Pax Imperialis

The World That Was is gone. Something was changed and the old world was swept away in a trickle which became a flood. This change is known as the Remaking. It must have been a tiny change, almost infinitesimal. A change so seemingly insignificant it can not be found. Even the most skilled in the arcane arts have been unable to pin it down. Most agree it is somewhere in the late 1860s or early 1870s. But exactly what or when nobody knows. However it is also agreed, the Remaking is best left alone, the consequences of another change are unimaginable.

Those few who can see the World That Was, the Sighted, can also see Worlds That May Be. Not one of these worlds ever shows anything other than a black blasted wasteland. So it's agreed, best not to know. Still there are those want to know, want desperately to know. Because if you can change the world once, you can change it again. And those who want to know are fanatics, certain they can avoid what the Sighted see.

But regardless of what the change was or how it was made, the change was made. And it left behind a new world, a world dominated the Imperial Commonwealth, the successor to the British Empire. The most powerful state the world has ever seen. Of course the Imperial Commonwealth is not really an Empire anymore. It certainly has colonies, but they're slowly being integrated into the Commonwealth proper. It's a confederation now, the ten Dominions and five Home Nations all autonomous and equals, united by common interests and a common ideal.

But the Commonwealth is not alone, there are other powers. The Pacific Alliance of Japan and the USA. The Franco-Russian Entente. The Warsaw Pact of Poland and Italy. Of course there are minor members to all the alliances, but they're the core. Then there's China divided in two, Latin America where the cold war between the Commonwealth and Pacific Alliance is fought, the bitter and supposedly broken states of the former Central Powers.

Other things have changed. The dozens of airships which ply this world. Domesticated zebras the size of a horse. The gyrodynes which carry the elite special forces of the Great Powers on their clandestine missions. It's 1938 now, and the clouds of war are gathering. So this is the world one tiny change made. The Pax Imperialis, the Peace of the Emperor, King George VI, the figurehead, the symbol of the common ideal which unites the Imperial Commonwealth.