A Special Providence

[J. Passepartout]

Frost would have been foolish not to gather up everything useful she could think of before she closed the connection to the future, or to retain a private connection if that is possible and she thought it a reasonable risk to take, so I am afraid the villains are going to be in rather better circumstances in that regard when we meet them. Our heroes should milk their remaining futuristic material as long as they can and in such a manner to make sure local timeline politics is favourable, if they can wrangle it.

I assume you have read Asimov's The End of Eternity? His best work of fiction, in my opinion, although not as well known as far as I can tell.

[Vann the Red]

Hmmm.... Thought provoking. As soon as they headed out to sea, I suspected we'd learn the origins of the sea monster sightings along the Carolina seaboard. Had not though of the name until the introduction, though.

Will this be a US World Conquest AAR with Frost as the power behind the throne and our intrepid heroes trying to stop it?

Vann

[Director]

coz1 - I thought the explanation for the sub wasn't too 'outre'. And if you have a secret submarine you almost have to have Captain Nemo...r.

You have a good point about the names. But we have only five major characters:

Donneval Makhearne, now called Phillip Sinclair; Sword of the Knights Temporal, AKA 'The Axe'
Feric Ronsend, now called Henry Allison; intern
Mattais Nemor, Knight and captain of the submarine ‘Argonauta’.

Kierianne Frost, now called Charlotte Ravenal; former Sword and assassin of the Knights Temporal, AKA 'The Killing Frost'
Temic Messoune, now called Charles Ravenal; former Knight

As the years go by and they take different aliases I will try to make certain the readers know who is who.

The Knights aren't everywhere - there aren't that many of them - but they could be anywhere. So you could indeed buy a paper from one...

Stuyvesant - ideally the Knights would prefer to traffic in rarities, luxuries, odd inventions, intellectual properties and the like. But trade requires security - the Knights think of the timelines as a sort of large farm, scientifically managed for their benefit. Screwing up the past is absolutely prohibited... because no-one knows what might happen.

Controlling a planet with just two people isn't possible. Of course, Frost is probably crazy... but she believes she can recruit and influence enough people to allow her to impose a certain vision upon the US and the world.

Rensslaer - I was googling around under Victorian woman portrait or some such thing and... there she was! As soon as I saw it I knew it was her. I apologize for the angle - the portrait was photographed while hanging on a wall, I think. You are correct about the eyes... infinite pleasure and ultimate malice reside therein.

Estonianzulu - We can assume that someone had to assist Frost (or at least refrain from stopping her). But it is hard to see what anyone else gains. The effect on the Knight homeworld would be rather like a total shutdown of electronics in our world. And if conveyor transport is ever restored, what would the survivors find?

TheExecuter - the next update will be tonight. I've been tinkering with V:R just a tad.

Stuyvesant - no, Tunguska has a different explanation.

J. Passepartout - there are no working timeline conveyors and can be none while the jamming is in effect. Frost made what preparations she could, but did not dare to do much for fear of attracting attention from the Knights. Remember she had already tried to alter a timeline once and had been stopped.

Yes, controlling - or attempting to control - national politics will be the easiest way for such a small number of people to make a difference.

Vann the Red - I haven't played the game all the way out so I cannot say what will happen. I do think it is unlikely that I would try for a World Conquest. Historically the US has maintained an empire of commerce, wealth, culture and influence.

[Vann the Red]

Oh, I completely agree, Director, but I'm wondering what Frost plans. The only reason I can come up with for sealing off this timeline is to make it her personal playground. Given what little we know about her so far, that could mean her personal world to rule.

Vann

[Director]

The next post is turning out to be somewhat long and it isn't quite ready yet. Here is a teaser. Hopefully, more tomorrow.

[Director]

Makhearne patted a corner of his nouth with his napkin. “Excellent, Mattias. Please, give my compliments to Allain. He has outdone himself, again.”

