Post by eurofed on Jun 9, 2018 17:29:44 GMT
This scenario is inspired by David Brin’s “Thor Meets Captain America”/”The Life Eaters” novelette/graphic novel, too many elements of Marvel and DC comic-book universes to quote, and a MCU movie marathon.
In 1942-43, a group of Nazi occultists, having foreseen the future defeat of Germany, secretly attempted an ambitious ritual to empower their own nation and create godlike superhuman champions for their cause. The ritual succeeded beyond its authors’ expectations albeit with some serious twists, since it tapped the huge pool of necromantic energy created in the last few decades by the World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and colonialism as a power source. It got in contact with some unfathomable cosmic force that transformed the world. The main effects of the Event were twofold: first, it transformed all the major areas of the world involved in the conflict into cohesive, idealized empires based on their prevalent cultural archetypes; second, it created pantheon-like groups of powerful superhuman champions for each area. Like the new empires themselves, these godlike champions embodied, and aligned with, trans-temporal amalgams of dominant geopolitical and cultural memes from the areas they represented.
Eight new stable and sizable empires were born in the Event. “Novia”, an idealized version of America, spanned the North American continent, the Pacific Islands, and Australasia. “Celtica”, a fusion of British, French, and Celtic cultures, included the British Isles and most of France. “Germanica”, a Norse, Germanic, and Central European homeland, spanned Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, Greater Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Franche-Comte, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. “Romanica”, an idealized version of Rome reborn, included Iberia, Languedoc, Dauphine, Provence, Corsica, Italy, Northwest Africa, Yugoslavia, Moldavia-Wallachia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. “Slavica”, the Russian Motherland, spanned Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, northern Central Asia, and most of Siberia. “Indica”, an idealized version of India, spanned the Indian subcontinent. “Sinica”, an idealized Chinese homeland, included China proper, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and northern Indochina. “Nipponica”, a fusion of Japanese, Korean, and Manchurian cultures, included Japan, Korea, Greater Manchuria, the Russian Far East, Sakhalin, Taiwan, and Hainan.
To a lesser degree, the process also affected the Middle East as Egypt (with North Sudan) and Persia (with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan) became two other smaller empires and developed features similar to the other new states. The names quoted above were working ones, not necessarily the ones the empires themselves would use. As a rule, they picked classical names coherent with their cultural archetypes, such as ‘USA’, ‘Germanic Empire’, ‘Roman Empire’, and so on.
Because of the Event, WWII ended as all the warring powers withdrew their forces within their new borders, established an informal truce, and turned inward to deal with their own changes. The fascist and communist regimes collapsed in the Axis powers and the USSR. A sequence of uncanny accidents, sudden deaths by natural causes, and political changes removed the warlike governments from power in the Allied powers. India seized independence and China purged its own communists.
The empires became constitutional monarchies or presidential republics that spanned the spectrum between moderate authoritarianism and liberal democracy. In practice, however, they not so rarely worked like benevolent metahuman dictatorships because of the presence and actions of the superhumans. The supers usually acted like benevolent, laid-back leaders that were willing to let the mortals rule themselves if feasible. However, they had no qualms imposing their authority any time they felt it was necessary. Their existence in each empire created a strategic stalemate that perpetuated the truce. Eventually the new status quo became enshrined in an official peace settlement that acknowledged a new world order based on a multipolar balance of power between the empires.
The new states soon developed solid national identities based on their new geopolitical circumstances and cultural archetypes. Previous identities became outdated and irrelevant for their populations, and were largely ignored or forgotten in most circumstances. The inhabitants of their core lands quickly and effortlessly mastered fluency in the national languages of the empires, which spread like wildfire. The old languages mostly fell out of everyday use and only kept academic or historical relevance. The only exception occurred if they had some serious international importance or cultural prestige. In this case, people were often able to keep them as second languages, but even so, they lost all relevance for national identity.
The North American-Australasian USA adopted a version of English with some serious Spanish borrowings. The Anglo-French union used a fusion of Gaelic, English, and French. The Germanic Empire picked a hybrid of German and Old Norse. The reborn Roman Empire adopted a hybrid of Latin and Greek. The new Russia got a hybrid of Russian and Ukrainian. India picked Hindi. Mandarin became universally widespread in new China. The transformed Japanese Empire adopted a fusion of Japanese and Korean. Neo-classical Egypt and Persia respectively reverted to Coptic and embraced Farsi as their main languages.
