Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Awakening eras, crisis eras, crisis wars, generational financial crashes, as applied to historical and current events
Post Reply
User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Post by Tom Mazanec »

This will be a thread for discussing GD in Science Fiction and Alternate History
Start with my favorite turning point: The Cuban Missile Crisis. What if it had gone nuclear?
Here are three views:
The End of the World as We Might Have Known It https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Might- ... B01MA3LC70
depicts a devastating two day war, which destroys 40 American cities. Curtis LeMay takes over as the whole line of succession is wiped out. Depicts the horror of nuke war quite well...read this to see what we might go through in a few years, if John is right. This is obviously a Fourth Turning Reset.
James Philip https://www.amazon.com/James-Philip/e/B ... D9FHMD7X5V has written a huge series of books set in the aftermath of the "October War". Here only a few American cities are hit, and the war starts an earlier, different Awakening in America (Kennedy even still wants to go to the Moon). The UK, however, is in a Fourth Turning Reset and has lost half its population.
In Resurrection Day https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Day ... ection+day also seems to be an altered Awakening, with "orphie gangs" (gangs of children who were at school on the Day and survived, when their parents didn't) replacing Hippies as a social phenomenon.
Now, I have corresponded with John on this PoD (point of divergence, as AH fans call it) and he holds this could not have happened, that you cannot have a massive holocaust like this so soon after the last Crisis War. Maybe. But the hair-trigger Mutually Assured Destruction of the time is a unique situation in history, and I am not so sure it would not have been possible to blow it up.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Post by Tom Mazanec »

Here is a view of the background of a fictional WWIII of America + Europe VS. China + Russia + Islam (Sunni and Shia both). Yeah, I know that's not the roundup John expects, but go along. It is set c2040, but if you backdate it 20 years and scale back the technology a skoosh, it could be what we will see c2020. https://www.amazon.com/Prelude-World-Wa ... bc?ie=UTF8
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Post by Tom Mazanec »

I have read more of James Philip's novels, and I think he is going to make the Aftermath bad enough for a Global Fourth Turning Reset. His next book is due May 26, we should find out in that volume.
Here are more books in the World War III series:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EW ... dp_rw_ca_2
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZ ... dp_rw_ca_3
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XW ... dp_rw_ca_4
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Post by Tom Mazanec »

Reading a long series of time travel novels featuring a CoCWW in 2021. Russia is on the Side of China and everybody seems to die, however. It is the Kirov series by John Schettler.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

CH86
Posts: 397
Joined: Thu Feb 08, 2018 8:51 am

Re: Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Post by CH86 »

I Found a sci-fi tv series canon that is interesting, that of the tv show Defiance 2046 and the related video game defiance 2050: Not A WW3 scenario, but an alien invasion whose effects are similar to that of an all out WW3. Someone on the alternate history forums even compiled a complete list for the Show's canon. The Show aired for three seasons and starts in 2046, 15 years after the end of the alien war.

I Posted this for discussion Purposes Only.

Here is the Full Canon he compiled:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/ ... d7ab902beb
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/ ... t-15619807
Jcw3, post: 15619807, member: 65404 wrote:
This is a map and write-up for the TV show Defiance, in the year 2046. Defiance is my favorite TV show, and it’s a damn shame it has such a pitiful internet presence. I had to create most of this map from memory, and most of this write-up as well. A lot of it is also fanon, to justify or expand. Or I’ve changed stuff to fix stuff that didn’t make sense to me.

If I write anything that violates canon, that’s my bad. If you’re a superfan of the show who remembers everything and I messed something up, first of all, we should become friends, second of all, my bad. Pretend this is my own imagination for the show.

For the rest of you, I’ll try to explain the show and its backstory as best as possible, and I’ll link to an imgur gallery with background lore. You can watch the show on Amazon Prime, or PM me for some suitably non-sketchy piracy sites if you want to see it yourself. Without further ado, the map (well, backstory of the VC first).

