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THE WORLD IN 2014

Here's the same world 52 years after the nazi-lizard war the previous entry was hinting at happened[1]. Again this "borrows", and by "borrows" I mean openly pillages various ideas from B_Munro's take on the worldwar world. More than 70 years after the war's end, the lizards still rule most of the planet with no human FTL starship on the horizon.

Neither of the two sides has managed to get a decisive advantage over the other: The lizards try to expand their military/industrial capabilities while the humans come closer to catching up. Meanwhile, back on home, 33rd Emperor Barotan, now elderly oversaw certain, unusually FAST planning. The results of this planning were launched in 1990, to arrive come 2024...

[1] The entry was set on june 28th, 1962. The Nazi-Lizard war was on july 4, 1962. Yeah, less than a week. Nazis do fast decisionmaking, especially when it comes to bad decisions. At least the reasoning I had them using involved actual reasons instead of turtledove's "Nazis therefore "haha nuclear launchers go brrr" level of logic. That's one reason out of a few I haven't done a remake of a 'rationalized' worldwar world as opposed to doing one "inspired"
[2] Really, Bruce just file the names off and do your own "original" not-lizards take, or at least use them in your own settings! I'm serious, you put in the effort to ratonalize them. We've got turtledove's Race, my Tenzykr/lizardfolk and Traveller's Bwaps as examples of "conservative, rulebound reptilian" aliens with your lizards simply requiring name changes to fit. This needs to become a thing imo!
MEANWHILE BACK ON THE LIZARD HOMEWORLD(The other worlds of the Imperium are peaceful, if more backwards than the Imperium's capital world, so not really relevant for this)

The first bad news came in 1953. It was followed by more, including even worse news in 1946 of the conquest's partial failure and the survival of independent, atombreaker-armed powers on Mirusev 3.

The FIRST set of bad news sparked massive debates over what to do. It took more than twenty years as measured on the Imperium's capital of Dust[1], ten earth years to come to a solution. Even the Tenzykyr, to use their name for themselves can act speedily if there is a severe enough need for it. Insanely innovative aliens who not only managed to get a primitive industrial capacity, but get to the point of 1) developing atombreakers during war with the First Fleet 2) then within 20 dust years of that have even a minor interplanetary presence? That counts as a severe enough threat. Decisive, foolishly rapid action became the order of the day.

The solution? Nip the threat in the bud before it can go interstellar -- yes, this translates into sacrificing the colonists but in another millenium or so, once the fallout has dropped enough a second fleet can be dispatched. A fleet of special warships loaded with cobalt-salted bombs was launched in 2000 and is is heading towards earth, to arrive a decade from now. The time? Early july of 2024, oddly on July Fourth like the previous military clash between the Imperium and human powers.

Nobody in Mirusev 3's lizard colonial government knows about these ships, but human astronomers using increasingly sensitive telescopes from orbit/the asteroid belt will know something is coming a year or two in advance. Incidently, elements of the US/Japan/USSR's leadership assume the lizards have something up their sleeves Incidently, the various preparations for nuclear war that have been put in place have seen rapid expansion since the 2000s. The same goes for human space capacities, particularly military: When the death fleet arrives, earth will not be unprepared. The big question is will preparations be enough?

[1] Yes, "Dust". The lizards are a pragmatic people, after all and not necessarily the most imaginative.

THE LIZARDS AND THEIR EMPIRE

The Tenzykr look reptilian to the casual observer but are not despite surface similarities like being r-selected egg layers and scales. Besides internal differences such as organ placement, differences in how joints are placed there are surface differences to consider. For starters, the movable eye turrets that most of their homeworld's vertabrate-equivelant life have resemble chameleon-lke eyes. Then there are the rows and rows of tiny, sharp teeth which are again un-reptilian. The scales look more reptilian but no earth reptile has squid-style chromatophores in their skin, a holdover from pre-sapient ancestors who needed to hide from predators. Regardless, lizards they got dubbed by the humans and lizards they remain regardless of what Pulvisologists[1] try telling laymen.

Lizards differ from humans psychologically in a few key ways. Firstly, there is the lizard tendency towards defaulting to hierarchy, secondly there is the species' naturally small c-conservative disposition. This disposition comes partially from being far more accepting of recieved wisdom than humans, but also a certain amount of pragmatism that exists due to the fact it's extremely hard to convince a lizard of something without actual hard evidence or experience. However, there are strong capapbilities to learn or handle steady, plodding work. These differences put into perspective their technological mix of OTL Japanese-style featurephones[2], fusion drive starships, 1990s-level military technology and cancer cures.

Violence over religious or ideological differences or disagreements isnt something Tenzykyr consider normal or acceptable. This oddly has led to certain difficulties in mostly-islamic territories they hold for obvious reasons. The fact that muslims they deport to say China or Brazil or Poland stir up trouble even after being removed from the middle east is a recurring headache.

The lizards also brought members of their other species of the empire, the Jiirlu[3], Votusev, Huhusev as soldiers and colonists, even if the vast majority were lizards. The other three races of the Empire are psychologically and physically rather more similar to the lizards than humans are, which made the lizards assume that they were the default for intelligent life. The Jiirlu have greyish-black scales, eyes located on muscular stalks, stand up taller than lizards but are otherwise quite similar physically and mentally. The green and scaly Votusev are the most conventionally "reptilian" looking of the subject peoples of the Empire, having a body plan like the Jiirlu in many ways except for the fact their eyes are not on stalks. The huhusev have bright yellowish green skin, big floppy elf-like ears and eyes on tentacles along with standing up straighter than the others. Humans being humans have come up with "inventive" names for the empire's other intelligent species -- skinks for the Jiirlu, Iguanas for the votusev and "floppies" for the huhusev. "Floppies" is in reference to the huhusevs posessing big, elf-like ears on their heads which flap when huhusevs are experiencing strong emotion.

Psychologically, this race differs from humans in a few key aspects which help explain things like say having interstellar travel, along with military technology recognizable to say post-cold war americans. The first aspect is reproductive biology's effect on their mentality, secondly is a tendency to default towards hierarchical societies and the third is a natural small-c conservative disposition. This unimaginative, conservative disposition comes from being far more accepting of recieved wisdom than humans are, but also it being extremely hard to convince a member of this race of something without actual experience. This is partially balanced by strong capabilities to learn[4], handle steady, plodding work with pragmatism. This puts in perspective the fact that it took the Tenzykyr over 120,000 years to go from the bronze age, to the first satellite in orbit. The Tenzykyr are not stupid, but merely rather willing to accept recieved wisdom and quite conserbative -- as far as raw brainpower goes, they tend to the 110-120 average IQ range.

