Literature / Chaos Timeline

This Alternate History timeline published at AlternateHistory.com is described by its author Max Sinister as "the Mount Everest of AH". It starts with the death of Genghis Khan in 1200 (thus preventing the Mongol conquest of Russia, China and Persia) and goes until the year 1993. History changes a lot compared to our world, although some patterns seem to reappear.

The complete timeline (including stories) is over 800 kB long.

Read the Chaos TL on the AH.com forum, or the Stories from the Chaos TL (you have to register and log in for them), or read the full TL as a scenario. The timeline can also be read at the Alternate History Wikia. See also this material on the GURPS wikia.

Inspired by… the RPG GURPS Alternate Earths - the scenario "Centrum", to be precise.

It has managed to get its own fanfiction work called Samowar in Atlantis. Also was mentioned by Alternate History Hub in "The Alternate Timeline Iceberg Explained" (Part 1), Level 6.

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Contains examples of the following tropes:

• The Alliance: Several times in this history. After all, it coined the term "anti-X War", as in "Anti-French War" and other wars, all of them ending with a victory of the alliance.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Lots of it, mostly for pure Rule of Funny. And not just with historical personalities and events, but also alternate vocabulary and culture.
  • A more serious one: After the Battle of Auschwitz, someone states: "Certainly this place has never seen such a massacre on any world, in any time."
  • And on the same plane:
  Topper: "Mates, it's official now: The 9th of November is the most uninteresting day in German history!"^note In our world, this day stands for: The revolution of 1918, which ended Imperial Germany and started the Weimar Republic; Adolf Hitler's unsuccessful putsch in 1923; the Reichspogromnacht of 1938, making the lives of German Jews much worse; and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
• Alternative Calendar: Introduced after France becomes a republic. One of the results of this is that a minute in this timeline is 100 seconds.
• Ambiguously Gay: King Gioacchino of Italy and his successor, Alessandro Napolione.
• Alternate History Wank: Many a Space-Filling Empire may fall into this category, but the three-continental German technocracy deserves special mention.
• The Alternet: The so-called Weltsystem, with national precursor systems akin to ARPANET established up to half a century earlier.
• Apocalypse How: Here with nanomachines, thus potentially Class X (planetary annihilation). And many locals vaguely expected it to happen for years.
• Artificial Intelligence: AI plays an important part at the end.
• Author Appeal: AI, cybernetics
• Balkanize Me: North America Atlantis, sometimes China, France and Russia.
• Bilingual Bonus: Topper muses that every story ends eventually, but history goes on. Both story and history mean "Geschichte" in German.
  • About Sophie Stein nee Shayna Löwenpferd: "She roars like a lion, and is as smart as a horse!" ^note In Yiddish, "fert" / "horse" is an insult for stupid persons.
• Black Shirt: The post-WWI Italian Fascisti. A subversion, since they're actually the right hand of The Mafia analogue (the mafia of this history being an amalgam of both organized crime and Italian ultranationalism).
• Blessed with Suck: The epically dramatic description of Germany in the 1920s.
• Bread and Circuses: Part of the technocratic agenda in Germany is making the working class unpolitical by the titular "three F": Fußball (soccer), Fernsehen (television), Fernreisen (vacation). One feels tempted to add a fourth F like Fressen (food).
• The Caligula: The fifth Chinese adoptive emperor, the protagonist of Samowar In Atlantis even calls him that way, "Kaiser Gaga". His precedessor was actually rumored to overthink his decision for succession, but got literally cut short by the events of 1993. And then it got worse.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Justified, since history diverged in 1200 and people could well invent different names for things. America is called Atlantis, teddy bears are mishkas since they were invented in Russia, computer hackers are Logos (from 'logic'), angst is called horreur, a blitzkrieg is a molniya (Russian for 'lightning'), tanks are Walzen ('steamrollers' in German), capitalism is monetarism etc. A pretty complete list of the TL's alternate terminology can be found on these pages of AH.com's wiki.
• Christianity is Catholic: Other than in our world, Catholic Christianity didn't split except for some minor fringe movements, but power gradually shifted to the governments of the Catholic nations, somehow akin to the Anglican Church or Gallican Church in our world whose rituals and doctrine were mostly kept unchanged. In Nippon, the tenno is the head of the country's Catholic Church! The Pope was gradually reduced to a mere figurehead, but this changed unexpectedly again when he had to go to Australia Tirland Antipodia after the revolution in Britain.
