Alternate Timeline Campaign

[Cassandra]

In 1898 an Alien race attempted to take over the Earth. They employed technology that was more advanced then the Humans, and introduced plantlife from their world into the Earth's ecosystem.

 

Despite overrunning much of the world, the Alien plan failed because they did not take into account the Earth microbiological life which infected the Aliens with disease, causing every member of the invasion force to die six days after the invasion began.

 

Some changes in the world because of the invasion.

 

1) The human population was reduced by about ten percent because of direct Alien action, and another fifteen percent in the aftermath. Because the invasion was worldwide, there was no advantage for any specific country.

 

2) The Alien plantlife died, but it's remains had an effect on the Earth's ecosystem. Certain individuals because exihibiting superhuman powers within one or two generations.

 

3) The Alien technology was examined and adapted by Humanity. The United States made greater use of the technology due to inventors like Edison, Marconi, and Tesla.

 

4) Because the invasion took place after the Spanish American War, and because of the vacuum created due to the damage done to the British Empire, the United States entered the World stage some twenty years earlier.

 

More to come and comments welcome

[Hermit]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

Well, I like the start of it, but then anything that mixes aliens and Tesla is okay in my book

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

Are you using H.G. Wells as the basis? If so, "War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches" would be a must read to show how the invasion affected other countries. Of course, it doesn't speak of the aftermath. I have lots of ideas about this, do you want to hear them or should I keep my big mouth shut?

[lemming]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

3) The Alien technology was examined and adapted by Humanity. The United States made greater use of the technology due to inventors like Edison, Marconi, and Tesla.

Marconi was Italian. Tesla wasn't born in the US, but did come over in 1894.

 

Other than that nitpick, sounds great.

 

WWI maybe different, but many of the roots to that conflict were from earlier times. And having the US enter the stage earlier may not make a huge difference, though maybe the isolationists wouldn't be as prevalent. That could cause The Philippines and Cuba to wind up becoming actual territories. Though the guerrillas in The Philippines would still be an issue.

[Wiz Kid]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

What a fun idea! I like taking modern tropes and plopping them into historical periods.

 

Because there's a lot of analogs between 1900 and 2000, I think that you may be able to play this out for a while.

[Alverant]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

I'm curious as to how this would affect the different societies. Did the world wars happen and if not did things like the Red Scare, sexual revolution, civil rights marches, etc still happen? What would be the effects on religious beliefs with not only the existence of aliens proven, but they were defeated by something many people considered demonic possession? Would other nations have risen to power? Would alien science have disproven notions like eugenics?

[Clonus]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

A balkan conflict ballooning out of control remains a likely event, since the network of alliances in Europe would probably be unchanged. Probably a little later, though because you want a full generation of fresh troops before you go shooting at each other again. How much the dynamics of the war change depends on how much alien junk they figure out in that 20+ years. Tripods could turn the western front into a war of mobility, one that the French would likely lose because the Germans had a good plan for attacking them that fell apart due to a lack of armoured vehicles. Given a speedy German victory in the west, since Russia would be likely to lag technologically, they'd also fall more quickly. A shorter more decisive war _might_ prevent the Bolsheviks from taking over, by letting the initial Russian parliamentary avoid being saddled with the prosecution of an unpopular war and keeping the Germans from shipping Lenin back to Russia. At least for a while.

 

But... It also means that Europe is going to be recapitulating the Napoleonic wars with the Kaiser in Napoleon's shoes, year after year of the Germans being unbeatable on the land while the British are unbeatable at sea, nibbling at the edges of German imperial power and other European nations rising up with British support. The death toll will be longer term and larger. Combined with the War of the Worlds death toll and emigration, we could be looking at European demographic collapse.

 

Then again they might not have figured out any of the Martian junk yet, and the effects would be much less dramatic. Maybe the United States stays out of the war because Anglophilic Woodrow Wilson is dead and the two sides have a negotiated peace instead of the surrender in OTL.

