What Lies Behind the Door

Part 0 ~ Backstory and Introduction

Hello all 👋😁 - 

I am your lovely author, and I realize this probably needs a little bit of back story. I am new to long-form writing like this, and exposition is...hard. So here it goes. 

What lies behind the door is an alternate universe (AU) in which humans have had magic from the beginning. While this would change virtually all of human history, I cant rewrite all of human history. Although I pretend to be a god, I'm not one, and I physically can't do that. so instead I have made a few "gentle" alterations to history. 

I think that something that might be helpful to explain is how magic works. Much like someone's personality, it's a mixture of nature and nurture. Some parts of many people's magic are hereditary, however, their magic can also change through necessity. When droughts are common many people develop water-based talents. Whether they can summon clouds to bring them rain, or shoot water from their bodies. But every talent has limitations and the water (or whatever is applicable) always has to come from somewhere, sometimes its body fat, maybe bone or muscle density. often historians can tell when times of drought came about based on the bones they left behind. Genghis Khan's magic mutated into crazy good eyesight, seeing the path arrows would fly, and some suspect he could see either in slow motion or a few seconds in the future. 

The Belgians and swiss had shields, so when the Germans came knocking on their door in 1914, they forced the Germans to enter through France. World War 1 was over faster and was far less deadly. The war ended and the treaty of Versailles still happened. But when Hitler acted up in the 30s, everyone was less hesitant to start another war cause they hadn't lost nearly as much last time. Hitler tried to build his master race of Aryan people, sighting certain powers as better. Killing those with undesirable traits still. Blitzkrieg or "lightning war" is now an extremely literal statement, as often the german children had mutated lightning harnessing during the great 10s-20s to combat power grid failings. (as electrical grids were built much earlier because they were able to harness it much earlier with the help of human exploration) Hitler the visionary saw a way to use this advantage. 

Hitler still blamed the Jewish population for the reason why the American stock market tanked. Many speculated Jewish people had an aura of good luck, that they would bring good fortune and happiness to those around them. Hitler claimed that they were bad luck, stealing every good thing from the world. But because of that aura of good luck around them, the nazi gas chambers were often ineffective, the door didn't seal right, or there would be water inside of the chambers. Many times there was a gas leak, killing the operators of the chambers.

          __________________________________________________________________

Much of European imperialism failed due to the fact that they came completely underprepared, expecting the natives of Africa and the Americas to have similar talents. In short, their racism backfired, in the sub-Saharan areas of Africa, many of the tribes had the ability to harness the sun, focusing its light and heat in a certain spot. They made lenses in the sand, to create staffs and spears that could even better focus the light. A pinpoint beam of light could melt straight through the European settlers metal plate armor. If they didn't get sliced in half, they died of sever burns. The white settlers who didn't get killed mid-journey would get skin cancer so bad when they returned back home, their skin seemed to be made out of soap bubbles. 

In South America, every time the Spanish got close to the shore, the sea would open up like a mouth and swallow the party whole. It would seem that the Mayan people could manipulate the earth, and in large numbers, they could control plate tectonics.  It took all of them, but they swallowed the whole Spanish armada in one go. that was deterrent enough for the Europeans to not try again. 

when the British came to North America, they found the natives armed with battle buffalo, or in a shroud of tobacco smoke so strong it caused hallucinations. They could bend the smoke to their will, creating horrible monstrous shapes, only worsening the terrible trips the British were having.  In the end, most of what we would know to be the US didn't get colonized by the British. They made it into the Appalachia and couldn't push forward. Unlike in the world we live in, the Natives didn't die. Spaniards just didn't make it very far into the Americas.   

Much of the Midwest and western united states became a refuge for those seeking shelter from prosecution. A few wars later north America looks more like Europe than what we know it to look like. Some of the states (as in the real term for states, not the Americanized version) formed a North American Union after seeing the success of the European Union, and that allowed all of these countries to have the same currency and open borders. 

(And yes I know that the Americas are named after a colonizer, I want grounding to my story god dammit. Nor am I willing to think up a bunch of new names, so I'm ignoring the history of place names cause so many of them derive from French and I'm already swimming up stream here) 

Colorado is its own country, it covers most of the rocky mountains and lies over modern Wyoming and Iowa. It losses its status of being a square as the borders were created by 3 idiots on horseback who had to mark out what is the rocky mountains. Much of the eastern plains of Colorado now belongs to Kansas, (think the western third of Colorado) a country mocked for being a libertarian safe haven. they came to Kansas after failing in New Hampshire and getting run over by bears. They came to Kansas, an area famous for not having bears. 

If you are interested in any other parts of history that may have changed, drop them in the comments. I would love to see it.