  • The nationalized and decentralized versions of Catholic Christianity are basically the Anglican Church and the concept of Gallicanism from our real history, but taken up to eleven.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Humphrey VII/II of New Albion
• Cool Train: Vacuum maglevs which can reach speeds of no less than 10000 km/h!
• Cross-Cultural Kerfluffle: "Atlantis" can refer to both Americas or the German part of the northern continent. Like "America" in our world, but even more egregious.
• Cunning Linguist: Tatjana speaks several languages, which is one reason why she does the communication at that one time.
• Cyberpunk: The last about thirty years of the TL definitely have this vibe going on, courtesy of the Logos (hackers) and the more earlier achieved advanced state of computer technology and networks than in our history.
• Culture Police: In the German technocracy. Censors the book "Das Paradies der Goldis" by Katherine Geller (apparently a bit like Valley Of The Dolls) for the depiction of mental diseases, drug addiction and lesbian love.
• Defecting for Love: The Russian Yegor Smotrytsky gives the Persians the telegraph technology for this reason. Later (1923) made into the movie Shirin, delight of my eyes which gets censored by the German Culture Police.
• A Degree in Useless: Subverted. The German technocracy generally scoffs at anyone studying humanities, minimizing their teaching to a "harmless enough" level, afraid of the potentially rising threat of pro-democratic freethinkers. Education in "hard sciences" and general blue collar vocational training is encouraged, supplemented by a Bread and Circuses approach in state propaganda. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome ensues when one of the stories depicts a young couple smuggling banned philosophy books from German Atlantis to a somewhat more democratic neighbouring country.
• Direct Line to the Author: Supposedly, author Max Sinister compiled this story from a computer file he accidentally downloaded... from Another Dimension.
• Dirty Communists: Here, Socialists. They take over Britain in the mid-19th century and spread over all of Western Europe. And Greece.
• Distant Finale: Several epilogues, set ten / 25 / 50 / 100 / 200 / 300 / 500 years after the Streich, and one more even further to the future.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In 1993, Japanese terrorists/freedom fighters crash a plane on the Chinese Summer Palace, killing the emperor.
  • Greece is considered a highly corrupt Chaos country and a drain on the Socialist Block's power.
• Eagleland: Speaking German. In both parts of the Americas Atlantis. ^note Guess which ethnicity most Americans in our lifetime claim to hail from? Right, the Germans. Guess where else in the New World Germans liked to settle? Right, Southern Brazil and the Plata countries. And appropriately, this Germany has three eagles in its crest, among them a condor that got dubbed as an "Andean eagle" in this world. Even absorbs the old motherland at one point. Becomes a political clusterfuck and quickly puts on the Reich as a so-called technocracy, a crossbreed of "Prussia, the GDR and the American military-industrial complex should it ever seize power." Not that its major opponents were really more pleasant in this regard.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: It ends up having this kind of ending.
• Earth Drift: The version 0.0 used In Spite of a Nail very egregiously, having Tilly, Wallenstein, Martin Luther, William of Orange and even Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan and Ken Thompson in the story becoming influential, similar to their roles in Real Life.
• Easy Logistics: Commenters raised one or another eyebrow about transporting six- to seven-figure numbers of soldiers across the Atlantic in each direction during this world's World War II. The author responded that several factors like bigger navies on both sides ^note That of Italia Nuova alone was supposed to be bigger than that of the USA in our world. and improved technology would work it out, but also confessed that there wouldn't be a world war in this world if it wouldn't because the odds were so one-sided in each half of the world.
• Egopolis: Several cities named after people, like Haraldsborg (our New York City), Wildenhartburg (Chicago), Alexandersborg (Cape Town) and Fort Knox (Singapore).
• Electronic Telepathy: An important factor. Helped the Logos to form what is for all practical purposes a Hive Mind and later take over the world.
• The Empire: As this is a realistic (hi)story, it's a question of your POV. The New Roman Empire, the German technocracy and others might all qualify.
• The End of the World as We Know It: At the end, World War III between the superpowers Germany and China breaks out, and although it doesn't last long (actually a mere three hours), the world will never be again as it was before. Because the hackers Logos and their allied AIs take over the world and the military and tell the war off.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Kind of. While there are dictatorships, communists and fascists, secret polices, many wars, nukes and even worse weapons, this timeline has no equivalent of the Nazis and the Holocaust.
