I’m a bit behind, owing to helicopter sim DCS: Black Shark, MMORPG Guild Wars 2, and the impending end of summery weather in western Pennsylvania. Next week, I’ll probably have one entry, writing unrelated to anything else but nevertheless (I think) awesome. The week after that, I’ll have a new story going. I did mention I might have bonus materials for Nathaniel Cannon, so: I don’t have anything storywise as I did for We Sail Off To War, so instead I’m just going to ramble about some of the political geography of the world in which Nathaniel Cannon exists.
Europe is recognizably Earth-Prime’s Europe: the Dutch flipped to a republic after public discontent with the monarchy’s pro-German stance during the Great War (which lasted a few extra years, during which zeppelin aircraft carriers were developed), and the French had a short, mostly bloodless nationalist revolution which restored the Bonaparte line to the throne, owing to widespread dissatisfaction with the white peace. The German Empire survived the war, but war hero Adolf Hitler quickly accumulated political power, and was able to secure his place as supreme leader of the German state in the aftermath of the 1925 Reichstag bombing1. Beyond those major changes, Denmark is also an effective Kingdom of Scandinavia (owing to some adroit marriage unions in the late 1700s; we haven’t had to work out the details yet). Russia became the Soviet Union, but Trotsky came out on top instead of Stalin (who was banished to Mexico).
We had the most alternate-history fun working out the Americas. The Civil War ended with the successful secession of the Confederate States; the Republic of Texas (with Texians, not Texans) never joined at all. To the east, American Pacific Northwest and Canadian British Columbia became the nation of Columbia. From the western edge of the Rockies to the Californian coast is the nation of Pacifica, under President Charles Spencer Chaplin and Industry Secretary Howard Hughes. Pacifica’s a nation of entertainment and mostly vice, so we figured a scandal-rocked libertine was precisely the right sort of character to put at its head. Working further north, Alaska, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories form the nation of Yukon, probably the most sparsely-populated country on the planet.
I’ll stop here, except I’ll also say that the Kingdom of Hawai’i remains independent, and it’s one of Cannon’s haunts.
1. My collaborator and I decided we liked 1929, but we also liked Nazis.