History of the Votanis Collective
*We sort of have to start here. Understanding the history of the Votanis Collective is important to understanding current geopolitics on Earth. You can skip this, but you might miss context.
*First of all, we start off tens of thousands of years ago, with a race of energy beings who decided it would be funny to see what would happen when you put around six different yet similar sapient species in the same solar system, now called the Votanis System, using the template of a similar species three hundred light years away. A little bit of artificial engineering later, and then you had six different species in the same system.
*The omecs found themselves on the top of the food chain almost immediately once they became spacefaring and began interacting with the rest of the system. Large, superhuman (or superVotan in this case) monsters in a near-human shape, they gleefully conquered the castithans of the planet of Daribo and the irathients, sensoths and liberata of Irath.
*They were debaucherous, cannibalistic (if you can call eating other species slavery?), and a variety of similarly horrific things. However, they made two unfortunate mistakes. Had they just stuck with enslaving the other primitive races, they might have been okay. But they chose to genetically engineer a new species, the indogenes. The indogenes were and are superintelligent, and while they’ve never been able to fully decipher the technologies of the omecs or the volge, they’re responsible for the xenoforming, the slower-than-light Arkfleet that saved a fraction of the Votans, and a variety of other marvels.
*The second mistake the omecs made was enslaving the indogenes as they did the other races, while also allowing them a degree of freedoms. A coalition of castithan and indogene rebels managed to use a gene bomb against the omec, the product of decades of work in secret and not-so-secret, as their labs were raided a myriad of times by the omec government, anarchic as it might have been, especially on colony worlds.
*It was done. The omecs were gone, or had run off elsewhere, and there were rumors of a race of cyborg aliens that had begun to hunt and exterminate them. Served them right, if you asked the Votans.
*The Votanis races hadn’t learned much of a sense of camaraderie with each other before the omec wars. The irathients, who had once been a spacefaring (think OTL 1960s, not the Expanse) race, had been destroyed by their own AI launching a nuclear war against them, with most irathients mostly willing reverting to a tribal level, but the memories were still sharp in the minds of the liberata and sensoth, the species they shared their homeworld with.
*Castithans and indogenes, however, managed to create a working partnership. It took decades to repair the damage caused by the rebellion against the omecs. But they managed it. Upper-caste castithans led, lower-caste castithans worked, and the indogenes spearheaded the precise management and scientific resources used to bring Daribo to a glory it had never seen before.
*They quickly fell to a similar level as the omecs before them. If you want an idea of castithan culture, think a mixture of a stereotypical Roman Empire (vomitoriums, gladitoriums) with advanced technology. As long as the indogenes were left to their own devices, they could not care less what the upper-caste, the shanje liro, did to their lessers.
*And it quickly became consensus that the other races of Votanis were lessers. Not thawandayo, naturally, but yuke liro, to break their backs building a better future, or rizi liro, to defend that future to the death.
*Irath was invaded, Daribo was terraformed. Primitives with sticks found themselves facing coldfire weapons. The result was inevitable. Sensoths, mighty, tall, strong, and long-lived, were their primary target, living in tribes in the enormous forests of Irath (on Earth, wookie, bigfoot and chewie are common slurs against sensoths) were the primary target, but irathients were often useful as well, many castithans fetishizing them.
*It took one hundred years for the castithans to conquer Irath, and through it all, the irathients managed to keep up a coherent rebellion. Oh, the liberata and the sensoths did as well, but only the irathients are remembered by history. Both for their ingenuity and stubbornness, and for how the videos of irathients being gassed by Dariboan forces are still available on the Votan internet, if you care to look.
*But, as you can expect, there were collaborators. The liberata in particular. Castithan religion frowned on banking and interest-lending, and indogenes largely found the banality of it all beneath them. Liberata picked up on it very quickly, and became very wealthy through the practice. Liberata found themselves as the economic backbone of the castithan empire.
*Things stabilized. Splinter cells of the volge, a cyborg alien race that had exterminated the omecs thousands of years beforehand, occasionally invaded Daribo, Irath or other xenoformed worlds in the Votanis System, but outside of that *one time* a continent was destroyed, it largely didn’t affect the average Votan.
*A culture was developed. The Votanis Collective, a more egalitarian government than the prior one, was established in 3752 BC. While castithans and indogenes still found themselves on top, many who had abused their authority against the other races found themselves on the chopping block very quickly.
*The liberata banking class was wiped out, its assets subsumed, within weeks of the foundation of the Collective, and modern day liberata often find themselves discriminated against, a relic of a small portion of their ancestors committing perceived crimes against the other races of Votanis.
*The Votanis Collective was and is firm in its belief that the races can be united, as long as they have their own autonomy and rules. Many have always argued that the Votan’s insistence on relative morality is more barbaric than the alternative of intervening in cultural systems, but then someone replies with the counter-argument of how they would like to put at the bottom caste of the castithan liro, or one of the lesser servants of an irathient tribe, and those arguments reluctantly fade.
*Things got better. The irathient revolts faded, and many moved into the grand cities used by their liberata and sensoth brethren. A new planet was founded, Casti. I’ll give you one guess as to who named it.
*In 3502 BC, the indogene ruling class gathered together, and warned the races of Votanis that a coming supernova would destroy their system. It had been known that the twin suns of Votanis were unstable, but to think that such a knock-on effect was possible? They needed to run. Some of the wisest and most renowned indogenes implored the Votanis Collective to begin preparations for fleeing.
*They were ignored. The idea of spending all of society’s resources on building a fleet was unthinkable to bean counters, terrifying to average citizens, and there was always some denier who would provide a counter-argument. Nothing that could disprove what the ruling class had to say, but enough to muddy the waters.
*The indogenes were unbelievably frustrated by this. They didn’t have the technology to build a fleet that could survive a journey to a nearby habitable planet, and they didn’t even know where one was. But they had their secrets. The Kaziri, an Omec harvester, a faster-than-light capable vessel. The indogenes had never managed to unlock its secrets. Most feared it would attract the volge, as faster-than-light emissions had before. But they needed it to complete a survey of the nearby galaxy, desperately looking for anything habitable. More importantly, they needed its ansibles.
*The ark-brain, a superintelligent artificial intelligence slaved to the Kaziri, needed to be convinced of the indogene’s purpose. To do so, the indogenes chose two irathient volunteers (society might not have been willing to support a full-fledged arkfleet construction, but there were always those who wanted to help preserve the Votans) for their neurological closeness to the omecs, and with a few alterations to help accommodate them to master the ship, they were sent to survey the galaxy.
*The ancient irathients surveyed seventy-nine systems before they came across Earth. The two were disappointed to find that it was habited, but they marked Earth down- and Venus, Mars, and several other planets, for long-term colonization potential. Unfortunately, what the indogenes had suspected to be true was, in fact, a reality. When working with a technology you hardly understand, and have actively been working to avoid understanding, you’re going to make mistakes. The failing faster-than-light drive stranded them on Earth, and the two irathients were forced to bury themselves beneath what we would know as the St. Louis area, so as to avoid detection.
*The ansible that made it back to Daribo only showed atmosphere levels, as well as several other matters, but they did not reveal the existence of humanity. The ansibles of all recorded systems thus far had been incomplete at best, and while this worried the ruling indogenes, time was running out. They made the decision to assume that Earth was uninhabited, to prevent any moral debates. Earth was the only planet that could be xenoformed on short notice, and the indogenes doubted their ability to maintain a coherent, multispecies society aboard spaceships alone.
*And so the majority of Votans, when they learned of Earth, assumed that it was uninhabited, a gift from their gods, to save them from a dying system. At this point, evidence of the stellar collapses was obvious, and deniers had long died off or been disgraced. A sixth species, the gulanee, a race of energy beings (not the progenitors, a different one) living within one of Votanis’ gas giants, Gula, joined the Votanis Collective. Ten million of them would accompany the other races to Earth, in exchange for helping to provide additional power and longevity to the fleet with materials mined from Gula’s core.
*The Arkfleet, a slower-than-light fleet, would employ cryosleep on the various races, and within five thousand years, they would arrive at their destination. Each race had its own selection process.
*Castithans largely chose from the upper liros, those who rejected the caste system already outcasts, and were left behind on Daribo or Casti. There were around ten million of the lower castes who managed to find their way aboard, but largely, the 120 million castithans who made it aboard were rizi (soldiers), emane (merchants), valane (nobles), and shanje (rulers).
*It’s a common misconception that irathients employed trial by combat to choose their candidates for the Arkfleet. This is largely a racist lie. While several million did make it this way, most were chosen by their communities for bravery, honesty, generosity, cunning, survivalist qualities, or some other traits, and their leaving was a tragic moment for all involved. Communities would choose to send who they believed was their best and brightest to this new Eden to save the race, despite how much other races might enjoy seeing irathients as a group of primitive savages. 90 million irathients made it onto the Arkfleet.
*Liberata employed a system where the wealthy universally made it aboard the Arkfleet (5 million), as was the case with most species, and a lottery system was employed for the rest (25 million).
*Urban sensoths had a system of standardized testing that gauged for positive traits, and the 30 million they chose were all those who passed this test. Several hundred thousand came from tribal reservations, particularly those favored by the sensoth and Votan ruling class.
*Indogenes chose a standardized testing system, as well as allowing their ruling class first pick. One hundred million made it to the Arkfleet.
*In total, a little over three hundred and eighty million Votans made it onto the Arkfleet, a product of centuries of work to escape Votanis before it kablooyed. The voyage to this new world would take thousands of years, a little under five thousand, if you asked the indogenes. When they woke up, they would be in a new paradise, untouched by any other species, and would be the mournful, yet foresightful, recipients of a new era of peace.

