GATE: the clash of the titans V2

by Qun Nguyn1

Mostly AUs. A Gate has opened in Tokyo by a Roman-esque Empire, familiar scenario with familiar faces but the people marched through the Gate is from a vastly more powerful magic world. The stage is set. Earth Alliance vs The Holy Empire. Science vs Magic. The power of the thousand sun vs The Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the clash of Titans begin. Let the worlds have War.

3. Chapter 3: Research and preparation

Chapter 3: Research and Preparation

---

After the Rumbling

The cataclysm impacted the entire world. So many beautiful cities around the world have turned into ruins. The pain and suffering was almost unimaginable.

The massive loss of life and economic destruction would take decade to fully recover. Leaders from around the world were screaming for blood of the Falmartian and vowed to revenge for the dead.

Massive rearmament projects were put into action. Those were essentially a massive job program to reduce unemployment and to calm the public wrath.

Rearmament was also vital to revive the heavy industries. Shipyards and tank factories around the world started to expand and work day and night to produce new weapons.

The world economy have transformed to a war time economy.

Japan sent all 2000 Falmart POW to America for further investigation in a secret location in the arctic.

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also called on the international scientific community to join forces to study the GATE phenomenal in project BRIDGEHEAD.

The leaders of the world have promised to spend $ 500 billion to study how to open the portal to another world and bring the wrath of the entire human race to those alien bastards.

---

Japan, Bay of Tokyo, 11-01-2029

Lieutenant General Yōji Itami, hero of the Ginza, was watching the gathering of the Global Fleet. Lieutenant General Itami Youji, 42 years old. He was an Otaku now, and would be an Otaku in the future.

He was just a First Lieutenant during the Ginza Incident but thanks to his heroic actions, commanded the search and rescue missions after the Rumbling, he was promoted, 12 years later he became a Lieutenant General.

Itami couldn't stop being amazed by the concentration of naval power before his very own eyes. This was too big, more than anything in history by an order of magnitude. The largest fleet in the history of mankind.

The Great Fleet of Earth Alliance.

The Allied combine fleet were the largest in the history. This is only to be expected, as the American, European, Indian and Chinese shipyards had been producing at wartime levels for a decade.

This was the largest job program on earth with more than 10 million direct jobs and over 30 million support jobs.

The Allied navies included 420 fleet carriers (including 70 of the massive Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers), 345 Guided-Missile Battleships (this, of course, included the old ships design like the Montana-class Guided-Missile Battleship, as well as the more modern Super Yamato -class Guided-Missile Battleship ), 1065 Carriers Escort, 1080 Cruisers, 5415 Frigates, 8790 Mine Warfare, and well over 5000 Destroyers. The Amphibious fleet numbered well over 35,000 vessels that deserved the title of "ship" as well as tens of thousands of landing craft that would ferry the Allied massive ground armies to the Imperial mainland.

Next to Itami, Lieutenant General Tommy Kennedy, Commander of the US 3rd Armored Corps and a close friend of him, said aloud "Those Fucker in the Naval High Command really done it. They built the Super Yamato-Class Guided-Missile Battleship."

The new guided missile battleship was an absolute monster.

"Have you read the ship's specifications, Itami ?"

Tommy opened his iPad. "You are looking at the first battleship designed and built after War World 2:

The Super Yamato-Class Guided-Missile Battleship, the design was based on the famous Super Yamato-Class Battleship that was never built in WW2, with some elements were modernized.

Full length: 295 m

Max. Width: 42 m

Displacement: 95,000 metric tons

Range: Unlimited

Speed: 100km/h (54 knots)

Sensors and Processing System: AEGIS Combat System and AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense System

Armament:

20 x Phalanx CIWS

60 × MK 57 Peripheral Vertical Launching System (PVLS) Module, 4 cells per module, 240 launch cells total for Helos nuclear-armed SAM, Land Attack Missile (TLAM), Harpoon, Standard Missile.

6 × Mark 32 triple nuclear torpedo tubes:

3 × triple 51 cm (20.1 in) Type 3 Advanced Gun System (AGS).

4 × triple 20.3 cm (8 in) precision guided rocket artillery.

6 × twin 15.5 cm (6.1 in) anti-air railgun.

4 x Raytheon SeaRAM Systems.

Laser Weapons System: 6 High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS)

Aircraft carried: 6 ASW helicopters

Aviation facilities: Flight deck and enclosed hangar for helicopters

Power Plant: Two 15 gigawatts A1C nuclear fusion reactors

Armour: Nano crystallized steel armour with 685 mm (27 in) on face of main turrets

430 mm (17 in) side armor (Immunity against own 51cm shells between 50.0000 and 60.000m) inclined at 20 degrees

230 mm (9 in) armored deck (75%)

254 mm (10 in) armored deck (25%)

And they built 50 of those monster. This is madness, and why building battleships, aren't they obsolete design since WW2 ? " Tommy complained.

Itami sighed then said : "Well, from what we know about the enemy, our primary enemies will be giant beasts so why wasting expensive cruise missile when we can shoot them with naval cannon for a much cheaper price. Beside, those guided-missile battleships created 800,000 new jobs.

In Falmart everything is uncertain, UEADF could use those battleships fitted for everything we need. The planet surface area was around 5 times our Earth so guided-missile battleships are necessary as standalone firepower.

Carrier is basically a "hunk of junk" if it got no ammunition left in the middle of the sea. Escorts can defend the carriers, but you need a battleship in this world should there are situations where you need to hold the enemy off until the fleet escapes.

Just imagine a scenario where UEAMDF must retreat after firing entire missile ammunition, you can see that our best chance to escape is to deploy a battleship that has 51cm guns to hold the enemies off when sailing like up to 10.000km without any ports to dock in to refuel.

As you noted that 30 fighters can take up to 3 hours on a aircraft carrier. One hour from landing, taxiing, and went to resupply station, one hour to resupply, and one hour to sortie.

I've watched several videos and the average rate of the launch is 2 minutes for each fighter and the rate doesn't change much even you have 2 catapults since the crew just to make sure everything was prepared thoroughly.

Although you can launch 60 fighters at that time, it will double your time on the carrier since the carrier can only accept 1 fighter at a time to land, clear the deck, and prepare for the next one. If you are looking at USS Eisenhower video, it takes 30 minutes to take 30 fighters, that's 1 per minute. Then again, you need to clear the deck to prepare for take-off.

I should remind again that we're not going to use the mindset of 21st century Earth where giant battleships were unecessary. It doesn't matter how good our supply line is since UEAMDF lacks everything to maintain its battle power on long-distance front.

On Earth, you can ask other countries to resupply your fuel and purchasing some of the arsenals when you need it, but in Falmart, you need to think that you have limited areas to refuel and resupply.

The UEAMDF, even with everything we have, lacks the manpower or the production capacity to conquest Falmart's world ocean, that is our biggest issue.

Battleship was made to complement the lack of battle power and manpower.

We need to be careful, it doesn't matter how superior our technology is as long as the opponent was more superior in terms of strategy, a brilliant strategist can exploit this for their advantage.

With the modernized Battleship, the brass hoped they could achieve better peace by having an intimidating Yamato battleship once again to dissuade future hostilities.

The Super Yamato-Class Guided-Missile Battleship as a modern and effective weapon of terror will enable Earth to have better standing in a violent and hegemonic environment of Falmart.

Additionally, due to the lack of naval personnel to crew additional warship, constructing the Super Yamato-Class Guided-Missile Battleship was necessary along with the concept of making it into an "Arsenal Ship" with Jack-For-All-Trades capability.

The High Command also want to use those battleships for not only as the symbol of power, but also as the main flagship by putting a Super Yamato and 2 Carriers together along with 1 Navy Escort Group since it's the best battle formation the UEAMDF can offer to combat threats on Falmart."

"Are those our new Tu-688 nuclear-powered ultra heavy bombers ?" Itami asked, pointing at the massive bomber formation in the sky.

"Yeah... they are ! From what I have read : The Tu-688 was, with all due respect to the fabled B-17, a true flying fortress.

The allied high command believe that stealth bomber like the B-21 is a waste of money for an enemy haven't invented radar so they choose a much cheaper bomber design.

The Tu-688 carried half a dozen four gun remote controlled turrets, four containing 40mm auto cannon and the other two armed with huge 57mm auto cannon.

It have a bomb load of 500,000 kg and it can fly for months on the sky thanks to the powerful nuclear reactor. "

"I still can't believe that they replace all of the ICBM and SLBM with those things, high attitude long range bombers; Really! Are we returning to the 1950s ? " Tom said.

"ICBM and SLBM won't work in Falmart." Itami replied. "From what we have learned about Falmart, the planet escape velocity is too high and the atmosphere is too dense.

Our ICBM and SLBM won't even be able to left the atmosphere and even if they can, the warhead won't survive the re-entry heat. Falmart's atmosphere is six times thicker than Earth.

That are why we use long range heavy bombers, the dense atmosphere is perfect for long range super heavy bomber and air-launched cruise missile (ALCM). In Falmart those Tu-688s can fly at the height of 50,000 m."

Tommy looked over Itami and asked "I heard that you became the commander of the 3rd Special Task Force of the JSDF. How the hell a lazy ass like you became the commander of a task force ?"

"Well, You know old man is the Minister of Defense Taro Itami. He said:

I can't believe after become the "Hero of Ginza" you still a lazy otaku Yoji. You are an embarrassment to our family.

I can't believe I will say this but I'm organizing sixteen Special Task Forces.

Your mission is to lead the third one to join the global expeditionary force to conquer the planet Falmart.

This will teach you a lesson and try harder to be worthy of our family name."

"Thus, I became the commander of the third Special Task Force."

"The conference is about to start, we have to go now or we will be late. " Tom urged as he watched the clock.

"Yea, yea, I know." Itami put the manga into his bag and walked over lazily to the conference room.

---

Tokyo International Convention Center

"Good morning and welcome to the United Earth Alliance Defence Force ( UEADF) conference in Tokyo to discuss the final phase of preparation for Operation Downfall." Supreme Allied Commander Liam Nuttall made an opening statement.

Itami yawned while listening to the commander-in-chief. He and Tommy sat in the 5th row. From here he could see his father Minister of Defence gave him a cold stare. He smiled wryly and waved back at his father.

The Supreme Allied Commander continued his speech:

"Your Majesty, Mr President, Mr Prime Minister and all the guests.

I am Liam Nuttall Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF) in the Falmart theatre.

As you see, just getting the title straight is tiring enough."

Some of the guests giggled as the Commander-in-chief make a small joke.

"So I will leave much of today's business to my trusted and gifted colleagues, our brilliant scientists and CEOs of arm-industries." He continued.

"We are from different countries, different religions but we united in this holy crusade for justice. We shall crush the unholy Empire and all its accomplice. We shall bring justice to those who have died in the Rumbling. We shall make the world a safer place for future generations. There are no other cause so urgent as to bring us so far from our homes. This is our purpose. This is Operation Downfall."

The guests applauded like thunder before the touching speech.

"Explaining how we will succeed, the nature of our enemy and the challenges that we will face is best done by My Chiefs of Staff.

Starting with Dr Hange Zoë of the military intelligence and the head of project BRIDGEHEAD. Dr Hange if you will ?"

Dr Hange, a woman in her late 40s with tangled hair , slowly walked up to the podium. She cleared her throat and said. "Thank you for your introduction, Commander Nuttall. I'm Dr Hange Zoë and today I represent over 100,000 biologists, astrophysicists, quantum physicists, archaeologists, geologists, astrobiologists, theoretical physicists and engineers working in project BRIDGEHEAD for the last decade.

Here is our full report about the GATE phenomenal and Falmart:

The GATE phenomenal : was an artificial dimensional portal or a traversable wormhole that can connect Falmart to others world. In this case the wormhole in Ginza containing a notable amount of "exotic" matter so it could stay open and unchanging for longer periods of time. Exotic matter, which should not be confused with dark matter or antimatter, contains negative energy density and a large negative pressure. Such matter has only been seen in the behavior of certain vacuum states as part of quantum field theory. The exit of traversable wormhole has broken the rule of our known physics, combined with the discovery of magic prove that there were more than 4 dimension space-time and those planes of existence could interact with the normal space-time.

