World-Building Month: History

See? I said I’d update.

All right, this project isn’t so much steampunk as… Nazi-punk. Which, you know, works.

Anyway, I think I have an alternate history. This could easily change at any time, but here’s the basics:In general, this world is much like ours, except that the aristocratic classes are magic-users. This elitism has been a part of the general conscienscous for a very long time, and has affected several events in history.

As mentioned in the magic article, magic is seen as proof of divine right to rule, and as such the aristocrats have almost always been in the ruling classes (this is not universally true, however — in India, magic users are more common in the Brahmin caste (priests, teachers, and scholars) than the Kshatriya (kings and warriors), and other cultures have had magic-users as a priest or an artisan class. For the most part, magic-users have generally been placed in leadership or military positions.

In the West, male-female relations are different, as both males and females can be energopaths. By the time that the telekinetic Queen Matilda came to the throne of England (Stephen of Blois being a non-magic user), women were treated with near-equality. However, only female magic users have been treated as equals to men. Women who cannot use magic were still treated as inferior.

Around the 18th century, it became fashionable not to practice magic. Once the aristocrats had learned to control it, they made no attempt to use it. It was this lack of magic that allowed the mostly non-magic using peasantry of France to rebel against the aristocrats. However, killing most of the country’s magic users severely crippled the French army. After Napoleon took over, he tried to reorganize the army to cover for this loss. The beginning of the French invasion of Austria went well, but they were crushed in the Battle of Hodenlinden. This caused a cycle of revolution and reformation that only ended around 1890, during the second restoration of the monarchy.

The Allies won World War I, but the army lost large numbers of magic-users. The end of the war called the value of magic users into question, as the non-magic users had been running the country while its generals were gone. This caused another deposition of the monarchy in France, leading them to stay out of World War II.

The non-magic user Hitler took over the government, insisting that Aryans were magic-users and non-magic users with Aryan features. He stormed across Europe. Britain held out for as long as it could, but without help, it fell in 1942.

Hitler invaded Russia in spring of 1941.  He captured much of the eastern areas of Russia but did not make it to Moscow. There have been a series of skirmishes between the USSR and Germany concerning the land, and Russia regained most of their land in the sixties.

The American government made peace with the Axis powers. With Germany controlling much of Europe and Japan controlling Asia, the United States had to tread carefully to avoid war. Several Nazi sympathizers came into power, and eventually the National Socialist of the United States (NSUS) came into power. They instituted a policy of having magic-users taken from their parents and put into state-run schools. There, they would learn to control their powers. The magic-users often recieved leadership positions in the army when they graduated.

The Academy, or Boot Camp, as it is known by the students, was founded in the late ’50s by General Andrew Sinclair, Sr. He still runs the school as its headmaster. The school takes children as soon as they begin showing their powers, usually around the age of six. They keep the children with the same powers together, and discourage socializing outside of that group. Most of these children will never see battle, except for the special Berserker battalions.

Not everyone is happy with the government, however. A small organization of people, mostly government fugitives and non-magic users called the People’s Party are communists who believe that the glorification of magic users is wrong. For twenty-five years, they were led by Edward Jones and his wife, Julia. After they were killed in 1969, their daughter Edith took over. The People’s Party doesn’t pose much of a threat against the government, but their protests and subversive acts, as well as their support of criminals, is a nuisance.

Wow, I got history of the world, history of the government, history of the Academy, and history of the Resistance movement. I think I’ll do personal history of the main characters next.