First Contact
*Humanity first noticed the Votan fleet decelerating in the Kuiper Belt in the year 2000. Hundreds of powerful, hot spaceships were almost impossible to miss, after all, even with humanity’s poor technological capabilities when compared to the Votans.
*The world’s governments were the first to notice, and clamped down on the news hard. Rumors of the Arkfleet were public in conspiracy sites, but didn’t make news until much later. This gave the regimes of Earth time to prepare.
*The Earth Military Coalition is formed, as if these aliens prove to be hostile, humanity wants to be prepared. The foundations are set to establish leaders of a unified human military force. The EMC will be the groundstone of the future Earth Republics.
*The EMC began throwing money at literally any project they thought might be useful. The Bioman project, a project to create dumb, expendable, powerful super soldiers, and the Stratocarrier project, an experiment in anti-gravity technology, were descended from these initial programs, although they would obviously be impossible without reverse-engineering Votan tech.
*By the early 2010s, the existence of the Arkfleet is close to becoming public knowledge. Even the most amateur astronomer can see that something is coming to Earth, and plenty of people are spreading knowledge on how exactly a common person with a decent telescope can see the coming fleet for themselves. In 2013, memos on the Arkfleet begin leeking to the public, and in March 2013, the leaders of the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, and India issue a joint declaration on the existence of the fleet.
*On April 4th, the fleet arrives in orbit. The indogenes charged with overseeing the awakening have contemplated drastic measures on the surprise that is Earth being inhabited, and some suggest unleashing xenoforming to quickly exterminate Earth, before xenoforming it once more to be habitable for the Votans. These ideas are quickly dismissed, as impractical for one, since it would require years and years for Earth to readjust, and the Arkfleet doesn’t have enough resources for long-term habitation, but they’ll have a notable following among many Votans for some time.
*Onulu Toruku, a valane diplomat, is chosen by the representative from the Arkfleet to Earth after several tense days. The cagey and militarized governments of Earth are caught off by the sight of the Votans, mothers carrying children, desperate people fleeing a destroyed home. It quickly draws public sympathy. By 2014, the Votanis Collective has a spot in the United Nations.
*Details about Votan culture abate this sympathy. The patriarchal caste system employed by the castithans is offensive to many, as is the cold technocracy of the indogenes. Realpolitik wins out, however, and the governments cautiously approach closer relations with the Votans. Small slices of land in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and the Congo are given to the Votans, enough to comfortably host ten to twenty million, but that obviously isn’t enough.
*Despite the efforts of Jon Stewart and other celebrities, tensions begin to rise. The Votans are utterly reliant on Earth for food at this point, as otherwise they would be forced to rely on nutrient paste, which is as tasty and good for morale as you might expect. They were told to expect a new, untamed paradise, and they found an industrialized world of seven billion.
*Many of the castithans who arrived on the Arkfleet were religious fanatics, converted to devout Rayetsuism by the destruction of Votanis, and there’s an increasing school of thought that calls for the extermination of the major human powers and outright conquest of at least the areas more easily xenoformed. Ambassador Toroku tries his best to alleviate the concerns of humanity, which does not like the idea of almost four hundred million aliens swarming Earth, even if humanity can interbreed with two of them, a fact which has worrying implications.
*In 2015, Krah Janir, the castithans’ Skabolo (Pope-equivalent), makes several inflammatory statements implying a call for ethnic cleansing after the Mexican President firmly and angrily denies selling any more land to the Votans, or allowing them into his country, which sparks a trend of similar statements around the world from more human supremacist politicians.
*Ambassador Toroku tries to smooth this over, and the nation of Kenya, one of the few important nations open to breaking from the EMC’s party line, accepts an invitation in 2017 to modify the local weather to end a long-lasting drought. It should have been an easy PR victory in a state of time where humans are rioting against Votan existence and vice versa.
*The rain generator goes awry. No one quite knows why, but it malfunctions, and the explosion is almost nuclear in size and power. In an attempt to awe the people of Kenya, the ship was parked over Nairobi, and hundreds of thousands die.
*The destruction of Nairobi is forgotten by history compared to the devastation inflicted by the Pale Wars, but at the time, it was almost a casus belli. The American and Chinese leadership had to be talked down by their counterparts in the EMC from launching a full orbital attack against the Arkfleet...mostly because they would have lost.
*There’s not much recovering from this. Xenophobes use this as a rallying cry, either the Votans deliberately destroyed a human city and killed hundreds of thousands of people who would have loved and respected him, or they were stupid enough to let their own people sabotage them.
*The xenoforming of small slices of land granted to the Votans for colonization is finished, and around thirty million Votans are living on Earth. Another thirty million died on the voyage to Earth, seventy million are awake on the Arkfleet, and the rest are still in cryosleep, nutrient paste being injected into their veins to keep them alive. Or, in the case of the gulanee, raw hydrogen into their containment suits.
*Tensions continue to rise. There are several near-misses, and the high profile trial of Tao Lei, the Chinese general who went rogue and subverted his command to launch several hundred ICBMs almost started the Pale Wars early. Tao was executed by the PRC, but that wasn’t nearly enough to make up for it.
*In 2022, despite controversy from humans and Votans alike, despite the growing tensions, there was almost a settlement agreement. Most of the Amazon Jungle, the forgotten jungles of the Congo, the savannahs of Namibia, and more minor areas around the world, were prepared to accept and integrate several hundred million more Votans. Settlement had been pushing forward slowly, the allure of trading land for Votan technology too much for rational leaders to resist. It honestly looked like there might be peace in their time.
*And then, in March 2023, a human supremacist shot Ambassador Toruku. John Paul Bullock was a known xenophobe, whose militia had been marginalized and often got into conflicts with the Montana police over their brawls with the Votan community there, so there were hopes that the incident might be smoothed over, but it was not to be. The precise point where the Pale Wars were launched is disputed, but it’s usually agreed to be the Mexican military firing on the defenses of the Omec colony (the VC regularly named important places after the omecs, so as to convince their people to no longer fear them).