Falmart :

"Falmart; The home world of our enemy, the Holy Darwinia Empire, is a super-Earth. It is a planet with 2.3 Earth radii and 7 Earth masses. It has 5 times the surface of the Earth so it's a big place with a very large continent and very high mountains. It has a dense atmosphere and a volatile weather. Its have higher escape velocity; 19.7 km/s so it very hard for our chemical rocket get to space. Thus instead of reconnaissance satellite we will use extreme high altitude reconnaissance drone for scout."

"This is a map of Falmart."

Confused sounds could be heard throughout the hall. There was something eerily familiar about this map but they couldn't pinpoint what it was.

"Looks familiar, doesn't it? Well, of course; This is the map of Earth."

Ehhhhhhh!

Her bombshell statement was met with utter shock and confusion.

"Does it all look distorted and moved around, like a map of the breakup of Pangea? It's not continental drift-these are our continents (a bit flooded and damp, but basically undamaged) in exactly the same layout!

But mapping round Earth on a flat sheet distorts it terribly-you're just used to the conventional map's polar distortions. This map's just as accurate-but its distortion's unfamiliar.

Visual habits are powerful, indeed!

The difference between the two worlds besides size is, in Falmart the poles are in, what on Earth we would call, the South Atlantic and off the coast of Japan.

The meridians run from the new poles, of course, but the Prime Meridian (the centerline, longitude zero) is, miraculously, still in Greenwich, England.

Yep, that little green archipelago just above dead center is England, upside down and flooded.

That's Scandinavia beneath it and the similar big island to the east is Greenland - rightly named at last!

The locals, of course, call them by different names.

There are too many similarity between Falmart and Earth to be a coincident, so my hypothesis is : Falmart is an alternate reality Earth in a parallel universe.

Here's a computer-created orbital shot of the 'north' pole, with the icy mountains of 'Brazil' at upper left and the cool boreal forests of 'Africa' on the right.

With no land near either pole, there's no Antarctic ice dome, not even a Greenland. With almost none of the world's water locked up in thick ice sheet, sea levels are 300 meters higher. The weight of that extra water on coasts and continental shelves presses them down, just as glaciers during our Ice Ages depress the land beneath them.

This slightly exaggerates the coastal flooding (though continental interiors bulge up a bit to compensate)-the result is an effective sea level rise in most places of about 328 meters.

Falmart climate is much warmer and wetter, especially toward the poles. While they're still icy, temperatures above 60 north are more Alaskan than Antarctic or even Greenlandic. In the global winters, this northern ice pack forms a bridge between 'Brazil' and 'Africa'. In the occasionally more severe hot summers, the ice pack may briefly break up into bergs, which our Arctic pack never has (so far; it will soon).

My point is that sea ice is thin and changeable compared to land glaciation. This ice pack looks impressive from space, but it's skin-deep; Falmart has only 10-20% of Earth's ice by volume, and that's just due to the sheer size of the planet.

What happens at lower latitudes without icecaps breathing down their neck? The high sea levels dominate climate. Instead of fertile coasts but harsh continental interiors, nearly all of Falmart has maritime climate-for the sea is everywhere. And perhaps 20 percents less land than Earth in ratio; but due to its sheer size, that is still 4 times Earth's total land mass! Rainforests and savannas; few deserts.

To simply put Falmart is a warm, flooded, jungly world.

Now, we'll go deeper into the geography of each region, okay?

ANTARCRICA/ ORNITHIA

We'll start with a tropical continent north of the equator; the locals call it Ornithia; for the sake of simplification, I'll use our Antarctica as an analogy.

Ornithia is our Antarctica but bigger and stripped of its ice — it's nearly unrecognizable. The continent is mountainous, warm, and broken up — its convoluted coast rivals our Europe for complexity but bigger in size. It is birdlike in shape - with its long western neck, spindly southern body, huge ragged wing/tail north and east... it's a thanksgiving turkey as drawn by a wobbly five-year-old.

A turkey nearly 10,000 km long.

The long dragon's spine on its west shore is the Trans-Ornithan Range, with steep jagged peaks rising 10-12,000 meters from the sea.

Near the south end, the small island with a crater is Mt Erebus, a gigantic live volcano looming over a tropical sea-a living Cretaceous cliche. The warm Ross Sea, and its great islands, are all that remain of 'West Antarctica'. These long, snaky, mountainous, tropical islands resemble Sulawesi or New Caledonia.

The northernmost isle, Palmeria, reaches well up into the temperate zone, and resembles New Zealand. In our world, polar researchers have dubbed the merely chilly Palmer Peninsula "the Banana Belt"; ironically, it's about the only place in Ornithia where bananas won't grow.

Ornithia's north shore is a fertile country like Natal in South Africa. Rising from the sea to the alpine Princess Range, behind the mountains, in their rainshadow, is the Maud Desert. Broken by many snow-fed streams running down to the Valkyrie River, which cuts a Colorado-like canyon through the desert from Lake Valkyrie in the east where the coastal range lowers and breaks up around Amery Bay.

Letting in enough rain to sustain savanna) to Pensacola Sound in the west, nearly as dry as our Baja Peninsula above the waterline, and just as riotously fertile below: fed by nutrients from the riverdelta, its warm reefs rival the Sea of Cortez as a diver's paradise.

Southeastern Ornithia is a complex maze of islands, waterways, and mountain chains. The dark area below Avery Bay is the Argus Range, a cool, forested tropical highland 5-7000 meters up. The lowlands here resemble Indonesia; in these sheltered gulfs, maritime cultures would flourish.

If these gulfs exist at all; without its ice burden, the land might ride so much higher than current soundings that these bays and islands might be mere hills and lakes peppering a Congo-size jungle.

SOUTH AMERICA/ AMAZONIA.

The continent we call South America; the locals call it Amazonia; for the sake of simplification, I'll use our South America as an analogy.

Patagonia, the long eastern cape of Amazonia, resembles Japan, with lakes, inlets, and snowcapped volcanoes, and a temperate climate with pronounced seasons.

The southern shore of Amazonia, between the Andes and the sea, is a land apart — a Mediterranean strip 12000 miles long, watered by small streams coming down from the mountains. Small city-states could flourish here, trading in a long arc from 'Panama' to 'Tierra del Fuego'.

In the northeast, the Plata Gulf is a cool-temperate region like the Gulf of St. Lawrence. From here, the Great North Woods stretch all the way across the continent to the Amazon Gulf. In the far north, the Bahia Mountains rise to 6000 meters and support extensive glaciers, the largest in the world, surpassing our Baffin or Ellesmere Island.

The western Bahia uplands are lower and warmed by the Moroccan Current, so the climate is milder, rather Alaskan, with huge spruce/fir forest, and tundra right up to the polar ice pack and east along the northern shore, supporting great herds of caribou-or arctic emus or ostriches or kangaroos, if placental mammals never made it here. (with the high sea levels and lack of Ice Ages, the land bridge to Gringolia probably never existed. Still, the Managua Strait is narrow.)

To the south of the Bahia glaciers, cool-temperate rainforests with huge cedars and redwoods stretch deep inland, only gradually thinning, for unlike British Columbia or northern California, the ranges here are aligned east-west and let storms hundreds of miles inland.

Further south, the Amazon Gulf lands are temperate, fertile, and European in climate, though growing more continental and drier inland, becoming grassy steppes around Bolivia and Paraguay, and true desert to the south, though broken up by many riverine strips fed by the Andes. This Orinoco Desert might well become a cradle of civilization resembling Egypt or Mesopotamia, but larger, and with far more rivers.

Manaus, if identical to Earth will be two thousand miles inland, is lost under the huge Amazon Sea, twice the area of Mediterranean Sea, which laps at the Andean foothills on the borders of Peru. One of its islands, long Tapajos, rivals Hispaniola in the Caribbean.

'Lake Titicaca' has grown, and has five huge sisters: Poopo, Coipasa, Uyuni (larger than Titicaca), Atacama, and Arizaro-together some 300,000 square kilometers of water. These and hundreds of smaller lakes moderate the climate of the Altiplano-it's still a cold windy land, but the treeline's crept up and the grass is richer.

On the southwest coast, 'Guyana' is quite Californian, with a dry sunny Mediterranean climate on the coast, and pine-forested uplands full of Yosemite-like waterfalls and canyons. The Gulf of Venezuela is an intricate tangle of desert, grasslands, scrub, forests, and alpine meadows. Alpine meadows? Yes. Don't miss the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a spectacular range rising 12,700 meters directly from the sea! Here too, snowfed streams in the dry lowlands might lead to irrigated agriculture.

THE CARIBBEAN/ AMERYKA SRODKOWA.

The Caribbean/ Ameryka Srodkowa means something a little different in Falmart than in our world: two long capes with an island between them, creating two straits between Spokojny and Antlantycki oceans.

The Caribbean/ Ameryka Srodkowa climate remains warm. It's a bit drier, especially in the north, along the 'Colombian' and 'Venezuelan' coast. But most of the region is recognizable.

Most of the Caribbean/ Ameryka Srodkowa islands are mountainous, and thus survive; but 'Cuba' breaks up into an island chain, and 'Florida' and the 'Bahamas' are just huge coral reefs with a few islets.

The biggest change is geographic, caused by the high sea level: the Managua and Panama Straits, two narrow channels severing the land-bridge between the continents. Such shallow, narrow straits (only two or three miles or in places) might not totally block animal migration between Amazonia and Gringolia, but they'd certainly inhibit it-currents in these channels might be very strong.

The effect on sea life would be large-twin warmwater gateways between the Spokojny and Antlantycki oceans. Expect more spillage from the Antlantycki into the Spokojny, since prevailing winds and currents would flow in this direction.

The Olmec Peninsula, meaning 'Mexico' below the Isthmus of Tehuantepec plus Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, and northern Nicaragua, ends at the Managua Strait. Beyond it lies the long Isle of Caribbea: southern Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and half of Panama. Caribbea ends at the Panama Strait, where fish swim among the drowned locks and dams.

South of it, a ridge snakes through the sea for thousand kilometers, nearly broached in two more places, before linking at long last to southern 'Venezuela' near 'Ecuador'. This isthmus is called Panama, though most of its spine was coastal 'Venezuela' in our world. Apparently, Panama's less a place than an idea.

NORTH AMERICA/GRINGOLIA.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is very narrow, nearly cutting off the Yucatan and Ameryka Srodkowa from the rest of 'Mexico'. The mild climate of the central Mexican highland now extends all the way to the 'US' border and beyond, creating a complex but generally fertile strip stretching all the way to 'Alaska'. Rainshadows still create savannas and grasslands between the forested ranges, but the climate resembles the more fertile parts of east Africa, like Uganda.

Making the analogy closer, great lakes fill the valleys and basins of 'Utah' and 'Nevada'. The Gulf of California extends nearly up to Palm Springs and Needles, while the Central Valley is an inland sea. The two gulfs nearly make the coastal strip an island 4500 km long. To the west, the lower Willamette/Columbia valley in Oregon has fused with Puget Sound in Washington to form a third inland sea.

From 'Baja' to the 'Alaskan Panhandle', the coast is wet subtropical, like southern China.

Inland, over the mountains from this lush wet coast is a long, drier strip of rather Kenyan highlands. This environment, judging by our own world, is a potential cradle of humanoid evolution, assuming suitable primate candidates are present. They'd have to have evolved in isolation since the breakup of Pangaea, or crossed the now-temperate 'Bering Strait'. It's unlikely-gorillas and chimps find it hard to cross even large rivers. Still, the south coast would be a friendly corridor leading them from Alaska-and inland, the savannas would beckon...

Mexico on your right, Greenland left, New England top, Alaska bottom.

So have you found home yet?

Floridians, you're excused-your home's not lost in the glare. Home's never been! Florida's just a maze of coral reefs. It's a scuba paradise rivaling Australia's Barrier Reef, but there's no dry land at all.

Louisiana was doomed too, of course, the sea swallows half Alabama too-south of Tuscaloosa, only Red and Grove Islands and the small Troy Peninsula are left. Mississippi is even worse off-the Gulf chews inland to Tupelo and Mantee, leaving only the Jackson Peninsula and Brookhaven Island, and a jungly strip up at the 'Tennessee' border.