Despite being less naturally imaginative than humans, the Tenzykyr do have their own versions of myths, legends and fiction. Purely speculative genres are much less common than say among humans, while the equivelants of fantasy fiction or some sort of minor insertion of what would be called fantasy/the equivelant of SFnal elements into more 'normal' story. Various forms of media all exist but differing priorities or worries about social change/texhnological disruption have kept certain paths closed(virtual reality, 3D graphics), along with extending the life of others(interactive fiction, ascii art)

The Planetary Networks of Tenzykyr worlds make the South Korean internet of OTL look like crap in terms of speed. However, the networks are more centralized with various large services being government-owned or at least strongly regulated monopolies as opposed to independent Big Tech. As a result, even despite having the technology to build fusion power, starships and cancer cures their Network's NetSites all look like 1990s or 2000s Geocities-era internet. The only upside is that virus-ridden ads, or personally-targetted ads remain severely illegal. There are even more Nigerians shipped to mongolian or patagonian penal labor camps for trying to create virus-ridden ads than there are terrorists shipped to said camps.

Violence over religious or ideological differences or disagreements isnt something Tenzykyr consider normal or acceptable. While the Imperial government promotes what is more or less ancestor-worship, with special devotion given to the Imperial Clan there are quite a few remarkably OLD religions from before pre-Unification times floating around as small, stubborn minorities[5]. This doesn't even cover various underground/semi-underground cults, secret societies or "philosophical discussion groups" all of varying levels of legality that are practiced.

Tens of millenia of careful, cautious genetic engineering has shaped the Tenzykyr race even with prohibitions against changing too radically. Various genetic diseases are gone or much rarer, cancer is far rarer and your average member of the Tenzykyr race would be considered tall, strong and quite healthy by their preindustrial ancestors. Lifespans have been expanded from around two centuries, to now a little over four and a half centuries with members sometimes managing to make it to 5 centuries of age. The subject peoples also have many of the same enhancements, if not quite as much as lizards due to less time to work with their genetic material.

The lizards rule over most of the planet outside of the original "Big Five" powers of the US, Japan, USSR, Germany, Britain(but not it's empire) and a few scattered vassals/allies of one big power or another. Their population is of course concentrated in the areas with decent weather from lizard points of view: most of Australia, the middle east, north africa, northern Mexico. "Decent weather" is somewhat broader than what most back on Dust or the other worlds would think given the deliberate focus on recruitment for lizards/their subject people for both fleets being from the cooler/wetter parts of the Empire. Even so, earth is miserably damp and cold by even these more generous standards.

224 million colonists live on earth, mostly lizards even if the other three races of their Empire have sent colonists there. There are 160 million lizards, 40 million Jiirlu, 30 million Huhusev and 15 million Votusev. Over 50 million live in Australia alone, with that area being considered the empire's crown jewel on earth. However, not all are lucky enough to live in the dry, hot areas with tens of millions settled around strategic points of control, or moved to areas for economic reasons/to help run local enterprises. The fact that lizards have had to learn how to properly fit clothing or insulate their buildings from humans is something that's QUITE annoying to them.

There are 20 million soldiers, recruited from the colonists along with another 15 millon lightly-armed human auxilleries. In an unprecedented move, not only 5% of every litter are raised by soldier/military clans, but colonists since the 1980s have had to serve two years in the armed forces upon reaching the lizard/other race in their empire's equivelant age of 18. Most of these soldiers aren't combat troops, but are focused on keeping order/peacekeeping among other tasks given the need to keep a lid on three billion humans.

There are only three billion humans in lizard territories due to an earlier demographic transition caused by forced-draft industrialization, lizards treating women the same as men for education/jobs[6], duplicating both the condom/pill and of course bringing television and the network to the ex-peasants of their colonies: women compared themselves to the people on sitcoms and decided to have fewer kids as a result.

This force-draft industrialization is without precedent in lizard history. Normally, worlds are lifted up to modern standards over a leisurely half-millenium or so, but this wasn't an option on earth given the presence of nuclear-armed free human not-empires to worry about. As a result, there has been massive if uneven economic development across the empire. Military-industrial complexes, basic infrastructure and of course massive construction for the benefit of settlers. The overall economy of the Empire's colonies on earth is capitalistic, albeit a rules-bound and legalistic form of capitalism. Compared to the norm on the other worlds, this is all done with absurd speed and from the lizard POV extreme sloppiness. Besides the state-demanded military industrial complex and infrastructure, there is a thriving capitalist economy. The RAPID shifts and seemingly impossible goals demanded for industrialization is a source of much stress for lizard sociologists and planning staff.

Lizard territory is of course linked together with high-speed rail given Lizard opinion of cars as being clearly reckless.

Security concerns means that the lizard Planetary Network and free human nations' Grid have very few permitted connections. Very few LEGAL connections: there are plenty of illegal hookups created by rebels wanting an edge or people wanting alternatives to the censored popular culture allowed in lizard territory.

On a cultural level, the lizard government is quite interventionist. Over the past several decades, there have been major literacy campaigns, in the Empire's language of course in order to try promoting human assimilation into the Empire. To the disappointment of lizard bureaucrats, as human areas start developing enough, they end up starting to teach local languages either instead or in addition to the empire's language. Another disappointing thing is that the intended goal of increated unity among the humans in the empire seems to only make it easier for terrorist types to start working together. Censorship is of course a major part of lizard efforts to retain control over their colonies: TV/radio/Planetary Network news always presents lizard rule as better than the alternative, the government monitors of the Planetary Network employ more censors than OTL China. What is surprising is what isn't censored: Lizards not having human mores about sexuality, or the hominid/chimp don't see a need to censor sexuality in media or pornography. Fiction is mostly left be, provided it's not too pro-independence or otherwise OBVIOUSLY Ideological.

Free internal migration between the various provinces of the Empire's holdings on earth has produced major demographic shifts around the planet. For starters, africa, latin america along with various wealthier/more developed parts of the Empire have recieved tens of millions of immigrants from East or South Asia over the past several decades. Chinese minorities dominate the upper echelons of the economy over a surprisingly large portion of the empire's holdings these days. These days, large numbers of african migrants are everywhere in the empire since even a rather more developed africa only has so many available jobs. Poles, Jews, French and Australians are also pretty widely spread, with a focus on more industrialized regions or just far away enough from Nazis areas like madagascar. A result of this has been the visible growth of mixed populations as people who move into the expanding cities meet immigrants from other lands.

