Keyguyperson — Roleplayer Guild

<Snipped quote by Keyguyperson>

I'd love to see you explain how to produce all of that in a language you don't know, and get it running within your now shortened lifespan, all without googling anything.@catchamber

I'm not just gonna run up to them and shout in English "HEY YOU FUCKS I'M GONNA BUILD YOU A FUCKING STEAM ENGINE!" I'd learn the language before explaining anything. And it'd be a really useful language too, since I live a few hour's walk from a Cherokee village. And their language was the SHIT in the Carolinas back then. I could teach them how to do something exceedingly basic like build a watermill for A: Easily milling food and B: Producing mechanical energy to run any machinery. Because I'm in an area where trade is important (reminder that the Cherokee language was basically the trade language around here) things like furs and food are going to be of value. 

So, of course, I introduce advanced stuff like CROP ROTATION and pull a British Agricultural Revolution. The problem is, of course, that a big part of that was new plough types. And we don't have any draft animals. The two possible solutions are either go south to get fucking alpacas and probably die in the jungle, or head west and try to bring back some bison. In either case, its a long and impractical journey on foot. But we need draft animals, and Lewis and Clark did it. How hard could it be?

Assuming we don't all die, me and a team of people set out to the west. We all stay there for a while, learn the language of wherever we end up, and domesticate some draft bison. And it's a good thing we were going for bison, because now we have animals that can carry enough food for both us and themselves. They could even pull carts, and from the plains natives we could get ourselves quite a bit of cloth (we could, for example, teach them how to plant shit if we bring along seeds. Or, of course, make the wheel, which they might find useful now that we just tamed gigantic beasts of burden for them). So we've just got bison-drawn covered wagons. Now that's pretty fucking awesome.

So we return with these animals and finally get our agricultural revolution going, and probably eventually start breeding a few for eating and using for their fur. Since we've got covered wagons drawn by bison now, we can even send people back to the west significantly faster than if we were on foot. Using my magical direction teller thing I made (a compass) and a map of the area pieced together by my geographical knowledge of the entire American continent and contributions from other tribes, journeys to other areas of the continent suddenly become possible.

And now the Cherokee have a population boom on their hands.

I help them learn how to build sturdier, more permanent buildings for their exploding population. But there's still more than food (which we have in abundance) to capitalize on in trade. Fur. Now, how am I going to make hunting for fur easier without depleting the game (which is probably already happening thanks to the population boom)?

Easy: We start growing a whole lot of cotton. We can weave that into clothing, but its not gonna be all that fast. We need two things: a cotton gin and a mechanical loom. We already have a watermill, which could power both easily. I might not be an expert at making either, but I understand the basic workings. And humans are just as smart as now in any time, everyone will have the same reasoning we do today. So by describing the basics and even just seriously imparting the idea to them, we can invent both and use a watermill to power them.

Boom. There it is. The first industrial revolution. We've just created the British textile industry. At this point, I'm probably getting a bit older. Had I not introduced, say, antibiotics, vaccination, germ theory, or pasteurization, I might be dead. But instead my life expectancy has increased by decades. As have everyone else's. People have longer to live now and longer to learn, but still, I'm having a midlife crisis (probably a bit more than midway through my life, of course, given the period's technology). I know I'm going to die, and I also know that we're going to need a practical system of record-keeping.

So I adapt the English alphabet for use with the Cherokee language, and quite literally just spell out words however they're spoken and teach someone else how to write. Then they can teach the others, so now we've got a writing system that EVERYONE can learn thanks to the tribal structure of our civilization versus feudalism in Europe. Then I just carve those letters onto individual blocks, dip the letter bit into ink, and invent the printing press. So now we can easily communicate ideas across large distances using standardized type, and the same script can be made countless times in a single day rather than in years. 

Coincidentally, the Cherokee written language spreads all over the place thanks to our merchants that have carts and draft animals. Now a big chunk of the world known to us can read our writing, and the continent is more united than ever before. The Cherokee, by this point, have formed something akin to an Empire thanks to trading and the technology I've helped them develop. The east coast is criss-crossed with roads laid to encourage trade, and everyone knows the Cherokee are the ones that made it possible.

So now, it's time for me to bring about the second industrial revolution. With some of the best minds the land has to offer, we invent the steam engine. But we've only got wood, which isn't great for a steam engine. So I tell them where to find coal (remember, I'm on the east coast-the old coal capital of America), and how to make and use the tools to get to it. This also makes it really easy to heat houses. With this steam engine, we can haul up the coal we use for it much easier. We can use its mechanical power to make things like steam drills, and build textile factories away from rivers. 