By the same process, people in the new empires embraced religions that aligned with the prevalent cultural archetypes of their nations and discarded the ones that appeared at odds or incompatible with the new world order. It seemed the forces that drove the Event were inimical to monotheist religions, the more exclusionary their nature the worse, and sought to make society more compatible with the existence of godlike superhumans and the other cultural changes they fostered. Christianity fared somewhat better than Islam in this regard, perhaps because of its greater historical ability to incorporate polytheist elements: the former survived as a minority in its core territories, albeit much weakened and with substantial changes; the latter almost disappeared.
Therefore, most people in the European, American, and Near Eastern empires embraced Neopaganism, while others adopted a modified, laid-back version of Christianity or Zoroastrianism. Several people gave prevalent or near-exclusive allegiance to one faith or the other, with Neopaganism getting substantially greater success. Others paid homage to both and ignored apparent inconsistencies or performed mental gymnastics to reconcile them. As a rule, reconstructionist models based on the area’s traditional practices prevailed in the modern Pagan religions of the European and Near Eastern empires. However, there was also sizable representation and widespread tolerance for more eclectic approaches to spirituality. The opposite occurred in America, where eclectic versions of European Neopaganism became prevalent. However, there also was a significant revival of Native American religions and a minority clung to tolerant Christianity.
India embraced a mix of its homegrown religions - Hinduism first, but also Buddhism and Jainism. China clung to a combination of Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religion, while the Japanese Empire adopted a fusion of Japanese and Korean traditional religions combined with Buddhism. The version of Christianity that survived in the European and American empires as a rule became fairly inclusive, decentralized, and tolerant of co-existence with secularism and paganism. In its advent, doctrinal and organizational differences between the various denominations declined to insignificance. The Event essentially erased Islam from the core lands of the European, Near Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian empires. To a lesser degree, these religious changes also took place in the other areas of the world unclaimed by the new empires, leading to a collapse of Islam, a radical decline and transformation of Christianity, a major spread of Neopaganism and Eastern religions, and a resurgence of native religions.
In the political and cultural field, however, the other areas of the world failed to manifest the same kind of change as the new empires, or did it in an incomplete and messy way. Perhaps this happened because in global terms their cultural archetypes, civilization status, and geopolitical importance were not sufficiently strong, influential, coherent, and sophisticated enough to drive the process to success. Notable examples of a partial, messy transformation were the unclaimed areas of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Both became a chaotic hodgepodge of influences spreading from nearby empires. Other areas where the process apparently tried but failed to take hold because of insufficiently powerful local archetypes included the Andes region in South America and West Africa.
In 1942-43, a group of Nazi occultists, having foreseen the future defeat of Germany, secretly attempted an ambitious ritual to empower their own nation and create godlike superhuman champions for their cause. The ritual succeeded beyond its authors’ expectations albeit with some serious twists, since it tapped the huge pool of necromantic energy created in the last few decades by the World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and colonialism as a power source. It got in contact with some unfathomable cosmic force that transformed the world. The main effects of the Event were twofold: first, it transformed all the major areas of the world involved in the conflict into cohesive, idealized empires based on their prevalent cultural archetypes; second, it created pantheon-like groups of powerful superhuman champions for each area. Like the new empires themselves, these godlike champions embodied, and aligned with, trans-temporal amalgams of dominant geopolitical and cultural memes from the areas they represented.
Eight new stable and sizable empires were born in the Event. “Novia”, an idealized version of America, spanned the North American continent, the Pacific Islands, and Australasia. “Celtica”, a fusion of British, French, and Celtic cultures, included the British Isles and most of France. “Germanica”, a Norse, Germanic, and Central European homeland, spanned Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, Greater Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Franche-Comte, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. “Romanica”, an idealized version of Rome reborn, included Iberia, Languedoc, Dauphine, Provence, Corsica, Italy, Northwest Africa, Yugoslavia, Moldavia-Wallachia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. “Slavica”, the Russian Motherland, spanned Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, northern Central Asia, and most of Siberia. “Indica”, an idealized version of India, spanned the Indian subcontinent. “Sinica”, an idealized Chinese homeland, included China proper, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and northern Indochina. “Nipponica”, a fusion of Japanese, Korean, and Manchurian cultures, included Japan, Korea, Greater Manchuria, the Russian Far East, Sakhalin, Taiwan, and Hainan.
To a lesser degree, the process also affected the Middle East as Egypt (with North Sudan) and Persia (with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan) became two other smaller empires and developed features similar to the other new states. The names quoted above were working ones, not necessarily the ones the empires themselves would use. As a rule, they picked classical names coherent with their cultural archetypes, such as ‘USA’, ‘Germanic Empire’, ‘Roman Empire’, and so on.