Muslims are widely spread outside of their homeland, but this is more deliberate lizard policy to try diluting them rather than voluntary migration. This hasn't had the desired effects, especially when moving muslims into an area just provides disaffected youth or already anti-lizard types both new reasons to be anti-lizard and connections to existing terrorist types. As a result, there are muslim converts or radicals from virtually every ethnic group within the empire. Besides new converts, there are also issues with inter-religious violence between muslims and locals.

Besides finding an industrialized enemy that they have to put actual effort in keeping up with, another Problem for the lizards has been earth's richness in new and widespread recreational intoxicants being available. While Cannabis Sativa wasn't an Issue, having the same effect on lizards as it did humans, the others are more problematic. The entire Zingiberaceae family of plants, one widely used by humans in cooking in one form or another produces multiple potent intoxicanting effects of one sort or another in lizards. Cardamom being the worst, due to it's both being a strong stimulant and fear-reducer. Turmeric's being able to induce mating hormones in both sexes even off-season is more disruptive than say the lizard version of crack cocaine or even just something that gets lizards a bit high and overly perky. To add insult to injury, various lizard recreational intoxicants like Nartu spines or Jaresh thorns have no effect on humans, at most maybe being adaptable for usage as spices.

[1] Latin for "dust" plus -ologist as a catchall title for researchers studying the Tenzykyr/their homeworld(going by information they've gotten off of lizard networks/their books). 70 years on, the lizards are part of the "normal" world/fitted into people's understanding like say the USSR in the 1980s or US global dominance in 2016 in OTL. Yes, they're still the Enemy but not aliens.
[2] They've been going back and forth on whether or not to allow smartphones on the market since before humans built any cities.
[3] A race known for their lack of punctuality, to the point where there's tens of millenia old jokes about them being late to their own funerals.
[4] An elderly lizard scholar is comparable to three or four professors emiritus, depending on how much knowledge they've kept.
[5] As long as they follow Empire laws and don't (publicly) contradict the establishment, they're left be, mostly. Depends on the individual emperor or planetary High Marshal for specifics, though.
[6] Being a race that's less sexually dimorphic than humans, gender discrimination doesn't really occur to lizards. This policy isn't the most popular in the middle east.

Seven regions of lizard portions of earth enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy: Poland, France, Ethiopia, South Africa, Mongolia, Lithuania and Nepal. Poland and Ethiopia got it thanks to locals being both unhappy enough with the occupying powers and the lizards on the scene being smart enough to run with it. South Africa got it for similar reasons thanks to the local blacks and cape coloreds deciding that they could work with the lizards. Nepal was able to extract concessions for sending so many of their men as ghurkas to fight for the lizards. France and Lithuania were cases of them recieving it once they were freed from Nazi rule to be lizard territories. Human-Lizard relations in these areas tend to be on decent terms, with extensive human-lizard cooperation on economic project in these areas.

Being more politically developed than other areas France, Poland and Lithuania run alot of their day to day affairs, with the presence of nazis nearby to discourage local rebellion[1]. Local economies in these areas are on par with standards of living in the settlement zones.

South Africa isn't quite as well-off as the European Three but is still "developed" by this world's standards. It is also rather turbulent thanks to being a recipient of large numbers of asian immigrants over the decades adding to existing complexities of diversity. The presence of the asian immigrants, combined with dislike of lizards[2] to put past issues in perspective have meant that boers and coloreds are now accepted by the local africans.

Haiti and Finland are autonomous protectorates that mostly run themselves: Haiti is a technocratic oligarchy while Finland stayed a democracy. The only real shift Finland has seen has been immigrants from other parts of the Imperium. Haiti due to how incompetent and brutal most of the local leadership was has seen more shifts forced on it by the lizards[3]. Finland, adjusted for technology is roughly on par with OTL in development thanks to Lizard trade even given it being in a bad neighborhood. Haiti is at say an OTL Argentine standard of living/develpment.

The Iberian peninsula isn't as well off as the other european holdings due to a persistant terror problem, but is no less developed than say OTL Spain/Portugal at least. Not having the ability to compare with OTL, the spanish/portuguese remain quite grumpy since they can see local american prosperity and compare it to their situation.

Initially, africa south of the islamic lands was one of the most quiet regions under lizard rule. Independence movements being weak at the time of conquest, combined with the lizards being generally both fairer/more competent than the europeans they replaced along with amazingly rapid economic growth[4] plus not showing any desire to rape the local women all worked in lizard favor to keep africa peaceful for a long time. As of the past decade and a half or so this is starting to change. Part of it is increasing trouble from muslims being dumped in non-muslim areas, combined with even more rapid urbanization[5] than the most radical forecasts causing the rise in tensions.

Like africa, india is another place that's benefitted compared to OTL at least in economic terms: The indian subcontinent's GDP is a bit over two times the size of OTL. Lizard rule simply stepped in to replace the British, and without seeing the UK get exhausted by a long war, there was less of a frustrated demand for independence so the population ended up adjusting to lizard rule. While India was used to foreign rule, not usually by people this fortunate. Three big things have helped lizards keep order in india: 1) Indian society's strongly divided nature 2) Lizard willingness to keep the caste system going 3) even more rapid economic growth than OTL. Gandhi and his followers ended up being shipped to China back in 1950, where he was oddly unpopular with the locals due to his views on nonviolent resistance. While there isn't a serious rebellion problem there are Issues such as Indians being even worse than Turks with playing bureaucratic games[6] with their alien masters and India's upper castes constantly pressuring the lizard government for more autonomy[7].

Turkey is the most peaceful islamic area under lizard rule. By "peaceful", this means that they simply do minimal compliance with lizard orders and deliberately try to screw up any task assigned to them instead of being a major center of terrorism or unrest. This arrogant incompetence regularly gets turks shot or jailed, but they continue with it anyways.

South America is a mixed bag, from guerilla-filled Venezuela, peaceful highland bolivia to rapidly developing Brazil. Indians, blacks and the mixed-race majority have been brought up to equality with the white rulers since lizards don't care much for human racial rankings. The situation is helped a bit by all four groups coming together to express their ah unhappiness at the growing chinese minority that controls more and more of the south american economy. The easing of racial tensions, combined with local anger often being pointed at the Chinese minority is why south America hasn't yet become another middle east/china level trouble spot what with all all the US/Nazi/soviet arms coming into the area. Latin American culture has picked up quite a bit of influence[8] from China and India thanks to decades of largscale immigration into the area.

