oh man looks like it’s time for the

N E W
N EW
W O R L D
W O R LD
Prelude to the Flowering

When Roland of Rennes laid eyes upon the sprawling city of Colhuancan in 1213, he witnessed
the climax of a mortally wounded civilization, gripped by the heady rush of collapse. When he
returned in 1217, the antique city of pyramids and gardens was no more, overthrown by a tribe
of the Nahua who called themselves the Mexica.

Vast and apocalyptic migrations of peoples, most notably the Nahua and Chichimecas, had
begun several decades before, mixed with plagues which would seemingly strike and level
whole nations. Scattered bands of European adventurers brought with them warfare and
disease. In the south, the armies of Mansa Nfansou (Fanceau to his European rivals and
federates) were carving out a nation from the backs of their swift horses, gathering allies and
enemies in equal measure and turning the valley peoples to war.

Meanwhile, the people of Colhuacan and their settled counterparts, who were in the eyes of
Nahua and European alike the “civilized ones” or “artisans” were building every greater works of
art and culture, ever more intricate pieces of golden finery which were every bit as ephemeral as
their civilization and painted art that would not long survive the plunder of migrating peoples.
The past century had been one of environmental shifts that in another world might have simply
been devastating. However, combined with Old World plagues and the arrival of adventuring
conquerors, there was simply no chance.

Like Tula, a city which had once held a hundred thousand souls and was now little more than
overthrown ruin, Colhuacan in time would succumb as well. A year later, the Emperor Nfansou
and his Fula cavalrymen would ride into the Valley of Mexico triumphant. They would record
their victories on stele in the varied tongues of the region and founded the city of Kafibaka on
the backs of their supposed native allies. The Mexica would prostrate themselves in rows before
the triumphant Mansa, who demanded the traditional submission of his Fula culture from the
conquered tribes.

Later, Europeans and their Nahua subjects would pick through the stony rubbish of these cities
and more. They would marvel for what was lost, but they would not understand. The Nahua kept
records, but these were shrouded in myth. They spoke of the people who came before them as
Tolteca, but little truth could be discerned from their reports – to them time was cyclical,
governed by patterns that only the wise could see. The fall of the Tolteca was every bit as
inevitable as the fall of the Franks and Fula.

In time, the Mexica claimed, a new round of disease and famine would purge the haughty
nations across the sea.

They had no idea how right they were.

The New World and the Old

The Frankish Empire needed an outlet, and the New World was the perfect answer.
Agriculturally, the Old World European populations were overburdened. They suffered from a
surfeit of nobles in a world where Eastern conquests were becoming increasingly unpalatable.
The 1128 conversion of the Polish King to Christianity marked the end of the Votive era in
Europe, and the beginning of the end of German migration. Stealing land from coreligionists
was hard to justify and far less palatable to the average migrant.

By and large, the Franks had come to terms with the state of affairs in the East. Xasar country
was an armed camp, whose great fortresses had marked the end of more than one ambitious
Marcher Lord with fanatic zeal and too few forces to make a difference. For the Germans, Slavic
country was increasingly off limits, and quite simply there was nowhere to go.

Was it any wonder that so many chose to flee the swollen cities of Europe or forfeit their royal
stipends to seek adventure in the new world? For the nobility, the cloistered misery of the
monastic life was nothing compared to the opportunity to take up Votive arms for Christ in a new
land. For the peasantry, the new world represented unprecedented social advancement in a
land where supposedly even the meanest tenant could have slaves of his own. It meant a land
of gold and adventure where anything was possible.

The New World was not what Europe wanted or needed in 1104.

The merchants of Italy and Ispana were far more concerned with the Near East than the Utter
West. Preachers on their payroll still clamored for Votive War and the destruction of Iran.

They were not wrong to think in this way: the wealth of Asia far outpaced that of Solvia, and the
luxury goods they wanted were all found in the Orient. Whatever bounty could be found
overseas was difficult to extract and bring back. The overwhelming majority of those who set sail
for the Utter West stayed there, never to return. Those who returned were more often than not
recruiters, and were shunned by landholders who wanted to keep their farms staffed and
merchants who thought this was all a vast distraction from the real war, the oldest war, between
the deadly fanatics of Boddo and the warriors of Christ.
For groups such as the Mauri and Ispanians, however, one major boon did present itself. Sailing
around Africa meant an alternative to Khardi tolls and the wartorn chaos of the Near East. It also
meant opportunities to bring back vast cargos of salt in exchange for what the Ispanians
considered a pittance. So while the Germans and Franks eagerly dreamed of Votive crusade
and glory, the merchants of the south plotted how best to circumnavigate the vast continent to
their south. It could be done – wise men all believed that much was obvious. Royal
mathematicians in Ispanic courts bickered and disputed the distances involved, but by 1146, the
first Italian-funded Ispanian voyage had reached Cape Watya.

In time the trickle of adventurers would become a flood.

First Steps

The first contacts between the Old and New Worlds were a series of utter disasters. Would-be
conquerors were time and again scattered to the winds or overrun by their own ignorance.

Navigation and nautical technology as a whole was still in its infancy. Whole fleets and voyages
were swallowed up in the passage.

If iron and steel would give the invaders an advantage, as many later scholars have postulated,
it was not readily apparent in the early post-contact days. The early decades post-contact
passed without major incidents, and after 1104, a series of pitched battles between natives and
newcomers would primarily end with the newcomers buried by sheer weight of numbers,
slaughtered despite technological advantages they presumed would keep them safe.

Few accounts of these early battles survive, and what stories we do have tell of huddled,
starving Franks surrounded and picked off one by one. However, these tales of atrocity are not
necessarily representative of the majority of these early post-contact massacres. Later
archeology indicates that pitched battles were more common than previously believed – that the
usual pattern of contact was one of brutal open warfare. The attritional patterns of later conflicts
only began after the natives were decimated by disease and forced back into the hinterlands. In
general these early battles were disastrous for the lightly-equipped seafarers who almost
universally underestimated their native foes time and again. Open hospitality gave way to
distrust, and soon the Caribbean was inflamed against the voyagers from the west.

However these disasters did not mark the end, but rather the beginning. The Europeans learned
from their mistakes, and benefitted from the collapse of native populations in their absence.
Future conquests swept islands already depopulated by plague and incipient social collapse.
Conquering lords set up cities under “the authority of the king” and built wooden castles and
churches so as to proclaim themselves victors. The use of “theatrical violence” brought many
cautious or outright hostile tribes to heel, and combined with the taking of (overwhelmingly
female) hostages as “wives” these early colonies were able to survive.
One Hundred Ships

There is no more vivid image of the conquest of Tolteca in the popular imagination than that of
Mansa Nfansou and his hundred ships setting sail from Fula country. Occurring a mere century
after the initial contact, Mansa Nfansou and his adventures quickly took on the aspect of legend
or myth, and few accurate chronicles of his voyage have survived. There is a gulf in the
historical record – between the legendary hundred ships and scattered accounts from the petty
“Duke” of Tahiti, who records no more than five ships limping into his harbor. The famed Mansa
in his account is a proud and arrogant man, a warlord who refuses to acknowledge the
disastrous storms that have ruined his fleet and left him “as a beggar in the Carib Sea” – a king
reduced to eating his valuable warhorses.

From there, Nfansou’s next steps become difficult to trace, not for a want of accounts, but for
the confusion of those royal historians and Norse chroniclers who travelled with him. He either
landed near the city of “Cuetsala” or “Cuetseleuca” on the Gulf of Tolteca, the location of which
is lost to history. Shortly thereafter he began involving himself in the affairs of native kings, and
rode to the city of “Ohsakag” – where in a ceremony which rapidly became confused by issues
of translation, he demanded the submission of the Ohsakagi King and his entourage.

The ensuing war was brutal chaos, but another wave of disease would fortuitously strike a year
after his landfall, and Ohsakagi would be destroyed by a rival city state that has been identified
to a large degree of certainty as Coyolapan. Shortly thereafter, a war with the Sabotegi would
throw him back on the defensive, and Nfansou’s chaotic and tumultuous rise to the top would
continue.

The Norse and Fula chroniclers who charted Nfansou’s ascension to power are broadly
responsible for the legendary quality of his conquests and the pervasive misconceptions which
endure to this day about his victories. The Norse in particular emphasized the individual heroism
of a small band of conquering heroes holding back endless waves of chaotic barbarians. To
them, Nfansou’s foes dressed in carnival motley. Each battle was a legion of unrestrained
cannibal demons throwing themselves on the long-armed and stern warriors of the Fula, who
kept disciplined ranks and repulsed their foes time and again. The native allies of the Fula
feature not at all in their accounts. The savage chaos of warriors armed with stone clubs
assailing the finely armored horsemen of the Fula made for a beautiful and romantic picture, but
an inaccurate one. Equally fraudulent was the Fula depictions, which emphasized the
pseudodivine glory of Nfansou, the heroics of the cavalry charge, and their enormous,
incomprehensibly vast fleet and army which won submission after submission with a minimum
of effort.

The truth, as ever, is a grimy thing. First, the Fula fleet was in no small part composed of Canary
Norse, a people who had rapidly outbred the carrying capacity of their small island. Second,
what sparse native accounts and oral histories remain do not focus on the cavalry at all, and
given the Duke’s account of the Mansa forced to eat many of his horses, it is likely that the
cavalry contingent was small to say the least. Third, the Fula would have been annihilated if it
was not for the apocalyptic chaos gripping the whole of the region. Mass migrations, societal
breakdown, and a rapid series of plagues all allowed Nfansou to carve out a state where
otherwise he might have simply been killed along with the starving men who staggered ashore
in 1208.

Still, Nfansou’s conquests were uncertain and ephemeral at best. Many of the native kings
whose “submission” he attained saw him as little better than a particularly high quality
mercenary. There were various Frankish and Norse mercenaries already in the New World by
the time of Nfansou, and he would certainly not be the last Old World leader to cross the sea
and engage in mercenary activity. The famed womanizer and mercenary Niccolo Cosca, who
had passed away some four decades previously, was hailed as a hero by the Xicallanca of
Cholula and his travelogues, widely disseminated in Italian vernacular, had proved wildly
popular with the common people of his home country.

Nfansou, in the eyes of many historians and contemporaries, was acting in the same tradition as
the Cosca family, who were in the 1220’s represented in the new world by Stefano Cosca, a
cousin of the famed adventurer, and his little brother who was called the Lesser Niccolo. But the
story of the New World is not the story of great men or grand adventures.

The story of the New World is of vast impersonal forces. From the first meetings of sailors and
Carib islanders, diseases leapt from mouth to mouth, from flea to flesh. From early beginnings
and perilous voyages, the groundwork for a truly global economy was laid. The engine of global
trade was even now being primed in the far East – when it reached the shores of the Americas,
nothing would ever be the same.

The story of the New World is the story of an exchange of ideas. From the first contact,
representations of Christ and the native gods of the Taino were painted on cliff-faces and pieces
of stone and bark. Cultures long separated by the yawning gulf of the Atlantic Ocean struggled
to understand and make sense of new worlds beyond their reckoning.

The story of the New World is one born in blood and fire. From the first meetings between
Haitians and Franks, it is the story of unspeakable atrocities and the lowest depths of human
degradation, of starving sailors butchering unprepared natives and being butchered in turn by
vengeful war-parties. It is the story of arrogant conquering Princes who sought everlasting glory
at sword point. It is the story of the New Votive Wars and the bloody religious revolution which
would follow.

[These posts are meant to be more "teasers" than anything. Fear not, I'll be going into more
detail shortly. However, there may be a bit more chronological jumping about in this part of the
story, especially when it comes to discussing cultural themes and the various revolutionary
changes taking place in Asia.
N.B. All guest posts set before 1104 should still be posted in the original White Huns thread. If I
have any additional posts that discuss pre-1104 topics they will go there as well. ]

A New Era in the

East

Immanuel Laskaris was a man for an earlier age. He would have, perhaps, made a great
Roman Emperor, but he was a poor match for the limited resources of the Asian State, a region
whose heartland was pastoral at worst and feudal at best, a region whose few remaining great
cities hugged the coastline and clung to the memory of ancient times. However, Immanuel was
a poet and aspiring philosopher, few Emperors did so much to foster the growth of Asian cultural
life, or wasted so much blood and treasure in their attempts to live up to the hoary legacy of
Rome. His warring began at a young age, with an intricately planed three-pronged assault on
the Xasar city of Konstantikert. Fed by the fields of the Dnieper, the city had grown into a true
metropolis under the Xasar, and its walls and exterior fortifications were well-maintained. A seat
of Buddhist scholarship, playing host to universities and temples and an opulent Xasar royal
palace, the city was in the eyes of the Asian cities, an insult to everything that old
Constantinople had once been. Accordingly, Immanuel had near total support from the powerful
urban magistrates and the rural landlords alike.

His defeat was thus all the more humiliating. While the Xasar fleet was swept aside and ruined,
the Asian army starved and suffered outside Constantinople, and as Xasar reinforcements
poured in and encircled the besieging army, Immanuel was forced to lead a disastrous retreat
back across the strait. If not for their distaste for ruling a large Christian population, the Xasar
might have invaded and wreaked devastation upon Asia Minor. As it was, they contented
themselves with an indemnity and hostages from the great cities of Asia.

Smarting from this blow, Immanuel turned East, towards the weakening Khardi Empire,
embroiled in border wars and distracted with substantial economic problems. He raised many
mercenaries and Votive soldiers with the promise of plunder for payment, and for some time it
seemed that he could not be defeated. He swept as far south as Jerusalem, holding a victorious
parade in the captured city and praising God for his victories. His troops hailed him as a savior
and a conqueror, and, emboldened, he embarked on a campaign to rescue “our Assyrian
brothers, who languish under the Boddo’s yoke.”

Mesopotamia was a bridge too far. The Khardi armies were ruined and unable to prevent his
march down the Tigris, or the overthrow of the current Shah (and the subsequent “Susa
Anarchy” which would last much of the following decade) but, bolstered by Arab and Bajinak
mercenaries they were able to prevent the loss of Susa and wear down the limited resources of
Immanuel’s army. While Immanuel was off playing the conqueror, his homelands were
vulnerable, and the Ifthal wreaked havoc across Asia Minor in his absence, while the army
slowly disintegrated. Soldiers, enriched by plunder, had almost no loyalty to Immanuel and
within two years, he was no closer to taking Susa and his forces were all but gone. Encamped
and eventually surrounded in the ruins of Tesifon, he was captured and ransomed back to Asia.
The Khardi would recover, but their prestige was shaken. A series of child Shahs only ensured
that satraps would gain more and more power. The more successful local rulers were quick to
begin calling themselves Shahs, and tax revenues continued to decline.

The Khardi had swept the Near East like a storm in their heyday. Unlikely conquerors, the sons
of nomads, they had forged an enduring state in the wake of Ifthal and Turkish anarchy by
taking advantage of the agricultural and commercial wealth of the Tigris and Euphrates. But the
very land which won them their fortune was a fickle mistress. The Khardi were compelled by
fortune to travel far from their hard-won homeland, and as settler colonies became ubiquitous,
those who remained landholders imported increasing numbers of slaves, weakening the once
great base of Khardi manpower. From Susa, a city transformed by a singular ambition to ape
the past, the Iranshahs looked out at their territory and realized how shaky great empires could
be. Their kingdom was built on the backs of so many cities, so many nations, so many proud
peoples once broken.

In a sense, they must have known it was all doomed to ruin.

The first stirrings of trouble came in the wake of Emperor Immanuel Laskaris’ disastrous
campaigns. Afterwards, the border lords consolidated their power independent of the central
state, and no group did more to unsettle Khardi power in the west than the sect or association of
warriors who called themselves the Bakhtiyar, or the fortunate ones.

Throughout history, many great minds have conceived of time as cyclical. What is the passing of
the seasons but a microcosm of grander patterns? As one ephemeral generation is born, and
lives, and dies to be replaced by another, we see time in its ceaseless flow, but also rebirth.
Nowhere is this pattern more obvious than among the nations of Iran, cursed to see Empires
rise and fall around them. From the Arsakid Palhava to the Sasanians to the Ifthal to the Khardi
to the Bakhtiyar, the pattern remains constant.

The contender to the title of Shah rose, as all great dynasties do, from humble beginnings. They
were derisively called Tayzig (from the Iranian Tajik) by the old and pure Eftal families, a word
which derided them as Arab pastoralists and ignored the Khardi’s own antique origins as
herdsmen in the Zargos mountains. There was truth to the slur, however, that the Bakhityar
were mixed Arab-Ifthal in origin. Their own name for themselves roughly meant “fortunate” and
in no small sense, they were incredibly fortunate. Far from the decadent and vicious court of
Susa, they were able to carve out a real state for themselves with minimal interference.

However, the Bakhtiyar had their origins not as nobility but as bandits, a group of allied clans
ruling Tadmur under the dominion of an enigmatic warlord named Akhsau, who was called
Mansar, from the Arabic Mansur, or Victorious. There were many legends about Mansar. Some
said that he was born blind, that he did not gain the ability to see until he was a man. Others
said that at the age of thirteen he wandered in the desert and spoke to God, either the Christian
deity or Ohrmazd, depending on whom you spoke to. Still others said that he was a demon in
human flesh, and that his words seized things in the hearts of men that should not be seized.

Most, however, simply acknowledged that he was a brilliant and capable tactician, the sort of
figure who would usurp the King of Tadmur at the age of 21 and expand his dominion from
there, conquering fortress after fortress and through force, charisma and guile bringing the
house of Mihiragula in line and carving out a crude but effective state which paid only lip-service
to the royal court in Susa.

Akhsau was a rare sort of figure, and the Bakhityar were a completely unanticipated event
historically. Within a few decades, all history would be changed by their rise.

Arabia was undergoing a crisis of faith. Saihism, the Arabic world’s response to the great
missionary religions, was on the decline. Nestorianism and Buddhism warred for the hearts and
minds of the Arab world, and the Church of the East, exiled from many of its traditional seats,
had found a fertile audience among the scattered desert tribes of Arabia. Buddhism was popular
in the south, among the wealthy merchant cities whose culture and civilization were an example
for the northern tribes.

Akhsau took all comers, and encouraged the mystical reputation he had gathered. As he moved
from victory to victory, the Arabs of the interior flocked to his banner, transforming desert raiders
and bandits into a disciplined fighting force of bow-armed light cavalry. If the Ifthal had forgotten
their nomadic roots, this new whirlwind from the desert had not at all – they specialized in
ambush and raiding warfare, and they excelled at starving the Ifthal fortresses into submission.

While the Bakhtiyar moved from strength to strength, they were able to do so because of
anarchy in the East. By the time Akhsau was forty, the Khardi had lost much of the Iranian
plateau to marauding Turko-Afghan warlords in what was a sort of repeat of the Eftal collapse.
Asia never truly recovered from the disastrous rule of Immanuel Laskaris, a sort of twenty year
false “Golden Age” that would lead to their doom. Swift Tayzig and Ifthal cavalrymen turned the
peninsula of Asia Minor upside down, and by 1150 the whole region was under Tayzig control.
By 1160, Akhsau, now an old man, would not even acknowledge the Shah in Susa. By 1183,
there was no longer a Shah in Susa, and the Khardi were divided into warring petty states.

As we will see, the Bakhtiyar themselves struggled to create an enduring state or legacy.
Perhaps because of their origins, they quickly allowed internal divisions to overcome them in the
aftermath of Akhsau’s conquests. Their architectural and cultural legacy was more enduring, as
was their grand project to rebuild the Canal of the Pharaohs, which became known as the
Mansar Canal. For a brief time, a unified Bakhtiyar Empire seemed poised to overcome the
Khardi and reunite the Near East, but ultimately no-one would do more to unseat the Khardi
than themselves. As the Khardi lost their distinct provincial culture and ties of tribe and clan to
the appeal of universal Empire, as they accepted the broader Indo-Iranian culture practiced by
the Ifthal, they became indistinct from their many subjects and even began to identify as them.
Latter-day laws to prevent intermarriage between Khardi and Turks were never strictly followed,
and coupled with the economic decline of Mesopotamia (rapid salinization and the rise of
unproductive slave estates) their fate was sealed long before the Bajinak conquered Mosil.

[Don’t worry, I’m gonna talk about the Near East more soon. I know that things moved fast in
this overview, and that my focus was nowhere near complete. But I wanted to start somewhere
and start laying the groundwork for the larger themes of the 12th century, which even beyond
the New World promises to be one full of shocking twists. Egypt, Iran, and many other places
deserve a more in-depth focus than I gave them in this segment.

However, for the next update I think we're going to look at China and the changing East Asian
economic scene, and perhaps also at Central Asia in the world of the Kitai and the Afsar. As
ever, I welcome questions and comments. There's a lot of hints and references to events that
need larger explanation in this segment, and I appreciate the chance to explain that stuff for
those who are interested.]

Great Cathay

The twelfth century in Kitai China was one of political consolidation and economic expansion.
On the military front, the half-Mongol half-Kitai general Chimtay advanced from victory to victory.
The Wu state crumbled under the brunt of his invasion.

The Kitai Emperor might have retired into the sublime luxuries of his palace at Kaifeng, but the
Kitai nobility still raised their sons on the steppe and taught them to fight. Unlike the Uighurs
before them, they did not integrate with their subject populations to the same degree. Instead
they utilized the Han bureaucracy and their Uighur federates as intermediaries between the
larger populace and their own relatively austere world. If the Kitai idolized the broader Chinese
culture, they were not immediately consumed by it. If they saw their Emperors become
decadent and wealthy behind the cloistered walls of the Kaifeng Golden Palace, they did not
rebel against it. Indeed, no sooner did the Emperor start to fear that his people were growing
restless than he ordered the massive 1123 invasion of Wu.

Chimtay was a capable tactician and won many proud cities over by the extent of his legendary
mercy. During his campaign against the Wu, cities such asTongzhouand Yangzhou surrendered
without a fight, bringing vast sums of wealth into the Imperial coffers and bringing the country
closer and closer to reunification under a single Imperial banner When, several years later,
Chimtay was ordered to invade the Chu, the siege of Fangcheng was notably ended within
mere months as opposed to the anticipated years. In 1130, the general was in command of
three whole southern divisions, and had the de facto backing of many of the ministries. His field
army was unmatched for the quantity and quality of his cavalry, and from the silk road had
acquired the latest in firepowder formulas.

Chimtay authored many early experiments into firepowder. Fangcheng was subject to an
immense rain of bolts tipped with explosive “grenades” and the Chinese variant of the firespear,
perfected by Imperial technicians, proved to be an unmatched shock weapon even in the hands
of unskilled peasantry.

It is unclear whether or not he had imperial authority to invader the South Kingdom of Tai, but he
did so, and when yet another sweeping victory came to him in 1132, Chimtay seemed
unstoppable. His fame and reputation had eclipsed the hidden Emperor’s by far. A year later,
summoned back to the capital, he came in force, with a huge army at his back.

He walked directly into a trap. The Kitai Emperor had enlisted the help of the Naiman Yabgu,
and had hired two thousand personally loyal imperial guard soldiers. He gave them the
standards and equipment of Chimtay’s own personal soldiers, and during a celebration of the
general’s achievements, had these soldiers turn on Chimtay. In the confusion the general was
quickly killed by the imposters, and the rank-and-file quickly fell into line. Those suspected of
involvement in Chimtay’s plotting were either executed or quietly reassigned to distant frontiers.
The architect of this plot, however, was not the Emperor but his confidant, the rising scholar-
bureaucrat Zhao Wei.

Zhao Wei, the Prime Minister from 1153-1161 advocated revolutionary changes in the economic
system of the country. In his opinion “The state and the ministries must take on their back the
whole management of commerce, industry, and agriculture, so as to ensure the prosperity of all.
It is the degradation of the common farmer that turns him to banditry, and it is the suffering of
the merchant that leads him to sympathize with esoteric preachers.” Perfect social order, he
argued, could be generated by enhanced state involvement. A devout member of Exoteric
Buddhism, he believed strongly that a perfected regime could be attained only by strenuous
application of all the power of the state bureaucracy.

The unification of the Yangtze River by a single power and the restoration of degraded and
silted parts of the Grand Canal allowed economic renovation on an unprecedented scale. The
coastal cities patronized by the Wu and Tai benefitted immensely from uninterrupted contact
with the interior. The Kitai devoted immense resources to pacifying banditry and restoring order,
and these acts seem to have paid off. Zhao Wei’s policies took inspiration perhaps from the
Tamil trading houses he knew of from his youth as a hostage among the Tai. He established a
central banking system as part of the Ministry of Revenue, and gave it a broad purview to invest
in promising commercial enterprises.

The Emperor Yaol Jelu (Muzong) ruled in splendid opulence, remote as all his people were from
the day-to-day affair of governing the south. Accordingly, it was a vastly expanded northern
bureaucracy which took on that responsibility, in concert with local magistrates. The exam
system, atrophied since its Qi era height, was brought back as a universal institution. If the
gentry idolized the life of the noble farmer, they nevertheless found great fortunes to be made in
investing in trade.

One of the largest advantages the new Kitai state had was that its Han gentry were intimately
connected to a vast foreign population. Many of those who had fled the Uighurs had distant
relations back in their mother country, and the Chinese overseas did not necessarily associate
the Yaol dynasty with the brutality of the Uighurs. The Yaol were distant foreign despots whose
meritocratic attitude did much to endear them to their subjects. And yet despite this era of
harmony and contentment, the Uighur garrison cities remained, a fist within the velvet glove of
Kitai hegemony.

All under heaven was reunited. But the top-down imperium of the Kitai had its flaws. In the rivers
and valleys of China, new and bold thinkers were authoring their own novel philosophies that
would eventually come into conflict with imperial orthodoxy…

North India

The Kshatriya warrior guilds and their mercenary counterparts had by the twelfth century blurred
so as to become indistinct from one another. However, a defining facet of warfare on the
subcontinent was that combat was almost exclusively conducted either by these groups or by
massed levies of relatively poor quality. Professional troops represented a small clique within
the broader civilization, and one that was difficult to gain access to.

When the Afghani warlord Khingal Askunu and his Turkish allies swept through Gandhara and
broke upon the plains of Panchala, their fellow Sahputi often turned and betrayed their
supposed paymasters. The republics of the north were overwhelmed one by one. Their treasure
was brought back to Shamibal, the seat of the Askunu before Khingal’s son resettled in
Lohawar.

The battles that defined the century were brutal affairs. The Askunu and their retainers fought as
heavily armed and armored cavalry, and unlike the guild warriors they had no sense of fairness
or honor. Where guild combat had become regulated by codes of conduct and diplomacy both
practical and ritual, the Afghans did not care to preserve the lives of the defeated or maintain the
social structures of the subcontinent.

However, perhaps because of the moderating influence of the Sahputi, the great temples and
universities of the region were preserved. The sangha and equal-kingdoms were broken but in
their submission they were allowed to organize as they saw fit. In victory, to Askunu were
merciful. However, their destruction of the old North Indian martial elite fundamentally changed
the region, and brought them into direct conflict with Gurjars and their Chandratreya patrons.

Afghanistan itself was a place in turmoil. It had never quite reconciled its glorious past with its
new status as a frontier. The country of the Afghans was the home of great empires! Did not the
Eftal come from Balkh, and the Johiyava come from their valley kingdoms? They sat at the
crossroads of civilization, and they had no desire to be mere subjects of a distant monarch in
Susa. No sooner did the Mitradharmids begin crumbling on itself than much of Afghanistan rose
in open rebellion. The garrison cities were massacred. The tribes of the mountains, of whom the
Askunu were but one of many, rose up openly and besieged Balkh, cutting off the Khardi Satrap
from his lines of communication.
By the time the Khardi might have considered a counter-attack, the Afsar Turks were ranging
freely across the Iranian plateau, and the Bajinak were besieging Mosil. There were higher
priorities. Afghanistan was distant and inconsequential to the new Khardi policy, which was
focused on maintaining its ever-weakening hold on the fertile crescent.

[Again, things will continue to be filled out as time goes on. I have a massive post on the fall of
the Khardi in the works, but it's proving frustratingly difficult. Rest assured these posts will make
more sense with that added context.

To those of you saying India was overdue for an invasion... yeah, you were right. And as soon
as the Khardi began cracking, as soon as there wasn't a monolithic empire in the Near East... I
think it was pretty much inevitable. However, its an open question whether or not the Afghans
will reach the real centers of the Indian revolution. The warrior guilds of the Ganges have far
greater numbers than the guilds of the north, and if nothing else economically that region has
been less embroiled in the unproductive border wars that the Khardi and Gandharans faced off
in time and again, or the relative power vacuum along the Indus.]
In the broad compass
of history, it can be easy to neglect the small scale. Certainly when telling the story of the all
mankind, from the first city states along the banks of flooding rivers to mankind united in a
global era of information and space exploration, it can be easy to forget the lesser moments that
change the world.

And yet these moments happen constantly. If a different merchant had traveled to Ethiopia and
not brushed against a rat, humanity might have avoided what would become the worst
pandemic in human history, the first global plague which touched every continent. If a soldier
had not brought down his cudgel on the head of a Sassanian Shah, the Eftal might never have
risen to power. If a herder’s son hadn’t traveled to Constantinople and joined their army as a
mercenary, the Roman Empire might never have fallen.

When dealing with an event as vast as the Ragnarssen exchange, when so many disparate
peoples began massive oceanic migrations, it is especially easy to forget. One of the long term
goals of this second iteration of Rise of the White Huns will be to capture as much of that as
possible while still overlaying the broad trends and themes of each era. Suggestions as to how
best to achieve this are always welcome.

Heretics and Votivists – the Troubles of Europe go West

The culture of Ispana was unique within the Frankish Empire. With its own royal court, it was a
proper kingdom where the rest of the “nations” were duchies and marches with nothing but
shared culture to unite them. Culturally, Ispana was nevertheless considered a backwater. Her
poetry, the courtly elites of Aachen said, was pastoral and vulgar at best, and crude and
blasphemous at worst. Her scholarship had nothing on the heady grandeur of Italy, where great
minds discussed the nature of angels and matter along platonic lines. Her architecture was
infused with barbarian models taken from the unique Mauri sensibility which permeated the
southern Mediterranean and had little in common with the delicate arches and spires of the
north.

Accordingly, the religious movements Ispana spawned were unique as well. One common
heresy, called Autotheism, held that the perfect soul and the Godhead were indistinguishable
from each other. Believed to be inspired by the movement of peoples and ideas from the East,
Autotheism found fertile ground in Spain, Sicily, and other areas where local rulers had little
incentive to directly combat heresy. In time it would come to influence the paganism of the
Berber peoples as well. Another, the Josefite cult, was classically gnostic – its followers
refrained from vaginal heterosexual intercourse so as to not bring new souls into the damned
world. Accordingly, it died out within in a generation. Its legacy was preserved in church tracts
which condemned the cult as a “a den of the most perverse sodomites, a cellar of inequity at the
root of the Christian world.”

As Christian missionaries found their way to the New World, so too did a small but growing
number of Autotheists. The lawlessness of Fanceau’s regime appealed to those who could at a
moment’s notice find themselves persecuted. Unlike the Tinanian heresy, which had secular
wealth and importance, Autotheists by contrast generally were all too well aware that they
survived by the dint of their local lord’s whim, and accordingly were more encouraged than any
other group to flee. The desire to found a “New Jerusalem to the Perfection of the Soul” as one
later Autotheist writer put it, was strong. Accordingly of all the various groups who would risk
their lives on the great transatlantic journey, few were more fanatical in their hopes than the
Autotheists. If they were only a small number, on a virgin island whose inhabitants were
slaughtered by disease, the Autotheists had a critical advantage – alone of the Frankish
colonists they had brought a significant number of women, and their towns were able to sustain
their numbers far more efficiently than the scattered Frankish trading posts and waystations.

The Duke of Haiti himself was an Ispanian, and while undoubtedly familiar with the sect, he
declared that his “city” would not become another seat for the “false men and sodomites” who
came ashore after the great journey. Where he gave shelter to heathens, adventurers, and
brigands, and tolerated the varied forms of “vice” and “immortality” that accompanied any
colonial settlement, heretics, it seemed, were a bridge too far in the mind of Duke Rodrigo
Meles. Autotheists quickly established their own safe haven not so far away, on the Isle of
Aravacia.

Back home, the lords of Ispana were happy. Whatever worries of land overcrowded by a surfeit
of hungry tenants or heretics they might have held were assuaged by the promise of a vast new
world which would conveniently serve as a dumping ground. Furthermore, they were beginning
to see the profits of their overseas voyages. With each new expedition, men such as Fernanti
Dias de Vivar brought back ships laden with treasure. Regular lines of trade and communication
were slowly being established with the Fula and the scattered southern coastal tribes. In 1157,
the Ukwu sent an embassy to the Frankish court, to much wonder and amazement. The Ukwu
Embassy, whose name is recorded only as “John”, was more than happy to embrace Christ and
be baptized. In all probability, the language barrier was far too great for such things to be clear,
and the Ukwu concept of divinity was utterly alien to the European mind, but it was a
propaganda coup nonetheless for the reigning Emperor, Aloysius the Blond.

Marcel de Amiens was another such man whose character and individual actions would set the
course of history along a different path. He was a man of famed humility and piety, but also
extraordinary charm and persuasiveness. Where his contemporaries, such as the decadent and
notorious Niccolo Cosca, were unscrupulous aspiring warlords, Marcel de Amiens was a loyal
servant of the Frankish crown. What he did in the New World, he did for God and Emperor alike.
When he conquered, he read royal writs out loud to the people, blithely ignoring the fact that
they did not understand the language, and accepting that his duties were done. He was the first
Votivist of the New World.

Arriving in the New World, he learned while in Haiti of a famed kingdom far to the north, where
great cities of gold rose out of mounds in the earth. Gathering a motley crew of adventurers and
a few native translators, he would embark up the Great River that divided Northern Solvia. He
would never return, but his influence would live on.

Liuqiu and the rise of Chola hegemony

The decline of Srivijaya left a power vacuum. It was the Chola dynasty that found themselves
most positioned to exploit that vacuum. They already had connections in every great trading city
across the Malay islands. They already had immense wealth and a navy more than capable of
asserting its dominance across the ocean.

They only needed a cause to expand their power even further afield. Fortunately, fate would
give one to them.

Besides the aboriginals, who claimed they had always lived on the island since the dawn of
time, the first settlers of Liuqiu[1] were exiles and refugees from the Qi state. Merchants made
sporadic contact with Liuqiu, and in the Liang dynasty era there had even been a plan proposed
to colonize the island make it into a colony or a tributary, but that plan was quickly dismissed
when it was realized by visiting emissaries that the island had no particular value. There was
nothing to be found in Liuqiu that could not be found in the Rivers and Valleys of China.

It was only with the rise of the Kitai that the first permanent settlement of Chinese people was
established on the island. A rough and disordered community of exiles, their communities
quickly became a haven for pirates, particularly the notorious Zheng Li. From sheltered bases
on Liuqiu, they were able to raid the sea lanes with impunity, and several attempts by the Wu
Kingdom navy to defeat the pirate bases were ineffectual at best – the Wu would arrive, but by
then the pirates would have taken shelter with the aboriginal peoples, and their only prize would
be burning empty villages and towns.
Part of this had to do with the gradual atrophy of the Wu navy. As the Kitai grew stronger, the
Wu pulled money from their fleet and put more money into ultimately hopeless attempts to
defend their northern border. As more and more ships were abandoned and left to rot, the Wu
lost their capacity to project power. Zheng Li and his pirates became ever bolder, building a fleet
which could rival anything the Wu had in their arsenal.

In 1116, a group of Chola backed “sreni men” would arrive on Liuqiu, seeking a lost convoy
which they believed to have been taken by the pirates. Their main purpose, as it always was,
was to negotiate a ransom for the lost cargo of silks and perhaps any high-ranking sailors
whose lives were particularly valuable. These sorts of negotiations had occurred before. They
were usually conducted with relative peace. For whatever reason however, this time
negotiations broke down.

It would not be until two years later that even one of their number would return. He had
seemingly aged many years, and he had clearly been brutalized. He could barely speak, but
one name was on his lips: Zheng Li.

This was a bridge too far for the Chola. Pirates were an acceptable cost of business –
sometimes you found yourself attacked by them, but usually they could be bribed or threatened
and overall they only took a small cut of the profits. This was different. Pirates who did not
negotiate were pirates that couldn’t be accounted for. Aligning themselves with several Champa
and Malay cities who had a grievance against Zheng Li and his marauders, the Chola built a
massive naval coalition to not only raid the coasts, as so many had done before, but indeed to
conquer the island outright and establish a friendly state there.

In 1119, a not insubstantial Chola fleet arrived in Liuqiu after a several month long tour of the
region. The campaign was swift – after the pirates retreated into the highland, they were
shocked to find an army, including several war elephants, disembark after them and give chase.
They were even more shocked when the Chola did not immediately attack but rather met with
the head of a lesser coastal tribe, the Siraya.

The Chola Admiral, speaking through an interpreter, made a simple declaration, the exact text of
which is apocryphal. The Siraya were granted the island to rule as a proxy of the Chola
Maharaja and were to work to prevent piracy. In exchange they would receive arms, goods, and
support from the Chola. However, none of it was as easy as it sounded. It would be a long,
bloody, three year campaign to subdue the highland tribes and bring “order” to the island. Even
then, disease and poor supply had sapped the effectiveness of the Chola army. Their allies had
largely pulled out of the fighting and morale was low. The war only ended with the Siraya signing
the Datu Compact, an agreement which limited their territory to the western lowlands and
allowed the other tribes to maintain their independence and pay a token tribute to the Siraya.

In 1126, a joint Chola-Champa venture organized by the Golden Bull Nakara Sreni had
established a city called Soulang (Sian) on the western coast of the island. They brought in red
brick from Java and raised a fortress and temple to Visnu Narayana some ten miles from the
Siraya capital of Chali (Kalipura). Instead of a pirate haven, the Siraya kingdom was a friendly
waystation for ships on their way north, and kingdom’s small landholding class provided a
captive market for Chola goods.

[1] Taiwan, a name which unless I’m wrong about the etymology I couldn’t really justify using.

The Procellaric Ocean and Greater Oceania

Early European voyages around Watya Cape were broadly speaking, disastrous. The early
vessels of European exploration could just about make it all the way south to the very tip of
Africa, although doing so involved a level of bravery and planning comparable to those who
wished to cross the Atlantic. In the early days, friendly kingdoms and waystations had not yet
been established along the coast. Chance encounters with locals could spell disaster.

It was worth it, however, to reach Watya, a land of strange and exotic spices where precious
stones were (supposedly) as cheap as dirt. However, the Randryan prohibited European
vessels from carrying on beyond the cape. Much as Tangrasirabh had a monopoly on trade to
Watya, Watya sought to establish themselves as a middleman for the pale-faced Ispanan
traders.

If the Ispanians wanted to circumvent this trade system, they would have to work with a group of
smuggling cartels traditionally known as the Seven Cliques. However, the Cliques themselves
were not terribly interested in anything beyond bypassing the customs taxes which kept
Tangrasirabh afloat, and with the language barrier such as it was, the Ispanians struggled to
make deals or even find the Cliques, open secret that they might have been to a local or a
native. Furthermore, without local knowledge and charts, even attempting to navigate the Cape
was extraordinarily dangerous for these early European ships. Several attempts were lost, and
several more were caught in the act and had their cargos seized.

It was thus no surprise that as European adventurers explored down the southern coast of
Solvia, they began to realize that perhaps there was an alternate way to the Indies – if Solvia
could be circumvented, perhaps they could find India. Surely the mystical land of spices and
wealth was not so far away once you bypassed the Solvian continent?

None of those early mariners who tried ever returned. The “Ocean of Lost Sailors” or the
“Ocean of Storms” (Oceanus Procellarum) claimed them all. Thus for Europeans the name
Procellaric Ocean would endure even after many explorers found that the ocean itself was in
many places peaceful and calm.

The southern continent was far larger than anyone could have imagined. Explorers like the Sri
Lankan Prashant Alakeshwar assumed that they would only find islands of varying sizes -- a
continued archipelago not unlike what they came from. They treated Javanese tales of the great
desert land to the south as rumors and superstition. Even if the Javanese had made sparse
contact with forested capes to the south, it seemed unlikely that there were any great
landmasses so far from the center of their world. When these South Indian and Sinhalese
naysayers were proved wrong, they almost immediately began fabricating tales of great
kingdoms with legendary wealth and new, never-before tasted spices and strange, never-before
seen birds and beasts.

They were half right.

The Sanskrit names “Daksinakhand” or “Yolnadvipa” came into common use among the
educated, although the sailors often just called it “Pula” or Island – a way of making the strange
and unfamiliar world beyond seem small and quaint. To treat the southern continent like any
other island was to make it safe. And the Southern continent was not safe.

The natives of Daksinakhand were primitive by the standards of the world that discovered them.
Their tendency towards outsiders was, broadly speaking, suspicion and violence, suspicion
aggravated by the lack of a mutual language. They were not overly impressed by the
northerners who came, not at first. The Yolgnu in particular were a practical people. They had no
desire for useless trinkets, but rather iron tools, cloth, alcohol, and other such gifts. In return
they traded what little they had – food, particularly sea cucumbers, and sex for practical
implements such as the Javanese were willing to part with.

In general the expeditions to Daksinakhand found little of value. Unlike the Europeans, the
Javanese and Indian explorers sought cities and populated regions with which to do business.
There was no missionary of Votivist zeal to animate them, and unlike the Europeans and
Africans, they never did find any urban centers, at least none close enough to the coast as to be
useful. Generally, they found a barren and unsafe continent with little to recommend it to the
outside world.

However, the Malay would return to the north in great numbers. Sea cucumbers were delicacy
in China and some parts of the archipelago. By trading with the Yolgnu, they were able to
acquire vast quantities of the delicacy for outrageously little cost. The Yolgnu had little
comprehension of how easy it was to manufacture an iron-tipped weapon or cloth, and
accordingly would work for a pittance wage in kind, harvesting and drying their ocean’s bounty
for the Malay, who in time established trading posts directly in Yolgnu territory.

It was in this way that agriculture was introduced to the Yolgnu. Although the agricultural
package of the Malay isles was not exactly compatible, it was sufficient to augment their diets
and allowed an increased level of health and consequent population growth.

The rest of the “Island” was explored in piecemeal voyages over the course of the next two
decades. Prashant was the instigator of most of these voyages. His trading company, the
Nanadesi, was convinced that they simply had to explore in greater depth to find the mythic
southern kingdoms of the continent, and they pursued this goal to ultimate financial ruin.
However, they were instrumental in mapping the coastline of the southern continent and
identifying safe harbors and major inland rivers and terrain features. They made contact with
countless native groups, and although they broadly struggled to have peaceful interactions with
them, one group, who called themselves the Gunditjmara, who according to Prashant dwelled in
stone houses and had a sophisticated system of aquaculture revolving around eels. Digging
channels, they were able to expand the wetlands that were their primary source of food and in
another world perhaps they might have developed primitive agriculture of their own accord. In
hard times and times of drought, they subsisted on tuberous roots which they cultivated with
artificial fires. The wild yam fields of the continent were not truly domesticated however – and
without this critical leap there was no great civilization on the Island, much to the disappointment
of Prashant and his fellows.

Other explorations were equally frought with disappointment. The unfavorable winds off the
coasts of Daksinakhand were perilous at the best of times, and it was only Prashant’s crew’s
skilled sailors and navigators that kept their dhangis from dangers and being thrown off course.
A Javanese guild expedition was less lucky. Strong winds from the north meant that a group of
three ships were forced to go East into empty ocean. Though they thought themselves doomed,
ultimately the group, led by the explorer Sudirmana, came into contact with what they called the
“Deep Clouded Isle” in 1265. It was an empty island to their eyes. The first tentative arrivals of
Polynesian settlers went unnoticed by them. The people who would come to call themselves the
Tengata Whenua were then very few in number – surviving by hunting the enormous birds that
roamed the land.

Sudirmana and his men marveled for finding a virgin land, unknown by humans in its entirety. A
learned man, a guru, was among their number, and he drew sketches of the strange birds and
wildlife of the island. The men would kill many of these birds, and hew trees for lumber. Then
they would depart, and the tales of the clouded island they found would become exaggerated
and strange with time and retelling.

The Tangata population would grow rapidly. Several other waves of Polynesian colonizers
arrived by 1300, and with abundant food supplies, even the relatively short and brutal lifespans
of these early settlers did not keep birth rates low. In time, clans began splintering and the new
settlers spread across the hills and mountains of their new homeland, everywhere they went
hunting the huge birds of the island and making huge mounds of their bones.

Later voyages would find a very different island.

These extreme voyages are perhaps notable for their scope and grandeur – there is something
romantic in pushing the envelope of human knowledge, of discovering huge new continents and
meeting civilizations who had lost contact with the broader human race beyond. However, while
Prashanti and his contemporaries were circumnavigating Daksinakhand, the empires of
Indonesia were also engaged in a much more immediate sort of colonization.
The Maluku islands and increasingly the whole of Melanesia played host to trading posts of the
rival Malay powers. Isyana, Srivijaya, and the Silendra competed over the valuable Maluku
islands, trying to gain monopolies on the production of spices such as cloves and nutmeg. The
value of these islands had long been known, but under Srivijayan hegemony, trade had been
largely peaceful. The native peoples had been slowly converting to the Hindu-Buddhism of their
Javanese neighbors, and gradually adopting the styles and language of the Malay to the west.
However, now outright imperialism was the order of the day – no power could afford to let any
other power become wealthier or gain more productive territory than any other, lest a new
hegemony be established.

The trade wars of the early twelfth century were a zero sum game for those involved, and
accordingly the indigenous populations suffered immensely, declining in numbers quite
significantly and being replaced with a combination of migrants and slaves taken from other
nearby islands. Fortresses and fleets were used to contest the islands, and trading posts
became armed camps overseeing spice plantations. The large island of Wanin came to have
fortified trading posts as well – its forests were utilized for timber during the naval arms race,
and the Silendra in particular were fond of establishing bases wherever they could.

The trade wars, if anything, only increased demand for spices. More cultivated terrain meant
simply more availability, which opened the envelope of those, particularly in places such as
China and India, who could afford to purchase spices and in turn demand only rose. Attempts to
open up Wanin to cultivation by the Silendra were met with resistance by the warlike Korowai
and other tribes who raided any outlying Silendra frontier settlements.

Discovery of the broader Procellaric Ocean would have to wait. There were few commercial
interests to explore beyond Melanesia and Daksinakhand. The Malay agricultural package was
poorly suited for any climate beyond their tropical zone, and accordingly settlement was an
uncertain prospect going forwards. With each ambitious voyage out to sea, it became
increasingly obvious that the peoples of the utter eastern ocean were violent and had little to
entice colonial ventures. Their islands became small and volcanic, their remarkable double-
hulled vessels a not insignificant threat to incautious explorers. Even storms and a lack of
knowledge of the region could prove fatal – archeological and genetic evidence seems to hint
that Polynesia did have contact with the broader “Old World” but that said contact was
essentially one-way – rare, and primarily conducted by people who were lost and stranded
rather than ambitious adventurers.

The Procellaric demanded of would-be explorers a level of technology, desire, and expertise
that was simply not available at the time. For those who threw caution to the wind and explored
anyhow, it swallowed them whole.
Yemen and Colonialism

While Tamil merchants explored the ironically calm blue vastness of the Procellaric Oceania and
asserted maritime hegemony over the Malay Isles, through the twelfth century, the mercantile
cities of the Chandratreya asserted dominance across the western half of the Indian Ocean.
This work would not have been possible without the complicity and indeed alliance with many
prominent Arab groups. The Arabs of Yemen sought safety from the growing power of the
Bakhtiyar, who unlike the Khardi were very comfortable expanding along desert paths that had
been safe from the “civilized” grasp of Susa. The Bakhtiyar also understood the value of trade –
they did not disdain merchants for many of them were the sons or brothers of merchants before
Akhsau had brought them together and made them conquering heroes and Shahs.

The explosion of Tayzig nomads southwards into the old caravan lanes culminated in the sack
of Al-Taif by a Bakhtiyar companion and later successor-Shah named Gashayar Harun and a
small cohort of swift cavalrymen. The overland routes, which had prospered as Egypt declined,
were now cut off once more. The southern kingdoms folded one by one as the northern peoples
descended southwards, taking the rich incense-growing country. As an aside, it was the
Bakhtiyar who would introduce the world to the glories of the coffee plant. They discovered it
among the Yemeni towns that they conquered, and the “Zanj drink” in time would spread across
the middle east, where it became a popular beverage for farmers in the morning and to give to
soldiers before battle, mixed with strong wheat alcohol. [1]

The Yemeni, particularly the Hadhramut and Aden, feared the growing power of the Bakhtiyar,
with their swift horses and camelry. The coastal cities were in danger of plunder, and pleaded
with their merchant connections for relief – for firepowder arms, for ships and men to resist the
onslaught, for loans to hire mercenaries. In this way, cities such as Bharukaccha became truly
colonial. Rather than simply striking unfavorable trade pacts, now they were permitted to send
guild armies on permanent station in Arabia and elsewhere. Sahputi and Gurjar mercenaries
were shipped en masse, along with a small corps of Bharukacchan advisors.

As their local contacts became embedded, Chandratreya licensed merchant houses were able
to invest in and buy the manufacturing of the Arabian peninsula, dominating the coffee and
incense trade of the region without having to lift a finger or provide their own labor. State and
Guild mercenaries provided the defense of Yemen, and an uneasy alliance grew between the
Malik of Aden and his foreign patrons.

In 1171, a full scale Bakhtiyar invasion of Yemen occurred under the leadership of the brilliant
tactician Gashayar Harun – but the Shah was dealt a rare reversal, underestimating the vast
number of mercenaries that would take the field against him. He retreated north towards his
fortress at Taxitar-in-Palestine and from there would spend several years licking his wounds.
However, so long as the threat of the Bakhtiyar remained, the Malik of Yemen was content to
maintain his deals, and quickly he realized that these foreign banks and guilds could be useful.
Several Arab trading houses sought to restore a Hawiya Shah in Ethiopia, and believed they
had a viable pretender – a family of Gidayan exiles who had lived for more than a few
generations among the Hadhramut and were culturally quite Arabized and religious Buddhist.
However, these small details were overlooked by the Yemeni in their fervor to restore the
profitable plantations and manufactories of Ethiopia – under Arab rule.
The Yemeni partisans of the Hawiya approached the Chandratreya Maharaja for a loan and
soldiers, promising him a substantial cut of the profits. However, the Chandratreya were
distracted and reeling. The Afghan Shahs and their Sahputi cavalry had won three major battles
against the Chandratreya and their Gurjar allies in the past five years. The Chandratreya,
despite their gunpowder and numerous armies, lacked the discipline and cavalry tactics of the
Sahputi. They suffered grievous losses in their engagements, but thanks to their vast resources
and long-established pre-eminence on the subcontinent, the Sahputi could not gain ground
against them.

