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Description
One of my few ventures into ASB ('Alien Space Bats') scenarios where anything goes and the usual rules of believable alternate history go out the window. You may notice shades of the Libyan conflict in here; unsurprising as the rough outlines of the scenario were sketched around the same time. Everything here, including the doodles, was done in Inkscape; cel-shading is actually fairly easy to do for simple shadows as you just duplicate the shape, recolour it darker, delete the nodes on the 'light' side and adjust the resulting curve.

The scenario:

"I was there when they killed him; or rather, when they put him to death. By the time they pulled him out that hole in the floor where he'd been hiding, he didn't look like himself, I mean, the way most people think of him. He looked like a corpse. He hadn't had access to Tree of Life root in six months, of course and I just kept thinking 'This is what a 1,700 year old man looks like'. His arms and legs had shrivelled up into sticks; his hair had fallen off his head and face; one of his eyes had sunken inwards, like it was rotting.

He started screaming as soon as they took him out, only 'scream' isn't the right word. I would say 'bleat', but then it sounds silly, and it wasn't silly. I still hear - hear that sound. It was high, like a child's. He kept crying - in Greek - 'You touch the prophet of God! How dare you touch the prophet of God! You will burn in hell!'.

There was no trial, of course. They ripped apart one of the walls of the house and took the two cross-beams. You could see in - in what was left of his face - that he knew what they were going to do to him, and he stopped forming words; he just made that horrible noise until he died. Months later, I heard a fox shrieking in my garden, and for a moment I thought I was back in Christoúgenna. That's the sound he made."

Christopher Hitchens, Pure Evil, 2009

In the 4th century Nikolaos of Myra comes into possession of certain documents indicating that a number of biblical miracles, including the resurrections of Christ and Lazarus, were carried out with the help of a certain root. He eventually finds a small ivory box containing the only known remaining supply of the root, and considers burning it. However, he instead decides to use it himself, discovering that it has nigh-miraculous health benefits. As his supply diminishes, he investigates the root's origin and discovers that it was harvested in the far north.

Unknown to Saint Nick, this is tree-of-life/gopher/world-tree root, one of the original plants with which humans enjoyed symbiosis, now mostly extinct (Silphium was another). Tree-of-life once grew across the northern hemisphere, but died out at the end of the last Ice Age as they were apparently highly intolerant to even temperate heat. The loss of tree-of-life as part of the human diet explains ancient myths regarding supernaturally long-lived ancestors (yes, I'm cribbing a bit from Niven and Protector here); tree-of-life is capable of extending human life nearly indefinitely.

Nikolas Thaumuturgos (Nicholas Wonderworker), as he is known by this time, discovers surviving specimens of tree-of-life in the Arctic circle, and, organising an expedition, conquers the Álfar as his own personal slave race. The Álfar (officially Homo Sapiens Diutinus) are an offshoot of Homo Erectus and survived mostly thanks to their adaptation to extremely inhospitable climates. Adult male Álfar stand around 5' tall and have glossy, wind-resistant skin (somewhat similar in colour and texture to watermelon) together with elongated ears and whiskers rather than facial hair. They require tree-of-life root far more infrequently than human beings, but without it their lifespan is no more than thirty years (a fact Myra/Thaumuturgos used to render them absolutely dependent upon him).

At the start of the Christmas War, Nikolaus is over 1,700 years old and the richest and arguably most powerful man alive. He holds both secular and religious authority in his kingdom, and is secretly consulted by the Orthodox patriarchs. World leaders are kept compliant by measured gifts of tree-of-life root - and the threat that he would wipe out the supply permanently if they attempted to seize it by force. Despite this the last centuries have seen increasing encroachment on his domain by Danish (and subsequently Norwegian), Swedish, Finnish and Russian settlers, and in 1912 he was forced to recognise several 'treaty towns' under extraterritorial jurisdiction within the borders of his autonomous fiefdom.

The world's reaction to the revelation of the millenia-long atrocities committed against the Álfar is distorted by the fact that, unlike many other similar crimes, almost every family in the Christian world is complicit by their acceptance of the Gift Tribute, the lavish annual bribe paid by Myra to secure the continued almost-mythic status of his realm. Guilt in the Western world over the origin of the free toys and games delivered from Lapland had been building for some decades previously, and it had in fact become commonplace for parents to simply tell their children that it was a gift from them. The especial complicity of the Scandinavian nations, who had signed covert treaties guaranteeing the curtain of privacy within which Nikolaus Myra filled mass graves with Álfar corpses, means that their position in the aftermath of the Christmas War (which concluded with the brutal execution of Myra and the Russian army overwhelmed by Álfar guerillas) is even weaker than the facts on the ground suggest. Nevertheless, the ethnic cleansing (if it can be called that) of tallervolk from the treaty towns, together with Chisfred Offric's vision of a 'Greater Álfarland' containing all significant areas of Álfar habitation (together with the Kola Peninsula, claimed as a historic homeland) suggests future conflicts with the Álfar may be unavoidable.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a rather large part of my conceit. While tree-of-life root extends life (in robust health rather than eternal youth as per the legends), the human brain is incapable of storing much more than 1,000 years of memories. After that, it begins overwriting connections and memories that are already there; first in, first out (no evolutionary pressures to create a more nuanced management system, you see). Consequently, by 2004 Nikolaus Myra has no memory of his first 700 years of life. His memory starts somewhere in the 1400s, by which time he had already consolidated his power in northern Scandinavia. As far as he is concerned, he was never born and is eternal.

