[center][hr][hr][img]http://bestanimations.com/Books/writing/writing-in-book-old-style-animated-gif.gif[/img][h1][b][color=goldenrod]World History[/color][/b][/h1][hr][hr][/center]

[center][h2][b][u][color=goldenrod]Discovery[/color][/u][/b][/h2]

[img]https://s1.eestatic.com/2017/11/11/social/Historia-Estados_Unidos-Groenlandia-La_Luisiana-La_Jungla_261235035_53637617_1706x960.jpg[/img][/center]

[color=silver]"We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives...From this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank." 
[right]-Robert Livingston, 1803[/right][/color]

The beginning of the 19th century, when history as we knew it developed, an alternate history of steam and fantasy unveiled itself right underneath our feet. It all began after the United States acquired the Louisiana territory from France in 1803 through the signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty on April 30 in Paris. On October 21 of the same year, the Senate authorized the third US president, Thomas Jefferson to take possession of the territory and establish a temporary military government. In legislation enacted on October 31, Congress made temporary provisions for Louisiana's local civil government to continue as it had under French and Spanish rule, and authorized the President to use military forces to maintain order. Plans were also set forth for several missions to explore and chart the territory, the most famous being the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

For years, Jefferson had heard of and read accounts of the various ventures of other explorers in parts of the western frontier and consequently had a long-held interest in further exploring this largely still unknown region of the continent. Two years into his presidency, Jefferson asked Congress to fund an expedition through the Louisiana territory to the Pacific Ocean. He did not attempt to hide the Lewis and Clark expedition itself from Spanish, French, and British officials, but rather claimed different reasons for the venture. He used a secret message to ask for funding due to poor relations with the opposition party in Congress.

On May 14 1804, the Corps of Discovery departs from Camp Dubois at 4 pm, marking the beginning of the voyage to the Pacific coast. The expedition progressed rather uneventfully until June 26 when Lewis and Clark arrived at Kaw Point where the Kansas River drains into the Missouri River basin, as the team discovered a seemingly bottomless big hole the size of a soccer field across the new territory. When news of the discovery reached Jefferson through letter the following month, the fascinated and extremely curious President decided that it was a good idea to assemble and send an exploration team into the mysterious hole with the country's newly developed airship prototype. 

[center][img]https://cdn.suwalls.com/wallpapers/fantasy/steampunk-blimp-25312-2880x1800.jpg[/img][/center]

Charles Floyd was one of the first explorer to sign up for the unprecedented exploration mission. As a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army and quartermaster in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, he was chosen to undergo navigation and flight training of the airship prototype, Agartha (named after a prominent hollow earth theory). He officially became the first aviator of the human history. On September 1 1806, the team was ready and Agartha was shipped to Kaw Point, as the first human expedition to a new world beneath began. 

When Floyd navigated the airship carefully descending through a long windy cave, the team felt a flip in gravity as the airship began to row slowly about its longitudinal axis. The whole world in front of them rotated upside down, and right after the airship stopped rowing it started ascending. They were confused, but they proceeded. Eventually, the airship found its way to an exit. With much contrary to their expectations, the team saw sunlight. The sky was as blue as the outside world and the sun shone brightly above them. Appeared in front of them was a vast land of desert; unfamiliar gigantic creatures were spotted traversing the land. The team immediately knew that they had arrived at Agartha, the hollow earth. 

News on the discovery of Agartha and Big Ass Monsters (BAM) soon reached the earth's surface, sending shockwaves across the whole globe. At first, people around the world were deeply skeptical and full of disbelief; but as the first primitive camera was invented by a french inventor Nicéphore Niépce in 1807, more photographic evidences of the hollow earth were produced and it caught their attention. Scientists and aristocrats around the world started flocking in to Kansas, hoping to spectate the hollow earth with their very own eyes. The following decade saw hundreds of airships built as young brave explorers were brought into the hollow earth. A new age of steampunk had just begun.

[center][h2][b][u][color=goldenrod]Conflict[/color][/u][/b][/h2]

[img]https://northatlanticblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/difference-engine.jpg[/img][/center]

[color=silver]The half minute which we daily devote to the winding-up of our watches is an exertion of labour almost insensible; yet, by the aid of a few wheels, its effect is spread over the whole twenty-four hours.
[right]-Charles Babbage, 1835[/right][/color]

A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to perform simple calculations and tabulate polynomial functions. The idea of a difference engine was first conceived by J.H.Müller, an engineer in the Hessian army in 1786, but he was unable to obtain funding to progress with the idea. Charles Babbage, an English polymath stumbled upon Müller's idea when he was self-studying about contemporary mathematics in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge as a student in 1810. He quickly became fascinated by the mechanics of the machine and began constructing a small difference engine with the help of his friends from the Analytical Society.

The Difference Engine 0 finished its construction the following year and the group announced their invention on Jan 14, 1811, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society (founded in 1809 to support astronomical research), entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables". This machine used the decimal number system and was powered by cranking a handle. It was a special-purpose machine designed to tabulate logarithms and trigonometric functions by evaluating finite differences to create approximating polynomials. 