The amazon, along with a few other smaller patches of jungle has been turned into nature preserves on the request of lizard scientists wanting to study environments without precedent on their dry homeworld.

Palestine had it's muslim residents cleared out decades ago in favor of jews from poland, along with Polish/French catholics. Local christians and druze got to stay and find their new neighbors more to their liking than the arabs. Mutual dislike of muslims is working on forging these disparate groups into a multi-religious, if still unified common Palestinian identity.

[1] Well, local anti-lizard rebellion. Immigrants from asia/africa still get targetted in riots occasionally. Poland's being more than a quarter black as of 2014 is a source of tension.
[2] The blacks soured on lizards surprisingly fast despite the lizard removal of discrimination thanks to not being allowed to commit murders against white farmers or nationalize white-owned property.
[3] Specifically enforcing anti-corruption measures.
[4] Africa averages out to OTL upper-end latin american standards of living. They compare themselves to local Americans/Poles/French, not having the ability to view OTL africa and aren't as happy as one might expect.
[5] Farmers displaced due to mechanization/automation or even just lizard crops/animals in drier parts of africa, relatively high growth rates(Quite a bit of africa only went at or below replacement rate fertility in the last decade, with various areas still being a bit above 2.0. Given the costs of building housing for THIS MANY people, there's quite a few OTL-like slums ringing the cities. Lizards would like to do more, but the government is cash-strapped given military commitments and modernization plans being EXPENSIVE just to keep up with the humans.
[6] Turks confine it to "arrogant incompetence", Indians do full-on Good Soldier Svejking.
[7] They point to problems in islamic areas or China as arguments. After all, one doesn't want Delhi or Bombay to look like Karachi or Beijing, od they?
[8] They've picked up indian varieties of chile peppers and techniques for making dishes spicy with the same enthusiasm of european soldiers and the gatling gun.

THE ADDLED EGGS

The area from Morocco to Pakistan has some of the best climate on the planet from a lizard POV. Unfortunately, it combines this with having some of the most aggressively hostile and stubborn humans on the planet. The local arabs/iranians/afghans strongly resist the imposition of lizard rule for a mix of nationalist and religious reasons[1]. Lizard response to unrest has been to move large numbers of people over the decades, leading to entire regions of the middle east now being human-free or if the climate isn't favorable to lizard settlement rather ethnically different than OTL. Unfortunately, these forced migrations simply either worsened existing muslim problems[2] or created new problems of inter-religious or anti-lizard violence. In recent decades, various quietist splinters that urge followers towards peaceful coexistence or at least being inexhaustibly preachy as opposed to endlessly violent have grown as decades of religio-nationalist violence and salafi fundamentalism have failed to gain any results in getting rid of the lizards.

Mass relocation of people hasn't had as much of an effect as lizards would want given the logistical difficulties, combined with the people in areas getting muslim refugees becoming more resentful of the lizards for adding unwanted new neighbors. Lizards who read human popular science magazines have started wondering about solutions involving electronic implants, brain chemistry or "memetic engineering"[3]. Lizards might read human popular science magazines so those solutions would be for a distant future given the need for endless cautious testing, re-testing, etc. In the interim a de facto solution of looking the other way re: human missionaries in the middle east, provided they're not muslim has been used. This has gotten limited results as opposed to zero results, given that one less muslim tends to mean one less religious radical. By the standards of lizard policy in the middle east this almost counts as a success.

Xinjiang combines both Chinese AND Islamic-related trouble in a single package. While "give the locals heavy arms and promises of never letting the USSR return" worked out in Mongolia, it didn't work out so well for the lizards in Xinjiang. Another policy failure on lizard part was the decision to move in a few million Chinese in the 1960s, in hopes of stirring up intra-human trouble: this did not work, as the Chinese and Uighirs decided they liked each other more than the aliens. The resulting alliance has borne strange side effects such as The Nihilist Buddha and his followers, famed for their skills at infrastructure destruction.

Despite a lack of desirable areas to send lizard settler in, China is an even worse place for the lizard occupying forces than the middle east. China is hell for any lizards stationed there. The issue isn't religious[4], but nationalistic. While the Soviets and Japanese, both concerned about risks of angry islam growing[5] in their territory have cut down on supporting trouble in the middle east, both still enthusiastically arm Chinese rebels. The same goes for the other human powers, since a China firmly under lizard control and relatively quiet like India or africa or latin america would add a potentially major boost to lizard industrial power. Despite being a mess, China's economy is as large as OTL's in 2014 thanks to no communism combined with access to world trade. This has had the side effect of making China be a recipiant of a sizeable number of immigrants from India and africa in addition to the usual unwanted muslims the lizards dump on them. The Nationalists are on their fourth successor party while the communists are three large movements plus five smaller ones. This isn't counting the neomonarchists, fascists, national bolshevik, Nihilist Buddhists and other increasingly radical and anti-lizard that have cropped up. While in practice, Chinese rebels have given up on trying to literally drive out the lizards, they have shifted gears to making China enough of an ungovernable mess that the lizards will give up eventually. They have managed the 'make china ungovernable" part, but not the lizard withdrawal bit.

Northern Indochina is of course a smaller version of China.

Mexico and central america count as the third worst area for the lizards after the middle east and sinic east asia. Why? The answer is simple: lots and lots of American weapons smuggling along with terrorism-funding to stir up trouble. The fact that these resistance movements are at least semi-democratic in ideology thanks to US sponsorship doesn't change the fact that they're even quicker to behead or decapitate collaborators or lizards they get their hands on than say islamic movements would be. Some of the most brutal anti-lizard terrorists in the area are aztec-maya revivalists who sacrifice lizards they capture to the Feathered Serpent or to Santa Muerte.

[1] Europeans were at least people of the book. The lizards are straight up heathans and worse, insist on treating women equally for purposes of jobs/education/being able to leave the house without a veil or male guardian.
[2] Dumping them in areas still muslim but too cool or wet for settlement just gives the locals ideas.
[3] Lizards are dubious on this, given how fast even harmless memes on their networks get edited, re-edited by humans endlessly.
[4] Chinese don't really have any problems with the shrines to emperors past or burning incense for former emperors. It's just the lizard presence on chinese soil that's the issue.
[5] Given Indonesia's issues, Japan is especially dubious.