Description
One of my few ventures into ASB ('Alien Space Bats') scenarios where anything goes and the usual rules of believable alternate history go out the window. You may notice shades of the Libyan conflict in here; unsurprising as the rough outlines of the scenario were sketched around the same time. Everything here, including the doodles, was done in Inkscape; cel-shading is actually fairly easy to do for simple shadows as you just duplicate the shape, recolour it darker, delete the nodes on the 'light' side and adjust the resulting curve.

The scenario:

"I was there when they killed him; or rather, when they put him to death. By the time they pulled him out that hole in the floor where he'd been hiding, he didn't look like himself, I mean, the way most people think of him. He looked like a corpse. He hadn't had access to Tree of Life root in six months, of course and I just kept thinking 'This is what a 1,700 year old man looks like'. His arms and legs had shrivelled up into sticks; his hair had fallen off his head and face; one of his eyes had sunken inwards, like it was rotting.

He started screaming as soon as they took him out, only 'scream' isn't the right word. I would say 'bleat', but then it sounds silly, and it wasn't silly. I still hear - hear that sound. It was high, like a child's. He kept crying - in Greek - 'You touch the prophet of God! How dare you touch the prophet of God! You will burn in hell!'.

There was no trial, of course. They ripped apart one of the walls of the house and took the two cross-beams. You could see in - in what was left of his face - that he knew what they were going to do to him, and he stopped forming words; he just made that horrible noise until he died. Months later, I heard a fox shrieking in my garden, and for a moment I thought I was back in Christoúgenna. That's the sound he made."

Christopher Hitchens, Pure Evil, 2009

In the 4th century Nikolaos of Myra comes into possession of certain documents indicating that a number of biblical miracles, including the resurrections of Christ and Lazarus, were carried out with the help of a certain root. He eventually finds a small ivory box containing the only known remaining supply of the root, and considers burning it. However, he instead decides to use it himself, discovering that it has nigh-miraculous health benefits. As his supply diminishes, he investigates the root's origin and discovers that it was harvested in the far north.

Unknown to Saint Nick, this is tree-of-life/gopher/world-tree root, one of the original plants with which humans enjoyed symbiosis, now mostly extinct (Silphium was another). Tree-of-life once grew across the northern hemisphere, but died out at the end of the last Ice Age as they were apparently highly intolerant to even temperate heat. The loss of tree-of-life as part of the human diet explains ancient myths regarding supernaturally long-lived ancestors (yes, I'm cribbing a bit from Niven and Protector here); tree-of-life is capable of extending human life nearly indefinitely.

Nikolas Thaumuturgos (Nicholas Wonderworker), as he is known by this time, discovers surviving specimens of tree-of-life in the Arctic circle, and, organising an expedition, conquers the Álfar as his own personal slave race. The Álfar (officially Homo Sapiens Diutinus) are an offshoot of Homo Erectus and survived mostly thanks to their adaptation to extremely inhospitable climates. Adult male Álfar stand around 5' tall and have glossy, wind-resistant skin (somewhat similar in colour and texture to watermelon) together with elongated ears and whiskers rather than facial hair. They require tree-of-life root far more infrequently than human beings, but without it their lifespan is no more than thirty years (a fact Myra/Thaumuturgos used to render them absolutely dependent upon him).

At the start of the Christmas War, Nikolaus is over 1,700 years old and the richest and arguably most powerful man alive. He holds both secular and religious authority in his kingdom, and is secretly consulted by the Orthodox patriarchs. World leaders are kept compliant by measured gifts of tree-of-life root - and the threat that he would wipe out the supply permanently if they attempted to seize it by force. Despite this the last centuries have seen increasing encroachment on his domain by Danish (and subsequently Norwegian), Swedish, Finnish and Russian settlers, and in 1912 he was forced to recognise several 'treaty towns' under extraterritorial jurisdiction within the borders of his autonomous fiefdom.

The world's reaction to the revelation of the millenia-long atrocities committed against the Álfar is distorted by the fact that, unlike many other similar crimes, almost every family in the Christian world is complicit by their acceptance of the Gift Tribute, the lavish annual bribe paid by Myra to secure the continued almost-mythic status of his realm. Guilt in the Western world over the origin of the free toys and games delivered from Lapland had been building for some decades previously, and it had in fact become commonplace for parents to simply tell their children that it was a gift from them. The especial complicity of the Scandinavian nations, who had signed covert treaties guaranteeing the curtain of privacy within which Nikolaus Myra filled mass graves with Álfar corpses, means that their position in the aftermath of the Christmas War (which concluded with the brutal execution of Myra and the Russian army overwhelmed by Álfar guerillas) is even weaker than the facts on the ground suggest. Nevertheless, the ethnic cleansing (if it can be called that) of tallervolk from the treaty towns, together with Chisfred Offric's vision of a 'Greater Álfarland' containing all significant areas of Álfar habitation (together with the Kola Peninsula, claimed as a historic homeland) suggests future conflicts with the Álfar may be unavoidable.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a rather large part of my conceit. While tree-of-life root extends life (in robust health rather than eternal youth as per the legends), the human brain is incapable of storing much more than 1,000 years of memories. After that, it begins overwriting connections and memories that are already there; first in, first out (no evolutionary pressures to create a more nuanced management system, you see). Consequently, by 2004 Nikolaus Myra has no memory of his first 700 years of life. His memory starts somewhere in the 1400s, by which time he had already consolidated his power in northern Scandinavia. As far as he is concerned, he was never born and is eternal.