During this project, Babbage realized that a much more general design, the Analytical Engine, was possible. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computing machine. The engineer went on to publish an article proposing his idea of the programmable engine system. The paper caught interest of the British government, as they decided to give Babbage all the financial support he needed to start work on this project, with the condition that Babbage help them build machines with the analytical engine for military usages. 

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In fact, the British Empire was desperate for any technological breakthroughs in their military at that time. Ever since the discovery of the hollow earth, the United States had underwent a series of technological revolution as thousands of scientists gathered to make speculation of the new world. Ideas were shared and world-changing inventions were made. Dozens of mining sites filled with a rich variety of minerals were discovered, giving the inventors more than sufficient resources to bring their creations into fruition. As there was a high demand for safer and more efficient flying machines to transport people in between Agartha and the outside world, the US air force technology boomed. The British Empire saw this expanding power of the Unite States as a big threat, and recent events in the Napoleonic War had just worsen the relationship between the two world leading powers.

Since the outbreak of war with Napoleonic France in 1803, Britain had enforced a strict naval blockade to choke off neutral trade to France, which the United States contested as illegal under international law. In fact, the British main intention was to prevent the United States from selling its airship technology to Napoleon, as it could turn the tables greatly in the Napoleonic Wars. To man the blockade, Britain impressed American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy. Incidents such as the Chesapeake–Leopard Affair (The crew of a British warship pursued, attacked, and boarded an American frigate, looking for deserters from the Royal Navy) occurred and further inflamed anti-British sentiment, as Americans of every political stripe saw the need to uphold national honor and talked incessantly about the need for force in response. 

Tensions between the two nations peaked when the British Empire publicly supported Native American raids against the United States in the Northwest territory between years 1810-1811. The Britain had ceded the area to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, both sides ignoring the fact that the land was already inhabited by various Native American nations. The Indians wanted to create their own state in the Northwest to end the American threat forever as it became clear that the Americans wanted all of the land in the Old Northwest for themselves. The British saw the Native American nations as valuable allies and a way to delay the United States growth in power and secretly provided arms. By 1811, the support became too apparent and this had finally angered the United States. On June 18 1812, after receiving heavy pressure from the War Hawks in the Congress, President James Madison signed the American declaration of war into law, hence officially starting the War of 1812 between the United States and the British Empire.

[center][h2][b][u][color=goldenrod]Defeat[/color][/u][/b][/h2]

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[color=silver]The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.
[right]-Napoléon Bonaparte[/right][/color]

While the Napoleonic wars continued, the United States started invading Canada after it had declared war on the Great Britain. At first glance, the Britains were far superior than the Americans in terms of military force since their trump card, the Royal Navy continued to dominate the sea. Its naval technology was top-notch, and its fleet size could easily outnumber the US navy force by a 10 to 1 (In 1807, construction of the largest factory complex in the world that employed the usage of steam power acquired from burning coal had allowed Britain to mass-produce new combat vessels within a short period of time). However, the empire could only commit just enough forces to the war to prevent American Victory at that time, as it was more occupied by its death struggle with France. On land, this meant a great reliance on militia and Native American allies. On the water, the Royal Navy kept its large men-of-war in Europe, relying on smaller vessels to counter the weak United States Navy. The war eventually turned into a stalemate. 

The War of 1812 was seen by the Britains as only a minor theater of the Napoleonic Wars, but Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool thought otherwise. When Lord Liverpool succeeded as Prime Minister after Perceval was assassinated in May 1812, he cleverly made use of his political skills in diplomatic relations to gain information about the United States' airship development. From his source, the Americans had at least 80 non-combat dirigibles built at that time for cargo and transport purposes, and were starting to design new combat aerostats. Liverpool was concerned that the construction of a combat air force would give the United States an unbeatable position in the war of 1812, as the British's current artillery technology did not have the capability to target a flying enemy. Destroying the whole royal fleet would be child's play to the United States if they could finish building such combat airships in time. The Prime Minister knew that they had to do something to break the stalemate position before that happened. He was looking into a peace negotiation with the United States in April 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars had intensified, when an unexpected solution came into his office. Charles Babbage had completed his design on the world's first and most important analytical engine. 

Lord Liverpool was thrilled by what an analytical engine could do as Babbage explained about the machine's inner workings. He quickly asked Babbage to put the analytical engine into use in the military's artillery technology as it would surely help in the still ongoing Napoleonic Wars and the war with the Americans. With more financial support from the government, Babbage immediately hired a company of experienced engineers and put them into work on the project. With the employment of steam power combined with the usage of the programmable analytical engine, the world's first semi-auto artillery capable of targeting flying objects was created in January 1815. A typical broadside of a Royal Navy ship of the late 18th century could be fired 2–3 times in approximately 5 minutes, but Babbage's artillery had the efficiency of once per minute. Babbage also made use of the engine to make factory production much more efficient and customizable; it took the British Empire only four more months to equip all their navy fleets with the new artillery technology and was ready to settle their scores with Napoleon and the United States. By that time however, the United States had also finished their production on the first batch of combat dirigibles. They have also invented the world's first air-dropped bombs. A new stage of war had just begun.