The Yemeni would have to turn to the Mahatitta banks for help.[2]

[1] There is a substantial drinking culture in the Middle East, which various Buddhist injunctions
against alcohol have done almost nothing to combat. Bakhtiyar Shahs are expected to drink
with their companions much as Akhsau Mansar did with their forefathers, and a Shah who does
not engage in hedonistic debauchery, elaborate hunting parties, and other such activities is
barely a Shah at all. In this, among many other ways, the Bakhtiyar have done almost nothing to
earn the support or sympathy of the Nowbahar.

[2] A story for another time, but in case you've forgotten, Mahatitta, Sri Lanka, is one of the
major financial centers of the world at this juncture. They could with relative ease provide ships
and money enough to buy whole armies of mercenaries.

Shahs and Romans

In the twelfth century, the Xasar state was able to take advantage of the collapse of Asia and the
growing weakness and internal division within Francia to expand and consolidate its borders.
While the Xasar Shah had long claimed titles which hinted at an ambition to universal empire, in
1122, with the ascension of Shah Ormatsidar, they began claiming to be the “King of Kings” in
addition to their many lofty titles which included Shah of Rhom. The latter title was part of a
broader pretension to the Roman legacy which vexed and frustrated the Frankish Emperors,
who not without reason regarded themselves as truer heirs to the Roman Empire than Iranian
nomads who took pride in sacking the Eternal city in past centuries.

The cultivated plains of the Danube and Thrace supported a large population and in turn a large
tax base, which in turn allowed the Xasar to build a sizable, well developed state apparatus to
govern the disparate peoples under their rule. The Christian populations, however, posed a
unique challenge from the standpoint of legitimacy. What right beside force of arms gave the
Xasar Shahs the authority to rule over Christians? While the number of Christians they ruled
over grew, the Xasar were forced to grapple with this more and more.

To Konstantikert, the answer was clear. Persecution had never really been considered viable.
They made heavy use of Christian soldiers as auxiliaries and Christian populations had always
been too substantial for persecution to be viable. Rather, Christian elites in newly-conquered
regions were forced by treaty or “encouraged” to send their children to be raised in the palace.
These “Gold and Purple Sons”[1] were expected to take part in Buddhist-pagan religious rituals
and serve in the royal guard cavalry. In a generation, with peer pressure, the wealthy and
important landholders of an expansive Christian region were culturally alienated from their
parents and in time would identify more as Xasar than as Slavs or Romans or Franks. These
children were at the forefront of a dramatic cultural shift – the Slavic, Roman, and Italian
populations of the Balkans who remained Christian were largely ruled by an aristocracy that
despite disparate origins identified with the Turko-Iranian culture in which they had been raised.

Unlike many other “pagan” peoples who came into such a situation, the Xasar could not and
would not convert. Their eclectic version of Buddhist paganism was a part of their identity and a
unifying factor. Temples and stupa were the central of Pannonian and Danubian cultural life for
the overwhelming majority of the people, and these crossed the diminishing barriers of ethnic
identity.

In this way, the Xasar were able to do what the Khirichan for all their military superiority and vast
resources could not. The Xasar Shahs chipped away the last bastions of Christendom in Asia
and the Balkans. Combined with a strong navy, they were able to secure the Aegean and
engage in a wave of conquests which while geographically less impressive than the ambitions
of the Khirichan, were far more long lasting.

Under Shah Ormatsidar and his successor, the usurper Arjaxa Darasakya, the Xasar expanded
deep into Slavonian and Asian territory. Ormatsidar (1122-1141) followed a relatively traditional
pattern of expansion, pushing deep into the Balkans, taking advantage of Frankish distraction
and repairing fortifications he knew he would need to withstand the inevitable counterattack.
Gone were the days of sweeping into Europe on horseback and pillaging the fields. His war was
one of attrition on all fronts, relying on siege engineering and some small quantities of
firepowder imported from the Khardi lands at great expense.

Arjaxa, however, had a different opportunity. When he rose to power, it was a coup for the
bureaucratic faction and palace-raised nobility, with whom he identified. The Darasakya family
were not high nobles – they rose to power by merit and won the throne because Ormatsidar had
insisted upon appointing his mentally handicapped son Mihirdata to the throne and making
Arjaxa a mere Regent. Within a month Mihirdata suffered a “hunting accident” and the throne
was secure for the Darasakya. Arjaxa grew up in Konstantikert, unlike Ormatsidar who’s early
life had been spent in military camps and on the warpath. Arjaxa instead focused on the urban,
developed world of Asia. To him, Slavic princelings and Frankish marchers were a poor harvest
for the Empire. There was no wealth in the Balkans, merely farms and antique ruins.

Within the 4th year of his reign, in 1145, he would accept the surrender of the Sklavenian King
George Alos at Salunicha. George had spent most of his reign watching the Xasar press the
Franks out of the Balkans, and he had pre-emptively seized a series of ports on the Adriatic, so
as to keep them out of pagan hands. This turned out to be his undoing, as the Franks refused to
come to his aid. The Xasar defeated the Sklavenian army and besieged Salunicha – and
although their victories would be hard-fought and hard-won, the Xasar triumphed.
Defeating Sklavenia once and for all solidified the power of the Xasar. Arjaxa returned to
Shahdijan in a spectacular triumph. The Xasar mathematicians were hired to make a trail of
Sklavenian heads on pikes running along a road that in antique times was the Via Egnatia.
Durasa became a major base for the Xasar fleet, which now could directly threaten the Italian
possessions of the Frankish Empire. The hills and forests of the Balkans would remain bandit
country, untamed and uncontrolled for a generation longer, but in time the last holdouts of
resistance were rooted out, in no small part because they became increasingly desperate and
apocalyptic in their ideology, and alienated the common people.

Asia was the real triumph of Arjaxa’s reign however. By 1150, the Bakhtiyar and their Tayzig
allies were everywhere – Phokaia, one of the last holdouts on the Aegean, was besieged in
1151 by the Tayzig warlord Khalid Shira, and sent numerous appeals to Rome and Aachen for
aid. However, these requests fell on deaf ears. Instead, it would be a Xasar fleet that offered
them protection from a certain Bakhtiyar sack. In coming months, the Bakhtiyar would be
pushed back – the Xasar actually managed to portray themselves as heroes and liberators
because of the famed brutality of the Bakhtiyar. Over the next decade, the Bakhtiyar would be
pushed out of Nikaia, Amastris, and Sinope. All Bithynia and Pontus was retaken, as was much
of the old Roman province of Asia.

Akhsau himself would ride into Asia in 1162, and strike the peace of Ammorion, which allowed
the Bakhtiyar to retain a sprawling territory, including wealthy regions such as Lycia and
Trebizond. The Bakhtiyar also aligned themselves with the Christianized pastoralists of the
Anatolian plateau, using them as enforcers and auxiliary soldiers.

Arjaxa, however, would take credit as being one of the greatest Xasar Shahs in the history of
their empire. From humble Pannonian origins, the Xasar now ruled a not insubstantial portion of
the Roman Empire. Konstantikert was made the official capital once more, with Shahdijan
relegated to secondary status as a major military center and local economic hub. While plunder
was light, the economic advantage of conquering Asia was substantial. The coastal cities were
still very rich and very powerful, and the sons of their merchant families were now obliged to be
held as hostages in Konstantikert and serve in the Xasar army.

In 1165, on his deathbed, Arjaxa took his nephew, Nanaivant and crowned him Shah to great
acclamation. “To you,” he said, “I leave the Empire of the Romans and the Xasar.”

[1]The Xasar nation’s symbols in this era are white stork on black – the banner of the
Darasakya, or golden chakra on purple – a royal symbol similar to that used by the Gardaveldi.

[Poll: is the Xasar Shahdom a continuation of the Eftal Rhom Shahdom]

[Poll: is the Xasar Shahdom a continuation of the Roman Empire?]

[Poll: is the above continuation poll a continuation of previous continuation polls?]

 Masamida and the Transatlantic Migrations

At an elite level of the Masamida were seeing widespread Christianization. While many rural
tribal groups refused to convert, urban centers where Chrsitianity had long been a minority
religion in decline saw rapid growth of new converts. Starting perhaps a decade before the turn
of the century, Christianity had been enjoying massive revival in North Africa. The religion had
never truly vanished. If many churches were abandoned in the countryside, the faith was still
equated with urbanity and civilization. Christ-worship, even if the specifics were unclear, was
part of the sort of lifestyle the Masamida aspired to.

As Masamida country was a valuable stopover point for Ispanian ships exploring, Churches
were founded to accommodate them, and local governors increasingly found it worthwhile to
convert to the religion to make their guests more welcome. On another level, the Masamida
were torn. The new relevance of their shores meant new contact with the world and a new
cosmopolitan sense of belonging to the broader Christian world, however, many rural tribes
rebelled against this new paradigm, seeing it as destructive of tradition.

They did not know just how irrelevant they were. The Kings of Masamida looked westward and
southward, but always across the ocean. The Tauregs made obscene profits as a cabal of
middlemen astride all the great trade routes, and their northern cousins knew they would not be
dislodged. In time, the rural Berbers would come around to the growing Christian consensus,
and it was them who spread the religion southwards to the Tauregs.

Over the century, Masamida collaboration with the Ipsanians would increase. The Masamida
Agilld would marry an Ispanian noblewoman in 1119, and increasingly Masamida and Ispanian
ships would work together to map the coast of Africa and explore the New World. They
struggled in these ventures, in no small part because the diseases of the continent were
merciless to newcomers. In the north, Fula country proved more hospitable but the north was
the country of cavalry-empires and long established trade networks. The Fula and the Mande
knew the Masamida intimately, and while they saw the utility of a transatlantic trade route, they
were all too well aware of what sorts of profits they could make. The Fula were just another
middleman, but crafty enough to cut their prices a shade below what the Taureg charged.

Soon, gold, salt, and many other finished goods flowed north from Niani. Of particular note,
however, was the flow of slaves. Traditionally, the societies of West Africa had enslaved many
people, largely in warfare. These slaves enjoyed varied conditions, but overall were not
substantially worse off than the serfs and indentured laborers of Western Europe. Broadly, they
were kept fit and healthy and used as a resource.

It was the Masamida who determined they might be useful as soldiers. The Kings of Masamida
feared their own tribes, especially given the religious controversies sweeping the nation. So they
purchased large numbers of young slaves and trained them as soldiers, promising them
freedom and a stipend at the end of twenty years of service. As the Norse began to turn away
from their traditional mercenary profession, slave “mercenaries” began to replace them in
Ispana and across Francia – a trend that would only increase as the Frankish aristocracy’s
fighting strength was sapped. The peasantry of Francia had lost much of their martial
experience – centuries of peace in Europe had left the common soldier near-useless.

While West Africans reached Solvia in a variety of ways, especially in waves of conquering
expeditions, enslaved labor, primarily from a hodgepodge of African states, quickly became a
part of the colonial fabric. Compared to the slaves used as soldiers in Europe, these slaves
were both far less expendable and far more important. Given the vast limits on European
manpower, all imported slaves in Solvia universally enjoyed higher status than the natives, who
when conquered were considered considerably lesser.

Many contemporary studies have focused heavily on the role of slavery in the colonization of the
Americas, but it is worth noting that the majority of West Africans who came to the continent did
so as free laborers, and by contrast many Western Europeans came to the continent as
indentured servants. In either case, manumission was common. After the first few centuries, the
focus of the slave trade shifted as well – as West Africa enjoyed greater and greater political
unity, slavers were forced to seek out regions with continued endemic warfare such as the
Kongo. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the Slavic slave trade was both a far larger and far
more brutal institution than the African Slave trade ever was, and had a far greater impact on
demographics.

Over the next two centuries, the Ispanians and Mauri would establish trading posts along the
coast of West Africa. As the number and size of these posts grew, the indigenous economy of
West Africa adapted and shifted to embrace these changes. The political and economic center
of the region shifted from the utter north and the cavalry empires increasingly towards the
various southern tribal groups, especially those who made the jump and embraced maritime
technology to its fullest extent.

In this early period, however, most naval traffic was oriented clearly towards Watya, and many
ports of call were stopovers, grim little dockyards seated on the borderline of what was to the
Ispanians and Mauri a vast and unexplored continent riddled with savagery and disease.
Repairs and replacement crew were their main attractions, but gradually and inevitably the sale
of ivory, sex, and other baubles became commonplace at even some of the most isolated
entrepots. Watya was the great goal and prize of any expedition however – if there was wealth
to be found in the New World and West Africa, a merchant could purchase a handful of
diamonds, fill his hold with spices and redbush tea, and never work again off of the profits.

Tajiks and Turks – the Story of Two Frontiers

“The Bajinak and Imur breed swift ponies, and train them from a young age to not fear the crash
of firepowder or the clamor of battle. In this way their horse can charge home against ranks of
men armed with fire-spears without fear of disruption. When they come close, they fire arrows
into the dense ranks of men and wheel swiftly so as to not come within the range of spears.”
The story of Iran’s collapse is one best told through symbols.

The decentralization of state authority and the devolution of royal authority to ever-more
powerful satraps slowed the decline of the state but also made it inevitable. Where dynasts such
as the Artsruni prospered and were able to solidify their personal commands, the Khardi in Susa
became increasingly weaker. Coinage of the era began showing the faces of local satraps and
eventually Bakhtiyar warlords. Temples, which in the era often had a statue of the monarch, saw
these statues looted and destroyed. While some scholarship has pointed to waves of Nowbahar
sentiment in response to the Bakhtiyar, the current consensus seems to be that the Bakhtiyar
refused to exalt or deify themselves, preferring to use the reputation of Akhsau Mansar as the
foremost symbol of their power. The erosion of the symbols of royal authority – statuary and
coinage – were quickly followed by very tangible collapse.

For the late-era Khardi, there were two rapidly expanding frontiers – Tayzigistan and Turkestan,
in the west and east respectively. However, the western and eastern frontiers, it is commonly
said, fell for opposite reasons. In the west there were too many soldiers, in the east, too few. In
the west, the Ifthal and Bakhtiyar eventually were able to come to common cause and enjoy a
swathe of military victories – however these victories only entrenched Akhsau as a sort of
secondary Shah – even before he claimed the title outright. As Viceroy, he had absolute power
to do as he pleased in any territory his soldiers could reach, and the Bakhtiyar made the most of
that – however they proved useless in the wake of such disasters as the Bajinak invasion. The
estates and cities of Mesopotamia, hard won and revitalized by the Khardi, were allowed to
wither on the vine once more, in what was becoming an all too familiar cycle of death and
rebirth.

In the East, a new class of Turkish warlord found their home. While the popular narrative for
some time pointed to massacres of Khardi garrison cities and rapid uprisings across the region,
it seems that there is only limited truth to that account. Some notable regions, such as
Afghanistan, saw rapid and violent takeovers by local aristocrats. The Khardi were annihilated
and replaced in widespread instances of communal violence. However, overall the Khardi
simply faded away. The Turkish nobles who replaced them were loyal to the Afsar Khaganate,
but only notionally. The scattered Turkish clans raided and extracted tribute from Iran with ease.

The fall of the Khardi, obviously, represented a new era of endemic warfare in its hinterlands,
and this came at perhaps the worst time. The overland Eurasian trade routes were hanging on
by a bare thread. Whether in Sogd and Balkh, or Mesopotamia and Egypt and Syria – the Near
East was simply not an appealing route for overland merchants – especially once the Canal of
the Pharaohs was finished its renovation in 1162.

Visualizing the Divine in Western Buddhism

For the Western Buddhists in the Xasar Empire and elsewhere, the interplay of pagan divinity
and Buddhist practice represented not two distinct but equal avenues for religious
enlightenment as Buddhism was treated in many parts of the East, but rather one coherent
universal whole. However, it was not always this way, and the road towards a unified religious
experience was a long and difficult one.

The center of Western Buddhist religious worship was the fixed temple, but even this innovation,
taken for granted though it may be, was not indigenous to the Xasar or their Turkish federates –
being a nomadic people, the temple itself was imported from the Sahu who in turn based their
designs on the Indo-Iranian sensibilities of the Eftal. Accordingly, the simple exteriors of
Zoroastrian temples were abandoned in favor of the gaudy and vibrant murals and reliefs
beloved by the Eftal. Later Khardi influences would only exacerbate this trend, as the revival of
Eftal styles touched the utter West as well. However, after the fall of the Khardi, later temples
and monasteries were decorated in a simpler style – geometric patterns came into vogue,
echoing the aesthetic sensibilities of the post-Bakhtiyar states.

The Xasar temple was typically a strange, chimeric creation, especially in its early days. The
addition of exterior shrines and temples around a central courtyard, a profound feature of early
temples, was not a planned design but rather a natural evolution as new gods were added and
patronized by various wealthy donors. The central Buddha statues which became commonplace
in the courtyards were a later addition, brought about as pagan and Buddhist ritual blended
together. The divinities worshiped in these shrines were often called Yajata, hinting at the
antique connection between Khardi paganism and the paganism of the west.

Inside the main temple, the statue of the Yajata Mihir triumphant which so frequently dominated
Xasar, Sahu, and ultimately Rusichi observance was placed behind a small sacred fire, to which
wealthier devotees would ritually offer sweet-smelling wood imported at great cost from the
East. The Mihir statue would have been a touch of familiarity to Christian converts – instead of
images of God the Father and Christ on the cross, the centerpiece of the pagan temple was
Mihir crowned victorious, standing as judge and defender of truth before the sacred fire. While
some very early temples featured Xormost or Ohrmazd, the former highest God of Iranian
religion had struggled to find a place in western Buddhism, and ultimately Mihir became more
commonplace.

Buddhism in these temples was difficult to find. While Buddhist ideas were understood by the
elite and the educated, the average observer found relatively simpler comfort in the vast
assortment of deities. The presence of Tangra, the Turkish divinity which so often was mirrored
in the pale blue domes of temples, and Anahida, the female maiden deity whose temples were
often comparable to Mihir’s in size and grandeur, allowed most to find some divinity which they
could worship and give direct offerings.

Time would ultimately put an end to this pluralism as the integration of Buddhism became more
profound and direct. The temples of Mihir gave way to temples to the Buddha and various
imported holy figures – Buddhist saints - whose cults were often established in such a way as to
subvert lesser gods. However, the pagan deities remained. Unlike many Slavic deities, who
were worshiped in nature away from the town and temple, the Turko-Iranian culture of the Xasar
world did not connect their deities to geography. Accordingly, their deities were forced to share
space with the Buddhists – and though the devout pagans who found this an affront did not
know it, that was what enabled them to survive in a more authentic form than any Slavic deity.
Mihir became the Guardian of the Dharma, perhaps, and the sacred fire became less important
than the image of the Buddha, but the deities eventually came to an easy truce with the teacher
of gods and men. They retained their places in alcoves and adjacent shrines and retained their
worshippers, even as the pursuit of enlightenment took center stage.

Greenland Across
the Sea

The Brothers Ragnarssen were the true European discoverers of the New World. Their small
settlements, however, were all but doomed to collapse from their inception. Those who settled
on what became known as King Erik’s Island found it rich in timber, fish, and bog iron but little
else. It was mainly a place to escape the frozen hell of Hvitland [OTL Greenland], and
accordingly this beautiful country of forests and rivers became known as Greenland or
Mikilaland [OTL Vinland/Solvia].

However, it attracted little attention. After the discovery of the great cities and kingdoms in
southern and central Solvia, the scattered Skraelings of the north posed little interest. They very
clearly did not possess any gold or wealth of any note. They had neither cattle nor horses nor
much knowledge of the world beyond them. Accordingly, but a few generations after 988 (the
exact date is unclear) the Greenland settlements died out. Sickly settlers were taken in by the
Skraelings and nursed back to health, but they were too few to have any meaningful impact on
the culture or society of the population that took them in.

However, the dream of Mikliland was far more resilient. Other voyages would return, and these
voyages would go far beyond these first island settlements. They found many other islands, and
most importantly, they found a lush country that grew lusher as one went further south.

Many of the first voyages to Solvia were undertaken by missionaries. Across the northern
coastlines, crude monasteries were founded by hard-laboring men. Some of them were
traditional – organized by the Cassadorians or Benedictines. Others were more impromptu
affairs, collections of fanatic holy men who sold all their possessions for a chance to see the
new world.

The majority of these adventurers would die, either in the voyage or the first bitter winters.
Archeological evidence points to atrocious health and not infrequent instances of violent death.
Some of these missionary voyages tore themselves apart within mere months of arrival. Others
integrated smoothly into the native populations, and only died when the inevitable plagues
swept through the populations of their new hosts. The plagues were an apocalypse of Biblical
proportions across the whole of Solvia. Small Anglander settlements along the northern bank of
the St. Audhar Firth recorded with shock and horror the decimation of even friendly tribes.
Whole communities vanished almost overnight.

Thorfinn Erikson, a merchant’s son, would make it his personal ambition to restart the
Greenland settlement. He brought a priest and many retainers, and promised good land to any
who made the voyage. When he arrived, he united those scattered settlements which had
survived the winter under him. Unlike previous such adventurers, he was personally wealthy.
His family had made vast profits trading in the Baltic, selling Gardaveldi furs and spices from
distant Iran. He envisioned the Greenland Kingdom as a way to transform his wealth into a
proper kingdom.

Bringing livestock and seeds in great quantities, he was the savior of the huddled communities
of Anglish and Irish settlers. He brought in a number of skilled shipwrights and blacksmiths,
capable artisans whose skills were critical to the endurance of the Greenland settlements.
Erikson was no warrior, but he was intelligent enough to retain the services of a small band of
retainers – armed and armored men who were more than capable of handling the decimated
Skraeling populations.

Larger and larger numbers of settlers flowed across the whale-road through Hvitland – the
overpopulated Scandinavians and Anglisch no longer turned to raiding and war, bringing an end
to the last memories of the Viking age. By 1230, the first colony was founded on Cape Trosc
[Cape Cod] and they found the native populations there were utterly wiped out. Ruins and
scattered tools were all that remained. By the time that the local Nanhigganeuck tribe had
recovered, the Vinlanders would be firmly established, and have a population of several
hundred and iron weapons sufficient to repel several early attacks.

The early governance of Greenland was a loose affair. In general, the freemen of the North who
came across the sea held regular assemblies. Erikson was acknowledged by many as a savior
and king, but many, especially the newcomers who had far less to fear from natives or
starvation and far more opportunity, saw little reason to acknowledge him as anything more than
a pretentious merchant with a large landholding. Fighting broke out at several assemblies as the
Vinland settlers [OTL New England] and the King Erik’s Islanders split from the greater
community. The King Erik’s Islanders pledged allegiance to distant Angland, but the King of
Angland decided that they would be nothing but a burden – he could not send his sworn men
across the ocean on a whim, and sending mercenaries were expensive. He refused to accept
their service, and the Islanders decided they would only be ruled by the Folkthing.

Vinland, for their part, allied themselves with the recovering tribe of the wide-ranging Nausett
tribe, intermarrying with them for protection. They shared knowledge of their agricultural
package and in turn gained maize and invaluable local knowledge. However, the Nausett
themselves were, by the standards of the nascent Great River civilizations, exceedingly
primitive. They had no substantial population centers and their agricultural techniques were
crude at best. The Skraelings of the north were poorly organized and when the plagues came
they tended to have a crippling effect on their small, relatively isolated tribes. They were utterly
unprepared for the numbers and violence that the Northmen were capable of bringing.

The Frankish Empire in Crisis

The Twelfth Century for the Franks seemed poised to be a follow up on the wondrous success
of the Eleventh. Aloysius X, the Boy-King, was a puppet of the Bishop of Aachen, but the Bishop
had built many wondrous public works in the city and prosperity among the elites was at untold
levels. The discovery of the New World also had the beneficial side effect of sapping the more
restless and warlike populations of Europe – the Northmen and ambitious Frankish aristocrats
now turned their eyes to the utter west and stopped raising trouble on the coasts and frontiers.

However, any predictions of peace and prosperity were foolish. The underlying rot of the
Frankish Empire emerged wholesale in the Crisis of the Twelfth Century. What follows is a rough
summary of the events of the Crisis, and the chaos that would ensue defined the Frankish
political situation for decades to come.

Aloysius X died in 1123 of uncertain causes at the age of 29. He left behind a brother, Aloysius
the Blond, but no sons. His two daughters were betrothed to Spanish nobles, but yet too young
to be properly married. The brother was also tainted by scandal. In 1119, his wife, the daughter
of the Italian Legate Marius Unterschi, a member of the prominent Unterschi courtly family,
claimed that he was impotent. A panel of doctors and priests was gathered to ascertain his
potency, and Aloysius the Blond failed to perform – although it is unclear if this was due to the
pressure or to some actual condition. Word became public, and Aloysius became a mockery.
His marriage was annulled and he went into self-imposed exile in Sardinia, which was then
home to a variety of warring Mauri principalities. Aloysius, whose shame was not so well known
in Sardinia, remarried to a Mauri woman he met on the island, and sired twin children in the next
year.

When word of this reached the gossips of Aachen, he was widely mocked. His children were
called bastards born with pagan blood in their veins, and Aloysius the Blond had no desire to
return home so long as that state of affairs persisted.

The Unterschi, meanwhile, sought a new avenue into royal power. A cadet branch of the de
Toulouse family called the Andrics ruled Meissen, a march near the Moravian border. Because
of their backwoods reputation as settlers on the very frontier, and because their holdings were
under sporadic threat from the Polish, they leaped at the opportunity to bind themselves to the
powerful Unterschi family.

The Unterschi however had made many enemies among the Italians by confiscating estates to
build their own power base separate from the royal court. They followed the consistent pattern
of royal Legates – acquire land through possibly illegitimate means, and use it to safeguard your
dynasty once you invariably fall out of Imperial power. Unlike many of their predecessors, they
realized that even land was a potentially ephemeral form of power – they needed to place
someone on the throne.

So the Legate of Italy gathered an army and married Conrad Andrics to Aloysius the Blond’s
former wife, Anna, before taking Conrad on a tour which very much resembled the coronation
tour of a new Emperor. He was testing the waters – counting on local magistrates to fall into line
and create an avalanche of support such that when Conrad reached the Pope, he could be
crowned as Aloysius XI. However, problems came when Conrad reached Florence. The Lord
Mayor of Florence, in conjunction with the local magistrate, denied Conrad entry.

The city was far from its heyday as an Imperial capital – better known for its beautiful cathedral
and a collection of nearby monasteries – but it had substantial walls and could call on a sizable
militia and many retainers. Conrad’s small army of Unterschi loyalists suddenly felt very
outmatched, and withdrew to a nearby hill where they fortified their position and waited on the
Legate to arrive.

Marius Unterschi came to Florence from Rome in a mood of violent anger, however, and his
normally charming and diplomatic personality was nowhere to be seen. He insulted the Lord
Mayor and turned the Florentines utterly against him.

Near simultaneously, many Italian cities and castles received letters from the Bishop of Aachen,
calling for the arrest of Conrad as a treasonous pretender to the throne. Soon, many armies
were gathering. An army of various Dukes came under Alberico de Camerino, bringing their
personal retainers and heavy cavalry. These Dukes had long feuded with the Unterschi, and
saw this as an opportunity to sort out their vendetta once and for all.

Conrad fled north to loyal Genova, whose Exarch, Ottocaro, was a friend of Marius’. By this
point, new edicts had emerged from Aachen. Aloysius the Blond was the rightful Emperor, than
he would be returning to the capital shortly. The Unterschi family were under arrest for treason,
and only Marius remained uncaptured. Conrad would only be spared if he surrendered at once.

It was impossible for the average Frankish aristocrat, let alone peasant, to tell that there was no
truth to these claims. Messengers moved slowly, and rumors flew from all sides. Aloysius the
Blond had no desire to return, but that did not stop a substantial number of Franks from claiming
that they fought in his name.

Another pretender came from what in hindsight should have been an obvious place – Theophilo
of Athens, a cousin of the Emperor’s by marriage, sought to place his son Aloysius on the
throne. He rallied to himself the Illyrian lords – many of whom would lose their landholdings to
the Xasar tide for supporting him.

In the capital, Bishop Paschal of Aachen struggled to retain some semblance of order. He found
himself having to pay the stipends of a vast bureaucracy and the salaries of countless lords who
served no productive function – and had to do it with taxes pretty much having halted in large
parts of his regime.

The Germans met at the Landstag and elected one of their own, the Saxon-born Henry “King of
the Germans” and proposed that he should be given equal rights to the King of Ispana. When
the Unterschi quickly refused the proposal, Theophilo accepted eagerly, knowing that the
German knights were one of the few capable of fighting forces not already under his control. He
also agreed to do his coronation tour in Germany as well as Italy, and to consider more radical
proposals like a Patriarch in some major German city, perhaps Koln. While the Germans knew
his claim was weak and easily challenged by many, they also knew that Theophilo had a long
history of fighting the Xasar.

Theophilo had vast military strength, and thus both Marius Unterschi and Bishop Paschal put
aside their differences briefly. Marius sent Conrad to Ispana, to rally the King of Ispana to their
side or at the least gain the support of some local Dukes.

The Frankish military proved utterly incapable of facing down the experienced German warriors.
Their nobility seemed glamorous, finely armored and well trained, but the marchers had a long
history of warfare and crushed the inexperienced Frankish, who had not faced a major war in
decades. Paschal was beaten horribly in a series of battles, and the Illyrian knights ravaged Italy
– but were incapable of taking the great cities of the peninsula. Medilan was their sole major
conquest, but it was enough – with the Po River under their control, the peninsula was cut off
from reinforcing Paschal. The Germans under Duke Otto of Franconia won victory after victory,
and the Pope crowned the young Aloysius (son of Theophilo) as Aloysius XI in the city of Metz.
By the end of the year, Otto was besieging Aachen and the Bishop had fallen back to Paris.

Aachen however, did not fall. Disease ate away Otto’s army, and poor logistics began to take
their toll. The Imperial army, for all its weakness, had excellent logistics, a legacy of a capable
and decentralized bureaucracy. Everywhere they went, they requisitioned livestock, fodder, and
foodstuffs. They kept their forces fed at ponderous expense and thus their forces survived while
the Germans withered. A year later, many German knights were returning home. Despite their
Christianization, the Poles still waged war on the frontiers, and proved a major threat. Two years
later, the Xasar would mount a major invasion and the Illyrians were still encamped in Italy and
unable to stop them, forced to make a humiliating peace which would inspire future invasions.

Aloysius the Blond now made his move. With a small force of picked Sardinians loyal to his wife,
and a larger contingent of Taureg mercenaries, he landed at Valentia and marched inland,
intercepting Conrad. Despite having a smaller force, the Tauregs were able to surround the
Franks and disguise their lesser numbers. Aloysius inflicted a humiliating defeat on Conrad, and
the rumors about him changed. Aloysius now was in the thrall of a Mauri witch. He worshiped
her evil god, Idir, and sacrificed children to him with her. Conrad for his part fled to the seat of
the Ispanian King, Augustus de Toulouse, who had him murdered and agreed to ally with
Aloysius the Blond.
Together, the two men raised a large army and met up with Paschal. The royal banners flying
high, they gained the allegiance of the Duke of Burgundy and scattered the remaining
Unterschi, before striking into Illyria and crushing the Illyrian knights by sheer weight of
numbers. With the whole of the Empire united against Germany, Theophilo found himself
abandoned.

Aloysius the Blond agreed to a similar variation on the treaty made between Theophilo and
Henry, and the civil war came to a close. However, the scars it left were lasting. The Xasar in
particular realized that military victory against the Franks could see vast territorial gains, and the
Germans realized that force could get them what they wanted.

That the Frankish survived at all is a testament to the underlying strength of their state. The
armed power that had conquered Western Europe and made an enduring Franco-Germanic
state was gone, and the sense of shared unity that had once held it together was cracking under
particularism and proto-nationalist pressures. But the institutions of the Frankish regime, though
feudal, were bound thoroughly to the central state and the palace bureaucracy. Even the
Germans at this early period did not conceive of abandoning the notion of Empire entirely. Other
institutions showed their weakness, however – the Palatine Lords were an effective concept
when the royalty was respected, but became a glorified police force when it was not. Divesting
power to the Marcher lords resulted in the bulk of armed, trained soldiers being at the frontier,
and the sprawling Frankish Empire was by its nature decentralized. If the true prize of the
Empire lay around the Mediterranean and in the blossoming northern center of commerce and
trade that would become called the Low Duchies, its armed strength was concentrated on the
frontiers and benefitted little from these cosmopolitan influences. The German settlers in
particular were deeply provincial, speaking their own disassociated dialects and intermarrying
with Slavic notables.

The loss of Illyria over the next generation would be a body blow. The rise of the Xasar was
coupled with a nation whose armed strength was distracted and spent. Votive War would
become ignored as a narrative, and by the end of the century, the teeming European peasantry
looked to the West for their future. As tales of the world beyond spread, romanticism of the New
World overcame romanticism of the hated and feared East.

Aloysius XI’s troubled reign would be characterized by wondrous overseas tales and near
misses of civil war. He also never managed to overcome the tales of his infidelity, meaning that
at his death, the carefully constructed truce would come crumbling down. In 1174, the Frankish
Empire would find itself in another crisis, and they could only thank God that Aloysius the
Blond’s reign had been mercifully long.
Marcel de Amiens

“Marcel de Amiens, like Fanceau, is a man whose life is shrouded in legend and wonder. In
another life he might have been a Savus or Prester John, a mystical Christian King to save us
from the degradation of the heathen hordes and restore Christ’s Universal Kingdom as it was
under the Romans.”
The embryonic cities of the Great River, or Akishti, were a sight to behold. While they did not
rival the teeming urban centers of the Mayan interior, if they had developed uninterrupted they
were rapidly on pace to do so. The spread of maize-based agriculture had allowed the
construction of mound settlements, the greatest of which were located far upriver from the
marshy floodplain country of Lower Aloysiana. The Aloysian River Valley, as it was named by de
Amiens, did not yield up its secrets to casual encounters. Rather, the explorers headed deep
upriver, past the brackish headwaters until their boats could go no further, at which point Marcel
de Amiens exhorted his followers to “…abandon these ships. Should we wish to return in
triumph to our native lands, vessels shall be provided. Should we return in disgrace, it would be
better we did not return at all.”

With some three hundred men, perhaps a quarter of them mounted, the rag-tag adventurers set
off upriver.

En route, they encountered many peoples, the “foremost of which are the Chicaza, who build
settlements of great size but poor accommodation, raising crude cities on the backs of false
hills.” The chief of a lesser tribe, the Akitsako, vouched for them and granted them safe
passage. His wife was struck by Marcel’s pleasing manner, and encouraged her husband to
learn all he could of the Frankish visitors, but to do so cautiously. But the chief, whose name
was Nimicha, was not a man given to caution. When Marcel explained, crudely, the story of
Christ, Nimicha laughed and Marcel struck him down. The Franks took up arms quickly, and the
battle turned to chaos.

At the end of the chaos, the Franks were besieged in Nanih, the ceremonial central city of the
Chicaza, which was ringed and palisaded. Because of their fine armor and horses they could
mount charges from the settlement with relative impunity, not fearing the stone arrows or
javelins of their foes overmuch. Accordingly an uneasy truce settled, a truce which was
disrupted when the natives erupted in disease. Many of Marcel’s soldiers engaged in sexual
bartering with the native women, and almost all had engaged in some sort of commerce with the
natives in the few months of their stay. Disease was rising, and though it had not reached
serious proportions, the exhausted and weakened native forces were routed.

Recently historians have raised skepticism about disease truly being the solution that
contemporary historians claimed it was – they argue that the apocalyptic devastation of the
Chicaza’s paramount chiefdom inspired the tales of disease, when in truth the issue was more
that the Chicaza were unwilling to assault their own holy site, and the Franks had a decent store
of supplies on site while the Chicaza had relatively little – accordingly the warriors were forced
to disperse and hunt.

Victories followed this first victory. Even as other tribes rallied to the aid of the Chicaza, they
underestimated the speed and numbers of the Frankish forces, which were no mere federate
warband. Their style of fighting was that of raid and counter raid, and they employed it poorly
against the Franks, who cared little what they destroyed and sought mostly treasure. The
pickings for the Franks, even in victory, were slim. The material culture of the Great River was
not so opulent as that of Tolteca or the Maya. There was no great reservoirs of gold or precious
stone, only the wealth of the great river and wealth in land.

Fortunately, Marcel de Amiens was a feudal lord. Not long after another victory at “Bloody
Creek”, he returned to Nanih and declared himself “Lord Defender of Nania” – but as a faithful
servant of his Emperor, he decided he could not make himself even a vassal king without a writ
from the King and a crown from at least a Bishop. In his typically straightforward manner, he
simply asked for these things outright, claiming that he had conquered “A great heathen city,
and established a province that sprawls perhaps many times the size of Ispana, and teeming
with people.”

However, when the letter would finally reach Aachen, there was no King. Aloysius the Blond was
dead and anarchy reigned once more. Marcel would die a “Lord Defender” – by the time any
King got around to determining his status, the world was in the depths of the Flowering Flesh,
and few ships were making the voyage to the New World. However, while he waited, Marcel
was not shy with giving out titles of his own, and acting as King. The title of “judge” or “Iudicates”
was one given out commonly to loyal supporters. So long as Marcel’s legal status in the eyes of
the Emperor remained unclear, he was not confident in his rights to give out legal rank – and
accordingly he primarily invented titles whole cloth. Any rider or knight could be made a judge or
captain, titles which gave one unquestioned allegiance within his ad-hoc military structure.

One prominent example was Karl of Frisia, who was made the Iudicates of Anilco, and granted
“all the lands to its south that he could reasonably hold in the name of our great and catholic
empire.” Karl would ultimately succeed Marcel de Amiens, establishing that primogeniture did
not hold true in matters of the Lord Defendership – it helped too that Marcel de Amiens’ only
children lived in Francia.

The establishment of massive estates under the Judges was a legal fiction more than anything.
The early Frankish conquerors had to contend with a population rapidly dying before their very
eyes. The apocalyptic conditions helped cement their power, but they also ensured that they
were little more than warlords extracting tribute in both food and corvee labor. Their crude
wooden halls were parodies of proper castles, and they went hungry more often than not. A few
fresh ships came from Haiti with more men and horses, but in general, Aloysiana was not seen
as a popular destination. It had little gold and little wealth. Land it had plenty of, but so did
regions of better climate.

Aloysiana attracted a very certain sort of person, one who wanted to play conqueror and hold a
fief regardless of low birth, the sort of person who was either a fanatic or could play the part for
a seat at Lord Marcel’s table, the sort of person who wanted to trade in slaves and little else.
Mansa Nfansou’s striking conquests of Tolteca lacked the same ruthless savagery and bland
fanaticism, and for that his ultimately became the more popular historiography. Even if his
conquests were brutal and set against an apocalyptic backdrop, they carried the weight of an
underdog story, woven with heroism. Europeans were content to make the “Fanceau” of their
imaginations into a Christian, and to West Africans he was one of their own in any case, a
cavalry king in the finest traditions of their people, and one who soon would be sitting atop a
literal mountain of gold.

The “Kingdom” of Nania had no gold. It was more akin to Viking Britian but if the Saxons had
only just stepped from the woodlands and began to farm – a settler colony without more than a
scattered handful of settlers, a place where the most savage impulses of humanity were brought
out and then summarily blamed on proximity to natives.

However, if it was a dark chapter, there was also some light, however embryonic. Nania laid the
groundwork for the blended culture of Aloysiana, and the unique art and material culture of
Chicaza Christianity. The settlers were too few to be wholly oppressive and brutal – as the
shock of their conquest wore off, blending, intermarriage, and ultimately assimilation were
inevitable in both directions.

[Not super happy with this update, but I wanted to get it out. I think I'm going to be bucking
chronology soon and touching on the "Flowering Flesh" before going back and filling out the
Twelfth Century in greater detail, because the Twelfth Century is tough to understand without
the context of the massive pandemic that almost immediately follows it, I think. It would be like
learning about the 1920's and 1930's without knowing it was leading up to World War II.]

-
Tibet is not in the hands of foriegn conquerors, I believe it is simply deeply divided between
regional monasteries holding secular power as OTL. The Kitai have some forts in the region and
a governor-general based in Rhasa, but this does not equate to true power. That said there's no
reason that Buddhist monks might not still use the "true Tibet" or "second Tibet" rhetoric
regardless.

Any old Slavic polities out east would probably be under threat from the Bajinak Turks and other
polities, so long as they didn't have the protection of the Rus? I wonder if Rus migration won't
occur en masse until the Rus themselves are more powerful.

China and Japan are powerful economies with strong regional influence. It's just that a lot of the
posts recently have been somewhat focused on the expansion of Indian and Indonesian trade. I
mean to show that they both are doing more than just being proxy markets, and that Japan in
particular is probably not going to be as isolationist in this timeline.
-
The World of the
Flowering Flesh

The exact nature of the plague is lost to time, though most theorize it was a form of the Bubonic
Plague, based on descriptions of the disease - but for the unique “blossoming” welts, it became
known as the Flowering Flesh, and although other great pandemics came in later centuries, the
Flowering Flesh was the first, and also by far the worst.
Carried by fleas, it spread on livestock and trade ships, on the bodies of the sick and those not
yet bitten. Due to its long incubation time and a number of secondary routes of infection, even
when rudimentary quarantines were attempted, they came too little too late. Dread disease
already stalked the halls of those who would shut their doors against it. Grim death, painted in
so many forms by so many cultures, was everywhere, was universal.

The nations of the earth would tremble and gnash their teeth at their helplessness. Never since
the Egyptian plague had so many died so quickly, and left so few to bury them. No prayer, no
tonic, nothing would work in forestalling it. The Pope in Rome sat ringed in fires. The Emperor of
Kitai hid himself in holy seclusion. Both would die before the end. The great houses of the
Bakhtiyar perished, leaving a new generation to seize power at swordpoint. The Tsaibwe
banned all commerce with the outside world, but the High Round’s bondsmen were decimated
and it fell to northern raiders.

The Flowering Flesh began in China in 1219, and reached Europe in 1222 – it did not burn out
entirely until 1234, when most records of mass death seem to abate. Across the Mediterranean,
perhaps half the population died, far more in dense and unsanitary urban regions. The Bakhtiyar
ruled middle east suffered by contrast “lightly” – losing only perhaps a third. China, India, and
Indonesia, the whole of the “far east” suffered horribly – losing often half or more. The human
toll cannot properly be understood. A Tamil goshthi spoke of funeral pyres which were never
extinguished, but ran night and day as an endless inferno.

In Europe, the Flowering Flesh was blamed on Solvia, leading to an edict in 1225 banning all
commerce with the Americas. Though this was poorly enforced and ultimately repealed, the
period of enforced isolationism allowed various African and Scandinavian polities to further their
lead in the new world at the expense of mainland Europe.

Luckily, many learned men retreated into monasteries. Knowledge was sequestered and
preserved across Asia and Europe. A number of great libraries and temples closed their doors to
the horror beyond, knowing that the skill and talent within their walls was worth saving at any
cost. Self-sustaining mountain communities survived the great plague by hiding, while many of
their more charitable cousins were annihilated in their attempts to care for the great community
of the sick.

Snapshots of Ruin

Over a hundred thousand towns in Germany were abandoned over the next decade. Forests
reached their leafy tendrils into long cleared land, choking fallow fields. Roads and public
services fell into disrepair, and in many places the rule of law was replaced with utter anarchy as
bandits preyed on the living and the dead.

When the plague reached Konstantikert, many fled – spreading the plague even further. Attica
and the Balkans were not struck more horribly than any other region of the Mediterranean, but
one profound impact of the plague was that many priests, attempting to bury the dead and care
for the sick, would be afflicted with the plague. The institutions of Sklavenian Christianity were
weakened substantially, and the Papacy lost what little influence it had amongst the Sklaveni
Church, whose autocephalous Patriarch would blame the plague of the hedonism of Rome.

In India, a swathe of new inheritance laws were published by the Chola Maharaja, regulating
how guild assets were to be distributed in the event of every major stockholder’s untimely death.
Vast quantities of land returned to state control, while wealth became increasingly concentrated
in the hands of a few lucky survivors.

A fire erupted in Pataliputra, ruining the great city that had been the heart of the very concept of
Indian Empire since the Gupta era. The holy Ganges was clotted with refugees, a mob of the
diseased and dying seeking blessed healing in its waters. The truth was far more devastating,
as pilgrims spread the flowering flesh like wildfire.

Trade in China collapsed. The Emperor would take no visitors, and many monasteries in time
closed their doors, the number of the sick were so many. The Kitai themselves were largely
spared, and viewed it as a sign of their supremacy, not correlating their pastoral or isolated lives
as landed gentry with their survival.

In Mesopotamia, Mosil was abandoned. Nasibin, the capital of the Bakhtiyar successor state of
Syria, looted the old city and found only a few huddled survivors. Those who fled into the
countryside fared little better than the migrants, however.

Haiti was ravaged by plague five years after the brunt of it passed through Eurasia. Forts
throughout the interior were devastated, but the natives, who were already ruined, could scare
fall lower. The Duke found himself besieged for months and no reinforcements came. Finally, he
accepted the inevitable and surrendered to the heathen Taino Cayacoa, who began calling
himself Supreme King. The soldiers were forced to yield up their arms, the artisans and priests
their knowledge. The Duke was forced to give a massive tribute in king, and accept the loss of
several precious stone forts, including his own.

When the next voyage arrived from Africa, a Mauri captain, he was shocked to find Cayacoa
sitting in the Duke’s chair, calling himself Supreme King. He was even more shocked to see a
fleet of Kapudesan ships arriving three days later, captained by the explorer Hariprasad
Abhivas.

Cayacoa’s son, Agueibanya, was fascinated by the westerners. Though they were now few in
number, he understood the value of their knowledge. He was the first of his people to learn to
read the Frankish language and ride a horse. He also sailed around the Caribbean, treating with
Nfansou and the Judges of Nanih, learning all that he could.

Aftermath
Why did some states emerge from the aftermath of the great plague stronger, while others came
out far weaker?

One compelling answer is based around an institutional model – the resiliency of a polity’s
systems play the biggest role in determining how it handles adversity. In feudal regions, the loss
of a whole family might mean dynastic upheaval. In a region where the basic unit of social order
was the guild or the company, that was less likely to occur. Indeed, the loss of many members
of a guild was often a factor which lead towards increased centralization and consolidation of
wealth in the hands of a small but potent investor class.

In countries such as Kitai China, the bureaucracy was a force in its own right. Regardless of
who reigned in Kaifeng, there was an organized and disciplined government structure above the
old hundred names, and the devastation of the plague was counteracted by direct policies in a
very modern and efficient manner. In Japan, when the Flowering Flesh reached its shores, there
was similar organized support, including records of major relief efforts at a scale which was for
the time unprecedented. The sequestered retired former Emperors also provided a powerful
force for dynastic continuity when a succession of child Emperors took ill and died. These aged
former monarchs, elevated and hidden from the world at large, did not become ill and refused
physical contact with anyone until the plague passed, and simply issued directives to the
bureaucracy from on high.

The Pancharajya’s successor states and the Sahputi meanwhile suffered significantly, as did the
Frankish Empire. Their elites had not built strong institutions but relied on various feudal
models. While these were loose on the subcontinent, and mixed with institutions such as the
guilds and the atrophied Pancharajya bureaucracy and goshthi system, Frankish authority was
personal at every level. There were no guilds, and the rudimentary banking institutions were
every bit as clannish as the ruling nobles – and thus equally vulnerable to annihilation by
disease. Into this power vacuum, a large number of radical peasant movements emerged, and
the Frankish state struggled to contain them.

In the wake of the disease, there would be also be unprecedented social mobility and a need for
labor-saving inventions. The Great Plague substantially weakened the caste system in many
parts of the Indian subcontinent, and as the Yaol dynasty’s bureaucracy was exhausted in
numbers, and opened up the exams for several years to be far less strict than they once were.
One concession to the devastation of the learned and literate class was to lessen the focus on
classic Buddhist and Confucian texts and include more practical sections on mathematics and
alchemy to the advantage of well-off merchant’s sons.

[The next post will cover the Rusichi and Kitai China in the pre-plague era. There's still a lot to
get to before I move chronologically beyond the Great Plague, but I wanted to get this post done
first. Hope everyone is understanding.]
What is Aleppo?
Ghalav, the Eftal named for Halab, known to the Romans as Beroea, [Aleppo] has been
continually occupied by settlement for thousands of years, making it one of the oldest
continually inhabited urban centers in the world. Greco-Roman urban planning gave the city,
rebuilt by Seleukos Nikator, a distinctly geometric design, which still persists to this day in parts
of the old city. Roman rule saw the construction of public forums and churches, particularly, late
in the period of Roman rule, the Basilica of the Holy Assumption, which persisted until the
Bakhtiyar sack of 1135, after which point the ruins were removed and a temple to Mihir-Manaf
was built on the site.

With the rise of the Eftal, Beroea often found itself assailed by raiders, particularly the early
Heshanids, whose conquest of the site led to it losing prominence in favor of more southern
centers such as Emesa and Dimashakh. However, it did not fare as poorly in the Eftal-Roman
wars as did coastal Syria, and unlike Antioch, escaped earthquakes, famine, and looting. By the
seventh century, Ghalav was one of many Eftal urban centers scattered across Syria – and an
important trade center near the terminus of the Silk Road. In this era, the Eftal citadel was
constructed, a square and unostentatious building which would eventually be replaced in the
Khardi era by a citadel that was both more luxurious and better defensible, connected to an
elaborate system of cisterns.

Under the Khardi, Ghalav prospered. Ruled by an Eftal dynasty of local “satraps”, it played host
to a large and cosmopolitan population, and represented a major center of trade. Arab
merchants travelled to Ghalav before travelling on to Antioch. Barakh Solamish, the famed
Tayzig polymath, was born in Ghalav in the late Khardi era, and his art and historical documents
would rightly make him “the Bakhtiyar father of history” – one of the first historians in the Eftal
tradition to write with a minimum of bias or excessive glorification of his subjects. His works both
summarized and addressed the deficiencies of earlier historians, and for that he was little
appreciated in his own time but greatly revered in later centuries.

It was under the Bakhtiyar, however, that Ghalav would truly come into its own, as a
counterweight to the power of the Dimashakh Shahdom. The Bakhtiyar council of Ghalav would
vastly expand and fortify the city, providing safe havens to Christians, Jews, and other
persecuted groups against roving bands of Nowbahar thugs taking advantage of the Susa
Anarchy, and Bajinak looters ranging across the Near East. It was the armies of Ghalav who
dealt the deathblow to the Bajinak invasion of Syria at the battle of Edessa, and it was the
Ghalavite armies who would form the most enduring and successful of the Syrian Bakhtiyar
regimes.
Shifu

Shifu [OTL Hangzhou] sits along the southern terminus of the restored Grand Canal, and in its
pre-plague heyday, it was easily the rival of Kaifeng and Guangzhou, two cities which were
often called by the poets the “Northern and Southern Jewels” of the Empire.

