Whims of Fortune

Introduction

This ATL, although a single continious storyline, will at first be treated as several stories one flowing out of another.


 * The Three Europes
 * Europe and its surrounding lands, among all the places on Earth, has always proved the most resistant to total subjugation even by the world's most powerful armies and most talented commanders. When the potential to come closest to this goal is shown by the sucesses of a young republic in central Italy, Fortune intervenes and hands the laurels of Victory to its greatest rivals, the men of Carthage. They, however, never attain the heights that Rome may have, and as a result, when the Germanic tribes start moving West to crush the old world order, they find Europe divided into three civilisations, similar and distinct at the same time. The new conquerors, however, find themselves unable to overcome the ancient division.


 * Since there is no Rome to unify the known world, it falls to Carthage, the resugent former Italian subjects of Rome, and the mighty Macedon to split Europe into three rough cultural zones, a division that persists long after the original Empires themselves crumble to dust.


 * Twin Destinies
 * Follow the histories of the two peoples, born from the ripples of the many waves of nomad tribes that swept from the East into Europe over the centuries. They survived the wrath of the world's greatest and most ruthless conquerors, filled the power-vacuum that formed when the Eurasian nomads exhausted themselves, and by the whim of fate became the ultimate rulers of the largest state in the world.


 * This section of the ATL deals with the history of the Rus and the Bolgar states, their separate origins, their mediaeval union, and their common trials and tribulations to the present day.


 * Fortune's Darlings
 * They were driven out of their homelands by the fiercest warriors that rode the Steppes of Antiquity and chased into the remote and barren region of the world. There, they found themselves occupying a power vaccum left by the retreat of the most sophisticated civilisations of the day. They took these peoples' traditions and mixed them with their own, tiressly and inventively synthesising to produce one of the most subtly influential cultures on the continent. Then, when the hordes of the enemies that had defeated them in ages past once again appeared on the horizon, they stood on the brink of destruction. Yet Fortune spared them - and would spare again them many times more.


 * The Kushan State, centered around the main corridors between China, Europe and the Middle East, is ever open to the nomadic tribes that sweep across the continent every so often. Still, they always cling on, persist, and rise to new ascendancy in the modern world - truly Fortune's darlings.


 * Legend and Truth
 * A great King had unified his ever-factitious people to withstand the greatest threat his country had ever faced. The previous conquerors from faraway Africa had been few and their hold tenuous; now they vanished like snow in spring. The new enemy was numerous and, if not stopped, would replace both the people and the culture of this ancient land with something foreign. Few don't know of his story of great self-sacrifice and greater achievment.


 * Arthur was forever to be known as the King who laid the foundation of united Brithain, and stopped the expansion of the foreign invaders. Here's his story and the story of the country he created.