Absolutely—this is a fantastic and ambitious fanfiction concept:
Title:
Steel and Ashes: Empire of the Southern Continent
Overview:
You want an epic, gritty alternate history saga where:
Shawn Oosthuizen is reborn in 1900 Australia.
He has Fallout 4 and Red Alert system technology (leaning heavier on Fallout weapons).
He builds a new empire from humble beginnings—factories, weapons, clones, trade networks.
He participates in real World Wars with historical figures.
The story includes visceral action, dramatic politics, and a transformation of Australia into a superpower.
Below, I'll draft Chapter 1 (approx. 3,000 words) to get you started. This opening sets the tone and shows Shawn's first steps toward empire:
Steel and Ashes: Empire of the Southern Continent
Chapter 1 – A New Dawn in the Old Land
Sydney, Australia – December 31, 1899
The world was turning the page on a century of conquest and discovery. In the taverns of Sydney, men shouted and sang, toasting the Queen and the endless frontier. Outside, the port bustled with the ships of empire—sleek British cruisers, rumbling steamers carrying wool and coal, and the ironclads that kept the peace in this corner of the globe.
Shawn Oosthuizen watched it all with eyes that had seen too much. He was thirty-two, broad-shouldered, and carried himself like a man who belonged in uniform. Because he had. Twice.
In a past life.
He touched the back of his neck where, in that other world, a bullet had shattered his spine during a special operations mission in Eastern Europe. He remembered everything: the night vision goggles, the bite of winter through tactical gloves, the thunder of gunfire.
That life was over. Yet something had crossed the veil with him—a spark of memory, and something more.
A System.
He called it that for lack of a better word. He'd woken two days ago in a flophouse room overlooking the harbor, his heart hammering, his mind screaming under the influx of information. Blue screens flickered behind his eyelids when he closed them.
SYSTEM INITIALIZED.
Fallout-Red Alert Hybrid Configuration Detected.
Primary User: Shawn Oosthuizen.
Skill Integration Complete.
Inventory: Empty.
Resource Fabrication Queue: Available.
Blueprint Repository: Active.
The memories were clearer than the brass lamps that lit the docks—schematics of Gauss rifles, T-60 power armor, vertibirds, Liberty Prime towering over battlefields. His hands trembled, not from fear, but from anticipation.
He could build it all—if he had the means.
If he had the will.
He exhaled, straightened his coat, and stepped into the cool summer night of Australia's edge of empire. He was going to turn this sleeping colony into a crucible. In time, the world would remember his name.
System Prompt
Skill Tree Accessed.
Super Soldier Serum: Active.
Enhanced Physical Traits: Strength, Reflexes, Endurance (+300%).
Special Forces Experience: Integrated.
He flexed his hands experimentally. His grip was crushing. His vision sharpened. Even the salt tang of the air seemed more vivid.
One step closer to destiny.
January 1, 1900
Shawn began small.
The System offered a limited Resource Fabrication Queue. He needed resources—scrap steel, copper wiring, polymers, fusion cells—materials that did not exist in this century's factories. Some he could synthesize, but much had to be salvaged.
He purchased a disused warehouse on the western edge of Sydney, near the railway yards. In the daylight it looked like any other corrugated iron hulk, with rust eating at the eaves and broken windows gaping into shadow. At night, when the dockworkers had gone, it was alive with quiet, precise movement.
He activated the first Assembler Node—a feature pulled from Fallout settlement systems. The Node shimmered into being like a ghost made solid, folding into reality from blue light.
Assembler Node v1.0 Deployed.
Capacity: 2 tons/day of processed material.
Power Requirement: External generator or fusion cell.
For now, he used a coal generator. It was primitive, but sufficient.
By dawn, the Node had produced a crate of treated steel ingots and a smaller crate of industrial-grade wiring.
System Log: Production – Day 1
Treated Steel: 500kg
Copper Wiring: 100kg
Aluminum Sheeting: 50kg
Ceramic Insulation: 25kg
Building the Foundations
In the days that followed, Shawn kept to a strict schedule:
Mornings: He purchased surplus materials from the port's auction houses. Scrap iron, abandoned machinery, railroad rails—anything he could feed into the Assembler.
Afternoons: He studied the markets. Australia was awash in wool, minerals, and coal. If he could build a reliable trade network, he'd have the funds to expand.
Evenings: He tested prototypes.
The first prototype was simple—a heavily modified Service Rifle chambered in .308, modeled after Fallout's survivalist arsenal. It weighed less than a Martini-Henry and fired twice as fast.
The second was more ambitious—a single suit of Prototype Power Armor Frame, unpainted and crude. He tested it in the darkness, lifting crates as if they weighed nothing.
February 1900 – The First Followers
A man cannot build an empire alone.
Shawn recruited carefully—men from the docks, veterans of the Boer War, roughnecks who respected strength. He paid them better than any shipping company. When one questioned the crates of unfamiliar alloys and the strange tools that seemed decades ahead of their time, Shawn looked him in the eye.
"This is the future," he said. "And if you stand with me, you'll be rich beyond your imagination."
The man swallowed and nodded.
Within a month, twenty workers called the warehouse home. They swore oaths of secrecy. A few he trained personally, teaching them tactics, marksmanship, the disciplined methods of special forces units from the future.
He needed them ready. War was coming.
