But what if Alexander hadn't died?
Divergence
Alexander finishes his plans in Babylon, establishing the city as his capital and the centre of his nascent empire. He easily conquers the Nabateans and Arab tribes then continues east, riding back to the Hindu Kush and marching his armies on the Lands of the Indus, conquering all but the very tip of the great subcontinent. He marches all the way to the Bengal delta and the cusp of Indochina before turning back west.
On his way back to Europe, he solidifies his rule over Egypt and takes the northern African coast, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to dominate the Celtiberian tribes. Sailing back to Greece, he destroys the Romans in their infancy, bringing most of the Italian peninsula under his domain. He then returns to Babylon and turns his eyes to nation-building.
Alexander the Great, Basileus of Macedon, Hegemon of the Hellenic League, Shahanshah of Persia, Pharaoh of Egypt, Maharaja of Indus, Lord of Asia and Emperor of the Known World dies at the ripe old age of 73, leaving the Alexandrian Empire in the capable hands of his son Alexander IV. The Empire lasts another four centuries in various forms, eventually fracturing due to a combination of internal political strife, an invasion of Scythian nomads from the steppes and unsustainable expansionism. The Jews were assimilated into the empire and Jesus of Nazereth is never born. Islam never emerges, the Ka'aba having been repurposed as a temple to the Hellenistic gods.
Following the fall of the Alexandrian Empire, the successor states from Iberia and Carthage to Bangladesh and Bactria fight and squabble in a Dark Age very much like our own, but speaking languages descending from Macedonian Greek instead of Latin and worshipping the Hellenistic pantheon instead of the Abrahamic God. Greco-Buddhism comes to dominate over the eastern successor states in India and Bactria, appealing to the Classical mentality, spreading as far as eastern Arabia and the Levant.
Europe north of the Alps is populated by the Germanics, Gauls and Celts, who are largely left to their own devices by the Hellenistic cultures, developing on their own without Rome to crush them. After a brief experimentation with using Greek letters, the use of Ogham spreads among the Celts and Gauls, whereas the Germanics use the runic script. In the absence of Rome's 'civilising' influence, the barbaric peoples become remarkably egalitarian, the status of women significantly better than in Hellenic culture. Women who feel their oppression in society is too much often flee the Iberian, Italic and Balkan kingdoms to join the Celts and Gauls, spreading learning among their new nations and affording women a respected position as philosophers and politicians, something which only makes the Hellenes regard them as more barbaric.
In the Far East, China is battered by onslaughts of steppe nomads, displaced eastwards by Alexander's conquests. China fractures into warring states, each dynasty claiming the Mandate of Heaven for their own. Dominance over the region is decided by alliances between the kingdoms, the Alexandrian successors and the steppe hordes to the north, whose allegiances change with the wind. The Mongol Khanate rises but conquers north and east instead of west and south, its expansion challenged by the Jurchen tribes. Genghis Khan dies as the chieftain of a nomadic horde, rather than Khan of Khans, giving way to feuding siblings as the tribes, clans and hordes of the region compete for dominance. They clash with the Korean and Chinese kingdoms, exchanging dynasties, bloodlines and technology but none coming to permanent dominance over the region.
The Present
With such an early change, many small things propagate outwards. The current year is 1674 in our calendar, yet no Renaissance, Enlightenment or Industrial Revolution have happened. Gunpowder is totally absent but the printing press exists, though has not triggered any sweeping social changes. Alexander's world is still essentially in late TL3 to early TL4, whatever conditions necessary for the great shifts in technology having never happened.
The Mantle of Alexander is the idea that Alexander the Great must always have a successor, and whomever this successor is is entitled to rule the world. Naturally, most rulers claim lineage from Alexander and any kingdom powerful enough to bully its neighbours into submission claims the Mantle. In Europe, Magna Graecia has risen to prominence as the dominant Hellenic power in the region, controlling most of Greece, western Asia Minor as well as southern Italy, laying claim to the Mantle. Magna Graecia has embraced the ideas of Athenian democracy which developed in Greece following the fall of the Alexandrian Empire, where citizens (a small minority of the population) participate in direct democracy, while non-citizens, women and slaves have no say. Magna Graecia's dominance does not go unchallenged, however – Thracia and Taurica to the north, Pyreneia and Leonoikos in Iberia, and Mauretania and Carthage on the north African coast all have their sights set on the Mantle.
Further north, the Germanics in Europe and Scandinavia continue to go viking, raiding and trading along the Baltic coast and British Isles. The Celts and Gauls in France still remain in small tribal groups, the concepts of feudalism and kingship never introduced by the Romans, but the Celts in Britain and Ireland have begun banding together in an egalitarian tribal democracy, called the Brigantian League.
Aegyptos, ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty descended from some of Alexander's greatest generals, remains in control of the Nile, with a Greek-Egyptian hybrid language flourishing and the Library of Alexandria still standing as a testament to learning. Eastern Asia Minor and Persia is split between small feuding kingdoms, giving way to the Neo-Bactrian Empire and its vassal states near the Hindu Kush. Established by Emperor Theophilus XI through the conquering of the various small regional kingdoms, the Neo-Bactrians also claim the Mantle of Alexander. The Samarkand Republic, an oligarchic trading nation in central Asia, controls the gateway to the Chinese kingdoms and the beginning of the Silk Road, exerting much the same control over the Bactrian and Indian regions that Venice did over Europe and the Mediterranean.