The Pale Wars and Arkfall
*The Pale Wars is the colloquial name for what’s officially called the Human-Votan War, but it’s growing as the accepted name in all English-speaking nations. So-called because the majority of opponents on the opposite were castithans and irathients, and because of the nastiness of the conflict, the Pale Wars lasted until 2032, and resulted in the deaths of 250 million Votans and 3 billion humans.
*I won’t go into too many details of the Pale Wars, in terms of specific fronts and the like. This segment is more generalized. Very few places (the northern bits of the United Kingdom, the American Southeast, West Africa, parts of China and Siberia) escaped unscathed from the fight, and the repercussions of the damages inflicted will be covered in the main segment.
*There are numerous cases of war crimes on both sides. The EMC in North America, for instance, tested anti-irathient diseases on civilians while claiming they were vaccines. The Votans smoked out resistance cells with localized xenoforming, effectively a hyper-advanced orbital chemical weapon. Then there are the more minor atrocities, prisoners of war being used as dartboards, and so forth.
*Singularity bombs were not used very often, despite the wishes of many Votans. The way singularity bombs work is by creating a black hole-like effect in an area, that destroys the area, before breaking apart. Too many of these weapons can destroy a planet, so the Votanis Collective took care to use them sparingly.
*As the war progressed, the coldfire energy weapons the Votans originally used were phased out in favor of gunpowder weapons, the latter being easier to manufacture with Earth’s technology base, and also less obvious.
*It’s worth noting that the Votans did not come to Earth ready for a fight. The indogenes selected themselves for survivalist qualities, for engineering a new society from scratch, and eventually, technological growth. Not for military strategy and tactics. Most of the weapons used by the Votans were repurposed from more peaceful implements, beating their plows into swords, as it were. There’s also the fact that throughout the war, around half of the Votans remained asleep in the Arkfleet. This, combined with the militarization humanity had had twenty-three years to undergo, allowed humanity to punch above their weight, by a huge amount.
*In 2030, Arkfall occurs. A mysterious act of sabotage, a mechanical failure, what have you, whatever happened, the remaining Arks in orbit break apart, either stopping dead in space, exploding outright, or falling through Earth’s atmosphere to the surface. Only around nineteen percent of the Votans aboard the ships survive Arkfall, and the Votan support structure is crippled by this event. The xenoforming engines, held in check by Votan ark-brains (AIs slaved to the ship), are unleashed, unchecked, warping Earth into a bizarre mixture of itself, Daribo, and Irath.
*Contemporary news reports would go something like this. “18:01 GMT: We are having difficulty keeping up with reports of geological destruction. The leveling of the Himalayas. Coastlines crumbling in South Florida. A mile-wide sinkhole outside Berlin. Record heat in Antarctica and snow in Tunisia.”
*These are largely mixed in terms of facts. Antarctica is not a tropical paradise, and Tunisia is not a wintry wonderland. Everest is no longer the tallest of Earth’s mountains, and has crumbled quite a bit, but the Himalayas still stand.
*Florida’s mutations, the new landmass risen in the China Sea, the land bridge between Denmark and Sweden, there are plenty real problems to worry about. That said, Arkfall still caused quite a bit of damage. Entire swathes of the world are uninhabitable to any near-humans. The upper atmosphere is so chock full of radiation and other such nastiness it’s impossible to fly or put satellites in space.
*Six months after Arkfall, a vicious battle is fought in San Francisco. Humans and Votans alike, revolted by demands from their leaders for continued fighting in what many are increasingly seeing as a pointless war, mutiny against their leaders in what will be known as the Battle of Defiance (for which many places and people in the post-Pale War world will be named).
*An armistice between humanity and the Votanis Collective is declared in April 2031. The EMC is disbanded due to geographical realities, and replaced by the Earth Republic, a theoretically united Earth government. In practice however, they’re just human governments using the symbol of a united Earth to justify whatever their actions may be. The People’s Republic of China, for instance, calls itself the Chongqing Earth Republic for the additional prestige.
*Side by side, humans and Votans cooperated to resettle this new, unknown Earth. The town of Defiance, built over the ruins of St. Louis, will be one of the many examples of this cooperation, and the end result...well, it’s complicated.