'Mississippi Bay' nibbles all the way up into 'Illinois', though it's broken up on the west side by long Crowley Island and the Spring and Pleasant Isles. Further south, in Texas, fishermen avoid the rotting, polluted Houston Reefs.

But 'Austin' survives-with a steamy coastal climate, flora, and culture resembling New Orleans.

Unfortunately, Dallas survives too.

Oh, well-you can't have everything.

North of the Rockies, the High Plains are forested; indeed the Mississippi basin, Appalachia, and most of Canada are one unbroken rainforest rivaling our Amazon. The northern shores are shallow; great coral reefs flourish all the way out to the Grand Banks.

Native cultures will be maritime! This maze of tropical islands, reefs, and indented coasts stretches from lost Florida to the isles of New England and Baffin Bay, and beyond — Greenland/Groenlandia has an inland sea full of coral reefs, Iceland and Spitsbergen resemble Sri Lanka or Hawaii...

In fact, the pattern stretches all the way into what, if on Earth, we would call northern Europe-Scotland, the British and Irish Isles, Scandia, and the lesser islands of Gdansk, Estonia etc, in the Baltic Passage to Siberia. Climatologically and culturally, everything from Poland to Panama might well be considered one vast region.

Southeastern Gringolia, however, stands apart. 'Alberta' and the 'Mackenzie' plains are drier, ranging from grassland and savanna to true desert in the rain shadow of the western 'Rockies'. The snow-fed 'Yukon' and 'Mackenzie' rivers would be reliable water sources and, like the Orinoco, might nourish Egypt-like civilizations along their warm, sleepy lower stretches.

'Alaska' as a whole resembles Greece, though quintupled in every dimension (including vertically). The gods would, of course, live atop Denali. I have no doubt this would be a major cradle of civilizations-fertile, ecologically diverse, and a crossroads for both land and sea trade.

SIBERIA/ SIBERYAN.

Siberia /Siberyan or East Azjania is very lush. The warm Polarny Ocean, much larger than our India Ocean, generates rain feeding jungles from the Sea of Ob all the way south to the more temperate Anadyr Peninsula.

The closest climatic analogy in our world is East Asia, from Manchuria down to Vietnam; and I suspect coastal Siberyan would be a similar cradle of civilization, sustaining high populations with its reliable rains. But Falmart's Siberia will be less unified, for the geography is broken up, more like our Europe:

The steaming, boggy shores of the Gulf of Ob, with its endless islets and waterways, like a thousand Louisianas

To the south, milder and hillier: Tungusia, Taymyr Islands, the sinuous Lena Gulf and rich bottomlands of the Lena River; Yakutia's hills, and the gentle Anjou Isles

The warm-temperate hills of Kolyma and Anadyr, like our South China? Appalachia? Peaks will see snow.

Along the Pacific coast, temperate lands like Koryak and Manchuria: France? Snowy winters, but not severe by Earth standards.

Offshore: the cool green islands of Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and Sikhote; further out, the island arc of Japan, all somber Nordic forests below icy volcanoes

Each of these capes and islands would likely nourish distinct cultures, as peninsular Europe did; the geographic deck seems heavily stacked against a Chinese unity and continuity.

EUROPE/ EUROPANIA

From Siberyan let's head north toward the equator (ha! I like the sound of that) toward EUROPE/ EUROPANIA. Yes, it deserves all capitals now. At last, Europe/Europania is now a true continent! But a tiny one by Falmart standard: Scandinavia, Spain, Brittany and Normandy are islands, and the northern plain is gone, from 'Belgium' to 'Murmansk'.

So are Athens, Venice, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Helsinki, St. Petersburg. Other locations like Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Warsaw survive, but are now coastal: their rivers are saltwater sounds or estuaries. Even far-inland locations like Madrid and Moscow are subtly changed-Moscow's just a few hundred miles from an arm of the sea.

The continent is largely cut off from Azjania by the Ob Gulf and the massive Inland Sea (the fused Black/Caspian/Aral Sea). So consequences for land-animal migration are obvious. At first glance you'd guess a Turgay Strait would affect sea life even more: not only could you swim from the Polarny Ocean into the old Mediterranean basin, but you could continue west through the Suez Strait to the Indyjski Ocean; and the Suez is the only warm-water passage between east and west hemispheres.

Follow the current in the Turgay Strait (left and upwards). The wide pale sheet of water past the strait is the old Aral Sea; beyond is a strange, contorted island called Usturt or Ustyurt. A mere patch of desert in our world, its fertile plains form an isle as big as Greenland.

Further up is the deeper, bluer Caspian, with the fertile triangle of Yergeni Island and mountainous Cape Caucasus; the Black Sea lies beyond, and then the enlarged Mediterranean at the top, upside down but recognizable: its shores are largely mountainous, so the sea couldn't sprawl here as much as it can over our Central Asian steppes.

This new, genuine continent of Europania is a hot rainforest nearly as large as the Mississippi Jungle. There are ecological islands: the Alps have a mild, Ethiopian climate: spring all year. Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn even have snow patches, but few others do. The west coast of Italy, in the rain-shadow of the Alps and Apennines, has savanna and open woods, except for the plain of Lombardy-it's a coral sea, extending the Adriatic right to the feet of the Alps.

The Iberian plateau, further north and higher up, is cooler but but still wooded, except behind the Pyrenees and Sierra Nevada, where strips of grassland open up. But most of Europania's wall-to-wall trees-a rich world above, and gloom underneath. A broken Amazonia, or a more continental Indonesia?

Other changes? Scandinavia, or Escandinavia if you're a local, won't be able to host the Winter Olympics. No winter! Escandinavia is a huge equatorial island the size of Congo cutting off from Europania by the swollen waters of the Baltic/Baltisch Sea. You probably didn't recognize it, and not just because it's tropical and upside down. The fjords are gone. No Ice Age, no glaciers. No glaciers, no fjords. Same goes for the hilly but not savage coast of Greenland / Groenlandia and the Canadian islands.

A cool arctic current from Antlantycki helps the keep Europania from overheated: it circles Europania, from the twin straits of Gibraltar and Midi (between Spain and France), south through the Albion Archipelago (the maze of small islands that on Earth would be western France, Ireland and Britain), southwest around Scandinavia/Escandinavia and the Isle of Saami through both the Polarny Ocean and the Baltic/ Baltisch Sea. And west into the new Ob Sea just south of the Ural/Urales Range, northwest through the long, narrow Turgay Strait into the Aral Sea, then northest to the Caspian and Black Seas, then east through the Bosporus and Izmit Straits into the Mediterranean, and east again to close the cycle.

Besides keeping the continent of Europania from overheating, just maritime indonesian, this loop's had an unexpected effect on marine life, the overall biomass is way up. The inland seas desperately needed this flushing action.

The influx of Indyjski Ocean water from the reinvigorated Red Sea through the Suez Strait also adds many species, warmth and nutrients, changing the 'Western Mediterranean' from a near-desert sea to an extremely rich one.

Nile silt, pushed by the twin currents, can't settle in the delta, but forms a long nutrient plume to the west, breaking up into smaller whorls only in the straits north of Sicily.

Fishing will move north. And inland, of course.

Way, way inland.

This new Europania is an unearthly place reminiscent of early astronomers' speculations about Venus:

Shallow muddy seas and dense, swampy, multistory rainforest with sequoia-high trees, often flooded at the roots, a land/sea where the sun's face is only glimpsed in flashes, between rains-rains measured in meters, like central Kauai. But instead of that tiny remnant, picture ten millions of square kilometers. The Carboniferous reborn!

AFRICA/ AFRYKANIA

Africa /Afrykania's greener too. Morocco resembles the East Coast of the U.S., with hot muggy summers and cool winters, even snows, though it's sheltered from Arctic storms by the Atlas Range, much higher than the Appalachians.

Inland, the rain shadow of the Atlas Range creates savanna not desert, for the Tunisian Gulf to the southeast, Lake Mauritania to the north, and the Sea of Chad, the largest lake in Afrykania, rivals the Red Sea on Earth, to the northwest all mitigate the Sahara's continental climate. In summer it's hot and rather muggy near the coasts with dry heat inland, and snowy in winter, as nothing shields it from the Arctic but the glaciated Guinea Highlands.

Green on the coast, the land turns to prairie inland — the largest grasslands on Falmart. In the north, from the Gulf of 'Gambia' to 'Capetown' (some 15,000 kilometers) sweeps a great boreal forest, warmer and much thicker than our Canada or Siberia: the treeline reaches the north coast in most places, fading into tundra only near the great ice fields of Guinea and Namib. South of the glaciers, great lakes like Etosha and Okavango feed the cold, milky Zambezi and Niger rivers.

To the northest is Senegal coast, a vast irregular gulf with wooded shores, drowning Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and southern Mauritania, even nibbling at 'Mali' 1100 kilometers inland.

In the far west, coastal 'South Africa' has a surprisingly mild climate for its latitude, due to the warm Kerguelen Current, similar to our Gulf Stream. Inland, the Drakensberg Mts form the third great icefield of Afrykania. Behind the Drakensbergs, a high plateau stretches nearly a thousand kilometers. Too harsh for forest, it's the world's most extensive tundra, broken only by the low Orange River Valley, dark with arctic view of Falmart, a climatologically alternate Earth: Africa/Afrykania (top; upside down), Arabia/Lemuria (left) and the Inland Seas (bottom).

To the south, Mozambique, Malawi and coastal Tanzania resemble Oregon and California. Madagascar is mountainous enough so little was flooded, except the northeastern cape facing Afrykania so it still as big as India; and with a climate similar to California; the main change is the resurgence of its inland forests. — the southwest coast is nearly as dry as Baja, and the east coast is savanna and desert. Still, the highlands support open pine forests. Lemur habitat is limited; they'd do better on the rainy mainland.

The Afrykania's Great Lakes deserve special mention. This region, inland and high above the sunny west coast, resembles Mexico or the American West-a complex patchwork of mountain forests, high grassy plains, small rainshadow deserts and savannas, with a climate tempered by the many large lakes fed by snowmelt from the volcanoes.

The plateau is high in the South and low in the north, evening the climate, which is wetter than in our world. Ecologically complex, the area's a potential cradle for intelligent species, human or not. Once inhabited, it's also a likely nursery for the development of agriculture and irrigation.

The poor old Somalia has hardly changed a bit-still arid near the Kenyan border and true desert further south. The small isle of Socotra, on the edge of the tropics, gets some monsoon rain in the mountains, so small streams water its dry sunny coast.

The Mediterranean grown at the Sahara's expense — not that anyone's crying over it. Its shore is up to 700 kilometers further north. A 2200 kilometer strip of dry coast, from Alexandria in Egypt west to Bengazi in Libya, is a long, low island like a huge Crete or Cyprus, whose northern slopes are covered with olive groves. Inland, a chain of oases and sinkholes from Cairo to Libya has flooded, forming a broad but shallow and twisting sound. A second, L-shaped sound cuts through Tunisia. Here, too, the vastly enlarged sea with its stronger currents and increased "fetch" for storms, keeps the coast around the sound Mediterranean wet.

Egypt and the Sudan, while warm and rather dry, are Sahelian grasslands, and are now watered by two great rivers-the enlarged Nile, fed by not just by the Blue and White Niles but a third great tributary draining the wooded Marra Highlands, and the shorter Uweinat, an eastern river coming directly from the highlands to a series of lakes dotting central Egypt.

North of the Marra, from the Congo River to the Sea of Chad and beyond, is an immense prairie, golden in this summer shot. Three snowy ranges, the Marra, the Tibesti due south of the Sea of Chad, and the lower but broad Ahaggar Massif in the east, support extensive evergreen forests and are the source of rivers watering both the northern woods and steppes, and the green Mediterranean plains of the South.

The mouth of the Nile is a long gulf, not a delta. The hilly Diffah Peninsula wiggles east all the way to Libya; coral fills the Qattara Gulf between Diffah and the shore. The long coast east to Morocco again is Mediterranean-olive and oak and citrus groves, brushy hills and small meadows.