“Fresh tuna is not difficult for us to come by.” Nemor smiled. “But a chef such as Allain is a pearl beyond price, I agree.” He sipped his wine. “We cannot indulge in a postprandial cigar, I regret, while we are submerged. Perhaps a brandy in the salon, instead?”

They passed through an open hatchway to the chamber beyond. As large as the dining hall, or larger, it was tastefully carpeted, paneled and furnished. Shelves of books lined the walls on either side of a holographic fireplace. The side curtains were drawn open, revealing what appeared to be windows into the ocean. “Our sonar gear translates what it hears into pixels for our eyes,” Nemor explained. “At this depth, windows would reveal nothing but blackness. But please, be seated.” He stepped to the bar opposite the fireplace and set out three snifters for brandy.

Returning, he handed a glass to the other men and took his own seat. “Now, Donneval, have you some idea as to where you will go, and what you will do there?”

Makhearne dipped his beak into the snifter, swirled its contents and drank contentedly. “I was working out of New York City. We should look over that house; there are some items in the cellar that would be useful, I believe.”

“Someone may have already visited it, or be waiting in case you return.” Nemor’s dark eyes glittered over the amber pool in the bottom of his glass.

“I hope they have,” Makhearne said with feeling. “They’ll get a surprise, I think. But we can’t stay there. Even New York City isn’t large enough for us to avoid discovery. Best I think if we go ashore, take what we need and then… Europe, perhaps.”

“Europe?” Allison said incredulously. “You can’t mean to just sail away and let her win!”

Makhearne set his snifter on a side table with a thump. “Listen, Ronsend, you’ve had a few shocks in the last week, and I’m sorry for that. But even if your training was purely academic, you can’t have forgotten all of it! What is the hardest part of any agent’s mission?”

The young man flushed. “Fitting in,” he mumbled.

“Correct. Accent, manners, current issues and events, customs, sports, slang – you can’t get them all perfectly right all of the time. Money and influence are essential to your mission, but you can’t just mysteriously appear with them. The wealthy and influential form a very small circle in every nation, and they all know everything about each other including whose aunts and grandfathers knew each other, and when, and how.”

“Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty,” Nemor said, seemingly apropos of nothing. “The more precisely you know an electron’s location the less certain you can be of its vector. In our situation, the more influence you exert the less anonymous you can remain.”

Makhearne nodded vigorously. “And anonymity is what we need just now. Frost has burned her bridges, too. No doubt Charles and Charlotte Ravenal will be found to have perished in the fire. Or if not, she will still need to organize and recruit. We must do the same.”

“In Europe?”

“The great virtue of the American republic, on the timelines in which it exists, is that it grows so rapidly that people ask few questions of foreigners. We will go to Europe for now. There is always room for a few more impoverished Italian cavalieri or barones. Or we can be petty German nobles – or even Poles. As long as we stay in England or France, and have some ready money, we can pass. Then we will return to America.”

Nemor set his own snifter aside. “You are convinced that Frost has designs on America?”

“It is not a powerful country now, but the demographics are clear. With immigration, population growth and a continent’s resources, it will become a mighty power. It is young now, and weak, and can be shaped with relative ease.”

“And what shape will that be?”

“I do not know. But I believe Frost will show us… and I do not expect to like what I see.”

[TheExecuter]

And the plan begins to take shape. Still not exactly sure how everything will go...but thats the fun of reading!

I like how you use the apprentice as your 'Dr. Watson'...gives us average blokes some idea of whats going on...not being time-line keepers ourselves...

Keep up the good work!
TheExecuter

[Nil-The-Frogg]

Director I thought that by now, you'd warn me when starting a new AAR, so that I could subscribe ASAP. Oh well, I wasn't home, anyway. I should catch up tomorrow or the day after.

