Of course each of us — and I’d love to recruit more — should work on their own language(s) and be free to make their own decisions. Likewise with the alternative history. The thing about having a shared alternative world is not to take all decisions by committee — that would rather ruin the fun — but to ping-pong ideas about the various mighthavebeens. IMHO it is not even necessary to nail down what ‘actually’ happened in the ATL or get as full a picture of the world. After all the whole idea with ATLs is that time forks continually. Actually I think the most interesting results are reached with small occasional divergences from OTL, rather than big and drastic ones. It is tempting to try to set history right in an ATL, but it seldom leads to the most interesting, or believable, results since real history tends to be so very more complex than imagination can come up with.

The funny thing is that an earlier Roman split-up with less internal strife for supremacy might have made each part more consolidated and able to resist barbarian invasions, as well as given the barbarians less room for playing out different emperors against each other as Alaric did with such skill. A more advanced border to begin with in Germany would of course have meant fever barbarians to deal with, since Franks, Longobards and Alamans would have been Romans already! Still eastern Suebians, Goths, Huns and Vandals might have done their thing much like in OTL.

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