Description
***
THE WORLD IN 2014

Here's the same world 52 years after the nazi-lizard war the previous entry was hinting at happened[1]. Again this "borrows", and by "borrows" I mean openly pillages various ideas from B_Munro's take on the worldwar world. More than 70 years after the war's end, the lizards still rule most of the planet with no human FTL starship on the horizon.

Neither of the two sides has managed to get a decisive advantage over the other: The lizards try to expand their military/industrial capabilities while the humans come closer to catching up. Meanwhile, back on home, 33rd Emperor Barotan, now elderly oversaw certain, unusually FAST planning. The results of this planning were launched in 1990, to arrive come 2024...

[1] The entry was set on june 28th, 1962. The Nazi-Lizard war was on july 4, 1962. Yeah, less than a week. Nazis do fast decisionmaking, especially when it comes to bad decisions. At least the reasoning I had them using involved actual reasons instead of turtledove's "Nazis therefore "haha nuclear launchers go brrr" level of logic. That's one reason out of a few I haven't done a remake of a 'rationalized' worldwar world as opposed to doing one "inspired"
[2] Really, Bruce just file the names off and do your own "original" not-lizards take, or at least use them in your own settings! I'm serious, you put in the effort to ratonalize them. We've got turtledove's Race, my Tenzykr/lizardfolk and Traveller's Bwaps as examples of "conservative, rulebound reptilian" aliens with your lizards simply requiring name changes to fit. This needs to become a thing imo!
MEANWHILE BACK ON THE LIZARD HOMEWORLD(The other worlds of the Imperium are peaceful, if more backwards than the Imperium's capital world, so not really relevant for this)

The first bad news came in 1953. It was followed by more, including even worse news in 1946 of the conquest's partial failure and the survival of independent, atombreaker-armed powers on Mirusev 3.

The FIRST set of bad news sparked massive debates over what to do. It took more than twenty years as measured on the Imperium's capital of Dust[1], ten earth years to come to a solution. Even the Tenzykyr, to use their name for themselves can act speedily if there is a severe enough need for it. Insanely innovative aliens who not only managed to get a primitive industrial capacity, but get to the point of 1) developing atombreakers during war with the First Fleet 2) then within 20 dust years of that have even a minor interplanetary presence? That counts as a severe enough threat. Decisive, foolishly rapid action became the order of the day.

The solution? Nip the threat in the bud before it can go interstellar -- yes, this translates into sacrificing the colonists but in another millenium or so, once the fallout has dropped enough a second fleet can be dispatched. A fleet of special warships loaded with cobalt-salted bombs was launched in 2000 and is is heading towards earth, to arrive a decade from now. The time? Early july of 2024, oddly on July Fourth like the previous military clash between the Imperium and human powers.

Nobody in Mirusev 3's lizard colonial government knows about these ships, but human astronomers using increasingly sensitive telescopes from orbit/the asteroid belt will know something is coming a year or two in advance. Incidently, elements of the US/Japan/USSR's leadership assume the lizards have something up their sleeves Incidently, the various preparations for nuclear war that have been put in place have seen rapid expansion since the 2000s. The same goes for human space capacities, particularly military: When the death fleet arrives, earth will not be unprepared. The big question is will preparations be enough?

[1] Yes, "Dust". The lizards are a pragmatic people, after all and not necessarily the most imaginative.

THE LIZARDS AND THEIR EMPIRE

The Tenzykr look reptilian to the casual observer but are not despite surface similarities like being r-selected egg layers and scales. Besides internal differences such as organ placement, differences in how joints are placed there are surface differences to consider. For starters, the movable eye turrets that most of their homeworld's vertabrate-equivelant life have resemble chameleon-lke eyes. Then there are the rows and rows of tiny, sharp teeth which are again un-reptilian. The scales look more reptilian but no earth reptile has squid-style chromatophores in their skin, a holdover from pre-sapient ancestors who needed to hide from predators. Regardless, lizards they got dubbed by the humans and lizards they remain regardless of what Pulvisologists[1] try telling laymen.

Lizards differ from humans psychologically in a few key ways. Firstly, there is the lizard tendency towards defaulting to hierarchy, secondly there is the species' naturally small c-conservative disposition. This disposition comes partially from being far more accepting of recieved wisdom than humans, but also a certain amount of pragmatism that exists due to the fact it's extremely hard to convince a lizard of something without actual hard evidence or experience. However, there are strong capapbilities to learn or handle steady, plodding work. These differences put into perspective their technological mix of OTL Japanese-style featurephones[2], fusion drive starships, 1990s-level military technology and cancer cures.

Violence over religious or ideological differences or disagreements isnt something Tenzykyr consider normal or acceptable. This oddly has led to certain difficulties in mostly-islamic territories they hold for obvious reasons. The fact that muslims they deport to say China or Brazil or Poland stir up trouble even after being removed from the middle east is a recurring headache.

The lizards also brought members of their other species of the empire, the Jiirlu[3], Votusev, Huhusev as soldiers and colonists, even if the vast majority were lizards. The other three races of the Empire are psychologically and physically rather more similar to the lizards than humans are, which made the lizards assume that they were the default for intelligent life. The Jiirlu have greyish-black scales, eyes located on muscular stalks, stand up taller than lizards but are otherwise quite similar physically and mentally. The green and scaly Votusev are the most conventionally "reptilian" looking of the subject peoples of the Empire, having a body plan like the Jiirlu in many ways except for the fact their eyes are not on stalks. The huhusev have bright yellowish green skin, big floppy elf-like ears and eyes on tentacles along with standing up straighter than the others. Humans being humans have come up with "inventive" names for the empire's other intelligent species -- skinks for the Jiirlu, Iguanas for the votusev and "floppies" for the huhusev. "Floppies" is in reference to the huhusevs posessing big, elf-like ears on their heads which flap when huhusevs are experiencing strong emotion.

Psychologically, this race differs from humans in a few key aspects which help explain things like say having interstellar travel, along with military technology recognizable to say post-cold war americans. The first aspect is reproductive biology's effect on their mentality, secondly is a tendency to default towards hierarchical societies and the third is a natural small-c conservative disposition. This unimaginative, conservative disposition comes from being far more accepting of recieved wisdom than humans are, but also it being extremely hard to convince a member of this race of something without actual experience. This is partially balanced by strong capabilities to learn[4], handle steady, plodding work with pragmatism. This puts in perspective the fact that it took the Tenzykyr over 120,000 years to go from the bronze age, to the first satellite in orbit. The Tenzykyr are not stupid, but merely rather willing to accept recieved wisdom and quite conserbative -- as far as raw brainpower goes, they tend to the 110-120 average IQ range.