Between 1191 and 1204, the city was administered by the poet-bureaucrat An Juyi, who spent
much of his career immortalizing the city he ruled and loved in song, noting the glass-clear lakes
and rolling green hills which surrounded it, and the bustling cacophony of the Indian and Arab
merchant quarters, where exotic goods from the west made their way inland. Under the Kitai,
thanks in part to An Juyi, Shifu rose to a city of critical importance.

Juyi’s detractors claimed he was in the pocket of the Ayyadevi Guild – a powerful Chola and
Vanga backed consortium of merchants. And while Juyi did make use of strong business links
with the Chola, he did so to the enrichment of his native country. The Ayyadevi and their fellow
guilds were granted special permits to trade within Shifu at reduced tariff rates, funneling and
centralizing the patterns of East Asian trade. In return, the guilds were required to include local
notables within their number, signing contracts which tied their fortunes directly to Chineses
textile manufactories. The first multinational corporations were born out of Shifu’s clever
practices – the vast wealth of China was turned towards buying stake in Chola companies, and
despite some attempts by the various Indian guilds to regulate these practices, driven by fear of
undue outside influence, these new joint-companies prospered.

Juyi also turned his attentions to the practical governance of the city. Using an intricate series of
locks and dams, he was able to build a vast artificial harbor for the city, to combat the threat of
silting and turn Shifu into a major shipbuilding center as well as a center of trade.

Along with its nearby rival, Jinshanwei, Shifu managed to negotiate the challenges of the great
Plague. Despite vast depopulation and the flight of the investor class to rural estates, Juyi’s
successors, including the famed polymath Lu Qiji, would restore the city to its former glory. Their
policies reflected the novel Daoist theories of poet-philosophers such as Dongpo Jushi, who
grew to adulthood among the horrific carnage of the Plague. They saw exoteric Buddhism,
particularly as practiced by the Kitai, as an increasingly futile enterprise trying to govern the vast
and inscrutable designs of humanity and nature. Governance, for Qiji and his radical
contemporaries, was about accepting and working with the designs of the world, rather than
attempting to enforce top-down changes from on high. Building projects such as Juyi’s Grand
Docks were best left to private investors, rather than state investment – it was the state’s
purpose to nurture investment but not to control it.

Naturally, these new philosophies, almost anarchic in their teachings, would be contested at
every level by the Court in Kaifeng.

Networks before the Fall

The Sinosphere had many substantial advantages over the rest of the Eurasian continent, and
indeed the world, in the twelfth century. The relative stability of nations such as Japan and
China, the lack of warlordism and feudal relations all contributed towards economic prosperity
and the growth of primitive industry. India and Malaya had an insatiable desire for Chinese
finished goods, and traded their own rare commodities for cheap, affordable steel, fine
chinaware, and superior silk textiles among many other trading goods.
The whole of the Sinosphere, especially China, had a vast literate population and a system of
schooling and university which was unrivaled in its modernity. While some parts of India had
many monastery-universities, the caste system limited the privilege of attendance even amongst
the Buddhist schools, where it was more of an informal rule. A large literate and educated elite
was a huge advantage in a premodern world where subliteracy reigned.

The Chinese traditions of state bureaucracy and strong centralization were also benefits,
especially under the laissez-faire Kitai dynasty, which reserved the right to intervene while
generally remaining aloof from small-scale practical concerns. In 1200, one would have been
forgiven for assuming that China would rule the world. Reunited under the Kitai monarch, it
embarked on a massive plan of state investment in the economy unparalleled by any previous
ruler. The cycling Prime Ministers of Kitai felt that it was their right and duty to benefit the people
and to ease the material concerns of their subjects – and it just so happened that what eased
the material concerns of their subjects benefited the wealthy gentry who proved the investor
class of Yaol China. They also established a sort of social welfare program, they first of its kind.
[1]

Linked into a massive trading system that spanned Eurasia, China was able to leverage ancient
technologies in new and profound ways. Perhaps the most notable was the introduction of
bituminous coke to the steelmaking process. This change was revolutionary and came at the
perfect time to forestall rampant deforestation to create charcoal. The use of hydraulic power to
operate bellows, discovered perhaps two centuries earlier, was implemented en masse around
this time as well. The earliest blossoming of industry brought great material wealth to those who
invested in it.

Foreign merchants first identified the utility of this method several decades after the turn of the
century, when a Gurjarati merchant managed to acquire knowledge of Chinese smelting
techniques and hire several blacksmiths to return to Bharukaccha with him. From there the
techniques spread like wildfire amongst the guilds and reached the Takasashila University in
1233, where monks began experimenting with the movement of superheated air.

The use of firepowder for mining was another revolution of the era. In 1143, the first records of
explosive mining are found among a Nepalese guild. The experiment was an utter disaster,
leading to the death of several hundred and a landslide, and is primarily recorded in a series of
legal arguments brought before the local Raja, but the techniques would be refined – and their
utility in siege warfare would not go unnoticed. Fast burning firepowder could be packed into
tubes and used to drive metal rods deep into stone… or propel them into an onrushing horde of
elephantry.

In 1203, the elephant armies of Surasena were devastated by a barrage of Sahputi “cannons.”
Elephants could be trained to not fear the blast and roar of firepowder and even to weather a
short barrage of shrapnel at range, but they could not help but panic when some of their number
were dropped by solid iron projectiles hurled from metal tubes. The effect was magnified with
thinking men, who feared being decapitated at range by an invisible blast of solid steel. These
early weapons were not supremely effective – they were, like their predecessors, psychological.
But slowly but surely, generals and thinkers were beginning to see further utilities. The polymath
Ishwaradeva even considered mounting a large number of these tubes on the deck of a ship,
but he was rebuffed. It would be madness to store such large quantities of firepowder aboard a
ship, and to lubricate the swiveling joints he proposed would be a chore in the open elements.

Across the Indian subcontinent, finance and industry were reaching new levels. The
interconnected world of the twelfth century fostered innovation and allowed rapid
communication of ideas. Steelworking technology which once might have existed in relative
obscurity was spread within mere decades across Eurasia. The discovery of further coalmines
in other parts of the world might have been soon to follow. Inevitable revolutions of steam power
and textile factories might have followed.

But the cusp of these great changes, unspeakable disaster struck.

[1] Depends on your perspective, I suppose.

The Great Rus Hans

Where the Khirichan held together a sprawling steppe Empire as a counterweight to the settled
regime of the Franks, their immediate successors, the Kundajid, failed manifestly at keeping
their state together. By 1110, it was already in a state of utter anarchy. Cities such as Tangrabad
and Navitashita refused to pay tribute to nearby Pianjiqand, to say nothing of Apaxauda and the
distant seats of far-off satraps who increasingly felt no connection to the Kundajid.

The Khirichan held together an Empire by raiding. Those who did not follow the dharma, those
who worshipped one god instead of the many, all these were fair game in their eyes, and from
the beginning of their regime to the end they were able to rally large armies in pursuit of plunder.
But with the loss of Pannonia to a settled, reformed Xasar Empire, Europe was cut off as a
target of raiding. Their only valuable targets were the Rus states, who had grown very organized
and capable in recent centuries, and were correligionists besides. Flimsy justifications about
false dharma and poor orthopraxy did little to rally the satraps against the “common foe” and
when Satraps did raid the Chernarusichi, the Chernarusichi were unafraid to strike back hard.

The Kundajid allowed their satraps great autonomy to avoid rebellion, but this meant that the
Chernarus Hans were seen as equals of the Khagan in Pianjiqand. In 1123, Darmaslav the
Great changed his title to Velchihan, or Great King, coinciding with an aggressive campaign of
expansion against the Gardaveldi and Sahu alike. Four years later, Darmaslav would add
“Wheel Ruler” to his list of titles, though he would never wholly defeat the Gardaveldi.

The twelfth century was one of massive expansion for the Rusichi people, coinciding with a new
era of royal authority and power. The Bylarusichi of Svayatapolk expanded aggressively against
the Polonians, to “protect the community of believers” after the conversion of Poland to
Chrsitianity.The Chernarus in particular benefitted from the weakness of their neighbors – to the
east were scattered tribal peoples, to the south the chaos of the Kundajid Khagans, and to the
north, an increasingly weak Wheel-Ruler.

Rusichi philosophers and wandering saints, the Volkhvs, denounced the heresy of the
Darmahujr[1] as improper practice. Odin, they claimed, was a false Bodhisattva and a
distraction from true revelation. His magic was not the magic of the Rus, but a bastardized and
foreign magic. The Wheel-Ruler at the time, Arnmundr the Golden, however, was a weak man.
In the past twenty years, the power of the local Assembly in Mikla Niragard had come to
dominate the Wheel-Rulers.[2] The rise of this potent mercantile faction weakened the central
authority of the Gardaveldi, and in many of the hinterlands the people actually came to identify
more with their “cousins” in Chernarus than the Norse-speaking urban ruling class. This can be
seen in how quickly Gardaveldi’s lost territories tended to fall in line with Darmaslav’s edicts and
taxes.

The wars between the Rus and Gardaveldi were not, however, a foregone conclusion. The
Gardaveldi were able to muster substantial military forces against the Rusichi, and between
1130 and 1140 won several major battles, including a shocking reversal at Toron’s Hold.
However, the Rusichi dipped into deep manpower reserves, whereas the Wheel-Rulers
generally relied on a small Norse elite and a massed levy of less than enthusiastic soldiers from
the community.

The Druxhina, or Companions, of the Hans provided the Chernarus with a strong cavalry arm,
equipped in the Turkish style as horse archers or heavily armored lancers depending on their
wealth and status. It was these soldiers who fought in raids and expeditionary battles and
complemented local community-raised militias. However, besides this elite corps there were few
other even semi-professional forces in Chernarus. Some large towns and cities could call upon
decently-well equipped forces, but these were few and far between, and generally cities sought
to use their economic privileges to avoid having to muster men for war.

The Hans, starting with Darmaslav’s father Vladislav Anuxa, began to invest in the creation of a
professional class of soldier drawn from the village communities which made up their realm.
They mandated that villages provide a certain proportion of adult males in the martial arts,
particularly the “bow and the long pole arm” and in exchange these men would be made exempt
from all taxes and rents, but be subject to yearly examinations by state-appointed captains from
the Druxhina. These newly exempted soldiers were expected furthermore to train their children
to fight as well when they came of age, effectively becoming a secondary martial gentry of less
wealth and privilege than true aristocrats, whose privilege was tied into a strict form of
hereditary obligation to the state.

Called the “Men of the Assembly”[3] or the “Young Druxhina” these soldiers were crucial in the
protracted wars that the Chernarus would wage to expand their state. The Turkish warlords of
the Kundajid might win sporadic engagements, but they could never inflict enough losses to
prevent their overall demise, and with each victory, more rich and fertile cropland fell under the
rule of the Chernarusichi. This in turn led to massive unplanned urban growth. The agricultural
bounty of “Sahustan” once sold south to Asia, was now sent north to feed the Rusichi cities.
This new urbanization led to the office of mayor becoming increasingly coveted by the Druxhina,
and those Companions who were able to secure a mayoral or palatine office quickly became a
class of their own above their peers.

[1] The Gardaveldi Norse/Buddhist hybrid religion

[2] More to come on Gardaveldi later. For that matter, much more to come on the two Rusichi
states, particularly Bylarus. There's a lot more going on in Eastern Europe.

[3] Though a very different sort of assembly than the Gardaveldi have.
Gardaveldi

The growing weakness of the Gardaveldi state through the twelfth century can be understood
through two distinct paradigms.

The first of these paradigms is that of assimilation. Gardaveldi was based on an increasingly
archaic and irrelevant Norse identity and a settler population which to a greater and greater
degree did not see themselves as different from the “Ilmeni” they ruled. Gardaveldi as a state
collapsed distinctly because its institutions were focused on a smaller and smaller peripheral
minority of its population – those urban merchants and landholders who still saw themselves as
Norse. The Wheel-Rulers lost power because they never understood how to gain the allegiance
and cooperation of the Slavic villages and landholders who were given neither incentives or
concessions in their regime.

Archeologically, it is difficult to see the collapse of the Gardaveldi. Until the end, the Gardaveldi
marked the extent of their regime with runestones commemorating dead kings and announcing
the splendor of their Wheel-Rulers. Their art and material culture by the twelfth century is
otherwise almost utterly indistinguishable from that of the Ilmeni, and runestones of the era were
typically bilingual, and had been for near on two centuries. A theory that the Gardaveldi only
spoke their stilted and archaic version of Norse in court, assembly, and during religious rituals
had gained prominence in recent years and meshes nicely with the assimilationist theory that
the Gardaveldi defined their social and ethnic group by those who could speak Norse, and as
this population declined due to the limited utility of Norse outside of the cosmopolitan merchant
class, the power of their polity naturally did as well.

The second paradigm is the “transformational” school of thought, which argues that the coastal
and far northern cities, especially Great Niragard, evolved into maritime city-states and simply
no longer saw any utility of attempting to rule the interior. The wars between the Wheel-Rulers
and the Velchihan are actually overstated in contemporary histories, and their treaties, far from
a humiliating defeat for the Norse population of Gardaveldi, were a simple acknowledgement of
a political situation which had actually existed for years – the loose and hegemonic nature of the
Wheel-Rulers meant that they saw no contraction in sharing sovereignty with the Rus or their
own Royal Assembly in Niragard.

The transformational school of thought has some contradictions which must be reconciled –
namely, the fact that the last recorded Wheel-Ruler died in 1173, and the Assembly handed the
title over to the Velchihan Vladimir II. That the Velchihans had claimed the title for two
generations prior was irrelevant to the Assembly. The fact that the Gardaveldi abandoned all
claim to Empire and allowed Vladimir II to establish the Zaratibozi Krepost, an enormous military
citadel and naval arsenal, several miles from Niragard. Another substantial contradiction is that
until their nonexistence, the Wheel-Rulers at the least wished to be considered hegemonic
rulers over a sprawling territory despite their practical weakness.

The reason for the endurance of the transformational school of thought is limited evidence for
the “spectacular reversals” described in later Norse histories. Battles such as Toron’s Hold are
seen as legendary at best. Records from the Chernarusichi side are very detailed in their record
of how many soldiers were present both as garrisons and at yearly musters, and these numbers
rarely decline as might be expected if the Chernarusichi were actually suffering stunning
reversals. Indeed, numbers of soldiers under arms continue to rise throughout the century, up
until the Flowering Flesh’s devastating toll caused massive declines in available manpower.

The Flowering Flesh however, was relatively limited in its effects in the great Empire of the Rus,
and especially in the north among the Gardaveldi. Perhaps twenty percent of the population of
this far northern region was devastated, in sharp contrast to the great Sahu cities along the
Volga and Dnieper, where the temperate climate and immediate trade links with the
Mediterranean lead to anywhere from thirty to fourty percent depopulation. This imbalance
perhaps accounts for the rise of settler colonies in subsequent centuries – while much of Europe
was ravaged by plague and in what must have seemed like terminal decline, the Rus were still
inexorably expanding southwards and eastwards, pressing against the Magyars and Bajinak
and the Turks despite still feeling the effects of disease acutely.

Niragard itself was largely spared the plague. The city “of shining canals” barred its doors
against the outside world, against refugees and merchants alike for a period of several months
during the first wave of illness. The captain of the Zaratibozi fortress’ garrison ordered the
emptying of its granaries to support the people, and otherwise the city was forced to rely on its
indigenous population of fishers until the first and most deadly wave of plague was passed. This
survival was noted by Rusichi monks, and future plagues would see further and more expansive
quarantines and restrictions on travel designed to let the plague “burn out” in limited regions.

However, if Niragard, or the older city of Gardveld [Starigorod] on the banks of lake Ilmen, had
any expectation of becoming the capital of this new and united Rus Empire, they were deeply
mistaken. Chernigov might have been too poorly located for a central capital, but the relocation
of the royal seat to Smolensk, and the subsequent expansion of the city to include a large
palace district and a series of new stupas and monasteries came at the expense of any royal
largesse that might have gone to the north.
The country of unpronounceable names: A brief history of Cymru

Vaeles, as the Anglisch call it, is a land of rolling hills and mountains, recently united beneath a
single sovereign king. During the Saxon Pentarchy, it was a country divided between small
competing petty kingdoms, not unlike Ireland or the country of the Saxons themselves. Chief of
these Kingdoms, especially from the perspective of Saxon princes vexed in their attempts to
conquer it, was Powys, whose heartland was based along the fertile Severn valley. Under King
Owain ap Cynddylan in the eighth century however, Powys was badly defeated by Mercia and
never regained its former glory, allowing Guent, along the Severn Estuary, to rise in power.
Llywelyn ap Athrwys, King of Guent, was able to unite the neighboring throne of Deheubarth a
century later, building many motte-and-bailey fortifications to defend his people against Viking
raids.

Llywelyn’s son, Morgan Mawr ap Llywelyn, however, was the truly great unifier. In 875, he
conquered Powys and swept “all Vaeles” beneath his rule. His reign would see Einar the Black
conquer the last remaining Saxon holdouts and seize Winchester. However, the Kingdom of
Cymru would enjoy relative stability in comparison to the Norse Kingdoms of Angland – the state
formed by Morgan Mawr was enduring. Porth Ysgewydd, the seat of the Cymry Kings, would
become a major port and center of trade on the Severn. Though by the standards of later times
it was little more than docks, a walled market town, a central hall and a stone church, Ysgewydd
would enjoy peace and safety in a time when Angland was tearing itself apart in endemic
warfare.

For their part, Morgan’s descendants, particularly the famous Cynan ap Rhys, would play
kingmakers and pit the Danelaw kings against each other – from fortresses in Powys they would
raid out across the Midlands, weakening any lord that seemed to be becoming too powerful.
With swift horses and peerless archers, the Cymry developed a reputation as vicious raiders
and the “Welsh Holds” were built by the Norse warriors as a defensive line to mitigate these
raids. Long sieges had little appeal to the nobility, who gained little plunder and were forced to
stay away from their lands for extended periods of time. Accordingly, the Kingdom of Cymru
turned inwards.

In 961, a rebellion by the “Prince in Caernarfon” seeking greater autonomy led to a vicious civil
war. The monarchy came out of this newly solidified and confident in its power, but the wounds
that it left across the countryside ran deep. Many had died in six years of sporadic fighting, and
if the country was reconciled it was because regions such as Gwynedd had been brutally
repressed and many of their men of fighting age slain, leaving few to protest increasingly
autocratic declarations from Ysgewydd.

When Sweyn Thunderer united Angland beneath his seat in Winchester in the early eleventh
century, he decided that the Cymry must be subjugated as well. They were a perpetual thorn in
the side of the Ring-Breaking Kings, after all. According to the annals of his reign, he frequently
commented that the only reason that no previous king had ever struck a hard blow against them
was that their lands were poor and had little worth taking. However, Sweyn died before he could
lead this great invasion, and the plans would pass to his son, Harald, who was proclaimed King
by his Earls but gained little loyalty from them and manifestly failed to keep them in check. In
1063, Godwin, Earl of Brykstow and his sister’s son, Black Yohn of Eddington would fight an
independent war against the Cymry and indeed almost emerge victorious, but no concerted
royal effort was made to subdue them – in no small part because any Anglo-Dansk warrior
worth his salt had far more to gain by sailing the world as a Viking or mercenary than remaining
home and fighting in cattle-raids on the frontiers.

A generation of warlike Cymry nobles grew to manhood hearing tales of Morgan ap Rhys and
his victory over Godwin Godwinsson, the “Devil Earl” and his armies. This generation came of
age in a swiftly changing world, however, and one where such victories were impossible. For the
better part of a century, the Anglisch Kingdom had been growing rich on trade and adventure.
Her merchants were worldly and sophisticated, her churches as grand and ostentatious as
anything in the Frankish Empire. Her armies increasingly were every bit as capable on
horseback in the style of Frankish knights as they were on foot in shieldwalls.

What the Kings of Cymru never grasped was that they were little more than a nuisance now, a
thorn in the side of a far greater power. By the time they became able to admit their situation, it
was too late. The first signs of their downfall came when the Anglisch King Harald Ivarsson
declared war on Defena during a dispute over the quantity of their regular tribute. Famously,
Harald, a man easily enraged at the best of times, beat to death the Defenas envoy after
claiming that the tribute was marginally below what it should be. While his court was appalled by
the act of open violence in the royal hall, clever men in the King’s employ realized that the tin
mines of Defena would fall to whoever managed the situation best. They claimed that the King’s
parentage had been grievously insulted and that the ambassador drew his weapon first. The
King of Defena, Conomor ap Colmin begged for aid from the King of Cymru, his brother by
marriage Llewelyn ap Morgan, but in spite of the large combined force the two sides arrayed,
they found themselves overmatched by heavy horse armored in mail who their archers could
not seem to harm.

The battle of Stallion Hill (1114) as it became known, was a disaster for Defena. Conomor was
slain, and his army – mainly lightly equipped infantry and unarmored horse, was dispersed by a
solid wedge of mail-armored carls with steel-rimmed shields who in “coming forward at a brisk
pace, and not falling into the least disorder, broke the line in its very center while the riders in
their multitudes came around the sides” In the ensuing sieges, the Anglisch employed tactics
learned from abroad – siege engines of immense size, great towers and trebuchets that
overwhelmed the fortresses of Defena.

The bulk of the Cymry forces did not arrive until it was too late. Defena was all but fallen, with a
few holdouts in Cernas that were universally besieged. Conomor’s sons were in the captivity of
the Anglisch King, and even if Llewelyn were to triumph over the Anglisch, he knew that their
lives would be forfeit, so that the Kingdom would never rise again. Already the region had been
divided into three earldoms, and the Anglisch outnumbered him three to one. Encouraged by
Defenas deserters, he retreated back across the Severn to Ysgewydd and awaited the coming
storm.

Envoys were sent to Ireland and Skotland, but they returned empty handed, with nothing but
vague promises. The strength of the Anglisch was great, and the wrath of Harald Ivarsson was
infamous. When envoys to the Anglisch had poor luck negotiating any sort of favorable truce
that did not involve a humiliating truce, the Cyrmy King’s nobles convinced him to instead mount
a raid on Gloucester, so as to gain a foothold in Anglisch territory. But the decisive strike did not
materialize – a halfhearted siege was abandoned when Anglisch ships moved up the channel
and threatened Ysgewydd. Meanwhile, the Earl of Worchester raided Powys, and managed to
devastate the region – making the King seem weak for being unable to defend his vassal
princes.

In 1116, King Llewelyn made peace with King Harald, who had kept his levies in the field for
three campaigning seasons in a row. However, this peace would be the downfall of his dynasty.
In 1121, Gwynedd broke away from the Kingdom, and Llewelyn could muster few troops outside
of his own retinue to fight them – soldiers which were desperately needed to guard his borders
against raids by the Anglisch. Dyfed and Ceredigion soon followed – leaving Llewelyn with a
sprawling territory that consisted of almost the entire border with Angland and yet almost none
of the interior territories – a strangely shaped snaking region which was utterly indefensible and
had no strategic depth in the face of incursion.

Attempts to reunite Cymru would never fade from the popular imagination, even after Powys
broke away in 1143 – there was always a notion that one day the Kingdom might reunite, if a
strong King were to rise up. The Anglisch, meanwhile, did not mind a disunited Kingdom on their
border, and in a series of pacts called the “Unequal Treaties” established tributary relationships
with the border realms and put an end to cross-border raiding. Whenever any given polity grew
too strong, they were quickly put back in their place by a large-scale invasion.

Interlude: Egypt

The beloved student sat cross legged, as he had been taught, his hands folded serenely in his
lap. His face was cool and bland, and it always struck his tutor how royal he seemed, even at
his young age. But it was fitting for a child who would grow to be the Malkusah of Egypt, lord of
the rich country along the Nile. Perhaps, as some said, he was Akhsau reborn. Perhaps he
merely deluded himself, biased by proximity.

He was full of wonder and questions. This morning he had just been to temple, and now his
head was filled with notions of the divine. "Why do the old Egyptian gods have animal heads?"
He asked.

"Because," his tutor replied "the barbarians and uneducated seek to understand the divine
through analogy. But they were wrong. More civilized people like the Arabs have never made
such flawed icons. Images are not wrong... but they are not necesssary."
"What do you mean?"

The tutor ran a hand through thin and greying hair. So full of wonder. So innocent, even here, in
the den of vipers that was Hesanabul. It made him nearly weep to think of the man the boy was
but a shadow of. He would become many things in his life.

"What I mean is that even the statues in the temple do not encompass the nature of the gods.
The gods are not merely greater men, or animal headed men. They are principles. Men give
strange names to that which they cannot understand."

"But the Boddhu must have understood! He was teacher to gods and men alike."

"He did. He spoke wisely that the gods are immaterial to liberation from the pain of this world."

"But others after him said they were essential."

"Men say many things. If you wish to understand the world, you must do it experientially. Do you
know what that means?"

"No." The boy admitted, crestfallen.

"It is good that you are willing to admit your ignorance. There is honor in that. I remember your
father..." The tutor shook his head. "But I'm getting carried away. The truth of this world boy, is
that all is an illusion. All is a mask, a paper mask behind which the true world, true being, lies.
But it behooves us to understand that world, and it can only be done through reason. The true
nature of things, that which is beyond our eyes' capacity to see, is something that must be
posited through facts and evidence. Revelation, as the Saihists and Christians claim to know it,
is flawed. Understanding is not miraculous. It is labor. That is why I teach you, that you might
carry on the labor of our race. That you might be a scholar king, as Akhsau the Great was."

The child nodded. Perhaps he did not understand all. But he would come to, in the fullness of
time. And then he would be a great Dharmasah and Malkusah. The tutor was sure of it.
The Transatlantic Fula
Kingdoms

Few peoples settled in any numbers along the coasts of West Africa in the early eleventh
century. The benefits of fishing and limited trade sustained a small maritime population, but
trends of feudalism and political centralization spread from the north down through the south.

The one exception to this rule was Takrur, the heart of the Fula Kingdom. The end of the “gold
road” (Senegal River), for centuries after the discovery of an oceangoing route to West Africa it
would be the greatest port and one of the few entirely in native hands. Takrur was designed in
the imitation of the great Mande cities such as Ghana – it was centered around two poles – the
palace and the marketplace, and all other things came secondary. Within a few decades of the
first Mauri merchant, commerce flowed near constantly. Under King Tabakali, Nfansou’s
grandfather, the first Christian Church was established, although it was necessarily built outside
of the city limits, so as to avoid offending any mystery cults. The Fulani were forbidden from
entering, and it was solely for the use of foreigners according to royal decree – although
conflicting reports hint at some underground conversions in this era.

The Fulani, being adept cavalrymen in the style of the Soninke, were also able to greatly
expand their kingdom at the expense of neighboring tribes, incorporating them into their empire
as tributaries and vassals. Under Mansa Naseriibe and his successor, Jajemkarme (Nfansou’s
brother) the empire expanded greatly. Takrur, and other lesser ports such as Isingan prospered
as the increased unification of the Senegal valley meant easier and easier trade with the interior,
which in turn made the nobility rich. In 1204, the Fula took Ghana itself, and after doing so were
able to negotiate with the other kingdoms of the Sahel as equals.

However, the Fulani were limited. The further beyond the Senegal valley to the south they
pressed, the more they encountered reversals, and warlike tribes whose disunity and lack of
strong cavalry did not prevent them from dealing humiliating defeats to overambitious Fula
generals. They were unable to conquer the Jolof or the varied peoples of the Kambral. So the
Fulani, and their Serer federates began to turn towards the ocean.

The rapid shift of the Fula from a nation that abhorred naval matters to one that ambitiously sent
conquering voyages across the waves as often been called the “Great African Miracle” but to
describe it as such is to both diminish the role of Africans and foriegners alike. Figures such as
Mansa Nfansou should be properly hailed as visionaries, for seeing that their lands were
overcrowded and turning feudal warlords and their pastoralist retainers into an army that could
sail across the ocean, and the Norse and Mauri should be acknowledged for their role in
providing necessary shipbuilding expertise. It would be another century before the Fula had a
true indigenous shipbuilding culture, and even then they considered it a task better left to their
subject peoples – apart from a few coastal dynasties.

Nfansou’s conquests were stunning, and brought the Fula onto the broader European radar.
Their origins in Africa were well known, and their victories both terrified and awed the European
courts who heard of them. Correspondence between Nfansou and his homeland, however, were
more strained. A second expedition was dispatched a decade after his first, led by Njanire,
Nfansou’s son, but while they brought much needed reinforcements and horses, the second
expedition fully cleansed the court at Takrur of Nfansou’s partisans and his son, ensuring
Nfansou would never be able to return and claim the throne from his brother.

But other opportunities awaited: in 1215, the Cosca family offered to marry an eligible daughter
of their faily, Trese, to Njanire, but the alliance proposal was complicated when the demanded
the princeling’s baptism. Nfansou was considered to be an honorable pagan, both a man of his
word and a virtuous and merciful opponent, but the son was an unknown quantity, and Stefano
Cosca felt he could only be trusted if he were willing to make certain religious commitments. But
Nfansou was unwilling to see his son grow up the servant of an alien god, and accordingly
rebuked the offer. Negotiations stalled until Nfansou conquered Colhuancan in 1220, and
established fortresses overlooking its agriculturally prosperous valley.

At that point, Nfansou added King of Mehika to his titles, and the Cosca family – mere
mercenaries by comparison – could ignore him no longer. With the Flowering Flesh raging in
Europe, hope of assistance from Francia dried up with astonishing speed. The European
population of the New World after a century of exploration numbered in the thousands, deeply
disunited, scattered across many islands, and almost entirely male. The African population was
smaller, and equally male, but they were united around Nfansou and had the assistance of the
Canary Norse, the most successful transatlantic seafarers south of Vinland and fellow pagans
who might have disagreed with the gods of the Fula, but were generally banned from the
Christian ports on the European continent.

Forest Kingdoms and Coastal Tribes

When the Kapudesan explorer Husrawa Abdassaiwa, a predecessor of Hariprasad Abhivas

reached the southern mouth of the Niger, he found “a greatly peopled country of salt marshes
and fisheries, whose inhabitants are greatly skilled in watercraft.” Further north, these swollen
villages gave way to the first proper city – the fishing-town of Akanembe, where salt was
warehoused for sale upriver. In general, the local tribes, who called themselves Ijo and Ibo, had
no centralized regimes, merely a series of lineage-based village alliances.

Further still north was the city of Ukwu, whose dominion sprawled as far west as Ife and as far
north as Raba. By the standards of the Mande, with their cattle and horses, Ukwu was a poor
state, and it dwelled in fear of the distant shadow of Kanem, but on the local scene it was the
great power, able to bully the Yoruba villages with relative ease. Generally, Ukwu was a
hegemon – it did not rule the delta villages, whose headmen called themselves amanyanabo, or
“village-owner” but instead traded with them along deeply unequal terms, nor did it rule the
Yoruba, who were allowed to govern themselves but had their diplomacy curtailed by the threat
of military intervention.

Ukwu itself had a curious government, at once feudal and pseudo-democratic. The Kings of
Ukwu had a system of non-hereditary royal offices that they used as a way of regulating power
between nobles, but as in similar systems in Japan and Francia, nobles could still accumulate
vast tracts of land – or more specifically in the case of Ukwu, could bind themselves together in
vast patronage networks held together by shared membership in powerful and prestigious
religious schools. Over the centuries, the Ukwu Kings had maintained their power by engaging
in ritualistic warfare with their neighbors – successfully fighting the Yoruba in battles which
neither side emerged truly victorious from. The once effective Ukwu armies, well-armored and
armed with iron, lost their fierce reputation. Their unwillingness to utilize a strong cavalry arm,
as some of the northern Yoruba and the Hausa did, provided yet another limiting factor which
confined Ukwu to the forest zone.
Husrawa met the King of Ukwu, Ahenzae, in 1216. Their meeting was not at first a revolutionary
one, but one of mutual curiosity. Communication was difficult, and owing to these difficulties the
Kapudesan venture remained held up for the better part of a month, but Husrawa had a gift for
languages – he compiled the first dictionary of the Ukwu dialect of Igbo several years later.
Henceforth, Ukwu begin an indirect trade with the Kapudesans – Nembe became more than just
a salt-market, acquiring ivory and rare textiles to ship back to Watya and beyond. With
Akanembe as a waystation, Kapudesan ships, taking advantage of the latest nautical
innovations, would travel further and further afield.

It would not be until Hariprasad’s voyages that the Kru Kingdoms were discovered along the
Pepper Coast, and even then they went largely unnoticed. The Kru did not live in dense
equatorial forest, but it was terrain sufficiently different from the savannah as to prevent easy
conquest by the expansive northern cavalry empires. Here, as in many places, geography
defined development. The Kru were splintered into many ethnic groups, as were their
neighbors, countless small kinship-based groups who built at best small urban centers and were
deeply disunited. Here, Kingship did not mean the ability to raise taxes or even appoint allies to
any special offices – Kings had “one right, and that was the right to call men and women alike to
labor for them, either in war or harvest” – and that right was strictly limited by traditional custom.
Unlike Abdassaiwa, Abhivas was a practical man, a guild man. He never explored for the sake
of knowledge but profit, and he quickly found that apart from a single plant, the “kru pepper”
which he found similar but distinct to black pepper, and accordingly he purchased many seeds
from the Kru and took them back to Kapudesa. Henceforth he ignored the Kru, and apart from a
waystation and a place to buy slaves or replacement crewmembers, the Kru were largely
forgotten for centuries.

To the north were many peoples, the chief of whom Hariprasad called them Temna, and his only
remark on their culture was that they carved soapstone idols to worship the dead, a practice he
found disturbing for unspecified reasons. The Temna designed immense earthworks and built
their villages in places where they could not flood. To Abhivas’ disappointment, they truly had
nothing of interest to barter – but they knew the location of Takrur, and this was invaluable to
him.

Takrur under Jajemkarme was the first West African port to impress Abhivas, according to his
diary. Greeted by the King’s younger brother (and eventual usurper) Sulanjai, he toured the
bazaars and temples of the city in awe, remarking on the gold and sophistication of the Fula, on
their quiet and stoic demeanor and “ability to endure all manner of pain without the slightest
shudder or cry of anguish.” He found fault only in their easy contempt for commerce – he
thought their nobility too aristocratic and too aloof for their own good, though he admired their
martial skill, comparing them favorably to the Arabs.

It was in Takrur that he would learn details of the New World, and against the misgivings of his
crew he would set sail for Haiti.
-
 Coffee, or "Zanj drink"
is popular in the Middle East and probably Kapudesa by 1220 or so, although most of the world
will associate it with the Tayzig and Ethiopians rather than the Savahilan states. Naturally it will
keep spreading, although it's not something that I think will have as much appeal in a world
where no major religion prohibits alcohol outright.

I don't think Kanem is strong enough to sweep over West Africa and unite it - even if they were,
their attitudes towards religion would conflict harshly with a still largely pagan continent with its
own complex cultural and religious traditions.

Watya has more land than it knows what to do with, yeah. And the Kapudesa and their
neighbors are too few in number to really get into the settling business. At the best we'd maybe
see some merchant quarters in foriegn cities.

The Xasar are still very scared of a united Frankish Empire. Antagonizing the Rus in their own
backyard seems unwise to the Shahs in Konstantikert, I would expect. But I guess much
depends on what becomes of the Franks, and how long Europe remains a united empire.

Edit: I haven't entirely decided how the Flowering Flesh will change global politics, but it's gonna
be huge. Expect a lot of tradiational power structures to adapt or die. But first I've got to catch
up to the (very unlucky) thirteenth century.
-
Springtime for
Practical Lobster and Germany, Winter for Polonia and Frankia

The Polish lords saw which way the wind was blowing from early on, but stubbornness kept
them from converting to Christianity until after their King was finally baptised by a Papal Legate
in 1128. The Polish turned on their old holy groves and priests, setting both aflame if they could
not be repurposed. Totemic statues to their traditional deities were torched together in what
became known as the Bonfire of the Gods, and the inhabitants of the royal monastery were
massacred three days later, their books becoming new kindling for the Bonfire of the Gods.

Thus the new Catholic Kingdom of Poland was born in blood and fire, and turned fatally and
irrevocably against the old ways. Wandering Buddhist holy men fled to Bylarus or the Xasar
Shahdom, spreading tales of horrific atrocities. Poland had only ever been lightly "Easternized"
by the standards of the Rus, and thus it was relatively easy for them to cast aside their old
traditions. Furthermore, the Buddhist monarchy had a habit of persecuting the traditional
priesthood which left their homefront divided.

The attacks on Buddhists and Old Believers were not so much the fanaticism of the newly
coverted as they were part of a systematic plan by the nobility to reassert control over the
nation. After a few years, the nobles turned their attention to German settlers within their country
with equal ferocity. If the German settlers complained to their local lords, as they did throughout
the 20's and 30's, their complaints fell on deaf ears. No Votive War would be waged while the
Frankish crown was up for grabs, and even when the war settled down, the Franco-German
elites preferred to work with their fellow Christians among the Polish nobility. They saw the
Polish aristocracy as potential allies on the frontier and a new buffer to keep their lands safe,
even if they viewed the Slavic peasantry as a mass of rebellious savages. Accordingly by 1140,
intermarriage between frontier lords was common. The King of the Germans even entertained a
Polish prince in Metz at the wedding of his daughter in 1143, a total reversal from their ancient
enmity.

The German nobility of the time is difficult to understand for a modern observer. As often as they
and their contemporaries viewed them as distinct from the Franks, such views are complicated
by how deeply similar they were. The German nobles maintained a unique identity as a distinct
"nation", but they were married, both literally and figuratively, to the Franco-Roman concept of
Imperium.

If they had a protonationalist identity as a people distinct from the Franks, that identity was very
different than that of their varied peasantry. Germany, as an expanding frontier, was more
martial and feudal than Francia. An aristocratic German landholder felt little kinship with either
the decadent and "unchristian" lords of the south or the peasants whose lands he ostensibly
was defender of, who spoke different and lesser dialects. The German lord peppered his
language with Latin loanwords and spoke with a courtly accent whose similarity to Frankish he
would never admit. He regarded himself, ideally, as a warrior for Christ and considered himself
wholly above both commerce and the pastoral villa-life of Ispana. Moneylending was anathema
to the Germans, and combined with pogroms against what few Jews lived in Germany, this had
ensured the country was remarkably free of banking.

By contrast, the German peasant was fiercely independent and often self-sustaining. Tenant
labor, so common in the rest of Europe, was comparitively rare in Germany, where a sort of
"middle gentry" had developed of wealthy and productive rural landholding peasants, who saw
the church and aristocracy as interlinked, corrupt, and undeserving. It was this society that
would rise into its own when the Flowering Flesh smashed serfdom and decimated the feudal
landholders. Theirs was a culture of folklore and oral tradition, rather than the inherited Latinate
culture of the German aristocrats, whose identity was far more indebted to the Romans than
they could ever admit.

The common people saw the Franco-German nobles as a holdover from a long gone era.
Particularly in the growing cities of Germany, the German commoner was an increasingly
educated and wealthy force, mirroring developments across Europe. The German burgher
understood the world around him - he was often literate and he often felt that the Frankish state
was an impediment on him. He felt unrepresented by the Landstag, the great Diet of Germany,
and this feeling would only grow as time went on.

Other changes only exacerbated this. In the Low Countries, the people considered themselves
Deutsch, not Frankish. They had mixed with the Norse traders and raiders who had come to the
region, and here, where manufacturing and trade was booming, the rural aristocrats truly had a
weak grip on power.

When the Flowering Flesh came, it is no wonder that the Frankish Empire collapsed. In 1174, it
was brought to the brink by another succession cisis. Aloysius the Blond's weak and inept rule
had left a power vacuum which was met by rebellions in Ispana and Germany alike. Backed by
an army of "Moors," Augustus I (Augustus III de Toulouse of Spain) seized power and unlike his
predecessors did not take the ruling name Aloysius, seeking to distance himself from his
cousin's weak rule and evoke the grandeur of Rome. However, Augustus maintained his power
by doubling the list of salaried Palatines, including many Moorish officers among their ranks.
The Crown debased both gold and silver coinage to pay for its excesses, and ultimately found
itself in debt to a number of Italian banking houses, whose loans were formally considered
"gifts" that carried conditions of political infuence.

In 1222, half a century after Augustus I, Aloysius XIV ruled, and the "Moorish Regency" was in
full swing. Germany, the Low Countries and Ispana were independent in all but name, and
Lords and Cities alike defied Imperial decree. The particularist and centrifugal forces gripping
the Empire were tearing it apart at the seams. Lords and cities could wage open warfare against
each other, and both sought to hire substantial foriegn contingents to bolster their armies,
frequently making use of Berber and African slave soldiers as a professional mainstay of their
armies.

The Plague brought a quick end to violence and Empire alike. Concentrated armies were
particularly vulnerable to disease, and accordingly most forces raised after 1222 were nothing
more than breeding grounds for plague, which during the Siege of Pavia annihilated 80% of the
Medolanese attackers. The Pavians hailed this as a divine blessing until the disease struck their
town a week later.

Augustus' heirs were not incompetent, as they are often portrayed. Aloysius III in particular was
an intelligent and thoughtful man, assassinated by his Chamberlain far too young. The problem
was quite simply that circumstances stood against them. A strong Emperor was a threat to a
strong court. A weak Emperor couldn't preserve the Empire. A strong court invariably turned on
themselves. As the Empire declined, there was a sense that various factions could extract
further privileges, and since the first Emperor precedents had existed for such tactics - did Italy
not safeguard their position in the Empire through the Pope?

For its part, the Papacy of the era was rendered similarly inept. It had been a long time coming.
Investiture laws had abolished all difference between clergy and aristocracy, and bound the two
together inseparably. Italian Legates used their family members in the Church to determine the
next Pope, and through the twelfth century the Pope that deferred to the Emperor on every
decision of consequence was the Pope who enjoyed a long life.

As the Frankish Empire collapsed, many decided to take advantage. It did not take too much
foresight to realize that those who acted first would be able to define the new order of things.
The "Peripheral Kingdoms" of Christian Europe struck first - the Danes and Poles would clash
over the fate of the Baltic while the Moravians and Barvarians struggled to decide their new
boundaries. The Xasar would take advantage as well. Their fleet was stronger than ever, built
from Rusichi timber and crewed by Rhomaniki sailors. As the Flowering Flesh died down swept
through Attika in 1232 and established a vast fortified harbor and arsenal at Dyrrakhiu on the
Adriatic, challenging Frankish dominion of the Mediterranean. The “heathen Chasar” would
emerge from the plague savaged but intact, while the Frankish Empire collapsed into the worst
anarchy in its history. If the Plague could be said to have a winner, it was the rural peasantry
and those who would exploit the devotion of the peasantry to their own ends, especially various
heretic and particularistic movements.

Tanianism[1]

What is Tanianism? The specter of the “Moorysh Heresy” as Saunt Adhar of Northumbria called
it, “Dwells in the bosom of the southron, inclined as he is to debauchery and all manner of
indolence.”

He was right to identify Tanianism with the Moors, or Mauri. Although the etymology of the name
is lost to history[2], some have speculated that it relates to “Tanio” or “Tanius” or some
translated Mauri name. The first reference to “Tanianitus” or Tanianism comes centuries later, in
Italy, from the Cassadorian monk Isidoro of Verona, although certain heretical movements in
Mauri Africa have been recognized by historians as relating to the Tanian tradition.

The Tanian religion itself is generally recognized as a belief system founded from disparate
influences. While it is ostensibly an Abrahamic faith, its followers believed in reincarnation, and
more specifically that the soul could not reach union with god without first going through many
reincarnations. The Tanians were thus deeply obsessed with discerning the lives of past souls,
and for this gained a reputation for fortune-telling and magic. Out of the Ein Sof, the endless,
they believed had come many souls, of which God and Satan were the two equivalent and
greatest. When one reached the highest levels of the order, one learned that the Pope himself
was the direct agent of Satan, set on the earth to lead people away from union with the divine.
Satan was concerned with worldly power and order, with schemes and machines, and sought
rulership by proxy over the material world. God, by contrast, was a God of love, pleasure, and
sensual delight. In happy acceptance one could find transcendence, in ecstatic orgiastic revelry,
one could find true joy. The Tanians, despite often being associated with Gnostics and
Autotheists, were set apart by this hedonism.

One of the more curious Tanian beliefs, and one of the most difficult to verify as true, is the claim
that the Tanians were a “suicide cult” of sorts. Many detractors claimed that the Tanians believed
choosing the appointed hour of your death was both holy and the best way to exert control over
one’s soul and reincarnation. Whatever the case, the Tanians were deeply secretive and
wealthy, and their religion, whatever it may have started as, slowly morphed from heresy and
mystery cult into a secret society, a hedonistic club for the wealthy and powerful that had little
meaning to typical peasants who lacked the money and resources to be debauched and
obscene. The Tanianism received so much focus from the Catholic Church speaks to the
concerns of the Church - keeping pure their own ranks was judged more important than
doctrinal consistency among rural peasants, who were allowed form their heresies with far less
persecution and molestation.

At the time of the Flowering Flesh, the cities and villas of Southern France and Northern Italy
counted many Tanians among their ranks, including the latest Exarch of Provence, Marcelo
d’Boso, and the local lords Anselm d'Indrois and Himnario di Taormina.

[1] And here I am awestruck that I haven’t written about it before.

[2] I forgot why I named it that.

The Fortunate Ones in Egypt and
Beyond

The Bakhtiyar state of Akhsau Mansar did not long outlive his death, and even in his old age it
was collapsing. The ensuing wars of successors would see the emergence of great warlords but
few real polities. Akhsau had possessed the pseudo-divine charisma and gravitas to yoke the
fractious Tayzig tribes together and bring many previously distinct Arab clans into his new
factitious identity of Bakhtiyar. His successors lacked this charisma, and accordingly, the whole
enterprise fell into disorder with remarkable swiftness.

The governor of Syria, Gashayar Harun, made the clearest case to succeed Akhsau Mansar as
a Regent of sorts over the whole Empire, a title he referred to as “Khalefeh” or Steward. Despite
having several wives, Mansar had only a single child, a sickly daughter who was rumored to be
a bastard in any case. Once the Great Shah’s corpse was cold, these rumors flared out into the
open. At first, Gashayar worked to suppress these rumors, but as the other successors turned
against him, he simply dispensed with all formality and had the daughter, Asma, strangled to
death. Henceforth, he and the other kings would refer to themselves as Sah or Malkusah. The
title of Khalefeh would come to represent a sort of vizier figure who held substantial power in the
state.

Unlike the Khardi, the Tayzig identity proved more robust throughout the Near East. Where the
Khardi often assimilated into local groups, especially the Ifthal, the Tayzig remained distinct and
often incorporated others into itself. Various reasons have been proposed for this – the first, and
perhaps most simple, is that the Khardi themselves identified as Iranians, but even in their
triumphs saw their own culture as inferior to the broader Iranian civilization of which they were a
part. They emulated the Ifthal and Iranian nobility they conquered. Another theory relates to the
agricultural collapse of Mesopotamia in the wake of the Tayzig invasions and the great plague –
silted and salinized fields saw an end to Khardi agricultural practices and led to their rapid
assimilation into the conquering Tayzig. Whatever the case, the remaining Khardi were
ultimately driven into the northern hill country in many cases. While substantial populations
endured in northern Mesopotamia and around Susa, the central Khardi successor states were
overrun. A final theory, and the most recent and widely accepted one, is simply that the term
Tayzig, with its origins as a vague ethnic slur for pastoralists, was broadened to accommodate
more and more people – that the Khardi, Arabs, and Ifthal all simply became “Tayzig” and in
time linguistic and cultural barriers were redefined as regional dialects and differences.

By the dawn of the thirteenth century, the Bakhtiyar successors ruled five major states – Egypt,
centered on the old Khardi Satrapy; Syria, a sprawling state encompassing Palestine, Cilicia,
Syria itself, and parts of Osrhoene; Asoristan, centered on Nasibin; and Zwaristan, centered on
the southern city of Herat-on-the-Euphrates; and Iran itself, whose rulers were the half Turkish
Ansara Suf dynasty. Anatolia had fallen to the Xasar in its entirety, and a new, Christian kingdom
of Armenia was on the rise in the north, reasserting itself after centuries of Buddhist dominion.
Isolated and fortified, it gained a reputation as a sort of hermit kingdom, an antique and out of
place state, but it nevertheless survived the horrors of the Plague and the brutal ravaging of the
Bakhtiyar.

After the Great Plague, the Bakhtiyar would emerge as the bringers of a new golden age. If their
era was more warlike or brutal than what had come before, it was also an era of philosophical
and technological achievement, spurred on by proximity to India and the constant flow of
travelers from Europe to Asia and vice versa. Philosophers such as Khatir the Red educated the
Malkusah of Egypt, Wahrama Mansar, leaving him with a life-long love of learning. Ilksadrana on
the Nile, a city which had long suffered under the Khardi, was restored and resettled by the
Tayzig. The Yippokupti, brutal enforcers whose widely corrupt rule was associated with Khardi
despotism, were removed from power. If the Tayzig brought in many settlers from overcrowded
Arab regions, they were also extremely, unprecedentedly tolerant. The brutality of the Khardi
was overnight replaced with lenience. The Patriarch of Alexandria was allowed to return to
Ilksadrana, and the Tayzig, despite being largely Buddhists and Pagan-Buddhists, hosted
religious debates and scholars of all creeds in the capital, allowing Arab Nestorians to play an
equal role in government alongside them. Indeed, it was the Nestorian Arab architect Isa al-
Jaffani who constructed the great Buddhist monastery at Artaxserabad and was for three
decades royal architect, designing the distinctive Tayzig Quarter of Ilksadrana, and the new
Royal Palace. Hesanopolis was abandoned and reclaimed by the desert, a sign of both Coptic
and Khardi rule that the Bakhtiyar had no desire to associate themselves with.

This religious tolerance should perhaps not be too surprising. The original followers of Akhsau
contained substantial Nestorian Arab and Saihist pagan elements, and although Akhsau himself
was a Buddhist-Pagan whose religious beliefs had a profound effect on the later convictions of
his followers, such tolerance was actually relatively commonplace in Tayzig Arabia, particularly
in the early decades before the Bakhtiyar became more solidified as a movement with distinctly
Iranian religious overtones.