• Everything Is Online: Exploited big time at one occasion.
• Expy: Many of the famous historical personalities of this timeline are analogues of the ones of our lifetime. It's handled realistically though.
  • Barbie has an equivalent in the German toys line "Goldi".
• Failed Future Forecast: In-universe at least for any work of fiction done before the Logo and AI induced abortion of World War III but set 20 Minutes into the Future.
  • The sci-fi universe "Ordo" wherein Germany's One World Order has expanded to the stars some centuries into the future.
  • A work of a Vlachian sci-fi author Mircea Savu who imagined an inter-galactic civilization with lots of independent states.
• Fake Defector: Walter Meier becomes head tribute collector for the French, making him perhaps the most hated man in occupied Germany. He's actually using the position to divert money to his favorite German resistance organizations.
• Fantastic Drug: In the GURPS adventure based on this, one dealer tries to sell the PCs the drug "black niig", which supposedly makes people feel "like Stalin ^note Not our Joseph Stalin, but still a bad guy, when he crushed his enemies' balls", and later they meet a crazy fundamentalist Christian who claims he knew a girl who never listened to advice, took nanodrugs and one day literally fell apart to dust.
• Fascist gold: A group of Red Pirates discovers it and decides to take off for Braseal instead of giving it back.
• Fictional Holiday: A Cryptic Background Reference mentions that many countries introduced special national holidays. England, for example, has St George's day.
• Fictional Political Party: Several are mentioned, in Germany, Russia and France.
  • German Atlantis has two big ones, "The free ones" and "the equal ones", who nickname each other "the naked ones" and "the blind ones"^note Implying that the latter are blind for reality, and naked shamelessness for the former
  • There's also a "House Russia" party is this timeline. That's also a trend in our world. ^note In our world, Russia had an "Our House Russia" party late in The '90s whose personell eventually gave way for "United Russia". In Israel, there's "Yisrael Beitenu" (Our House/Home Israel) that especially appeals to post-Soviet immigrants. And the Ukrainian party of Viktor Yushchenko was "Our Ukraine". Oh, and why has Poland a website called naszemiasto.pl ("our city") while Germany has meinestadt.de ("my city")?
• Forever War: After Republican France occupies Spain, the fighting down there does not end until eighty years later.
• Former Regime Personnel: The entry at GURPS wikia suggests a term for a whole caste of high-profile PTSD victims, "ex-leaders", the collateral damage of the outcome of the Grand Finale.
  • Effectively stripped of their former power, many of the people in leadership positions before the Velvet Revolution had their personal fortunes largely left intact, but still feel a void as a result of their loss of power. People obviously don't deal well with becoming obsolete over night. Alcoholism is said to be rampant among these guys.
• For Want Of A Nail: Genghis Khan dying from a minor accident in 1200 prevents the unification of the Mongol tribes and their subsequent global conquests.
• Future Slang: Several examples. "By the Truth" comes to mind.
• Geek Physiques: Fynstr is slim, Tatjana is very slim, Topper is fat. And quite tall.
• General Failure: Wolfgang Henrich at the German side, in this world's World War II.
• Global Currency: At the end of the story, the GEM (short for Geld-Einheit der Menschheit - "money unit of humanity") is introduced. The sign for it looks like a G with a circle around it, much like our @.
• Goth: Tatjana. Well, the equivalent of.
• Grand Finale: World War III, and the world being taken over by the Logos and A.I.s.
• Granola Girl: Their nicknames have a higher potential for being used as slurs than ours. Terramici (environmentalists) literally mean "friends/lovers of the earth" and Menschenhelfer (development aid workers) literally mean "man helpers" or "humanity's helpers".
• Gratuitous German: Germany is a superpower at the end, so don't be too astonished to find a bit of it. For example, virtual worlds are called Märchenwelten - fairytale worlds.
• Gratuitous Italian: In the late years of the TL, there are artificial insects (flying nanotech robots) called Zanzara. Also, the Renaissance is known under the Italian term Rinascita in this history, rather than the French term from our history.
• Gratuitous Russian: Brought this world, among others, the synonyms to teddy bear and blitzkrieg. Generally, German is the number one world language, with Italian and Russian being respective second and third.