Despite being less naturally imaginative than humans, the Tenzykyr do have their own versions of myths, legends and fiction. Purely speculative genres are much less common than say among humans, while the equivelants of fantasy fiction or some sort of minor insertion of what would be called fantasy/the equivelant of SFnal elements into more 'normal' story. Various forms of media all exist but differing priorities or worries about social change/texhnological disruption have kept certain paths closed(virtual reality, 3D graphics), along with extending the life of others(interactive fiction, ascii art)

The Planetary Networks of Tenzykyr worlds make the South Korean internet of OTL look like crap in terms of speed. However, the networks are more centralized with various large services being government-owned or at least strongly regulated monopolies as opposed to independent Big Tech. As a result, even despite having the technology to build fusion power, starships and cancer cures their Network's NetSites all look like 1990s or 2000s Geocities-era internet. The only upside is that virus-ridden ads, or personally-targetted ads remain severely illegal. There are even more Nigerians shipped to mongolian or patagonian penal labor camps for trying to create virus-ridden ads than there are terrorists shipped to said camps.

Violence over religious or ideological differences or disagreements isnt something Tenzykyr consider normal or acceptable. While the Imperial government promotes what is more or less ancestor-worship, with special devotion given to the Imperial Clan there are quite a few remarkably OLD religions from before pre-Unification times floating around as small, stubborn minorities[5]. This doesn't even cover various underground/semi-underground cults, secret societies or "philosophical discussion groups" all of varying levels of legality that are practiced.

Tens of millenia of careful, cautious genetic engineering has shaped the Tenzykyr race even with prohibitions against changing too radically. Various genetic diseases are gone or much rarer, cancer is far rarer and your average member of the Tenzykyr race would be considered tall, strong and quite healthy by their preindustrial ancestors. Lifespans have been expanded from around two centuries, to now a little over four and a half centuries with members sometimes managing to make it to 5 centuries of age. The subject peoples also have many of the same enhancements, if not quite as much as lizards due to less time to work with their genetic material.

The lizards rule over most of the planet outside of the original "Big Five" powers of the US, Japan, USSR, Germany, Britain(but not it's empire) and a few scattered vassals/allies of one big power or another. Their population is of course concentrated in the areas with decent weather from lizard points of view: most of Australia, the middle east, north africa, northern Mexico. "Decent weather" is somewhat broader than what most back on Dust or the other worlds would think given the deliberate focus on recruitment for lizards/their subject people for both fleets being from the cooler/wetter parts of the Empire. Even so, earth is miserably damp and cold by even these more generous standards.

224 million colonists live on earth, mostly lizards even if the other three races of their Empire have sent colonists there. There are 160 million lizards, 40 million Jiirlu, 30 million Huhusev and 15 million Votusev. Over 50 million live in Australia alone, with that area being considered the empire's crown jewel on earth. However, not all are lucky enough to live in the dry, hot areas with tens of millions settled around strategic points of control, or moved to areas for economic reasons/to help run local enterprises. The fact that lizards have had to learn how to properly fit clothing or insulate their buildings from humans is something that's QUITE annoying to them.

There are 20 million soldiers, recruited from the colonists along with another 15 millon lightly-armed human auxilleries. In an unprecedented move, not only 5% of every litter are raised by soldier/military clans, but colonists since the 1980s have had to serve two years in the armed forces upon reaching the lizard/other race in their empire's equivelant age of 18. Most of these soldiers aren't combat troops, but are focused on keeping order/peacekeeping among other tasks given the need to keep a lid on three billion humans.

There are only three billion humans in lizard territories due to an earlier demographic transition caused by forced-draft industrialization, lizards treating women the same as men for education/jobs[6], duplicating both the condom/pill and of course bringing television and the network to the ex-peasants of their colonies: women compared themselves to the people on sitcoms and decided to have fewer kids as a result.

This force-draft industrialization is without precedent in lizard history. Normally, worlds are lifted up to modern standards over a leisurely half-millenium or so, but this wasn't an option on earth given the presence of nuclear-armed free human not-empires to worry about. As a result, there has been massive if uneven economic development across the empire. Military-industrial complexes, basic infrastructure and of course massive construction for the benefit of settlers. The overall economy of the Empire's colonies on earth is capitalistic, albeit a rules-bound and legalistic form of capitalism. Compared to the norm on the other worlds, this is all done with absurd speed and from the lizard POV extreme sloppiness. Besides the state-demanded military industrial complex and infrastructure, there is a thriving capitalist economy. The RAPID shifts and seemingly impossible goals demanded for industrialization is a source of much stress for lizard sociologists and planning staff.

Lizard territory is of course linked together with high-speed rail given Lizard opinion of cars as being clearly reckless.

Security concerns means that the lizard Planetary Network and free human nations' Grid have very few permitted connections. Very few LEGAL connections: there are plenty of illegal hookups created by rebels wanting an edge or people wanting alternatives to the censored popular culture allowed in lizard territory.

On a cultural level, the lizard government is quite interventionist. Over the past several decades, there have been major literacy campaigns, in the Empire's language of course in order to try promoting human assimilation into the Empire. To the disappointment of lizard bureaucrats, as human areas start developing enough, they end up starting to teach local languages either instead or in addition to the empire's language. Another disappointing thing is that the intended goal of increated unity among the humans in the empire seems to only make it easier for terrorist types to start working together. Censorship is of course a major part of lizard efforts to retain control over their colonies: TV/radio/Planetary Network news always presents lizard rule as better than the alternative, the government monitors of the Planetary Network employ more censors than OTL China. What is surprising is what isn't censored: Lizards not having human mores about sexuality, or the hominid/chimp don't see a need to censor sexuality in media or pornography. Fiction is mostly left be, provided it's not too pro-independence or otherwise OBVIOUSLY Ideological.

Free internal migration between the various provinces of the Empire's holdings on earth has produced major demographic shifts around the planet. For starters, africa, latin america along with various wealthier/more developed parts of the Empire have recieved tens of millions of immigrants from East or South Asia over the past several decades. Chinese minorities dominate the upper echelons of the economy over a surprisingly large portion of the empire's holdings these days. These days, large numbers of african migrants are everywhere in the empire since even a rather more developed africa only has so many available jobs. Poles, Jews, French and Australians are also pretty widely spread, with a focus on more industrialized regions or just far away enough from Nazis areas like madagascar. A result of this has been the visible growth of mixed populations as people who move into the expanding cities meet immigrants from other lands.