Egypt prospered as well by the Canal of Akhsau – built with the help of a vast force of (paid)
levied labor, and the expertise of Sindhi mathematicians and monks, the Grand Canal once
again linked the Nile and the Red Sea - allowing the efficient transport of goods and ensuring
that sailors would only have to pay a single royal tariff to go from the Mediterranean to the Red
Sea. The guild placed in control of its management was a joint Bakhtiyar and Bharukacchan
venture, speaking to the increasing political influence of Bharukaccha and the secondary status
of Copts even in the new tolerant regime. The mercantile and urban class of the new Egypt
would be Buddhist Arab-Iranians and their Indian trading partners.

[Most of the Bakhtiyar states will primarily be discussed in post-Flowering-Flesh pages, as will
the state of Iran and Armenia. However, I felt that another Egyptian update would be good. The
Khardi left deep scars in Egypt when they conquered it, but I felt the region deserved something
of a break. While they’re still under foreign rule, at least the Bakhtiyar are relatively unconcerned
with persecution and exploitation.]

Ethiopia

The Horn of Africa has long been called the “Tapestry of Nations” and not without reason. As a
descriptor it reaches back to the antique era of the Hawiya monarchy, when Jains, Christians,
Buddhists and Saihists lived in harmony and perhaps a hundred different tribes and languages
coexisted under the benign hegemony of the Hawiya Kings. To the south dwelled the Somali, a
people largely under the thumb of the Pazudesada – coastal cities such as Makdish, Zeil, and
Barbira provided trade ports and entrepots, but did primarily for the Savahila to their south,
whose guilds made unequal partnerships with the ruling clans of the Somalia cities. Inland, the
tribes, who some travelers to the region confused with the Berbers, were cattle-herders and
generally pastoralist and deeply divided. Feuding and raiding prevented the rise of an organized
polity to equal the Hawiya, and left the whole region rather destitute in the eyes of travelers
seeking to spread the word of Christ or the Dharma. Merchants generally avoided the interior,
given the aridity of the region. The potent spice and coffee growing regions were either in
Arabia, or better reached from other ports.

The interior and highlands were Christian regions, with substantial communities who did trade in
Zanj drink and coffee. While contemporary histories describe various warrior-kings, with Kushitic
names such as Yikunno and Amdesiyo, there is little evidence, archeological or otherwise, for
any sort of stable polity in the region. The rich urban centers of the highlands existed in a
symbiotic relationship with their monastery communities. The monasteries provided centers of
education, hospitals, and staffed the churches of the region, and in exchange they were fed and
defended by the townsfolk. The monastic communities preserved the ancient poetry and oral
traditions of the Amhara and Shoa, and provided schooling to the rural gentry’s sons.

The monastery communities had an informal series of alliances based on the “Lake Hayk
School” – most of their leaders had studied under someone who had studied at Lake Hayk, and
accordingly routine pilgrimages were made back to this holy site. Every few years, these
gatherings would discuss the broader politics of the region, but given the rarity of these
meetings and the dangers involved in getting to them, it was an ineffective and reactive
institution at best.

The counterweight to these urban centers were the “camp kings” – a phenomenon
commonplace among the Bedja and elsewhere among the Ethiopians – rulers whose power
extended not far beyond their military camps. These rulers were effectively parasitic, demanding
“tribute” and remaining constantly on a war footing so as to feed and pay their retainers. Despite
being widely hated and feared by the populace, they had the only professional military forces in
the country, and accordingly were indispensable during times of outside invasion, such as would
happen near the dawn of the thirteenth century.

Along the coasts, there were two great city states, Gidaya and Adulis, both of whom clung to
power along the hinterlands, and defied the anarchy of the interior. Adulis, the city of gardens,
was an architectural miracle and a peaceful trading center defended by alliances with the local
camp kings. The looming red sandstone walls and basalt palaces of the city made it an
impossibly wealthy prize, but also one that could call on too many favors to be destroyed. By
contrast, Gidaya had no such protection. The last stronghold of the Hawiya, its power to resist
the camp kings gradually diminished until in 1163 it was overrun once and for all by a camp king
by the name of Yakob-Dawit, who sacked the city and forced the Hawiya monarchy to flee to
Yemen. With the defeat of the “last heathen king”, Yakob tore down the last Buddhist monastery
on the Horn and made his camp several miles outside of Gidaya for the next few years,
extorting the local landholders before moving onwards back into the interior.

Ten years later, in 1176, a full-scale Arab invasion of Ethiopia began. Aimed at placing a Hawiya
monarch in control of as much of the region as possible, it was a curious venture, the first of its
kind. Mahatitta, the great financial center of Sri Lanka, had paid for thousands of Indian guild-
warriors and Arab mercenaries to assemble in Yemen, where they had the backing of a fleet of
Arab merchant ships. Often called the “first colonial war” the Hawiya War was a curious and
polyglot thing, utterly chaotic and completely without clear and orderly leadership. Mahatittan
paymasters, exiled Hawiya lords, and Arab princes fought for who should be in charge of the
venture, and by the time it launched, the expedition was on the verge of collapse.

Gidaya itself and its hinterlands could not support such a large army. The joint Arab-Indian army
was forced to fan out across the countryside, where it encountered stiff resistance. The Camp-
Kings unified under one of their number, a powerful warlord named Amdesiyo, who travelled to
Lake Hayk and gained the blessing of the most senior Abbot there. Subsequently, he crowned
himself King of Amhara and Defender of the Faith, and set out with a broad coalition to defeat
the invaders.

His subsequent victories and final triumph at Gidaya became the foundational myth of the
Ethiopian state. His army swept the Arab-Indian forces into the ocean, despite the enemies
having vast stocks of firepowder and disciplined ranks of heavy archers and Arab cavalry. The
battle, according to legend, lasted four days. The Arab horse were repulsed after an opening
assault on the Gidaya camp, after which the Indian forces fortified the landscape around
Gidaya, constructing earthen ramparts behind which firespears and archers could take cover.
They inflicted horrific losses on the light cavalry of the Camp Kings, slaughtering wave after
wave of horsemen with shrapnel blasts from the fire spears and disciplined volleys by some of
the finest archers in the world.
However, by the third day the firepowder reserves were running dry, and reinforcements had
arrived from the local hills. The town levies who came fought as archers and spearmen, and
traded volleys at range before a lockstep wall of spearmen drove the firespears off the ramparts.
The fourth day of battle was an assault on the ruined walls of Gidaya – close hand-to-hand
fighting in which the pretender King of Hawiya fell. The fighting was visceral and intense, with
the heavily armored infantry of the guilds fighting for their lives. The epic accounts of the day
describe how it was exhaustion which saw them succumb in the end, and when Amdesiyo saw
the carnage of the fighting, the ranks of men fallen in pooling blood, the horses and men gored
by spears and riddled with arrows, the charred ruin of the ramparts where firepowder had been
used to such horrific effect, he declared that there could be no celebrating their victory.

And yet, as the sun set on the final day, according to legend a cross was seen in the sky, a sign
that God had brought his children a great triumph.
Conquering Lions

For those who presumed the era of Indian Empire dead, and assumed the Bharat would never
again fall beneath a single conqueror’s boot, the Sahputi would be at once a cruel awakening
and, down the road, an affirmation of the truth of that belief.

The Turkish and Afghan horsemen who descended under the banner of the Askunu Shahputi
were the finest fighting force assembled in the Indian subcontinent perhaps since the Eftal-
inspired cavalry of the Johiyava. There had been a tendency, at least since the Gupta era, for
horsemen to turn not towards the wealth of India, but towards the easy pickings presented by
the Near East. However, the anarchy brought on by the collapse of the Khardi was matched by
weakness in India – Gandhara was exhausted from her border wars, and once the “bastion of
the Hindu Kush” fell, the whole subcontinent was opened up for conquest.

If the Johiyava had been at least culturally Indian, however, the Askunu were alien, socially,
culturally, and religiously, and sought to impose a very different way of life on a continent with
rich and antique traditions. Victory after victory was followed by a general uncertainty about the
future or even what to do now that they had won. When the Panwarawat dynasty of Pajcanada
fell, Lohawar was made the new capital, of the regime. Centrally located, it made an excellent
place to deposit loot and tribute. However, little else was done to make a nation of the Sahputi
conquests.

As Turkish and Afghan tribal groups flowed into northern India, they did so haphazardly, in such
a way that portended their certain assimilation into the broader culture of the world they had
entered. When they clashed with the Gurjars and the Pancharajya’s successor kingdoms, they
enjoyed stunning military successes, but as soon as they became bogged down with the day to
day tedium of ruling, they simply intermarried with the same Gurjar clans and took to a lifestyle
almost indistinguishable from those they warred against.

Khingal’s son Varatingin inherited a vast, if loose kingdom, and immediately set about putting it
to order. He was charismatic and beloved by his allies and federates, at least at first.
Underneath his veneer of charm and easy manner was a blandly autocratic personality, which
brooked little dissent or innovative thinking while being deeply uncreative to boot. Varatingin
was a successful tactician and indeed a capable warlord, but he had no pretentions to being
anything more than a warlord. There Askunu state had little in the way of central diplomacy or
indeed bureaucracy of any kind – to the point that many historians have referred to the Sahputi
as a sprawling confederation of tribes rather than an Empire.

Coalition, confederation, or empire – it almost didn’t matter. Varatingin was a charming despot
who could mix fear and love into the perfect cocktail of obedience. Loyal vassals saw great
rewards, while anyone even suspected of plotting against him was subject to horrific
punishments. Under the Sahputi, the first cannons, manufactured by the co-opted manufactory
guilds of Gandhara, were mass produced and deployed to devastating effect in sieges and
pitched battles alike. This, combined with the powerful cavalry at Varatingin’s disposal, was a
devastating combination.

In 1202, he began his next series of wars – finally putting an end the Surasena in 1204, and the
subsequent year he attacked Panchala, and the “three Ayats” were overrun within a matter of
months. At the battle of Amroha, the republican coalition failed to put up a meaningful defense.
The vanguard of the Sahputi army, under general Mirghulin, managed to take the enemy’s camp
before the main body of the Sahputi force could even arrive. For this, Mirghul and his clan were
granted exclusive rights to the city of Ahikshetra and its surrounding lands.

The campaign continued down the river. The Kirata dynasty, under Govindra Kirata was
defeated and Kannauj fell after a two month-siege. Visnu Soumitri, the Equal King of Magadha,
was killed in battle, and without his leadership, Pataliputra, the city that was the “birthplace of
empires” fell without a fight. Ironically, only the disunited cities of Vanga gave the Askunu any
real difficulties – the terrain of Bengal proved poor for cavalry, and the cities there waged a war
of attrition which saw an eight year campaign to subdue them.

Developing a kingdom that stretched from Vanga to Afghanistan was no small feat. But within a
few years, the Flowering Flesh struck – seemingly an omen of divine displeasure against the
new imperial dynasty. However, as the decade wore on, the continent was exhausted. Factions
which had been planning armed insurrection were now every bit as decimated as the
conquerors. Indeed, the urban settlements of the Ganges had suffered far worse than the feudal
estates and pastoralist conquerors in the north. It should be little surprise that in the years
following the Flowering Flesh, the Askunu actually managed to expand and consolidate,
defeating the Chandela and scoring a few more crushing blows to the now badly crippled
Chandratreya dynasty.

However, Varatingin was murdered by his favorite concubine in 1224, a sordid affair all told. An
old man, now well into his sixties, his death saw the end of the Askunu dream of empire. No
sooner were his ashes cooled than war broke out among his retainers and companions. There
was no clear succession. His eldest brother, Ishtatengin, was but a few years older than him,
and fighting with bouts of tropical disease (which seemed to be unrelated to the Flowering
Flesh). While rightfully authority to rule should be his, he chose instead to retreat to a monastery
in the high mountains of Afghanistan, where he hoped the dry, cool air would bring relief.

So the throne was divided between sons. Varatingin the Lesser, the eldest son, and Sebuktigin,
the third son, were the obvious choices for rulership, but the clans were divided and thus civil
war broke out almost immediately, with the middle child, Ghiliji, seizing territory in Sindh to add
to the confusion.

Ramifications

The Sahputi did untold damage to the sangha-ayat networks of North India. Scholars of the late
thirteenth and early fourteenth century would look back on the guild-council structures that
dominated along the Indo-Gangetic plains and say that in any case, they had surely succumbed
to the worst impulses that could afflict republics – dominated by factionalism and particularism,
with weak and unprofessional militaries and highly compartmentalized economies. The
summary condemnation of later generations was not without truth in any case – the guild armies
of the successor kingdoms were quite simply crushed, and the political will to resist quickly
collapsed into a race to jump off a sinking ship.

The Sahputi destroyed many of the most prosperous guilds to enrich themselves. From roughly
1180 to 1240, India suffered some sixty years of feudal rule beneath the Sahputi, whose policies
reduced what few ayats remained to mere formalities and were broadly devastating to
commerce. The nascent banking systems of the region were similarly destroyed so that the
money they contained could be distributed to Askunu vassals. Between the fall of the
Pancharajya and this, the Indian economic revolution was all but halted. Only in central and
southern India, under the Chandratreya and the Chola respectively, did the subcontinent’s
economy not undergo massive contractions. The subsequent spread of plague was a deathblow
to the fat urban centers of the Ganges, leaving the temples and monasteries as the sole
remaining centers of power and influence outside of the Sahputi.

The monastery-university network of ancient India was an oft overlooked component of political
and social power, particularly in the north. Far from being isolated and independent structures of
religious authority, the monasteries were deeply interconnected, with monks travelling on
circuits to share ideas. Patronized by the Ayats and Kings of North India, monasteries typically
held substantial lands and wealth as well, and many had fortified citadels and private armies at
their beck and call. Particularly in the chaotic era after the fall of the Pancharajya, the monastic
communities grew in influence – servings as intermediaries and diplomats during the internecine
conflicts of the era. Sites such as Nalanda and Paharpur were pre-eminent centers of learning
but also had a sort of immunity to attack or persecution which solidified their strength.

When the Sahputi came pillaging and burning across the Indo-Gangetic plain, some of the few
sites they spared were monasteries. Afghanistan had its own rich tradition of monasteries and
stupas, and despite the wealth within them, the Sahputi made efforts to spare many religious
centers, unless said centers became embroiled in war. This in turn was the salvation of the
goshthi as well – many nobles took shelter in the monasteries, paying exorbitant sums to keep
their fortunes and families safe.

However, Prajnavikram, a Buddhist monk and intellectual of the era, had a different, and
somewhat revolutionary idea about the role of the university in India. Having lived through both
the Flowering Flesh and the Sahputi invasions, he’d seen firsthand the carnage and ruin that the
Sahputi had inflicted, and it certainly made an impression on him. While he himself had little
desire to rule, he was intimately familiar with the ancient treatises on rulership, including the
Arthashastra of Chanakya and by 1234, he had begun travelling from monastery to monastery –
the “Jeweled Tour” as it was known. His activities attracted no suspicion because the monks
had cultivated a reputation for being above secular politics, and the Jeweled Tour was a
common lecturing circuit, starting in Gandhara and ending in Vanga – it was notorious for
sometimes taking many years to complete.

Between lectures, Prajnavikram made many allies in secret. The Sahputi, he argued, were a
disaster because they were foreign kings, and those who remembered that fact were quickly
dying out. They were becoming a fact of life, and that truth devastated Prajnavikram. If they
adopted Indian dress and prakrit languages, they were still savage barbarians, outsiders, and
they had stolen the wealth of the Ganges long enough.

At Paharpur, Prajnavikram found his big break – Prince Dharmapala of Harikela, a vassal of the
Sahputi whose realm was too peripheral for them to conquer. Almost overnight, his vision for the
destruction of the Sahputi changed wholly. He had long envisioned a peasant rebellion led by
monks and the surviving native nobility, but he was awestruck by the young prince, and now
saw him as a new Chandragupta Maurya – a new Bharati Emperor who could reunite the
subcontinent and rule from Pataliputra. Dharmapala was well positioned, admittedly, to become
a conqueror. He had grown to adulthood among the Sahputi, and had learned their superior
cavalry tactics.

However, the rest of India was learning as well. The Chandratreya had imported thousands of
Arab and Iranian horses starting in the reign of Amoghavarsha (1205-1218) and had created a
professionally drilled cavalry arm that was undeniably the equal of the Sahputi. In 1231, the
battle of Betwa had been their first major triumph. The Great King of Kings at the time,
Indrasharva, had overseen incredible military reformations – firepowder weapons had gradually
been getting better and better – from crude hand-cannons to a slimmer, more efficient weapon
called tufenj from the Turkish. Creating mixed units equipped with bows, tufenj, and long spears,
Indrasharva’s formations were able to hold their own at range and in close combat against the
Turkish horsemen.

The Askunu horse, in harassing, would ride close, firing their bows with peerless skill. They
were shocked to see skirmishers with tufenj guns emerge from the massed pike and open fire.
The roar of firepowder and signature billows of white smoke were followed by the screaming of
horses and men, and in the disorder that followed the first line of spearmen would rise from a
crouch and rush into the midst of the broken horse, slaughtering the wounded and slow as the
Askunu fled.

In time, the tufenj would become a ubiquitous weapon across the subcontinent and into the
middle east, even as the independently invented shouchong saw use in Chinese armies starting
in the mid-third century. The Xasar would first make use of the tufenj in massed numbers in
1280, around which time the first reports of “Chasarcanna” in European texts. The various
European names from firearms descend from either canna (Italian for reed) chasa (Xasar) or
busse (literally box).

In the short term, however, the Chandatreya tactics would permanently end the threat of Sahputi
expansion at the same time that Dharmapala rode west from Vanga, having united the cities of
his home and pressed up the Ganges. These two great rebellions would parallel a multitude of
similar rebellions in Gandhara and Pajcanada. However, the Sahputi were not wholly dislodged,
and across much of the north would simply assimilate into the aristocratic classes.

The guilds, especially military guilds, would never recover. The new face of warfare was the
Pala and Chandratreya armies – mixed arms units backed by mobile medium cavalry and
cannons.

Byalarus

Unlike her eastern counterpart and sometimes rival, Byalarus did not have easy opportunities
for expansion. To her south lay the Xasar, who had turned into a mighty Mediterranean Empire.
To her north were the Lietuva princes, whose realm was poor pickings at the best of times. They
were a good source of auxiliary horsemen, but otherwise hardly worth the conquest. To an
ambitious Byalarusichi prince, the only clear direction to go was West.

Byalarus had been cursed by geography not to lie on any of the truly major trade routes as the
Chernarusichi did, and indeed to have few cities worth the name. Clusters of townships, the
“harod” (gords) that had defined the early Slavic patterns of settlement, were still the primary
organizational unit of the state. Towns each tended to have a few local nobles who were little
more than community headmen. The nobility held the best land and in times of war came
mounted on horses – but unlike the Xasar or Chernarusichi, there was no steppe tradition
among the Byalarus – these were heavy horse, more akin to the retainer cavalry of Europe.

Svayatapolk, the “City of the Blessed Host” was effectively a hilltop castle with twin rings of
walls where the Byalarusichi Hans held court. Turau, some distance west, was an important
center of manufacturing and trade, but even it did not rival the cities of the Dnieper. To the south
was the country of Halka, which was peopled by the eponymous Sahu tribe, who lived on the
northern foothills of the Caparthanian mountains and traded with the Yazistani peoples to their
south.
The conversion of Polonia to Christianity saw Byalarus’ position in the world changed
irrevocably. The Border Wars, as they became known, were a famously vicious affair. The Polish
Kings often came out worse in the decades between 1120 and 1130, but Byalarus lacked the
resources to deliver a deathblow to the Polonian state. The Byalarusichi launched attacks deep
into Polish territory, sacking Krakow in 1142. Peace was signed three years later, and the
Byalarusichi gained substantial border territories, and saw a substantial influx of thinkers and
merchants from Polonia whose convictions had not allowed them to convert to Christianity.

The Border Wars were a curious phenomenon in the sense that it was effectively a Buddhist
Holy War, and was articulated as such – going beyond the notion of a “Just War” which the
Chernarusichi often employed, or the Xasar, who typically described their conflicts in the
language of Khirichan-style raids, no matter what the ultimate objective of the campaign was.
The Byalarusichi, by contrast, waged war explicitly to defeat the Christian kingdoms and to
spread their religion at the expense of “the ignorant false beliefs of the western princes.”

The collapse of the Frankish Empire granted the Poles breathing space. Their western
campaigns, under King Markus II lead to the reconquest of Veletia and the Polish Marches.
Their new rivals were Denmark and the Saxon Kings of Hamburg, especially Frederik the Great,
whose regime encompassed the better part of Franconia and Thuringia as well. Byalarus faded
from view temporarily. In 1167 Han Sidabog embarked on a campaign against Moravia instead,
utilizing similar justifications to his previous wars. Despite a lack of significant victories, Sidabog
returned home with enough plunder to call the campaign a success.

Thus was politics in Byalarus. As the new frontier against the rising tide of Christendom, their
kings would engage in sporadic border-conflicts with the Polonians and Moravians, conflicts
which would define more permanently the borders between the two halves of the Slavic world,
much as the Northern Votive War had done for the Norse. Close ties to the Xasar were essential
for this policy to succeed, and over time a triple alliance between Chernarus, Byalarus, and the
Xasar Shahdom developed, much to the distaste of the European marcher lords whose lands
were perpetually threatened by the pact.

Religion in Byalarus resembled more closely that of the Xasar than any other.[1] Byalarus kept
many Bogii, or traditional gods and idols, in their practice, and their stupas were filled with
depictions of traditional folkloric legends alongside more traditional iconography of the various
Mahayana Buddhas and hagiography of their lives. Their school of Buddhism was called the
Iazhati and while there were some Iazhati monasteries Chernarus, in general the Chernarusichi
were more orthodox, following a mixture of the Sogdian School and Apasvanadi Buddhism.

If anything held back Byalarus, it was their feudal structures and peripheral nature. Compared to
the Xasar, their kings were relatively weak, and unlike the subordinate Druxhina of Chernarus,
Byalarusichi retainers more often than not provided a counterweight to royal autocracy. The
harods, especially after the arrival of firepowder transformed the capacity of peasant militias,
were individually strong and often fractious. When the Byalarusichi Han when on the offensive,
he had the small royal army at his disposal, but little else. When he was invaded, he could rally
the rural communes to his side and present a much stronger force. Accordingly, Byalarus was
unable to expand and take advantage of the disorder of Christendom in the same way that the
Xasar were able to.

[1]The primary Xasar sect of Buddhism was known to them as the Khotadhata, or God-Defined
School, which was similar to the Iazhati of Byalarus in that it held that divinity and understanding
and visualizing the divine was an essential element of Buddhahood. The Khotadhata are unique
in their worship of Mihir as a sort of supreme divine figure. Khotadhata preaching spread from
Anatolia into the Bakhtiyar successor states, where they clashed with both the Nowbahar and
the traditional Sogdian School. A fourth school, the Apasavandi, also existed. Known as the
School of Holy Water, it represented the influence of Theravada missionaries from Sri Lanka
and Arabia whose preaching prompted a middle-ground school seeking to bridge the puritanical
Nowbahar and the loose teachings of the Sogdian school. Notably, Apasvanadi cheerfully
adapted to the forest mysticism of the Rusichi, and is catching on like wildfire among the
isolated mystics of Chernarus.

[Woo! Big post! I think next I'm gonna swing down to East Africa for a bit, then maybe back
around to start covering the Chinese treasure fleets, and then we're in dire need of more New
World themed posts. There's a lot to cover. Also what's going on in Japan? I don't know yet!
There's so much world to explore!

And at some point I want to get back to the Land of the Long White Cloud and Australia. The
earth is so... big.

Ahigin, if you have any ideas what say a thirteenth and fourteenth century Kitai colonization of
the Amur region might look like, I'm curious.]
An Era of Northern Focus

The colonization of the world has never been a pretty thing. The expansion of industry,
commerce, and empire typically has a grim human cost, both in the displacement of indigenous
peoples and the abject conditions of the new colonies. Slavery, genocide, and communal
violence characterized the first colonial expeditions, from Cape Watya to Chicaza.

Even the Kitai colonization of the northern rim of the Procellaric was incredibly disruptive to the
traditional lifestyle of the Jurchen and Transamuric tribal peoples whose lands they settled.
While in the south the Treasure Fleets sailed forth as grand flowery diplomatic actions –
incredible displays of power and majesty coupled with the velvet glove of diplomacy – in the
north the Kitai sailed north with humbler but more numerous voyages seeking resources and
political control. These expeditions were less glamorous by far – they sought nothing more than
a new home for China’s teeming populace and fuel for the fires of industry.

In China, bureaucracy had once again been the saving grace of the people. Food production
was managed in a way which, if not scientific per se, was certainly better than disorganized and
haphazard reclamation – the exoteric scholar-gentry sought to develop clear and meaningful
solutions to local problems. The post plague Chinese world was one of astonishing wealth and
massive population growth. Subsequent generations would however lack this prosperity – they
found themselves in overcrowded squalid cities without the means to attain the same position
and success their parents had. Many sons could expect little opportunity – inheritances were
small once divided between children, and many would sell their shares of whatever land they
owned and seek their fortunes abroad.

For the more successful and the southern, life as a sailor or merchant beckoned. Overseas
communities blossoming in Srivijaya and Malaya however, only needed so many people. These
were already crowded regions, and the power of the Indian guilds was difficult to challenge
directly. It was easier to simply cooperate with the “southern barbarians.”

The Chinese would turn North instead, where there were few organized states to challenge
them – those which did exist, such as Goreyo, were their tributaries and vassals. The reforms of
Yaol Pusuwan, a Kitai prince who from a young age had chafed at the confining life of the
palace. Taking himself out of the succession, he toured the north and avoided courtly
constraints. His brother, Yaol Zhilugu, was left the throne, to rule as the Emperor Taizong. Five
years before, the Northern Exploratory Fleet had begun its voyages, a counterpart to the Three
Treasure Fleets of Yaol Abodai, Xu Biao, and Fu Youde.[1] But Yaol Pusuwan would usher in
what he called the Era of Northern Focus.

The land was bleak and hard perhaps, but it was vital to the future. Even the Emperor Taizong
knew it well – with the south secured and ruled, the north must become Kitai’s new focus. How
many great dynasties had rightly feared northern barbarians? The Kitai were particularly
conscious of their origins as well – Yaol Pusuwan loved to ride and hunt from horseback, and
excelled in both. He was Kitai through and through, but he also had a civilized man’s
appreciation for the comforts of life, and most importantly he understood the threat if a Mongol
khan were to gain undue power in the Kitai administration. The migration of the Kitai had largely
left a power vacuum in the north. Whole regions of the steppe had been emptied, and only the
threat of Kitai reprisal and a few scattered Kitai clans kept them so. Sooner or later, the
floodgates might burst open and leave the Kitai vulnerable once more. A large portion of their
peerless cavalry, he felt, had degraded in quality with generations of easy living in the south.
Even the Uighurs, a people who were largely considered "more Kitai than the Kitai" to the
Imperial bureaucracy, Pusuwan feared secretly chafed at the Yaol dynasty's usurpation
centuries earlier. Despite their impeccable loyalty during the Era of Northern Focus, Pusuwan
never allowed himself to be surrounded by Uighur commanders, and often reassigned
successful officers to other fronts, further from their homelands.

As a prince he excelled in declaring that a thing should be done and seeing it through. In this
case, his plan was twofold. He established the province of “Greater Liaoning” and encouraged
settlement across its barren highlands and hills – where there were great quantities of iron. Fed
by Kitai-majority communities in the low country and fishing ports, the province allowed the mid-
twelfth century to be one of “Northern Pacification” – the characters used to describe Liaoning
were the same as “Distant Calm.” The settlement of Han into what had once been the Kitai
heartland was not always popular, but it created a northern bastion against the Jurchen – and
allowed Kitai embassies to begin negotiating with the Jurchen from a position of far greater
leverage.

In time, the Kitai would rewrite the very fabric of the north. They would bring the Jurchen
dwelling along the Yalu and Sahaliyan rivers to heel and incorporate them into their empire.
They would settle hundreds and thousands of Han miners in the coal-rich hills of the regions to
eke out a hard but profitable living. Dingy ports would slowly grow along the rim of the sprawling
taiga. Imperial mathematicians would lay plans for canals and trackways across the verdant
forests as land prospectors made their way through the perilous dark, searching for iron and
coal among the hillsides.

The Era of Northern Focus also extended to the Naiman and the other vassal clans to the north
of the Kitai. Midway through the twelfth century, Pusuwan ordered Ordobeliq, the old Uighur
capital, reoccupied, as it had shrunk to a small monastic community alone in the vast steppe.
The ancient palaces of the Yalaghar Khagans was reopened and renamed “Exalted Northern
Capital” – henceforth the Tatars, Naimans, and other tribes would be required to send tribute
and hostages to the region. When the Merkets rebelled against the new system, they were
defeated in a five year campaign which combined diplomatic offensives with actual military
offensives by a joint Kitai-Uighur army which was almost as mobile as their rivals, and had far
greater resources to pour into an nigh-indefinite military campaign. The Merkets eventually
found themselves diplomatically isolated and strategically outmaneuvered.

If the Kitai army was more “Chinese” than previous incarnations had been, that also meant it
could leverage enormous resources in manpower, food, and capital to achieve whatever aims it
set itself to, while still deploying large numbers of heavy cavalry and horse archers who had
been nearly born into the saddle. The establishment of the “Western Command Posts” – a
series of border forts which penetrated deep into the steppe – gave them unprecedented control
over their nomadic vassal states, and prevented them from having to rely overmuch on co-opted
local leaders for their service. When local clans were used as mercenaries, they were invariably
deployed in the south or east, far away from any place which they might have had loyalty to.

[1] Another post.

Caucasus

The Caucasus is a region which defies easy unification. Even under the Eftal Shahs, it was a
disunited land – split into many satrapal subdivisions Buddhist Adarbaygana along the Caspian,
Christian Arminiana with her peerless cavalry, the northern mountain valleys of Virkana, and
Ardan, where the river Kura breathes life into an otherwise arid country. At various times, the
Eftal controlled only portions of this territory, and the same was true of the Khardi. Beneath a
veneer of Empire, the Caucasus fought against homogenization.
The Bajinak made the country of the Aduri Iranians their own, but it was difficult to resist
assimilation. Edicts given in the name of Tengri gradually gave way to the worship of the
Buddha along Sogdian school lines. They adopted an adulterate version of the Eftal script as
their own, and spoke the Aduri dialect except in their court, where Turkic was still the language
of the day. Unlike the Alans, who for centuries remained an independent and fiercely unique
people within Virkana (Iberia) and Anatolia, the Bajinak found themselves masters of a rich land,
but one more suited to agriculture than herding. They abandoned their traditional pastoralism in
favor of becoming landlords, and the Bajinak incursions into the Khardi country are some of the
last records of their activity.

Henceforth, the Bajinak would blend into the Aduri – the Bakhtiyar speak of the “Shah of
Aduribijan” but neither in edicts or histories do they mention Bajinak, which seems to have
slowly faded into the mythic past as an identity. Some revisionist historians even question the
role of the Bajinak in the Khardi collapse – claiming that Bajinak might well simply be a
shorthand for “mounted raiders” rather than a clear ethnic identifier, or suggesting that Iranized
Turks from the East might otherwise fall into that category despite not actually being from the
Bajinak tribe. It was important for Aduribijan, as the only Buddhist kingdom in the Caucasus, to
define itself as a united polity, rather than as a tribal confederacy. Controlling the length of the
Kura river valley, they ruled large portions of Ardan in the mountains as well, controlling several
key trading avenues which connected the Eurasian Steppe and the Iranian plateau.

Under the Aduri Shahs, a period of rebuilding in Darbend, the great “locked gate” and one of the
oldest fortresses in the world saw the northern passes once more closed to raiders and nomads
from the north. The lowest of Darbend’s new walls was twenty meters high, with sixty high
towers spaced evenly along all clear approaches to the city. The old Sassanian fort at Narin
Kala was looted for resources to build this new, far more impressive edifice, but its tan brick can
still be seen in the construction of certain parts of the new fortress.

Armenia in the Khardi era was ruled by the Artsruni dynasty, a native Armenian family who
leveraged their Buddhism into rewards and power within the Khardi system. However, their
attempt to build an enduring Buddhist state on the back of Armenia’s ancient nobility was flawed
– they underestimated the sincerity, it seems, of many of the families who “converted” to
Buddhism, and they underestimated how quickly those families would reveal themselves as
Christians once the Khardi specter retreated. Defeats in a series of prior rebellions had little
lessened the conviction of the Armenian people to rise in rebellion the moment the heathen
kings were weak – and this time they succeeded.

The Artstruni Shah Seneqerim I had declared himself independent of the Khardi in 1143, but his
reign would be brief. Setting his capital at Dvin, he sought aid from the rising Bakhtiyar in
securing his country in the uncertainty of the Khardi collapse. While Akhsau Mansar was willing
to give some tentative promises, those promises amounted to little tangible support and only
turned the people further against him. If the Nakharar nobility had been decimated by centuries
of foreign rule, they found themselves thrust into power once more by Seneqerim’s dire need for
an army beyond his own personal retainers. However, once elevated to high positions and
secured in their privileges, the Christian nobility of Armenia knew they need only wait for the
right moment to rebel.

That moment would come two years later, when a peasant rebellion under a stonemason
named Tiridates became full-fledged civil war. Tiridates claimed to have been visited by an
angel in a dream, and been given the Holy Lance which pierced Christ’s side, a relic lost
centuries previously during the Heshanid-Roman wars. Starting around lake Van, his rebellion
had managed to ambush and kill the local governor sent to subdue it by Seneqerim – and the
king was forced to travel himself to put down the insurrection. However, his army was
ambushed in a narrow pass and he and most of his household was slain. The nakharar did not
come to his aid, and instead met with Tiridates in a series of negotiations. Tiridates, much to
their relief, had little desire in claiming kingship for himself. He turned over the Holy Lance to a
man named Ashot Kamasarakan, who claimed descent from the ancient Araskid dynasty, and
the nobles, happy that Tiridates had not claimed the throne but angered that they had little
choice in the matter, tentatively acclaimed Ashot the new King, ushering in the Kamasarakan
dynasty.

Despite a Bakhtiyar invasion by Vahram Razi, the short-lived Shah of Arbayestan, the Armenian
Kingdom survived both the titanic rise of the Bakhtiyar and the horrors of the Flowering Flesh.
Under Ashot and his sons, the Armenians fortified their mountains and build a well-defended
island of Christendom in a world where the faith had largely been overrun across the East.
While they would rarely be able to gain ground against the Buddhist kingdoms to the south, they
would also find themselves rarely having to concede land to the divided Bakhtiyar successor
states, who lacked the resources and will to unite and defeat the Armenians.

Meanwhile, around Kutatisi, a city which had long been at the periphery of the Byzantine and
Iranian world, a new state had been founded in the wake of the Khardi collapse. Blending
Iranian monarchy with Christianity and Greek influences, the Shahs of Imereti were building a
small but expanding empire. As Imereti conquered greater and greater territories, they generally
allowed their defeated rivals to continue to rule, making a network of vassals and an effectively
feudal state.

Kutatisi itself had been home to an autocephalous Patriarch since the abandonment of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, and its distinct religious tradition paid little more than lip service
to Niece Christianity in Rome, despite not embracing any of the various heresies prevalent in
Armenia, where centuries of home worship and isolation had strengthened the monophysite
teachings of Cyril of Alexandria and compounded them under Aharon of Manavazkert, whose
religious beliefs emphasized the unity of Christ’s nature and the heresy of considering him
anything other than a singular being. Aharon even subtly called into question the very nature of
the Trinity, giving credence to the deep divisions and controversies of Armenian Christianity.
Imereti, by contrast, had none of these divisions – their faith remained somewhat unified, even
as every valley was home to its own rival Shah. The implicit primacy of the Patriarch of Kutatisi
indeed made it easy for the Imereti Shahs to claim their own primacy over the lesser Shahs.
[While the true Kitai expansion into the Amur region is still a little ways off, I wanted to show how
the Kitai retain control over the northern steppes, especially the Uighurs, and how already
they're starting to eye the north eagerly as a site for more resources.

And the Caucasus is just a super ignored part of the White Huns world that really deserved an
update. A bastion of the Christian faith in the East - which is especially important given the
collapse of Asiana and the rise of the Xasar and Bakhtiyar as vigorous and expansionist
Buddhist polities.] A chronicle of Shahs

Nanaivant never expected to be the Shah of the Xasar Empire. Born in the sleepy Danubian
agricultural community of Belhrat, his father was a lesser member of the usurping Darasakya
family, and owned a series of luxurious villas along the river, isolated from the threat of Frankish
raids by many miles of fortifications to the west. His father, also named Nanaivant, made every
effort to remove himself from the politics of the Xasar court, especially after his brother Arjaxa
seized power. But Arjaxa Shah distrusted those nobles who preferred to sequester themselves
away from court – he was a firm believer in the notion that enemies should be kept close. And
so the Shah demanded that the younger Nanaivant travel to Konstantikert and live as a
hostage.

There were some orders one simply did not refuse.

Instantly, the boy impressed Arjaxa. Nanaivant Darasakya was a child who never seemed
particularly impressed, according to Arjaxa’s daughter Amadtra, who wrote one of the definitive
histories of the Darasakya Shahs. Everything he looked at or interacted with, he seemed to
interact with as from a great distance, and Arjaxa found this aloofness in so young a child to be
a kingly trait rather than a sign of the stunted emotional development of a child long
sequestered behind opulent palace walls. Of Arjaxa’s own children, only one, Xsamandatta,
survived to adulthood, and he would die in battle against the Sklaveni at the age of 18 – leaving
Nanaivant the closest living relative and the obvious candidate for the throne.

Nanaivant accepted the title of Shah at the age of twenty three, after a long childhood in
Konstantikert that was not so different from his upbringing in Belhrat. He remained largely
sequestered from the typical activities of young men his age, and he did not ride to war. Arjaxa
indulged these impulses, both out of a fondness for Nanaivant’s detached behavior and a
willingness to spoil what few members of his family were left alive. Once enthroned, he made
little effort to change, only now his behavior was more obvious to the courtiers and lords of the
Xasar Shahdom – brought into the cold light of day, his behavior seemed inhuman and
autocratic at the best of times, and downright sadistic at the worst.

Xsamandatta became all the more idolized for how perfect of a ruler he might have been, if only
he had lived. Everything Nanaivant did angered the nobility – he set himself apart from the
young lords with whom he had been raised and accordingly did not know his own retainers. He
refused to party with them in the Bakhtiyar style that was in vogue – he avoided their carousing
and debaucheries, and kept no concubines or lovers. He swung wildly between shy and aloof
and arrogant and sneering, reminding his servants and family that he was a God incarnate, and
forbidding them to look at him directly. If he had one talent, it was that he dismissed the small
army of sycophantic courtiers that had surrounded Arjaxa in his last years.

Nanaivant would not take the field of battle or indeed resolve many policy decisions. Ghazan
Shira Shah, a Christian Bakhtiyar prince in Anatolia, raided the frontiers with impunity, having
rallied many who dreamed of restoring the Roman or Asian Empires to his cause. Calling
himself Sublime Autokrator, he cut a dashing figure in fine armor on a swift Arabian horse, a
clear contrast to the pale, tired Shah hiding in his palace. While Ghazan Shira was far too weak
to seriously challenge the Xasar, he remained a thorn in the side of their Anatolian lords for the
better part of a decade.

Nanaivant would die in 1173, after a mere eight years of ruling, before he could do enough
damage to be a truly awful leader. A forty year old cavalry commander, the husband of Amadtra,
Arjaxa “Sebouk” was elevated to the throne by the army. In sharp contrast to the king he left
behind, he would spend no more than a total year of his fifteen year reign in Konstantikert. He
granted the nobility and soldiery vast estates in Anatolia, destroying once and for all the power
of the once great Asian landholding families and breaking the Bakhtiyar. Ghazan Shira was
killed and Anatolia brought firmly under Xasar control.

Arjaxa II would be followed by Xsamandatta Shah, a scholarly man who nevertheless shared his
father’s martial attributes, but perhaps a greater degree of prudence and pragmatism in how he
applied them. “Anatolia,” he said wisely, “is a vast sink into which we shall pour the whole nation
of the Xasar and find it emptied of its men and made effeminate by the proximity to the
Romaniki.” While Xsamandatta would have the great misfortune of reigning during the Flowering
Flesh, and was helpless to stop it, in the war-torn aftermath of the disease he sent out his
warlike sons on a series of vast and successful invasions of Frankish Europe, marking a shift of
the Xasar frontier westwards and demonstrating that he could strike at the Frankish kings with
impunity while their realm collapsed into disorder. He ignored the Bakhtiyar and their internecine
power struggles, preferring to focus on European affairs. However, he was also a patron of the
arts and music, and unlike Arjaxa he spent much time beautifying Konstantikert, expanding the
dockyards and building a new university just outside the city walls.

His eldest son, Drutasana, would seamlessly inherit Xsamandatta’s regime in the year 1221,
and although he was already fifty years old, he would soon earn his soldiers epithet for him:
“Conquering Lion.”

Southeast Asia

The Khmer Empire in the twelfth century was a curious institution. The Devaraja of Indranokura
was unquestionably the foremost ruler of a vast empire, a land of rich riverine settlements and
expansive temple complexes rising out of the deep forests. However, beneath the surface
Kambujadesa (as the Khmer Empire was known to its contemporaries) was a paper tiger – the
agricultural system that maintained it was dependent on artifice, continued internal political
stability, and the cooperation of nature. Unlike other comparable powers, such as the Champa
and the Chola, the Khmer were neither a maritime nor a particularly mercantile people. While
their large population and strong military allowed them to dominate their neighbors, they were
conscious that the world was largely leaving them behind. The arrival of Kitai fleets in the
thirteenth century would only confirm this sense of technological and societal stagnation.

The twelfth century was one of gradual changes. A succession of long lived rulers coincided with
an era of peace and prosperity. The Angkor Ayat formally adopted Mahayana Buddhism as the
religion of the state in 1178, relegating the old Hindu temples to a secondary position. New Wats
glorifying the Bodhisattva Lokesvara were built across the state and the “thousand handed
sovereign” took the place of Holy Visnu in many royal decrees. Gradually, Malay and Bharati
trading councils were established in the major cities of the Empire, and their foreign merchant
quarters were carefully regulated.

However, the thirteenth century was one of chaos. The plague saw the collapse of key hydraulic
works which had allowed the Kambuja to maintain their legendary prosperity. The Angkor Ayat
collapsed into warring factions, and a succession of short-lived rulers failed to ensure the
stability of the state. Sri Thep, a great Mon city that had long been subordinate to the Kambuja,
openly rebelled with the assistance of its foreign merchant community – leading to the Khmer
Empire turning on its foreign subjects in the Purge of 1232, which in turn lead to an attack by a
coalition of Malay states organized by the “Twelve Happy Sreni” of Kataha and backed by the
powerful navy of Srivijaya. While the Khmer army was distracted in Dvaravati surpressing the
Mon rebellion, the army marched on the Angkor Ayat and forced them to flee from Indranokura
to Yasodharapurait. However, the “Second Ayat” of the Empire, the ruling council of
Yasodharapurait, had grown weary of their status as the second city of the Empire, and
kidnapped them. The Raja of Yasodharapurait, Sriindravarman, met with the Srivijayan Admiral
and struck the “Golden Treaty” disavowing the actions of the previous king and gaining
recognition as sole ruler of the Khmer Empire. He renamed Yasodharapurait to Angkor Thom,
acknowledging its status as the sole capital of the Empire, and accepted the independence of
certain Mon cities in the former Dvaravati League before marching north and destroying the
Indranokuran army.

This shift in power might under other circumstances have been restorative, but in the current
situation it was anything but. The other subjects of the Khmer Empire realized how fragile royal
power is, and even as population rates stagnated and the agricultural systems of the core
regime fell into disrepair, the periphery bled away and the center preoccupied itself with ever
grander prestige projects, huge temples meant to overawe subjects who were purely concerned
with military power. Meanwhile, raids by the migratory Shan people contributed to a situation
where the “harmonious mandala” that was the Khmer Empire began to crack. Several battles
between 1243-1258 revealed the weakness of the Khmer military – even with overwhelming
Khmer numbers, the Shan and Champa managed to win startling victories over the new regime.
The Shan also assaulted the Kyauske Empire, ruled by a Raja Kysansittha. The Kyauske,
similarly dependent on carefully managed hydraulic systems, had been devastated by the Great
Plague, and the more arid northern regions in particular had suffered – leaving the capital of
Kyauske vulnerable to rebellions by the southern cities, chief among them Kusimanagara, which
gained independence in 1219 and was able to take a whole league of secondary entrepot ports
with her. Gaining an alliance with the Pala dynasty to the west, the Kusimanagara Ayat was able
to create a successful republican league in the south even as Kyauske was overrun.

Kysansittha, whose name recalled the first founder of his dynasty, was merely a boy when the
Shan, a people related to the Tai, came down from the hills and overran Kyauske. A tribal
people, divided into semi-feudal statelets, the Shan established a similar pattern of rule over the
north. Instead of cities they built fortresses, and thus the pattern of development along the
northern Irawaddi valley was substantially set back. Urbanization declined substantially, and
instead of a centralized tax base records show that the Shan focused more heavily on corvee
labor, indicating a regression from Kyauske’s more complex monetized economy. The most
powerful of these new Shan states, Hsriwa, would come to be a substantial threat to the
Kusimanagara, but not for the better part of a century, by which time the political situation had
substantially shifted.
God’s African Daughter

The Kay Empire of Kanem, two centuries after its founding, was a repressive but united
theocratic regime. Generations of peace had seen the Dalai, or Students, grow into an identity
that superseded ethnic or tribal-familial ties. By taking instruction in the Bible, by learning to
recite chapters and even the entire compiled work from memory, one could advance in the
consulted social ranking system of the Dalai regardless of origin or upbringing. If the Dalai were
strict in their application of the Law, they were also remarkably egalitarian, and adept in creating
a system where their peculiar brand of theocracy could self-perpetuate.

However, under Mai (King) Dawiti Kay, the Kanem Empire’s economy reached its lowest ebb in
centuries. The Hawwaya Berbers to the north had turned to raiding, because there was simply
no profit in the old trade lanes. As Africa turned oceanward, as the wealth of the Sahel went
towards the black waters of the Atlantic, the old caravan routes began to dry up – and the first
place this disaster struck was Kanem, the easternmost of the old roads. Bakhtiyar Egypt simple
did not send missions down into the desert – instead they warred with Makuria, driving a wedge
between African Christendom and the broader world. The Bakhtiyar were also the first to
actively incorporate Hawwaya clans around Cyrene into their state, further separating the region
along north/south lines.

The Kanem had always maintained, even in the period of great peace, an excellent military
force, adept at striking against the Berbers, Daju, and any rebellious southern peoples who
might secretly be hiding totems to false gods in their midst. Accordingly, a growing faction at
court argued that Dawiti Kay should go to war with the Hausa, and that by taking land on the
Niger they might once again become a great power in the world, linked back into the trade
lanes. Also, there were certain factions that had never abandoned their religious impulse to
spread the word of the Lord, and these emerged full swing once the notion of a war against the
westerners became real.

The first target was Potiskum, the chief city of the Ngisim. Ngisim, ruled by a political and
religious leader called the Kumu, defied the embassy of the Kanem, and according to legend
ordered their missionaries executed. After this outrage, the Kanem fell on the Ngisim in 1154,
destroying their city and temples. The typical scenes of triumph were enacted across Ngisim’s
central marketplace, where Dawiti Kay declared his victory in truly spectacular fashion. A golden
cross was erected in the marketplace, and those captive notables who could afford to buy their
way out of slavery were made to kiss it and denounce their idols. Those who did not were
summarily executed. This scene repeated in village after village, and the Kanem armies
marched onwards. Ngisim refugees fled en masse, spreading panic as they went.

The Hausa Kingdom of Kano, based around the eponymous city, was the greatest of the Hausa
Kingdoms, although it never achieved more than slight hegemony over its rivals. As tales of the
atrocities in Ngisim spread, however, these rivalries were put aside. The priestesses of the
various cities gathered together in Kano and held a conference where it was decided that the
Hausa would set aside their difference in the face of Kanem. According to the Kano Chronicle,
the “All-Mother” and high priestess of their faith gave such an impassioned plea that the
gathered Kings were moved to declare that they would not rest until Kanem was destroyed.

This Hausa confederacy was not perfect – indeed many cities would do little more than
contribute token forces, but it laid the stage for future pacts and unity. However, the King of
Kano, Gijimasu did receive aid from several kingdoms, including Kalawa and Daura, whose
swift cavalry would play a decisive role in the conflict to come. As a well situated trading power
with many links to regional states, Kano was able to leverage many allies and call in many
favors. Even the distant Mansa of Djenne, Nyingnemdo, sent tokens of aid and assistance.

“The Student-Kings,” Gijimasu is recorded as saying in the Kano Chronicle, “worship no spirits
save Atrocity. They will not honor the pacts that have made in this country. If you do not stand
with us, will you not fall in turn, slaves to the White Banner of Kanem?”

Many answered his call of war against the Student Kings, and the Kano Chronicle provides one
of the clearest pictures of West African warfare in this era. Cavalry dominated both sides, but
unlike the Xasar or European model of cavalry warfare, there were no charges with couched
lance or whirling volleys of arrows shot in the “Parthian style.” While the Kanem and Kano alike
went into battle well armored in mail, with their horses protected by padded cloth barding, their
cavalry were more accustomed to tactics that Europe might have called “light” – but were
devastatingly effective nonetheless. Riding in close, a skilled rider could loose javelins at rapid
speed, and carrying a quiver of ten to twenty, could wreak untold havoc on a dense infantry
formation or an opposing cavalry squadron alike, before riding in with sword or axe to finish off
the survivors.
The war would last five years, and saw relatively few decisive engagements. It is a testament to
the organization of the Kanem state that they were able to sustain a war on the offensive at
such long distances from their homelands, but ultimately their armies were decimated. The
Hausa were more familiar with warfare – internecine conflicts against their rival cities had
ensured a ready supply of veteran soldiers capable of training new levied troops how to fight. By
contrast, like many West or Central African states, the Kanem rarely engaged in full-scale
conflicts, and when they did were accustomed to having an overwhelming advantage in
numbers. Facing a foe who could easily bring tens of thousands of troops to a battlefield was a
new experience – the closest similar threat to the Kanem was Makuria, who were limited by
geography and accordingly would never engage in more than isolated proxy conflict.

Thus defeated, the Kanem signed a humiliating peace that recognized the Hausa confederacy
as its equal. With peace came a period of soul searching. What had they done wrong? How had
they defied God that he would punish them with defeat against a heathen foe? The ensuing
purges would be some of the most brutal in the Kay Empire’s history.

