So I was working on an outline for a writing project I was doing based on a what-if where Astoria failed to become the Grand Navy. Unfortunately the new info above came out just hours after I started the outline and kinda totally messed it up, so I figured I might as well just post what I made of the outline just for fun.
I know I could just run with the scenario I had written beforehand, but I like for what-ifs to be as accurate as possible aside from the point of divergence. I also like for them to have an interesting story beyond that point and I feel as though this new info, while pretty interesting and cool to me, does kinda make that difficult for me, at least without changing up a bit of my plans. I have an idea of another way I can do this scenario in current lore, but I’m still thinking about exactly how it’d work out plus how exactly I could make it work well past the point of divergence.
Interesting! No Grand Navy would have HUGE effects. The Assassin Syndicate could probably expand more, too.
There is the question of whether the Cassia Town battle would have happened at all with Nero still in the picture, though. I mean, with both him and Octavius, I think the Thorne Empire probably wouldn’t even try.
It’s debatable whether or not the Corsairs could form without the Grand Navy… Initially I said yes, but there would be so many more pirate factions that conflict and infighting may very well be too high, plus without a common enemy, each group of pirates might just shoot for the stars and decide they wanna be the sole sovereign on their own.
It’s not in the outline, but the story would’ve been from the perspective of the AO MC and starts the same as in canon, but would quickly change once he(I was gonna have them be a dude in this story, but I honestly hadn’t ironed out entirely what I wanted them to be so that might’ve changed by the time I started writing) got to redwake.
It was just a useful way to both create the conflict using already existing events, plus Octavious would be at the island when the experimental curse dropped. Trust me I definitely thought the same thing about Thorne not trying I just decided to go with them still attempting it for the same reasons.
I definitely would do more with this if we had some more info on the assassins, specifically the who. I definitely didn’t want to wait around for that info either for obvious reasons so I figured I’d just run with mostly what I did know so most of the story would’ve involved Ravenna and that one ancient lightning wielding pirate cause he’d probably still be around depending on how old he was when he died in canon.
I decided for them not to exist both because I wanted the Haven Sea to exist instead of the Marauding Sea to exist sorta as for something people would try to escape to as a massive world war would be going on. Pirates would also be more widespread and causing trouble in kingdom’s territory which would be along with an ongoing war distracting Ravenna one of the reasons they haven’t been able to destroy Redwake yet(though it is mostly the war).
Anyways the new info kinda messes with it in two main ways. The one that’s a bit easier to get around is how Nero is arrested. If I have him beat that coalition of kingdoms that already changes the setting in ways that I can’t predict. Multiple kingdoms that I don’t know the identities of aside from Astoria would be either crippled or totally destroyed. The only way I can think of to get around this without kinda changing up Nero’s character would be to get him to somehow convince them what he did to Winterveil was justified and that seems like kinda a stretch.
The other problem was that Ravenna was gonna get basically everything they could ever want in this scenario, especially the way I was planning on writing it. I was gonna give them the Apocalypse Bringer curse, the death curse, an experimental curse, the wave curse, the cloud curse, the glass curse, and shatter magic like you had suggested. At the time I was under the impression that Nero was strong, but not like so insanely strong that he could really tip the balance of the world. Now if I went through with what I was planning Ravenna probably just wins, the only factions that could really challenge him is Keraxe and maybe the Azure province depending on what other people they have aside from Warren.
I might try rewriting this to work, but I’m definitely gonna need to brainstorm a while before I got it where it can still work with the story I have in mind.
Okay some new stuff from Vetex confirmed that Nero is actually a bit closer to how strong I originally thought he was though maybe a bit stronger, so my story might be saved.