North America (The Modern Day)
*The predominant power on North America in 2046 is the New York Earth Republic, a power built around the American Northeast. While the main decisions are still largely made in Buffalo, New York is increasingly regaining its former prestige. The Republic of Columbia is a union of American and Canadian peoples, with around a million or two Votans on top of that. Columbia’s colloquial name amongst the fortress towns of the Storm Divide and the rest of North America is the E-Rep.
*Regarded as a dangerous freedom-destroying tyranny by many of those fortress towns, Columbia is actually a fairly bog-standard post-Pale War liberal democracy. Militaristic, forceful, statist, but with freedom of speech, protest, and practice still remaining, despite what the more fearful in remote towns might tell you.
*Columbia is keeping a watchful eye south for the Votanis Collective, but its biggest priority right now is constructing a maglev route to Yuma, its sole Pacific port. The best route goes through quite a few stubborn fortress towns, Defiance being a great example of one of them.
*Columbia claims the entirety of the former United States and Canada, and is working its best to make that claim a reality. It’s working to expand its frontier, and every other week, a stubborn fortress town turns itself over to the control of the NYER. There is a sense of paternalism on the part of the Columbians, one that shows whenever they interact with survivor states in North America.
*The American Southeast was largely untouched by the Pale Wars, and the survivor states of Alabama and Mississippi have almost been ignored entirely by New York. The Havana Earth Republic has become their closest trading partner. Alabama and Mississippi have very restrictive laws against human-Votan relationships, much to Havana’s embarrassment.
*Liberalized by a tide of refugees from Florida, Cuba’s a downright pleasant place to stay nowadays. It’s done its best to form a wall against Votan expansion in the Caribbean and Central America, but it hasn’t been able to stem the tide against their expansion on the mainland.
*The Canadian Desert was one of the purer examples of the xenoforming that hit Earth post-Arkfall. Creating an environment near-humans can survive in only by using protective suits, an indogene research party discovered something interesting here, and they’ve created a nation for indogenes only to live here. (Well, the native Canadians have special treatment, but besides that…) Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, they’ve discovered proof that the Votans were artificially created, and by whom, and they’re trying to work out how to contact these...Progenitors.
*The Dakota Republic has nukes, a family oligarchy ruling class, and spends its spare time worrying about the indogenes up north.
*The Badlands in the Storm Divide are the worst of the worst, and only the valuable minerals transmuted by the xenoforming convince humans to endure raiders and some of the worst conditions on Earth. Some of the ballsiest people on Earth live here.
*The Republic of Texas doesn’t cotton to this E-Rep nonsense, but they’re polite enough to New York and Havana. Having mostly gotten their house in order, they’re trying to expand. Very, very worried about the Votan expansion in Mexico, and talking to Cuba about closer relations.
*I’ll just let SyFy’s website explain what’s going on in California.
*The Seattle-Vancouver area is the sight of an unlikely little empire. Biomen, genetically engineered super soldiers who carried the day in many North American battles, and gulanee have formed an alliance, conquering an empire for themselves. Humans, biomen, and gulanee have managed to work out a mostly functional partnership, against all odds.
*The Aleutians are a minor survivor state sponsored by the Japanese government.
*While there were minor wars against Votan occupation, Central America was under firm Votan control during the Pale Wars, like most of Latin America. There are varying shades of freedom in the modern day.
*The former Guatemala and Belize, as well as Panama, are under military administration, to be colonized by Votans, and human military resistance to be crushed. Others, like Honduras or Costa Rica, are mere protectorates, or maybe they went the path of Chiapas or Nicaragua, and tried to violently revolt against their Votan puppetmaster, and were viciously put down for their troubles.
*Mexico is solidly balkanized, and the Collective is trying to keep it that way.

South America (The Modern Day)
*Firmly under the bootheel of the Votanis Collective.
*The Collective is a nicer place for humans than you’d think, the collaborators anyway. While Brazil could have put up more of a fight during the Pale Wars, it sort of got unlucky (or lucky, if you think about how little Brazil actually suffered). Brazilians have quite a few low-level government positions, partially out of necessity, partially out of (perceived) open-mindedness on the Votan side.
*The Collective itself is wrestling with expansionist attitudes of its own. While the Collective is still tied down in multiple quagmires in Africa, and worries of uprising in Colombia and Paraguay, there are still more who want to push upwards into North America, hopefully to beat Columbia to the punch before it can build its maglev across the continent.
*Argentina gave the Collective a hell of a fight before it went down in the Pale Wars. The Rio de la Plata area is still pretty radioactive. (Nuclear restrictions basically stopped existing once the Votans arrived in 2013.)
*They’re currently divided into three states, all of whom swear fealty to Sulos, the capital of the Votanis Collective, and a constructed city, and one of the few areas where xenoforming worked exactly as it was supposed to, creating a perfectly realistic and functional artificial habitat. Very few humans have ever been to Sulos.
*Anyway. Back on topic. Argentina was split into three, and the two in the interior were never technically pacified by the Collective. They have military governors, but it’s believed that the Cordoba Earth Republic is still operating in secret as a terrorist group.
*Chile, on the other hand, has gone full collaborationist. Fully occupied during the Pale Wars, the Votans were able to find a competent and loyal collaborator, and his government has given way to even more collaborationist sentiment. Chile’s seen the writing on the wall, and wants to keep its sovereignty while being on the winning side. For their loyalty, they’ve been given Patagonia, the Malvinas, and the right to have a large standing army. Chileans fight alongside Collective soldiers in their many wars.