Because of the Event, WWII ended as all the warring powers withdrew their forces within their new borders, established an informal truce, and turned inward to deal with their own changes. The fascist and communist regimes collapsed in the Axis powers and the USSR. A sequence of uncanny accidents, sudden deaths by natural causes, and political changes removed the warlike governments from power in the Allied powers. India seized independence and China purged its own communists.
The empires became constitutional monarchies or presidential republics that spanned the spectrum between moderate authoritarianism and liberal democracy. In practice, however, they not so rarely worked like benevolent metahuman dictatorships because of the presence and actions of the superhumans. The supers usually acted like benevolent, laid-back leaders that were willing to let the mortals rule themselves if feasible. However, they had no qualms imposing their authority any time they felt it was necessary. Their existence in each empire created a strategic stalemate that perpetuated the truce. Eventually the new status quo became enshrined in an official peace settlement that acknowledged a new world order based on a multipolar balance of power between the empires.
The new states soon developed solid national identities based on their new geopolitical circumstances and cultural archetypes. Previous identities became outdated and irrelevant for their populations, and were largely ignored or forgotten in most circumstances. The inhabitants of their core lands quickly and effortlessly mastered fluency in the national languages of the empires, which spread like wildfire. The old languages mostly fell out of everyday use and only kept academic or historical relevance. The only exception occurred if they had some serious international importance or cultural prestige. In this case, people were often able to keep them as second languages, but even so, they lost all relevance for national identity.
The North American-Australasian USA adopted a version of English with some serious Spanish borrowings. The Anglo-French union used a fusion of Gaelic, English, and French. The Germanic Empire picked a hybrid of German and Old Norse. The reborn Roman Empire adopted a hybrid of Latin and Greek. The new Russia got a hybrid of Russian and Ukrainian. India picked Hindi. Mandarin became universally widespread in new China. The transformed Japanese Empire adopted a fusion of Japanese and Korean. Neo-classical Egypt and Persia respectively reverted to Coptic and embraced Farsi as their main languages.
By the same process, people in the new empires embraced religions that aligned with the prevalent cultural archetypes of their nations and discarded the ones that appeared at odds or incompatible with the new world order. It seemed the forces that drove the Event were inimical to monotheist religions, the more exclusionary their nature the worse, and sought to make society more compatible with the existence of godlike superhumans and the other cultural changes they fostered. Christianity fared somewhat better than Islam in this regard, perhaps because of its greater historical ability to incorporate polytheist elements: the former survived as a minority in its core territories, albeit much weakened and with substantial changes; the latter almost disappeared.
Therefore, most people in the European, American, and Near Eastern empires embraced Neopaganism, while others adopted a modified, laid-back version of Christianity or Zoroastrianism. Several people gave prevalent or near-exclusive allegiance to one faith or the other, with Neopaganism getting substantially greater success. Others paid homage to both and ignored apparent inconsistencies or performed mental gymnastics to reconcile them. As a rule, reconstructionist models based on the area’s traditional practices prevailed in the modern Pagan religions of the European and Near Eastern empires. However, there was also sizable representation and widespread tolerance for more eclectic approaches to spirituality. The opposite occurred in America, where eclectic versions of European Neopaganism became prevalent. However, there also was a significant revival of Native American religions and a minority clung to tolerant Christianity.
India embraced a mix of its homegrown religions - Hinduism first, but also Buddhism and Jainism. China clung to a combination of Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religion, while the Japanese Empire adopted a fusion of Japanese and Korean traditional religions combined with Buddhism. The version of Christianity that survived in the European and American empires as a rule became fairly inclusive, decentralized, and tolerant of co-existence with secularism and paganism. In its advent, doctrinal and organizational differences between the various denominations declined to insignificance. The Event essentially erased Islam from the core lands of the European, Near Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian empires. To a lesser degree, these religious changes also took place in the other areas of the world unclaimed by the new empires, leading to a collapse of Islam, a radical decline and transformation of Christianity, a major spread of Neopaganism and Eastern religions, and a resurgence of native religions.
In the political and cultural field, however, the other areas of the world failed to manifest the same kind of change as the new empires, or did it in an incomplete and messy way. Perhaps this happened because in global terms their cultural archetypes, civilization status, and geopolitical importance were not sufficiently strong, influential, coherent, and sophisticated enough to drive the process to success. Notable examples of a partial, messy transformation were the unclaimed areas of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Both became a chaotic hodgepodge of influences spreading from nearby empires. Other areas where the process apparently tried but failed to take hold because of insufficiently powerful local archetypes included the Andes region in South America and West Africa.