ramblings (alt-history)

A while back there was a thread about an alt-history where the cold war continued past WWIII and that humans moved out into the stars in different nationalist factions.

Now I have to ask . . . as a different alt-history, what if prior to the United Earth which formed after the first contact . . . some nationalist groups took to the stars, claiming to be governments and people in exile from their homes. How would they have existed . . . would they expand themselves. . . would they eventually rejoin the rest of humanity? Would they become conquered peoples? Would they be like the small nation-states in Europe in an ever coellescing EU?

The official site says it was founded in 2113, correlating to the abolishment of 'disease, war, poverty, etc' that Troi said in First contact. This gives plenty of time for non-UE colonies to be established in the regular timeline.

It was a crappy episode, but we saw breakaway groups (albeit, not nationalist ones) in the Bringloidi and Mariposans, from the European Hegemony. Other presumed supernational groups would be the Eastern Coalition or the African Confederation. Theoretically, we can presume that most colonies for the first 50 years of exploration were nationally-aligned.

A breakaway nationalist government might serve as a refuge for everyone with ideals opposed to those of the United Earth government. Nationalist ideologues, anarcho-capitalists, transhumanists, Terra Prime-esque xenophobes, etc.

Well, I had a vague plot based on this sort of scenario planned many moons ago.

The basic premise was that the SS Botany Bay was only one of the exodus ships, and that another group had also escaped Earth, under the sway of a rival of Khan who planned his escape from Khans core group and re-programmed the cryo pods to allow them to wake early. But seperated from the Botany Bay they were alone in the universe and on the brink of starvation when they were 'rescued' by another vessel...

And so they took over their rescuer and subjugated the survivors... But in so doing became hunted...

Cut to several hundred years later, when the heroes of your own saga come across a city ship, seemingly made up of a rag-tag fleet welded and fixed together... although scans show that its not quite as patch-work as it first appears with reasonable up-to-date weapons, shields and engines comparable with most contempary powers... And the crew is a motly collection of species led by advanced humans, decended from the original crew...

Now you can either go with a slave-owning race of arrogant super-beings, still modifying themselves, and acting as space-pirates, generally disreputable, and about to become a protagonist and general pain in the lives of our heroes...

Alternatively, over the centuries they may simply be on the run from the various civilisations that their ancestors antagonised, genetically programmed to fight, they need help and could well use the guidance and may even seek repatriation over the course of a series (if any of your players ever fancy playing a genetically advanced human???)

@JALU3: I made a map and a small back story a while ago in an alternate history thread of this forum. There were of course some problems, like would such a thing actually be feasible, since tensions between USSR and NATO could escalate if one of them invented warp or space based weapons.

It is still possible that with the premise of early sleeperships, crews might discover USSR-style colonies or 1960s American colonies or even more obscure one like imperial china, maybe even still waiting to here from the Soviet Union or other institutes back home believing there system of government would hold out. I think we saw some colonies with these ideals in the Star Trek shows, like the indian tribes in the DMZ who settled there to be able to live their own lives. And the 39'ers episode of Voyager had a settlement of humans from the 1930s who were placed there by aliens.