritarian rule which encompasses radical ideas of anti-communism, nationalism and pro-American foreign policy. Gotland starts the industrialization, and new roads and houses are appearing on this island. Estonia participates in Marshall Plan and acquires much of the finances from the USA to develop the economy. Uus-Tallinn (New Tallinn) becomes the capital city.
1949 - Estonia becomes one of the founding states of NATO
1950s - the Soviet Union starts demanding the Western countries to leave Gotland to the Soviet rule. The United States warns the Soviet Union about the war if the Soviets invaded Gotland.
1960s - The Soviet Union vetoes Estonia's access to UN. Despite this, Estonia maintains diplomatic relations with much of the Western European, North American, South American countries, plus South Korea, Japan, Israel and others. Under the Soviet pressure, Finland and Sweden can't formally recognize Gotland (Estonia) but secretly have trading and business with it.
1970 - The dictator Jüri Uluots dies at the age of 80, marking the end of his 30-year long authoritarian rule. Republic of Estonia begins the process of democratization and cooling the unstable relations with the USSR.
1985 - Estonia joins the European Union.
1989 - Estonia becomes part of the United Nations and is recognized by the majority of the countries.
1991 - The Soviet Union falls apart and mainland Estonia is freed. The Estonian authority in mainland start the referendum of unification with the Republic of Estonia (Gotland). The majority chooses unification. The capital is moved from Uus-Tallinn to Tallinn.
Like how Japan amd its inhabitants are called Japan/Japanese by everyone else in the world yet they have always been Nippon/Nipponese to themselves and have never bitched at the world about it?
Based the concerning world shattering developments of current world affairs, with debating sides battling over the biggest of all questions that are both known and unknown to man. I present the only factual and correct answer and solution to mans worries...
B I G M A R Y L A N D
Is a joke, please no take serious
B I G M A R Y L A N D
Is a joke, please no take serious
thank you, this cured my cancer, made my parents get back together, and my runaway dog came back!
Does that include Philadelphia? Because if it does, might as well annex the rest of Pennsylvania.
“[When] Cresap… made a run for the river, they were upon him before he could launch a boat. He shoved one of his captors overboard, and cried, "Cresap's getting away", and the other deputies pummeled their peer with oars until the ruse was discovered.”
The guy rolled a nat 20 on Charisma (Persuasion).
Pennsylvania partitioned between the Yankee claim, the Virginian claim, and the Maryland claim, leaving only a thin-strip rump state, it's greatest city being the grim metropole of Allentown.
(Tangentially related - does anyone recall/have on hand a map called "The Conspiracy Against Pennsylvania"? I remember it very vividly, it was a looser union AoC worlld and it was just documenting several ways in which Pennsylvania was screwed over first by land cessions, and then being bypassed in canal and road development. I believe it was set in the same TL as another map by the same member that depicted Gaihwiho taking off as a religion)
Go ahead.
Honestly the map is just something I did for fun mostly and to try to help me visualize the world that I had in my head. I posted it here because I wanted to hear opinions and criticism about it. I didn't expect it'd be so well received that I'd have to do a blank version for free use.
If you've gotten even more ideas to change the map and need to edit it further, then go for it.
The only thing I would be kinda iffy about would be of the use of an exact replica of the original map I made where I drew borders for the nations I was visualizing in my head: that part is really personnal for me. But if you're just going to edit the blank map to make even more alternate geography or want to draw completely different borders, then it's fair game as far as I'm concerned.
Okay, that's good, thanks for the cooperation. I don't plan on copying the exact borders anyway...
A question that's epic to think about regardless of which route you're envisioning being taken by Mongols.... imagine Mongols invading from Morocco.... might just make them realize crossing the sand wasn't going to be as spectacularly lavish with rewards when Spain starts sinking troop ships.....