When you say alt. history, do you mean alt history in the sense of "What if france won the 7 years war" or something like Kugelstahl /Regicide/Myths and Muskets?

Since if it's the latter i'll drop this and just work with you on that setting provided that there's trading companies and very similar elements to what I described here like ancient civilizations lost to time, the existence of humanoid races that while related to humans are clearly different species and strange creatures in strange lands of great value.