[lemming]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

Hmm. I think that the roots of the conflict in the Balkans would still happen, unless a couple of the key players were removed prior to 1914. Even then, the Balkans still had plenty of nationalism going on (well, pretty much all of Europe)

 

France still wants Alsace and Lorraine back, the forces that unified Germany and Italy, are working on the Balkans, especially with Turkey in a state of weakened power. Though maybe instead of 1914 being the trigger, Turkey, weakened even further by the Alien invasion, loses control of territories earlier. Of course, with the right combo of super powers that doesn't have to happen. The old man of europe turns out to have an ace up the sleeve.

 

Course, in the meantime, we have Japan in the midst of expansion and modernization. They grabbed Formosa and parts of manchuria in 1895. In 1898, Russia pressured china into leasing port arthur and other parts that Japan had claims to, but did not have the strength at the time. In 1904, they did and kicked russia out. Then in 1910, they subjugated Korea.

 

Good chance, that depending on the timing, Russia wouldn't of tried to get the eastern ports in 1898.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

In 1898 an Alien race attempted to take over the Earth. They employed technology that was more advanced then the Humans, and introduced plantlife from their world into the Earth's ecosystem.

 

Despite overrunning much of the world, the Alien plan failed because they did not take into account the Earth microbiological life which infected the Aliens with disease, causing every member of the invasion force to die six days after the invasion began.

 

Some changes in the world because of the invasion.

 

1) The human population was reduced by about ten percent because of direct Alien action, and another fifteen percent in the aftermath. Because the invasion was worldwide, there was no advantage for any specific country.

 

2) The Alien plantlife died, but it's remains had an effect on the Earth's ecosystem. Certain individuals because exihibiting superhuman powers within one or two generations.

 

3) The Alien technology was examined and adapted by Humanity. The United States made greater use of the technology due to inventors like Edison, Marconi, and Tesla.

 

4) Because the invasion took place after the Spanish American War, and because of the vacuum created due to the damage done to the British Empire, the United States entered the World stage some twenty years earlier.

 

More to come and comments welcome

 

Wow! Its my superhero campaign except I placed it on an imaginary planet, not Earth ( for more freedom) and the humans won because it was a Steampunk world with magic and magicians not because of microbes. I also had the aliens experimenting on people to produce some of the supers.

 

Needless to say I love the idea.

[McCoy]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

3) The Alien technology was examined and adapted by Humanity. The United States made greater use of the technology due to inventors like Edison' date=' Marconi, and Tesla.[/quote']

 

Marconi was Italian.

 

Yep. And Marconi and Tesla in the same room is going to generate a lot of heat but very little light. Tesla and Edison, not quite as bad.

 

In my worldline superscience begain with humans reverse-engineering the alien machines from the 1898 invasion and the Aurora "airship" that had crashed a year earlier. In addition to Edison and Tesla, major players included Clark Savage, Sr, and Testla's nephew and eventual heir Alexi Luthor. Captain John Carter of Virginia joined the project briefly before his disapperance. Most of what Carter thought he knew about radium and what the called "the 8th and 9th ray" was wrong, but it was wrong in a consistant enough way that Tesla was able to figure it out.

 

If you use the Aurora airship, it might have been a scout craft for the invasion. But in my timeline it was from a third species, totally unconnected with the 1898 invasion.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

excellent as usual

[Cassandra]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

The belief that the Aliens were Martians was based on a series of explosions that took place on the Red Planet during the invasion. The Viking probes in the 1970s disproved this assumption. The first Viking probe detected a massive radioactive area before landing, but contact was soon lost. The second probe, rebuilt to withstand higher radiation, landed in the middle of the wreckage of what seemed to be a huge cannon, and a line of cylinders ready to be fired. The third probe had a mobile explorer which examined the immediate area of the explosion, and discovered evidence of what had happed 80 years earlier.

 

There were a total of three supercannons that had been landed in three supercylinders. The had been set up, and the invasion force of 27 cylinders, each carrying three war tripods, was launched. There was to be a second and third wave, each of 27 cylinders as well. During the attempt to launch the second wave one of the cannons jammed, causing a chain reaction explosion that released deadly radiation, killing the entire remaining alien force. It is important to know that the Aliens were wearing breathing gear while on Mars, further proof that the Aliens were not native to our nearest neighbor.

