Hey, that's Es' community! You should join it, as she's good people and she loev daemons long time.

Also, if you like alterna-worlds with what-if cultural paradigms, you should totes pick up Kim Stanley Robinson's magisterial The Years of Rice and Salt, being a record of the history of the world after the Great Plague annihilated the denizens of the land of Firanja, i.e. Europe. Cultural geekery meets geopolitical counterfactuals on the grand scale. :Dd