China and the Far East is split between the Xiu, Song and Jin kingdoms, all vying for the Mandate of Heaven. Tibet remains as historical, with additional Grecian influences in art, philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism due to the syncretic Greco-Buddhism practised in India, Bactria and central Asia. Further north, the Manchu, Oirat and Mongol tribes clash, conflicts bubbling over south towards China, Tibet and Korea. Even further east there is Uchotka, a nation created by a revolt of Siberian nomads who were conquered by the Manchu. They successfully revolted and overthrew their masters, establishing their own state on the Kamchatkan peninsula and the Kurils. Since being conquered, they have developed a more settled lifestyle, though still call their king khan. Uchotkan sailors sail east in search of better hunting grounds for whales and Uchotkan outposts have been established as far as Attu Island. Japan remains almost identical to the same time in our world, save for the lack of any Europeans. Japanese, Chinese and Korean explorers have also begun to cross the Pacific, charting the ocean and the myriad islands. So far they have sailed as far east as Hawaii but none have yet reached the western coast of the Americas.
Western Africa has seen the meteoric rise of the Kingdom of Benin, unimpeded by the far-reaching hand of Islam. Though Benin is technologically behind the Hellenes, they are quickly becoming an empire, making vassals and clients of the smaller West African nations and the Kongo, exploring the African coast and establishing colonies in South Africa. It may only be decades before Beninese sailors discover Brazil.
The Americas remain largely virgin, free from European diseases or exploitation. Left untouched by the Spanish, the Mesoamerican cultures have developed bronzeworking, though retain obsidian in ritualistic use, and their art, poetry and philosophy have exceeded the golden age of the Classical philosophers. The picture-based proto-writing in Aztec and Mayan codices has blossomed into a full hieroglyphic writing system, with an expansive and varied corpus of literature. Though the altepetl (city-states) still struggle for dominance over the peninsula, slicing out hearts and dripping blood on the steps of their pyramids, the Aztec (or the Mexica-Tenochca as they call themselves) have maintained their hegemony over the core region as in our history, though they are only just beginning to form a true empire.
Bronze has begun to spread slowly north and south from Mesoamerica, along with the concept of writing. Bronzeworkers can be found as far north as the Apache and as far south as the Inca, and basic hieroglyphic writing copying the Aztec and Maya has spread north even faster, reaching to the Iroquois and the Great Lakes in the northeast and the Puget Sound and the Salish in the northwest. Most are still written on leaves, hides or maize husks, whereas the Inca have perfected their quipus into a full writing system, both written and carried in knots.
Infinite Worlds
Alexandria-1 is definitely a curiosity, demonstrating both high-inertia and low-inertia features – it is the first worldline ever observed where Alexander the Great didn't die in Babylon before invading Arabia. At the same time, the fall of the Alexandrian Empire, the subsequent dark age and period of successor states so closely mirrors the fall of Rome that it must be some facet of parachronic inertia. Infinity's scientists hope to discover more close parallels to Alexandria-1 (hence the optimistic naming) to evaluate exactly how likely the death of Alexander in Babylon is.
Currently, Infinity has opened the worldline to researchers, who adore the linguistic, ethnic and religious divergences, and cautious tourists, who are mostly interested in Classical bronzes of Apollo and the Buddha, marble architecture and silk togas. Alexandria-1 also offers the opportunity to study pre-Columbian America in exquisite detail, with Native American cultures that have remained untouched by disease, war, Western culture or Christianity, and will remain that way until the Beninese, Chinese or Uchotkans discover the Americas. To this end, Infinity is running feasibility studies for vaccination campaigns in the Americas to protect the natives against common Old World diseases.
Centrum's possible operations in Alexandria-1 are massively impeded by their lack of linguistic science. In Homeline, Classical languages such as Bactrian, Persian, Kushan and Sanskrit are well-preserved and accessible, as is a large corpus of works in Classical Greek, making learning the Grecian, Greco-Persian and Greco-Indian languages of this worldline possible, though not easy. Centrum has no such luck, relying on immersion to even begin learning the dizzying array of Greek dialects and daughter languages. The language difficulties, in addition to being two quanta away with no obvious large powerful nations to manipulate, makes Alexandria-1 unattractive to Centrum, with only limited reconnaissance activity known about to date.
Alexandria-1, 1674
Current Affairs
The fractured remnants of Alexander the Great's once-eternal empire squabble and bicker between themselves to prove that they are worthy of the Mantle of Alexander. While the Celts, Germanics and steppe nomads coalesce into true nations ready to challenge the Hellenes, the Kingdom of Benin and the Asian powers are on the cusp of discovering the still-virgin Americas.
Divergence Point
11th June, 323 BC; Alexander the Great doesn't die in Babylon while planning his invasion of Arabia and India. The Alexandrian Empire grows to include most of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and India, falling four centuries later to produce a swathe of Hellenic, Helleno-Persian and Helleno-Indian successor states.
Major Civilisations
Hellenic (empire with rivals), Hellenic-Iranic (multipolar), Hellenic-Indic (multipolar), Bactrian (empire with satellite states), Chinese (fragmenting multipolar), West African (empire with satellite states)
Great Powers
Aegyptos (dictatorship, CR4), Magna Graecia (Athenian democracy, CR3 for citizens, CR4 for non-citizens and women, CR6 for slaves), Neo-Bactrian Empire (feudal dictatorship, CR4), Samarkand Republic (oligarchy, CR3), Kingdom of Benin (feudal dictatorship, CR4), Brigantian League (clan/tribal, CR2), Uchotka (clan/tribal, CR3)
Worldline Data
TL: 4 (though no gunpowder; TL3 in steppe, West African and Siberian cultures, TL1 in the Americas)
Mana Level: low
Quantum: 5 Infinity Class: P6 Centrum Zone: Yellow
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