• Heroic BSoD: All Logos (well, those whom we learn more about) seem to suffer from this at one point in their life. Fynstr has issues since his childhood, Topper lost many good countrymen at work, Tatjana becomes outright melodramatic (though fully justified) in the end. But the mere exchange from campus to workplace is often enough.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: As a review of in-universe movie "Alexander" says, Oswald of Cottington only played a minor role in the (Great Occidental) war and never met Prince Alasdair in person.
• Hollywood Hacking: It involved a lot of hackers connected by a quasi-telepathic network, many of them in key positions, artificial intelligences willing to help them, and Translation Convention for programming languages, but it's still handled more realistically than typical for Hollywood.
• I Have Many Names: Sophie Stein, aka Sofonisba Leoncavallo, aka Shayna Löwenpferd.
• Imperial China: Still exists even in the later 20th century, ruled by the so-called adoptive emperors.
• Inside a Computer System: AIs are important, so expect this.
• Interfaith Smoothie: The Indian Chandramoorthy develops his own religion, which combines elements from Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism and the classical Greco-Roman religion.
• The Internet Is for Porn: "[...] some other place in the Weltsystem, where people can store their photos to keep them hidden. Recently a shadow of doubt was cast on said place by the users because of a claim that the owners of the place used compression programs to save on server storage, since most of the people just store identical 3D photos of nude women anyway..."
• Irish Priest: Taken up to eleven, with the Irish-Catholic pope(s) from the land Down Under and their many missionaries, which are probably a trope of their own in this world.
• Ironic Echo: "It didn't really take long, but the world will never be again as it was before."
• Ironic Nursery Rhyme: One of them goes through Tatjana's mind during her Heroic BSoD.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: The elderly Fynstr. Also Topper for some years.
• King on His Deathbed: King Gioacchino of Italy
• Lady of War: Or rather Lady of Diplomacy, Queen Kristina I of Sweden, forging an alliance against the French king.
• Language Equals Thought: One in-story novel mentions the people in the world After the End having become unable to lie - but unfortunately, they also lost the ability to imagine things.
• La Résistance: Various. Spaniards against Republican France, Germans against Russians and Italians, various against the Socialists.
• Leet Speak: The currency of the German technocracy is the Thaler, abbreviated "Th". Thus, people from this timeline will replace the T's in names of firms considered too greedy with Th. One example is the computer/electronics firm Werstand (imagine a cross between Microsoft, IBM and Siemens), which becomes Wersthand.
• Letters 2 Numbers: Wers(th)and
• Lipstick Lesbian: The bisexual variant. Tatjana
• The Mafia: La Famiglia, which seizes full political power in the Italian empire after it loses World War I and its ruler is forced to abdicate. Also a subversion, since they're in fact a mixture of The Mafia and the fascists. Note that in our world, the fascists and the mafia were enemies!
• Magic Floppy Disk: Averted, the present Chaos uses "data cubes", which are based on threedimensional computer chips.
• Meaningful Name: Sophie Stein, again. "Sophie Stein is the stone that breaks the steel of Socialist propaganda!"
• Names Given to Computers: Or rather, AIs. In fact, they name themselves after random strings - three of them are called X27, a_gcl and Horace. And when they have to create database records for non-existing humans, they invent names for them which have some similarity to theirs.
• Nano Machines: Everywhere in the last years of the timeline.
• Naturalized Name: The woman born as Shayna Löwenpferd became Sofonisba Leoncavallo (the last name being a literal translation) in Greater Italy and Sophie Stein in Germany. Similar to Ayn Rand.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • A great general who was born on an island west of Italy, fought in Egypt, became emperor and brought the church under his control was already mentioned.
  • Matthias Lieber, one of those who translated the Bible into German, is a Shout-Out to Martin Luther. And at the same time, a Shout-Out to the RPG 7th Sea.
  • Friedrich von Hohenzollern who might be Frederick the Great born in an Atlantean log cabin and successfully running away from his tyrannical father.
  • Explorers / travellers Markus Poller and Mao Polou
  • "Kingdom of God" is the counterpart to Thomas More's utopian story, well, Utopia.
  • Condolcessa, last one of the Florentine ruling family, reminds of Lucrezia Borgia, at least in that people claim both to have committed Parental Incest, though this hasn't to be true.