Along with the steam engine, we need new metallurgical techniques (newer than the ones that we've invented until now, that is). Now THIS I don't know much about, but I do know what the basics were and what the goals were. And the spark is all that's needed to start a revolution. With some help from me, of course, industrial metallurgy comes into being. Society is different now. The old tribes hold little sway, and rather have all blended together through Cherokee trading and writing. On the east coast, at least. This is a society that can function industrially.

Of course, all that's left for a full-on, complete industrial revolution is to use the steam engine to make something move on it's own. This isn't hard, we've got smart young people now who grew up in this new world, they can help me figure out the intricacies of the design (because I certainly don't know enough about trains to design one myself, I don't think anyone does, they're things that are designed by groups rather than individuals). Tracks are easy, and with a fairly unified civilization we can create a standard width for our railroads (preferably something big enough to handle the larger trains that will soon come). So now we have an industrial society complete with early steam trains. At this point I show off electricity, because now we can make the tungsten wire we need for lightbulbs.

Since I know the Caribbean is inhabited and just asking to be uplifted into the industrial era by our nice, benevolent Cherokee empire, I pretty much just say "We need canoes, but really big and powered like the trains". We'd probably use wood, since there's literally no reason to build ships out of metal yet and quite frankly we ought to be using that new industry for more practical things. We go to the islands of the Caribbean with our paddle steamers and proceed to colonize the SHIT out of that stuff. We're basically imperialist European by now, except we hopefully walk the talk of helping out the people we colonize rather than doing what the Europeans did.

So this is the bit where I spill the beans. Yeah guys, I'm from another land from the other side of the oceans called Europe. They've got weird white skin like mine. I can also see the future/am from the future (whichever I think they'd accept easier) and know that in another reality they slaughtered you and stole your land. I've been doing all of this to prevent that from happening. Thanks to the medical advances I brought about (like vaccination) the diseases won't be as big of a problem. But the Europeans have guns.

Which are real easy. Just get to making that black powder, build a metal rod that can be lifted to your shoulder, make an ignition mechanism, and you can shoot lead balls at stuff. But wait, there's more! Put the gunpowder IN that lead ball and make it the right shape and you don't even need such a complicated trigger! And THEN, etch grooves on the bullet and in the rod! BOOM! You've just invented rifles. Maybe we use them to conquer the Aztecs or something, who knows, I introduce them as the endgame of my plan to create a glorious American Federation. 

To be honest, by the time Chris gets over I'm probably dead. But for the sake of the narrative, let's say I arrived at the right time for it (nobody ever said just what part of the medieval ages it is). I know where he'll end up, and so we set up a little welcoming party for him with a fleet of steam-driven ships built out of metal specifically so cannons couldn't harm them. Chris spots our smoke and assumes it must be signs of an encampment.

He spots our ships, and is probably bewildered by the fact that they can move without sail and appear to be made of iron. Like the Americans did when the Europeans came, he might think our ships move by magic. We direct him to a nearby island for a meeting, and though my Spanish is rusty after all these years, we can communicate in some form through rusty Spanish and English cognates.

I promptly inform him that he's not in India and that there is instead a continent in between Europe and Asia. I then tell him what he did in my time, and mention that if he tries to pull that shit he's gonna get shot with guns that can fire multiple shots in quick succession and his ships will get sunk by vessels immune to cannons. I send him back to Spain with some food and gold, as well as a roughly reproduced copy of The Communist Manifesto (updated for feudalism) in English and Cherokee just to fuck with the timeline some more. Maybe some text about how the Bible should be read by commoners tacked onto it, so I can make Protestantism or at least reform happen way too early.

I'm dead, but my advancements live on in a civilization and Empire that has the ability to cross the continent. In my final will, I tell them to do so and unite even that which lies beyond the Rockies and in South America under one banner to ensure that they all remain free.

It's likely that I die a ways before I can get the second industrial revolution started, but that's no problem. I just leave writings on it because I INVENTED WRITING. Events play out in the same way, and I make a script for whoever actually meets Chris to use. Just because.

So there you have it, steampunk Native American superpower in the age of sail. After the second revolution at least, they won't have any need for my guidance. Technology will advance naturally just as it did for us.

I spent like three fucking hours on this shit, fuck me what am I doing with my life? This is longer than a story I've been writing since last week on and off.
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