Pointing at the good parts would be unpractical because there's no point in quoting almost the whole story, or is there? So, I'll nitpick instead

This:

“What you don’t see is that I can’t be of much help to you. We have some specie and gems on hand, and the ‘Argonauta’ is a transportation fit for a king. But she will wear down and give out, in years and not decades. We three will live on long after my poor ship shuts down.”

sounds more like the author's worries about plausibility and contingencies than like what would be said in a first conversation, right after a deal has been sealed... But then, they are time travelers accustomed to think about that sort of things all the time, so here we go.

Edit: Okay, caught up and looking forward to see how each team deploys its assets and develops its strategy. Oh, and I must agree with J. Passepartout: The End of Eternity really is a good book.

[J. Passepartout]

England would be better, methinks... Imperial resources to draw upon, whereas France is weaker.

[Director]

I must have forgotten to say that I agree with Passepartout. Though it has been many years since I read it, I remember 'End of Eternity' fondly.

Readers would do well to pick up H Beam Piper's 'Paratime' series, including the novel 'Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen'. In his day Piper compared well to Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. Sadly his life and career were ended by his own hand.

[Stuyvesant]

Passepartout: I don't think our intrepid adventurers are going to France or Britain to take control of that nation and do Battle Royale with a Frost-helmed USA (though that could be a fun story, too, methinks ), to me it sounds like Makhearne and Ronsend will merely stay long enough to build up a plausible cover for when they return States-side. If that's the case, they can go pretty much anywhere and their effect on said country will be negligible. Sounds like a good plan, might however mean that we'll have to wait a few years longer before we see any obvious gameplay-related events pop up in the story.

Director, such a sumptuous submarine! I can only hope she won't be blown out of the water by an early twentieth-century destroyer. That would be a sad way to go for that dining room, that library...

[CatKnight]

Director: Just now found this. Excellent so far!! I'm just not sure who I'm rooting for yet.

You built up the setting (explaining time travel etc.) nicely and introduced us to some compelling characters. All I can say is "More!"

[Director]

The United States in 1836

The United States of America in 1837 could almost be said not to be a nation, at least in the sense that Europeans understood such entities. Instead of thinking of the centralized state it might one day become, it may be useful to visualize the United States as a collection of regions, loosely confederated, sharing commonalities of language, religion, customs, governance and recent history. Let us consider these regions separately before attempting to comprehend the larger issues.

New England, in the far north of the Atlantic coast, is the heartland of old English Puritan settlement. Dour and hardworking, the people of this region have turned from the stony and unproductive soil to new pursuits: rum, seafaring, ice and industry, to mention a few. As of 1836 the rum, sugar and slave trades are dying away, replaced by whaling, shipping and a broad range of manufactures, chief among which is the mass-production of cotton cloth. Profits are thriftily reinvested in roads, schools and banks. Politically the region tends to support the Whigs and leans toward internal improvement and away from western expansion.

The Mid-Atlantic region is centered upon the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. New York City and Philadelphia are among the larger English-speaking cities on the planet, not as grand as London but comparable to mid-rank cities like Bristol and Birmingham. Industry is not the force it will later come to be; small-holding farms are the preferred livelihood for the majority of the population. Despite the discovery of vast coal fields and iron ore deposits, American industry remains centered on the small craftman’s workshop. Unable to compete in price or quality with wares from Britain, the region has strong support for the Protective Tariff. The port cities serve as gateways for travel west, either by water up the Hudson River and Erie Canal or overland along the Susquehana River to the headwaters of the Ohio River. The people are more likely to be descended from Dutch, Scot or Irish stock and tend to be less pious and harder-drinking than their New England neighbors.

The Upper South centers on Virginia, though it extends as far as Georgia. By culture and inclination the planter aristocracy patterns itself after the titled nobility of England. The religion of choice is high-church Anglican, directly related to the Church of England. Here plantation agriculture is the norm and slavery is well established. Old crops of indigo, rice and tobacco have given way to cotton, which has exhausted the soil and brought a number of fine old families to near-ruin. Some of these have returned to planting other crops; some profit from the banning of the slave trade by selling field hands to the new plantations in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Manufacturing nothing and dependent upon staple crops, the South bitterly resents the Tariff, desires low taxes and expenditures by government, depends on cheap and easy credit, and refuses to support any federally-funded internal improvements outside the Southern region. In general the South has been opposed to western expansion, but the market for slaves in the Gulf States is causing many planters to rethink their position on the issue.