Muslims are widely spread outside of their homeland, but this is more deliberate lizard policy to try diluting them rather than voluntary migration. This hasn't had the desired effects, especially when moving muslims into an area just provides disaffected youth or already anti-lizard types both new reasons to be anti-lizard and connections to existing terrorist types. As a result, there are muslim converts or radicals from virtually every ethnic group within the empire. Besides new converts, there are also issues with inter-religious violence between muslims and locals.

Besides finding an industrialized enemy that they have to put actual effort in keeping up with, another Problem for the lizards has been earth's richness in new and widespread recreational intoxicants being available. While Cannabis Sativa wasn't an Issue, having the same effect on lizards as it did humans, the others are more problematic. The entire Zingiberaceae family of plants, one widely used by humans in cooking in one form or another produces multiple potent intoxicanting effects of one sort or another in lizards. Cardamom being the worst, due to it's both being a strong stimulant and fear-reducer. Turmeric's being able to induce mating hormones in both sexes even off-season is more disruptive than say the lizard version of crack cocaine or even just something that gets lizards a bit high and overly perky. To add insult to injury, various lizard recreational intoxicants like Nartu spines or Jaresh thorns have no effect on humans, at most maybe being adaptable for usage as spices.

[1] Latin for "dust" plus -ologist as a catchall title for researchers studying the Tenzykyr/their homeworld(going by information they've gotten off of lizard networks/their books). 70 years on, the lizards are part of the "normal" world/fitted into people's understanding like say the USSR in the 1980s or US global dominance in 2016 in OTL. Yes, they're still the Enemy but not aliens.
[2] They've been going back and forth on whether or not to allow smartphones on the market since before humans built any cities.
[3] A race known for their lack of punctuality, to the point where there's tens of millenia old jokes about them being late to their own funerals.
[4] An elderly lizard scholar is comparable to three or four professors emiritus, depending on how much knowledge they've kept.
[5] As long as they follow Empire laws and don't (publicly) contradict the establishment, they're left be, mostly. Depends on the individual emperor or planetary High Marshal for specifics, though.
[6] Being a race that's less sexually dimorphic than humans, gender discrimination doesn't really occur to lizards. This policy isn't the most popular in the middle east.

Seven regions of lizard portions of earth enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy: Poland, France, Ethiopia, South Africa, Mongolia, Lithuania and Nepal. Poland and Ethiopia got it thanks to locals being both unhappy enough with the occupying powers and the lizards on the scene being smart enough to run with it. South Africa got it for similar reasons thanks to the local blacks and cape coloreds deciding that they could work with the lizards. Nepal was able to extract concessions for sending so many of their men as ghurkas to fight for the lizards. France and Lithuania were cases of them recieving it once they were freed from Nazi rule to be lizard territories. Human-Lizard relations in these areas tend to be on decent terms, with extensive human-lizard cooperation on economic project in these areas.

Being more politically developed than other areas France, Poland and Lithuania run alot of their day to day affairs, with the presence of nazis nearby to discourage local rebellion[1]. Local economies in these areas are on par with standards of living in the settlement zones.

South Africa isn't quite as well-off as the European Three but is still "developed" by this world's standards. It is also rather turbulent thanks to being a recipient of large numbers of asian immigrants over the decades adding to existing complexities of diversity. The presence of the asian immigrants, combined with dislike of lizards[2] to put past issues in perspective have meant that boers and coloreds are now accepted by the local africans.

Haiti and Finland are autonomous protectorates that mostly run themselves: Haiti is a technocratic oligarchy while Finland stayed a democracy. The only real shift Finland has seen has been immigrants from other parts of the Imperium. Haiti due to how incompetent and brutal most of the local leadership was has seen more shifts forced on it by the lizards[3]. Finland, adjusted for technology is roughly on par with OTL in development thanks to Lizard trade even given it being in a bad neighborhood. Haiti is at say an OTL Argentine standard of living/develpment.

The Iberian peninsula isn't as well off as the other european holdings due to a persistant terror problem, but is no less developed than say OTL Spain/Portugal at least. Not having the ability to compare with OTL, the spanish/portuguese remain quite grumpy since they can see local american prosperity and compare it to their situation.

Initially, africa south of the islamic lands was one of the most quiet regions under lizard rule. Independence movements being weak at the time of conquest, combined with the lizards being generally both fairer/more competent than the europeans they replaced along with amazingly rapid economic growth[4] plus not showing any desire to rape the local women all worked in lizard favor to keep africa peaceful for a long time. As of the past decade and a half or so this is starting to change. Part of it is increasing trouble from muslims being dumped in non-muslim areas, combined with even more rapid urbanization[5] than the most radical forecasts causing the rise in tensions.

Like africa, india is another place that's benefitted compared to OTL at least in economic terms: The indian subcontinent's GDP is a bit over two times the size of OTL. Lizard rule simply stepped in to replace the British, and without seeing the UK get exhausted by a long war, there was less of a frustrated demand for independence so the population ended up adjusting to lizard rule. While India was used to foreign rule, not usually by people this fortunate. Three big things have helped lizards keep order in india: 1) Indian society's strongly divided nature 2) Lizard willingness to keep the caste system going 3) even more rapid economic growth than OTL. Gandhi and his followers ended up being shipped to China back in 1950, where he was oddly unpopular with the locals due to his views on nonviolent resistance. While there isn't a serious rebellion problem there are Issues such as Indians being even worse than Turks with playing bureaucratic games[6] with their alien masters and India's upper castes constantly pressuring the lizard government for more autonomy[7].

Turkey is the most peaceful islamic area under lizard rule. By "peaceful", this means that they simply do minimal compliance with lizard orders and deliberately try to screw up any task assigned to them instead of being a major center of terrorism or unrest. This arrogant incompetence regularly gets turks shot or jailed, but they continue with it anyways.

South America is a mixed bag, from guerilla-filled Venezuela, peaceful highland bolivia to rapidly developing Brazil. Indians, blacks and the mixed-race majority have been brought up to equality with the white rulers since lizards don't care much for human racial rankings. The situation is helped a bit by all four groups coming together to express their ah unhappiness at the growing chinese minority that controls more and more of the south american economy. The easing of racial tensions, combined with local anger often being pointed at the Chinese minority is why south America hasn't yet become another middle east/china level trouble spot what with all all the US/Nazi/soviet arms coming into the area. Latin American culture has picked up quite a bit of influence[8] from China and India thanks to decades of largscale immigration into the area.