For the Hausa, victory meant newfound confidence and a self-assurance which led them to take
on a larger role in West African history…

The Bakhtiyar East

For most Europeans, the world to the east was the dominion of the Xasar. By happening to be
the closest heathen Empire and the latest in the long series of threats to Christendom, the
Xasar became synonymous with firearms, Buddhism, and all the exotic hedonism of the orient.
However, for the educated, all those things had their origins even further East. The Bahktiyar, to
the European eye, were all that was wrong with the east. Debauched and warlike in equal
measure, they symbolized the disorder and chaos of the eastern world. The pleasure-palaces of
the Bakhtiyar Shahs were populated with beautiful young girls and boys, and the Shahs and
their companions would drink themselves into a stupor while enjoying every sensual pleasure of
the flesh.

There is some truth, of course, to these tales. Certainly, the Bakhtiyar were influenced by the
ancient Iranian tradition of keeping a harem, and certainly the wine culture of the East had
flourished under Eftal, Turkish, and Khardi patronage alike. Strong beers and wines were well
known in the Bakhtiyar and Xasar courts, and intoxicants ranging from alcohol to cannabis to
khat to the zanj drink could be found in their cities. But if the Bakhtiyar were inheritors of some
sort of hedonistic tradition, they also ran sophisticated states with well-ordered governments.
Negotiations between the various Bakhtiyar states revolved around ceremonial gift-exchange
and the various “brother-kings” all respected each other’s legitimacy.

While border wars were a substantial part of the Bakhtiyar lifestyle, and an important way for a
new Shah to gain respect from his retainers, these conflicts were usually low intensity. The
Bakhtiyar did not fight wars for existential survival, but rather to shore up their positions in a
constantly shifting pattern of alliances and borders. Like the Khardi, each Bakhtiyar ruler
considered themselves to be a universal sovereign. For the Bakhtiyar, especially those of Tayzig
descent, equally important was the fact that they were a spiritual heir to Akhsau Mansar, who
was descended from the first Ifthalshahs and thus from the Askarid and Kayan dynasties of Iran.

The symbolism on Bakhtiyar coinage speaks to this. The King was always presented as an
idealized figure, lofty and divine, surrounded by Buddhist symbols. However, the writing on the
reverse was usually in many languages – in the bastardized Arabic of the Tayzig, in the Khardi
dialect of Iranian, or any number of regional languages. Everything was at one particularistic
and universal, and accordingly as boundaries shifted and varies Tayzig and Ifthal clans fell
under various monarchs they adapted with remarkable alacrity, finding one ruler little different
than another.

The three greatest Bakhtiyar dynasties were located in Iran, where the Ansara Suf ruled; Egypt,
the seat of the Mansar dynasty, and Syria, where the Haruniya dynasty ruled. Each of these
dynasties was confronted with unique challenges – for the Ansara Suf, those challenges
involved retaining control of Transoxania and bringing the various Turkish warlords to heel. The
Haruniya had to balance the interests of the large Coptic majority against that of their various
settler populations. The Mansar, despite the strongest manpower base (holding most of the
Ifthal and Tayzig country) were surrounded by threats and thus had to adapt to a state of near
constant warfare.

The coming of the Flowering Flesh did little to shake the Bakhtiyar regime – if anything it
strengthened it. As the great cities of the east were hollowed out by plague, the Bakhtiyar
themselves prospered by being able to fill the vacuum, rewriting once against the demographics
of the Middle East. Any ethnic map of the region would by an absolute patchwork – the sprawl of
Khardi and Ifthal settlements, the indigenous Syrian, Iranian, and Egyptian populations, the
Arabs and Turks and Tayzigs blanketed over the entire region, the legacy of successive
successful invasions.

Perhaps this is why, unlike in other parts of the world, premodern and indeed modern states in
the Middle East were never based on the idea of a common language group or common history.
The politics of ethnic and religious identity were always complex, always defied easy
arrangement. While the Bakhtiyar held absolute power as a martial aristocracy, as the era of
martial aristocracies faded away, what would replace them was by necessity deeply egalitarian
and confederal.
Urban development in East Africa

Historians have long questioned the exact pattern of development in the region of Africa astride
the Great Lakes. Relying on the courtly traditions of the Ganda and Nkore and similar Bantu
kingdoms provides an incomplete picture – but so too does relying on the often biased
travelogues of Indian and Savahilan adventurers. Archeology is little help, because the urban
foundations of the region were ephemeral and constantly shifting. The records of kings founding
settlements with every reign seems to point to the merest shift in political power necessitating
the evacuation of the entire royal enclosure to a new location, and according mass migrations of
the elites. The rural subsistence farmer or tributary landholder was too low in status to merit
mention in these accounts, and so their lives remain shrouded in mystery.

For the Indian travelers who came spreading Buddhism or Ishvara worship, or simply to trade,
there was little question of interacting with the impoverished or rural. They were inclined to see
the whole of the Bantu world as deplorable and degraded compared to the superior Kw’adza,
and their chauvinism is recorded quite plainly in the travelogues. Where the Kw’adza were city-
building rulers in the accounts of the Kapudesan merchant Bhiru Malagha, the Ganda king
Murindwa was a “savage chief who rules over a carnival.” Lake Nyanza was deep forest, and
would be until the rise of the Chwa monarchy circa 1250, whose work at land-clearing allowed
permanent and profound agricultural changes to take place.

The chauvinism was a mix of racial animosity inherited from India and a sense that forest-
dwellers were inherently inferior in some way to even the Kalenjin confederacy, who at least had
the sensibility to raise cattle beyond the boundaries of the forest in the north. What the
Kapudesans overlooked was the steady growth of the Bantu kingdoms, the migrations and
counter-migrations that were slowly shifting the balance of power in East Africa. In the reign of
Murindwa, a Nilotic-speaking people known as the Lwo crossed the Agoro mountains and
began threatening the Kalenjin, applying pressure on the Ganda. Eventually, a separate branch
of the Lwo, the Panyimur, would topple the Gandan kingdom in 1240. Another branch, the
Atyak, would crush Kalenjin and subject the survivors to their rule.

The origins of the Lwo are unclear, but it is believed that they came under population pressures
as a result of Makurian hegemony to the north. Some historians believe they were Christian in
the Makurian tradition, but there is no evidence for that conjecture in any Gandan chronicle.
Whatever their nature and origins, they did not long outlast their victory. The annihilation of the
Ganda state merely lead to the rise of successor states, and these states, though lacking the
centralization of the Ganda, were far more enduring and successful. The Kitara, Chwa,
Karagwe, and Nkore were the greatest of these states, but the chronicles of the Ganda refer to
even more polities than that: Ndorwa and Isingiro and countless others. Instead of competing
over centralized power, these polities actually migrated back out into the broader Bantu world.
The urbanized civilization they had created, merging Nilotic and Kushitic culture and ideas with
their own traditional agrarian practices, spread like wildfire across East Africa. In the country of
Rwanda, the Singa clan came to power ruling as a confederal monarchy in a style that would
not be unfamiliar to the Ganda.

What remains uncertain to historians however, is whether or not this was a simple spread of
ideas or of people as well. The impact of the Lwo has long been debated. Certainly the
destruction of Ganda acquired almost a mythic significance as a sort of “loss of innocence”
moment for the culture of the Lake Nyanza region. The collapse of the nation marks the end of a
golden age and the beginning of a more successful but also more brutal and less moral era with
less ancestral piety and more ambitious, scheming courtiers. Certain accounts speak of
“refugee kings” or “pioneer kings” but it is uncertain if these figures brought people or merely
ideas and belief systems with them out of Ganda. Certainly there is little genetic evidence for a
widespread exchange of population, but the scale is nevertheless disputed. Yet other historians
have argued, quite successfully, that the development of the Songye kingdom on the Lomani
river, the Boyomi Riverine Complex, and Rwanda is independent of the Ganda-Lwo migrations
entirely. They argue that the vast changes which took place in the Congo basin during the
thirteenth century were simply the culmination of existing trends in centralization and
development, and that the Ganda played no role at all. The division of labor was self-reinforcing
cycle which provided great returns to all who were involved in it – it raised quality of life and
freed many from backbreaking agricultural labor. Iron metallurgy was reaching new levels of
sophistication, and it was only logical that stone cities would begin to form.

The evolution of what most historians still call the “Ganda-system” of Kingship relates to the loss
of the King’s sacred authority to rule, ironically enough. In Ganda and Congo alike before 1100,
the Bantu kings retained the chiefly right to perform sacred rituals and enjoyed religious power.
After this time, that authority was slowly stripped away, replaced with an increasingly large
retinue of itinerant bureaucrats, councilors, and priestly figures. Bodyguards, dignitaries, judges,
and the like were rewarded in valuables and most importantly, a royal allocation of sorghum-
beer. These rewards necessitated additional agricultural surplus – and while land was abundant,
clearing it was intensive, so the corvee system gradually developed out of that. Labor-tax
allowed the Bantu kings to direct villages towards long-term productivity instead of what was in
their short term interests, allowing a steady but gradual population growth which in turn allowed
more specialization which in turn increased royal power. Most specialized artisans and court
dignitaries were either directly owned by the King himself in some form or other – effectively
indentured servants – but their children were free to travel to other courts and work for
whomever they pleased. Attracting talented workers into these contracts thus became a major
occupation in and of itself.

These changes allowed the Lake Nyanza civilization in particular to survive and thrive in
contrast to the Kw’adza and the new Lwo kingdoms to their north, which lacked this
sophistication. The Kw’adza in particular were increasingly becoming subsumed into the
colonial boundaries of the Kapudesa, and lacked the will to escape this gradual assimilation. To
compete with the growing strength of the Takama kingdom to their north, whose armies
seemed, in the words of Malagha, “larger and more vicious with each passing year, owing to the
movement of those retainers who flee the might of the Luoh and the civil wars of the north” the
Kw’adza were forced to invite Kapudesan soldiers into their midst. They lacked the indigenous
ironworking capacity to match the increasingly sophisticated iron weapons and armor of the
Takama and so came to rely on Kapudesan military forts deep in their territory for protection.
The introduction of coffee to the region was also a final blow to the autonomy of the native
kingdoms there. The Ma’a and Kw’adza had the misfortune of dwelling in a region where the
Zanj bean was best cultivated, and after the Kapudesa introduced the bean to the region, it was
quickly found to be more profitable than food production in many marginal areas. By the late
twelfth century, the Kapudesans were making an immense profit as coffee middlemen,
effectively running many interior tribes as plantations.
Treasure Fleets
Beginning in the 1230’s, Yaol Pusuwan expanded the borders of Kitai to the north, building the
major seaport of Yongmingcheng in Gamat Bay and bringing the peoples there under the yoke
of Empire. Under his nominal command, the Northern Fleet mapped regions long thought to be
devoid of interest, probing the arboreal vastness of the Siberian coastline and mapping the Kuyi
islands. They found teeming populations of whales thriving beyond the still tentative reach of
Ainu and Japanese fishers. They found deep uncharted forests and beautiful ranges of
mountains that might hide coal and other resources.

But their expeditions would take some twenty years to achieve the fame of the Three Treasure
Fleets. The first Treasure Fleet, launched in 1228, came only a short time after the Flowering
Flesh, and was launched by an active crown prince not unlike Yaol Pusuwan: Yaol Abodai was
another Kitai prince that chafed at the tedious confinement of palace life and so took onto
himself the immense task of organizing a massive naval expedition in a plague ravaged and
ruined China.

The First Treasure Fleet was small but overwhelmingly successful. The ports it visited were
open for business but largely devastated and depopulated. A comparatively enormous military
venture seemed incongruous to those who were faced with the arrival of the dashing prince in
splendid finery. Traveling across the Malay region and reaching tentative footholds into India,
Abodai produced a spectacular travelogue and did much to remind the weakened guilds who
the true power in Southeast Asia was. The Chola were capable of sending fleets into the Malay
Archipelago. They had done so on several occasions, to combat pirates and make shows of
force – but these fleets had withdrawn after the Flowering Flesh, and had been slow in
returning. As the local superpower, it fell to the Kitai to enforce order, seizing Liuqiu [1] from the
guilds after it had once again sunk into the status of a pirate haven, and providing assistance to
Srivijaya in keeping the region safe for merchant shipping.

While the Chola would return, they would find themselves outmatched. Yaol Abodai was not a
brilliant sailor or even a capable admiral, but his position in the royal court allowed him to
sponsor projects that others would have considered unthinkable, and maintain a massive
expeditionary fleet for generations at ponderous expense. Even as an old man, he fought tooth
and nail with three different Kitai Emperors to maintain his expeditionary fleets, and he would do
so quite successfully. By 1271, when the Treasure Fleets were long gone, the Kitai still had a
naval force based in the city of Temaseka, whose vital position on the straits meant that the
Chola were forced to accommodate the local Embassy rather than fight it.

The second treasure fleet, under Xu Biao, is perhaps more aptly considered as two fleets. One
fleet, under a series of subordinates, was retained in the “backyard” of China – doing yearly
tours of the Malay Archipelago, making diplomatic stops, presenting gifts, fighting pirates, and
mapping the region. However, the second and more glamorous fleet, under Xu Biao himself,
would travel first to India, where it stopped at the major trade hubs, cementing business deals
on behalf of distant Joint-Stock Companies and making business deals. While Xu Biao tried to
avoid interfering in local politics to a great degree, on several occasions he writes that he was
enlisted as an independent mediator, most importantly to solve a dispute between Bharukaccha
and the Chandratreya Maharaja.

Carrying on, Admiral Biao reached Arabia and then Egypt, where he learned much to his
disappointment that the Canal of the Pharaohs could not accommodate his vessels. Utilizing a
bank loan from Bharukaccha to feed and supply his men in harbor, he sailed upriver with only a
picked detachment, arriving in the capital city of Ilksadrana to much fanfare. He was pleasantly
impressed with the hospitality of the Bakhtiyar, but opted against traveling north to
Konstantikert, choosing instead to sail south through Kapudesa and on to Cape Watya, where
he acquired a great quantity of Red Tea as a gift to the Emperor, along with many exotic animal
pelts.

Fu Youde, who had previously been one of Xu Biao’s subordinates, was granted permission by
Abodai to launch the Third Treasure Fleet several years later. His was a scaled down fleet, and
his first port of call would be Mahavisayas, whose Raja greeted him well and agreed to the
establishment of a trading quarter for Chinese merchants. However, that was only a small part
of his mission.

One of the most stunning revelations brought back by Xu Biao was that there was a vast and
wealthy land between Europe and China, and not, as many in the Kitai court had presumed, an
immense ocean dotted only with tiny islands. If this knowledge had been known to many, it had
not permeated the highest levels of the elite until Xu Biao brought it directly before Abodai. And
yet, in one of the fortunate accidents of history, Xu Biao’s math was abhorrently poor. He
contradicted established measurements of the globe which were known by Bakhtiyar, Indian,
and Chinese mathematicians and philosophers alike – and yet Abodai bought into them at once,
and those who did know refused to contradict him in all but the most subtle ways. A secondary
appeal to the Emperor became bogged down in protocol, and thanks to Abodai’s persuasive
manner, enough of the common sailors became convinced of the possibility that they were
willing to outfit a massive expedition, thinking that just beyond what the Chola called the
“Furthest Islands” there must lie the landmass the Fula Kings had discovered.

Thus, Fu Youde would become the first person to circumnavigate the globe, and in the process
would see his fleet decimated. A single ship would limp into port at Shifu four years later with a
crew that was almost completely different from the original – but Fu Youde lived. Disease
wracked and preternaturally aged, he nevertheless clutched a journal whose findings would
prove monumental to world history.

Fu Youde’s Journey

Starting in 1259 and lasting until 1262, Fu Youde would leave China with a fleet of some twenty
ships. Merchants, astronomers, mapmakers, soldiers, navigators, sailors, prostitutes, diplomats,
and thousands of others clogged up the immense fleet whose design was foolhardy from the
beginning. In both the North and in Europe alike, expeditions were generally small affairs, with
stripped down crews and plenty of supplies. However, Fu Youde, at Abodai’s order, had
determined that resupply would be relatively easy. There was a general assumption that the
islands that lay between Solvia and China were rich and fertile and would be willing to trade.
While this was true, they were not capable of feeding such a vast fleet, and the moment the first
storm hit out in the open ocean, Fu Youde’s fleet was scattered to the winds.

Most of the regions to which Fu Youde travelled had either exceedingly poor historiographical
traditions, or were in a state of profound anarchy in the wake of disruptive invasions and
population transfers. Accordingly, it is difficult to prove that his writings are true. There are
records of his reaching Europe, as there are records of his arrival in Watya and the grueling last
leg of his voyage around India, but there are no indigenous accounts of his time in Solvia, nor
any accounts written by the Fula or Franks of that region.

The Third Fleet was first recorded arriving at a place they called the “Island of Stone Intervals”
which is frequently associated with the developed urban civilization present on Pohnpei[1], or
more recently, with the islands of Vauna or Viti, both of which also had stone monuments and
Melanesian peoples who match the descriptions given by Fu Youde. He described a civilization
that was to him an affront – although they had met with traders from Malaya, and even accepted
stone idols of the Buddha, the islanders he encountered still worshiped “cannibal spirits whose
hunger was rarely assuaged” and Fu Youde was deeply concerned with their seeming
hospitality. He described incidents of violence breaking out between crew and islanders, and
made his leave quickly.

Subsequently, Fu Youde lays out a tale of a miserable and degrading voyage across the
Procellaric, interrupted only by an immense storm laying waste to his entire fleet and scattering
them to the winds. When land was next sighted, there were only three ships remaining, their
crews malnourished and diseased. No other ship was ever recovered, although various
cryptohistorical tales have described arrivals across the new world, and sought to explain native
traditions and cultures through the lens of “Third Fleet Survivor” narratives.

The new land Youde’s flagship sighted was Tolteca, then firmly under the grasp of the aged
Mansa Njanire and the Queen Mother, Trese Cosca. The “black king” Youde describes however
seems to have been no more than some sort of local satrap, with limited authority.[2] The
hospitality of the Fula ruling class to strange wanderers was part of what would become a
cultural tradition – Tolteca did not turn away travelers who were hungry, poor, or wretched. They
remembered all too well their own arrival in Solvia, and their hospitality was in many cases a
clever marketing campaign. Seeing the bounty laid before them, Youde reports many of the
surviving crew deserted, and were welcomed with open arms by the local king, who was in any
case seeking fresh sources of manpower.

By the time they left Tolteca and made to round the Southern Extremity, Fu Youde only had
sufficient manpower to crew two ships. They had picked up several adventurous natives along
the route, but these men were according to Youde, of “poor quality, and lacked knowledge of
naval matters… They required complete training to be useful.” There was little time for training,
however, as the Southern Extremity was as brutal as ever – the very test of nautical skill that
had given the Procellaric Ocean its name proved more than the malnourished and exhausted
sailors could reckon with. The winds and currents were treacherous and separated the two
ships, leaving Youde’s flagship, the Emperor Taizong, alone. The second ship was never
recovered.

Now alone, Youde sailed onwards up the coast. He describes a period of peaceful journey. The
Emperor Taizong was repaired with wood from the verdant forests of Southern Solvia, and the
natives they encountered were generally quite peaceful and curious. His remaining sailors ate
well on a diet of tropical fruit until they reached a small and ramshackle colony on the coast
belonging to a group of Fula-Norse traders, who were able to give them a chart and explained
that their best bet for returning home was to catch the “Lesser Gyre” and then round yet another
“Southern Extremity” – Cape Watya. Youde describes the sense of relief which washed over him
when he realized that the name Watya was familiar, despite the difficulties of communicating
with the Norse mayor of the settlement.

It would still be many months before they returned home. Damage to the ship caused by a
transatlantic storm forced them to remain among the Temna peoples of the coast for some time,
before finally they reached Akanembe, the great trading port of the Ukwu kingdom. There, they
were fortunate to encounter a Chinese merchant from Guangzhou who was able to offer them
sophisticated navigational charts and provisions. From there, their next long stop was at
Izaoriaka, where they remained for several weeks after an attack by Savahilan pirates. Youde
describes an island torn by internecine feuds, but offers a historically fascinating, if brief, portrait
of Radamavarma, the man who would ultimately reunite the island, as a young child and
temple-hostage.

From there, Youde travelled north to the island the Arabs called Suqotra, after passing through
to take on fresh water and wine in Pazudesada, and then on to Arabia, where his men were
attacked by customs officials who did not believe their story and forced to flee. Youde paints
only a sparse picture of these regions, and has little positive to say about them. The Indian and
Southeast Asian legs of the voyages passed largely without incident – in familiar waters, the
threats to the crew were limited, and Youde describes a period of relatively pleasant travel and
readily available provisions.

By the time of his return, it would take several months to confirm his identity. All but five
members of the original crew were dead, and the ship crewed by a mix of what the Kitai officials
considered strange barbarians – Kru and Temna from Africa, Toltecans, several Izaoriaka, and
an Arab who had a “unique skill at languages.” The crew mostly spoke a bastardized mix of
Chinese naval terms and their own argot, which by necessity was somehow comprehensible to
all. The ship itself had been repaired so many times that officials struggled to identify it at all as
the original ship, leading to the scholar Zhang She to propose and discuss at length the
philosophical problem of the “Ship of Youde” – if every piece of a ship is replaced on its journey,
is it the same ship that departed when it returns?
[1] Pohnpei, as OTL, has constructed some pretty impressive stone settlements and palaces
despite a total lack of animal labor. It’s amazing what you can do with conscripted workers and
years of ingenuity.

[2] Later historians would identify him as the ruler of Akapolko, which at the time was only a
small coastal community – no more than a shadow of the major port it would become.

Europe after the Flowering

There was no greater shock to European settlement of the New World than the Flowering Flesh.
The Solvian colonies depended on a steady flow of reinforcements simply to survive, and when
those reinforcements were not forthcoming, they mostly withered on the vine. Colonies such as
Haiti were little more than depots for adventurers in any case, waystations at the end of a
transatlantic supply train. Accordingly, it should be little surprise that the 13th century was one of
enormous victories for the underdogs of Solvia. The Taino captured Haiti, and stubbornly
resisted several attempts by the Frankish to retake it. The Autotheist colony on Aravacia began
calling themselves the “Free Apostolic Order of Aravacia” – their attempt at creating political
legitimacy outside of the normal framework of Frankish sovereignty. Nanih as well was allowed
to survive, prosper, and continue creating its own unique identity.[1]

However, by the end of the century, new waves of European settlers flooded into Solvia. The
reason for this was twofold, and up to much debate from historians. First and foremost,
necessity was driving the creation of newer and larger ships – the Anglo-Dansk “Great Hulks”
which would become the primary model for oceangoing transport. Secondly, however, across
the European world substantial disruptions were motivating enterprising people with means to
escape to a new world of opportunity – and with travel becoming increasingly reliable and safe,
the risk and reward paradigm had shifted.

The collapse of the Frankish Empire was at first a seeming period of opportunity. The Danish in
particular saw it as their moment to “protect” northern lords and cities. When they seized the
great trading cities of the north, they did so under the auspices of the Frankish crown. This
decision proved fateful for the Danes – once brought into the politics of Germany, there was no
escape. The Poles became their bitter rivals, and northern duchies such as Saxony fought the
Danes fiercely for control over northern Germany.

Meanwhile, the Flowering Flesh gave rise to countless apocalyptic and millenarian movements,
mostly short lived but nevertheless devastating to Frankish authority. Theocratic movements
claimed that Votive War was incumbent not upon the ever-advancing infidel hordes but rather on
the Franks themselves, who had incited God’s wrath. Millenarian groups such as the “Children
of St. Adhar” and the “Righteous Apostles” sacked castles and instituted brutal purges of Jews
and outsiders and any who could realistically be blamed for the Plague. Monasteries were
overrun and burnt to the ground, the monks and nuns inside accused of sodomy and witchcraft.
With the authorities reeling from the shock of the plague, there was no-one to maintain order or
confront these roving bands until it was far too late and the damage had been done.
After the horrors of plague died down, and the millenarian movements faded from immediate
memory, the average peasant found their labor suddenly far more valuable. For once, Francia
was not overpopulated but underpopulated, and cities and towns desperately needed workers to
fill skilled positions which had been left vacant by the ravages of plague. “Fields are abandoned,
and the towns are empty. The dead clog our memories and all bonds of kinship lie broken.”
Wrote Bernard of Cleves, a thirteenth century monk and survivor. Many regions, now only lightly
peopled, saw the remaining survivors move to more heavily populated places where they had
better hope of finding community. The Flowering Flesh at once weakened and strengthened
identity. Family groups were devastated and broken, with old peasant communities being
shaken to their core, but these new post-plague communities were often exceptionally strong
and united by shared trauma and new charters.

The use of Moorish slave soldiers for the past few generations had also sapped the Francien of
their martial identity. The aristocratic cavalry and freemen levies which had once made the
backbone of European armies had gradually been replaced with what were effectively
mercenaries. The Moorish troops had several major advantages – they could remain in the field
indefinitely, they had loyalty exclusively to their owner, and they did not require lands or sire
children who could claim a salary. In short, they allowed any power with sufficient money to
raise an army and fight without having to personally invest themselves in the conflict to the
same extent. Furthermore, after the Flowering Flesh devastated Europe’s population, free levies
were few and far between.

The Moorish troops, both those belonging to the Imperial Crown and otherwise, were famously
brutal – ravaging the countryside without any particular investment in the lands that they
destroyed. Particularist tendencies, long rearing their head, became exacerbated. The newly
empowered cities and local lords alike felt that they were more or less on their own, and now
freed from the burden of central rule, began to fight amongst each other. Lesser nobles, once
confined to their station in life, suddenly found upward mobility as they took the places of now-
extinct families that had once ruled over them. Landholding peasants were able to expand their
claims and rule at least in principle huge territories that once had belong to their neighbors.

The Frankish Empire did not so much fall as rot away until it was meaningless. While certain
groups, such as the Poles and Danes and Xasar all did their part, attacking the Frankish
periphery and cutting off vast portions of land, the real danger came from within. Fewer and
fewer regions of the Empire paid taxes or acknowledged imperial authority, effectively
necessitating the use of the royal army as a profit-generating mechanism. Pretexts for
imprisoning and confiscating the lands of various Francien nobles abounded – refusal to pay
taxes being the most obvious, but claiming higher titles than they legally had any right to was
another common one. Since no noble in their right mind would submit to such demands, the
Empire gradually turned its constituent duchies against itself with increasingly outrageous
requests.
A succession of short lived Emperors preceded the fall of the Empire. Karl the Fat, Duke of
Montfort, became Lord of the Palace and spent much of his time expanding his personal salary
and demesne at the expense of rivals – employing a vast army of Moorish slaves. He placed
and displaced Emperors at will, seeking to appease increasingly rebellious German and
Ispanian nobles and avoid the very situation which ultimately killed him – the Francisau
Augustus, the newly-crowned King of Ispana riding north with his retainers and his own slave
army and slaughtering the staff of the Palace, sacking Aachen, and putting his own Emperor on
the throne in 1243. The Last Frankish Emperor, Aloysius XXI “The Pious” was bundled off to a
monastery in 1258 by Steninus Magnus, the Duke of Flanders, after Aloysius had demanded
tribute from the Duke. The slave soldiers in the capital offered to place the Duke on the Imperial
throne, but he refused, instead claiming the title of “King in Ghent” upon his return home.
Directionless, the Moorish troops simply looted the palace and began making their way home to
Africa – the story of their journey ultimately becoming one of the most famous Soninike epics.

Francia was thrown into even greater turmoil by the absence of any Emperor. There had not
been a King in Francia for centuries, and no-one could be found who wanted the Imperial title.
Claiming Imperium, once a desirable ambition, was now a guarantee that some outside lord or
king would take offense and seek to destroy you. Since 1239, there had been a “King in
Aquitaine Francia” ruling out of Bordeaux, but Henri de Agde, its ruler, was widely disliked in the
north. There were rumors he was a Tinanian heretic, and his armies took frequent journeys
northwards to raid and plunder ever since his 1241 marriage to the princess Magdalene,
daughter of Francisau Augustus prohibited him from raiding Ispana.

Ispana was one of the few places not to fall into complete anarchy. It had a long history of
single, central kingship and relative autonomy from the Empire. As a relatively rural country, the
Flowering Flesh struck less harshly and even when the Augustian dynasty usurped the last de
Toulouse King of Ispana, they were universally acclaimed and elected king by their lords. Since
their only land border with Francia was mountainous and easily fortified, they avoided the worst
of the endemic warfare and raiding which beset the rest of Europe.

By contrast, Italy had been tearing itself apart even before the Flowering Flesh, and somehow
the threat of the Xasar did not compel additional unity. Italy, like Francia, began utilizing slave
soldiers to great degrees,

By 1232, the Xasar were stationing a substantial fleet in Dyrrakhiu, and a succession of
aggressive Xasar Shahs saw no reason not to take advantage of Europe’s chaotic situation.
War against Christians was an opportunity for the Xasar nobility to gain fortune and acclaim, as
well as new territories. It was a way for the Emperors to solidify their position and in almost a
ritual sense, required to show that they were worthy of the throne. Technologically, by the end of
the thirteenth century the Xasar style of warfare was also far beyond anything the Europeans
were prepared to cope with. The Italian cities became increasingly dependent on slave soldiers
and Anglo-Dansk mercenaries for their defense in a time when the Xasar were bringing to bear
well-developed gunpowder weapons – the Chasarcanna – and had a highly professional
aristocratic army.
After a stunning naval victory at Siponto, the Xasar actually organized a proper naval invasion of
the peninsula. Landing at Andria, they secured the south with relative ease, sending the Papacy
into a frenzy. For the first time, Votive War was no longer a pipe dream but a daily reality. The
Papacy manufactured an alliance with the Exarch of Sicily and the Duke of Ancona, but the King
of Tuscia, Lorenzo Attonid, allied himself with the Xasar and conquered Ancona before marching
on Rome from the north. Only fortune and the arrival of a large Votivist army from Bavaria saved
Rome from falling.

[1] Yeah yeah, we’re gonna get into the New World later. Sorry for the extended teaser.

[Whoa whoa whoa, Mr. Lobster, you find yourself saying. What are all these places you touch on
briefly? Europe is a huge continent and you just tried to summarize a half-century of
development in about 1600 words. What does it look like? What are the major polities and how
are they organized? What the hell is going on? What is the Kingdom of Tuscia and who are the
Augustinians? What is happening in Germany?

Tell you what, avid readers. I’m gonna go back and do an in-depth update about the culture and
politics of every major Imperial “region” – Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. Then, I’m going to
cover the Anglo-Dansk and the Norse, particularly as they relate to the ongoing colonial hubbub
but also how they relate to European politics.

Then, I’m going to go to India, which has been woefully undercovered lately for how big of a
subcontinent it is.

Then we’re gonna hit up the New World once more. But if anyone has any questions about any
region, no matter how insignificant to the current “big picture” – just ask me and I’ll try to figure
out a good answer.]
Many Germanies, Many Kings

At the collapse of the Frankish Empire in 1258, Germany was a difficult beast to comprehend.
On one hand, it had stronger institutions than much of the now moribund empire. The Landstag
continued to meet in Metz. The Dukes and newly self-proclaimed Kings of its provinces clung to
power with the help of powerful free cities and ecclesiastical officials such as the Arch-Bishops
of Utrecht and Koln. On the other hand, the free citizens had grown stronger and their support
could no longer be taken for granted. Formerly “common” landholders had sufficient tenants and
economic strength that their interests were crucial in local lord’s pursuit of power or election to
higher rank.

Germany had possessed their own Kings since the 1123 rebellion, but this position quickly
evolved into a formality – traditionally the Duke of Saxony was simply elected the glorified
middleman between the Frankish Empire and the Germans. The Landstag itself was
responsible for paying tribute and taxes owed to the royal state, and finance was never under
the King’s authority. However, as the Frankish state continued to decline King Henry, the last
Saxon King, died childless of the Flowering Flesh. For whatever reason, the Saxons had still not
named a Duke when it came time to elect the King, and negotiations on that front deadlocked.
On account of this, by the time the Landstag next unified, they could not achieve a majority vote
for a new King – with most of the powerful Lords voting for themselves and pulling their vassals
to do the same.

A series of crises followed in the next few months – famines and peasant rebellions combined
with plague ensured the Landstag was forced to disband without electing a new German King.
The Saxon lords returned and appointed one Aloysius (the Fat) their Duke. However, he would
die of the Plague even as the Flowering Flesh died out across Europe – a final indignity for
Saxony. The Saxon lords were forced to respond to a Danish invasion, but without clear
leadership their efforts floundered and the Danish captured much of the coast and made the
next Saxon leader accept the title of Duke under their (nominal) rule. In the minds of most of the
Landstag, this diminished Saxon realm no longer had any right to rule them.

Vexed, the Moorish regent in Aachen, whose name was given as Stephen Musurius, sent
envoys to the various German lords, demanding taxes and the right to appoint a King. He
launched several raids into Germany but these met with little success, and in 1223 he was killed
outside Metz. Musurius’ successor, Suljanus learned his lesson and accepted the now clear
independence of the Germans. Instead of demanding taxes, he instead cleverly stepped in as a
neutral middle-man, offering title-granting for a price – either in money or lands. In this manner
he acquired vast estates across Europe, while elevating countless lords to Dukes or Kings of
their respective regions. Titleless freeholders could become barons and counts in exchange for
money, and general anarchy reigned for about a decade.

In 1231, at the annual meeting of the Landstag, the Kings of Moravia, Poland, and Denmark
were all invited for the first time, as was Suljanus[1]. Of these, Poland refused. Their conquest
of Polonia and Veletia had left them in the position of ruling over a great portion of Germans,
and their invitation had been an opportunity to open negotiation about the recognition and rites
of certain free cities and marchers in places such as Schetzin and Rougen, all of whom the
Poles were in no position to forbid from attending. Moravia was similarly Germanized, to the
point that the court and perhaps a plurality of the population spoke the German language
fluently – the division of Slavic dialects within their realm contributed to the use of German
among burghers, immigrant freemen, and the nobility. The Danes, for their part, had done much
to interfere in the ruling of Hamburg and Bremen, who acknowledged the King of Denmark as
their overlord, vexing the Duke of Saxony in his attempts to restore order in his territory. Forced
to move his seat to a newly constructed fortified palace at Heldesse, Duke Bernard was seen as
a laughingstock among his peers, especially King “Aloysius” Marten of Franconia, whose
declaration of royal authority was a result of a strong central position as he sought to carve out
an “Eastern Frankish Empire” with military might.

The 1231 meeting of the Landstag was famous for becoming the first “Metz Diet” – in short, it
simply did not end. Even when Suljanus was murdered outside the meeting-grounds by an
unknown killer, the meeting persisted. Negotiations were tense. Many lords were forced to
accept reduced titles or vassalage, and several kings, including Franconia and Pritzmark,
became mere Dukes[2]. The Danish crown agreed to abandon its vassalage over the Duke of
Saxony in exchange for recognized rights over many coastal cities, including some in Veletia
ruled by the King of Poland. Most notably, the King of Moravia was granted an annulment of his
previous marriage on grounds of (fabricated) consanguinity so as to be allowed to marry the
sister of the newly-elected Duke Steninus of Flanders, a sixteen year old boy given the title in
the sixteenth month of the negotiations after the previous Duke, Ademaris, went home in
exasperation.[3] After his marriage (which also took place in Metz) the King of Moravia was
named “a King of the Germans” in the official papers, and allowed to return home with the
promise that his envoys would have a voice in the Landstag.

This system of negotiation allowed the Germans largely to avoid future confrontations, and also
to avoid the chaos which gripped Francia for the next two centuries. Those on the border
certainly took some advantage (the Duke of Franconia seized Aachen and named himself King
in 1260) but in general the Germans did not interfere in the broader crisis. After 1231, the
Emperor in Aachen no longer had even the slightest authority over his supposed vassals, and in
1258, his last attempt to exert control would see him overthrown and unceremoniously bundled
away while the new “King in Ghent” grew from strength to strength.

In Germany, King Steninus Magnus deserved the accolades he received. He remained in

constant contact with his sister, forging an alliance between the Moravian court in Veligrad and
his own in Ghent which would have disproportionate influence over the Landstag after the
inclusion of Frederic of Swabia formed a mighty political triumvirate. After a clash with the
Saxons in 1265, Denmark became a secondary member of this alliance, at once creating a
north sea trading bloc of unprecedented influence. The Danish King Sven III married his
daughter to Steninus’s son Boudewin Adelinus, and later would assist the King in Ghent with
conquering Utrecht and much of the “Low Frankish” lands. After a long reign of 37 years,
Steninus had accumulated many titles: King of Freisklandt and Greater Vlaanders, Protector of
the Arch-Bishopric of Utrecht, Duke of Guelders and Holdlandt, an area which would become
known as the United Crowns or United Kingdoms under his son Boudewin.[4]

This state at first was a sort of chimera, but its power could not be denied. The Kings of Angland
were quick to recognize its power, and its ambitions would spread from Germany and the North
Sea to the New World and distant India.

Meanwhile, divided Germany remained divided. The Landstag in 1260 was divided into a series
of Colleges – at the top stood the College of German Kings, and below them, the College of
Lords, and the College of Cities. By his death, Steninus had made himself first among equals,
but this position was contested, sometimes with violence, by the Kings of Bavaria, who disliked
being trapped between Swabia and Moravia. Alfred the Hunter and his son, Otto, would engage
in three substantial wars against Moravia with the aid of an ever-shifting network of powers who
became known as “the Lords and Cities in Opposition” and yet King Boudewin, at his first
personal visit to the Landstag in 1273, declared that there was "one God, one church, one
people" to whom his fellow kings had a responsibility to protect and safeguard in their common
interest.

The real divisions lay internally, however, and these were reflected in this external politicking.
Bavaria was a nation of aristocratic lords and Votivists, famed as a bastion against the heathen.
By contrast, Steninus’ chimeric monster of a state was a “nation of freeholders and merchants”
– the influence of whom the Bavarian monarchy, and many of the greater names feared. The
post-plague world had seemed at first to weaken cities, but the hard truth was that if anything
social mobility had increased and the cities rebounded with astonishing speed. Steninus himself
was uncomfortably close to these “lesser names” and low nobles who had jumped far past their
position, and the “Lords and Cities in Opposition” broadly fought this trend – and yet ironically
their name itself evoked the power of the cities and burghers.

[1] However, Suljanus’ power was on the decline in court, and it seems likely he would have
been murdered if he remained in Aachen. He chose what was perceived to be an “out.”

[2] Ruling Dukes, it should be noted, sovereign only under the Emperor. By 1231, the idea of
making a single German king had undergone a decade of violence and interrupted Landstag
meetings.

[3] Ademaris was waylaid by bandits on his journey home. We can only assume Steninus was
responsible. Either way, he had a duchy awaiting him on his return, and was destined to finally
put an end to the Empire of Francia.

[4] Colloquially at the time the United Crowns were referred to as “Those countries and those
cities” or “those cities and lands” but as in OTL, it was an obscenely rich area, and Steninus
uniting it has created a real hegemon – especially given its now outsized authority in the
Landstag.
Battleground of Empires

Italy had always been accustomed to being the seat of Empire, even under the Franks. Rome
was here, and even if the Eternal City was a diminished shadow of its antique glory, the
“dowager queen” of Europe, its prestige diminished by the splendor of Imperial Aachen, Italy
remained critical. The cities and lords of Italy were used to privileges unknown in the other
sections of the Empire, foremost among them the Coronation Pilgrimage, which ceased first
with the coming of the Plague and then entirely in 1227 when the Moorish Regent Suljanus
refused to allow the Emperor to leave the palace. The Imperial Legate, one Antinous of
Clermont, was forced to make the ritual gifts in his stead – an unhappy compromise.

Italy was already a very mercantile region with a long history of relative social mobility – at least
in the urban regions. In this sense, the plague changed little, beyond increasing its dependence
on mercenaries and, increasingly, slave soldiers. However, the rural regions were a byzantine
patchwork of estates and landholdings. Unlike Germany, the free farmer was comparatively
rare, and most tenants were bound into antique contracts with varying degrees of social
mobility. Accordingly, Italian agriculture did not rebound nearly as quickly as many other regions,
which ensured that its cities began to stagnate to some degree in the latter half of the thirteenth
century. While other regions experienced stunning population growth, Italy lagged behind.

Politically, the dissolution of the Empire left each city and lord for himself. The interlinked levels
of administration which so complicated affairs was destroyed with alarming rapidity. City
councils issued orders arresting their local officials on various trumped-up charges and turned
swiftly on nearby landholders who seemed unsupportive of the new regime.

Slave soldiers, for their part, were a perfect remedy to the economic depression caused by the
plague. In Italy, unlike in Francia, slave soldiers were not paid at all, but rather offered a pittance
upon the termination of their contract. And unlike in Francia, where the slave soldier
phenomenon gradually declined after the terminal dissolution of the Empire, in Italy, it only
increased. Internecine war between the Free Cities increased to unheard of levels. Isolated by
geography from the rest of Europe, there were few existential threats to force the city-states to
cooperate, and the “Chasar” were not recognized as a threat until it was far too late.

Perhaps the most critical problem was that European powers were often cheerfully willing to
align themselves with the Xasar for short term benefit. Moravia turned a blind eye when the
Carinthian town of Laibach was sacked and turned into a Xasar fortress, because it brought the
Duke of Carinthia under their hegemony and put further pressure on Barvaria. The Attonid Kings
of Tuscia turned against the Papacy rather than accept that the Pope, not him, would get the
glory of being defender of Europe. King Lorenzo I captured Ancona and marched on Rome, and
without Barvarian intervention, the Xasar might well have conquered Italy.

The Xasar were not like the steppe barbarians of centuries past. Their armies were prepared to
take and hold territory, introducing bronze cannons to the European battlefield. While Italy was a
well-fortified country, its fortifications were useless against cannons, and it would take the better
part of a generation for adaptations to be made, and even then, their gunpowder weapons were
primitive at best until the end of the century. With their foothold in the south and their armies
horribly close to the north, the decade between 1260 and 1270 saw the Xasar operating in Italy
with impunity, gaining the submission of many cities, including Modena, Verona, and Pavia. The
Po Valley was open to them, and Europe seemed paralyzed with its own internecine disputes.
No great Votive War was launched – and apart from isolated skirmished with Barvaria, no major
European army could answer the Xasar.

Rome itself did not fall – although the reasons are unclear. In 1274, a Xasar army captured
Napoli, and although two years later they would be repulsed from Sicily without any gains, they
nevertheless had a dagger pointed at the Eternal City. Perhaps they were aware of the political
ramifications of a direct attack on Rome, or perhaps they simply did not view it as a sufficiently
wealthy target. Or perhaps, and more probably, they were overextended.

The Xasar were, to put it mildly, not Christian. All their territories save their Pannonian
heartlands and Thrace held sizable Christian populations, some more restless than others. In
Italy, they were forced to work directly with Christian cities whose officials they did not dare
replace with more tractable coreligionists. The heathen menace was accordingly overblown –
the Xasar were forced by grim necessity to be tolerant and indeed lenient to a degree which
made their long-term prospects in the region poor at best. The situation became even worse for
the Xasar in 1281, when the Iznagen King of Africa, himself a Christian, invaded Southern Italy
at the behest of the Exarch of Sicily and caught the Xasar on the back foot. Naples fell, and for
the time being the Xasar were stymied.

Italy, however, would remain the battleground of Empires. Two years later, the Kings of
Aquitaine and Burgundy would set aside their differences and launch a Votive War to retake
Italy from the Xasar. And yet the Italians chafed at the notion of Burgundian garrisons in Milan
and Pavia, and Burgundian lords being awarded fiefs where once their landholders had held
territory more or less unmolested by the Xasar. The pendulum continued to swing back and
forth, with various sides gaining temporary advantages and then losing ground once more, while
Italy bled.
(A few of) The Cities and Kingdoms of Italy

Tuscia – perhaps the greatest and also most degraded of the kingdoms of Italy, the Kings of
Tuscia are descended from the successful Florentine nobleman Atton di Firenze. Under the
Attonid dynasts, particularly Lorenzo I, Tuscia has become a strong independent state which
holds central Italy under its thumb. Cities such as Lucca, Ancona, and Siena all are under their
hegemony, and their military is one of the largest and best trained forces not belonging to an
outside power.

However, all this has come at a steep cost. Starting with Lorenzo I, the Attonids aligned
themselves with the growing Xasar threat, and in this way have preserved their autonomy and
power and even gained a substantial say in the affairs of the now diminished and impotent
Papacy. However, as Xasar influence on the peninsula grew, the Attonids increasingly took on
the role of collaborators and have been revealed to be utterly impotent in the face of Xasar
demands – handing over the cities of Spoleto and Perugia without a fight to the Xasar, and
allowing the construction of a Xasar garrison in Ancona. Their tribute to Konstantikert has
steadily increased. Under the terms of the 1263 Henet Concordat, Shah Ormatsidar became the
official overlord of Tuscia. When Lorenzo II attempted to object to this clause, the Shah simply
told him the alternative was war, and the Tuscian monarch accepted without a fight.

Sicily – The Exarchs of Sicily have never taken the title of King, but the title of Exarch has
acquired in the native tongue all of the connotations of that title. There has been an Exarch in
Sicily since the Byzantines installed Isidorios in that position over six hundred years ago, and
there is power and legitimacy in the ancient title. Nowdays the island is less Greek and more
Mauri in character, and the language they speak is a bastardized melding of a thousand
different mercantile tongues. Romanesque Cathedrals dot the skylines of cities which were old
when the Romans themselves were young, but these are juxtaposed against marketplaces
brimming with unfamiliar goods – spices from the orient which might have once cost a fortune
are now available to far greater numbers of denizens. The island is a haven for commerce,
home to one of the few banking institutions in Europe to survive the collapse of the Frankish
Empire intact.

Faith and trade are the cornerstones of the Exarchate, and while the latter has encouraged
Sicilian merchants to spread across the world, the former has incited a series of Votive Wars
against the Xasar. Unlike their brethren on the peninsula proper, the Sicilians disdain the use of
mercenaries and slave-soldiers. Their army resembles the professional fighting-forces of the
Isidorian and Severian Empires, and looks quaint at best in the modern era – their lamellar and
oval shields recalling an earlier era and a different war entirely. However, their troops are very
disciplined and have not performed inadequately despite their outdated appearance. Their fleet
by contrast is a modern but small force that has never outright defeated the Xasar, but has
inflicted some embarrassing draws despite limited resources.

Genova – from the gleaming Cathedral of San Christoforo to the Torre d’Essarca, Genova was a
resplendent city and one of the great trading ports of Italy. Defended by a mix of Scandinavian
and Saxon mercenaries as well as a substantial contingent of Soninike slave-soldiers, the pre-
conquest Genovan army was every bit as colorful and fanciful as the city’s reputation. A council
of merchants overthrew the Viscount of Genova in 1246 and elevated one of their own to the
position, Ottocaro di Cuessi, whose true colors as a vicious and populist tyrant were quickly
revealed. The nobility had their estates confiscated en masse, and the di Cuessi became reliant
on mercenary forces entirely.

Various members of the di Cuessi trading family would rule Genoa henceforth. Subsidized
bread and games kept the populace of the unruly city in line, while their army engaged in
various foreign adventures with limited success. After the Xasar invasion began in earnest,
Genova sent some three thousand soldiers to Solfertino, but none returned. Three years later it
would be captured. The di Cuessi were maintained with the help of a group of Xasar “advisors.”

Mantova – Mantova has been elevated since the Xasar conquest. Once one of many cities on
the “Imperial Route” it enjoyed great privileges but its position was not as good for trade as
many of its rivals. Accordingly, during the early period of the anarchy it was often fought over
and rarely had the funds to raise its own mercenary forces. Accordingly, it embraced the slave
soldier system to an unprecedented degree, most notably in the creation of an elite unit known
as the “Hundred Lions” – African soldiers chosen for their intimidating size and armed with
heavy axes. Whenever any number of the Lions died, a new soldier immediately took their
name and identity. The leader of the Hundred Lions, who was always for some esoteric reason
named Martino, slowly gained political power over the course of this period, and Mantova
gained a reputation for one of the strongest militaries in the area – inflicting harsh defeats on
Pavia and Verona.

Accordingly, it was Mantova who the cities rallied around during the Xasar invasion, and
Mantova was one of the first to fall. Solfertino saw some thirty thousand Italian mercenaries and
noble retainers gathered together on a single field, facing the vanguard of the Xasar invasion –
some twenty thousand cavalry. Despite a heroic defense, the Italians were only able to stall until
the main body of the Xasar army arrived, marching through the night to outflank their camp and
cut the army off from Mantova. After that point, the battle was lost. Many of the mercenaries
sought to return to their cities of origin, and the isolated Mantovans were annihilated.

By 1270, however, Mantova is one again important, now as the Xasar provincial capital over
Northern Italy, a distinction it won over Henet.

Ravenna – Ravenna remains free. A hiding-spot for dissidents and exiles and the multitude who
might have fled the Xasar menace, Ravenna is one of the few independent polities on the
peninsula who have not had to make any concession to the heathens. Perceived as defensible
because of its swamps and marshes, the truth is that the Xasar are more than willing to accept
an outlet for exiles. The Satrap of Italia realized early on that every nobleman who flees to
Ravenna is one more who doesn’t offer his sword to Burgundy or Bavaria. Accordingly, the “City
of Exiles” is clogged with impoverished aristocrats and their households, and presumably will be
until such a time as the Xasar are able to complete their conquest of the peninsula.

Medilan and the Western Cities – Medilan is the loose hegemon over the western cities,
including Pavia and Torino, and whoever controls it seems to control the region entire. Most of
the time since the Empire’s fall, that has been the Xasar. After Solferino in 1262, Medilan fell two
years later and Torino the year after that. For nearly twenty years, the people of the northwest
would chafe under the Xasar yoke, until the Burgundian Votives arrived in force.

Almost immediately, the Burgundians confiscated the lands around the western cities to award
as fiefs to their nobility. Italian nobles were arrested and executed on trumped-up charges
ranging from “intercourse with the heathen” to outright witchcraft, and the Burgundians, filled
with a sort of fanatic zeal that was equally mixed with greed, did absolutely nothing to prevent
the entire region from turning against them. For the next five years they would be faced with
peasant rebellions and general anarchy until the Xasar returned and swept the region back
under their control. By this point, the countryside was devastated and the cities of the area were
much reduced in population.
Kalapirar

In the post-plague Indian subcontinent, it seemed that the Republican experiment had failed.
The revolutionary development of the Equal-Kingdom had largely been rolled back by powerful
dynastic kings and their armies. Outside of the city ayat, the guild-republics of old were all but
destroyed, overrun by the Askunu and then the Pala in rapid succession. If the Pala and
Chandratreya dynasts were willing to compromise with local representative groups, that was not
so different from the situation under the Gupta or Maukhani. A goshthi historian of the era might
have been forgiven for assuming that the era of revolutionary change and uncertainty was at an
end, and that affairs in Bharat would continue the way they always had. Victories throughout the
30s by both the Pala and Chandratreya against the lesser feudatory states in the north and
south alike were seen as the inevitable march of universal empire.
But as a tidal wave is invisible to a ship at sea, to too was the continuing march of progress
invisible to those in the midst of it.