[McCoy]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

It is important to know that the Aliens were wearing breathing gear while on Mars' date=' further proof that the Aliens were not native to our nearest neighbor.[/quote']

Or that they had grabbed emergency respirators (which proved ineffective) after the explosion, or that the launch process produced toxic or noxious emissions, or that their environment had deteriorated to the point that it could no longer sustain complex life.

 

And technically Venus is our nearest neighbor.

[Cassandra]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

The Cult of Mars

 

In Sept. 1901 President William McKinley became the first victim of the cult of Mars.

 

Although it was believed that the entire Alien invasion force had died from disease by the sixth day of the invasion, there were rumors that some of the creatures had escaped. The theory was that they somehow left their bodies and imhabited the minds of human victims. These individuals would then commit murders and other horrific crimes in an attempt to destablize society.

 

At the World's Fair in Buffalo, New York, Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley, who died six days later. Theodore Roosevelt, Hero of the Spanish American War, and who marched his Rough Riders across Cuba to battle the Alien forces near Havana. Although it took he force a week to reach the Cuban Capital, after the Aliens had died, his fame soon led to a political career. As Governor of New York, Roosevelt supervised the rebuilding of Manhattan, but made so many political enemies that those in the State Government sought a way to remove the popular governor. Vice President Garrett Hobart had died during the invasion, and Roosevelt was offered the Vice Presidency. Now three years after returning from Cuba he became President of the United States.

 

Czogosz admitted to killing McKinley, his reason McKinley's leadership during the war with the "Martians." The assassin's rambling testimony made it clear that Czogosz believed that human society was sick and evil, and the Aliens were a cleansing force meant to save the Earth from humanity. The entire trial took eight hours, and Czogosz was executed a month later

 

Although the best scientific minds of the era were convinced that all the Aliens were dead, President Roosevelt created the Bureau of Investigation to deal with any possibility of Alien sabotage of human society.

[Doc Shadow]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

I am intrigued by this. Please continue, madame.

[Cassandra]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

The Cult of Mars 2

 

In the aftermath of the Great War came The Martian Plague. As the fighting men from across the globe returned from the War to End All Wars, a mysterious disease began to infect millions of people. While medical professionals believes it to be based on influenza, the public at large was convinced that the cause was a weapon left behind by the Martians, and used by their worshipers.

 

The death of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in 1919, who was considered the front runner for the 1920 Presidental Election, convinced many that the plague was deliberate. The take over of Russia by Lenin and his Communist movement was seen by many in the West as an action of pro-martian anarchy. The term "Red Menace" began to have a dual meaning.

[Yansuf]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

The Cult of Mars 2

 

In the aftermath of the Great War came The Martian Plague. As the fighting men from across the globe returned from the War to End All Wars, a mysterious disease began to infect millions of people. While medical professionals believes it to be based on influenza, the public at large was convinced that the cause was a weapon left behind by the Martians, and used by their worshipers.

 

The death of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in 1919, who was considered the front runner for the 1920 Presidental Election, convinced many that the plague was deliberate. The take over of Russia by Lenin and his Communist movement was seen by many in the West as an action of pro-martian anarchy. The term "Red Menace" began to have a dual meaning.

 

Now this I like!

[Cassandra]

Re: Alternate Timeline Campaign

 

The Cult of Mars 3

 

In the aftermath of the Great War and the Martian Plague an attempt was made to prevent Russia from going "Red." The War-Weary governments lacked the willpower, resources, or popular support to prevent the Communist from taking power. Leon Trotsky escaped from the Soviet Union, and claimed that the Martian influence had caused his fall from power, and had corrupted Marxism. U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer advanced the theory that the Martians had sent agents to Earth to pave the way for the invasion, and that they had influenced Karl Marx into creating an ideaology that would make humans susceptible to Martian influence.

 

Palmer's views were later confirmed by information coming J. Edgar Hoover, head of the General Intelligence Division of the Justice Department. Hoover had been gathering information on "Martian Radical" elements, and predicted that those forces would strike on May Day, 1920.