ARABIA/LEMURIA

The RED SEA is superficially unchanged-ringed by mountains and at nearly the same latitude north, it's still a desert sea, trapped in a rainshadow. But it's grown: the Afar Depression is now a gulf, and Israel, Palestine, and the Sinai Peninsula are nearly an island, connected to Arabia only at the end of the Gulf of Aqaba near the ancient ruins of Petra; and the Suez is a strait pouring into the Mediterranean.

The Dead Sea and most of the Jordan Valley are an arm of the Mediterranean. The steady flow from the Indyjski Ocean through to the Antlantycki makes the eastern Red Sea and western Mediterranean nearly as fertile as the southern Red Sea is in our world. Coral reefs flourish all through the INLAND SEA (the Aral-Caspian-Black-Mediterranean-Red Sea complex, far bigger than our Mediterranean), instead of being confined to the Red Sea.

In ARABIA/LEMURIA, the monsoon dominates. The shores of the enlarged Persian Gulf are greener than in our world. The mountains of Oman (nearly five miles high) trap enough rain for extensive forests; Oman is now nearly an island nation (tip of peninsula, lower left). In the east, most of 'Iraq' is a shallow sea, but the Fertile Crescent is back — Syria, Jordan and eastern 'Iraq' are an arc of lush prairie.

Lemuria proper shades imperceptibly from monsoon forest on the Gulf coast to savanna to grassland and desert in the north, like our Sahel. But unlike the Sahel, rivers vein the plain, nourishing great herds of grass-eaters (and their predators). These are snowmelt streams, flowing from the mountains above the Red Sea, which support pine forests on their slopes. 'Yemen' (top left of peninsula; snowy) remains a green ecological island with desert at its feet... just not in all directions.

ASIA/ AZJANIA

In AZJANIA, Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan also form one unified highland, but a tropical one, with the Caucasian Peninsula as an isolated outlier. Mountainous, well-watered but with local rainshadows, mild in climate, in places fertilized by volcanic ash, it resembles a gigantic Uganda or central Mexico. This upland, like the West Africa it resembles, might evolve intelligent hominids. The Mediterranean is now just the northern arm of the great Inland Sea that covers much of Central Asia. The Black Sea has new breaches to the Mediterranean-east of the Bosporus is Kayali Island, cut off by a new channel at Izmit, while the Dardanelles have a twin strait to the east near Gallipoli. South of the Black Sea lies Manych Strait to the Caspian Sea. The large ragged triangle is Yergeni Island, with the Rostovs off its northern cape and the Caucasus Peninsula to the west. Further south is huge Usturt Island, on our Earth is a desert between the Caspian and Aral Seas, but in Falmart is a strange maze of mesas and cliff-lined sounds, resembling Greece in size and climate, though without high mountains. Iran, to the west, between the enlarged Persian Gulf and the Inland Sea, resembles our Turkey-Mediterranean along the shores, dry but irrigable inland, with forested mountains. The mudflats and saltbeds of central and eastern Persia are now great shallow lakes, bordered by grassland and marsh.

INDIA is more tropical and wetter overall, but the wet and dry zones are reversed: Peninsular India and the Deccan are wet year-round, while Pakistan is monsoon forest, like our plains of the Ganges. Conversely, the Ganges is drier, on the edge of the tropical zone. India's heartland, the Ganges Plain, is gone. The sea's crept up the Brahmaputra valley, too, nearly to the Chinese/Darwinian border. What there is of the Ganges! The Ganges Gulf reaches all the way up to Benares, and its southern arm stretches deep into Assam, forming an inland sea like California's, ringed by even higher mountains. Bangladesh never existed, and Burma, to the south, is just an arc of desert hills rising from a coral sea, like our Sea of Cortez. The nation of Bangladesh is gone too. So is half Burma. And Thailand. And southern Cambodia and Vietnam...

TIBET is closer to the equator, especially its higher end near the Pamir Knot. It's still cool and dry, but can sustain grasslands resembling the Altiplano, and the deeper valleys are forested, even atop the plateau. The Central Asian steppes still exist, but range from savanna to grassland, rather than from grassland to desert. The one true desert, the Taklamakan, is ringed by some of the highest mountains on Falmart, blocking storms no matter what its orientation or latitude. Like the Red Sea, its topography is its destiny. Even so, at its south end, Lop Nor and the Turfan Depression are now good-sized lakes below the Tien Shan, a range much greener and more heavily forested than in our world.

Though the climate's milder, MONGOLIA rivals Somalia as the least changed region of this alternate Earth. Mountains with conifer forests alternate with wide grassy valleys and plains. Biggest difference: the Gobi is no desert, but a vast sea of grass.

ANADYR (Asia's southeastern tip) is Japanlike, with a temperate climate but stronger seasons and colder winters than Grecian Alaska across the strait. Southeast of the Lena Valley sprawls Chukhota, a jagged maze of forested mountains, some high enough for snow even in summer. The ranges narrow and the climate turns more maritime, as bays and deep farm-valleys gnaw at the north and south flanks, till Chukhota trails off into the Bering Strait. Southeast of the sea sprawls huge Kamchatka Island, and its eastern twin Koryak. Once the coast of Siberia, with harsh continental winters, the 'Kamchatkas' are Greenland in size, topography and climate-pine-clad hills and rice-field valleys below a chain of Fuji-size volcanoes. One giant stands three full kilometers above the rest: Klyucha, perpetually snowcapped even now-unlike Fuji, now wooded to the top. To the west is Japan/ Chipangu, along with the Sakhalin Chain and the huge new island of Sikhote, with New Vladivostok at its southern tip. The islands range from warm-temperate in the east to quite muggy in the west. Korea, Kamchatka and Sakhalin all resemble Hokkaido, which is remarkably unchanged: boreal forest and snowy volcanoes. But the rest of JAPAN is near-Arctic-the north coast supports sparse spruce taiga, but its south coast, unshielded from the pack ice only a few hundred miles south, is tundra. Fuji is ice-clad nearly to its feet, except when it erupts.

CHINA/DARWINIA: Below the rugged, shrunken peninsula of Korea, the Neihai Sea covers the fertile lowlands of China/Darwinia, except for Sichuan, safe in its mountain nest. No one worries much any more that Three Gorges Dam might fail and flood the lands downstream-downstream, no lands are left. Now fishery dominates the Shandong/Charles Islands and the maze of hilly capes around the Neihai. The mountains of these cool island arcs shield the mainland somewhat from Antarctic storms, making Okhotsk and Manchuria temperate if snowy in winter. The Shandong/Charles Islands and the many capes and bays around the new, shallow Gulf of China/Darwinia are like Oregon-rainy and mostly snow-free. The Tonkin/Augustus Gulf, the island of Hainan/Valentinian, and much of Indochina have a Mediterranean climate, with warm dry inland valleys, mountain forests, and oak-grassland coasts with mild year-round weather. These dry sunny valleys, with great rivers fed by snowmelt from the Tibetan plateau, are another region where irrigated agriculture might develop. The new rice-baskets are the delta of Manchuria and Ordos (once the edge of the Gobi Desert, now a vast farm-basin in the crook of the Yellow River).

BORNEO ISLES: To the west lies one of the world's great temperate zones-the Borneo Archipelago. Malaysia is now a wholly offshore nation, like Indonesia. The Malay Peninsula flooded in two places, creating the Isle of Kra in the north and Malaya in the south. Singapore is long abandoned-just another rusty reef. On the other hand, 'Kuala Lumpur', 90 miles inland, has flourished, though its famous twin towers now rise over the harbor. Sumatra is still one of the world's great islands, but it looks anorexic-the mountainous spine really shows, for all the fat lowlands are gone. Eastern Indonesia's islands are mostly mountainous enough not to have shrunk drastically, except Borneo. Its southern plains have become gulfs, and the southeast has broken off. The Southeast Asian archipelago has shrunk a bit, but reforested. The Malay Peninsula's an island chain, and Borneo's broken up. The mountainous Philippines are recognizable. True, Manila's gone, of course-just a sound cutting off southwestern Luzon from the rest. Mindanao has lost several deep valleys. And Palawan, the long southwestern island, third largest, has broken in three. New Guinea, while tectonically part of the 'Australian' plate, is now cut off by a two thousand kilometers of shallow sea and seems part of 'Indonesia'. It's shrunk by a full third, and looks like Sumatra or Java-a long, mountainous strip trailing lesser isles east and west. This vast complex of islands and peninsulas ranges from the Norwegian forests and icy peaks of Papua through the cool rainy English climate of Taiwan, the Philippines, Sulawesi and Halmahera, to the warm-temperate French Borneo, to the quite Californian Java, Malaya, and Sumatra, with their sunny coasts and forested volcanoes. While not large in land area, perhaps only FOUR MILLION square miles (10M sq km), it's varied and fertile enough (even without its rich seas) to support multiple civilizations, and forming a bridge to the smallest continent, Tortolia.

AUSTRALIA/TORTOLIA

Tortolia is not Australia. Two numbers tell the story: 375% bigger, and 200 times the biomass. The entire east coast, from subtropical Perth through the Kimberlies to temperate Darwin, is green and rainy. With no mountains to block the rains, forests and fields stretch 2300 kilometers inland, all the way to Alice and the central ranges. The Nullarbor Plain is not treeless, though they're sparse. This photo, in summer, shows it red and dry, but the winter grass feeds mobs of... what? That'll have to wait for our next section: biology.

The heart of the Australian/Tortolian desert is gone, for from Adelaide through Lake Eyre nearly to Uluru itself stretches a warm sheltered inland sea the size of the Mediterranean nearly split Australia/Tortolia in two, with some of the southernmost coral reefs in the world. West of Cape Flinders (two thousand-kilometer peninsula resembling Greece) a second gulf floods the Murray and Darling Basins. In the south, too, the Gulf of Carpenteria thrusts deep inland, leaving a green isthmus only six hundred kilometers wide between East and West Tortolia.

At Tortolia's southern tip, the York Peninsula has dense temperate rainforests with hundred-meter gums... or sequoias. Tortolia's west coast resembles Oregon, becoming Californian in the warmer north. In the rainshadow of the coastal mountains, patches of dry Outback survive, but the Darling Gulf moderates the climate-even the Artesian Basin has many year-round streams and a mild Mediterranean climate.

CONCLUSION

Despite Falmart has smaller ratio land mass, so little land is frozen or dry that the fertile area is 7 times greater than Earth's! And different.

Falmart's a tropic-centered world. But there are tropics and tropics. Our two greatest tropical forests are unbroken continental interiors, sparsely settled. Only our Southeast Asian jungle, and on a smaller scale the Caribbean, are broken into many islands and peninsulas, allowing easy trade and settlement; as a result these "broken jungles" have fostered denser populations and higher civilizations (the Malays, the Mayas and Tainos). But the jungles of Falmart are vast, and more like Indonesia than the Amazon or Congo. Even the great Euro-Groenlandia-Gringo- Ameryka Srodkowa rainforest is a maze of lakes, gulfs, bays, and islands.

Falmart's a world of islands. On Earth, the Polynesians spread from Madagascar to Easter Island, but on Falmart, with its Inland Sea far larger than our Mediterranean, the straits of Suez and Nicaragua, and an ice-free Siberyan sea and Bering Strait, Stone Age sailors could quickly island-hop all the way round the world. The tilted Pacific/Spokojny has vast temperate stepping-stones: from Azjania to Tortolia to Ornithia to Amazonia to Gringolia and back round to Siberyan, Europania, and Azjania. There is no gap comparable to the one between our Americas and Asia/Australia, no barriers like our Suez or Panama; this is a world whose geography fosters sea-trade, not land-routes.

Falmart is decentralized. Dry regions with reliable rivers seem to be nurseries of agriculture. We tend to forget that the tight clustering of our ancient world's great irrigable flood plains in the Near East is a geographical accident. Where conditions are right, whether in the Indus Valley, the Colorado Basin, the Yucatan, the Valley of Mexico, or the small streams from the Andes through the coastal desert, agriculture independently developed.

In Falmart, such rivers abound on every continent: the many-branched Valkyrie River in northern Ornithia, the Orinoco in Amazonia, the Mackenzie and Yukon in Gringolia, the Great Lakes and the Kenya coast in Afrykania, as well as the Nile and its many sister rivers all across the former Sahara, the Brahmaputra/Ganges, the five great river canyons of Indochina, and the many streams feeding Tortolia's Darling Gulf... and on and on. There is no single, obvious center where agriculture, irrigation, and city-states would inevitably evolve first.