In all three Atlantic regions the population density is greatest at the seashore and thins rapidly with each mile traveled inland. New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and to a lesser degree Baltimore offer many of the amenities of European cities, but outside their limits lie only scattered villages and isolated farms. By the time a traveler reaches the Appalachian mountains he might journey for days without encountering a single farmstead. Population increases again in Ohio, especially along the waterways of the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, and decreases with each westward mile until the frontier of the Missouri River is reached. Without the city of St Louis – scarcely five thousand strong – Missouri would not qualify for statehood. And beyond Missouri lies a country almost unknown to Europeans.

The Gulf South is new, raw and rapidly becoming impatiently rich; the sole exception is Louisiana, which is old, corrupt, rich and indolent in the crescent around New Orleans. Elsewhere in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and the northern half of Louisiana a man may hack a field from a forest, raise up a crop of cotton and in five years be a lord in a manor house overseeing hundreds of acres and nearly as many slaves. Many of these nouveau-riche planters are in debt to their eyes, but they build extravagant homes and live like kings. In a decade or so, when the cotton has leached the soil of nutrients, they will move west in search of new land and a new fortune. These are the men who agitate for the westward expansion of slavery.

The states that are emerging from the old Northwest Territory – Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and to a degree Kentucky and Tennessee – are peopled by a mix of small farmers, craftsmen and townsfolk. Whether the economy is based on wheat and cattle or hogs and corn, the people are quietly and modestly prosperous. The great exceptions are the cities of Chicago and St Louis, both hubs of water-borne transportation and passageways for immigrants streaming farther west. These are rough, raw places – frontier boom towns where incomparable fortunes are daily made and lost.

Immigrants flowing up the Hudson River and Erie Canal can embark on ships at a number of Great Lakes ports. From there they can venture into the unclaimed vastness of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Peopled largely by hardy Scandinavians and Germans, this region is growing rapidly and will soon be split into new states. Politically and socially the inhabitants have most in common with the residents of northern Ohio and Illinois.

West of Missouri stretches the Great American Desert; a vast plain of sod so deeply rooted in grass that no plow can break it. Uncrossed by any major river this enormous tract rolls west to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Expectations are that this region – perhaps as large as the entire settled United States – will remain undeveloped as a reservation for the indigenous Indian tribes. Passage across it to the fertile coast of Oregon is dangerous and uncertain.

Politically the nation is divided along economic but not regional lines: both Whigs and Democrats (or National Republicans and Democrat Republicans) are to be found in every state and region of the country.

The Whigs were born as an opposition party to counter the Democratic party machine and the administration of Andrew Jackson. As such they are less a coherent political party than a loose coalition of interests that can be mobilized around a few core issues. They approve of modest, restrained growth and oppose rapid westward expansion, fearing the centrifugal forces thus unleashed would rip the country apart. A national bank to control and regulate credit is highly esteemed by Whigs, as are a high price for the sale of public land in the west and the use of federal funds derived from land sales and the high tariff for road construction, harbor improvements and other public works. Henry Clay’s American System (see also) is the heart, soul and Holy Text of the American Whigs.

For more than a decade the Democratic party has been on the rise and it shows little evidence of impending decline. Given voice and heart by Andrew Jackson, the Democrats are the small-government party of the frontier: no national bank, easy credit, cheap or free public land, little or no tariff, rapid westward expansion and little if any expenditure by the government. Many of the measures enacted by the Jackson administration have rebounded to contrary effect from that which was intended. The destruction of the Bank of the United States was one such, as it brought on the grave economic depression that led voters to turn away from Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Martin Van Buren.