March 1900 – The Strategic Plan
System Notification: Blueprint Repository Updated.
He reviewed the catalog of his future arsenal:
T-45 Power Armor: Early exosuit, simpler metallurgy.
T-60 Power Armor: Advanced version, better protection.
X-01 Prototype: Experimental.
M42 Fat Man Launcher: Too conspicuous, for later.
Vertibird Transport: Requires large airframe and turbines.
Liberty Prime: Not practical yet.
M1 Abrams Chassis (Red Alert Variant): Adaptable.
P-80 Jet Fighter (Prototype): Technically feasible if he could refine high-octane fuels.
Aircraft Carrier Hull: Titanic undertaking, but Australia's shipyards were growing.
He prioritized what he called Generation 1 Assets:
Infantry Weapons: Service Rifles, Gauss Pistols.
T-45 Armor: Limited production.
Light Tank Chassis: Basic cannon, rugged suspension.
Resource Extractors: Automate iron and coal harvesting.
To fund this, he needed legitimacy. Trade. Contracts. Allies.
April 1900 – The First Contract
Shawn approached the colonial authorities with a proposal: subsidized production of agricultural machinery—tractors, reapers, threshers—all using his proprietary designs. He sold it as "modern American engineering," a harmless lie.
The Governor-General, an aging aristocrat named Lord Hopetoun, studied the blueprints and raised a brow.
"These specifications are…unorthodox."
Shawn smiled, easy and charming. "Progress always is."
He secured a contract worth £25,000—enough to triple production in the warehouse and begin construction of a proper factory on the outskirts of Sydney. No one suspected that beneath the tractors' steel casings lay the first components of a mechanized army.
June 1900 – The First Tank
The M1 chassis prototype rolled across a test field north of Parramatta. It was an ugly brute—flat steel plates riveted onto a frame of composite alloys Shawn's men barely understood. But when the cannon roared and pulverized a derelict barn, they cheered.
Status Report: M1 Prototype
Weight: 48 tons
Armor: Composite Alloy Plate (85mm equivalent)
Armament: 105mm Cannon, coaxial .50 caliber machine gun
Engine: Coal-fired boiler w/ auxiliary electric motor
Crew: 4
Top Speed: 22 km/h
Shawn circled the machine, the warm dusk wind in his hair. One tank. A thousand to follow.
August 1900 – Special Projects
With trade contracts flowing and factories expanding, Shawn activated a new feature:
Clone Soldier Program: Experimental.
Incubation Time: 6 months.
Projected Output: 50 units per cycle.
Template: Customizable.
He selected the Special Forces Template: disciplined, intelligent, loyal. He would not field an army of mindless brutes. These would be soldiers worthy of the new empire.
September 1900 – Contact with History
Word of his "industrial miracles" reached far shores. Delegations arrived—British military observers, American entrepreneurs, and German attachés sniffing for secrets.
One evening, in the rose-lit study of his newly built manor, Shawn met a tall, severe German officer. The man introduced himself as Leutnant Erwin Rommel—young, eager, brilliant.
They spoke for hours of tactics, supply lines, armored warfare. Rommel's eyes glowed when Shawn described mobile tank battalions punching through infantry lines.
"Such machines will change the world," Rommel said.
"They will," Shawn agreed. "And I intend to be at the forefront."
December 1900 – The Shadow of War
The Boer War raged in South Africa. Britain bled resources into the conflict. Tensions simmered in Europe—Kaiser Wilhelm's navy growing, the Triple Entente watching warily.
Shawn read the newspapers by lamplight, cross-referencing dates in his mind. He knew exactly how it would spiral:
Archduke Franz Ferdinand: Assassinated in Sarajevo, 1914.
World War I: Trenches, gas, unthinkable slaughter.
Treaty of Versailles: Seeds of the next war.
World War II: Global conflagration.
Unless he intervened. Unless he built something so formidable that no one dared challenge it.
Australia would be that bastion. His empire.
December 31, 1900 – A Toast to Destiny
On the last night of the year, Shawn stood on the balcony of his manor overlooking the railway lines. Below, trains hauled steel ingots and crates of weapons labeled Agricultural Equipment. In the east, the first gleam of dawn touched the sea.
He lifted a glass of whiskey.
"To the century ahead," he said. "May it remember the name Shawn Oosthuizen."
And the System whispered in the darkness:
Resource Reserves:
Steel: 10,000 tons
Copper: 4,000 tons
Coal: 12,000 tons
High-Grade Alloys: 500 tons
Production Queue:
T-45 Power Armor Units: 12
M1 Light Tanks: 6
Clone Soldiers (Incubation): 50
Vertibird Chassis: 2
Prototype Aircraft Carrier Keel: Laid Down
Trade Revenue (Monthly): £15,000
The foundations were laid. In the year to come, the world would discover what it meant to face an emperor forged from steel and ashes.
[End of Chapter 1]
Next Steps
If you enjoyed this first chapter, I can:
Draft Chapter 2 (another 3,000 words) where the first military exercises occur, and Shawn begins political maneuvers.
Detail the specifications of Fallout 4 weapons, vertibirds, clone soldiers, and aircraft carriers.
Incorporate more historical characters (Churchill, Roosevelt, MacArthur, etc.).
Include dramatic World War I and World War II campaigns with brutal, bloody battles.
Would you like me to continue drafting Chapter 2?