  • "Christnacht" is a text about a rich but avaricious landowner, who isn't willing to share his wealth with others, until he is suddenly experiencing... something at the evening of christmas. And his name (Thimotheus) becomes synonymous with "miser". Sounds familiar?
  • Lauritz von Arguim. Also has a brainless captain.
  • A technical genius who's a Swede from Finland inventing a codebreaker machine. (Linus Torvalds, anyone?)
  • Carlo Carosio of "La Fiamma"
  • Canada has the presidents Joseph B. Franklin and Jacob Andrews (a war hero).
  • Germany has a populist (from the left!) named Josef F. Krause who suggests that his party should split to have more success with the voters: "Marching seperatedly, striking together!"
  • A guy named Röhm unsuccessfully protesting race-mixing. He barely escapes unscathed.
• Nostalgia Filter: Mentioned in a story. At this moment, the world has reached the point where they love the Industrial Revolution - the great time of inventors. Steampunk becomes very popular.
• Nuke 'em: The German technocracy nukes Verona (core Italy) and about a dozen Russian cities in World War II.
• Nu Spelling: The "Nu Inglish" used in Socialist Britain.
• One Head Taller: Topper. He even dwarfs Tatjana, who's six feet tall.
• One World Order: The German technocracy probably strives for it. The Logos succeed instead.
• Overly Preprepared Gag: Since (or although) the name Adolf and the lesser known abbreviation "Nazi" for "Ignaz/Ignatius" aren't discredited by Hitler, the author is able to make an "Adolf Nazi is dead!" joke.
• Parodies for Dummies: aka "The Rules for/to ______"
• Penal Colony: Braseal. Like our Australia, only even better. "Don't you wish that your grandfather had cursed the emperor?"
• The Plague: The Black Death, happening somewhat later and spread through longer time than in our world.
• Playful Hacker: The Logos. First mentioned here.
• Police State: After the German democracy falls, pretty much every major power on Earth is this.
• Poor Man's Substitute: The brothel "Rote Fahne" from the mentor's GURPS adventure sources ^note Which was inspired by a scene from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. Forbidden Fruit, you know.. Its hookers are an in-universe example of this trope. While there would indeed be hookers of English, French, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian mother tongue, they were actually supposed to be from Atlantis or just anywhere outside the Socialist Block.
• Punny Name: About Sophie Stein nee Shayna Löwenpferd: "She roars like a lion, and is as smart as a horse!" ^note In Yiddish, "fert" / "horse" is an insult for stupid persons.
• Red Scare: The Socialist Block in Western Europe.
• The Republic: France, German Atlantis, Novorossiya (New Russia, our Siberia). And Greater Switzerland, of course. Oh, and (Greater) Judea.
• Robot Religion: in-universe, a sci-fi author invents a religion based on binary logic.
• The Rule of First Adopters: "System-Sex" is definitely at the very short price list of the GURPS manual. And guess what people, being people, do with their robots in this world.
  Fynstr: They beat up androids, just for fun, and have the most perverted sex with them - because they can!
• Ruthless Modern Pirates: The modern Red Pirates of the Socialist Block, robbing ships of the capitalist nations. And also Nipponese terrorists doing this, who are even worse.
• Sanity Slippage: Tatjana during World War III. She even notices it. The way it's described it sounds like a near-death experience. She gets better and gives the signal to save the world.
• Schizo Tech: Some of the sciences and technological advances are discovered or perfected earlier than in our history. For instance, Novorossiya invents the telegraph and electrical devices nearly a century before it happened in our history. Let's just say that a resident from that timeline would compare our real world's present tech level with his 1960s at best.
• Self-Deprecation: In one of the stories, someone on the internet Weltsystem asks "Max" (counterpart of the author?) why he doesn't write a timeline himself instead of criticizing others'.
• Shout-Out: Quite some, including Seinfeld, Gone with the Wind, William Shakespeare, and also to a number of AH.com members. See below.
  • Two German merchants, Herr Hagenström and Herr Buddenbrook talk about the emerging Atlantis business. A mijnheer Arnoldsen from Amsterdam is also mentioned.
  • The two first Dutch men who founded a colony in Atlantis are named Jan and Kees van Houten.
    • And the first German guy there is a Hans Meier - the equivalent of John Smith.
  • The German land Anderland is named after the best song by the German punk band Fluchtweg.