Still, the incoming Clay administration will have a difficult time accomplishing its goals, for the House of Representatives retains a Democratic majority, and in the Senate the Whig coalition is thin and delicate. In the years to come, no-one can doubt that the fabled powers of the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, will be sorely tested.

Cited from the databases of the Knights Temporal, reference: Successful American Revolution Timeline, Second Generation After Founding, General Information.

[Director]

TheExecuter - you caught me. I have a lot of exposition, explanation and background that readers will find handy, so having the characters explain things to a relative 'noob' is a time-honored trick.

Nil-The-Frogg - Hi Nil! I've read a bit of your new EU3 AAR but not enough to comment yet. Good to see you still 'hopping' around... and I am very pleased to have you drop by for a look-see.

Your nit is well picked, but... see the above comment. There is a lot that needs explaining and I don't think I can get away with the use of throwaway pseudo-science (as in 'Frontier'). This is supposed to be real history.

Stuyvesant - I honestly don't know what will happen to the 'Argonauta', but readers should not expect a replay of '20,000 Leagues' or the 'Mysterious Island'.

You are correct in assuming the battle will be for control of the United States. Victorian Britain is a more powerful lever but gaining influence in the governing elite is extremely difficult for outsiders. By comparison, influencing events in the US will be easy.

CatKnight - Hi CatKnight! Thank you very much for stopping by - I've missed your writing and hope you will get back up to speed before too much longer.

You should prepare yourself - this AAR could well be electro-shock therapy for those of us who know our American (and world) history. I'm playing for 'plausibility' here, and let the chips fall where they may!

[coz1]

Interesting. I like how you did that history portion. Very detailed and helps to give a feel for the country as it slips into ahistoricity.

And the scene above was done well. Hiding in Europe to build a cover should work easily, I would think. Then come back and be the darlings of the social scene. After all - who doesn't like a Polish Count?

[J. Passepartout]

Passepartout: I don't think our intrepid adventurers are going to France or Britain to take control of that nation and do Battle Royale with a Frost-helmed USA (though that could be a fun story, too, methinks ), to me it sounds like Makhearne and Ronsend will merely stay long enough to build up a plausible cover for when they return States-side. If that's the case, they can go pretty much anywhere and their effect on said country will be negligible. Sounds like a good plan, might however mean that we'll have to wait a few years longer before we see any obvious gameplay-related events pop up in the story.

I don't think so either. I just think Britain is a better place for establishing one's self, considering 1848, 1870, and so forth... although it all depends on how much time our heroes need, I suppose.

Nice overview, Director. Clay could easily head towards greatness or disaster, although I note he is refered to as the Great Compromiser, still. We shall see if this is merely a reference to most timelines, or all of them.

[Nil-The-Frogg]

'hopping'

Thank you to correct me on this. I don't even know how many times I've written it. No way to track them all.

I'm generally not fond of history-book style AARs, but I humbly admit that this piece is a nice way to set the scene and present probable future issues. As to point to variations compared to real history... Does it give you a hint if I explain that I'd have to check the web to even know that Clay wasn't elected president? From your description, I think I'd have voted for the whigs. Oh, it was not the point? As to the AAR, nothing to do with the never ending first one: it's a collaborative non narrative piece.

[Mettermrck]

Sounds like I slipped into the theater just in time to catch the end of the previews. I look forward to your main feature with great interest, Director!

[Contradiction]

*snip*The civilization that spawned the Knights Temporal has such a metaphor for their expansive realm: Yggdrasil*snip snip*

Is Yggdrasil actually something from history or did you play a lot of StarCraft?

Btw cool AAR, and I knew "The Axe" was his nickname

I just wonder...If Frost's goal will be to take control of America, then how will you then play the game? you'd have to be the bad guy, and you'll have to shape the game to your story...

Edit: Oh and I knew the Knights Temporal sounded an awful lot like the Knights Templar (though perhaps I associate them with the masons way more than I should)

[Nil-The-Frogg]

Is Yggdrasil actually something from history or did you play a lot of StarCraft?

Scandinavian mythology.