Two Interesting Alternate-History Scenarios...

Here are a couple of interesting scenarios from my alternate-history message-board you all might find interesting.

An Age of Miracles: The Revival of Rhomanion

This is a Byzantine-revival scenario that takes place fairly late--it's actually after the Fourth Crusade in which the Crusaders took Constantinople and the Empire shattered into several warring statelets.  Considering how at least some Byzantine experts think the Empire's fall was inevitable after the crusade, the fact one of the Byzantine statelets manages to reunite the Empire and actually expand territorially in Asia Minor, which had since become largely Turkish and Muslim, is impressive.

(I'm not the biggest Byzantine expert there is, but there's nothing here that seems to be unrealistic.)

A Crack at Draka: ME's Attempt at a Better TL

Here's an attempt to create a more realistic version of the Draka timeline, beginning with a longer-lived Sir Francis Drake establishing a colony on the Cape of Good Hope.  Pretty realistic so far, although the author had to revise a particularly-glaring issue involving the leaders of the East India Company being strong-armed.  It also has an explanation for the weird Latin lingo the Draka used in the canon timeline making an appearance in this one.

This timeline's Draka aren't as scary as the canon timeline's Draka--there are history-book entries dating much later in the timeline that feature them trying to remain part of the British Commonwealth as late as the 1950s and 1960s and being rejected for their racist behavior, so they aren't apparently interested in world domination and being the Master Race.

UPDATE 9/17/2014: "Age of Miracles" is still going strong, but "A Crack at the Draka" has been rebooted. See here for the new thread. It starts out with a narrative set in the late 1980s involving what looks like a member of the Assad family as a Citizen, which is cool. And the Draka in the late 1980s still practice slavery (instead of becoming mega-Rhodesia that the original timeline implied), which isn't.