JacobFenrir said: I think it more realistic to just include Indo-Iranians around today and see how they could be more unified. We certainly could have seen a Greater Persian from Mesopotamia to the Indus and north to the Aral Sea. It could well have become a superpower. As for the Scythians and kin, I think if they were to survive they would end up in Europe most likely as a distinct entity. I believe that because of the eastern lexicography of the Slavic languages related to other Indo-Europeans in Europe that their blood is intermixed with that of the Scythians. Click to expand...

Hmm. What you mentioned about the Persian Empire is actually exactly the borders of the Persian Empire till the Islamic invasions. They held territories till the Aral Sea and towards the North of that lived Scythians. Indus valley was held in the East but not settled much by Persians I think. Persians and Zoroastrians then we're limited to today's KPK in the Southeast is my guess. Towards the Northeast,it was Sogdia. Also the cities in Transoxania were mostly inhabited by Persians and Sogdians as it seems rather than the Scythians who lived more proximately. Scythians had a wide dominion. They had Khotan in the East and were spread till the Balkans or even Pannonia in the West. The descendents of Scythians in Europe have many Hypotheses. Hungarians are definitely for a large part having Scythian ancestry as they were initially a part of a confederation in which even Scythians(their subset Sarmatians) also came. Lasz in Hungary are still Iranian speaking. What happened later is that the Scythians were assimilated into the population of the region like into Romanians,Slavs,Magyars(Hungarians),etc. Alans ventured the Westernmost into Spain. So Scythians were truly marvellous in terms of territory. But they were Nomadic than settled.Now what my plan for this timeline is that let Scythians have their version of Zoroastrianism,settle cities in the Central Asia,Volga Basin other than the cities inhabited then by Persians and Sogdians and then build an empire. Then I want to see how the two Iranian Zoroastrian Empires interact with each other. Tocharians will come into the picture as in absense of huge invasions from the East as the Empire is well defended and will join with the Eastern Iranian peoples' Empire and settle inside. In OTL,the Tocharians formed the confederation called Yuezhi with the Eastern Iranian peoples. Now with these two empires initially fighting and later becoming one under Zoroastrianism,I would be interested to see how all this would affect Europe with the later massive invasions checked by this empire itself. Finno-Ugric and Tocharians are the Non Iranian peoples who will join the Empire in this timeline. Finno-Ugric peoples already said to have had quite some relations with the Scythians in OTL so I think that would be possible. Also,Zoroastrianism in this TL will be more universal as it is going to get a lot wider than OTL and such.