Given the prevalence of rainforested islands, the center of gravity of Falmartian civilization, at least early on, might not be centralized "hydraulic" farm societies as on Earth, but wide networks of trading and fishing villages-that is, no real center at all. A worldwide sea-trade from the earliest days might flatten the sharp technological and military gradients that allowed empires and colonialism to become so extreme in our world. Falmart, with its web of island cultures, would not easily allow a single continent to dominate long, at least until they discover telecommunication.

I'm not postulating paradise. I suspect, in the early day, our problems of racism and colonialism would be replaced by problems of specism and tropical disease. Plague might replace war and famine as the great population-limiter. On the other hand, locally evolved peoples of very different species might not be able to handle the diseases and parasites of other continents (like the European colonialists in the tropics, but far more extreme), effectively limiting each species to certain regions or view of Falmart, a climatologically alternate Earth.

Some things, being driven by geography, not climate or culture, would remain constant. The Inland Sea is still the only easy sea-passage between the Indyjski Ocean, Europania, Central Azjania, and the Antlantycki-indeed, easier, as the Suez is a natural strait. Great port-cities would inevitably develop - Cairo and Istanbul and Gibraltar. But these would be rivaled by Qaanaaq and Etah, on the Kennedy Strait between bustling Siberyan and sleepy Gringolia, and Beringia with its 120-mile bridge from Alaska to Anadyr, and Managua on the strait between the Ameryka and the Spokojny Ocean.

Beside these great port cities, keys to the world's maritime trade, river-mouth cities also seem inevitable, though their sites would often be inland of ours: Para, serving the prosperous farmlands of the Amazon and the inland prairies; steamy St. Louis, exporting tropical products from the sweltering Mississippi Basin; fabulous Buffalo, with its locks up to the three Great Lakes (Superior, Huron-Michigan, and Erie), and its famous falls pouring into the sea (well, almost); Adelaide, where the Darling and Eyre Gulfs meet; and Pensacola at the mouth of Ornithia's great Valkyrie River...

Here are some survival tips on Falmart:

Landing on Falmart, you immediately know you're not on Earth. Why?

Instantly visible: that orange sunlight. Falmart's smaller, cooler sun looks golden at noon, blushing lower in the sky to a pure spectral red Sol never achieves. Falmart days have a warm tone, like perpetual afternoon, or gaslight, or firelight... Your eyes adjust quickly, so you'll see a full spectrum. You won't even be aware it's warmer-consciously. But it shifts your mood.

Invisible, but in your bones: the extra gravity. If you're in the tropics (and you'll probably start there) you weigh about 25% more (well, your weight gain really ranges from 23% at the equator to a good 40% near the poles. Variable gravity sound absurd? It's common! ). Strangely, many people experience the extra weight as a sort of vigor, at first. It's so evenly distributed your muscles can easily handle it short-term, and they respond forcefully, enjoying the workout. But a few days later you'll get sore and tired-your joints aren't used to the extra load being constant. After a week or two the vigor returns and you'll stabilize in excellent shape (rats raised in high gravity live LONGER-their joints adapt and last, they stay lean, and their hearts strengthen). The big risk isn't falling, breaking bones, or heart attacks-it's that you'll misjudge how fast objects fall! This adjustment is mental-and deep. You aren't weak, you're clumsy. And will be for weeks.

Visible within hours: the sun races across the sky. Falmart rotates in just 12 hours! Just seven hours of daylight, only five of night. Learn to catnap! (How can day and night be unequal? Falmart's thick and tightly layered atmosphere (thinning fast as you rise) bends light better than Earth's. So at dawn or dusk, sunlight's refracted several degrees around the planet-rarely under five, and up to ten degrees. Result? The sun seems to be shining above the horizon, when it's really just below it. Sound odd? It happens on Earth too, every day. The setting sun you see isn't there-it's several diameters below its image! A few minutes of extra light at dawn and dusk... But on Falmart, it's more than a few.)

Utterly invisible, but vital: the air's different, different in three ways, all of which affect you.

You have 3.5 times as much oxygen available. It's invigorating short-term-but you didn't evolve for it. Harsh on your lungs, if you over-exercise. It may age your tissues faster! Also: within days, in response, your blood will thin out-you'll feel fine, but by Earth standards you'll be severely anemic. So just before leaving, live in high mountains and eat an iron-rich diet for a week or so-or you may faint back in Earth air. So breathe easy, tour leisurely... and before settling on Falmart, consult a doctor!

There's also four times the nitrogen on Earth. That's not quite enough to give most people serious nitrogen narcosis, but you may be mildly euphoric for a few days. Enjoy the buzz ("rapture of the deep", it was once called), but don't fly aircars, or get married-you know, things you can crash. That's a good tourist, let your brain adjust!

And most importantly for our tour, Falmart's air also contains a lot of inert gasses too-so the total air pressure is fully SIX TIMES sea level on Earth. Air that dense means lift under your wings. Yes, you can fly. On Earth today, no flying creature weighs over 15 kg (35 lbs), though some pterosaurs were quite a bit bigger. On Falmart, despite the higher gravity, the air's SO dense that flying's much easier-possible even for creatures as heavy as humans. So strap on your wings and be sure they're comfortable! You won't impress the locals-you're too heavy for aerobatics, or carrying food home to your young, or soaring aerial courtship dances-but with a little practice and a good set of spidersilk wings, a human in reasonable shape CAN get off the ground and chug around. Cruising speeds are near 90 kph (55 mph)-as fast as a migrating goose.

Holy Darwinian Empire

The Empire also known as the Holy Darwinian Empire, is an early-industrial, militaristic, theocratic, and autocratic state with a very intolerant polytheism believe system located in Falmart and ruled by Emperor Molt Sol Augustus, where it runs in a hegemonic system with many tributary states. As an imperium dominatus it controls most of Falmart, from the land to the sea and even underground and underwater.

The Empire rules from its Imperial Capital, Sadera, is located northwest of Blue Sea, deep inside the mountain range of Ice and Snow. With a population of 10 billions it far surpass any Empires in Earth's history. It is the most powerful sovereign state in the modern world and the largest and oldest country in history of Falmart.

The Empire is very old, far older than any nations on Earth. Their Empire has written records going back some 50,000 years and the current Imperial House has ruled their entire planet for some 25,000 years. That is 20 times older than the Roman Empire.

Politics

The Holy Darwinian Empire is a theocratic absolute monarchy governed by its Holy Emperor under his imperium maius (supreme executive power), his auctoritas principis (primary legislative authority), and his jure divis (divine mandate as the Son of Heaven ). Other magistrates possess political powers subsidiary to and even derived from those of an emperor. A Emperor's other titles include Princeps Civitatis (First Citizen), Augustus (Venerable One), primus inter pares (first among equals), Imperator (Supreme Commander), and Pontifex Maximus (Pope). Separate from his public office, a Emperor bears the highest Dignitas (social standing) of a Imperial citizen and has sacrosanctity from physical harm under Falmartian Orthodox and Imperial laws. Violating his sanctity is sacrilege and treason - punished by death.

The Holy Council of the 13 Apostles's resolution 1066 gave an Emperor the sole right to represent Gods on Falmart under canon law of the Falmartian Orthodox Church. However the religious powers of Pope are diluted in their new person; an Emperor cannot bring forth new religious dogma. This authority was only in the hand of the 13 Apostles. Still, as Bishop of Sadera, the Emperor may issue binding papal bulls, canonize saints, and structurally reform the Church in a limited fashion. As the sovereign of the Senate and People of Sadera, an Emperor alone can enact legislation promulgated by the Senate. For his executive powers, an emperor can appoint ministers and perform the functions of most ministries and for his administrative powers, he can dismiss and reappoint praetors for provincial government.

The Imperial government is somewhat identical to the Roman Dominate Period, in which the Emperor is nearly an absolute monarch. He has the responsibility for the overall policy of the state and its diplomacy and has the final authority on most matters of state. However, substantial power also lies in the hands of the Imperial Senate and the Holy Order of Eden.

Unlike in the Dominate, however there exist the title of princess, which, in reality, never happened in the Roman Principate Period.

Like in the Late Antiquity Roman Empire, domestic affairs are still managed locally. The vast land of the Holy Empire is divided into territories known as Provinciae, ruled by Praetores (Governors) who are appointed by the Emperor whenever a Praetorian position opens (either by resignation, death, or impeachment). Praetors must be patricians born and having lived no less than 30 years of their lives in Sadera. Once elected, the new governor forfeits his other magisterial positions and private jobs. Consequently, praetorship is a common successive post for senators or consuls after their terms. However, the position is precarious. An Emperor can remove Praetors at will.

In addition, the Empire has permitted certain cities with long and distinguished histories, such as Rondel and Bellnahgo, to rule themselves; this was typical for the Eastern Roman Empire since the 2nd half of the 5th Century. Certain places which are not suitable for a limited-term regional governor, but which require long periods of acclimation, such as House Formal's domain have been ceded to individuals who possess the requisite adaptability. Many lesser kings and nobles swear loyalty to the Empire and provide troops during times of war whilst controlling most of the local affairs in their territories. Imperial vassal states included hundreds of nations big and small like the Kingdom of Elbe, the League Principality, Kingdom of Mudwan, Kingdom of Alguna, or the City State of Italica. In term of religion, the Emperor counted as the highest religious official in the Empire so he could speak with Apostles of the Holy Order during national religious events.

Unlike in the Late Antiquity Roman Empire, senators, military commanders, and other high-ranking officials while carry substantial political power; never have enough political power to depose an Emperor. Only the Holy Order have the political power to depose an Emperor if they deem him to be unfit for divine mandate.

History

Based on the Imperial Calendar, which likely marks the founding of the Empire as "Year 0", the Empire was presumably founded 52017 years before the GATE event , or in the early 50000 BC based on Earth's calendar. Initially the country was a semi-constitutional monarchy, however, the government grew ineffective as the territory increased, which resulted in the current duocracy system. While few events in the history are known, it is known that, about 25000 years prior to the GATE, or around (260997-27029 ) Imperial Calendar, a major war called the War of Unification took place, which is generally considered to be one of the most turbulent and difficult times in Imperial history.

Imperial Subjects

The dominant species on Falmart is Homo Titanien, also called Titan Shapeshifter, Subjects of Darwin, or Humanoid. Titan Shapeshifter are unlike any other species encountered by Humanity. They are the ultimate lifeforms. Their cells can assimilate genes of other species, this combines with their own hyper-evolution allow them to survive in almost all environments. They don't need food, water or even air to survive. Titan Shapeshifter possess extreme longevity. Their lifespan is between 1000 to 10,000 years.

Basic abilities :

Titan transformation: A Titan Shapeshifter is able to turn into a giant Titan 10 time bigger than normal. Hence the name.

Although the organic materials that make up the Titans' bodies appears to be from nothing, they are said to be sent from invisible paths that transcend physical space.

The body of Titans appears to violate several known laws of science, spontaneously generating both energy and mass. Their muscle is incredibly powerful granting them superhuman levels of maneuverability.

Their extremely high level of activity and body temperature indicates the need for a massive intake of energy to fuel them, yet they apparently never need to eat, drink or breath at all.

Superhuman strength: Titan Shapeshifter has superhuman strength and is able to lift a 8-ton truck in human form. Experiments have shown a Titan Shapeshifter have the strength of 100 man. In Titan form their strength increase a thousand time that mean they now can lift a 8,000 thousand-ton destroyer.

Immense speed: Titan Shapeshifter is able to dash around battlefield at incredible speed, and easily outrun a speeding vehicle. During the test, test subject Tuka also managed to dodge gunshots from many assault rifles used by CIA agents and reached the speed of 370 km/h but this ability is not absolute since she cannot outrun all the bullets in which she receives a few shots. In her 20m-tall Titan form, she still can reach that incredible speed despite the inverse-square law indicate an extremly powerful energy source.

Combat prowess: Titan Shapeshifter are very skilled with weapons, they can use any type of Shapeshifter can gains the battle experience from every single Titan Shapeshifter before them via paths but they need special training to awake this ability.

