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Aztec Wank

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A world with some rather improbable success on the part of the Aztecs - but bear with me, it's based on one of the worlds from "alternate history travel guides" and there are limits on how far I can bend the source material.

It is a world in which earlier and more intermittent contacts with the Old World allowed the Native American civilizations to pick up enough tech (and survive enough plagues) to manage to survive the eventual full onset. The strongest power grouping in this world is the alliance between the Mexica Empire and the British North Americans. The Mexica Empire extends from OTL Panama north to Alaska and east as far as the Mississippi-Missouri line. Three small mixed-race-native American states form buffers from southern Canada to the Savannah River: Canada east of Regina, Saskatchewan and the US east of a line roughly Chicago-Knoxville-Charleston is the Republic of West England. They are the principal opponents in the global “great game” against the Romanian-Pacific Chinese alliance.

The Romanian Empire, arising from the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in the New Crusades of the 17th century, was originally a fief of the French Empire, but soon managed to become a regional power in its own right, by the 19th century bringing most of the Orthodox Balkans under its control. After the horrific War of Empires at the start of the 20th century, the Empire took advantage of the revolutionary chaos that followed to expand enormously: unable to contain so vast a territory by conventional absolutist-monarchy means, the Emperor was eventually reduced to as vassal of the Unity Party, a *fascist party different from OTLs Fascists in that they lacked racial discrimination: if you were Orthodox you were in, and eventually everyone in Europe would be Orthodox and a member of the Unity Party. Today, all the Balkans, much of OTL Anatolia, and the Ukraine are run from Bucharest with an iron fist: the states of western Russia (Russia broke up in the 17th century ATL) are kept weak and disunited puppets. Only Poland-Sweden (in this TL, Sweden is still Catholic) of its neighbors remains strong enough to avoid at minimum Finlandization. (Venice is simply too corrupt and its leadership too slippery to manipulate subtly, and too valuable as a place to do shady business to actually invade).

China is currently divided in three parts: Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, Russified and mostly converted to Orthodoxy by the East Russians: the Councils of Civilized Order, controlling the bulk of OTL China and Tibet: and the southern coasts, which are ruled by the Pacific Chinese, descendants of the Ming who fled overseas. Nowadays, from a capital in OTLs Philippines, the sea-Chinese rule south coastal China, Indonesia, Malaysia, northern Australia, New Zealand, and all the isles of the Pacific. They are not interested in re-conquest of impoverished, backwards China proper, presently ruled by revolutionary committee after the long, bloody collapse of the old Zuo dynasty: they have developed their own, mercantile culture, have interbred with the Malays and the Polynesians, come to wear light and colorful clothes and abandoned examinations on the Classics, although they still revere Confucius, along with the Buddha and the gods of the sea. Old China would be a milestone around their necks. The oligarchic dictatorship which rules has a place in its plans for the ancient homeland, but that is for the future.

Europe is mostly dictatorships of one kind or another. The Franco-Italian dictatorship and its Spanish puppet are allied to Bucharest, while the Anglo-Danish monarchy is a corrupt police state which requires either connections or a load of bribes to navigate. Fragmented Germany is bullied and terrorized by the French and the Romanians. Eastern South America, settled by the French and the Portuguese, is actually one of the more civilized parts of the globe: France-Antarctique is a working democracy, if not a power of the first rank, and has less oppressive security laws than West England. Western South America is an Inca state, a Pacific Chinese ally since they gained their independence from their Mexica overlords as a result of the Pacific War.

Some Mexica fashions, such as the jeweled nose-plug, have spread to their European allies and even Europe itself (although the roasted grasshoppers on popcorn have never really caught on). In other cultural fashions, Christopher Marlowe lived until 1630 and did very well indeed, while Shakespeare never seems to have amounted to anything. It is a harsh world: the Aztecs still do the human sacrifice thing, if not on the industrial level of old, and 'cruel and unusual' punishment remains the norm in Europe. The chemically preserved and mutilated bodies of criminals, nailed up on steel crosses, are a normal part of life in the Big City, whether London-on-the-Hudson or Greater Paris. (The Romanians prefer to put them in large transparent jars of alcohol: more sanitary). West England is a democracy, of sorts, but there are substantial economic requirements for voting, social mobility is low, and it is also a 'security state' that would make John Ashcroft swoon with delight. (Really, aside from the human sacrifice, the Mexica Empire has fairer and more humane laws).

Although a lot of Mexica now follow Christianity or Buddhism, the old religion is still followed by most. If criminals and volunteers for sacrifices are in short supply – and they usually are, these days – many people deed their bodies to serve as stand-ins for a live sacrifice in much the way people OTL fill out organ donor cards. Many temples now include shrines to Christ and the Buddha – most Aztecs feel you should show some respect for other people’s gods.

Islam has done poorly in this world: between the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish conquest (and brute-force conversion) of Northwest Africa, and the distinctly anti-Islamic nature of the Chinese conquerors of Indonesia, it covers less of the world than OTL: only Persia is a major power, having conquered much of Central Asia and Iraq in the absence of Russian and Ottoman competition, and has moved a long ways towards modernity on the basis of a sea of oil. India, long struggled over between the French and the British, is currently divided between French-controlled territory and the West-England protectorate of the Ganges Confederation.

Technology is more advanced than OTL, with high-definition 3-d television, excellent 'drain-cleaner' meds for those pesky arteries, multiple landings on Mars, and bases on the Moon. Of late, thanks to the rise of a new, reformist group in the Pacific Chinese government, (and some realization on the part of Bucharest that the whole 'star wars' missile defense thing was harder than it had first looked) the world has been taking some slow, cautious steps away from global thermonuclear warfare…
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