The amazon, along with a few other smaller patches of jungle has been turned into nature preserves on the request of lizard scientists wanting to study environments without precedent on their dry homeworld.

Palestine had it's muslim residents cleared out decades ago in favor of jews from poland, along with Polish/French catholics. Local christians and druze got to stay and find their new neighbors more to their liking than the arabs. Mutual dislike of muslims is working on forging these disparate groups into a multi-religious, if still unified common Palestinian identity.

[1] Well, local anti-lizard rebellion. Immigrants from asia/africa still get targetted in riots occasionally. Poland's being more than a quarter black as of 2014 is a source of tension.
[2] The blacks soured on lizards surprisingly fast despite the lizard removal of discrimination thanks to not being allowed to commit murders against white farmers or nationalize white-owned property.
[3] Specifically enforcing anti-corruption measures.
[4] Africa averages out to OTL upper-end latin american standards of living. They compare themselves to local Americans/Poles/French, not having the ability to view OTL africa and aren't as happy as one might expect.
[5] Farmers displaced due to mechanization/automation or even just lizard crops/animals in drier parts of africa, relatively high growth rates(Quite a bit of africa only went at or below replacement rate fertility in the last decade, with various areas still being a bit above 2.0. Given the costs of building housing for THIS MANY people, there's quite a few OTL-like slums ringing the cities. Lizards would like to do more, but the government is cash-strapped given military commitments and modernization plans being EXPENSIVE just to keep up with the humans.
[6] Turks confine it to "arrogant incompetence", Indians do full-on Good Soldier Svejking.
[7] They point to problems in islamic areas or China as arguments. After all, one doesn't want Delhi or Bombay to look like Karachi or Beijing, od they?
[8] They've picked up indian varieties of chile peppers and techniques for making dishes spicy with the same enthusiasm of european soldiers and the gatling gun.

THE ADDLED EGGS

The area from Morocco to Pakistan has some of the best climate on the planet from a lizard POV. Unfortunately, it combines this with having some of the most aggressively hostile and stubborn humans on the planet. The local arabs/iranians/afghans strongly resist the imposition of lizard rule for a mix of nationalist and religious reasons[1]. Lizard response to unrest has been to move large numbers of people over the decades, leading to entire regions of the middle east now being human-free or if the climate isn't favorable to lizard settlement rather ethnically different than OTL. Unfortunately, these forced migrations simply either worsened existing muslim problems[2] or created new problems of inter-religious or anti-lizard violence. In recent decades, various quietist splinters that urge followers towards peaceful coexistence or at least being inexhaustibly preachy as opposed to endlessly violent have grown as decades of religio-nationalist violence and salafi fundamentalism have failed to gain any results in getting rid of the lizards.

Mass relocation of people hasn't had as much of an effect as lizards would want given the logistical difficulties, combined with the people in areas getting muslim refugees becoming more resentful of the lizards for adding unwanted new neighbors. Lizards who read human popular science magazines have started wondering about solutions involving electronic implants, brain chemistry or "memetic engineering"[3]. Lizards might read human popular science magazines so those solutions would be for a distant future given the need for endless cautious testing, re-testing, etc. In the interim a de facto solution of looking the other way re: human missionaries in the middle east, provided they're not muslim has been used. This has gotten limited results as opposed to zero results, given that one less muslim tends to mean one less religious radical. By the standards of lizard policy in the middle east this almost counts as a success.

Xinjiang combines both Chinese AND Islamic-related trouble in a single package. While "give the locals heavy arms and promises of never letting the USSR return" worked out in Mongolia, it didn't work out so well for the lizards in Xinjiang. Another policy failure on lizard part was the decision to move in a few million Chinese in the 1960s, in hopes of stirring up intra-human trouble: this did not work, as the Chinese and Uighirs decided they liked each other more than the aliens. The resulting alliance has borne strange side effects such as The Nihilist Buddha and his followers, famed for their skills at infrastructure destruction.

Despite a lack of desirable areas to send lizard settler in, China is an even worse place for the lizard occupying forces than the middle east. China is hell for any lizards stationed there. The issue isn't religious[4], but nationalistic. While the Soviets and Japanese, both concerned about risks of angry islam growing[5] in their territory have cut down on supporting trouble in the middle east, both still enthusiastically arm Chinese rebels. The same goes for the other human powers, since a China firmly under lizard control and relatively quiet like India or africa or latin america would add a potentially major boost to lizard industrial power. Despite being a mess, China's economy is as large as OTL's in 2014 thanks to no communism combined with access to world trade. This has had the side effect of making China be a recipiant of a sizeable number of immigrants from India and africa in addition to the usual unwanted muslims the lizards dump on them. The Nationalists are on their fourth successor party while the communists are three large movements plus five smaller ones. This isn't counting the neomonarchists, fascists, national bolshevik, Nihilist Buddhists and other increasingly radical and anti-lizard that have cropped up. While in practice, Chinese rebels have given up on trying to literally drive out the lizards, they have shifted gears to making China enough of an ungovernable mess that the lizards will give up eventually. They have managed the 'make china ungovernable" part, but not the lizard withdrawal bit.

Northern Indochina is of course a smaller version of China.

Mexico and central america count as the third worst area for the lizards after the middle east and sinic east asia. Why? The answer is simple: lots and lots of American weapons smuggling along with terrorism-funding to stir up trouble. The fact that these resistance movements are at least semi-democratic in ideology thanks to US sponsorship doesn't change the fact that they're even quicker to behead or decapitate collaborators or lizards they get their hands on than say islamic movements would be. Some of the most brutal anti-lizard terrorists in the area are aztec-maya revivalists who sacrifice lizards they capture to the Feathered Serpent or to Santa Muerte.

[1] Europeans were at least people of the book. The lizards are straight up heathans and worse, insist on treating women equally for purposes of jobs/education/being able to leave the house without a veil or male guardian.
[2] Dumping them in areas still muslim but too cool or wet for settlement just gives the locals ideas.
[3] Lizards are dubious on this, given how fast even harmless memes on their networks get edited, re-edited by humans endlessly.
[4] Chinese don't really have any problems with the shrines to emperors past or burning incense for former emperors. It's just the lizard presence on chinese soil that's the issue.
[5] Given Indonesia's issues, Japan is especially dubious.