High speed regeneration: Titan Shapeshifter body regenerates any wound it receives. They can regenerate lost body parts from seconds to minutes, even severed heads. Even if the Titan body were destroyed, the real human body inside would not be can only be kill if their real body is torned to pieces or burned to ash.

Object Conjuration/Materialization: Titan Shapeshifter can create any simple medium size object like tools or weapons or even armor. Although this appears to violate the law of conservation mass when matter appears from nothingness, they are said to be sent from invisible paths that transcend physical space. They can create even bigger object in their Titan form.

Magic: Titan shapeshifter is capable of using magic. Magic in the Falmart follows the "Legal Principle", which states that the "False Principle" (Magic) is an application of natural phenomena unfolded upon the "True Principle" (reality / physical laws). For example, a spell that causes rocks to levitate then accelerate is the "False Principle" interfering with the "True Principle" of the rocks being still. Falmart magic appears to be means of manipulating natural processes such as chemical interactions and fundamental forces of the universe in a manner which is not completely understood by the residents of the Falmart.

Humanoid Races

Homo Titanien has many sub-species divided into many races called Humanoid. A Homo Titanien can transform into any humanoid form that suit their need hence the name shapeshifter. But this ability required a special transformation pod.

Some common humanoid races living in Falmart are:

Immanity

Immanity are basically normal human. They look exactly like human on Earth except for their impossible natural hair and eyes colors. For some unknown reasons, they have glorious anime-like hair colors: blue, green, violet, pink, silver, ruby, red, orange ect. Immanity make up more than 60 percentages Falmart's population.

Elves

The Elves in Falmart are similar to depictions of elves in 'high fantasy' fiction, being depicted as humanoid creatures with unique pointed ears and dashing appearances. Elves are known as expert archers and are also skilled in the use of spirit magic. They are famous for Turning Arrows that can change fly directions mid-air.

Dark Elves

Dark Elves are a sub-race of elves with brown or blue colored skin, who seem to live in colonies separate from their fair-skinned counterparts. They suit for living in the desert.

Fairies

A pacifist race that, due to their small size, handle small jobs such as handing pens to others and providing desk assistances. Groups of fairies can cooperate to handle heavy objects.

Orcs / Trolls and Goblins

Goblins are sometimes referred to as "Orcs" or "Trolls". They are large and muscular humanoids with gray, green, or purplish skin and pig/ape-like faces. They are known to have very thick, superhardern skin and hightly resistance to injuries. Goblins are very strong but appear to be less well-armed and armored than humans or other soldiers, carrying mostly crude clubs, warhammers, axes and cleaver-like swords. They are infamous for the superheavy Orc's longbow.

Ogre

Armored Orge , also referred as Walking fortress by the Empire, are giant humanoid race that can be found in the Mountain Region. Armored Orge are famous for their tremendous physical strength and super thick armor allow them to wreak havoc the enemy formation or working in very dangerous environment. They are the heavyweight lifter of the Empire.

Dwarves

Short, stocky, and bearded, the typical Dwarves of 'fantasy fiction' are among the races seen at the bar in Alnus. The Dwarves are known among the inhabitants as skilled blacksmiths and metalworkers. They are strong and skilled combatants in spite of their short stature.

Pooka

A red-skinned humanoid species known for their skills in commerce. They seem similar to Japanese Oni superficially.

Lennon

Lennon are a Humanoid race with a third eye on their forehead. The Third eye allow them to see through wall.

Minotaur

Minotaurs like most of the fauna of Falmart bears resemblance to mythological creatures from Western cultures on Earth. In this case, it's the labyrinth-dwelling half-man, half-bull monster of Greco-Roman mythology. Like their mythical counterparts, minotaurs of the Falmart possess giant humanoid bodies (save for the bovine hooves on their feet) and heads similar to that of a bull. They are famous Gatekeepers .

Succubus

Race of humanoid consists primarily of highly attractive female prostitutes. They bears resemblance to mythological creatures from Western cultures on Earth.

Amazons

Race of humanoid consists primarily of tall, muscular and highly attractive female warriors. Due to their fighting prowess and beauty, they are among the favorite races of Emroy as well as Hardy. The Amazons are the most human-like race of all humanoid races. They work at bodyguard for the noble and the Emperor.

Cat-People

Cat-People are humanoids with feline features, specifically cat-like ears and tails.

Warrior Bunnies

Strong, agile, disciplined, and feminine lagomorphic humanoids best known for being fast and fierce warriors and assassins.

Sirens

Sirens are humanoids with bird-like feathers from their arms and heads, as well as avian-like feet. Their arm feathers resemble wings thus they are able to fly. Sirens are famous to have the ability to use powerful wind magic.

Monarch wing

A race of winged humanoids apparently distinct from Sirens are known to inhabit the Arctic Region. These winged humanoids are six-limbed, having two wings growing out of their back in addition to 2 arms and legs, similar to depictions of "angels".

Medusae

Medusae are humanoids with numerous 'snake heads' sprouting from the scalp, as if they are hair as to the like of normal humans. These 'snake heads' possess the ability to feed on the life force of a victim, as well as the ability to read minds.

Volralden

The Volraden are a tribe of humanoid Werewolf race with wolf-like appearance. They hail from the Mountain of Snow and often serves as mercenaries for various Lord in the Empire. Most of them are seen doing their job as military police or convoy guards

Leonoids

Bipedal anthropomorphic lion and tiger-like beings . Like werewolves/Volralden of the Mountain of Snow and Winter , Leonoids appear more like animals with an anthropomorphic body structure than humans with some animal characteristics.

Atlantean

They aquatic humanoids have a fish-like tail but also possess two legs, allowing them to stand and walk on land.

Mer-People

they look like the classic depictions of "Mer-people" they are a race that are half-human and half fish. They have many great cities underwater. They play a vital role in the Imperial Navy.

Draconians

A tribe of humanoids with dragon-like features, including wings, scales, and sharpened teeth. They are known to be capable of communicating with Dragons to a degree, as well as taming them more easily.

Centaurs

A demi-human race with the lower body of a horse, just like it's counterpart in Earth mythology. They are the main components of the Imperial cavalry.

Kobolds

A aggressive and salvage race of wolf-like demi-human that bear quite resemblance to the Voldradens.

And there are many more humanoid races that are not on this list.

Imperial Army:

The Imperial Army is the main army used by the Empire. The Imperial Army is similar in appearance to the Roman Empire on Earth, being made up primarily of formations of heavy infantry armed with spears, swords, large metal shields, and utilizing Roman testudo formations in battles.

Also present in the military are super heavy cavalry, long range archers, siege engines such a battering rams, ballistae, mortars, cannons and dragon riders.

As the empire's military, it is the centerpoint of a military-industrial complex with unbelievable power and international authority. Feared by foreigners and revered by patriots, the Imperial Army is without question the most effective army in Falmart's history.

Overview

While the Imperial Army might share many similar to the Roman Army in their appearance, their technology level is particularly more late-Renaissance.

For instance the Imperial centaurs cavalry, who are typically similar in appearance to the Polish hussars knights, clad in very thick plate armor and armed with heavy cavalry swords, lances and the fearsome Joergbow.

Imperial legionaries also extremely heavily armored with thick plate armor and heavy metal shield can weight up to half a ton.

Other Renaissance weaponry used by the Empire include wall-mounted artillery and mortars. Their air force is made up of giant Wyverns Titan shifter with high speed, agility and devastating firepower. Their main use is ground and sea support.

They also own a very large navy, with between 200,000 and 300,000 transport ships of all kinds, ranging from 50m long Galleons to giant wyvern carriers up to 150 meters long. Those ships are not weapons by themselves they are just mobile base of operation. The main naval weapons is the Sea Cavalry comprise of mostly Sharkopath Titan.

As the largest armed forces on the planet, the Imperial Army boasts 126 million regular soldiers. This almost excessive number of troops is maintained by mandatory military service - twenty years for every man born within the borders of the Empire. No force in history compares in size to the modern Imperial Army. Even the entire Earth's militaries in the Second World War combine fell short of its forces.

Historically, the World Empire has supplemented its army by conscripting citizens into the Imperial Army. When the security of Empire is threatened, the Emperor can lawfully force his people into service, magnifying the size of his forces several times.

A modern horde could have anywhere from 200 million to 500 million soldiers. Human civilization has never witnessed a comparable military force.

Structure

As an arm of the executive government, the Army is completely at the behest of the Emperor. Its internal leader, however, is the Crown Prince of Drawinian, the supreme commander of the army, navy and air force.

The professional division of the exercitus consists of 200 Army Groups according to nearly identical designs. Its present form stems from the Second Reforms in 7717. This reorganization emphasized the command hierarchy and enforced strict uniformity in the armed forces.

The state confers absolute command over the entire armed forces to the reigning Emperor, Sadera's chief executive officer and first citizen.

As the top of the pyramid of command (pyramidis imperia), his orders must be followed without exception. Due to the separation of most emperors from military life, their orders are typically vague with a great deal of strategic flexibility, along the lines of "hold Thebes above all else" or "take the enemy's capital".

Imbedded securely in the pyramid and immediately below the Emperor, the Crown Prince (Supreme Commander) is the highest distinctly military office in Sadera. He is the commander who formulates the Empire's military policy and global strategic goals after the Emperor's input.

Civilian management of military affairs works through the Ministry of Defense, popularly known as the War Ministry. The Minister of Defense, its administrator, manages the bureaucratic issues of keeping a standing army, and working closely with the Secretary of Army, Navy and Air Force.

There is little natural conflict between the duties of the Crown Prince (Supreme Commander) and the Minister of Defense. The latter engages himself in paying wages, organizes the legions during peacetime, and communicates military policy to the public, while ensuring that national strategy is in line with national policy.

The Crown Prince (Supreme Commander), by contrast, decides the where, when and how of military operations at the highest level. Of course, often strategy must be planned on a global scale so he tends to decide on strategic goals while his generals flesh out the details.

Organization:

The Imperial Army structure is surprisingly similar to the US army in WW2:

5-10 soldiers will form a squad lead by a Optio (Sergeant )

3 to 4 squads together make up a Platoon (15-45 soldiers) lead by a Centurio ( Lieutenant ).

3 to 5 platoons together formed a Company (80–250 soldiers) lead by a Primus (Captain).

3 to 5 companies will form a Battalion (300–1000 soldiers) lead by a Praefectus (Colonel ).

3 or more battalions will form a Brigade (1,000–5,500 soldiers) lead by a Tribuni ( Major General ).

3 brigades form a Division (10,000–25,000 soldiers) lead by a Tibunus (Lieutenant General ).

3-4 divisions will form a Corps (30,000-50,000 soldiers) lead by a Legatus (General ).

2-4 corps will form a Field Army(100,000–300,000 soldiers) lead by an Epistrategos ( Field Marshal ).

Finally, 4-6 field armies will create the largest division of troops is referred to as an Army Group (400,0000-1,000,000 soldiers) lead by the Generalissimus (Lord Commander) who are also the member of the Imperial Senate.

Recruitment:

Recruitment into the Imperial Army is either done voluntarily or through conscription. Military service is considered a great honour and volunteering for the Holy Darwinian Army is considered to be an honourable profession in the Holy Darwinian Empire. The Imperial Army also employs mercenaries and Arch-mages to bolster their forces. Much of the armed force is made of warrior-class citizens. Soldiers of the Imperial Army have good education and are expert at geography, history, archery, hand to hand fighting, psychological warfare, airborne skills, underwater combat, poison use, and so life of a common soldier is quite decent, they have high salary combine with many benefits and are well respected by all members of society.

Special Unit:

One difference from a Renaissance Army is the fact that the Imperial Army does employ a kind of Air Force in the form of the Titan Wyvern Lord Corps. These are Draconian soldiers who are trained to transform into giant wyverns (dragons with winged forearms). Wyvern lord length about 120 meters, can fly up to tens of thousands of meters high, at the speed of 2,400km/h , has extra thick exoskeleton skins, super regeneration , and can shoot giant fire ball at enemy. They are normally armed with giant heavy flechette and use the wyverns' ability to breathe fire to attack enemy troops on the ground. They are the ancient equivalent of ground-support aircraft. They are also used for reconnaissance, patrols, and for intimidation. Their super hard dragon scales combine with insane regeneration and supersonic speed prove to be invulnerable to modern-day anti-aircraft weaponry and can only be killed by a tactical nuclear weapons.