[img]https://www.fxguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/AR100_FINAL_NEW.0000.jpg[/img]

The strategic location of the Chesapeake Bay near America's new national capital, Washington, D.C. on the major tributary of the Potomac River, made it a prime target for the British's Royal Navy and the King's Army. Starting in June 1815, a squadron under Rear Admiral George Cockburn started a blockade of the mouth of the Bay at Hampton Roads harbour and raided towns along the Bay from Norfolk, Virginia, to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Provoked, the United States immediately deployed ten combat airships with the expectation that they would destroy all the British's navy force with little effort. It took them by shock when the Royal Navy's artillery fired and hit the first airship accurately, destroying it far before it could even reach the sea. The attack turned out to be extremely unsuccessful as all the airships were soon eliminated, only barely able to damage two of the navy's vessels. 

The Americans were devastated. Their most trusted new technology had just been annihilated with little outcome. It was a really unwise and reckless attack, as it had also given the British enough confidence to initiate a full assault. In July 1815, just a few days after the attack attempt, the Battle of Bladensburg occurred. Although Major General Ross commanded the British troops in Chesapeake Bay, the point of attack was to be decided by Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane, commander in chief of the Royal Navy's North American Station. Cochrane had concentrated four ships of the line, twenty frigates and sloops of war and twenty transports carrying Ross's troops at Tangier Island. Rear Admiral Cockburn, Cochrane's second in command, favoured a quick attack on Washington, but Ross was not eager. He was wary of the whereabouts of American's remaining airship force - intelligence gathering revealed that the United States had built at least 50 war aerostats. Ross knew that his first objective had to be the capture or destruction of the American air force, but Cochrane convinced him with a better plan.

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On 2 July, Cochrane dispatched two forces to make diversions. A frigate and some small craft threatened a raid on Baltimore, while two frigates, some bomb ketches and a rocket vessel ascended the Potomac River, an expedition that resulted in the successful raid on Alexandria. His main body proceeded quietly into the Patuxent. The Americans, still overwhelmed by their recent defeat, panicked and sent all their remaining airships towards Baltimore, completely falling for Cockrane's trick. Ross's troops landed at Benedict on 4 July, and began marching upstream the following day, while Cockburn proceeded up the river with ships' boats and small craft. By 6 July, Ross had reached Nottingham, and an unprepared US Commodore Joshua Barney was forced to destroy his gunboats and other sailing craft of the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla (built to defend Chesapeake Bay) the next day, and retreat overland towards Washington.

From Nottingham, Ross continued up the Patuxent to Upper Marlboro, from where he could threaten to advance on either Washington or Baltimore, confusing the Americans. Before the US could change the course of their airships, Ross decided to risk an attack on Washington at the urging of Rear Admiral Cockburn and some of the British Army officers under his own command. Ross had a choice of two routes by which he could advance: from the south via Woodyard or from the east via Bladensburg. The former route would involve finding a way across an unfordable part of the Eastern Branch of the Potomac (now called the Anacostia River) if the Americans destroyed the bridge on the route. In the morning of 8 July, Ross made a feint on the southern route, before suddenly swerving northwards towards Bladensburg. The inexperienced American militia, which had congregated nearby at Bladensburg, Maryland, to protect the capital, were defeated in the ambush, opening the route to Washington.

Seeing the sudden turn of events in Bladensburg, fourth US President James Madison and the government with members of the Presidential Cabinet quickly fled to Virginia using a non-combat dirigible. To prevent the Britains from getting hold of crucial US industrial technologies, several facilities were set ablaze within Washington before British arrival at the capital. Upon the capturing of Washington DC, British commanders ate the supper that had been prepared for the President and his departmental secretaries before they burned the Executive Mansion down to ashes; the United States had received an utterly humiliating defeat that day.

[center][h2][b][u][color=goldenrod]Closure[/color][/u][/b][/h2][/center]

[center][h3]Depends on how RPers develop the lore[/h3][/center]

[center][h2][b][u][color=goldenrod]Aftermath[/color][/u][/b][/h2][color=khaki]A distant, possible future[/color]

[img]https://wallpapercave.com/wp/zlqPorb.jpg[/img][/center]

[quote]
Today, I bring grave news to all of you regarding what have just happened... Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare...

[indent]...yes, casualties are predicted to be beyond 100 thousands...

[indent]...believe me, it was really a hard decision for the Congress. We only considered it as a final measure against [color=red][b]that thing[/b][/color], there was no other way we could...[/indent][/indent]

Thank you, I believe you have more questions but I will address it in another formal statement later... thank you, no more questions for today...[/quote]

[right]-Statement by the President Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima (August 6, 1945)[/right]

[right][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/168191-literary-work-urban-creatures-short-stories/ooc]... [link] Agartha, the world in 21th Century[/url][/right]