Europe (The Modern Day)
*Contrary to popular opinion in the United States, the European Union did not fracture because of human difference of opinion, they fractured because they were flattened by the Votans, and the various governments were more focused on keeping their own house in order than helping in a war across the continent.
*The greatest power on the continent is the Eastern Commonwealth, founded by EMC soldiers stationed in Poland, which was sandwiched between two of the most brutal fronts in the Pale Wars. The Western European front, and the Russian front. Poland never saw much of the war. It contributed to the defense of both fronts, and saw its former capital, Warsaw, destroyed by a mixture of a singularity bomb and radiological warfare. (At least the former helped to mitigate the latter.)
*Together with the nations of the Balkans, who were virtually untouched by the war compared to France or Russia, the Lodz Earth Republic has created a safe zone for refugees in Eastern Europe. Human and indogene refugees have always been welcomed, as the death toll, even in the safe zones, was massive, with a deficit of manpower existing almost everywhere. Other aliens, however...well, there haven’t been too many pogroms yet, at least.
*The Eastern Commonwealth is a multicultural democracy with authoritarian and militaristic overtones. It’s fairly bog standard, a more conservative version of Columbia.
*With the Øresund having been replaced by a massive land mass connecting Sweden and Denmark, the Commonwealth is forced to rely on the expanded Adriatic (the xenoforming really caused a collapse throughout Central Austria and the surrounding area) for its sea access. It has to keep in touch with its allies in the Low Countries and Aquitaine somehow.
*It’s working to more closely integrate its ‘autonomous national allies’ like Austria, Czechia, and Estonia, but geographical and cultural barriers alike are blocking it. They’re working on building a maglev, and it’s going a lot better than their New Yorker counterpart.
*The Commonwealth’s biggest concern, however, is the Rhone ark-brain. During Arkfall, the ship with the backup cryogenics for the travelling Votans crashed smack dab into the Rhone valley, and the cryogenics lashed out across that slice of Western Europe, turning it into a wintry hellscape virtually overnight.
*Freezing Frenchmen soon found that the unnatural and self-maintaining cold wasn’t their only problem. The ship’s ark-brain had been driven insane by the sudden rush of disparate and conflicting information during Arkfall, and using formerly dumb, automated servants called ‘Scrappers’ by the remaining English speaking population, enslaved most of the population, and was growing its population rapidly.
*The Italian government is beginning to report slave raids from the Rhone ark-brain into its territory, and the ark-brain is expanding unchecked into France proper. Lodz is trying to convince its allies and the Antalya Accords to back it in a crusade to take down the ark-brain before it becomes an existential thread.
*Then there’s the endless warfare in Germany. While Schweinfurt is loyal enough to Lodz, it’s stuck in constant intervention in an area where the Pale Wars never ended. Germany was hit with enough radiation and chemical weapons to already make life hellish, but when you add that to the man-eating jungle that occupies most of the country, the remnant human and Votan warlords who barely know that the rest of the Pale Wars has ended...well, it’s not a great place. The Commonwealth isn’t that interested in intervening, viewing it as a quagmire. They sell Schweinfurt guns, and that’s it.
*The humbled French government survives in Corsica, a landmass largely untouched by the war outside of a few tsunamis. They’re friendly enough with Lodz, but have no interest in joining their alliance.
*Spain and Portugal withstood the Votan assault, the Collective more focused on threats like France, Germany and Russia, but they’re still recovering. Both are still under emergency authoritarian governments, and are trying to get their own houses back in order.
*Sweden saw quite a bit of bombing from Votan forces, but the xenoforming only really affected their very south, with occasional Votan scouts in their far north. With Finland having entirely occupied by the Collective, with the ensuing damage, Sweden emerged as a regional power.
*The closest thing to a modern day liberal democracy in the world, Sweden has no interest in this Earth Republic nonsense, and is just trying to keep its neighbors’ houses from burning down...or at least keep those fires from spreading to their home.
*Italy’s fractured into two states, with a Catholic fundamentalist state occupying Rome at the moment. Italy put up a good fight, but the Votans broke them fairly conclusively, and they’re only afloat thanks to Commonwealth aid. Oh, and San Marino’s still around.
*A Votan republic of around three million exists in the North Sea, atop a risen landmass. Tela’ku is cordial enough with the human powers that it’s largely left alone.
*Iceland never even saw a single Votan bomber, and all Arkfall did to them was reshape their eastern coast. They’re trying their best to contribute to the modern world. Currently they’re engaged in nation building in Greenland, with talk of expeditions to the Great White North, a minor annoyance to New York, which knows of some valuable pre-Arkfall goodies hidden up there.
*The United Kingdom is perfectly happy to keep its head up its ass and ignore the rest of the world. Ireland and Britain faced heavy bombardment campaigns from Votans on the mainland, but apart from one invasion attempt that was repulsed at great cost (August is London Remembrance Month), they escaped the world unscathed.
*The EMC branches in the British Isles, once Arkfall occurred and the Isles were untouched, banded together. Ireland and Britain had effectively been one country since the Pale Wars began, and neither EMC branch had a problem solidifying the arrangement. There was unrest among the population, but the jubilation over the war ending outweighed any complaints.
*Nowadays, the UK is a fairly authoritarian, isolationist state. It no longer has relations with the outside world, there are automated coldfire guns near most major ports, and Swedish sailors regularly complain of the fact that the British mined the Channel, forcing them to take the long way around.
*Romania’s broken away from Lodz’ grasp, and has created its own little faction with Turkey and Tunisia, two other regional powers. The Antalya Accords largely keep to their own affairs (outside of the dick-waving contest in Bosnia) but Lodz is very worried about their increasing outreach to Sulos.
*Ienopols is another Votan state built on a constructed landmass, to the southwest of Iberia. They’ve accepted plenty of European refugees, so the EU and AA are largely both fine with them.
*Xyaia is a majority Irathian state, composed of mostly liberata, sensoths and irathients, as well as those of the original Balearics who survived Arkfall.
*The Koryazhma Earth Republic is the most successful of the European Russian successor states, and is doing its best to hold out until the Omsk Earth Republic can connect to it and subsume it.

Africa (The Modern Day)
*Tunisia’s become the great power in North Africa mostly by default. Morocco and Algeria were sacked by Votans coming from Iberia, Egypt and Libya by Votans from the Middle East. The Sahara blocked any other form of conventional strike, and as such Tunisia only faced the usual sort of air war. In the modern day, Tunis has done well for itself, fashioning a decent regional block, and being the third greatest power in the Antalya Accords. A traditionalist Islamist democracy, with a rather poor record on Votan rights.
*There are several surviving states in Lower Egypt. Egypt, a newborn nuclear power during the Pale Wars, was flattened by the Collective troops coming out of the Middle East, who had faced some of the most fanatical, yet not especially well organized, resistance. Most are under Turkish or Collective influence, or aren’t relevant enough to gain international attention.
*West Africa was briefly occupied by the Votans, before collaborationist regimes were installed, regimes that were required by law to recognize Votans as people with equal rights. Some of those regimes have fallen by the wayside since the end of the Pale Wars, and thus, Collective interest in West Africa, but many, like Ghana, stand by the side of their former puppet-masters. Ghana, with 700,000 Votan citizens living in its borders, hopes to prove itself an example of Votan-human cooperation...while also not being on the Collective’s to-destroy list.
*They’ve even allowed Sulos to occupy the Oduduwa Republic, a state established after Collective broke Nigeria, after a human supremacist was elected to the Prime Ministership.
*The Votans have a very delicate British Raj-esque system in Africa, a system of protectorates, territories under military administration, core territories, and states that have openly declared independence peacefully while still technically being part of the Collective (it’s complicated), which sometimes erupts into open revolt.
*The Congo is probably the Collective’s biggest issue beyond infrastructure and technology, as that’s where several million Votans live...right near rebellious humans who have a habit of trying to engage in pogroms. Arkfall enhanced the dangerous qualities of the Congolese jungles, and every few years, tens of thousands of Votans disappear into the Congo putting down yet another Congolese revolt. It’s enough to trigger a debate about the ethics of cloned soldiers back home in Sulos.
*On the bright side, their client state in South Africa is still going strong, and even though it’s stretching its legs a little, it doesn’t look to show any signs of disloyalty. Hell, they’re even keeping a wide berth from Suaizhmo, an irathient state built in the savannas of Namibia. Even better news, Suaizhmo is industrializing, a rarity for irathient states, which are normally fairly anarchic and decentralized.
*Ethiopia is also a clusterfuck of ethnic tensions, but that chore is normally left to Ghanaian and South African peacekeepers, which helps with the ethnic tensions as much as you’d expect.