Another difference is the Sea Cavalry . Imperial Army do have a kind of underwater Cavalry called the Titan Sharkopath Corps. They are Mer-people soldiers who are trained to transform into giant Armored Shark. The armored shark length about 50-60 meters, can dive to tens of thousands of meters depth, making speed at 550 knots, has extra thick exoskeleton skins, super regeneration , and can shoot air bubble wrapped supercavitating teeth at enemy, each around 6 meter long and 50cm thick and at hypersonic speed of mach are the sign of calamity of the sea. Supercavitating nuclear torpedoes are suggested as a weapon to kill them.

Types of soldier

Heavy Infantry: the basic soldiers in the Imperial Army. They wear a 250 kg plate armor that look like a Crupellarius and carry a 150 kg metal Scutum. The thick armor and shield make them immune to most firearm up to 50 cal. Thank to their superhuman strength they can move at speed up to 300 km/h even with all those heavy armor.

There Titan form is 10 times larger than their normal form reach the height of 20 m. Their weight increase a thousand fold to 500 tons. Heavy artillery is need to neutralize them.

Centaurs Cavalry: the basic cavalry units in the Imperial army. Very heavy armored can run up to 600 km/h. They are shock troopers of the Empire. In their Titan form they can weight up to 1000 ton with all those heavy armor. They are very maneuverable allow them to encircle their enemy. They are very good archers. A heavy cavalry charge with lances by the centaurs is almost unstoppable. Anti-tank mine is the weapon of choice.

Volralden warrior: Volralden are excellent skirmishers, they are like the Ghurkha in our world. Their Titan form is a giant wolf-like monster with horns. Its length is 50 m, total height is 20 m. It has 2 small wings incapable of flight and it is covered with hair as hard as steel. It possess tremendous amount of magic, being able to shoot explosive magic from its mouth and its horns. It has super strength and also has super regenerative magic. It has two types of explosive magic: a low-power lightning shockwave fired from its horns and a single high-powered explosive magic. Although it has high offense magic, it has a weak defensive power. Its speed is impressive up to 720 km/h so air-to-surface missile (ASM) is the best way to kill it.

Armored Ogre demolisher: They act as armored troops of the Army. They normally move at the front act as vanguard. Their normal size is 6m height . They wear very thick armor up to 50 mm of super hard Titan crystal and armed with a 200mm thick shield along with a 10 ton giant hammer or club. Their Titan form is a colossus 60m height 30,000 ton beast. It can generate massive telekinetic wave and destroy everything around. It's quite fast for its size can move at 200km/h. An Armored Ogre Titan can leveled a city in a day. 460 mm Advanced Gun System (AGS) is the best way to deal with it.

Warrior Bunnies Assassins: Warrior Bunnies are known for superhuman agility, reflex and speed as well as highly skilled warriors and big bunny-like ears also enable them to have enhanced hearing in which they can hear sound and conversation at a very far average Warrior Bunnies is equal to five trained Imperial soldiers that is why they used as special force.

Special weapons

Helstorm Rocket Battery : The Helstorm Rocket Battery is an experimental artillery piece used by the Empire as a means to shower the enemy with a hail of explosive rocket munitions, nicknamed the Sunmaker, for it fired specialist phosphoric rockets that burned with a blinding brilliance.

Dwarf Organ : The Dwarf Organ Gun, or Organ Cannon as some call it, is a strange yet infamous artillery piece created by the Engineers Guild and used extensively by the Dwarfs for its ability to shoot cannon-balls at a far greater rate of fire than a typical Dwarf, the Organ Cannon's barrel are smaller and lighter than the ones used in standard cannonry, meaning it lacks the range and firepower of conventional artillery. However, the Organ Gun makes up for this disadvantage by being able to fire multiple shots at the enemy, able to literally tear apart an entire regiment of soldiers should the crew get within adequate range of the enemy.

Helblaster : The Helblaster Volley Gun is one of the most infamous black powder weapon ever invented, its devastating firepower able to tear apart an entire regiment of enemy troops in one thunderous volley. Its nine separate barrels are divided into three "decks" and are turned by means of a central crank, firing around three shots per deck which would shatter the enemy in hail of miniature cannonballs. Helblaster crews may choose to fire all three decks in quick succession, or to load and fire the decks one after another. Either method has advantages.

Wildfire : The Imperial Troops use Wildfire flasks as incendiary weapon. Wildfire is a flammable liquid which is created by the power of Titan. Wildfire is a highly volatile material; when ignited, it can explode with tremendous force and the resulting fire burns so hot that water cannot extinguish it. Only by smothering the flames with large quantities of sand can they be put out. Wildfire is identifiable by the distinctive green hue of its flames and a bright green color in its liquid state .The Wildfire flasks can be loaded in the giant Polybolos to launch at the enemy to burn them.

Joergbow : Joergbow is a rapid fire magazine-fed bow . It allow archer to increase their rate of fire and accuracy because it have a magazine of 6 arrows, draw assistant system ,trigger release and the ability to mount iron sights. Combine with the ability to create unlimited arrow through Paths , an imperial soldier can shoot up to 60 arrows per minute. Because of magic and superhuman strength the crytal arrow can fly at the speed of 1000m/s make them as dangerous as the 20×102mm round. The Titan form of this bow can shoot 9m long 100kg heavy arrows enought to kill a tank.

JoergMachine Bow : It a crossbow with a 50 arrows magazine and a magic power repeat system. It shoot lighter arrow but with the rate of fire up to 360 arrows per minute. It the reason why the Empire didn't invented gun because it basically a M2 Browning. This thing will be very dangerous in this giant form.

Giant flechette : It a high velocity heavy rod dropped from Wyvern Lord. It is basically a giant Lazy Dog (bomb) used in Vietnam War. A Wyvern Lord can summon thousands of flechettes per minute from the " Paths Dimension " make them essentially a ultra heavy bomber. Each flechette would develop an enormous amount of kinetic energy as it fell .Those flechettes weight about 1 ton each and their speed often exceeded 700m/s before impact penetrating nearly any material upon hitting the ground.

Economy

The Holy Darwinian Empire is the sole hyperpower on Falmart. It has the largest economy and controls the raw materials of the entire planet with the capability to field a full-time professional army, millions of warships and battle beasts and well as complete massive construction project such as the "Fortress of Falmart" an extensive system of coastal defences and fortifications along the entire seven continents coastline.

In spite of the fact that the Holy Empire's economy is somewhat limited by its early-industrial revolution technology level, the existence of magic, Titan powers and Paths dimension places no limits on the amount of resources which can be exploited by the Empire, as well as the annual gross domestic product of the Empire.

For this reason, the Holy Empire's annual gross domestic product is enormous even in comparison to that of an comparison to that of a modern industrialized country such as Japan. While the annual GDP and government budget of the Empire is not known, it is known that the initial Emperor budget proposal to rebuild the capital Sadera of 50 trillion Suwani, which is about the 3 billion tons of gold, was considered to be a small sum.

However, Darwinian society suffers from an income inequality deeply ingrained into its history and class system. The top 10% of earners control about 65% of the empire's wealth - the noble (1%) alone more than 44%. Unsurprisingly, the empire's gender gap is enormous. 75% of women who reported working in the year of the last census earned less than 1000 Suwani that year.

Women are subject to the same minimum hourly wage as men so their lower income comes from a lack of work hours - a social disparity rather than legal inequality. Regularly working females tend to hold jobs for which men are less suited, e.g. designing women's clothes, or men consider degrading to their gender, e.g. prostitution.

Other jobs typically held only by females will place them underneath men, like the position of secretary, or keep them by the side of a businessman or politician. This reflects the perception imperial possess of distinct gender roles in society.

As their early-industrialization suggests, the Empire's citizens create hand-made and mass produced goods, using raw materials from Paths Dimension. The lands of the Empire also very rich of gold , silver and gem stones.

Some of the more unique materials in the Empire are dragon scales, Titan crystal, wood of Titan Forest (is comprised of colossal trees generally around 180 meters tall), Iceburst stone (natural gases solidified by Titan power, becoming like icy stones), Titan ultrahard steel, ect.

The Currency of the Empire consists of gold, silver and platinum coins of varying values.

Weight & Metal Exchange rate

Gold: Suwani = 60g

Silver : Denari = 60g

Platinum : Soruda= 60g

1 Suwani = 5 Soruda , 1 Denari = 2 Soruda

Slavery

Slavery still exists in the non-Imperial parts of the world, although the Holy Darwinian Empire effectively destroyed the slave trade by the early nineteenth millennia. Most slaves are found in the Ameryka Srodkowa and former Europania colonies of the Former West Afrykania Union, and in the Amazonia kingdoms, though there are some in Afrykania itself. Many nations use slavery as a criminal punishment, or simply as a way of disposing of political opponents of various kinds.

Attempts have been made to stamp it out, which has halted the trans-Antlantycki slave trade (while leaving nations with their own internal slave markets), but in general apart from a small number of anti-slavery campaigners, slavery is considered an internal matter, with which other nations should not interfere.

There is an interesting paradox however, although the Holy Darwinian Empire doesn't have slave, at least officially, free people could willingly sell themselves legally to pay off debt, they use a massive number of slave labour. In the form of mindless titans and homunculus slave. They are basically biological robots doesn't have a will of their own, that is why they are perfect slave.

In fact, homunculus slave growing and selling is one of the major sources of income for the Holy Empire and it is known that in the Holy Empire exists many factories and markets completely dedicated to the create and trade of high quality homunculus slaves and that the homunculus are used for forced labor and sexual exploitation in inhumane and life-threatening conditions.

Do not misunderstand, the Holy Darwinian Empire didn't abolish slavery because some moral objection or anything, they did it because normal people were horrible slave and didn't make economic sense. Homunculus are much better slave and they never revolt, you can also design a perfect homunculus slave yourself.

Technology

The Empire technological level was in the 1700s, right before the Industrial Revolution's era. Most of their known technologies are reflected in the military aspect, so their full technological capabilities (such as civilian technologies) remain unknown.

Militarily, their army is based on ballistic weapons of the 18th century, such as mortars and cannons. All their weapons, however, use magical force to propel projectiles rather than gunpowder, although the principle of firing looks the same.

Their warships were in the style of the early-modern ships-of-the-line, with a curious variation is the Dragon Carrier. When it comes to speeding, they use the Tear of the Wind God to wind the sail.

It shows that their technology represents both "forward" and "backward" thinking when compared to Earth technology in general.

While most of their technologies are only equivalent to the 1700s, interestingly, there are some areas that are far more developed.

Darwinian is the first country to successfully develop television, using magic to convey images far away by unknown mechanisms, in addition, some others communication technologies such as magic radio exist.

Another very well developed area is biotechnology, with their mighty Wyvern is a product of that technology. By using magic, it allows them to perform gene editing and hybridization, helping to create beneficial traits at will.

The love of gadgets by the nobility of the Empire drove the development of numerous inventions in the 'Age of Gadgets' before mass production and large-scale industrialisation took hold. Inventors were funded by nobles to produce devices to entertain, amuse, excite or help them.

These included such devices as steam cars and calculating machines. In most cases these devices, that begin as toys for the rich, evolved over time into things of general use.

Education

Free education is provided to all children by the Holy Darwinian Empire. Based on the unified curriculum of the Holy Order of Eden, which was first used in 10702, this provides a sound basis of knowledge, covering magic, grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, logic, scholasticism, religious studies, mathematics, history and the natural sciences.

There are a number of world-renowned universities in the Holy Darwinian Empire. In particular the universities of Bellnahgo, Rondel, Kabul and Agra are very well-respected. In addition to the Holy Empire has a number of astronomical observatories in Olympus mount. The University of Lhasa is especially well known for its astronomy department.

There is a long tradition of a scholarly, magically-literate educated nobility which has, over time, trickled down to all levels of society, leading to there being more scholars and so on per head of population than on Earth. Significant amounts of magical progress derive from the efforts of amateur magicians, who meet in clubs and societies across the civilised world.