Chola dominion, although it seemed stable, was always based on the feudatory states –
numerous vassals who had broad autonomy. Economics had always kept them in line – the
Chola were simply too rich and prominent to defy, and their system of regulated tariffs benefitted
the Companies and Guilds alike. Even while Chola ambassadors could intimidate the cities of
Andhra and Utkaladesha, they sometimes struggled to keep their rich vassals closer to home
content.

Maharaja Kulottunga (1223-1231) and his nephew and successor Vikramchola (1231-1244),
were weaker rulers than many who had come before. However, the personal strength of the
monarchy had largely been somewhat irrelevant for some time – power was increasingly shifted
towards institutions such as military and commercial groups. The role of the monarchy was
increasingly ritual and judicial, with independent arms of the Chola government acting according
to their own interest. In the post-plague era, the restrictions that the Chola had put in place to
prevent the rise of an Ayat or the development of the equal-kingdom based on northern patterns
were weakened as part of a series of far-reaching reforms. Vikramchola’s repeal of certain
esoteric temple patronage laws was but a first sign of these changes, and the increasing
dependence of the Chola on the banks.

In 1238, the first factory dedicated to the mass production of tufenj opened, run by the
Cevirukkai Joint-Stock Company. The Chola, Chandratreya, and other polities had long
attempted to keep the secrets of firepowder and particularly the creation of large guns for
themselves. State secrecy laws had been a key portion of this. However, in the disastrous
aftermath of border-wars with the Chandratreya, the Cevirukkai, a guild of brassworkers,
convinced the state that mass production was their only hope to counter the more numerous
and more tactically skilled Chandratreya in future wars. Cevirukkai tufenj became ubiquitous
across South India and in time much of the world. The Pazudesada word for tufenj, “kebhir” was
even said to come from the Cevirukkai, although the etymology is regarded by many linguists as
uncertain.

The proliferation of firearms, both small and large, would have startling long-term ramifications.
The power of caste in India had long been on the decline – the old guild systems, so based on
social hierarchy, were weakened by the emergence of new corporate structures which
disregarded these antique protocols. The joint-stock company was too ruthlessly profit-focused
to care who they employed, and in the aftermath of the Flowering Flesh, social mobility was far
more commonplace. The cities, especially coast ones, were places where caste simply didn’t
matter – for centuries they had accumulated the cast-offs of rural restructuring and economic
migrants, and reorganized them by guild identity. But when the great plague struck, guild identity
suffered a final deathblow.

As of 1250, a group of wealthy scholars called the Ariyar were the real power behind the throne
of the Chola state. Their origins are unclear, and there are clear parallels to the goshthi
movement, the Ariyar were property owners – rich merchants and landlords rather than
bureaucrats and priests. The goal of the Ariyar was not necessarily governance but rather the
accumulation of capital and in all political matters they took a generally laissez faire attitude. Led
by the Kashyapani family, the Ariyar were able to create political networks based on trade ties
that finally put an end to the Chola-Chandratreya rivalry, and would eventually put an end to the
Chola dynasty entirely.

The Kashyapani family had been in the banking business for almost two centuries, and had
accumulated lavish wealth – the sort of money that could buy whole empires. While banks were
numerous, the key to the Kashyapani dominion was that their promissory notes were accepted
the world over as a sort of “gold standard” – and that the Kashyapani were notably
unscrupulous in their willingness to deal with any of the major factions in Malay Island spice
gathering. However, this unscrupulous reputation in the Malay islands eventually led to
complications. Growing Kitai power provided a counterweight which allowed Temaseka in
particular to defy the unequal trade deals that Tamil merchants had typically been able to
enforce.

What would follow was an era of proxy warfare and eventually, outright Chola interference. The
Chola launched their own counter to the Treasure Fleets at enormous expense, and after the
Srivijaya crushed one of them in open battle, the monarchy was forced to redouble their efforts
to save face. Where some might have decided to stop, the Maharaja of Chola was compelled to
continue sinking resources in the Malay islands, lest his vassals think he was weak. Beyond
mere prestige, there was also the matter of state debts – after the first fleet was destroyed,
further fleets were made by taking massive loans from the Kashyapani, loans which left the
Chola utterly beholden to the banks.

In 1267, the Chola lost yet another expedition, and the Kashyapani decided that there would be
no more loans. After this proclamation, their fellow Ariyar read the writing on the wall. The Chola
dynasty was done.

This series of crippling defeats led to the feudatory Narasimha Hoysala, a prominent member of
the Ariyar, declaring open rebellion against the Chola in 1271. He received thousands of tufenj
and other weapons from the Chandratreya cities, who were happy to see one of their old rivals
fall into disarray. The Chola themselves had never had a spectacular land army, and with
Chandratreya advisors drilling the Hoysala army, the Hoysala were able to break away and
force the Chola to acknowledge them as an independent state.

In 1289, these disasters became too much for the Chola’s remaining vassals to bear and the
Chola were overthrown. Their successors were the “Latter” Kalapirar, a lesser feudatory dynasty
who claimed continuity with the ancient Kalabhra. Despite holding geographically less territory,
the Kalapirar had ties to the Ariyar and the Banks, and were able to quickly appropriate the old
Chola trade ties and establish some degree of continuity of governance. While the Kalapirar
began their reign promising to pass legislation to limit the power of the powerful banking families
over the state, they were also clever enough to realize that they needed the banks to survive,
and thus compromises were quickly made.

The Kalapirar, however, had learned from the mistakes of the Chola. Immediately upon
ascending the throne they embarked on a purge of any vassals who might have “retained
sympathies” – arresting many and confiscating vast tracts of land so as to make them a power
independent of the traditional networks of feudal power in South India. Instead of granting land
to supporters, the Kalapirar, taking for their own an Ariyar recommendation, decided to only
lease land to their political allies for twenty-year periods, preventing the rise of a feudal
aristocracy with a single stroke of the pen.

The final era of the Chola was also one of stunning artistic and cultural achievement in
vernacular writing. The wandering ascetics of the south, the Cittar, continued to create profound
works of religious poetry, while filling a philosophical and scientific role which in the north often
was taken by the Buddhist schools and monasteries. As advocates for the abandonment of
material wealth and the pursuit of pure enlightenment for its own sake, they often found
themselves at odds with the secular and politically aligned Ariyar – who ironically often still
patronized the Cittar as a way to convey social status and (theoretically and ideally) exert
influence over their teachings.

Ethnic and cultural tensions became more significant. The Kannada speaking Hoysala dynasty
felt increasingly less kinship with their Tamil overlords, and on both sides of the language divide,
companies and rulers patronized artists and scientists who wrote in vernacular. While certain
universal groups such as the Ariyar transcended these increasingly calcified divides, they were
the exception. The Veeradharma Printing Company, the first of its kind, was founded in 1217,
during the height of the plague in the city of Madurai, but many would follow in its wake.

The printing press allowed the mass production of the great Tamil Epics, a variety of ancient
moralistic tales which demonstrated proper social conduct and religious practice while providing
entertaining stories and popular culture heroes. Tamil vernacular literature borrowed heavily
from the examples of Sanskrit court poetry, but it infused the tales with a distinctly regional
sensibility which allowed the common people to identify with its narratives, despite how fanciful
they often were. At the injunction of the Cittar and their royal patrons, the presses were also
required to print an equal number of standardized religious texts – an attempt to unify sect
practices and syncretize diverse beliefs.

Where once literary and religious debate and criticism were purely the province of small elites –
the goshthi and the Ariyar – increasingly these debates were the province of what can only be
termed an urban “middle class” of literate artisans and merchants who were excluded from the
lofty circles of the elite. The foremost difference between these groups was the content
discussed – the ariyar in particular still preferred their literature in Sanskrit and had access to a
far more global body of religious criticism as a result. Across the southern half of the
subcontinent, the middle class was far more focused on their own culture and identifying their
own cultural signifiers than the notions of universal religion, culture, and statehood with which
the goshthi identified.

The Two Africas

When composing a eulogy for Amazigh paganism, it is worth noting its stunning longevity.
Across much of Eurasia, a people’s first encounter with a proselytizing religion represented
nothing short of the first death knell for their traditional faith. Amazigh paganism defied those
odds, and anthropologists seeking an explanation for its endurance have sought many answers.

In short, it does not seem that Christianity had a strong appeal to the Amazigh peoples, and
even when it came into predominance among them, they always kept their own distinct cultural
traditions and never, as the Mauri did, assimilated into the Latinate world. Even as they became
Christian, the Imazighen never became European. As early as the twelfth century, trading
contacts with Ispana had brought the Masamida King to Christianity, and over the rest of the
century the majority of his people would convert.

The remainder of the coastal Imazighen would take longer. The Amazigh Igillden there had
generally fewer trading contacts with Europe, and what contacts they did have were mediated
through the Mauri. While missionaries did travel into the interior, they generally made fewer
converts. The tribal groups of the interior by and large knew of Christ – but they also knew their
traditional deities were an important part of their clan identity, and to repudiate them would
mean repudiating their clan. Accordingly, the interior remained poorly Christianized. The interior
simply didn’t care if the coins from Carthago now hailed “Isau Karst” as the one and only God.

However, Christianity slowly spread through the interior. The last king to convert was the
Iswaiyen Agilld in 1187, and he received the title of “King of Africa” from the Pope in exchange, a
title he shared with the Iznagen Agilld, who was his brother-in-law. With royal conversion
complete, many tribal elites weighed their options and determined that conversion was an
excellent way to gain royal favor – signaling to their subordinates and family members that
conversion was now acceptable and would not see one lose prestige within the family group.

A second theory argues that this slow spread was not the true death of Amazigh paganism.
That, they claim, came later, with the mass conversion in the wake of the Flowering Flesh.
Temples to Idir and other local deities, they note, were still in regular use until roughly until 1230,
and still received substantial donations and were able to maintain large staffs of priests for at
least two decades past that date.

The mass conversion due to Plague theory is more controversial. It rests on an assumption
which is difficult to prove – the Mauri, culturally, maintained the old Roman custom of public
bathing and accordingly their better hygiene allowed them to survive the Flowering Flesh at
greater rates, and that this higher rate of survival was taken as a sign of divine favor. Other,
more plausible theories point to the work of Christian churches and monasteries as hospitals
during the plague times currying favor with the lower classes and motivating a large-scale mass
conversion, even if people maintained some sentimental attachment to their own temples for at
least a generation or two longer. Indeed, many Christian churches in Africa were called “Church
of the Hospital” or something to that effect – and many Mauri patron saints were associated with
healing.

Whatever the case, by 1250 Christianity was firmly entrenched across North Africa. The Kings
of Africa had always known themselves to be part of a larger world, but for centuries they had
allowed that connection to be mediated by the Mauri, who now were increasingly absorbed into
a state whose identity was no longer defined along tribal lines by religious ones. In 1253, the
two Kingdoms of Africa were officially united after the childless death of one King Vivirgh. The
resulting Kingdom would become known as the “Kingdom of the Two Africas” and in 1281, its
King, Iwna Isemrases II, would be instrumental in repulsing the Xasar.

Of the two “Moorish” Kingdoms, the Two Africas was much more oriented towards the
Mediterranean. Unlike the Masamida Kingdom, there was no overseas avenue of expansion –
Ispana and the Masamida controlled the route in that direction. Rather, the ambitions of the Two
Africas lay closer by – and consisted primarily of an ill-fated rivalry with the Xasar. If the Mauri
were excellent sailors, they were also few in number and the Kingdom that patronized them
lacked the immense resources of the Xasar state. Flush with their initial victory, King Iwna made
the Exarch of Sicily his vassal and provided troops to garrison the island.

Nothing could prepare him for a string of naval defeats, most prominently the Battle of the
Burning Masts, off the coast of Syrakusa. The Mauri fleet was annihilated by a Xasar navy
willing to employ firepowder to remarkable effect, tufenj-volleys sweeping the African decks
clear, allowing the Xasar ships to close with their foe. When they came close, instead of
ramming or boarding, slingers were ordered to lob grenades of naphtha onto the decks. A strong
wind whipped the flames into a frenzy and the Xasar ships retreated to watch their handiwork –
a fleet consigned to the waves along with the pride of Mauri seamanship. Within two months,
the Exarch of Sicily found his island occupied and his own days numbered.

When word reached Carthago, Iwna himself was overthrown by his brother, Azerwala. All of the
Two Africas was in utter shock at the loss. Even as the Aquitanian Votive War reached its
climax, the bulk of the African tribal armies were trapped on Sicily, retreating southwards
towards a naval rescue that could not come. Instead, the field commander, one Maysara of Hifo,
was forced to agree to humiliating terms in order to guarantee the safe passage of his men
home. Azerwala’s first action as King would be to requisition funds for a massive indemnity, and
it a testament to his leadership that the Two Africas did not collapse.

-
None of the otl major cities of Morocco exist, alas - so the name will probably become
something totally different. Aghmat is the current capital.

Venice is mentioned twice in the Italy thread, but in such a way that nobody would ever really
know - Henet is the Xasar name of a small fortified dockyard constructed by the Xasar near the
site of OTL Venice near Aquiłegia, the largest city of the TTL region. ITTL, there were never as
many incentives for people to utilize the coastal lagoon system to hide from warfare or invasion.
While a modest population of fishers and traders moved to the area during the Khirichan raids, it
simply didn't develop into a metropolis of the same import. Aquilegia (OTL Aquileia) is actually
substantially bigger because it was subjected to less warfare, and the only people to conquer it
(besides the Xasar) were the Khirichan briefly, and they just used it as a base for further raids
and thus were shockingly lenient in their treatment of the city (although many of its antique
treasures and relics found their way to marketplaces in Tangrabad).

Henet, interestingly, is home to one of the few Buddhist stupas in the Italian peninsula, although
it is a small one.

Ahh that's a big question. But here's a quick recap from the previous thread: The Xasar were
originally a tribal group under the Gaoche (Tiele) confederacy, who themselves were
descendants of the Xiongnu and federates of the Rouran (Ruru). Along with the Sahu and
several other groups, they were defeated by the Eftal Shah Khauwashta in 528. Stymied, they
turned north and migrated around the Caspian Sea, crossing the Volga (Rav) in 534.

Previously, the Xasar were an Iranic people who had assimilated many Turkic customs and the
Sahu were a more traditionally Iranic tribal group. However, by 534, it is best to think of them as
one singular people, and TTL chroniclers use the names somewhat interchangeably. Upon
arrival in OTL Ukraine, they assimilated many Hunnic and Bulgar groups into their ranks.

As time passed, the Sahu and Xasar began to diverge once more - the Xasar being the western
satraps who identified to a greater degree with their Bulgar and Turkic heritage, and the Sahu
being the Iranian and increasingly settled agriculturalist peoples who identified with the broader
Eftal civilization. Eventually, the Xasar would move in force into the Bulgar (Kutrigur) and Avar
countryside and would assimilate these people as well. Thus the Xasar are an Avar-Hunno-
Bulgar-Turko-Iranian tribe that has assimilated many diverse cultural influences (including plenty
of Eftal, Slavic, and Greek) to create something at is authentically and uniquely "Xasar" without
analogue in the OTL world.

The Bulgars don't exist as a people outside of the Xasar anymore. Thanks to vagaries of history,
the Kipchak were under the Uighur Confederation and then invaded India and were defeated.
Some of the survivors slowly left the Tarim basin and became mercenaries in Iran and
assimilated into the Ifthal military class. Others remained in the Tarim and became merchants
and soldiers in that region. The Oghuz are represented by many different clans in this story - the
Afsar being one of the prominent ones. They rule a broad area around the Aral Sea. Other
Oghuz groups have intermarried with the Afghans, creating the Turko-Afghani dynasties such as
the Askunu who have raided India for decades now. Other Turkic groups, such as the Pechengs
(Bajinak) have settled on the upper Volga and in Aduristan.

The steppes have seen some of the most radical changes, in part because butterflies have
been most concentrated there. Our PoD began in Central Asia, and the enduring Eftal Shahs
scrambled the fortunes of every single historical steppe people. However, as time goes on, I've
focused less and less on the steppes because quite simply they have less impact on the
surrounding world.

TLDR: They're Buddhist Turko-Iranians who function as an Analogue Ottoman Empire.

-
The area known as
Switzerland is, I believe, pretty much divided into Romance dialect and Germanic dialect
speaking zones, but that's exceedingly rough. Burgundy controls most of it, the rest is in the
hands of various German-dialect-speaking counts and dukes. Alas for poor little Switzerland, I
haven't given them much thought. If anyone wants to comment on them, feel free.

What threats from the East? If the Rusichi turn on the Xasar, the whole Xasar diplomatic
paradigm is broken down. There might not be as much of a unified sense of Buddhist identity[1]
compared to say "Christendom" but the Xasar and Rusichi know that they're the two bastions of
their own worldview against the monotheists - and furthermore have been working together for
over a century or so - a long alliance by the ever-shifting standards of modern European politics.

The other threat could come through the Bakhtiyar, but the current Bakhtiyar don't pose much of
a threat[2], and the Xasar are interested in and willing to work towards keeping the east divided.
Armenia is the sole eastern Christian kingdom that might pose an issue, but they're too weak to
do more than pick at border spoils.

Plus their naval strategy isn't all that costly. The scale of these navies is relatively small for now.
There was never a foe like the Arabs outright challenging naval dominance of the Mediterranean
and threatening shipping until the Xasar started doing it. Generally everyone was perfectly
content to keep Mediterranean trade working and flowing. Sure, systems broke down some
times - but the Xasar are the first to really gun for Francian trade in a big way. Before them
nobody had the means and the will to antagonize Latin Christendom like this. The short term
rewards are pretty big as well - dominance over many major Mediterranean ports and cities.

The question I suppose, is multifaceted: will the Xasar go to far, have they gone too far already,
and what will they do about it? I'm curious to hear other people's opinions. Sure, the Xasar have
definitely stretched with their conquests of the Balkans and Asia Minor. Now they're stretching
again. I'm not sure I've decided what the breaking point is.

[1] There is definitely a sense of the "community" of Buddhist adherents, of course.

[2] Why not is a bit interesting, but it boils down to the fact that the Bakhtiyar era has seen
military sizes diminish - increasingly elite forces fighting increasingly less decisive
engagements. For the Tayzig, wars are an extension of tribal politics, a worldview the Ifthal have
always been willing to agree with. At this point, the Bakhtiyar dynasties aren't really fighting to
kill - unless the threat is internal rebellion, in which case the gloves come off.
-
 Andhra

Andhra was more of a geographic expression than a country in the early commercial era.

Narayanaksherta, the great port which dominated her economy, had no control of the hinterland
in the early twelfth century. After decades of slow, halting rise to power, of abortive raids on the
“Bandit Raja” of Vinukonda and snuffing out his vassals one by one, the city reached the
apogee of its power around 1045, when the Kalapalar dynasts (mere puppets of the Ayat) were
considered to be sovereigns over the whole country. The Ayat itself, composed of the many
guilds, came into possession of appropriated landholdings from the old vassal dynasts.

The transition from merchants and artisans to landholders shook the old guild system. As
Narayanakshertan politics grew increasingly partisan and volatile, the ranking leaders of the
guilds, those whose deep pockets maintained the system, withdrew to their rural estates. There
they could avoid the violence of the City in idyllic comfort. The Kalapalar monarchs themselves
died like flies. The Ayat took on the role of dragging fresh royal children out of the bedrooms of
concubines and scheming to expand their personal holdings. Guilds turned against guilds – the
weavers went to war with the ironworkers, the shipbuilders with the judicial guild. There was no
logic to these conflicts – it depended on the whims of now distant landholders whose estates
made them no different than the old dynasts. Their fortunes were tied as much to land as to
labor or material wealth, and thus they had little to lose in pitting their friends and foes against
each other.

In 1144, open street fighting broke out for the first time. Sporadic bursts of extrajudicial fighting
were not rare before, nor targeted assassinations. But active civil war was a horrifying novelty.
The Ayats broke and scattered, and the guild system was in ruins. One of the last Equal
kingdoms to fall, fell.

The collapse of the state allowed the Chola to move in. Yerrapragada Vemakana, a local
nobleman of distant relation to the Kalapalar, arrived in the court of the Chola Maharaja with an
interesting proposal. He called upon the Chola to take control of the entire region, and he had
the backing of almost the entire commercial establishment in this. Andhra was a nearby
neighbor whose uncertainty was bad for business.

Chola direct control would take a span of five years, but when it was complete there was a new
ruling Maharaja, and the guilds had been bought out (at spear-point) by the Tamil joint-stock
companies. While such imperial ventures had taken place before, they usually happened in
peripheral regions – this was an unprecedented change of policy. The Vemakana monarchy
which followed was a vassaldom no different than any other Chola feudatory state. The Ayat
was reduced to an advisory commission, and certain officials were added to its ranks who
belonged to the Ariyar. Andhra remained a powerful economic center, but its profits generally
were sent home to the Tamil – the mines and agricultural surplus did not benefit the local guilds
but rather the joint-stock companies of which they were now a part.
This dominion rankled, but so long as the Chola remained powerful there was little to be done.
Still, the educated, urban population of Andhra could see that even their rival feudatories had
better deals with the Chola than they had been able to negotiate. Their position was uniquely
poor and uniquely humiliating. The people of Andhra traced their lineage back through the
Mahabharata, and in its verses they were described as tall and long-haired, an elegant and
refined people. Why should they accept this foreign overlordship?

Slowly but surely, conspiracies began growing amongst the Andhran commercial elite whose
positions of rank had been taken from them. Members of the ayat began conspiring with priests
and Andhran bureaucrats to assemble a rebellion. However, these rebel movements were
deeply divided. Around the turn of the century, when the printing press began accelerating the
dissemination of information, several different rebel factions came into being.

The foremost of these, the Partisans of Vemakana, believed that the Vemakana dynasty should
be made independent. They were royalists to a fault, taking inspiration from old goshthi ideology
about the proper role of kings. Their rivals were the Twin Bulls movement, which advocated an
Ayat without a monarch – the restoration of the old Equal-Kingdom in an idealized state with no
ruler except the guilds. They took as their example the old Pancharajya, whose scholars had
published many works extolling the virtues of republicanism. Many small factions also existed –
notably a cabal of Buddhist merchants and monks were stockpiling tufenj to distribute to the
peasantry. Influenced by the exoteric Buddhism of Yaol China, they sought to create a
communally-based resistance based on Buddhist dharma and the abolition of caste once and
for all. Their movement would sputter out due to a lack of proper Buddhists among the rural
community. It turned out the peasantry were far more willing to follow their local and familiar
Brahmin priests than wandering monks with muskets.

A hotbed of unique radicalisms, Andhra benefitted greatly from the Cittar movement. Despite
their proto-nationalist impulse to reject Tamil practices and customs, the Andhran elite
recognized that the Cittar were seekers of knowledge, and sought a dialogue with them. Some
of the Cittar were political philosophers who believed in the equal-kingdom, and those few found
a home in Andhra where otherwise the dynasts and feudatories would have had them
imprisoned. Visiting Cittar were impressed by the universities of Andhra and the dissent
fomenting under the surface.

In 1273, after the Hoysala had finally declared their own rebellion, Andhra erupted into its own
spasms of revolution. It was not, to be clear, the first time such a rebellion had taken place –
there had been sporadic uprisings since the turn of the century. But after a hundred years of
Chola rule, the local administrators were caught off guard by the severity of the revolution. They
lacked a proper military force to deal with this insurrection, and the Chola had no soldiers to
give.

Almost bloodlessly, Andhra won its independence. In another story, that might have been cause
for a sign of relief. However, the various factions and organizations who had organized and led
the revolution were still militarily strong. They had shed little blood in liberating their state, and
were accordingly fresh and prepared to fight for the right to define its future.

Utkaladesha

"True serenity is a well-regulated ministry.

True peace is a properly-loaded tufenj."

Aphorisms (Anonymous Xasar court poet, 14th century)

Two centuries of rule by the scholar gentry had been transformative to the Utkals. Theravada
Buddhism was the religion of the majority of the elite, but Utkaladesha was largely a religiously
pluralistic and tolerant society. Wealthy populists in the Ayat built enormous temples to the
wooden icons of Jagannath, the round-eyed wooden god whose traditions and rituals predated
the coming of the Aryans and their horse-drawn iron chariots. Ecstatic devotees of Shakti and
goshthi who envisioned the god as infinitely divided and infinitely united at once debated in
village squares.

In Utkaladesha, commercial interests did not rule – indeed, it was generally foreign companies
who operated the largest manufactories within the region. So long as they paid tariffs to the
scholar-bureaucrats who ruled the Equal-Kingdom, they were allowed to operate with impunity.
There were some laws to protect local guilds, but in general the scholar-bureaucrats believed
that their role was more to promote the welfare of the citizenry than regulate commerce.
Accordingly, they used tariff revenues to build temples, hospitals, and other public works and
maintain a strong army. Otherwise, they remained aloof, seeing themselves as ideal mediators
in the pursuit of harmony between the various factions in Utkaliya society.

To later generations, this era would be considered a golden age of philosophy, science, and
harmony, and an inspiration for how ideal government could function. However, by 1230 the
Pala were on the rise to the north. Having reoccupied Pataliputra, the ancient seat of Universal
Rulers, the Pala had begun to claim a more expansive mandate – while it was still incumbent
upon them to fight the foreign Askunu and Sahputi, they also cast their eyes further afield,
seeking flimsy pretexts to invade ever larger regions.

After the 1231 battle of Betwa, Indrasharva Chandratreya broke the power of the Askunu
forever, and stole much of the glory that Dharmapala had sought to gain. Chandratreya was
hailed by his courtiers and even far off kings as Samrat Chakravartin, much to the chagrin of the
ambitious Prince of Harikela, who was acutely conscious of his less ancient and less prominent
origins. Upon taking the throne three years after Betwa, Dharmapala’s successor Rajyapala
began seeking flimsy pretexts to expand his dominion, subduing the Chandela and building a
powerful cavalry army to strike deeper and deeper into the Sahputi territories.

Rajyapala’s forces emulated the Afghani-Turkic military style that Dharmapala had first used to
win his triumphs – a combination of mobile medium-light infantry and swift cavalry divided
between horse archers and heavily armored lancers. He had not been present at Betwa, nor
had he seen the enormous successes of the Chandratreya tufenj in battle. The son of a
feudatory warrior with guild-warrior origins, he had no trust of peasant armies. His forces were
distinctly feudal, based around landholding Kshatriya on horseback or equipped with longbows.
An auxiliary force of Nepalese and Assamese mercenaries provided a sort of line infantry,
armed with a motley assortment of javelins, spears, and outdated fire-spears – however, in all of
Dharmapala’s victories, it had been the cavalry who had scored the decisive blow.

Accordingly, when Rajyapala used the pretext of a trade dispute to declare war on Utkaladesha
in 1247, the scholar-bureaucrats were alarmed to say the least. They chose one of their
number, Hamira Chotray, as supreme commander of the armies, or Senapati. Under his
authority, the War Office would be doubled in size, and would undertake, in his own words “a
mass levy of all men of capability for the purposes of defending the Sangha.” Chotray, unlike
Rajyapala, had actually served as a mercenary officer at Betwa. He had seen the power of a
professional infantry force drilled in the use of the tufenj and spear, and now he sought to imitate
those tactics on a grand scale.

Utkaladesha was a rich province, with fertile valleys and plains capable of sustaining a large
military force in the field for a substantial period of time, but the Senapati knew full well that he
was at a massive disadvantage. Between Vanga and the Ganges river valley, he was facing a
foe who could raise an army many times anything he could put in the field. His hope,
accordingly, lay in innovative tactics and the reliance of the Pala on their cavalry arm.

Hamira Chotray conceded the vast open plains to the Pala cavalry, stockpiling vast food
reserves in the hill country from which he recruited thousands of soldiers. No single city or
strongpoint could be held indefinitely in this era of warfare – Chotray recognized that earlier than
most of his contemporaries. With heavy guns walls were nearly obsolete – although it would
take another forty years for cannons technology to truly render sieges irrelevant and another
generation for defensive technology to catch up – and thus Chotray opted for a defense in
depth. When the Pala moved on a coastal city, that city would have a small army shipped to it
by boat. Because the Utkaladesha had naval dominance, they were able to maintain their
coastal cities without interruption.

At the same time, the Utkaladeshan cavalry would focus on raiding supply lines, drawing
Rajyapala’s main army into the rugged hill country, where finally Chotray decided to engage.
The thunderous charge of the Pala cavalry, heavy lancers in intricate beautiful armor, was a
sight to behold, but his men had been drilled for just such an eventuality. Instead of breaking as
peasant levies so commonly did, they held steady, loosing arrows and firing tufenj before
dropping back behind a solid line of long spears. The battle was a slaughter. The flower of Pala
cavalry lay dead or dying on the field, and they were quite simply irreplaceable. A generation of
martial talent was wiped out in a single day at an anonymous field.

Rajyapala himself was dead after only seven years on the throne, captured while mortally
wounded. Chotray himself was hailed as a hero, and after the peace treaty was signed with
Rajyapala’s younger brother and regent Nayapala, the Ayat offered their Senapati a crown –
which he ceremonially refused. The last of the Equal Kingdoms had triumphed.

But there were other battles yet to come. The Pala did not abandon their ambitions lightly, and
those who survived the horrors of the Utkal War learned a valuable lesson. Within a few years,
factories on the Ganges were producing tufenj in unprecedented numbers…

Nama Narayana
Nama Narayanaya

The chanting mystic used to sit outside the temple on a little woven rug. When she was an even
younger girl, (a baby her elder brother Asadewo had always said) Iayatya had watched him with
rapt curiosity. In her own whirling dances, she thought of that mystic, impeccably still, his lips
fluttering like butterfly wings.

She found it helped her to concentrate, to distract her soul from trivialities and focus on a
singular moment. Her feet could find the sacred rhythms without the groping presence of the
self, fumbling about crudely with the manifold pieces of her soul. She had found freedom in the
dance, and release as well.

Now the mystics were gone, and the temple itself abandoned. Its prayer flags were old and
tattered, and the whole little community had faded into the red wastes. One of her father’s
servants had said that they had gone down through the Brush country to a place called Saryi,
where there was peace. Father was a strict man though, a stern lipped man with a face whose
lines were firm and cruel, rather than curious and fluttering. But sometimes he was kind to her.
He brought her red tea, her favorite, and when the seasonal merchants came up from inland he
brought her zanj drink that he sweetened with honey and spices – a gift only they shared
together.

“You are the light of my world, dearest.” He said to her one evening, when the servants had
retired into their quarters and their little town had fallen silent. “And when you have a beautiful
light, you must keep it safe, so that the world does not strangle it.” His voice was tight and
measured, but it often was.

A tear rolled down his rough cheek. “You’re going to have to go away for a time. It’s not safe
here. The barbarians of Gosi are coming down from the hills. There will be fighting. Soon, you
and your brother will go south. Saryi is still safe. The Abutswana will not come that far.”

She did not weep when he told her this, though she thought perhaps he wanted her to weep.
The tears would not come. She had never been beyond the horizon of their little town. As it
shrank and withered, her horizon had shrank with it. The world grew smaller and she was afraid,
but knew better than to show it. Father was proud. He called them Randryan, and he said the
word with such reverence that she knew it was a great thing to be.

She did not weep. Not when the servants packed their belongings into saddle-bags, or when
Asadewo helped her climb up onto the back of her favorite horse and they began riding south
along the blasted back of a dry river bed. Along the course of scrubland waste, great ugly birds
with long hooked beaks and red faces perched and gibbered.

“The waters will have to come back.” He said. “In the south there are gardens. Do you want to
see a garden, Iaya?” He tried to smile. His face was smooth and soft, and nothing like father’s.
“When the waters come back, Gosi and his barbarians will have no reason to fight with us
anymore.”

She nodded silently. Those sounded like father’s words, not his.

After three days their water was running low, though they still had plenty of food. One morning,
in the predawn gloom she thought she saw black figures moving along the track of a nearby
ridgeline. Her brother had made them double back, scanning for footprints in the xeric soil.
There was nothing, but he clutched his keibir close, and at night they took shifts sleeping.

The next day they came across a village. The locals there were dour and had many weapons
such as her father and brother might use – bows and long-barreled keibir, spears and axes.
Some wore padded linen. One had an antique helm decorated with peacock feathers.

At first, Iayatya felt afraid, and she offered a silent prayer to the Preserver and to the Bringer of
Fruit. But her brother spoke calming words, and she realized that all the reason to fear these
strange and frightening men were all the reasons they would keep her safe. They were finally in
the south.

She could not have known how many miles over rough terrain the south was. This was a mining
town, a humble border village. She had not yet seen the marketplaces of Watya, the galleries of
Ankaramena heavy-laden with spices. But for now, for a day, they were safe. The lord of the
village was a Randryan, like her father, although the two men had quarreled in the past over a
matter she did not understand – something about monks with blue or saffron robes. His name
was Andirmaniy, and he provided them supplies without cost. The common threat on the horizon
had united all.

“You are good to get her to safety.” The lord said. “The frontier is no country for young girls. I
tried to tell Isakowo so many times, but he never listened. Not after your mother.”

Her brother nodded. That night they slept in Andirmaniy’s long house, and they ate roast goat
and cheese for supper, washing it down with red tea (for her) and honey-wine (for her brother.)
Andirmaniy sang a song for them, a song of a country across the sea where men warred with
each other rather than with barbarians.
Iayatya awoke to screaming in the shadows of the night, and the smell of heavy smoke. Her
brother was already awake, his keibir loaded and close at hand. Outside the long-house, in the
streets of the village she could hear clamor, and occasionally the snapping report of keibir-fire.

A lifetime passed. She wanted to hold Asadewo tight, but he shrugged her off and moved
towards the door to peer out at the battle beyond. Andirmaniy was nowhere to be found.

She thought of the old mystic. She thought of one sunny morning when he used the money in
his begging-bowl to buy her a stick of honey – a rare treat. She imagined his chant, the
reassuring familiarity and constancy of its sounds and movements. Back then the world had
made sense. Life had been simple and patterned according to the rhythms she knew. One foot
followed the next. The chickens called the morning watches. The next step was towards her left.
The women were down at the river washing clothes and bringing up fresh water. The beat of the
greater-drum, a slight leap.

The door was flung open with a crash and she was in her body once more, staring at the wild-
eyed man before her. His chest was bare and sheeted with dark, shining blood. He had a
curved axe nestled in his…

Her brother fired the keibir. She saw the flash and the roar was deafening. The man staggered
back and did not brace against her brother swinging the wooden stock like a club before
drawing the short, curved sword at his belt and diving on the man with animal ferocity. But
another barbarian was at the gates now, and the spear in his hand thrust towards Asadewo’s
back.

She wanted to cry out. She wanted to, but she was not there. Somebody else was, some silly
girl who wasn’t home, wasn’t dancing in the temple to the beat of a cattle-skin drum. Some girl
who was illuminated by moonlight and the embers of a dying fire and not the prayer-candles
nestled in the alcoves beneath the grinning statues of dancing gods. Some girl who was dying in
an impossible nightmare.

That girl chose to forget what came next. Left for dead in the smoldering ruin of the long house,
she would eventually rise and pick through the ashes. Someone would survive, a hollow-eyed
girl found by slavers. They enticed her from the osteal framework of the long house with
promises of water and food and then bound her wrists and made her to walk with them.

In Watya she would forget who she was. She would forget that she was the child of nobility. She
would forget the temple and her father’s estate. But she was always prized for her dancing.

When she became older, she found herself on a ship, crossing the black water on a journey that
would eventually lead far away to a place called Kitai that was the center of the world. There,
her life would change forever. And yet over the course of many vile nights and many memories
she determined to forget, the men who took her and owned her would sometimes feign curiosity
about her past, and she would simply answer that she had always been a dancer.

-
Orthodoxy Zoroastrianism as we might have understood it in the Sassanian era is long extinct.
Isolated pockets of folk Zoroastrianism survive, and the major fire temples still persist in some
form. After all, in many places of Iran, Buddhism is just a veneer through which Zoroastrian
belief is interpreted. Of course, these folk beliefs have often diverged quite far from traditional
orthodoxy. The trauma of the apocalyptic movement and the coming of the saosyant was a final
deathblow to the religion as an organized belief system, since it divided the community of
Zoroastrians as nothing before had - and left many disenchanted people who were easy
converts to Sogdian school Buddhism, which let them keep their gods after all.

I assume in the isolated parts of Iran there's whole intact Zoroastrian communities, but these
groups have no real political or social power, and the institutions of Buddhism at this juncture
are simply too strong in the Near East to challenge. Also one could perhaps consider the
indigenous Khardi religion of this timeline to be Zoroastrian, although it's more broadly just an
"Iranian paganism" much like the traditional Eftal religion. Unlike the traditional Eftal religion, it
still has many adherents.

Manichaeanism survives as a small minority religion in certain regions such as the Tarim basin
and among the Bajinak.

Edit: Readers may have noticed that Asadewo's musket doesn't require a match to fire. My
notion for that was that in TTL, the matchlock never really caught on in a lot of places due to the
weapon being invented in the damp tropics. Accordingly, there's two main styles of ignition for
tufenj. The first is a toothed wheel like a modern cigarette lighter which grinds against a
sparking piece - typically pyrite. This is common in India and many parts of the world, but
requires skilled metalworkers and is a bit intricate. India will be super happy when somebody
figures out a flintlock.

The other is basically a matchlock, and this is what is commonly used by the Xasar, Bakhtiyar,
and Europeans. A hempen cord soaked in a secret formula of chemicals is inserted into a
"snapping" mechanism that quickly introduces the stiff match into the otherwise covered pan. It's
not as quick to fire, but it's a hell of a lot easier to make, especially if, like the Xasar, you have to
rely on royal armories and cottage industry to get the job done.

On the Watyan frontier, a place where Bantu migrations are making life very difficult, the tufenj is
a godsend. They are typically used at extremely close ranges to great effect, more of an
opening-salvo of pistol fire than a proper ranged weapon. But since there's little good wood for
making bows (that aren't also imported), and Watya can afford to import firearms, this is a huge
advantage.
-
Japan

The Fujiwara Regency’s monopoly on the reins of power could not last through thirteenth
century. By the end of the twelfth rising powers such as the Taira clan had accumulated vast
landholdings outside of imperial jurisdiction, in no small part by aligning with the cloistered
emperors and other factions whose concerns were removed from the simple nepotistic politics
of the Fujiwara. Branches of the Fujiwara began competing amongst themselves, and in turn
sought alternative allies outside of the old structure.

After the Flowering Flesh passed and left its bleak stain upon the social life of Japan, there were
three main Fujiwara factions warring for the ear of the impossibly institutions of the regency. The
Kujo and Ichijo were the two greatest of these, and the latter faction, the Nijo, found themselves
aligning with the Taira – distant relatives of the Emperor themselves, and powerful but
dangerous allies. While these factions schemed in their glorious isolation, they cheerfully
ignored rapid changes among the peasantry.

On one hand, the post-Flowering Flesh era saw an incredible rise in commercial opportunity. As
the Chinese engaged in their northern expansion and cities like Yongmingcheng prospered from
the trade in raw materials, so too did Japan. Already a prosperous and urban civilization,
Japan’s religious institutions promoted a (relatively) high rate of literacy. Landholders and those
who had found wealth in other ways would send their children to monasteries to learn, and this
provided a strong foundation for further development. Bureaucrats in coastal trading cities could
draw on a deep talent pool of capable recruits, and administered tests whose character seems
to have been borrowed from the Chinese state examination system.

On the other hand hand, the various schools of Japanese Buddhism had found new competition
in the rising Zen school, a school which generally provided simpler and clearer explanations to
the peasantry. As the rural populace felt increasingly left out of social progress, they turned to
Zen as a way of rebelling against landholders, urban artisans, and the prominent religious
institutions such as the esoteric monasteries. There were two levels of wealth in late Fujiwara
Japan – and the highest was utterly inaccessible, the realm of high court politics and intricate
cultural and religious ceremony into which the lower nobility, bushi, and artisans simply couldn’t
penetrate. A small percentage of these figures would accordingly become dissatisfied and turn
towards Zen or sometimes traditional Shinto practice as a way of rebelling against this insular
culture.

This clash of cultures never truly materialized however. The remarkable social tensions largely
fizzled out without grand upheavals, and understanding why has long been the preoccupation of
Japanese historians. Orderly transitions of power between Fujiwara clans eventually ceased,
but this led simply to the Taira Regency (beginning circa 1240) and the relegation of the
Fujiwara to powerful outsider clans who remained patrons of commerce and industry,
particularly dominating trade with foreign nations through long-held offices. The Taira, eager to
avoid civil war, allowed this state to persist.
The Taira had more than one reason to avoid a massive conflict. Northern provincial officials
maintained substantial retainers of bushi warriors, only notionally under state control. Enticed by
promises of land and the conquest of the Ainu, these warriors fought a series of bloody wars
against the hunter-gatherers to their north, and encouraged free settlement on the subsequent
land grants. The Chinese conquest of the North was re-enacted in miniature. Meanwhile, the
southern Fujiwara remained extraordinarily wealthy, and it was artisans and commercial
ventures under their patronage who had the closest ties with the outside world. The Taira played
a balancing act – controlling the interior levers of power and the Cloistered Emperors without
actively controlling one of the main sources of military might or the main source of state
revenue, i.e. tariffs.

The Taira instead had vast landholdings and the support of the old guard of monasteries. This
seems to have been enough. They could levy large peasant armies and their own retainers
were not incapable – a series of Zen rebellions, the most sizable in 1261, Tadaoki’s Uprising,
was nevertheless put down within a matter of months after the offending monasteries were
seized and the rebels dispersed by professional bushi.

The Taira Regency was not an era of cultural flowering, however. The travelogue novel became
a force to be reckoned with among the literate population – inspired by new and remarkable
contact with the outside world, educated audiences sought knowledge about the outside world,
no matter how fanciful or florid. The Taira themselves kept their court life in splendid isolation,
but the world found its ways of breaking through. In 1293, even the Kalapirar had established an
embassy of sorts on the island of Kyushu, near to the Sri Lankan bank in the city of Kagoshima.
Kagoshima was unparalleled on the island - it had grown into a substantial trading center,
swollen with commerce and teeming with artisans. The powerful Hata clan oversaw its
hinterlands – having moved south sometime before the Fujiwara regency. As the strongest local
landholders, they were able to dominate the institutions of the city, and Hata Iehisa, their
patriarch from 1287-1294, was one of the richest men in the entire archipelago, with an income
rivalled only by the Fujiwara and Taira aligned clans.

Central Asia and Rusichi expansion

Either by some accident of history or for climactic reasons, Rusichi records do not record the
horror and anguish of the Flowering Flesh as distinctly as European histories do. A relatively
small proportion of the Rusichi population was lost due to the Flowering Flesh, compared to the
other settled nations of Transuralic Asia and Europe. In comparison to Germany, few farms and
towns suffered outright abandonment, and within a mere few years, eastward expansion
continued apace.

The eastward expansion of the Rusichi was a mix of central policy and simple demographic
pressure. The authorities in Smolensk certainly authorized many punitive expeditions against
the Volga Bajinak, which seems to have been a broader term than in past centuries, including
tribal groups such as “blond-haired” Magyars and a series of Khirichan Turkic clans who still
held out along the Volga. However, while it may be presumptuous to say that the Bajinak
Confederacy was inevitably defeated, its Khagan oversaw a series of lopsided defeats. The
traditional pattern was thus – the Bajinak would raid Rusichi territory, prompting a punitive strike
by the local magistrates, which led to a Bajinak defeat and the Khagan accepting a humiliating
peace treaty. These treaties invariably forced Bajinak recognition of Rusichi communities deeper
and deeper into their land, until in 1238, the Bajinak Confederacy was officially disbanded. By
this point, it seems that the Volga was simply overrun. The Bajinak themselves had been
pushed far beyond the river, to the banks of the Ural. The rich cities of the Sahu and the
farmland of the Volga belonged to Rusichi settlers.

The Rusichi had established a degree of decentralization in their defense. On the European
frontiers, several Overarching commanders called Voivoda were designated for large regions
and given broad latitude in how they accomplished their orders. On the eastern frontier, the rank
of Satrap was replaced with the Iesaul, a term borrowed from the Bajinak. Satrap was
henceforth a title given only to federate Sahu leaders, and was a declining position in any case.
As Satraps grew old and died, they often found their tribal groups absorbed into the state. Most
notably, in 1202, under the orders of Darmaslav II, a council of Druxhina was set over
Tangrabad, the largest trading port on the Black Sea. Similar orders would remove local
authority from most of the Sahu cities – but in compensation the Sahu found their own nobles
and tribal leaders granted status as Druxhina within the state, so as to preserve a sense of self-
government despite the new autocratic system.

This decentralization was necessary. The Rusichi system of riverine transit allowed relatively
fast communication, but the Empire was still vast. The Velchihan in Smolensk was far removed
from the eastern frontier in particular, and if the government had relied on his orders, they would
not have been able to react to nomadic threats. Accordingly, the central authority put increasing
trust in appointed Druxhina to govern – albeit for fixed terms that were never to exceed ten
years. The Rusichi held a vast territory, and while areas such as Gardaveldi slowly came around
to the Rusichi identity, the Iranian and Turkic peoples of the steppe had little in common besides
shared religion.

Accordingly, it was through religion they were ruled. The Russian school of Sviatovochi, known
to the Iranian world as Apasvanadi Buddhism, was common throughout the Empire, having
caught on amongst the Sahu and the Rusichi alike. Theirs was a somewhat unique sect, lacking
the vast and colorful pantheons of their Xasar cousins, whose Khotadhata faith was not for
nothing called the “God-Derived School” however, they were not austere in their denial of
divinity. Reverence was still given to the old gods and spirits of the forest, and the old forest
mystics still had a great deal of authority in their religion – and indeed were instrumental in
spreading Apasvanadi ideals to the Gardaveldi.

In the West, the Rusichi policy was no less aggressive, but that aggression was tempered by a
need to present a defensive posture. The loss of Sweden, once a key ally in preserving the
balance of power in the north, stung. The King of Gautland and Sweden was a Christian king
now, and trade on the Baltic Sea declined somewhat. Niragard became a massive naval arsenal
designed to assert Rusichi hegemony over the Baltic, and in a curious reversal of policy, the
Rusichi signed an alliance with Denmark. Hopeless entanglement in the web of European
alliances was inevitable. Poland, who wanted no part of the German Landstag and no part of
the eastern, Buddhist world either, aligned itself with Gautland-Sweden, pressing into the Baltics
and Bylarus alike.

These challenges would land firmly on the plate of Xlatarhad (1256-1263), the nephew of the
previous Velchihan, Kresimir II. A young boy when he took power, the defense of the Baltics
from Polish expansion fell to his generals, particularly a newly commissioned Voivoda of the
Baltic, who was given a large army of Assembly troops and ordered to secure the entire region.
At the battle of Gardinas, the Voivoda Vladimir won a spectacular victory over a Polish army,
and briefly became a hero for the Lithuanians before it was revealed that neither he nor his
troops had any intent of leaving.

Xlatarhad himself was a curious choice for the throne. Kresimir II had left only illegitimate
children[1], his own wife largely being assumed to be infertile. A young and weak boy, it is
unclear why Kresimir II chose him over his own child, as Xlatarhad allowed himself to be
manipulated by his councilors, particularly a faction of mystics and astrologers called the
Ghovorbog. Apart from the traditional Iranian-Slavic forest mysticism, the Ghovorbog were
heretical at best in their pursuit of the divine, believing that dharma was an aspect of an
immeasurable, ill-defined divine presence, and that spiritual liberation depended on formulating
a “psychic union” with the divine. They believed that the expulsion of semen into a woman was
impure and accordingly were chaste, except for certain masturbatory and homosexual religious
rituals which have been theorized to have some relation to tantra.

As a young adolescent, four years into his reign, Xlatarhad met a wondering Ghovorbogi mystic
while on a hunting trip and invited a number of them to take up residence with him at the
Summer Palace in Smolensk. Other factions as court, particularly members of the Druxhina and
orthodox religious scholars, were sidelined, and the Velchihan increasingly lost perspective. Two
years later, Druxhina had come to believe that Kresimir’s illegitimate child, himself named
Kresimir, would make a better ruler, and began plotting to remove Xlatarhad. It is said that the
preparations of the coup took only as long as it did to locate Prince Kresimir, who was leading
an army in Samogitia, and invite him back to the capital.

The Solstice Coup, as it became known, was a quick and bloody one. Xlatarhad did not mistrust
his cousin or the Druxhina, and when they were granted an audience he was surprised when
they took up arms and fell on the Ghovorbog. Once the mystics were dispatched, Xlatarhad
himself was blinded, mutilated, and sent to the care of a monastery. Two months later he would
be strangled. The monks expressed little interest in solving the mystery.

Kresimir’s III (1263-78) reign was long and successful, particularly on the diplomatic front. By
1270 the tufenj was becoming common among the Assembly Troops. Introduced by the Xasar, it
further shifted the balance of power, and it would be a few decades before European armies
would have their own firepowder weaponry to counter with – a process which would involve the
theft of state secrets. Unlike the past few Great Kings, he was charming and gregarious, signing
new treaties with the Xasar and Danes, and taking part in a series of inconclusive wars against
Poland. However, the crowning achievement of his rule was convincing the Bylarusichi King to
accept him as a protector and overlord. While the region was permitted to maintain a great deal
of autonomy, its military was rolled into the Durxhina-Assembly system, and the King of Bylarus
was made into a Voivoda.

Unfortunately, when Kresimir died, it would still be at a young age. While touring the Turkish
frontier, he was waylaid and shot with arrows, leading to his son Darmaslav III (1278-1278)
taking power before dying of a childhood illness which led in turn to the ascension of his
youngest son, the infant Karmamil (1278-1280) and then finally, Kresivies II (1280-1291) – his
(also illegitimate) sister’s husband. The Kresivid dynasty would go on to become one of the
greatest and most influential in world history.[2]

[1] One son Kresimir, and three daughters, Vesna, Smilasna, and Zlataslava. The eldest
daughter married a noble by the name of Kresivies, while Smilasna disappears from the
historical record at a young age, and Zlataslava would go on to become a prominent Buddhist
nun – and play a substantial role in the court intrigues that led to the Solstice Coup.

