I won't go into huge detail, if you think for a bit the maps tell the story.
I never got around to writing this because I gauged the political climate to be far too toxic for anything so overtly political and that people would assume the worst - as they often do with me - rather than negotiating the background and the story.
Maybe I'll come back to it one day.
You do know that you given the Republic of Zion some of the absolutely worst agricultural territory to be found in the southeast, right?
I realize that a general acquaintance with US geography is probably not something that gets found in the UK a lot, but this is some pretty basic stuff. The Appalachian Mountains are the space you've traced, where very little more than scratch farming was possible in the period.
No one would know that better than freed slaves, who were employed in heavy agricultural activity in some of the most fertile territory in the region. Most of which was to the east of that band, along the southeast edge of the Appalachians.
And if your point of divergence is Harper's Ferry, there's no way that an independent state of free blacks would be found along the northern part of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and the west of South Carolina. Not that the locals would be the big problem, because they were some of the poorest whites in the region and really didn't care a lot about what the plantation owners were doing except as potential employers, but because they were some of the poorest people in general in the region and there would be absolutely no advantage to establishing a separate state which is largely inland except for a tiny port area largely blocked by Union territory.
Both the Union and the Confederacy would have a field day with a landlocked, poorly arable, recently enslaved population. We're not just talking pawns, we're talking about a captive nation with very few personal resources and little chance of getting any.
Not to mention being grossly outnumbered by the locals.
It would be far more reasonable for the Republic of Zion to be located much further west in southern Arizona/northern Mexico or even Southern and Baja California, with the weather is dry but coastal regions provide some excellent port transport and they could be a significant influence on West Coast food shipping between the Union and the Confederacy. And where the population is sparse enough in the. For what is effectively a colonizing group to establish a stable governance before outside pressure made that impossible.
Not that actual knowledge of history and geography is necessary for an RPG, but it's nice to see once in a while.
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The region is derived from the history of the area, which I actually visited, and the plans for the rebellion that were made. Think of it almost like Afghanistan. The plan was to hide in the mountains and launch guerilla raids. They do have access to the sea and have foreign sympathisers etc helping support them, and they have huge access to coal etc. Yes, it would be a pretty shitty place to live, but defensible and rooted in an area where socialist and labour-oriented policies were strong later in history.
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You do realize that I actually live in the area, making it not of theoretical interest in my personal experience.
They definitely don't have access to the sea, however. That is an isthmus-protected large bay, yes – but as depicted it would be entirely under the control of the Union on the north side of the bay, and well within the range of the canons in the northern parts of North Carolina. Nothing would get in or out without the tacit approval of both sides, and that's before we factor in whether or not the South decided to actually build up a more significant naval force as a result.
Foreign sympathizers is great, but they can't get the support there, neither from the north nor the south because that is a lot of land to cross, so whoever they're bringing it from has to be also be buying off one side or the other.
Coal they certainly might have, but that's only going to make them a protected trading partner from the north with the factory production of the Union historically, and much less interesting to those in the South who are largely agricultural. Food being a resource that your Republic of Zion is going to be terribly short on.
While simultaneously robbing the north of a lot of what would become inner-city cheap factory workforce, while we're at it.
And let me tell you – "socialist and labor-oriented policies" were not the socialist and labor-oriented policies you are familiar with. And they have always been actively and grossly contentious, largely oppositional to the Jacksonian political inclination of the region.
Let me look outside real quick.
Nope, still very much like that.
This would be very much like me suggesting that Provençal became a breakaway slave state established by escaping Moorish and North African slaves, fully accepted by the locals, except that Provençal actually has pretty decent transport access.
For all that we suggest that game designers should learn European history before writing northern European fantasy, we also have to support that European game designers should learn American history before trying to write North American fantasy. If we don't, what good are they?
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Maybe today is the day, because I'm curious about it. While I am pretty sure I understand the political nature of this map, I'm wondering if you're opposed to elminating Alaska and Hawaii from the Union (possibly making them "belong" to Russia or Canada and Japan, respectively).
Also is Republic of Zion a methaphoric naming (meaning more of a safe homeland of a lost people), or a religious nod (as in Tzion)?
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A bit of that, but it was one of the potential names for an independent state (or State) for freed black slaves, an equivalent to Israel. The historical divergence point is John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.
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Very nice divergence point, and exactly how I imagined this setting's Zion (based on the little history I know).
I see you have 1975 wrote down as a year on the map. Is that the current year in the setting?
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That would be, yes.
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Any particular reason for 1975? I'm sort of drawing a blank.
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Interesting time period and I figured the civil rights era would have been delayed.
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