  • During one war story set in NW Germany of the 16th century, someone who's much like German comedian Otto Waalkes makes an appearance. (In fact, he uses Obfuscating Stupidity.)
  • The two greatest authors of this world are the Spaniard Alejandro Enrique Ruiz Rodriguez, who wrote several plays about kings (of biblical Israel), whose works are suspected by some people to be written not by him, but really by the Spanish king, or his daughter, or someone completely else; and the German Albert Franck Baltzer, who wrote tragedies like Der König von Leer about a Frisian yeoman and his daughters, or a jealous mercenary in Otto Leo, genannt Der Schwarze von Verden, which also were used for several Hollywood Paradies movies.
  • Imperial China is at one point governed by the Hong dynasty.
  • A satirist writing an obituary "Today our beloved Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation passed away at the great age of 911 years", almost the same as a text in our world.
  • Captain Ingolfsson and the Söderlinger in South Africa
  • Russian general "Uncle" Popov (to an obscure German children's book by Janosch).
  • Weber (this world's term for "Luddite") is a Shout-Out to a political poem by Gerhart Hauptmann about Silesian weavers.
  • Ronaldo Servio (whose name doesn't remind you of Maffeo Servitore for nothing), who's got the most terrible reputation all over Italia Nuova.
  • "Keep your fingers off him, Consuela!" is a translated mondegreen of the German band Fettes Brot.
  • A German Jew named German Seinfeld who complains that he's arrested for nothing.
  • The way Ariel Ben-David got his name reminds of how a similar thing happened to Ephraim Kishon.
  • The anti-slavery activist Lauritz von Arguim is played by a Georg Götzner - reminding of RL German actor Götz George.
  • The firm Werstand refers to one German translation of R.U.R., where the titular firm was translated as this.
  • The first technocratic government of Germany has a technocrat for police named Schimanski and an experienced bureaucrat who is convinced he understands government work better than all of his chancellors named Alfred Neumann.
  • Two working class guys talking about stuff who sound very much like the Zomtec guys.
  • One Tyrolean partisan in this world's World War II, of all people, starting to channel Austrian fun rock band Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung.
  • Karl Beller is a very popular author of the German kids series "Theobald the Technician".
    • Sally Kohn is a Token Israeli member of the gang in said series. ^note The name was deliberately chosen to redeem it. In our world, The Nazis made a children's book with a Jewish scrappy bearing this very name. This world's Sally Kohn however is an accepted member of the group. Yes, the technocracy is a better dictature, at least in some ways, though still a dictature.
    • Also there is a real life Sally Kohn who is a liberal commentator on Fox News.
    • The title of "Theobald the Technician" reminds a bit of the story Ephraim Kishon writes in-story about a sponge.
  • Taktische Spiele Regensburg is a producer of Tabletop Games.
  • The name of one of the first men on the moon is Gorsky.
  • The Menschenhelfer scene was borrowed from the obscure book Schöne Grüße aus der Zukunft
  • A British professor advocates using more computer technology, to create a truly just society. His name is Kilian Houston, which were the middle names of John Brunner, author of the proto-Cyberpunk classic The Shockwave Rider.
  • Terramici are the environmentalists of this world - the same term used in Decades of Darkness. Except for the fact that it's Latin-based in DoD and Italian-based in Chaos.
  • Mokkers, the gang members of this timeline, have a similar name to the mukkers from Stand on Zanzibar.
  • The Rasac (Japanese-influences group of radical sceptics - so radical, they even doubt logic and science) are a Shout-Out to a story by Heinrich Böll (in abbrev only - the other Rasacs are short for "Rasante Sadisten Capotas" - Rapid Sadists of Capota]).
  • There also seems to be a counterpart of Discworld.
  • A Nipponese resistance group using a line from the Neon Genesis Evangelion Theme Song.
  • The supreme technocrat Slezak is a Shout-Out to the prime minister of Kurt Vonnegut's story "Report on the Barnhouse effect".
  • The last story begins deliberately similar as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  • Russian WWII general and dictator Gridenkov is a Shout-Out to an older AlternateHistory.com timeline - Fire Eagle, Snow Bear - which had a Russian dictator Gridenko fighting Germany which won (our world's) World War I. Also, one of right hand man of this timeline's Gridenkov, a guy named Belochvostikov, is known as "Stalin, The Man of Steel" (like a certain dude from our history about whom you might have heard of).