[2] And also is a story for another day. Christmas Special –

a White Christmas in Aloysiana

Marcel de Amiens did not have a particularly ostentatious grave. Set on the site of his death, it
was a simple rounded stone engraved with a crucifix and his name. Beneath, in Latin, was a
small inscription declaring that he was the Lord Defender of Nania, and that he had died in
peace while riding north to treat with the “King of Chucalissa.” Sixty years. Already sixty years
had passed. He had never witnessed the Flowering Flesh, the blackest days of Christendom
and the collapse of the Beloved Empire in whose name he ruled. Perhaps that was a blessing.

Now his memorial was a small stone in a clearing in a dark wood. Snow was falling gently, and
the sky was heavy with the promise of further snowfall to come. Géralt de Leuze had seen the
Mausoleum of Fanceau in Tolteca. Now that was a proper conqueror’s grave! A pyramid that
seemed to shine as if the entire base was made of gold, not just the pinnacle. A pyramid in a city
of shimmering canals, a proper tribute for a King. The heathen would be remembered forever,
he thought not without some bitterness. How would anyone remember the Christian Lord who
brought the Votive War to Solvia?

Solvia. Even the name was a heathen’s name. Yorn Solva or some such. A sun-worshipping
Boddist from some godforsaken country. At least this was a proper country. Aloysiana, the seat
of true Christendom in the New World. Nania, de Amiens’ great dream, had been changed by
the past sixty years. Géralt, in his five years on this continent, had spent a great deal of time
learning all he could. He poured over the scattered parchments which preserved the only first-
hand accounts of the conquest, and copied what he could. He was determined that this history
not be forgotten. Lately it seemed that this self-proclaimed “King” in Nouvele Aichs was more
than willing to erase the old history.

Géralt regarded the grave in solemn silence for a minute more, and then spurred his horse
forward. He had many miles to go before he could rest, and then many miles still to go, before
he reached the Fort Lyon. By nightfall, the snow was beginning to drift, but he had come to the
great river Aichista, its swollen course deep and black. The waystation he sought was the sole
source of light beyond the fading sun.

When he arrived at its door, he saw the warmth of the fire and the revelers and his heart was
warmed. An attendant boy led his horse to the stables and he sat down at the long table, where
soup and corn beer was brought to him. The soup was warm and heavy with cream. He did not
speak to anyone beyond to provide payment – a little scrap of paper with the royal seal marked
on it – and instead he chose to listen.

In the far corner, by the warmth of the fire, some soldiers – a sergeant and his retainers - were
drunk. It was the night before Christmas, after all, and they were far from home. Nouvele Aichs
was the closest thing to a true city in Aloysiana, and beyond the old Nanian hill forts, Anilco, and
a few other towns, they were in native country still. Heathens newly converted to the True Faith
or still holding out.

A group of women and men were the only other occupants besides serving staff. By their simple
clothes, a patchwork mixture of Francian and Native designs, Géralt knew they were pilgrims.
There were few poor Franks in this country – how could there be, when mere blood set them
above the common rabble of the indigenous? As he listened to what snippets of their
conversation he could hear above the raucous laughter of the soldiers, Géralt learned that they
were going south to Nouvele Aichs to touch the grave of Charles the Martyr. Curious, he
approached them and enquired after what they knew of him.

It turned out they knew little that was true. A young man, his head shaved and his eyes alight
with a certain fire, claimed that Charles the Martyr had been murdered by the Tuscalousa Chief
for preaching the word of God in the heathen kingdom. A woman who was his wife corroborated
this tale, adding grisly details relating to his torture. Supposedly, Charles the Martyr had his
flesh pierced by stone needles and ropes were threaded through the holes. Then, he was
elevated to a great height until his weight allowed the ropes to break through his skin, at which
point he fell to his death, was mutilated and thrown into the river. King Augustine’s father, Henri,
had rescued his bones from the savage natives and led the Votive War against the Tuscalousa,
before returning triumphant to Nouvele Aichs.

Géralt thanked them for their time and returned to his own table, where his soup had begun to
cool. Accuracy in history had always been important to him. The historians of the past, the
writers of the gospel – those men had spoken with inerrant truth. But time, as the old scholars
said, was degradation. The glories of the past were continually being overwritten with lesser and
lesser things. The glories of the Biblical Kings faded into Rome, who fell and was replaced with
the Franks, who now had fallen as well. The idolater Kings of the South were now on the rise,
and their dominion would be cruel and ignorant. A man might despair, except that these signs
meant that the end times were surely near.

Even here, in this bastion of Christendom, truth was fading. Charles the Martyr’s corpse had not
been rescued by Henri de Saintes – that was simple self-aggrandizement from a parvenu
dynasty eager to set themselves above the Judges and the law of Nania. In the old times, there
was no King in this land – the sole monarch was the Emperor in Aichs. But this was a tarnished
era, an era of warring Kings. Such formalities had been forgotten. It seemed any man could
make himself a King, if the reports from back home were true. Even heathen slaves.

As the night grew long, the pilgrims joined the soldiers in their infectious revelry. “Come, sir!”
One called to Géralt. “The savior was born tonight, and the night is long and dark. Augustus has
broken out the strong beer!” Their sergeant, an older man with a deep barking officer’s voice,
informed the varied occupants of the waystation that the next round was on him to general
applause.

Against his better judgement, Géralt joined them, taking a stiff draught of unwatered corn beer.
The old sergeant asked where he was coming from, and where he was going that would bring
him this far out.

“Well, my journey began in Tolteca, and I'm heading north to join the Cascacia Expedition...”
Géralt began, but before he could finish, a group of pilgrims cut him off.

“Tolteca! Tell us of Tolteca! Tell us of the demon king Fanceau!”

The beer was really very strong, and he could see the mausoleum temple as if in a vision, high
and gold and shining in the first light of the sun. He could see the Plaza Cosca, bustling with
vendors, mules burdened with heavy textiles and clay jars of peppers. Géralt smiled wistfully.
“Well, Tolteca is far larger than Nouvele Aichs… larger too than all cities in Europe. Its streets
are paved in gold. Their kings are covered in gold jewelry, and are said to be descended from
fallen angels. Fanceau, they say, still lives in his dark temple…”

[Next Post:

Australia and Norse Settlement in the New World

Every so often I feel inspired to do some narrative bits - but in general I don't intend to make a
habit of them. There's too much world and I find them more draining than normal posts. But I
hope that everyone enjoys the brief narrative sections when they come.

The New World has not gotten enough attention for a thread entitled "New World of the White
Huns" - and I do aim to rectify that. In particular I want to start examining how various native
societies will form quite differently based on a major wave of plagues hitting during a much
earlier period in their history.

And eventually we need to get around the what the hell is happening down in Tolteca.]

From the Chippewa on down to the big lake they call Gitchigumi

On a frozen winter’s night in 1231, a group of hard-bitten men and women gathered in the
warmth of the mead hall of young Haakon Thorfinnsen[1]. It is recorded that amidst the rowdy
yuletide revelries and lively political debates, the settlers realized a small black crow had found
its way into the hall, warming itself on the rafters by the light of the fire. Darting amongst the
revelers and stealing scraps of food, it provided great amusement to Haakon’s wife Aslaug, who
proclaimed it a good omen. She bid the men allow the bird to fly free, and shortly afterwards it
departed into the snowy world beyond.

To them, the world outside the mead hall was one of mystery and unregulated superstition. The
Skraelings were scattered and plague ravaged, but Solvia was still a land of deep, primeval
forests and mystery. While a substantial population of the new country where Christian, many
kept to the old pagan rituals, and a select few even included elements of Darmahujr practice in
their worship – venerating Boddo as well as Odin. In general, syncretism was the order of the
day. By and large the elites were Christian, but in this strange and ancient country, where wild
land was abundant, there was something appealing in the old superstitions and paganism.

Even if Christianity eventually became entrenched in the New World, the pagans had the last
laugh, informing the customs and culture of the new settler nations. The Anglish and Irish monks
who established communities along the [St. Lawrence] river and deeper inland spoke without
contradiction of the devils, spirits, and elves dwelling in the woodlands. Some of the first
literature of the region, accounts by these monks of their travels and settlement, acknowledged
the countryside as animate in a way that their more orthodox cousins in the New World would
only imitate with far more caution.

The Anglish and Norse who arrived in the New World found it a more egalitarian place than they
had left. There were few thralls in the New World, and those that there were, were more
commonly taken from the indigenous inhabitants in raids. The vast abundance of land and the
easily dispersed natives created a land of opportunity – for a society in which landholding was
synonymous with wealth, and agricultural success was synonymous with power, the New World
seemed a land where anyone could aspire to a sort of qualified nobility.

But if anyone could be a landholder, anyone could be politically important, with all the attendant
political ramifications of a new and radical egalitarianism. While certain groups, such as the
more hidebound of the Anglish monks behind the timber and roughstone walls of their
monastery-fortresses, spoke against this blurring of class distinction, in general the expansion of
the Thing and the rapidly increasing ranks of the landholding elite simply created a new sense
of community. Dane and Norwegian, Irishman and Anglishman alike abandoned these old ties
with astonishing rapidity. Those who kept their old associations were primarily coastal, primarily
those who were very actively involved in foreign trade. They were also the most likely to practice
religious orthodoxy and send back to the old world for wives, rather than taking native women[2]
or the daughters of fellow settlers.

Haakon Thorfinnsen would, several months after that fateful night proceed down the swan road,
exploring the rainy bays and inlets he would come to call the Inner Seas, but posterity would
often call the Crow Lakes. He and his men traded his potent mead and finely made tools and
leather products for foodstuffs to sustain their voyage and most importantly knowledge.
Haakon’s expedition would bring back a bounty of native seeds but most importantly the know-
how to utilize them. He would bring back maps of the lakes and the rivers that defined this land.

Haakon himself had never lived in the Old World. To him it was a fanciful dream, a land of
antique things he could scarce comprehend, of castles the size of mountains and wild spices
and flavors he couldn’t comprehend. Stranger still was Southern Solvia, the heady temples of
Tolteca, a land he envisioned as full of nubile and naked women and sexually aggressive
barbarian kings. He would always very much be a man of his own northern countryside, and he
would never leave.

However, he knew well the value of foreigners. He kept a Gardaveldi navigator among his
retinue, a pale-eyed man named Vladimir who was rumored to be a Boddist witch who
communed with eagles and fire-magic. Witch or not, he was skilled at riverine travel and
negotiating the Crow Lakes even during winter – a skill his people would in time become famed
for.[3]

[1] Haakon’s father was a Norwegian merchant who became one the major patrons and
sustainers of the Greenland community. However, Thorfinn Erikson hismelf was a controversial
figure, one who alienated both Greenland and Vinland alike. The latter two settlements would
become loosely democratic and run by local assemblies, while King Erik’s Island became its
own kingdom under the eldest son of Thorfinn, Ivar.

[2] This practice of wife-stealing, while exaggerated in the novels and poems of the time, and
exaggerated again far later in the seedy romance novels of a far removed era, nevertheless
undoubtedly happened, and was exaggerated by the lack of easily available women and the
relative weakness of the native tribes.

[3] Thanks to you, my excellent readers, for reminding me about the riverine skills of the
Gardaveldi and making me have an idea.

Daksinakhand: The Island at the End of the World

In contrast to the oft-genocidal interactions of the Vinlanders and Skraelings, the interactions
between the Malay and Tamil expeditions and the indigenous Pulan [Australians] were largely
peaceful – with a number of exceptions.[1] Where the Vinlanders seized land and the Skraelings
were primarily reactive, the paradigm between the Indosphere and the Pulan islanders was
utterly different. The one exception to this was the waves of disease that accompanied the
contact, just as they had in Solvia. Tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, the flowering flesh, and
countless other afflictions ravaged Pula. It only took one asymptomatic carrier or sick colonist to
start a wave of death that ravaged the continent and profoundly altered tribal relations at the
very moment that the Indosphere was most poised to take advantage of these crippling
population losses.

Often the natives blamed the newcomers for disease. However, with their diminished numbers,
the hardest hit tribes were often the most receptive to any aid that they could acquire. Interior
groups, who were rather lightly afflicted, by contrast often blamed more coastal groups and
dismissed the legends of foreigners in strange boats coming across the water. Thus did some of
the early trade structures of the island continent become severely disrupted.

The Tamil conceived of colonization differently.[2] For them, any overseas imperial venture was
conceived of in terms of collective or corporate profit. There was no notion of individuals going
to a new land to make an individual fortune. There was no hardy Vinland karl or ceorl
establishing family farms deeper into the interior – and indeed the environment of Pula did not
lend itself to such rugged individualism. Pula was, in the main, either tropical or extremely arid,
with little middle ground. It was not an easy country to survive in, even with the importation of
traditional Indian and Malay crops and livestock – which began in earnest as early as 1290.

The Tamil also were scrupulous in their treating of tribal groups that the Vinlanders might have
regarded as savages or heathens as equals – in a certain sense. While undoubtedly the
indigenous peoples of Pula were seen as barbarous, and while undoubtedly their polities were
far weaker than the Kalapirar (if they could be called polities at all) the Tamil treated them as
sovereign and thus were inclined to always negotiate.

These negotiations took many forms. Some tribes, such as Yolgnu, had much to offer. Sea
cucumbers were desirable for a number of culinary and medicinal purposes, and every source
of them that was available was exploited – from the frozen northern shores of Yongmingchang
to the sweltering tropical shores of Pula. The Yolgnu were expert sea cucumber divers and were
keen to trade for trifles – and indeed this trade had been going on for many decades by the time
that the Tamil trade ships began properly exploring Pula.

In approximately 1330, when coral was discovered off the Pula coast, loosely organized tribal
groups such as the Yadhaigana and the Yalanji found themselves greeted by strange men with
strange fashions from across the shore, who were very eager to make arrangements and return
later in greater numbers. Linguistic barriers made such arrangements very difficult, but slowly
and surely deals were struck. Once interpreters were found, the Tamil merchants moved in with
shocking alacrity. Certain types of coral, most notably red coral, were exceedingly valuable in
medicine and as jewelry, and there seemed to be endless supplies of it, temptingly close by the
in coastal shallows.
In yet other places, the mere notion that someone must live there motivated small trading
settlements. These in particular would struggle, especially as they discovered that there were no
true cities on the continent. This was a shock, particularly to the Tamil, who were convinced and
often remained convinced that the true urban civilization lay just around the corner. They would
watch the Gundjitmara and the Wergaia practice their primitive forms of proto-agriculture and
aquaculture and marveling, exclaim that these people must be near to a proper civilization.
Where else would they have learned to imitate such practices?

Thus was the colonization of the land the Tamil called Daksinakhand a story of profound
disappointments. For every small merchant outfit that found something worth bringing home,
another was met with the surreal disappointment of having struck a treaty for useless land to
build an agglomeration of houses and a rough dock that could at best scratch out a living by
subsistence, but were of little value.

True settlement would have to wait until later discoveries could once again recommend the
settlement of Pula, but by then, the Pulan indigenous would have begun recovering from their
plagues and learning techniques from the strange visitors from across the black water.[3]

[1] Whoa boy were the exceptions different. Generally cultural clashes led to incidents of
sporadic but severe violence. Marriage customs and religious traditions marked frequent points
of contention. Tufenj failed to scatter native attacks, and the explorers were often ill-prepared for
melee, once they ran out of crossbow-bolts, arrows, and loaded guns. The smart ones would
flee back to a nearby ship and hope to hold out there, but doing so meant losing any unloaded
goods to pillage.

[2] Let us not think, despite what I say here, that the Tamil were somehow more enlightened
than the Vinlanders for any particular reason. A reader with a long memory will remember the
horrible atrocities they inflicted on eastern Indonesia and Melanesia in the name of their trading
rights, and they are quite willing to use violence. However, they are also more familiar with the
notion of hunter-gatherer tribes, and at once have more familiarity in dealing with them and less
will and less manpower to expend subduing them. Which is not to say that the Tamil aren't
ruthlessly exploitative - they and the Malay pay the Yolgnu in pittances for valuable sea
cucumbers, and their land treaties are usually done with the implicit assumption that the natives
will barely understand and will be happy for the gifts.

[3] I wanted to end on an optimistic note... but oh boy are they still screwed. A few thousand
year technological gap, endemic disease, and ruthless Indian capitalism will combine to mean
that there's no spoiler alert here to say that they're doomed. Especially once sexually
transmitted diseases and whatnot start spreading out from the early settlers - it's mostly been
pulmonary and livestock related ones so far.
The Mansas of Mehika

As with any freshly-conquered colonial region, there were strong cleavages among the society
of conquered Tolteca. If a unified and coherent society would emerge down the road, there was
no sign of it in the decentralized but autocratic regime established by the earliest conquerors.
The rapid expansion of Nfansou left the self-proclaimed King’s colonists with their pick of lands,
slaves, and wives from among the conquered people. They built the garrison cities such as
Kafibaka, Njanyri, and Madrijalure on the back of enslaved natives even as these slaves died in
droves of communicable disease. The Norse historians often gloss over this horrific death toll,
but surviving native records state in horrific detail how in defeat vast quantities of labor were
levied to construct the stone cities in which the conquerors would live. Nfansou's heirs would
often boast of expanding his kingdom "merely by riding" - a euphemism for the ease of many of
their conquests against disease ravaged, broken and politically disunited foes. They casually
ignored the massive fortress cities that were the true key to their dominion. From Njanyri, all
Oaxaca could be threatened by swift cavalry detachments - making rebellion difficult and
frequently a piecemeal matter at best.

The Nahua and Chichimec alike owed their privileges in the new system to their victories.
Choice lands in the valley of Mehika and indeed across the Fula dominion were assigned to
them to construct cities which became known as jaluuje (altepetl or nuu local dialects) – cities
which owed their limited autonomy to their alliance with the Fula. In both of these cultures the
Fula saw something of themselves – mobile warrior peoples who nevertheless had the capacity
to settle. Their aim from the beginning was to remake these people in their own image,
especially the Tepanec of Mehika. Cities like Azcapotzalco replaced Tula and others as local
centers as power as early as 1250, and by 1300 were far larger, despite the depopulation of
plagues afflicting them evenly.

Tula, for its part, was little more than a ruin, although it was idolized by the Nahua and called
“Tolteca” by them, held up as a relic of a civilized past.[1] This in part led to the European
legend of Tolteca, the frequent conflation of the legendary city with current extant cities,
including rather surreal the garrison-site at Kafibaka, a city constructed along native lines but
designed for and settled primarily by Fula. From a demographic standpoint, from 1270 onwards,
the African population of the Mehika Kingdom skyrocketed. Immune to the waves of disease[2]
and increasingly maritime, many Fula and Serer were enticed over by the promise of
landholdings and automatic entry into a sort of lesser aristocracy. European and African
adventurers alike utilized Nfansou’s realm as a base of operations.

Nfansou would happily call himself Mansa, Rey, and Tlatoani alike, although in his own court he
refused to speak any language but his own. Lesser Fula warlords, such as Nyiwasude and
Tabakali, and the later Mande conquerors such as Kandkessa, who struck out on his own
towards the Maya, still implicitly acknowledged Nfansou’s rulership because they were
frequently dependent on him to supply their expeditions. After the fall of Haiti, the Canary Norse
were the only major shipbuilders in the region, and they were aligned with Nfansou, who
rewarded them with vast estates in the new world. By the fourteenth century, a series of
Fortifications and naval ports were established across some of the lesser Taino islands called
the Hemreleydi. Xaymaca, an otherwise unassuming island home to Arawak-speaking Taino, in
particular became a major naval hub after the indigenous inhabitants were near-universally
enslaved and subjugated to a small group of Fula settlers.
In matters of belief, Fulani traditional religion was not dissimilar in some respects to that of the
Taureg, although they had assimilated significant elements from the Serer and Mande peoples
among whom they settled. However, in Nfansou’s time and onwards, Tereism had become
predominant, with the Fula Kings in both the old and the new country hosting Poet-Priests and
secret societies. Their primary worship was centered around ancestors and spirits, both of
which were merely aspects of a being called Manguionki, or the Great Spirit – known as Ngala-
Nyama among the Soninike.

The veneration of Manguionki and his aspects was performed in secretive, gender-segregated
ceremonies. Sacred images and iconography was commonplace in these rituals and outside
them as well. The Cosca family’s eventual inclusion in these rituals was a matter of no small
matter. Mario Cosca would be the first of the Cosca family to join a Tereist secret society, and
also the first to be accused of witchcraft. Those members of the Cosca family who remained in
Europe and elsewhere were forced to tread lightly and quickly disown him so as to keep the flow
of support from European nobles and mercenaries from drying up entirely.

As culture diverged between the Old and New Worlds, Tereist worship would also diverge – in
the new world it confronted a dizzying array of cultures and customs and would draw inspiration
from far more eclectic sources. Very few Poets went across the ocean to Tolteca, and
accordingly any sense of orthopraxy or tradition was muted in comparison to West Africa, whose
religious practices solidified and became more organized and hierarchical in response to the
challenges of Christendom.

Many Serer and Norse also came to the new world, bringing their own distinct religions. Most of
the Serer were Tereist in their own way, although they chose to call the Supreme Being “Roog
Sene” and generally were considered by the Fulani to be improperly worshiping. The Norse for
their part worshipped no pantheon of Gods – they were Darmahujr, exiled alternately for
refusing to worship Christ and refusing to consider Odin as a god and not a Bodhisattva. They
had their own eclectic writings and distinct traditions, traditions which they would keep alive
amongst themselves with great success. As the descendants of the persecuted, they clung to
their own faith tightly, although in later centuries they would not be above giving homage to
Manguionki, wagering that the Supreme Being was just the Fulani name for the universe.

Native peoples often had general autonomy to practice their religion and order their society as
they saw fit, especially in those allied states such as Azcapotzalco, Tochapan, and Cholollan.
The abrupt collapse of the Toltec culture led to the rapid rise to predominance of the northern
Nahua-speaking peoples, whose peoples were generally more warlike. Military elites gained
unprecedented power in society, displacing agrarian and mercantile oligarchs. Groups like the
Purepecha who resisted conquest for a few decades after the arrival of Nfansou found
themselves becoming increasingly dominated by military factions who claimed they could
provide security in uncertain times – however, without the massive technological advantages the
invaders possessed, these military factions were little more than an impotent stopgap measure.
Italian and Spanish Christians also arrived in Tolteca and across Southern Solvia, but they
mostly kept to themselves, except at an elite level. Part of the rank-and-file of Christendom
came to regard their own leaders with suspicion – seeing them working with heathens and
infidels left a sour taste in the stomach of many would-be Votivists, while another large
proportion with more mercenary interests cheerfully tried to find excuses – the mystery cults
were merely another name for Saints, and Manguionki was just God the Father. The most
important ancestor was just a misunderstanding of Christ. To this select group who didn’t want
to face inconvenient spiritual realities, the Fulani were not infidels, not truly, merely ignorant of
the true Word.

In general, the Europeans did not find it quite as easily to accept that the Fulani Mansas were
here to stay. At least one ill-fated expedition by Tomas de Sanctiacau attempted to unseat them
outright. The best that can be said about this attempt was that it quickly realized the
impossibility of what Tomas intended and relocated to Aloysiana, where Votivist sentiment was
more able to be realized.

However, many Europeans did not share de Sancticau’s qualms. By the 14th century, the Cosca
family were obscenely wealthy off the successes of the Fula. Their landholdings in the New
World and their vast piles of native treasure allowed them to marry an eligible daughter, Trese,
to the Mansa’s son Njanire and henceforth to remain deeply entangled with the Fula dynasty,
eventually more or less culturally assimilating into the syncretic culture of the region – their sons
played ball games and raced horses with the sons of the Mansa, and they transitioned from a
state-within-a-state into an integral part of the royal family. Only in Europe did the Cosca
maintain the pretention of separateness, generally using the New World’s relative isolation to
hide or disguise the true nature of their connection to Nfansou’s dynasty.

By the time Nfansou II ascended the Mehikan throne in 1273, several members of the Cosca
family worshiped Tereism to varying degrees and several more enjoyed high positions within his
regime. They served as a valuable intermediary between the throne and European adventurers,
allowing the state to mediate cultural tensions that might have otherwise broken out into small-
scale wars. As an example of this cooperation, the city of Mayapan was conquered by a joint
Fula-Italian expedition – led by the conqueror Nyiwasude, it brought down the growing
Confederacy just as it began recovering from the devastating waves of plague that had swept
through the region several generations previously. Rule over the lowland Maya fell essentially to
a sub-kingdom run by Nyiwasude, who himself converted to the Darmahujr religion thanks to the
influence of a few Norse companions, and paradoxically remained a member of the Tereist
Sariya cult.

Legally speaking, Nyiwasude’s Mayan kingdom was typical of the political chaos that was the
Mehikan Kingdom. Intertwined, overlapping jurisdictions and vassal kings were incredibly
common. Kafibaka was nominally the capital of everything from the lowland Maya to the
independent Chichimec polities in the north, but in practice many rulers asserted independent
foreign, domestic, and religious policies with little objection from the central rulership. In general,
the Fula in particular made little effort to hide the exploitative nature of their regime. Their
policies were designed around acquiring land by subjugating the indigenous inhabitants to
outrageous labor taxes which exhausted their populations and allowed the Fula to secure yet
more land to give away. These policies seemingly appeared without any real precedent, based
entirely on the situation at hand, and those who administered them crushed any resistance with
brute military force, seeing it as merely a different means to the same end. Yet at the same time,
the Fula still accepted many native regimes as legitimate and as allies, and these were treated
with extreme leniency and often given immense gifts of territory, metal, and other such
commodities. This paradoxical treatment created a bizarre state indeed – one filled with glaring
contradictions and internal rifts that showed no sign of resolving themselves, one held together
by brute force and military power.[3]

[1] Tolteca is often a common European expression for the entire state Nfansou created,
although the Fula more commonly called it Mehika or Oumiruulei, the latter of which is of
unclear origin.

[2] Mosquitos bringing tropical disease will be a last death blow to any hope of a truly native
civilization recovering in many parts of this country.

[3] Many people have mentioned the Fula settlement of OTL Brazil as a possibility - however,
sugarcane is not well known to them and is only grown in India, Asia, and some parts of the
Bakhtiyar world in any great quantities. So while they've explored the coast, as have the Mauri
and other groups, their notion of conquest is primarily sticking to the areas that have large,
organized cities and other areas where wealth and labor can be easily exploited. The
Bharukacchi and Kapudesan explorers who've found TTL's Caribbean and started trading there
are the most probably introducers of sugarcane. They'll be covered in greater detail, but their
first arrival is around 7 years post Flesh. There have been many more explorers and a good
amount of trading, but so far it's a long voyage. By the end of the century, they start selling
tufenj and cannons in small quantities to the various New World, European, and African powers
alike, along with other finished goods and spices. Africa is flush with precious metals, herbs, and
ivory, the latter of which is starting to become more scarce in Kapudesa. But this trade will be
covered in another post.

[My preliminary thoughts on the slave trade began on page 3. They've developed a little since.
Basically, as we'll see, West Africa ITTL is home to increasingly developed polities whose
political unification will make the slave trade as OTL more difficult. Furthermore, differing cultural
understandings of slavery will mean less profitable slave trade to the New World. Many who
come to the [Caribbean] to work will do so voluntarily, knowing that the difficult conditions are
well rewarded for those who prosper. As native slaves die out, European indentured servants
might also be commonplace. Culturally, many societies/cults of Tereism strongly encourage
manumission of slaves and good treatment of them - so you're not going to be able to build the
dehumanizing massive factories on hereditary labor as in OTL.
Then again, perhaps I'm being too optimistic about what economic motives will make people do
to each other. But I would rather like to make a world where the slave trade is, if not gone, far
less abhorrent.

And maybe that's ironic, given that I just spent a whole post detailing the brutality with which the
Fula treat the indigenous of the Americas.]
The formation of West Indian
Ocean Empires and Trans-Atlantic Guilds

The first Bharukacchi settlers came to Solvia early, but they were few in number and did not
establish their own polities. Indeed they were hardly settlers – Bharukaccha sent ambassadors
and merchants, not farmers or soldiers to the New World. They were interested in economic
opportunity first and foremost, eagerly bringing ideas. In their world, guilds and corporations had
a monopoly on some of the more important resources – human capital and land were both
frequently spoken for. Certain industries, such as sugar production and agriculture, were,
barring some immense technological breakthrough, essentially impossible to break into… until
the Bharukacchi learned of the New World.

Suddenly, smaller banking houses, whose capital was nearly meaningless in the old world,
began to imagine what they could do with such a small investment in the old world. The vision
they ultimately devised was one based in little that was traditional or recognizable. The caste
systems of India, which their forbearers brought to East Africa, had little role in the new world
they imagined. It must be remembered that those who travelled to Solvia from the Chandratreya
Empire were a different breed – they had soaked up the ideologies of a new generation of
radical philosophers and writers whose notions saw the accumulation of wealth as the ideal goal
of a state. Even if, as many did, they couched this in notions of communal welfare and societal
interests, taking liberally from the exoteric movement in Buddhism, these profit-hungry
philosophies ultimately gave rise to greedy and self-interested movements whose ultimate ends
were without precedent in their bloodthirsty willingness to exploit for the end of pure profit.

The history of the conquest of the world is not a pretty one. Motivated by profit, some of the
most inhuman systems in history were designed in the era of the Ragnarssen exchange. These
systems began in the early fourteenth century, with the arrival of these merchant-adventurers.

Meanwhile, the greater banking houses had their own ventures. The Red Swan Association of
Khambhayat (one of Bharukaccha’s chief rivals) signed a deal with the Masamida King in 1293,
establishing a foreign headquarters in the distant Masamida capital of Aghmat. Two decades
later, they would establish an alliance with the Taino kingdom of Haiti, providing arms and know-
how in exchange for permanent toll-free basing rights. Settlement wasn’t in the cultural DNA of
the Chandratreya, but they understood the concept of a protectorate quite well. Even if their
colonial impulses were somewhat neutered, they nevertheless were eager to acquire overseas
allies. In time these allies would provide the basis for a series of new commercial programs on a
scale the world have never before seen.
Placing military and commercial leverage on the Watya, it would be the Bharukacchi
government which undid the traditional prohibition on vessels moving east around the Cape, just
as new ship designs made it easier and easier to attempt such voyages. Now, certain
companies could gain government writs and pass the cape without paying a toll, and all other
merchants would merely pay a toll, rather than having to accept the work of Watyan
intermediaries. Those who attempted to circumvent the toll became smugglers, and a heady
business of privateers developed almost immediately so as to hunt down ships which were
denied safe passage by the Port Guild of Watya.

In the end, many prospered. The Mauri and certain Ispanian and Italian merchant houses could
now pass Cape Watya and trade directly in Asia. The Watyans themselves now were delighted
to collect a toll and to undermine the old laws of Tangrasirabh, whose decline into irrelevance
began with the First White Elephant Concordat of 1306. The Chandratreya and Kapudesa
signed a pact which allowed them to deploy embassies and soldiers to the ports of Watya,
which at that point were falling into general anarchy due to the northern raids and the dissolution
of the Randryan councils.

Kapudesa began stretching their muscles globally as early as the 1260’s, when they began
interfering in the Izaoriaka conflict. Where once there had been two rough factions – the
theocratic Hundred Temples and the highland tribes (united in the thirteenth century around the
Andrarimani clan) since approximately 1245, a period of general anarchy had reigned. In the
aftermath of the Flowering Flesh, the generation that overseen the recovery had been
particularly parochial in their outlook. While powerful clans such as the Andrarimani and
powerful temples such as the Ishvara-worshipping Iuzaorin Siwa temple held much sway, their
power was deeply decentralized and broken. Kapudesa found great profit in playing the sides
against each other, and utilized exiles from both sides as soldiers-for-hire.

In 1271, however, a young man named Radamavarma entered the scene. Noble-born, he was
held as a hostage at Iuzaorin Siwa for most of his life, where he received the typical religious
and practical education of the aristocracy. He never knew his father, a local petty king, who
would die before his birth. With nothing left for him upon leaving his comfortable captivity 1271,
he would leave the island and sail north, stopping in Pazudesada briefly before heading to Aden
and then ‘Kwana, the great center of Buddhist scholarship in the Arabian peninsula. He was
struck by the unique style and profound iconoclasm of Arabian Buddhism, unique and yet
parallel to the Iranian Nowbahar movement.

Radamavarma had seen his own people suffering. Famines were regular, and the Hundred
Temples and clans alike provided no solution for the common people. He believed that the
suffering of his people could only be eliminated by the “breaking of the temples” and so on his
arrival he rapidly gathered a crowd of fanatics and exiles. Despite early persecution, this rag-tag
band made it to the highlands and began waging a successful war against tribe and temple
alike.
“You shall cross the ocean of becoming!” He declared to his followers. “None who die in my
service shall not be reborn in the Pure Heaven!” And thus he lead a rebellion which smashed
the political power of clan and temple alike in one fell swoop. Victory led to victory, and
suddenly, improbably, a young minor noble found himself with ultimate political power and no
system of governance beyond those he had smoothly annihilated.

Like many revolutions, he was easy co-opted. Embassies from Kapudesa arrived swiftly after
his victories, congratulating him on his triumph and realizing that he was not the fanatic that
popular mythologizing had made him out to be. He generally allowed Hindu temples to remain
operational, even despite his Populist-Buddhist movement. Furthermore, he had no clear
system of government, and the Kapudesa were eager to provide advice when it came to matters
such as land redistribution and trade policy. As his mobs began to melt away, they even
provided outright military assistance in suppressing Sakalava-loyalist rebellions in the north.
Soon, Izaoriaka was all but under their political control.

As much as the Kapudesa feared a similar uprising among a disgruntled underclass, they also
saw the Izoariaka situation as fundamentally unique. As long as anyone could remember,
Izaoriaka had been a collection of warring statelets. Bringing order could only be a good thing.
The establishment of citizen guilds who were legally required to enter into partnerships with
Kapudesan merchants was an even better thing. And yet for all of this scheming, the Kapudesa
kept their sights far further afield.

The Kapudesa knew all too well the score beyond the Cape. They knew that Egyptian Canal
and Cape transit was the future of global commerce. Europe, West Africa, and the New World
were seen as captive markets – rich in precious metals, raw goods, and the like, while Asia was
essentially a great factory with insatiable desires for such things. The Watya had made a small
fortune for their traders by denying ships the right to pass the Cape, forcing the world to accept
the Watya as middlemen. But the Equal-King of Kapudesa, in alliance with the Chandratreya,
knew that the future lay in allowing trade, in connecting the world by invisible lines of obligation,
credit, and tolls. “Denying the free flow of people, goods, and capital,” the famous Kapudesan
philosopher Ijur Ishvakaseh said “only forces it into the realm of the secretive and the profane.
Better for the wise king to profit off the dealings of his subjects than repudiate them and suffer
great costs and lose great chances to gain wealth.”

The system of tolls and the broader international agreements that began with the White
Elephant Concordat were only possible because of financial and political connections arranged
and strengthened over the last few centuries among the Indian Ocean polities. The wealth of
India and increased political stability across the powers of the Ocean ensured the
standardization of tolls and the diplomatically negotiated regulation of trade. Such negotiations
ensured that merchants had no surprises upon arriving in a port and generally could expect
lower tariffs on their imported goods. Ironically, despite their maritime success, the Tamil, who
were at this point in an era of political turmoil, were unable to take advantage.
When the second White Elephant Concordat was signed, it was between a coalition of Arab
states, chief among them Aden, and the Chandratreya. Representatives from the Bakhtiyar
state of Egypt attended, as did a Xasari embassy, and their negotiations were of immense
import, setting the tariffs across the northern rim of the Indian Ocean and deciding with the flick
of a pen which merchant expeditions would be allowed through the canal.

There has long been some confusion among historians who study the Chandratreya, alternately
seeing the Chandratreya government as a unified, monolithic entity whose actions and policies
arose from a single powerful government with many tendril-like interests in many diverse fields,
or seeing the Chandratreya as a divided state, one whose imperial pretentions in India and
overseas did not act in concert at all and did not know what the other was doing. The latter
seems far more true. The Chandratreya Maharajdhirajas were primarily concerned with their
land based empire, and their coastal cities often functioned as states within states, undertaking
independent policy and providing direction to imperial diplomats on sensitive matters. The
Chandratreya were, when push came to shove, quick to back up the actions of their cities but
they were frequently only spottily aware of the hierarchies they had created – the actions of the
banks, cities, and companies were in many senses only dimly known to the monarchy.

Thus did Bharukaccha and its rivals spread out across the Indian Ocean and indeed beyond in
ventures that were increasingly imperial in nature. Like the good client cities they were, they
paid their taxes and were not interfered with. Establishing trade links across the Royal Canal in
Egypt and the Cape provided new and enormous potential sources of revenue, sources that
would keep the Chandratreya government afloat long after they might otherwise have atrophied
and died of natural causes. Instead, Suryapura itself would essentially become the owner of
much of South Arabia, while a joint Khambhayati-Pazudesadan venture began to colonize
southern Solvia. Many governments became mere extensions of mercantile policy decided in
distant Indian city-states, and few did not feel the sway of this rapidly expanding global center of
trade and commerce. The
Arawak Sea and South Solvia

Even as early as the 13th century, the Arawak Sea had a reputation for chaos and lawlessness.
Of course, all the new world had such a reputation to some degree to the typical European
settler, expecting to find civilized Christian kings and some semblance of the old order among
which they could feel safe and welcome. They found no such familiar institutions.

Like the Vinlander communities, the Taino had been somewhat democratic in their local political
associations – unlike the Vinlanders, these political associations were often run by women to a
degree that would have shocked even the Vinlanders (who owing to manpower shortages and
Scandinavian cultural norms gave women freedoms unprecedented in European Christendom).
However, the waves of plague had allowed a new level of autocracy to creep into the highest
levels of Taino politics. The reduction of traditional governing bodies and the concentration of
strong warriors under one man slowly began to shift the Taino towards despotism.
In 1227, Cayacoa would earn himself eternal fame and glory by conquering the self-proclaimed
Duke of Haiti and declaring himself the Supreme King (Kasikekena) of the island. Given that all
other tribes had been decimated by plague, there were few to dispute his claim, or the
secondary claim that he was chosen by the spirit of cassava, the cemi Yikiyu, to rule Haiti.

Cayacoa and his son, Agueibana, were both fortunate to be intelligent, capable leaders in a time
which required such people. The Taino had been decimated by disease, and their recovery was
only just beginning by fits and starts. They had acquired iron weapons from the westerners but
these were few and far between, and the Marathi traders from the Chandratreya Empire were
still few and far between – it would be another century before their trips became more than rare
occasions. Watyan and Mauri traders would still come, but the latter were skeptical of arming
the Taino.

In 1236, Taino chief Gueibana took some forty warriors to Cubao Island where the Autotheists
had established their prosperous colony. A former rival of Cayacoa’s, he sought to both escape
the autocratic rule of his new sovereign and imitate his feats. Gathering a few crossbows, some
iron-tipped spears, and various cudgels and other weapons, he and his men arrived in Cubao
by means of large canoes and began meeting with native chiefs, trying to spur a rebellion
against the Autotheists. However, he discovered that unlike on Haiti, the Europeans here had
never waged war against the Taino. Few were interested in joining his alliance, and several
tribes even attacked his warriors.

The Autotheist communities of the island of Cubao, which they called Aravacia, lived in peace
with the locals. They had adopted many parts of the native agricultural package and had spread
some of their own in return. But it was their small supply of livestock, mostly goats, chickens,
and a few cattle that was their true source of trade wealth to the Taino of Cubao. Indeed, the
Autotheists were (relatively) poorly armed. While they still had iron tools and ironworking, there
were few of the martial aristocrats which had been the forefront of European aggression in the
New World. The Autotheists by contrast were peaceful proselytizers whose beliefs had slowly
been spreading among the Cubaoan Taino. But a decade early, twelve of the greater chiefs of
the island had accepted the anointing in oil that was Autotheist baptism. Their souls had
become one with the Divine Sophia and they had begun their education in the esoteric rites of
the religion. In political terms, the Autotheists recognized them as the “Gran Casiques” and
together they had brought the island under a loose political union – a union in which the elected
high priest of their sect, the “Grandmaster of the Free and Apostolic Order” was first among
equals.

Aravacia, despite or perhaps because of their heresy, received far fewer European arrivals than
most islands. After the last major wave of Autotheist immigrants in 1248, they were essentially
on their own, apart from a few isolated Mauri settlements and trade from the Darmahujr Norse.
Their alliances and intermarriage brought them a sizable population that was equipped to resist
outside disease and predation over the course of the century. Gueibana, for his part, did
manage to rally a few tribes onto his side, but this was little more than a substantial minority.
Once defeated, they melted back into the forests and Gueibana himself was killed.
European adventurers to the New World needed new bases of operation in the Taino Sea. A
group of Aquitanians found the Lucaia Islands, the largest of which they named Sant Gioan, as
almost uninhabited but yet quite sufficient for resupply stations. Enterprising Flemish merchants
established a settlement further south in 1263 (on the same island chain as Haiti) the colony of
Rijkhaven, sending some two hundred Irish mercenaries to force its remaining indigenous
inhabitants into slavery or worse. The success of these warriors lead to Rijkhaven’s eponymous
town and capital quickly becoming the largest purely European settlement in the New World in a
mere twenty years. Under the direct authority of King Boudewin Adelinus of “Those countries
and those cities that comprise the United Crowns.” – A royal viceroy was established several
months later, and thus began Low Country involvement in the New World in earnest.

The rapid expansion of Netherlander influence in the New World should perhaps be
unsurprising. Under King Steninus and his brilliant son Boudewin, the United Crowns had
exploded in size, power, and influence. Her cities had rapidly expanded in the period of Frankish
dominion, built upon new urban foundations rather than the archaic Roman cities of the south.
Her merchants traveled the world and her nobles fought across Europe to preserve their
hegemony in the wake of the Frankish collapse. Her maritime culture was rivaled only by the
Norse and Anglisch, and unlike the Italians and Mauri, whose transition from Mediterranean
sailing and local trade networks to oceanic was performed haltingly and with some trepidation,
the Netherlanders had always been oceangoing, and no sooner than the Norse had settled
Vinland did their ships begin pursuing them across the ocean, providing supplies to starving
colonists and reaping the bounty of the North Atlantic in fish.

Netherlander ships were the first to connect the Vinland settlements around Cape Trosc to the
European settlements in the Taino Sea – including Aloysiana. En route, they discovered bays
and inlets rich with shellfish and filled with natives fewer and ever more primitive than those that
their counterparts were finding. In 1289, New Ghent was founded at the mouth of one of these
bays, and soon, with Papal consent, the Kingdom of New Vlaanderen was founded, a sprawling
territory which recognized all from Cape Trosc to Aloysiana as the property of the United
Crowns in perpetuity. Boudewin established his brother Mariss as Viceroy, something which his
contemporaries considered a humiliating exile after Mariss failed in some court intrigues he was
planning.

The Papacy was eager to fund and encourage strong European states to send government-
backed expeditions to the New World. They saw the New World as a breeding ground for
paganism and heresy. The Aloysianans, though notionally connected to the old world, had
appointed their own Bishop from among the itinerant priests who had traveled to the New World
of their own accord. Nouvele Aichs was, to the Papacy, a false Bishopric, and thus the arrival of
the United Crowns could not be better timed. Here was a proper Christian monarchy with proper
Christian subjects, and one that acknowledge the authority of the Papacy with alacrity, unlike
the Vinlanders and the Miklalander Norse, whose own Christendom had always been a bit more
independent and strange.
The first major Ispanian voyages to the New World saw them granted a huge Duchy that
amounted to the entire coastline of South Solvia. This was an utterly impossible claim to
enforce. The Fula monarch Sulanjai, back home in Africa, had begun sending his own royal
expeditions, finding large towns and sophisticated urban centers. The Fula had been growing
progressively more maritime, and ever bolder. Striking out without the assistance of the Canary
Norse, they were able to establish a series of small conquests along the Ningatu river and the
Tupi Coast, where they established governors to extract tribute from the natives. This tributary
system, of course, failed rapidly. Their subjects began dying of disease, and no matter how
many slaves the Fula brought back from their raids into the jungle, they would die just as
quickly. Furthermore, the Fula were at a distinct disadvantage. Their cavalry was useless in the
deeply forested terrain of large parts of the continent, thus restricting their dominion to those
portions of the region where dry scrubland predominated.

In these more arid regions they found a climate much like what they were accustomed to ruling.
While the Ningatu river territory fell into the hands of Mauri merchant adventurers, the Fula were
able to establish a second kingdom along the Tatolamaayo [Rio Sao Fransciso] and indeed
much of the scrubland region. The ruler of this region was a nephew of the Sulanjai, and his title
was “Sedud Mansa” – an ad hoc title that effectively amounted to viceroyalty. Although at first
the Tatolamaayo Kingdom was weak, the Fulani gained enormous profits when they realized the
utility of their coastlines as entrepots – and eventually, for sugarcane production. The vast inland
farming estates were in time supplemented by equally vast coastal sugarcane factories.

Ispana was thus left with slimmer pickings. They were able to conquer the mouth of the Ningatu
and seize much of Carib country. They did not come as Votivists. As often as they justified their
conquests with royal and papal writs, they frequently simply established small fortifications on
the islands and coasts they were able to seize – regions all but abandoned and purchased from
the surviving natives for mere trinkets. Petty aristocrats overnight became Dukes of huge tracts
of land, an appealing prospect except that the Ispanians found themselves the rulers of malaria-
infested tropical forests with little apparent economic value. While the lords of New Vlaanderen
were few and far between, ruling an almost apocalyptically desolate land, at least their farming
tactics were viable. The Ispanians found themselves ruling an apocalyptically desolate jungle,
and it would take them a great deal of time to adapt and find any profitability in their venture.

Aquitaine, meanwhile, was organizing their own colonial ventures, and these were Votivist
indeed. Rumors of great golden cities on the far coasts of Solvia saw them launch impressive
expeditions into the jungles and mountains, seeking legends…
Map that ignores natives settlements entirely in favor of an absurdly unrealistic notion of
Eurasian control. The Europeans are nowhere near numerous enough to claim even a fraction
of what they hold. The Fula territories in Mexico are even a good bit exaggerated, to say nothing
of the Fula who are now claiming they hold the whole Brazilian interior cause they can raid it
with impunity.
Kuruma

Much attention is given by contemporary and later histories of the Conquest of the New World to
the achievements of the Fula. Part of this may be because of the improbable nature of the Fula
conquest – within a mere century or so of their contact with the European world, the Fula were
building oceangoing ships and exploring and conquering alongside the Europeans. Of course,
this should not come as a total shock. From a standpoint of societal and technological
advancement in comparison to the Eurasian world, the Fulani were nearly the equals of the
Europeans in most respects that mattered – they had sophisticated metalworking, organized
governments, and ship working technology brought by foreigners but rapidly adopted by native
workers. They held an expansive empire from the Senegal (the main artery of their civilization)
to the Gambia and the Casamance, although they were unable to wrest the gold mines of
Bambouk from the Jakhanke, nor establish anything more than a temporary vassaldom over
that region under one Mansa Silatigui. Seeing commerce as beneath them, the Fulani typically
allowed the Dyula, and later the Norse and Marathi, to serve as their mercantile caste, collecting
tariffs with what they viewed as a cultivated disinterest.

However, the tendency is, in such accounts of the Fula conquests of the New World, to ignore
that there were many other African peoples who made the voyage alongside the Fulani. The
country to the south of the Fula Empire was a mixture of migratory Mandika kingdoms and
native societies – and these natives had their own indigenous shipbuilding techniques, creating
oceangoing vessels of moderate size long before the arrival of the Canary Norse. However,
foreign innovations transformed a society of coastal raiders into long-distance travelers. The
Bijago tribe, equipped with better construction methods and the compass, were able to take up
an indispensable role as a shipbuilding and sailor caste for the Malinike kingdoms of the region.
It was by this route that Soninike adventurers joined their Fulani cousins abroad.

The foremost of the coastal Malinike kingdoms was based around the Kuruma caste, who for
unspecified reasons left their homeland around the middle Niger sometime in the eleventh
century, and by the twelfth were engaged in the outright subjugation of the coastal peoples,
even pressing deep into the forested regions. Slavers and conquerors, they established a
regime not dissimilar to the Fulani, and although they lacked the latter’s headstart in maritime
adventures, by the late thirteenth century they were selling slaves to Fulani estates in
Tatolmaayo and Mehika. The Kuruma kingdom would not engage in its own colonial ventures,
but it was their raids against the Kru, Nalu, and Temne that provided manpower to the Fulani.

In this early era, the Fulani were scarce on the ground. Their ostensible slaves were quickly
freed or their children were freed so as to boost their population. Slavery was a means to
acquire manpower and that manpower as often as not was turned to martial ends – an
extension of the slave-soldier system that developed in the Late Frankish Empire. These slaves,
though considered less warlike than the Fulani, were in the Fulani hierarchy far superior to
European or Native soldiers, both of whom they considered to be sickly and prone to disease.
Though their opinion on Europeans would slowly gain additional qualifiers – namely that only
certain diseases seemed to afflict the Europeans, and that they were certainly not nearly as
vulnerable as the natives, European migrants generally came as “free” men and women, given
that slavery was less of a social institution – and indentured servitude and serfdom moreso.[1]

The first Kuruma mariners would not round Cape Watya until 1312, at which point they would
begin their interconnection with the Eurasian maritime trade system, performing a useful role as
intermediaries connecting Ukwu and the Kongo to Watya, and eventually reaching as far as
Arabia. In 1343, they would receive their first Kapudesan embassy, and become recognized as
a critical trade link in the system of mercantile exchange.

[1] “But that’s just slavery with extra steps!” You say, to which I reply: “Oh la la. Someone’s
gonna get laid in college.”

Aloysiana

Aloysiana had many growing pains as a young country.

The Judges of Nania were few and far between, but attempted to exert control over a huge
territory. In a repeated phenomenon across the New World, this meant that it was necessary
that they fortify. Taking whatever slave labor they could find and whatever engineering
knowledge they could buy from the old world, the Judges set about creating fortresses set atop
the old, depopulated mound-settlements. The Chicaza era, they pronounced, was over. Theirs
was the new Empire.

The Aichista River is at time difficult to navigate, but it provided a simple system to exert
dominance. As the biggest river network in all North Solvia, river-boats became a critical part of
the Nanian state. River transit moved substantially faster than even horses, and using it, the
Judges found themselves with a force multiplier with which to subdue increasingly large
numbers of natives. Rival states such as the Caddo and Chucalissa were depopulated and
weak in any case, and thus the Nanian dominion only grew – especially with the arrival of fresh
waves of Francien and Aquitanians fleeing the chaos of the Frankish Empire’s collapse.

However, these new arrivals proved far more difficult to subdue than the natives. The Nanian
Judges who had fought alongside de Amiens were growing old indeed. Their children had often
taken native wives, and spoke Chicaza and Natchez. They worshiped Christian icons made out
in native styles – colorful and surreal by the standards of the newcomers, who liked their
iconography in the same style that had continuously evolved since Roman times. They often
participated in festivals and celebrations which seemed pagan by the standards of the
Aloysians. However, the Judges, contemporary slander apart, were a deeply devout and by all
accounts orthodox faction. It was aesthetic differences which doomed them.