Asia/Oceania (The Modern Day)
*Turkey is the founding state of the Antalya Accords. Istanbul took quite a bit of a pounding from a Collective invasion force, and the radiological weapons still make it unsafe to inhabit. With all of the conventional damage dealt to the surrounding area, the capital was moved to an area comparatively unscathed. Antalya. Together with Tunisia, they agreed on a mutual trade pact a few years after the armistice. This blossomed into the Antalya Accords.
*Turkey itself is mostly a military-’overseen’ secular democracy with Islamist trappings. Votans have more rights here than in Romania or Tunisia, which makes them more comfortable than their allies with the idea of negotiating with the Collective.
*Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt were the four most prominent of the tinpot shithole dictatorships that built nukes in a panic once the aliens were coming, with tacit permission from the international community as long as they stayed in line and didn’t do anything stupid. Whether these additional weapons helped against the Collective is debatable, but many analysts think that they would have been able to deal more damage to Turkey and Iran otherwise, thus removing two regional powers from the fold.
*The remnants of these nations are largely under Turkish influence nowadays, starving, irradiated warlord states utterly dependent on Antalya for aid. Kurdistan is doing fairly well, though. (Win some, lose some.)
*Turkey’s pushed into the Caucuses, which held their own fairly well against the Votans, outside of a few bombings, naturally, and has installed compliant nationalist regimes, which annoys the hell out of Omsk.
*Israel gave the Votanis Collective one hell of a kick in the nuts before the Votans broke them. A third of the Israelis were evacuated to the United States and Europe before the fall of the country, but most died from the radiation and focused xenoforming used against the country.
*The Collective is sponsoring a neutralized state that holds Mecca, whose authority is only reluctantly recognized by the world’s Muslim nations.
*Iran’s about the same sort of government it is today, except more militarized. Most of its southern and western portions were shattered by encroaching Collective forces, and even today, most of its south is uninhabited and anarchic. There are existing Earth Republics in the west, which Yazd is trying to reincorporate. Both sides are willing, it’s just slow-going thanks to geographical realities.
*The Omsk Earth Republic, better known as the Eurasian Federation, was established in 2009 by Russia. Vladimir Putin, for all his faults, knew how to bully people into doing what he wanted, and the Eurasian Federation almost reached the heights of the Soviet Union before the Pale Wars, much to the worry of China, Europe, and America.
*A nationalist military junta, Omsk (and Moscow/Gorkij/Nizhny Novgord/etc. before it) has tried to create a generic Eurasian identity rather than Russian or Kazakh or Tajik. It’s...slowly succeeding. Very slowly. Most people are just happy to have some degree of stability, and the various former countries still have some degree of autonomy within the Omsk E-Rep.
*Currently trying to retake Russia. Tuva and the Ulan-Ude Earth Republic have agreed to rejoin once sufficient physical ties are reestablished. The Russian Wastes in Europe, however...that’s another problem, and one Omsk doesn’t think it has the resources to fix. Their countrymen made the Votans fight and bleed for every inch of land, but in the end, the Votans have a stable, united, verdant country in Latin America, and the Eurasians have a wasteland to reclaim.
*Afghanistan (“oh, I’m sorry, the Kabul Earth Republic”) just wants all of you to fuck off. The aliens went...wherever the fuck they went, and they’re tired of being used as a staging ground by their neighbors. They’re smart enough to not directly insult Lahore or Yazd or Omsk, but they no longer want to be an aircraft carrier for governments that once invaded and occupied them. (The War on Terror was a more worldwide effort on this Earth, a trial run for the EMC.)
*The Lahore Earth Republic, unlike many of its equals across the world, actually doesn’t have a secondary national identity. Founded by Indians, Afghans, Central Asians, Nepalese and Pakistanis defending southern Pakistan from the Collective, many chose to stay behind after the war. When you add the fact that Lahore rules over Kashmir, an area contested between India and Pakistan before the Pale Wars, it’s in their interest to be a generic militarist human-unificationist state. They even treat Votans better than their companions, although there are only around a hundred thousand of them living there.
*The Kohalpur Earth Republic is the last remnant of the Indian government, and a blatant military dictatorship. They tried to have a mixed government, but there were...irreconcilable differences, and after a Hindu nationalist PM tried to force out the Muslims to improve food stocks for Hindus, they enacted a coup. Their attempts to regain territory have been rebuffed, and so the military has shrugged and moved on. They have a country to rebuild after all. *They’re the most naval-oriented of the four prominent members of the Astana Earth Republic (technically, Lahore, Kohalpur, Kabul, Yazd, Kathmandu, and Omsk are all one country. No one acts like that’s the case, of course.), and they’ve been reclaiming islands abandoned after the Pale Wars. They’re concerned about Collective expansion in the Indian Ocean.
*Xenoforming rose up the landmass around Sri Lanka, and the loss of access to the sea, combined with the natural ruggedness of the new land and Arkfall taking away humanity’s access to the sky, meant that Sri Lanka collapsed into feuding warlord states with an eagerly engaged hobby of ethnic cleansing.
*The Guwahati Earth Republic, or the Bengal-Assam Association, rather than returning to India as hoped, has instead leapt into Chongqing’s arms. Unstable, poor, one wonders why China even wants it. Then they remember that Guwahati’s territory holds the closest thing Chongqing will get to an easily accessed warm-water port anytime soon.
*The Lhasa Earth Republic doesn’t have long left in this world. The difficulty of access was an excuse ages ago, but now that infrastructure has been repaired? Chongqing will ‘ask’ for a ‘reunification’ any day.
*The various warlord states in Uyghurstan, well, China is fine letting those stay around. They make convenient buffers. The same is true for Mongolia, which, aside from Ulaan Bator facing some air raids and a few million Chinese refugees, was untouched.
