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Thanks guys.
Anyway, first of the suggested divergences.
The divergence between our world and the world designated Sigma- 018 occurred in 1861, when the Union navy failed to secure their naval blockade of the Confederate ports, meaning that the Confederate states could still export their goods, maintaining their economy for long enough to win the decade long war. When a peace treaty was eventually signed in 1871, there was no reunion of states, the Confederate States Of America and the United States Of America were both recognised as separate countries. Neither country became exceptionally powerful on the world stage over the next 50 years, the Confederate Staes lost their main trading partner when Great Britain announced they were to stop trading with slave based economies, whilst the United States was powerless to prevent the Germany defeating its allies in the first world war (a war that the Confederate States remained neutral in). Whilst the United States gained a large amount of international standing by siding with Germany, France and Britain in the second world war against Russia, and defeating the Japanese in the Pacific War, the Confederate States became more and more isolated, only banning slavery in 1950. However, the former slaves where still treated as second class citizens, unable to vote or receive the same pay as a white person. This came to a head in the 1960’s, when the United Negro Army, lead by a former Pastor called Martin Luther King Jr. declared war on the Confederate government, plunging the Confederate States into a state of civil war. When Luther King was assassinated in 1968, his deputy Malcolm Little became leader of the UNA, but he was captured and jailed some 5 years later. However, by the 1990’s the Confederate government was under increasing international pressure for it’s human rights abuses and was forced to release Little, who, in 1994, became the first black President of the Confederate States of America, ending segregation and amending the constitution to give black citizens equal rights to white citizens.
The world known as Theta- 862 diverged from our reality in October 1916, when Private Adolf Hitler of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry was killed by an exploding shell at the Battle of the Somme. Two years later, after Germany surrendered, Anton Drexler, a German Nationalist from Munich, formed the Committee For Independent Workmen, which later became the Germany Socialist Workers Party, but the party never became a major political force. During the 1920’s and ’30’s, the German state was hit by various economic catastrophes, struggling to keep the country viable. In 1932, the popular President Paul Von Hindenburg left office, due to his term being up and his old age and mental state preventing him from running for a second term. He was replaced by his Chancellor Kurt Von Schleicher. However, Von Schleicher became increasingly less popular as the economic situation worsened until, in 1934, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) lead a Socialist uprising, overthrowing the government in a similar fashion to the Russian revolution of 1917. The KPD pronounce Germany a Democratic Republic (DDR) and cancel debt paying to its main creditor, the USA. Through a number of Marxist economic, employment and rearmament schemes, Germany is brought out of depression quicker than any other European country and soon starts to ally its self with the USSR, spreading Socialism throughout Eastern Europe. The USSR successfully defeats Japan in the second Sino-Japanese War, utilising its new atomic weapons development, and socialism starts to spread across East Asia, Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam all becoming Socialist Republics within ten years. However, by the 1950’s the US and its European allies, Britain, France, the Italian Social Republic and Spain form an alliance to stop the spread of Communism in Europe. This leads to a Cold War between East and West which lasts for decades. With both sides building up enough armaments to destroy the world many times over, the two sides turn to trying to out do each other in scientific development, a battle which culminates in a joint Russian- German team landing a man on the moon in the early 1970s.
Anyway, I’m going to move away from Alt. Realities for a bit, because once again I’ve been reading Sandman, which must mean it is time for more goth-y stuff.
Little is known about the mysterious Gravekeeper, except that he has some sort of connection to the powers of life and death. His job is to collect the dead and deliver them on to the next part of their journey. Normally invisible to all but the recently desceased, he has been seen by the living, but this is considered an omen of great doom, because the Gravekeeper only ever appears for one reason.
Thanks guys.
Anyway.
Another immortal spirit guide who performs the same function as The Gravekeeper on a different planet, Fra Gast is what could be considered The Gravekeeper’s sister. They belong to a family of beings infinite in their age and number, who shepherd the newly deceased into the beyond acting as a guide and comfort, each assigned to a planet host to a sentient species. They often take a form familiar and similar to the species they service, but their true form is mostly shadow, broken only by their pale faces and empty eyes.
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