Likewise, because of the lack of an equivalent to the Earth's third world, the general level of education around Falmart is higher than on Earth, and the vast majority of people are at least somewhat magically literate.

XXXXXXX

"TO SUM UP, despite their primitive technology the Empire presented unparalleled challenge for our expeditionary force that require upmost commitment to overcome. Mr Musk, CEO of the Musk Industries, would continue the presentation. Welcome Mr Elon Musk."

"Thank you Dr Hange" said Elon as he came to the podium.

"As you heard from Dr Hange, Falmart is a hostile environment. Its planet high gravity mean our soldiers can't carry heavy firearm. Facing enemy with super heavy armor and super speed, our light infantry will be sitting duck. We need better firepower. "

"Introducing the next evolutionary step in warfare : the Combat Jacket Mk3." Elon point as the main screen as he continued.

"Combat Jacket is highly advanced exoskeleton suit that enhances soldiers abilities in the battlefield. When wearing the suit, soldier can run faster up to 72km/h, jump to extremely high heights, lift and push heavy objects. The suit also lets soldier to avoid damage when falling from great heights when they are dropped from the Quad Tiltrotor. The suits visor can show upcoming threats even in smoke.

Jacket is powered by Tesla's hypercapacity battery that needs to be periodically replaced after the last one runs out of power. Without the battery the Jacket can't function and soldier inside of it becomes immobilized. So remember to check your battery.

The suit is equipped with high calibre railgun and rocket launchers that are controlled by Neuralink - a implantable brain machine interfaces (BMIs). The suits are fitted with four weapons: arm mounted rifle with a grenade launcher on the right arm, a triple-barrel cannon device on the left arm, an 20mm auto-cannon mounted on the right shoulder and a 16-shot grenade/missile launcher on the left shoulder.

The suit has metal plates around the user. The helmet has a cage like attachment around the face. The suits (BMIs) comes in few different languages so soldiers of different nationalities could used it without hindrance.

The suit is also equipped with smart blood. It a artificial blood carry nanobots that will improve your health, reduce your stress. It is compatible with all blood types therefor saving a lot of life. The suit also have morphine to relieve pain.

With this State-of-the-art exoskeleton suit our armored infantry will have what it take to survive the battlefield of Falmart and bring us the final victory."

"Oh Man, he is really turning us into real-life Iron Man ! isn't he. "

Said Itami as he secretly reading manga from his sit at the 5th row. The meeting continued for 6 more hours discussing many aspects of the operation.

Rearmament

Falmart's environment presented unprecedented challenges for military operations. Those challenges need to be solve in order for the first interplanetary war to be a victory. The dense atmosphere of Falmart mean its wind had 6 times the force of Earth's wind with the same speed. Not just that the high temperature and faster rotation of Falmart mean faster wind and the formation of Hypercanes

(Hypercane is an extreme type of a tropical cyclone which forms in extremely warm waters (around 50°C/122°F). This storm has a recorded wind speed of 500 mph (801 km/h). Hypercanes cover a large area of land and reach around 90 km into Falmart's stratosphere, preventing stratospheric jets or airplanes from getting past. The ocean in which the hypercane formed in stays warm from a few weeks to a few months, allowing the hypercane to survive longer. Also, if waters stay warm after the storm dissipates, it will allow more hypercanes to form. If this sort of storm actually impacts land, it causes widespread chaos. A hypercane's winds allow it to form an extremely high storm surge, which floods up to 20 miles (32 km) inland.)

This mean our aircraft with fragile aluminum alloy frame would be torn to pieces like paper. So we had to replace and redesign all of the air forces planes. This resulted in the use of stainless steel for airframe and super large airplane design to better resist the wind. Stainless steel airframe combined with thick heavy armor plate make the plane too heavy to effectively fly on earth atmosphere but perfect for the stormy weather on Falmart.

This is perhaps best illustrated by the Tu-688 nuclear-powered ultra heavy bomber and the Boeing C-177 ULTRA (Ultra Large TRansport Aircraft).

The Tu-688 had the length of 75 metres and the wingspan of 95 metres with 8 reactor driven electric turbofans and swept wings, it have maximum take-off weight of 1000 tons, a payload of 500 tons. Tu-688 was the heaviest armored strategic bomber in the world, it steel armor plated can resist even 30mm cannonfire, made it more like a flying battleship than a plane.

Boeing C-177 ULTRA had the length of 172 m and the wingspan 342 m. The wing was of crescent form, similar to the British Handley Page Victor V-bomber, but unlike the British design it was tailless. The plane was the biggest nuclear-powered transport aircraft ever designed. If the Tu-688 was the flying battleship then this was the airborne aircraft carrer that could stay airborne for 90 days. Its power was derived from the heat generated by a high capacity, high efficiency compact nuclear reactor and transferred to four jet engines where it would superheat the air passing through to provide thrust. The craft would be capable of staying airborne for long periods of time thanks to this. At low altitudes the jets would burn conventional aviation fuel. In order to get airborne in the first place it required 182 additional vertical lift engines. The aircraft carrier version could carry up to 22 fighter aircraft externally and had an internal dock capable of handling two air-to-ground shuttle transport aircraft. The cargo variant could carry 5,265 tons of equipment and 3,000 troops. It had VTOL capability.

The United Earth Alliance produced at least a half dozen different fighter with similar designs philosophy (J8, J-11, J-86, J-100, J88/101 & the Dragon Hunter) in greater quantity that all types of jet fighter produced on Earth from 1992 to 2018 combined, with just the J-86's 130,000 aircraft production run equally Earth's total aircraft production (including everything from basic trainers to helicopter to passenger jet aircraft) from 1959-2019. That massive number was only possible due to the simplicity design of the aircraft. None of them have stealth or electronic warfare ability because the enemy didn't have radar.

The minutes of the Combined Chiefs of Staffs realized the nature of the Titan and their abilities. They concluded that super heavy armored/mechanized formation was not just the key to victory but also to the survival of the troops because sending light infantry to fight Titan was suicide. The higher gravity and air pressure mean our armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) need redesigned. But the main reason for redesign was the price, modern AFVs were too expensive. Impossible to mass produce. They needed cheaper designs.

It was remarkable that the Allies, especially the United States of America, the United Republic of Europia, the Greater Russian Union, the Republic of India and Federal Republic of China, were able to nearly totally reequip their massive ground force with new, or at the least, massively upgraded armored vehicles in only 7 years. The sheer effort in the project would have been beyond the enormous resources of even the United States, EU, Russia, India and China had the entire world's raw material and manpower weren't under their control. However, with the forming of United Earth Alliance (UEA) and the forced labors of the third world countries, together with all the material, not to mention the skilled welders and other craftsmen & women shunted to armored vehicle construction, The project has had results. The results of this effort were, of course, the Type-47 Sheridan and the Type-92 Chamberlain.

While the United Republic of Europia, Arab Union, African Union and South American League armies were being re-equipped with Chariot II MBT. The Chariot II tank had an impressive weight of 84 tonnes, was armed with Rh-130 130 mm L/51 tank gun and had thick steel armor, the Anglo-American (along with the Indian Armored Forces, The People's Liberation Army and the Russian Armed Forces) had gone far further with the Type-47 Sheridan.

Swallowing a fair amount of pride, the Americans and Russian had built the Sheridan around a license built version of the German Armory 130mm weapon being used on the Chariot and an upgraded version of the M1A3 basis layout that was, to use the words of one American armored veteran, not built, but carved out of solid nano-crystalline steel ingots. While this level of protection came at the expense of range sapping weight of 94 tons, and limited the Type-47 to 58km/h it was a considered to be a reasonable compromise.

The other super tank, the utterly mind boggling Type-92 Chamberlain MBT, at the weight of 141 ton the tank reflected in many ways the ideals of its primary builder, the Bath Iron Works, a long time builder of warships. Slow, with a top speed of only 47km/h, Type-92 was the most powerful and best defended tank on the tough battlefield of Falmart. The vehicle was covered with almost 230mm of nano-crystalline steel armor (the same formulation used on the Yamato II battleships) provided the tank with 690 mm RHA vs APFSDS, and 920 mm RHA vs HEAT, and was powered by a 2,700 horsepower AGT-2700 turbine engine. Armed with a high velocity 152mm smoothbore gun the L/92, or the L/60 (155) and L/67 (180mm) SP gun carriages, and the rare (only 35,000 built) 210mm L/71 super SP assault gun, the Chamberlain was so large that it required a modified version of the LST to disgorge it.

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"Operation Downfall is the largest millitary operation in history, however before examining Downfall in detail, it is worth considering the enormity of the overall Downfall operation.

Numbers can be misleading, but in this case, tell much of the tail

Allies (Deployed to Falmart only)

Troops: 60,000,000 (this represents just Combat and directly combat related troops like landing craft drivers and Combat engineers) Total forces exceeded 390,000,000 when air force formations (including ground support), naval personnel, and logistical/support troops are included.

Land Assets (as of the onset of Operation Downfall):

Total Tanks : 888,160 (10 times as many of tanks as the total US tank production in WW2)

+ Upgraded M1A1 Abrams: 1500

+ Upgraded M60 Patton: 990

+ FAMBT-3 Mjolnir: 180

+ M1A2 Abrams: 3,650

+ Upgraded T-72: 40,210

+ Type-47 Sheridan: 266,080

+ Chariot II: 371,980

+ Type-92 Chamberlain: 203,570

Total Infantry Vehicles: 2,851,600 ( 20 times NATO and Warsaw Pact total inventory in 1989.)

+ 573,600 tracked IFV

+ 41,200 wheeled IFV

+ 1,122,800 tracked APC

+ 934,000 wheeled APC

Additional 640,000 armored trucks, off-road cars and reconnaissance/patrol vehicles various.

Total Artillery Forces : 1,440,500 ( 10 times NATO and Warsaw Pact total inventory in 1989.)

Self propelled 122mm: 49,760

Self propelled 155mm: 41,000

Self propelled 180mm: 40,800

Self propelled 203mm: 16,130

Self propelled 240mm: 9580

Self propelled 406mm: 3600

Self propelled 800mm: 1030

Self propelled mortars 240/320/380mm: 150,000

Self propelled mortars 520/600/914mm: 4300

Towed 122mm : 3060

Towed 140mm: 52,260

Towed 155mm: 49,330

Towed 180mm: 214,000

Towed 203mm: 66,000

Towed 240mm : 4800

MRLS 227mm : 2800

MRLS 300mm : 75,000

MRLS 320mm: 8100

MRLS 380mm : 3770

MRLS 480mm : 1200

Mortars 81/120mm: 261,100

Mortars 155/180mm: 382,900

Military Aircraft (as of the onset of Operation Downfall):

Combat aircraft: 2,004,430

Very Heavy Bomber: 37,400

Heavy Gunship: 41,060

Heavy Bomber: 214,610

Jets fighter and Fighter-Bomber: 316,850

Attack Helicopter: 399,860

Combat/Reconnaissance Drone: 994,650

Support aircraft: 955,160

Transport Aircraft: 239,000

Training Aircraft: 580,850

Aerial Refueling Aircraft: 135,310

Grand total: 2,959,590

Even without counting the drones, the UEAADF were the largest and most powerful air force in human history by an order of magnitude, with more than 2,9 million operational aircrafts, ten times as many planes as the entire US aircraft production in WW2. This insane number can only be achieved in a total war economy.

Naval Assets (as of the onset of Operation Downfall):

Battleships: 345

Cruisers: 1080

Destroyers: 5655

Frigates: 5415

Total Surface Warships: 12,495

Carriers Fleet: 420

Carriers Escort (manned and unmanned): 1065

Submarines (manned and unmanned): 3480

Mine Warfare Ships: 8790

Patrol Ships: 18,060

Amphibious Ships (not including Amphibious Tractors or Amphibious Tanks): 38,205

Auxiliary Ships: 19,005

Total Active Ships: 101,520 (this is the largest naval force in human history, by the end of 2029 the United Earth Alliance Maritime Defense Forces are operating 15 times more naval vessels than the US Navy at its peak in WW2, 6,768 ships on V-J Day in August 1945)

In addition to the almost unimaginable cornucopia of material available to the Allies as listed above there is also the more important matter of the quality of the equipment which was the premier armored formations on Earth."

The New York Times-2031