  • Another timeline, "A Plethora of Princes", is also Title Dropped, and its author Grey Wolf is hinted at.
  • Technische Hochschule Argentinien/Neustadt für Delizierung und Eisenverarbeitung
  • Other Members of AlternateHistory.com are also mentioned.
  • There's even a Shout-Out to a defunct German AH forum, i.e. two members of it. Chamberlain, von Schleicher, in case you're reading this, this means you.
• Show Within a Show: Several fictional works of art are mentioned by name (just fair for a story covering 800 years). Like the fantasy saga Midworld, from a New Albionese writer.
• Sliding Scale of Libertarianism and Authoritarianism: Slid from authoritarianism-moderate to most libertarian on a global scale in the wake of its Velvet Revolution. Citing the entry at GURPS wikia:
  "The Logos rule a world population of about 5.5 billions - a bit lower than in Homeline at the same time. The CR is now at 2, a great difference for the people who were used to C Rs of 4 or 5. Most taxes and other dues were abolished, except those on speculative profits (a world state can do effective controls), nanofactories, legal drugs and pollution. [...]"
• Slave Liberation: Done by Lauritz von Arguim.
• Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility: Type II, best explained by the author at the Wikia entry page.
• Space-Filling Empire: The New Roman Empire, Russia, the German technocracy. However, mostly avoided by introducing the eponymous "Chaos", vast areas of the world, esp. in Africa, where the governments change every few months and borders every few years.
• Spy Bot: The zanzara
• Stealth Pun: The standard dictionary for German is called "Plassen" after its creator. In our world, you'd use the "Duden" instead. ^note "Tuten und Blasen keine Ahnung" is a mediaeval German idiom, used to describe someone who has "no idea about tooting and blowing".
• Steampunk: Germany invents and deploys steam-driven tanks in this timeline's World War I. And wins. A fan made some pics.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Rum-Seljuks are basically Ottoman Turks on steroids. And they keep the name "Seljuks" instead of Turks or Turkey to the modern day.
• Take That!:
  • Berlin is an uninteresting medium-sized city. ^note So uninteresting that it's mostly known only for an ordinary all-girls technical school. "Lesbunien" ahoj!
  • Japan is a poor, underdeveloped protectorate of China.
  • Soka Gakkai is the name of an Al Qaida-like Japanese terrorist group.
• United Space of Germany: With a twist. Germany is THE superpower, comparable to our USA, and in their universe, there is a series of SF-novels (with a touch of technocracy government propaganda) named Ordo, so it's safe to assume that their space is ruled by a German technocracy. (Word of God.)
• Utopia: What the Logos try to achieve after they save the world from World War III and impose a new, peaceful world order on the Earth. Your mileage may vary if they succeed, but flash forward fifty years and there are people out there who think that world society has gone so wrong that they wish to leave it and live their ideals by emigrating into space.
• Vestigial Empire: A lot of the old European monarchies end this way.
  • New Rome, descending first into Greater Italy and eventually into five seperate Italian nations. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • The lands that once merged into the Union of the Old and New Russia eventually become, well, Russian Chaos.
  • The remaining British Empire's royal family flee to New Albion (New Zealand) after Britain turns republican it got worse and eventually socialist. A civil war over succession issues eventually rocks the country in the 1960s and effectively splits it in two, the South Island behind the resident Cloud Cuckoo Lander and the North Island behind a certain Elizabeth. (Not that Elizabeth, though.) Hoo boy.
• Wham Episode: Read for yourself. Three words: World War III.
• What If?: the development of medieval Europe, the Islamic world and China wasn't hampered by the Mongol invasion known to our history?
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Fynstr isn't that happy about the Utopia they helped create where people spend all their time doing parties. Tatjana and Topper are better off.
• The Wise Prince: Prince Harald of Denmark, who (re-)discovers America
• Why We Are Bummed Communism Fell: The premise of Samowar In Atlantis, if you replace "Communism fell" with "Logos striked".
• World War III: Appropriately at the end of the story.
• Worthy Opponent: Henry V of the Triple Monarchy of England-Castille-Portugal and François III of France, towards each other.
• You Have Failed Me: After the attack on the Summer Palace, the new Chinese emperor has several air controllers and air force officers executed "for neglecting their duties".* Warrior Prince: Prince Alasdair, later king Alexander of Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, and (shortly) elected king of Poland and Holy Roman Emperor.

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