*Chongqing itself is an unstable technocratic mess. During the war, they conscripted every citizen of the country that could walk, talk, shoot, and see straight (and some who couldn’t), and at the peak, the army had seven hundred million actively walking around with guns, fighting desperately against the Votans, launching nukes on their own territory. Every citizen was a frantic cog in the gears of the People’s Republic of China, defending humanity from the alien menace.
*And now the war is over, and those millions of people armed (those who lived anyway) are tired of sitting around watching buildings get reconstructed. They want to go home, or at least, settle down and retire after decades of service, some of them having never even met their adult children thanks to the war. Chinese leadership, fanatical about reclaiming territory lost to Votan machinations. China could have a civil war any day now, and the leadership doesn’t even see it.
*China’s working to reclaim lost territory, but they’re losing the war thanks to overextended logistics and the fact that many outright don’t want Chongqing there. Unfortunately for those fortress towns, China doesn’t give a shit what they want. Unfortunately for China, there are thousands of these fortress towns- and their conscripts only have so much tolerance for fighting.
*Yunnan is still independent, mostly because China finds it a decent buffer state between it and its ally of Laos. Chongqing and Vientiane have positive relations...now. Who can say for the future?
*Burma collapsed after the war. With no clear leader, ethnic tensions run rampant. Laos and Indonesia have dipped their toes in the water, but no one else is especially interested.
*The Harbin warlord state is the only one to have lasted this long, and is actively invading Chinese-claimed-and-technically-occupied territory.
*The Votan commander who destroyed North Korea was...perhaps a bit overzealous. Pyongyang was the first to use a nuclear weapon against the Collective (not counting Tao Lei’s outburst) and Presa Tarna hoped to make an example of them. It didn’t work. South Korea was occupied and dismantled by Collective forces, and when Arkfall and the xenoforming hit, Korea crumpled into the sea. Japan is trying to engage in nation-building in the south.
*There’s a surviving Russian state in eastern Siberia, the Sovganan Earth Republic. It doesn’t like to talk about how reliant it is on Japanese aid.
*Japan wasn’t hit too hard by the war, hell, Tokyo’s still standing and habitable. While there was a brief period of Collective occupation, they were largely recalled to China when the war there heated up, and a Japanese revolt was able to push the weak occupation force out. In the modern day, Japan is a one-party militaristic democracy that hopes to forge a new sphere of influence.
*Japan’s very fond of using exoskeletons in their military. Primitive models were small, and there were quite a few Russian warlords that found themselves facing fourteen year old volunteers in suits of bulky power armor. Nowadays, of course, mecha are adult only.
*Taiwan was smacked by Arkfall, but a massive exodus north managed to save the country. That and, you guessed it, Japanese aid. A Japanese client state nowadays.
*Laos was the only one of the Indochinese states to largely survive the war without too great a loss in infrastructure, and has assumed a role as the most powerful state in the region. Thailand is a rising power that threatens its dominance, however. Vietnam, thankfully, is broken, cut in three.
*The only Votan majority state in the Chinese sphere of influence (called a Votan majority by human and Votan powers due to the power of the Votan minority, it really isn’t), Vahrahmo, was founded by Vietnamese and castithan military forces (I say military, they were poor bastards who woke up after Arkfall in the middle of a war zone, and grabbed whatever they could to defend themselves), and they’ve cobbled together a decent-ish multispecies democracy. Four million Votans live here, in relative peace with their human neighbors.
*Indonesia’s done well for itself. It’s managed to get back on its feet after Collective occupation, and has even become a regional power. Trying to reclaim what it once held, which is much easier for them than say, Chongqing, Omsk, or New York.
*The landmass that rose in the China Sea and brought radiation with it submerged Luzon with radiation, mutations, chemical weapons, and bizarre wildlife, forcing a refugee march south.
*Indonesia is trying to help sponsor a stable Filipino power, which is harder than it sounds, especially with the ongoing Islamist movement in Mindanao. There’s peace now, but...that won’t last long.
*The Spratlys, or rather, the landmass that rose from their location, are, as of present, unclaimed by any sovereign power.
*Sarawak is independent. There’s talk with reuniting Malaysia, but it’s not the first thought on anyone’s mind.
*Australia was mostly flattened by a xenoforming blast that, unlike most, didn’t affect the geography too much, but did release quite a few poisons and the like into the area, which, combined with the superstorms that came after Arkfall, didn’t do wonders for the Australian population. There probably aren’t more than a million people on the continent.
*Indonesia’s sponsoring refugee movements into northern Australia, where the poisons have largely abated, and indogene scientists have figured out cures for them. It’s a slow-going process, but it’s an easy place to put people.
*New Guinea doesn’t have a government, and Jakarta could not give less of a shit.
*New Zealand is a reluctant Collective ally. Untouched by the war, alone in the world, Chilean and Collective ships were their only contact for a long time. Only recently did they start arriving from Kohalpur, Fukushima and Jakarta.
*Hawaii is independent, and considers itself the heir to the United States. Columbia finds this cute.
*No, Antarctica is not a tropical paradise. That was a lie Joshua Nolan told his daughter so she’d have something to hope for while living in a very shitty world.

Phew. I'm glad I got this finished and uploaded before Irma took out the power. Hope you guys enjoy, and questions, comments and criticisms are welcome and wanted! This was 9,000 words in total, so I genuinely hope you guys have something to say about it.

User avatar
Tom Mazanec
Posts: 4180
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:13 pm

Re: Sci-fi and Alt-hist

Post by Tom Mazanec »

Looks promising, CH86. I can buy it from Amazon Video. Maybe I'll give the first episode or two a try and see if I like it.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests