Yeah, by virtue of the Goa'uld literally killing everybody else first, the galaxy will be eating tacos now (maybe).
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Picking up the Pieces
As 2007 came around, humanity had to pick up the pieces of its once proud civilization. China and Prussia immediately began building more spaceships to take the fight to the Goa’uld, but it was Mexico and Australia that got to them first, developing nuclear weapons and hyperspace travel in rapid succession after reverse-engineering Goa’uld technology and sending their own SN teams off-world by February; Siberia and Lithuania followed shortly. The System Lords Cronus and Ares were killed by the same Siberian nuke in March. By April, Lithuanian and Polish hussars were rampaging across Dakara, a sacred planet for the already demoralized Jaffa warriors, and Lithuania secured access to a superweapon there, the most powerful Ancient weapon in the galaxy (luckily they did not know how to use it). By summer of 2007, Mexico and Australia had established permanent colonies on other worlds, mainly military bases. Argentina and Lithuania began raiding Goa’uld planets, searching for missing Earth civilians. They found thousands of them at a time, spread out throughout the cosmos, some who had even forgot their origins in the short timeframe since the invasion due to the Goa’uld’s success at culture conversion. The nations of Earth could not cope with millions of liberated slaves returning to their lands at a time, causing several complications.
By the time China recovered its stargate from the Empire of Pacifica after months of negotiations and the sale of a Zheng He-class spacecraft carrier and sent a team through to a random planet, the people they encountered there ate tacos for dinner.
On Earth, reconstruction continued. Constantinople was rebuilt by a joint Greek and Turkish effort in July, but the cost was enormous, driving both nations into immense debt which Prussia could hardly help out with. Mitteleuropa collapsed later that month due to the economic crisis that gripped the Balkans but mainly to the combined efforts of Austria and the German states, not wanting Prussian economic hegemony. It seemed that the economy would not return to normal in a long time, with the stock markets destroyed and all major currencies burned in Goa’uld incinerators. Sophia wisely decided against rebuilding Northern China, as that would similarly empty the treasury and destroy the Chinese economy.
Efforts at Prussian expansion into former Reich territories were met with failure, as the other city-states banded together under the leadership of Bohemia and Bavaria to fight off the Prussian Kaiser, being highly protective of their independence. The Habsburgs began asserting regional power over the German states, seeking to reunite Germany before the Hohenzollerns did, but also meeting with failure. Meanwhile, France was careful not to interfere in the madness that was Central Europe.
In France, the Bourbons reigned supreme, as the Napoleonic dynasty had also been exterminated by the Goa’uld in 2006. The Bourbons were liberal and instituted a constitutional monarchy to increase relations with England and Scotland, to the shock of Prussia. When the people in the south rebelled and set up a Kingdom of Aquitaine, Paris responded by nuking all of the major cities in Aquitaine, asserting control over the region.
In space, the Jaffa slaves started a revolution against the Goa’uld Empire, overwhelming the surviving System Lords and their exhausted levies. Each planet or star system declared its independence from the Empire, with human and Jaffa kingdoms, republics, dictatorships, and empires popping up across the galaxy. Many of those planets had substantial Earth populations, and the Earth humans there attempted to make contact with their lost homeland.
Seeing how the Empire was being picked apart by slaves, Lithuanians, and Siberians, of all of the people to destroy an empire, King Harold of England (the only surviving member of the English royal family) ordered an excavation of Glastonbury Tor after hearing rumors of treasure and Ancient technology buried there. He hoped to use the treasure to reinvigorate the English and world economies. After a week of digging in the mound, in which dozens of men were killed by a holographic Black Knight which was ultimately defeated by a random recruit named Arthur who could also pull swords out of stones, the English Army found a trove of gold and other precious items, as well as ten-thousand year old books written in Ancient detailing the whereabouts of Lost City; a holographic message from the Ancient Merlin stated that Arthur was the rightful king of England, being descended from the legendary King Arthur. Harold was promptly forced to abdicate in favor of Arthur, who ascended the throne as King Arthur II.
The Great Powers convened in Geneva to discuss the Lost City in September of 2007. It was agreed that a multinational team of scientists and soldiers, led by Prussian and Chinese officers, would go through the Chinese gate to the Lost City, now known as Atlantis and hidden in another galaxy. They would not be heard from again for a year. When contact was finally reestablished when a Zheng He-class arrived in the Pegasus Galaxy, Earth found out that they had accidentally unleashed a human-derived alien species that fed off the metabolism of humans. Despite this, the Prussians and Chinese were actually winning…somewhat.
Canada fell from Great Power status due to its failing economy and the fact that millions were immigrating across the border to America, which tried desperately to keep deporting the Canadians back. Canada was replaced with the Empire of Pacifica, which proclaimed itself fully independent from China and began aggressively expanding in space using the infrastructure that the Chinese had built.
The colonies that Pacifica established throughout the galaxy sparked a “Scramble for Space,” something like the Scramble for Africa except in space. Some Great Powers declared war on the planets and star systems that had gained independence in the aftermath of the destruction of Anubis’s empire, absorbing them into a growing Earth empire or making them satellites (no actual pun intended). Others decided on colonizing uninhabited planets and establishing peaceful relations with locals.
Despite Yu’s promise to leave Earth alone, a horde of space Mongols descended upon his capital planet, sacking all of his cities and capturing the System Lord. The Siberian khan, the self-proclaimed Khagan of a restored Mongol Empire, then poured molten gold down Yu’s throat and eyes, killing him and his host. Yu's First Prime Oshu, a human clone of the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu and Yu's chosen non-Goa'uld successor, then negotiated an agreement with Sophia: he would outlaw slavery in his realm and reform his government along Chinese lines in exchange for protection from the Mongols. He proposed to marry Sophia to seal the alliance, but Sophia refused, everything else being enough.
When Siberia was officially renamed the “Mongol Empire,” the Khagan launched an invasion of the Chinese Empire to reclaim Mongolia, which they won in two weeks due to the Chinese army being practically nonexistent. The Mongols also seized the entirety of Manchuria and Xinjiang from Sophia, subjugating and annexing the Central Asian Empire. With that done, they turned to Europe and the Middle East again, nuking Baghdad, Esfahan, and Moscow. By the spring of 2008 the Mongols had annexed Arabia, Israel, Persia, and Afghanistan and had forced the Tsar to swear fealty to the Khagan.
As nobody but the Mongols wanted a repeat of the Mongol conquests of the 13th century, the Great Powers banded together to defeat the mad Khagan once and for all. The Chinese Celestial Fleet and the Prussian Space Fleet bombarded Mongol-occupied territories from orbit as Prussian and Chinese troops marched into Russia and Siberia. The Mongol space fleets then dropped out of hyperspace and engaged the Prussians and Chinese in a huge battle around the planet, with all three fleets being practically destroyed in the end. By the end of 2008, the Mongol Empire had surrendered all of its territory on Earth, but the Khagan and his loyal hordes escaped into the stars to their colonial possessions, where they constantly raided other nations’ colonies.
With the Mongol threat on Earth eliminated for now, China took back all of its Siberian territories that were lost during the invasion, boosting its population up slightly. The Central Asian states were also annexed, and China regained its pre-invasion borders.
The Prussian General Staff turned its fleet on the rest of the German minors after noticing a lapse in the Bavarian and Bohemian defenses, nuking the vast majority of them (except for Bohemia) into submission; the Kaiser then ordered the same to be done to the French, who instantly ceded Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia, not wanting to be annihilated in a nuclear strike. On January 18, 2008, Kaiser Wilhelm III was recrowned German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. His first order as German Emperor was to invade Poland and Lithuania after secretly negotiating an alliance with Russia. German panzers and Russian jets smashed through all resistance, and the two nations were partitioned between the Germans and Russians on October 24, 2008.
The Poles and Lithuanians retreated to their joint colony on Dakara, where they joined together as a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in exile.
With Central Europe united under the Hohenzollerns again, the Habsburgs became alarmed. Using the few spaceships they had, they conducted orbital bombardments of Bohemia and Czechoslovakia, which surrendered to Vienna by November 2008. In a national referendum (that was slightly rigged by the Habsburgs), the Hungarian people voted to join Austria in a new Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Habsburgs then invaded the Balkan states that had sprung up in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, annexing them effortlessly, before seizing Istria and South Tirol from the Italian minors.
Catalonia managed to buy a Bismarck-class battleship from Germany, and it was used to nuke the other Spanish states into submission, with the Catalonian king declaring himself the king of a reborn Spain and moving his capital to Madrid.
The Pope staged a coup against the King of Italy, who was still in the civil war with President Berlusconi of the Republic of Italy, and forced both of them to swear fealty to him, with the King forced to switch roles with the Pope. In a series of speeches addressed to the Italians of the world, he urged them all to reunite under his guidance, in order to not repeat the mistakes of the previous Kingdom of Italy. He advocated for spreading the Gospel into the stars, where Jaffa had been searching for a belief system to replace their false Goa’uld gods.
In April of 2009, the peoples of Sardinia, Piedmont, Naples, and Sicily voted to become a part of the “Italian Kingdom of God” under the guidance of the Pope, with the King of Italy ruling from a small enclave in Rome next to the Vatican.
Meanwhile, Sophia got married to a Chinese refugee from the famous Wong family she met at the Alpha Site, and when the television networks were finally restored that year, the first thing they broadcasted was a smiling Sophia waving as she got into her car with her new husband and drove away. After everything that had happened, the Chinese people loved her and were utterly loyal to her.
Internet resumed over the summer, with the economy starting to recover around the same time, after massive Chinese and German efforts at breaking the anti-science and anti-education conditionings of their peoples put in place by the Goa’uld.
Most methods of transportation were generally restored, except air travel. While the scientists of Germany, Russia, and China worked to reverse-engineer teleportation devices, trains became the primary method of transportation again. It would take a while before people started traveling by air again.
As 2010 rolled around, the Great Powers were, in order from least influential to most influential: France, Russia, Germany, China, Austria-Hungary, the Kingdom of God, Spain, and Mexico.
You would think that expanding into the stars and intergalactic war with aliens would end petty earth conflicts, but nope.
Always nukes... so many nukes...
Always nukes... so many nukes...
Good to see Germany back around.
Are you making EU4 references here? Kingdom of God sounds too fishy for me.
I wanted a change from all of those sci-fi stories where there's a united Earth government that fights aliens and whatnot, so I took this idea from a (non-PDX) story I've been writing in my spare time.You would think that expanding into the stars and intergalactic war with aliens would end petty earth conflicts, but nope.
Always nukes... so many nukes...
And you would think they would have destroyed themselves by now, but luckily the vast majority of the nukes had already been shot at the Goa'uld, so...(shrug)
Yeah, maybe I should just rename it to the "Papal State," amirite?
Dei Gratia
Judaism also found some new followers throughout the galaxy. Some Jaffa and humans, not wishing to embrace Islam or any branch of Christianity, felt that Judaism was a middle ground between the two. Nonetheless all three Abrahamic faiths grew significantly in the stars. On Earth, other religions almost tore themselves apart.
At the realization that their “gods” were actually aliens, the Hindu nations of India began tearing themselves apart, with those abandoning Hinduism clashing with those remaining loyal to the idea of the gods, claiming that as the Goa’uld were merely posing as the gods, the actual gods were still out there. The same thing played out in Japan, where mobs attempted to murder the Emperor and his family for being descended from a Goa’uld but ultimately failed. In China, Sophia simply ordered the textbooks to be amended to discuss Yu the Great, founder of the Chinese state, being a Goa’uld who didn’t enslave or oppress his people to the extent as the System Lords Ra or Anubis.
The ancient Norse pagan faiths became popular among the Scandinavians, who had seen the Asgard attempt to defend Earth from the Goa’uld and realized that their gods were actually benevolent aliens. Within months after the death of Anubis, the majority of the Scandinavians worshipped Odin and Thor again. There were even discussions of a “Fylkirate” patterned after the Caliphate to organize and centralize the Norse religion even more.
King Arthur II of England ordered the continued excavation of Glastonbury Tor, and in late 2010 the archaeologists and soldiers found an Ancient communications device, which they accidentally switched on. Upon returning to consciousness, the researcher the device was connected to told King Arthur that his consciousness had been switched with that of a man from another galaxy, one where the Ancients originated from millions of years ago and was now ruled over by ascended beings known as the Ori, who were genetically identical to the Ancients and modern humans. The Ori demanded to be worshipped by the humans of their galaxy, with their highly evolved human “Prior” priests burning all suspected heretics, blasphemers, and innovators at the stake.
A week later, the first Prior arrived in the Milky Way, coming into immediate conflict with Catholic missionaries visiting the local Jaffa populations. Needless to say, an altercation between the two groups ensued, resulting in the deaths of everybody on the planet except for the Prior in question.
More Priors came through the gates, spreading their own twisted version of the Gospel. The Jaffa were given a choice: renounce the false Abrahamic god, or die. Most refused, and plagues of disease and insects broke out on their planets. Those that accepted and embraced the “one true faith” of Origin were given advanced technology which were leagues ahead of anything the Goa’uld had. When one such civilization turned its Ori-built satellite weapon on a nearby German colony, massacring its settlers and leveling the settlements, the Kaiser sent the Bismarck to negotiate with the civilization, only for them to turn the satellite on the Bismarck, quickly piercing its shields and destroying it with all hands onboard, including General Osten.
Mexico, Spain, and the Papal State sent humanitarian aid to the planets struck by the plagues but only succeeded in bringing the plague to Earth with them. Before the Germans and the Chinese could synthesize a vaccine and cure for the deadly virus using Atlantis’s database, about five hundred million people had died long and painful deaths by the summer of 2011, reducing humanity’s population to just under a billion.
The Pope was among one of those killed by the disease. His successor condemned the Prior’s use of biological weapons in order to gain converts. The Priors simply responded by calling a crusade against Earth, to the shock of all of humanity.
In a large “super-gate” constructed in space near Dakara as the Poles and Lithuanians were harassed by Priors, the Ori deployed a three of their white horseshoe-shaped ships into the galaxy. The Zheng He and dozens of other Earth and allied Jaffa ships were sent to stop the Ori invasion. After the commanders of both fleets attempted to read scripture to the other side, the two fleets opened fire on each other.
In seconds the Zheng He was the last ship standing against the Ori, its life support failing and its shields down; it would be left alone to spread the word of the Ori victory. The Ori ships began their crusade and cleansing of heresy against the heretics and heathens of the Milky Way…
Meanwhile, the Wraith from the Pegasus Galaxy decided that this was a good time to invade.
Blood and Iron
On Earth, not much progress was made, despite the Pope and the Caliph calling for crusades and jihads against the Ori to free the Poles and Lithuanians on Dakara. Germany declared war on France over a defaulted loan, and the Kingdom of Arabia descended into chaos as separatists tore the nation apart, with only Israeli, Ottoman, Persian and Chinese intervention keeping it from total destruction.
The Wraith invaded the Milky Way, descending upon human planets like locusts. When they were done with a planet, there were only desiccated and aged corpses left behind, drained of all possible nutrients. It took the combined efforts of Mexico and Spain to take down the Wraith invasion force for good, as the Atlantis team was busy in the Pegasus Galaxy.
With Earth only days away from destruction (again), King Arthur personally journeyed with a personal retinue to the planet known as Camelot, where he pulled a sword from a stone (again) defeated a holographic knight (again), and found a trove of Ancient technology (again), as well as the Holy Grail, which happened to be a weapon capable of destroying all ascended Ori.
In response to the discovery of the Holy Grail in space, Sophia revealed the Colt to Arthur, which she kept with her in case of emergencies, and told him that if she met an Ori, she would shoot it with the Colt to kill it. Arthur responded by commanding a Bismarck-class battleship, the HMS Avalon, to the super-gate and shooting the Holy Grail itself into the Ori galaxy, which released enough energy to kill all of the ascended Ori, though none of their followers believed it.
After the Ori ships continued their smiting of heretics and heathens, with China’s Zheng He-class aircraft carriers only able to slow them down slightly, the Ori came within one day’s hyperspace travel of Earth. It was at that time Sophia realized one of the Ori managed to survive the Holy Grail by taking on a physical human form, a woman named Adria.
After some long negotiations with the Priors, with the Zheng He the only thing standing between Earth and the Ori ships, Adria agreed to discuss peace terms with Sophia and Arthur.
The gate deactivated, and the Ori, Adria, a tall imposing German-looking woman dressed in a long flowing medieval style dress, stepped out into the gate room in Hainan. Meeting them were King Arthur II and Emperor Sophia. A detachment of guards stood nearby, but Sophia had hidden the Colt in her jacket.
It was several years since the return to Earth, and Sophia had gotten a little bit older. Yet she was still the intimidating young woman she was, and she hoped to intimidate the surviving Ori by manipulating its human emotions.
Adria was not intimidated by Sophia, shockingly. For a split second, Sophia thought she could see fire literally burning in her eyes, causing her to shudder slightly and grip the Colt. Nobody had ever intimidated her like this before. Adria radiated power and control in such a way that she could actually felt it. Arthur seemed to fidget slightly beside her.
“Ah, Sophia,” said Adria, her voice calming yet full of power, “I trust you know who I am, woman who claims to be Emperor. The Ori have blessed this day, December 21, 2012.”
“Enough of this chit-chat,” replied Sophia, “Get to the talking. And please respectfully refer to me as Her Imperial and Royal Highness Sophia Aisin-Gioro von Hohenzollern, Chinese Emperor, Defender of the Five Races Under One Union and the Greater Han Civilization, King of Ryukyu, Emperor of Pacifica, Khagan of Mongolia and Siberia, and Protector of the Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Hawaiians, and Spanish Peoples.”
Adria was unfazed by Sophia’s proclamation, instead chuckling a little bit.
“I am willing to retreat my forces on the following terms, Emperor,” said Adria, “The Pope and his followers will convert to Origin, the one true faith, and I will spare your precious planet. That is all. The heretic faith that spreads among my followers must be snuffed out.”
“What?!” shouted Arthur. “You can’t just waltz into this room and demand that!”
“I guess I should just give the order to open fire, then,” said Adria.
“Like hell you are,” said Sophia, pulling out the Colt.
Adria instinctively flicked her wrist, and the Colt flew out of Sophia’s hands. As Arthur drew his sidearm and fired at Adria, the Ori simply held out her hand at him and telepathically stopped the bullets in mid-air.
Sophia dived for the Colt, but Adria noticed and threw her against the wall with just her mind.
“Two powerful human beings of Earth,” she said, “All in the same room with a god. Who do you think will win? Please reconsider your backward ways. Adopt the true faith, and you will be granted enlightenment.”
“I’ve read enough Confucius and Buddha to know that’s not the case,” Sophia spat, her throat being compressed against the wall.
There was a gunshot from behind her, and her eyes flashed fiery yellow once more. Then she fell over dead, revealing Arthur behind her, gun raised and smoking. As Sophia collapsed, gasping, on the ground, Arthur put down the gun and said, “Britons never be slaves.”
With Adria dead, the Priors took control, declaring her a martyr and renewing their offensive with even more zeal than before, causing the Chinese and Germans to mobilize their entire fleets to combat the threat. It took another few months before the last Ori ship was destroyed and the last Prior killed after Germany developed a weapon capable of disabling the Prior’s natural telepathic powers and China upgraded its Zheng He-class ships to be able to pierce Ori shields.
The Ori war had taken its toll on Earth, though. The rebounding economy had slumped again, causing nations to turn on each other. Germany defaulted on a Greek loan in June 2013 and declared bankruptcy, and when the Greeks demanded that the Kaiser repay his debts, the Kaiser refused to do so, starting the Seventh Weltkrieg between Greece and Germany.
Even when there's intergalactic wars, there's always time to collect on a defaulted loan.
Especially if it involves Greece or Germany!Even when there's intergalactic wars, there's always time to collect on a defaulted loan.
Freedom and Democracy
The Greeks called in their allies in Bulgaria, Romania, and France against Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary. China chose to remain neutral in the war, as Sophia knew that her armies were tired from constant warfare across the galaxy.
The first operations of the war involved the Greek space fleet engaging the German fleet, with the demoralized Germans easily destroyed. From space, Greece rained nuke after nuke down on German cities before having its troops advance up the Balkans. The Archduke then detonated his own nuclear arsenal over Romania and Bulgaria, forcing them to capitulate immediately and become provinces of Austria-Hungary.
It was all in vain, however, when French troops stormed across the Rhine, pushing deep into western Germany within months. The Germans were forced to surrender when Aachen, Frankfurt, and other major cities were captured by the French, who settled for seizing Alsace-Lorraine from Germany.
Greece forced Germany to repay its debts, which caused the German economy to crash, which in turn caused a huge economic depression affecting everybody in Europe except Greece. A civil war in Germany resulted in the secession of Bavaria for five months, further worsening the economy of Europe.
By the summer of 2014, Germany was reduced to a third-world level nation, along with Spain, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, and France, as a result of Greek machinations. The June 28, 2014 celebrations to commemorate the beginning of the First Weltkrieg were canceled.
Meanwhile, Greece became the dominant power in Europe, exerting military and economic influence throughout the continent, bullying the other nations around as it saw fit. It set up a “Mediterranean Economic Union” to replace the old Mitteleuropa, further enriching Greece at the cost of the European states. Sophia sobbed a little bit after reading the news of the Greek victory in the Seventh Weltkrieg, but she held her temper, for now.
The last straw for her came when a referendum was held in Greece, and the majority of the Greek people favored a return to Athenian-style democracy. The King of Greece voluntarily abdicated his throne (and later committed suicide after killing his entire family), and a president was elected the same day, to cheering crowds.
Immediately other nations began adopting republicanism to save their economies and replicate the “Greek miracle.” The Empire of Pacifica, in successive referendums, split into the republics of California, Columbia (territory was ceded to the already existing Columbia in Idaho), Alaska, and Deseret, with California inheriting the Empire’s colonies. Revolutions in Abyssinia and Mali overthrew their emperors and replaced them with presidents.
When the Indian states and the South Americans started going republican, Sophia realized that republicanism as an ideology was going too far and had replaced Syndicalism as a threat to her and the Kaiser’s power. She sent troops to crush major republican uprisings in Korea, Bengal, and Vietnam, generally succeeding at high cost. The King of Hawaii, along with his entire family and royal government, was killed when a republican terrorist detonated a nuclear bomb in his palace, forcing the survivors to institute a democracy. The Emperors of Mexico and Brazil were forced to abdicate after riots due to the economic crisis became rebellions and then full-scale revolutions, with the Emperor of Brazil fleeing to Portugal; ironically, Portugal then underwent its own republican revolution. The Emperor of Mexico wasn’t so lucky, and he was torn to pieces by Jacobins.
The United States moved to get in on the action, invading random African and Middle Eastern states to topple their kings and install democracies (and also extort them of scarce oil). By 2015, the majority of the nations of Earth, except for those in Europe and Asia, had embraced democracy and freedom.
The Great Powers were, from least to most influential: Germany, China, Russia, California, the United States, Alaska, the Papal State, and Greece. The stage was set for another Weltkrieg…
Willy turned on his computer and went online. He browsed some forums until he came to one he found interesting. It was about this game that was published in the former Scandinavia detailing the Victorian era leading up to the First Weltkrieg. Apparently somebody in California had started an RP game about a Roman Empire that had lasted into the Victorian Age, in which the Byzantine Doukas family had managed to “restore Rome” in the medieval period. It looked interesting to him and actually compelled him to join the forum, after countless other “AARs” had failed to convince him. He always liked alternate history. His favorite included, “What if the Goa’uld never existed?”
He quickly created an account and started typing. It allowed him to take his mind off the horrors of the Goa’uld invasion and living in exile on New Brandenburg.
“
>logged in as user zen[REDACTED]
>Posting to ‘The Empire Strikes Back 3’ by [REDACTED]
Greetings, Your Highness.
Introducing Nikephoros Doukas of the Foederatoi…”
Yes. Yes I did.
You're not that far off (spoilers), but fyi Willy's father died in the 9/11 attacks and his mother is a commoner, so he's not Aisin Gioro or Hohenzollern.