One of the newcomers, a man by the name of Henri de Saintes, a titleless landholder in the Old
World, was particularly aggravated by the activities of the Judges – their simultaneously
puritanical and seemingly heteropraxic actions aggravated him. After he was called up to court
for public intoxication, he chose instead to gather a group of likeminded individuals and murder
the Judge who had attempted to censure him for his crime. Outright war did not, however,
follow. Henri de Saintes rapidly accumulated many of the newcomers to his faction, providing a
list of grievances to the High Judge and Lord Defender, Hermann of Anilco. Hermann feared
that outright conflict between the Franks would embolden his native subjects and enemies, and
out of a desire to keep the peace, made de Saintes “iudicates and patrician” and allowed him to
establish an advisory council of the Anilco guilds to help make decisions. De Saintes would later
marry a Cosca bride, Giovania Cosca, and would use their connections to the Mauri to bankroll
the founding of a new city.

De Saintes used his new powers to legitimize a de facto settlement near the mouth of the
Aichista, and used his new connections to hire proper mercenaries and begin training an army.
Every taste of power increased his ambitions, and the Judges were powerless to stop him.
Nouvelle Aichs[1], or New Aachen, grew rapidly, swelling with Ispanian, Aquitainian, and
Francien settlers. Conflicts with the native settlements the Judges oversaw increased rapidly.
The Judges at once held themselves as the protectors of the Christian faith and yet also
oversaw villages where many secret pagan rites took place, and this hypocrisy rankled for the
newcomers. Attacks on these native villages led to the best land being taken by the newcomers.

De Saintes would never become king. That would fall to his son, Henri, who took the name
Augustine upon ascending to the throne. The Judges were disbanded shortly thereafter, and
newcomers and mercenaries received vast allotments of land. The De Saintes dynasty became
proper Kings, receiving belated Papal approval for their actions and a vast but entirely
theoretical claim to “all the country watered by the Aichista” – a claim which demanded a series
of missions, most famously the Cascacia Expedition, to determine the extent of.

If the new Aloysianian Kingdom was more brutal to the natives in its land redistribution
practices, it too could not help but assimilate in time. Within mere decades of its found, the
colonists would find themselves taking on the artistic style, traditional foods, dress, and culture
of the natives, especially the Chicaza. Intermarriage became commonplace once more,
especially as the Chicaza began converting en masse to Christianity, spurred on the social and
political advantages.[2]

[1] No relation to Aichista, which comes from the native word Akishti, which I believe just means
“Big River.”

[2] The most obvious of which is that you’re way less likely to be enslaved. But village chiefs
would do it too, for more complex reasons.
The Babylonian Captivity – the
Papacy and the Christian East

For a young Prince Martin of Moravia, the fall of the Frankish Empire was a godsend. The
collapse of a monolithic power on his borders and its dissolution into countless warring fiefdoms
signaled the beginning of a grand new era in Moravian history. Prince Martin was able to forge a
marriage alliance with the family that would become rulers of the United Crowns, and their
newly dominant position in the Landstag ensured that Moravia often as not had a free hand in
the affairs of eastern Germany. Upon his ascension to the throne, two years after the final fall of
the Frankish Empire, he would come to see he had traded one monolithic empire for two new
rising powers – neither of them Christian, and both of them expansionistic.
To his north, Poland remained a strong, if intractable, neighbor. As Moravia had Germanized,
Poland had reasserted its elite identity time and again – attempting to toe a fine line between
Christendom and the eastern, Slavic world that was increasingly synonymous with everything
Buddhist, pagan, and evil to so many. Polish aristocrats found themselves isolated from the
interconnected European world. After they rejected the 1238 Landstag they were never granted
a second invitation, even as many of their German vassals attended yearly and assigned
permanent ambassadors to Metz. While they became diplomatically isolated, they remained
militarily powerful. Polish cavalry were unequalled in their sphere. They eschewed latest
European armor technology, designed to stop crossbow bolts in favor of a lighter, swifter style
that was nevertheless quite effective in outmaneuvering the ranks of German peasant pikemen
and dealing a series of stunning defeats to Denmark throughout the thirteenth century.

Over the decades their army increasingly became a relic and found itself slowly pushed back by
the growing dominance of the Rusichi. Their spectacular defeat at Gardinas in 1256 failed to
serve as a wakeup call to Polish lords. The Rusichi Velchihan Kresivies II, upon his ascent to
the throne in 1280, proved to be a militarily capable leader who renewed his country’s alliance
with Denmark and oversaw a four year campaign which left the Polish army shattered. Poland’s
German allies fell into the Danish sphere and Poland itself was left with its aristocracy in ruins
and its dreams of Baltic dominance up in smoke.

Moravia, meanwhile, was in a sort of military, and indeed cultural limbo. Their two societies,
German and Slav, had merged, creating a blended culture that was neither purely German nor
purely Slavic, but might have been recognized by both as either. They lacked the aristocratic
traditions of Poland, and indeed the martial prowess as a whole. Their aristocracy was counted
largely among the “lesser names” – those whose personal and familial prestige was not the
equal of the old Bavarian families who had fought the Votive Wars. For such conservative
“greater names” the Moravians were a mongrelized people, the border between civilization and
savagery.

If Poland had shared a border with the Xasar, the two would certainly have clashed. But Moravia
was not a warlike nation, and though it had a long and storied history of Christendom, including
many great cathedrals, monasteries, and libraries, the Moravians, apart from some border
raiding, determined that cooperation with the expansive Buddhist empire to the south was the
best policy. Over years of mutual interaction, they had begun to understand the Xasar imperial
ideology in a way that few Christian polities did. The Xasar often justified expansion on the basis
of establishing a greater order, and thus eternal peace. War, for them, was the regrettable tool
of a state that needed to impose harmony on a disordered world. The collapse of the Frankish
Empire served to validate and strengthen this ideology.

Accordingly, for the Xasar, a duly obsequious neighbor, such as the Attonids of Italy, might be
granted a free hand to follow whatever policies they wanted, at least internally. The Moravians
paid prompt tribute to the Shah in Konstantikert and were allowed to maintain whatever policies
they wished in Germany. While the Christians of Germany, especially their enemies, often
viewed this as a betrayal of Christendom, for the Moravians it was a small price to pay for a
peaceful, safe border where trade was permitted in great volumes.

By 1282, it was clear that the Papacy had no hope of retaining its independence. The Henet
Treaty of 1263 signed away the rights of the Attonid dynasty and their armies were increasingly
incorporated into the Xasar military. The Satrap in Mantova had repulsed the joint Aquitanian-
Burgundian Votive War, and for the time being, all Italy seemed to be a Xasar province, divided
into a northern and southern satrapy at Mantova and Napoli respectively. Those isolated hold-
outs such as Ravenna were all but besieged and the Christian population of Italy, despite being
furious at their newfound impotence in the face of the pagan hordes, had few avenues for
resistance. At a council of prominent Church officials in 1284, it was determined that holding
Rome was untenable. The Pope, the College of Cardinals, and every other major official made a
mass exodus from the city, one of the only times such a thing had happened in the long history
of the organization. Once the decision to flee was finalized, Pope Alexander III determined the
bold plan which the Church would undertake.

The Pope’s subsequent flight from the Eternal City by ship took him to Nice, a heavily fortified
frontier city under the control of Burgundy, a country still smarting from its recent defeat in the
Votive War. There, he did not remain long, but he offered the Burgundian King his blessing
before traveling to Aachen, a city which existed in a state of limbo. No-one had properly claimed
the city since the fall of the Frankish Empire, out of a fear that whoever did would invariably be
claiming the mantle of Imperium. The United Crowns, who were best positioned to do so, had
studiously avoided retaking the city, having sacked it on two occasions but never remained. The
town and its environs were under the control of a burger’s council, and the nearby lords were
notionally subservient to the United Crowns but generally independent.

King Boudewin welcomed the Papacy to Aachen with open arms. It was an unimaginable prize
– having the Papacy at arm’s reach and residing in the ancient Imperial city no less! For the
Papacy, it was no less of a public relations coup. Fleeing Rome was transformed overnight from
an abandonment of the holy city into a calculated decision to take the Papacy to the ancient
center of temporal power. The unspoken implication was that henceforth, the Pope would take
more of an interest in political affairs, especially as it came to uniting Christendom against the
Xasar menace.

With the Papacy’s abandonment of Rome, the Satrap of Napoli established a new Patriarch of
Rome under their guidance, much as they had done in Constantinople. Latin Christendom, of
course, immediately refused to acknowledge these puppet spiritual leaders or their
ecclesiastical appointments. The Xasar had been accustomed to taking a light hand with their
numerous Christian subjects, but the Romans and Sklaveni had been under the imperial boot of
the Xasar for decades. They were accustomed to unpleasant compromises with their ruling
leadership, and since the Xasar were generally tolerant, they accepted that rule by a heathen
king was just an inevitable fact of life.
In Italy, the notion of the Xasar government taking an active role in chosing the Pope was an
outrage. Riots broke out and a series of peasant rebellions wracked the region, but having not
coordinated with any outside support, were put down with ease. The local Xasar Satraps,
angered by this resistance, ordered the execution of numerous priests and bishops who were
suspected of opposing their rule. Xasar troops fanned out across the peninsula, slaughtering
many and arresting many more. In a final blow, the Attonids were forced to sign yet another
treaty, one which at once declared them the “Kings of Italy” and stripped every last vestige of
real power from their crown.

In a Papal declaration the following summer, Lorenzo Attonid III and “any who give aid and
comfort to the heathen Xasar” were declared excommunicate, as was the “the false Pope in
Rome.” The Pope in Rome responded by excommunicating the Pope in Aachen.

It was the peak of Xasar rule in Italy. They ruled an astonishing Mediterranean Empire, but also
one that had reached the peak of its logical expansion. To go any further would mean
confronting either enormous geographic obstacles such as the Alps or deeply entrenched
enemies such as the Syrian Eftal-Tayzig. Furthermore, a huge proportion of their population
were Christian, and despite widespread conversions among the Sklaveni and Roman elites, that
proportion had not decreased dramatically. The rebellions in Italy had shaken the Xasar badly.
They knew that the religious differences between ruler and subject were not easily overcome.
They had dismissed the capacity of the peasantry to riot, seeing the rural Christian peasant as a
weak and cowardly figure who would not be stirred to action without aristocratic incitement. And
so they had assimilated the aristocracy and clipped the wings of those who they could not
assimilate. They had dominated the landholders and the high ranking merchant families, making
them raise their children into the sangha and making them carouse and fight alongside Xasar
sons.

The Christian aristocracy thus neutered, they had assumed they were untouchable.

Perhaps they were. Perhaps the Xasar should have paid more mind to the fact that the Italian
rebellions were easily quashed. Perhaps they should have decided to double down on their
policy of assimilating or removing local elites. But in 1291, Shah Ormatsidar III panicked. Military
forces were assigned to regions that had not seen significant garrisons in decades. Christian
Churches were investigated for signs of sedition, and in some sensitive regions, the locals were
made to renounce Christ or were put to the sword. The Patriarch of Constantinople was
strangled and replaced.

Most critically, the Xasar began to turn inwards. Not enough, the Shah announced, had been
done to create harmony internally. They had been so focused with restoring order across
Europe that they had forgotten how many people within their own state were violently attached
to a false God who led men to ignorance.

For their own good, the peasants would have to be made to see the light.
Tales of these atrocities, especially in Italy, filtered quickly across Europe, and as they spread
they became exaggerated and increasingly disturbing. The Pope did not act, however. He was
an old man, and on his death bed. His successor, Pope Honorius III, would be too busy to act
immediately in any case. The Papacy between 1284 and 1296 was preoccupied with securing
their temporal position around Aachen, including hiring mercenaries to restore order and
promote a sense of safety under the benevolent rule of the Church.

But by 1296, the clamor for Europe to unite against the Xasar had reached a new fever pitch,
and Honorius III finally felt safe enough in his position to do something. The Papacy declared a
new Great Votive War, a war to equal the great conquests of the Severian Romans of old.
Europe, the Papacy declared, "should not rest until all Asia is liberated from the heathen yoke,
until our banners rise proud in Jerusalem once more, and until the Roman Empire is restored.
The captivity of our brothers in faith has gone on far too long."
Stirrings of
Votive War

The new Votive War was not a simple phenomenon. Romanticization of the Iudicates and the
"Southern Votives" in the New World led to the growing notion that Christ-aligned military power
had success where decadent nobles and slave soldiers had failed. In Church-produced
proclamations, the decadent, heathen Cosca family, who had renounced their old world ties in
favor of the New, were contrasted with the dutiful saints of Aloysiana, who brought enlightened
and glorious rule to the world, and furthermore won incredible triumphs and vast lands for
themselves. The Cosca were a convenient stand-in for the failures of the Frankish aristocracy
“numerous, but good for nothing” as Pope Alexander once called them. Their failures were the
failures of all Europe. Intellectually removed from the common tide of European culture, from the
stress and the chaos of the day, they made poor fanatics at best.

Some regions pushed back against this disparagement. Eastern Christendom, whose noble
based armies were strong and capable, had no need to change. Moravia, Poland, and Bavaria,
though quite different, all had their own martial forces of aristocracy. The United Crowns, urban
and populous, had its own levied militias who were well-equipped and well disciplined and
whose nobility was considered more mercantile and less martial in any case. The "Sargeants'
Columns" of the Crowns were however something sui generis in Europe, having kinship only
with the Northern European armies and fyrds whose mercenaries had been so effective and
were ubiquitous across the south.

Of the various powers that comprised the loose association that was European Christendom,
two, the Anglisch and the Bretons, consistently managed to punch above their weight and in
comparison to their various rivals and avoid many of the reactionary and traditionalist changes
sweeping Europe. Naturally, they also contributed little to the Votive Wars.

The young kingdom of Neustria found itself sandwiched between foes. A callback to the ancient
Frankish Kingdom, the Francien of Neustria had changed dramatically since those days. The
wealth disparity between the great landholders of the Empire and their peasants was enormous,
and necessitated large slave armies to keep in check. The Twin Crowns, Aquitaine, Burgundy
and Brittany alike found them an easy target, rich but internally divided, a land of decadent
nobles who were commonly viewed as having utterly failed to inherit the warlike spirit of the old
Franks. In the popular consensus, this was because of their impiety, and that narrative would be
reinforced when Paris itself fell to a slave dynasty. However, during the latter half of the
thirteenth century, Neustrian weakness could not have been more apparent. Aquitaine and
Brittany alike used the wealthy and poorly-fortified villas of their rulers as targets for raids,
striking before the slave armies could muster in force and retreating back across the border.

Neustria, however, under the poorly situated Ventomei dynasty, provided only one great service
to Europe – they isolated the Bretons, allowing them to begin eager maritime exploration,
particularly around the stormy seas of the North Atlantic. Breton fishing, whaling, and ultimately
traders would ply the Atlantic ocean, facilitating commerce to a substantial degree. Vannes grew
into a substantial port, rather than a more isolated haven eclipsed by rivals.

Europe as a whole was left with a crisis of identity in the wake of the Frankish Empire's collapse,
and it was the periphery which benefitted from this. Spain, Brittany, Angland, the Norse
countries - those regions never ruled from Aachen or ruled with a light touch were first to bounce
back, or indeed to carry on as if nothing had happened whatsoever. The notion of Europe as a
united entity was a foreign one to the things of Gotland and Norway, whatever faith they
practiced. The Skots and Irish did not care overmuch for papal pronouncements of far-off wars
against the East. For them, adventure was a western dream, and for the more fanatical among
them, bringing natives to Christ presented an easier and perhaps safer option than all-out holy
war.

The Papacy realized that they were left, in many respects, with the dregs. King Boudewin of the
United Crowns had passed away, leaving the low countries in the hands of his son, Boudewin II
– who died shortly thereafter of the pox, leading to the ascension of Boudewin’s nephew,
Claudius. It is unclear why Mariss was ignored in the line of succession, but the viceroy of New
Ghent was not recalled from his home in exile. Claudius, Pope Alexander III would write in his
personal dairy, had a “coin-counter’s heart at best, combined with overweening pride. He sees
in himself something greater than other man, despite his cowardice and common origins.”

Nevertheless, Claudius would be one of the first to declare his participation in the Votive War, if
only to ensure that he would get a prime seat at the negotiating table. Ironically, due to their
proximity to the Xasar, both Bavaria and Moravia remained silent, fearing to provoke the wrath
of the Xasar before Europe was united.

Never before had a Votive War attempted to organize without a massive Imperial enterprise
backing it, and the so called “Kings’ War” as it became known was a chaotic, messy affair. A
mere two months after it’s proclaimation, the Ventomei dynasty of Neustria was overthrown and
replaced by a former slave captain named Ptolemei by the rather eccentric Neustran king under
whom he served. Upon his ascension he took the dynastic name “Optime.” Later historians
would not hesitate to point out the strange coincidence of a King Ptolemei under a Pope
Alexander, and would find it remarkable how two pagan conquerors were now the two strongest
supporters of Votive War. For Ptolemei, this made particular sense. He had no legitimacy except
through Papal grant of power, and, since he lacked the cooperation of the Neustran nobles in
any case, he was essentially an army feeding off the state.

Ispana and the Two Africas were quick to join the cause as well, but the largest groundswell of
support was from the common people. They joined in great masses, thronging towards major
urban centers and assembling rough pilgrimages who, with pure devotion, believed they could
overcome the Xasar and their hateful “Chasar Lances” of fire and brimstone. They believed the
road to Constantinople was already open to them, and they had only to follow God’s
commandment and march.

Various folk figures emerged. For example, a Frankish girl named Joan was followed by great
quantities of butterflies, and indeed said to be clothed in them. She led her followers to the
Mediterranean Sea and claimed it would open and let them march straight to Jerusalem itself. It
did not, and she and many others drowned. Those who had followed her as far as Arles now
turned and in their desire to avenge themselves on some heathen, sought out “Tinanians and
Jews” to turn their crude weapons on. They found many who fit their notion of what those
groups should look like, and the slaughter became general, spreading out through Southern
France. Order was only restored at long last by Aquitanian mercenaries, and the King, Charlei II,
decided after that, that he would have no part in the Votive War, even, according to rumor, going
so far as to open negotiations with the Xasar.

This rumor would see him killed. If the Frankish landholding nobles had been assumed to be
dissolute and weak, they were not entirely so. Beneath the veneer of cultivated decadence and
royal charity lay thousands of second and third sons eager to find some respectable trade
outside of the traditional. Many of these who lusted for adventure used their stipends to seek
adventure in the New World, but many others now turned to adventuring at home. The call of
the Votive War set in them a higher purpose, and those who seemed to defy it were easy prey
for the wave of apocalyptic fanaticism sweeping Europe.

And so the year dragged on. Apart from what became known as the Vulgar Votives, no great
war began. In the spring of the next year there was still no sign, although the peasant
movements began to congregate on the borders, demanding provisions to march through to
Constantinople. In some cases, such as in Burgundy, they were even given said provisions, and
the Xasar massacred the ill-disciplined mobs with ease. Moravia, for their part, dispersed the
mobs with their own cavalry, bringing the heads of local leaders to the Xasar envoys in their
capital as a token of their “alliance.”

The Church, desperate to provide some sort of order out of what was viewed as a European
wide anarchy, established a military order. Higher ranking noble’s sons became Iudicates and
their lesser cousins became “Sworn Brothers.” Taking an oath to fight until the Holy Lands were
retaken and all the Patriarchal Sees were in Christian hands was no small matter, but for many
it was a path to political importance rather than living at home on a stipend for the rest of their
lives. Armed and trained by the “slaves” and mercenaries whose armies were so critical across
Europe, these nobles formed the core of a new, Christian army - the “Votive Fraternity” as it
became known.

While the Fraternity certainly had an armed wing, they primarily existed as an appropriation of
secular imperial power into the hands of the church. They ultimately inspired and frightened the
Kings of Europe, rapidly ascending into the very heights of power. On one hand, many Kings
idolized the Frankish Empire and the glories associated with the antique mythologized past of
Europe. On the other hand, many feared their own positions would be subsumed under Church
control. The Church already held vast properties in Europe – religious estates were massive
and represented huge wealth and influence even under the Empire. Now, they were truly
independent, holding Aachen and Paris in thrall, and the Church had the very reins of power
once more.

However, King Claudius, for his part, became increasingly afraid of the growing Church armies
and of the peasant movements that often sought to strike at Jewish and “heretic” populations
within his own borders, accurate or otherwise. He began to place pressure on Aachen to bring
their flocks to heel. Pope Alexander III, however, died in 1298, and his successor, Clement XI,
was elected his successor – a choice that vexed and frustrated the Ghentian King – Clement
was a more fanatical man than his predecessor by far, and viewed Claudius not merely as a
spineless, arrogant merchant but as a tool of the devil. He vacated Aachen for Paris, leaving
only a garrison of slave soldiers to defend the city. The Twin Crowns, however, did not dare
march on the city.

Tensions across Christendom grew. Burgundy and Bavaria increasingly allowed Papal Legates
and Judges to establish military camps and logistics depots across their territory, and in general
the beginnings of a rudimentary pan-European system began to develop for the first time since
the Frankish Empire’s collapse. In many cases, the same institutions were utilized – two
generations of atrophy did not mean that these changes were unprecedented. The Legates
were not so different from the circuits of Imperial authority and the Landstag was a potent tool to
rally the German princes behind the cause.

Still, however, it would not be until 1301 that the whole enterprise was finally ready. The “Grand
Diet” of Paris, a meeting of European Kings and their embassies that same year, rallied the
factitious lords and kings of the continent together. Notable non-attendees such as Claudius
promised aid and soldiers, while the more devoted lords prepared to march themselves.

Furthermore, the Church, in the past five years, had begun to understand something, or
believed they understood something, that their Frankish predecessors simply had not. The slave
armies of Europe could easily be kept in line so long as their masters were nothing human or
earthly. Promises of wealth or land seemed petty in comparison to what the Papacy could offer
– the promise of life eternal. One of the primary alliances forged by the Church was between the
Two Africas and Masamida, who provided a continuous supply of young slaves the Church
could make into fanatical soldiers of Christ and his earthly representatives.
The most complex enterprise in European history was finally almost ready to launch.

Our Islands and Cities

The Malay states after the Flowering Flesh did not long experience the pangs of contraction that
afflicted so many other parts of the world. The unprecedented bounce-back effect has been
attributed not to some preternatural survival despite the negative effects of the plague but rather
that the indigenous Austronesian societies were devastated to a far, far greater degree.

The colonial project, designed around feeding the insatiable desire of the Indian "middle class"
for goods, had substantial knock on effects. Unprecedented wealth expansion and the growth of
a new urban class of educated Hindu-Buddhists mirrored the developments in Hindustan and
increased their own desire for a unique bevy of distant trade goods. The development of island
plantations and the rapid spread of Malay interests was exacerbated by incremental
developments in navigation and weapon technology that granted them a substantial edge over
their rivals. Furthermore, as their agricultural package was already well adapted, they did not
struggle to colonize and expand around the rims of the tropical islands. Concrete examples of
this policy often varied in specifics, based on the tractability of local tribes and the powers that
organized it.

Any tropical island with a small population of technologically primitive peoples was a target for
conquest and plantation development. Those places where the natives did not already have iron
weapons and a knowledge of how deadly and duplicitous the peoples across the waves could
be were prime targets for slave raids and the establishment of ports further and further afield.
However, even more densely populated Papua, with the exception of the inaccessible and
treacherous inland regions, was an example of a prime target for Temasekan and Silendran
colonization. It had many exports - beautiful feathers, resins, spices and sugarcane were among
the various enterprises that the indigenous peoples were "persuaded" to take part in by their
(primarily Temasekan, during the period of their hegemony) overlords. However, Papuan
colonization was often a dangerous prospect. Interior tribes such as the Ekari and the Asmat
were proto-kingdoms capable of raising large armies over whom the Malay technological
advantage was often not significant enough.

Another major consequence of these revolutionary changes was that the old powers, already
fractured and weakened, truly crumbled and began a practice of outwards rapid expansion
paradoxically simultaneously. The old potentates, the Isyana, Srivijaya, and Silendra alike were
only clinging to power. Power on the archipelago meant networks of alliances – even the
strongest and most centralized dynasties relied upon the consent of their vassal kings and trade
guilds to thrive. As the vassals and colonies, especially the inner ones, grew rich, centralized
control failed. Srivijaya was wracked by rebellions and in 1298, the city itself sunk into the
canals and marshlands upon which it had been built. The Silendra found their carefully crafted
island confederation collapsed into three successor states – Sapi, Kemek, and Mirah, each
holding little more than a few scattered islands. There was a generation of warlordism that
reigned across Java, and the Isyana became one feuding family among many, struggling to
keep hold on their colonial enterprises.

The catalyst of this collapse is often seen as the failed Chola invasions of Srivijaya. Indian,
particularly south Indian, trading powers were a balancing and a stabilizing factor in the Malay
Archipelago. The mix of Chinese and Indian trade powers created a situation of proxy warfare
that collapsed in upon itself as the Kitai and Chola began trying to directly influence affairs with
their “treasure fleets” – active naval involvement in Malaysia meant warfare conducted at the
end of very long lines of supply by powers that were more often than not distracted with their
own affairs on the homefront. These expeditions failed to radically alter the balance of power in
favor of outside forces – rather they allowed the calcified old order of trading cities to finally
collapse.

At the dawn of the fourteenth century, an enormous vacuum existed and there was no-one to fill
it. The Kitai tried, utilizing their Temasekan proxy and their own fleets stationed in the region, but
the Kashyapani banking family emerged to counterbalance their influence. The Temaseka’s
peninsular on-and-off rival, the Pahang, suddenly found themselves with more wealth and
mercenaries than they knew what to do with, and the war between Temaseka and Pahang
reduced the prestige of both powers substantially.

And yet the vacuum would not last long. The Javanese coastal city of Mahadaha, which had
risen to prominence under the Isyana, and emerged as one of the strongest warlord states,
began making aggressive moves against Temaseka’s short lived thalassocratic hegemony.
Mahadaha, often known as Trovolana, was the “city of festivals” – a canal-lined city filled with
temples and public bath-houses, theatres and palaces. However, its primary innovation was a
form of monarchal absolutism that was rare in the peninsula, whose polities preferred the
vassal-based mandala. When Mahadaha conquered, they deliberately avoided leaving any
trace of the old ruling family behind. They did not establish vassals but rather deliberately
erased all traces of prior dynasties and set their own rulers upon the throne.

By 1301, when Temaseka had entered terminal decline, the King of Mahadaha, Nararya
Jayavardhana had just finished conquering his rival Singharasi, an inland power who had
seemed poised to inherit the mantle of the Isyana. The King of Singharasi, Panji Arok, had
offered his submission to the Mahadahan King, on three occasions only to be viciously rebuffed.
The King and his family ultimately had to accept the confiscation of all their property and a
humiliating exile from their native land.

Nararya Jayavardhana was one of the first Malay Kings to truly grasp the technical and military
revolutions of his time. His naval vessels incorporated Indian and Austronesian innovations –
some of them utilized outriggers and even twin hulled-designs that granted incredible
maneuverability to his light ships, while his heavier vessels were built with know-how gained
from alliance with the Kalapirar. His soldiers, the “white banded” army of Mahadaha, was a far
more professionalized force than the levied militias raised by aristocratic vassals. Mahadaha
had been a small city, one among many. They learned early the force multiplier that was a
disciplined, elite military, and they never diverged from that pattern, even later on when they
began hiring Polynesian and Pulan mercenaries to augment their forces.

After Jayavardhana’s conquest, he did not rest on his laurels. He declared the foundation of the
Majachaiya, the “Radiant Tree” Empire. Immediately, he turned his attention to conquering the
old colonies, the rest of Java, and ultimately, bringing the entire world under his submission. It
was said that in his youth, Jayavardhana had been a hostage of the Kitai. Surrounded in the
dizzying opulence of their royal court, a place that seemed not so remote from the divine realm,
he must have seen the relative weakness of his own people, the way that they were prized
primarily for what they could give to the rest of the world rather than any intrinsic quality. Malay
was a word synonymous with spices and trade, not with grandeur or glory. This rankled the
young Prince, and when he returned he embarked on a vision of reform and transformation that
would have long lasting impacts.

For Majachaiya, each victory brought in enormous wealth. Their wars were often long and
bloody, given that they did not accept the traditional feudatory system of the islands, but once
successful, the royal properties were directly taken into the trust of the State. They were a
worrying sight to the foreign trade companies and the Kitai – finally, there existed a power
strong enough to negotiate on equal terms with the foreign companies and their limitless
reserves of capital. With word spreading of the Kitai and others crossing the Taipingyang
Ocean, the Majachaiya also became increasingly concerned with mounting their own
Transprocellaric voyages across the Mahasaagar.[1] Majachaiya trade companies began
preparing their own expeditions out into the open ocean.

Meanwhile, on Svarnadvipa, the collapse of Srivijaya left a similar series of feuding states, but
apart from the highland kingdom of Dammacraya, no true polity capable of challenging the
Majachaiya. Over the early fourteenth century, most of the island would be conquered – except
for Dammacraya, whose resistance was attributed to a network of alliances with the inland
tribes, the very polities long ignored by the Srivijaya. The Minangkabau tribal group had their
own matriarchal system and their own animist religion they called uccata. Despite influences
from the Hindu-Buddhist Kings of Srviijaya, and attempts to enforce uniformity of religion, the
Minangkabau, as with many of the interior peoples of the islands, had little interest in adopting
any more than a veneer of Buddhism over their traditional worship. The “civilized” centers of
Svarnadvipa mocked them as outdated and savage, calling them ignorant and “the people of
shamans” ignoring a long history of oral tradition and a cultural focus on education which meant
that some of the greatest of the Buddhist monasteries on the islands were actually in the
uplands of Dammacraya, and patronized by the notionally Hindu-Buddhist kings of the region.

Dammacraya would remain for centuries as a thorn in the side of Majachaiya, even long after
their hegemony was assured over the islands.

Other rivals simply remained too far afield for the Majachaiya to destroy and submit. The
Mahavisayas, once little more than a stopover for merchants, were increasingly exploring and
expanding their own borders. The first Champa voyage to Pula took place in 1321, and the first
Champa voyage to the new world was only a generation later, crossing the Mahasaagar and
establishing a shrine to holy Indra on the far side of the world. These rivalries spurred constant
innovation and striving on behalf of the Majachaiya, a state that the Tamil Ariyar remarked
seemed always to have “a conviction in its own grandeur and a fear that such conviction was a
lie. The paradox of their greatness is thus.”

It is often said that last Isyana were defeated in 1311. Under their surviving patriarch, Isyana
Srirama Raden, they had fled to Pakuan, which in ancient times had been a Srivijayan city on
the periphery of the Isyana regime. There, they hoped high walls and a stockpile of tufenj would
grant them success. They were wrong. However, the Isyana’s own epic history, written a century
after their demise in a time when they could be safely romanticized rather than vilified, records a
voyage of Isyana that fled Java and the old world of feuds and war. It is said they came to an
island that hereafter was called Meghadvipa, or by the natives Aotearoa, an island that then was
covered in strange and beautiful birds, but thereafter would be the home of goats and lambs
and savage tribesmen who knew nothing of pure dharma. Whether these first settlers of
Meghadvipa truly came from the last Isyana or not, it was a compelling tale, and one which
enhanced the prestige of those first castaway settlers, who found themselves in a strange but
temperate land.

[1] And in one sentence I lay out the major names for the Pacific Ocean in this timeline. Woo!

Back where it all began

The wide open steppes were the birthplace of many great empires. So many proud peoples had
begun their ascent on the desolate lands between the Caspian Sea and the Altishahr Basin.
Rimmed by the eastern Tienshan Mountains and fed by the glassy, glacial waters of the Vehrod
and the Yinchu, the lands around the Aral had been the birthplace of peoples Europe called the
Huns, the Hepthalites, and the Chasar and indeed every proud and nomadic nation whose
legacy left Christendom diminished and a shadow of its former glory.

And yet over the centuries Central Asia had increasingly become a backwater. Armies who had
once been the very terrors of the earth no longer poured from the steppe. The silk road, the
lifeblood of this vast and sprawling country, was atrophied to a slow trickle of goods. The Turkish
Khagans did not receive, as the Eftal once did, an endless flow of tribute from the Iranian
Shahs. Even in the an era not so far removed, those thrown out of the Afsar Turks had joined
with the Afghani and waged a great and spectacular war against the men of distant holy Sindh,
the country of the blessed Buddha, where spice grew on bushes and even the common men
were rich as kings.

Nowdays the Sahputi were a distant memory. Lowahar, in her dotage, had been sacked by the
Pala and the Ansara Suf ruled in Balkh. The country the Bakhtiyar called Avjanayyastan and the
old Turks called Afgha was lost to them. The alpine monasteries and universities were
decorated with the sun and moon of the Ansara Suf, and the Tayzig and Iranians were united in
the splendor of their conquest.
In Christendom and much of the Near East, history was not seen as cyclical, and this belief held
even after the arrival of the sangha. Instead, history for many in Iran was degradation. The
glories of the Pishdad and Kayan[1] had faded into the glories of the Haxamanish who in turn
had fallen to the Arsaka and the house of Sasan. Then the Eftal had brought glory back into the
world, and revived the dharma, dispelling the great lies. But the Eftal, as with all things in this
world, were only transitory. In time, they too would fall, and their passing would usher in an era
of apocalyptic ignorance that heralded the end of this kalpa and the coming of a new era.

For the Ansara Suf, however, Akhsau Mansar had revitalized the world in a quasi-messianic
sense. He was the Mitrabudha, and he had brought back truth, beauty, justice, and dharma to a
world which had been deeply wanting. After the Ansara Suf clan had conquered Iran and Balkh,
they established their capital at Jai-Asvahan, a site that had attained ephemeral prominence
under the Khardi, but was primarily favored by the Tayzig warlords for its centrality and its lack
of history – upon its hilly foundations they could build a unique capital city, blending Arab,
Sogdian, Turkic, and Iranian influences. A city of domes and gardens, the Jai-Asvahan was the
seat of a uniquely synthesized and enduring culture. The history of Iran and epic poems alike
were crafted in ornated calligraphy. For the Shahs of the Ansara Suf, the Iranian renaissance
was born in Jai-Asvahan.

Unlike the Sahputi, the Turks, and the other weakened peoples with whom they warred, the
Ansara Suf were quick to grasp the implications of the tufenj in warfare, and other new military
innovations. They imported elephants to move their cannons at the pace of their armies, and
they used peasant armies as counters to the superior cavalry of the Turks without having, as so
many dynasties before them had, to rely on mercenaries. They did not conquer Asoristan or
Zwaristan, preferring to keep them at arm’s reach as tributaries, the Tayzig Shahs of Iran
preferred to expand towards the steppe. The river Vehrod’s basin provided decent agricultural
land on which countless Iranian, Turkish, and now Tayzig and Arab settlers could make their
homes. With fortifications and plows, the Ansara Suf slowly eroded the traditional nomadic
culture of the region in favor of their own sedentary lifestyle.

As one Chinese explorer wrote: “we moved from a miserable country of desert where the Turks
lived in tents with their animals to a place that, well-watered as it was, seemed to be a garden.
Nearby there were hills, running up to a great height clad with trees and foliage. There were
stone houses here as well as tents, and the livestock and men became plentiful and joyous in
character. They lived a well ordered existence and said that they were among the fortunate
ones of the earth. Everywhere there were shrines to the Buddha and to the gods of fire and
thunder, and the people are wise and gifted in astrology and the breeding of horses, making far
stronger and more capable beasts than they do in Jetisu.”

The Turkic peoples themselves were wedged in between a rock and a hard place. The slow but
steady advance of the Rusichi had become practically frantic, as demographic expansion incited
a constant need for communities to press further down their riverine avenues of settlement. The
Belaya and the Ural communities were armed, isolated, and fortified, barely loyal to the original
state from which they had been spawned, comfortable in the saddle and the river-boat alike.
The wars that characterized this expansion were dirty frontier conflicts between isolated tribes –
and the expansion of the Rusichi had a domino effect that should be familiar to any student of
steppe history. Along with the Sahu, the Rusichi established countless frontier towns called
Kheldansahr.

By the fourteenth century, Rusichi settlements had reached as far as the Ab and Irtish, with little
sign of slowing down. They traded and fought with the Turkic peoples of the region, but in
general there their presence was less disruptive than it was along the Volga and Ural rivers. The
establishment of Caspian Sea trading communities meant alliances between the Kheldansahr
and the Iranians, including ultimately a series of punitive expeditions against the fading Afsar
Khaganate.

The two main Turkic polities were the decentralized Afsar, clinging to life around the Aral Sea,
and the Jetisu, or “Seven Rivers” around lake Balkash, where the Esendimir clan was
paramount. Under the conditions of nomadic life, especially cattle-herding, which was the
primarily occupation of the Turkic peoples of the region, borders were especially vague, and it
was in direct response to the attempts of settled peoples to define and delineate borders
between nomadic and settled peoples that drove the violence of the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries. The Oghuz clans of the Afsar launched increasingly unsuccessful raids
against Iranian settlements on the Vehrod, and when those failed often tried to find work as
federates and allies of the Ansara Suf – only to find themselves repudiated by local satraps, who
had no need for such agents. Along the border the Ansara Suf were able to establish
watchtowers and local militias equipped with horses, tufenj, and lances. Lightly armed and
armored otherwise, tufenj gave them an additional shock factor and allowed peasants who
spent little time training at arms to function as crude horse archers – so long as they could
condition horses to be tolerant of gunfire.

Tensions on the steppe grew slowly but did not abate. The centrally located Khagans of the Isiq
and the Asghin went to war and despite attempts by both the Afsar and the Esendimir to put an
end to it, there was no clear end in sight. Raiding, long a traditional way to display power and
prestige, was less profitable than it had been in the past. There was no outlet for the Turks to
find adventure and lands abroad either – in short, the noose was growing tight around the Turkic
peoples. Nomadic life was always more tenuous, closer to ruin than settled life. After 1250, a
period of unseasonably cold winters led to mass dieoffs of horses and cattle, their fodder buried
beneath deep snow. Migrations southwards towards the Vehrod led to massive battles. The
Tayzig came off better, crushing the Afsar and permanently breaking the Turkic tribes into
feuding subgroups without any single organizing factor.

Others fled towards the Tarim basin, but they found the passes barred to them by the Altishahr
Cities. Kitai troops chased down those who found alternative pathways through, and the Turkic
peoples suffered greatly.
Despite the dire picture portrayed above, the Turks lived in a world of ornament and color.
Beautiful woven tapestries and banners, cleverly decorated saddles of pressed leather and
most spectacularly of all, their vibrant tents were remarked upon by those visitors to the region.
Increasing urbanization along the rivers and in other sheltered places meant greater material
wealth for the common people, who did not have the privilege of owning massive herds and
benefitted greatly from the ability to trade with settled groups in hard times. A new class of
nomad began to emerge, one whose territory was perhaps more limited but whose ability to
survive through hardship was much improved.

If the old clans were collapsing, unable to sustain their traditional lifestyle off the backs of the
settled peoples of the world, new clans emerged in their wake.

Ritual and tradition were kept by the common people in a way that was rarely touched by the
Buddhist veneer. The common people worshipped spirits of earth and water, spirits of cattle,
horses, and sheep. Tengri, god of the clear sky, was worshipped chief among all, and there are
few references to Buddhism among any but the elite, for whom giving lip-service to settled
religion was a valuable political tool. While some prior Oghuz clans seem to have included
sincere believers, the new conditions of Turkic life seem to have welcomed a regression
towards safe, familiar, and ancestral practice in an uncertain world.

When a person died, they were buried, not burned. On the Mangishlaq, coquina graves were
erected over their tombs. Further into the interior, there were sometimes earthen or stone stupa,
where small shrines and statues might be erected inside. Pyres were common among the
royalty and patriarchs of tribal groups, especially for those tribes dwelling to the immediate west
of the Tienshan and near the Vehrod. Monastic life was rare, as it conformed poorly to the rough
life on the steppe.

The establishment of ethnically Turkish cities such as Qarabat (near the Aral) and Akmola
(along the Syr Darya/Yinchu), with their distinctive vibrant coloration and sky-blue domed
temples and monasteries, represented a break from traditional Turkic life. For those Turks who
were drawn to the settled life, art, culture, and politics tended to imitate the Tarim basin. These
city-states, ruled by a “Bek” or master, were generally entirely autonomous from the external
tribes. A late thirteenth century development, they proved ultimately more enduring than the
tenuous associations of clan and tribe that defined Turkic politics. Their immense earthwork
walls represented a dangerous barrier to cavalry attack and enabled them to take on a role as
nexuses of regional trade and power independent of the traditional confederal model which had
failed to thrive in the face of rapid expansionism by invigorated settled polities. These city-
dwellers were sometimes called Qalmak, from the Turkic word meaning “to remain” or “to stay”
but ultimately the term Qalmak came to encompass the whole range of settled Turkic culture.
The Jackals of the
old High Round

There is no life but this

There is no God but ours
She comes walking
She separates the wheat
When the spring rains come

Isvara is the most False

Buddha is the most False

They are wicked spirits

They are the evil ones
God will defend us
He does not accept equals
When the thunder comes
-Musengezi prayer stone, written circa 1330

The collapse of Tsaibwe is a matter of some debate among scholars. The traditional account,
mythologized and recollected among the people of Rozvi, revolves around a great warrior-king
named Dlembewu, who was born to a woman impregnated by the god Muali-Mwari. Dlembewu,
according to legend, raised the city of Musengezi and overthrew the decadent Tsaibwe Kings,
whose cattle had grown few and sickly in any case. With the establishment of Dlembewu’s
regime, the famines that had wracked the nation came to cease almost immediately. There was
great rejoicing, and Musengezi gave gold wire bracelets to his followers and was recognized as
King. The High Round was looted, first for its movable wealth in cattle and horses, then for its
gold and copper, then finally for its very stone.

Certainly, archeological records confirm that the Tsaibwe were wracked with famines around the
time of the Flowering Flesh in the 1220’s. Tsaibwe civilization was based on wealth in livestock,
and the aristocracy was far too thin on the ground to keep safe this mobile source of wealth.
They relied on retainers, to whom they gave food, shelter, and small stipends, to protect and
care for their cattle. However, as the plague struck and was followed by famine, social trust
broke down. Tsaibwean nobles could not trust their retainers to not steal livestock, and as
subsistence farming broke down across the Zambezi valley, many turned to cattle-raiding to
augment their food supplies. Iron weapons and horses were ubiquitous enough that the
aristocracy had no real advantage. They found themselves besieged from all angles and quickly
were overrun.

Soon, jackals loped through the old hilltop cities, searching the granaries for old bones. The
world had moved on. Riverine communities developed, more reliant on the expanded Afro-
Eurasian agricultural package than cattle-rearing, less stratified and more resilient.

The tendency in the Zambezi and Limpopo basins during the thirteenth century was towards
increasingly sophisticated polities and larger populations. Heavier and better plows allowed the
cultivation of larger and larger regions. The fall of Tsaibwe and the collapse of the stratified
fortress-settlements during the Flowering Flesh led to a brief period of social chaos – the
migrations which began during the plagues and subsequent anarchy would hit Cape Watya a
few generations later in full force – dispersing isolated frontier settlements and driving the
Watyan settlements back towards the coast. The scattered tribal chiefdoms that appeared along
the Watyan frontier, however, tended to be more primitive and less organized than their northern
cousins. They lacked the ornate decorations of thin gold and copper wire that characterized the
heirs of old Tsaibwe.

The Zambezi basin cultures of the thirteenth century had high population densities and frequent
contact with the outside world. While they never approached the relative egalitarianism of their
northern cousins clustered around Lake Nyanza, cattle were no longer owned exclusively by a
tiny elite, and precious metals – a sign of royalty – were now available to petty tribal patriarchs
and local notables. Traders from as far afield as China would travel inland from a number of
trading ports – Tangrasirabh having declined in importance and never quite having recovered
from the Flowering Flesh. If the massive palace-economies of the past centuries were gone,
they had been replaced with a far more complex system – smaller stone settlements were
commonplace and wealth stratification, while extant, was lessened, allowing a wider-spread
horse and cattle raising nobility to emerge, supported by networked village economies. These
communities, known as “Enclosures,” were the basis of political culture in the new post-Tsaibwe
era.

Over this new world order, the Musengezi Kings reigned. Unlike Tsaibwe, whose palace-
economy was simple and whose laws were strict and executed without nuance, the Musengezi
were rulers for a more complex, more uncertain era. They were merely chief hegemons,
exerting indirect influence over a large network of subject kings who paid them obeisance and
offered regular tribute. For the Musengezi kings, who were acutely conscious of their status,
religious authority was paramount. Having the support of the Gods, they believed, would stave
off famine and would ensure that their vassals did not rebel. At some point early in the
Musengezi hegemony, the God Muali-Mwari attained paramount status over the vast number of
traditional cults known as mhondoro.

Called the “God of Priests and Chieftains,” Mwari had often been a lofty, abstract figure, one
equated with the sky and rain. One of his oldest attributes was a female one, that of Dzivagaru,
meaning “Deep Pool” – a reference to his/her raingiving powers. Over time she would gain more
ambiguously feminine attributes as well. Inscriptions from the late thirteenth century[1], for
example, praise Mwari as the Mother of Fertility and the Lord of Elephants simultaneously.

In the Musengezi era Mwari continued to become more personified and personal. The Mwari
cult was traditionally organized around oracles called vanyai (singular munyai) whose authority
in spiritual matters at once guaranteed and limited the power of kings. A large pantheon of
ancestral spirits and lesser deities were organized around Mwari, subordinate beings who
presented intermediaries between the lofty God and his followers. As the Musengezi conquered
a greater and greater stretch of territory, new vassal-tribes had their cultural heroes and great
ancestors seamlessly incorporated into the pantheon. Furthermore, around this time Mwari was
increasingly referred to with the epithets Musiki and Musikavanhu, meaning “creator” and
“creator of mankind.” The Musengezi priesthood transformed Mwari from an abstract apex of
the ancestor-spirit system into a universal deity situated before the old heroes and gods. In time
the ancestral shaman and rainmaking prophetesses of the Zambezi, with their dizzying
pantheon of oracles and cults, were subsumed into Mwari-Dzivagaru.

However, the most profound and revelatory change came from the messenger Chiwara, who
had been born into the Mishuku kingdom, a lowly vassal of the Musengezi. However, according
to legend, from a young age he was blessed with strange and wondrous visions. Chiwara
travelled to the cultic center of Chirundu, and he rose through the ranks quickly. It was Chiwara
who, among his many proclamations, first declared that the truth of Mwari should never be kept
secret, but that it must be spread across the tribes and nations. Along with his wife Tengela, who
herself was a Svikiro, or spirit-medium, he was responsible for taking a disorganized but popular
royal prestige cult and transforming it into an ordered religion. As he ascended to dizzying
heights of power, he was careful to befriend and align himself with King Nemashakwe of the
Musengezi.

Thus the Holy Mother-Father of the Musengezi spread far beyond his initial dominion. As a
religious movement, it followed the waves of migrations south and even began to spread
tentatively north, to the country of the Yao. Ordered by Chiwara, fresh waves of vanyai
messengers spread out across the country, performing supposed great miracles and bringing
powerful and unseasonable rains wherever they travelled. Mwari was revealed as a personal
God, a God who took direct and tangible interest in the lives of his people. He had raised up the
Musengezi so his people could have political order, and he had raised up Chiwara so his people
would know how to perform the correct rituals and ascend into the spirit realm and dwell in his
heavenly habitation. In her aspect as Dzivagaru, she ensured the people would not go hungry
again, and in his aspect as Musiki he had reordered the eternal universe so as to prepare the
way for humankind’s arrival.[2]

Despite being foremost messenger, Chiwara remains something of a cypher. Called

ShiriyaMwari, or “Bird of Mwari” after his death he would be worshipped as the greatest of the
spirit-intermediaries, the greatest oracle of all history. And yet very little is known of his life that
can be confirmed in any way. Contemporary scholars have even doubted his existence,
claiming that he was an invention of King Nemashakwe, a figure who does have historical
attribution in the records of Hindu merchants. Under this hypothesis, Nemashakwe created a
uniquely powerful oracle so as to justify his revisions to the religion and his attempts to organize
the priestly class into an administrative bureaucracy for his state. The offices created
contemporaneously with Chiwara’s life, that of the Eye, Mouth, and Ear, seem to have served as
a system for spying, promulgating royal decrees, and hearing petitions respectively. Only once
Nemashakwe died in 1277 and the movement rapidly exploded beyond his ability to control did
it become a true religion.

Nemashakwe’s successor, Nedanga, established a new capital at Inyati [OTL Great Zimbabwe]
reflecting the southern expansion of his state and the need for a centralized capital. While
eastern merchants had once traveled freely, he was the first King to place restrictions on where
they were allowed to go. Henceforth, designated caravan routes were established with
designated waystations, and the freedom of movement travelers had once enjoyed was
curtailed substantially. Nedanga also was the first King to issue proclamations against the
foreign Hindu-Buddhist religion. The Munyai priest Chaurura issued a contemporaneous
declaration that reincarnation was a great lie designed by wicked spirits to lead men astray from
proper religion and ritual.

Along the coasts, meanwhile, Tangrasirabh’s decline into irrelevance continued apace. Four
new coastal cities, Veromanga, [OTL Chinde] Siddhapura, [OTL Beira] Ihosi, [OTL Vilankulos]
and Ramamida [OTL Maputo] were on the rise, populated by a mix of ambitious Kapudesan and
Bharukacchi merchants seeking to take advantage of the White Elephant Concordat and Arabs
fleeing the border-wars of the Bakhtiyar. The indigenous Izaoriakan population were not treated
as second-class citizens by any means – there are many reports of wealthy Izaoriakan quarters
in these cities[3] – but the comparative decline of their civilization ensured that they would play
second fiddle to the spread of Kapudesan power into this region.

However, by and large, these cities were not happy with the new proclamations coming out of
Inyati, nor with increasing raids by the Musengezi vassal kings against their territories. Once
considered a nuisance at best, the Musengezi had presided over major military reforms. Horses
were now utilized in a more direct and offensive manner – rather than hurling javelins from
horseback, or merely using horses as rapid transit to a battle-site, the Musengezi cavalry had
begun charging home with spears held overhand – an effective tactic to disrupt archers and
tufenjmen alike. The trading cities themselves generally did not have a strong cavalry arm, and
though their cavalry were armored with mail and lamellar, they were few in number compared to
Musengezi, who always had a significant numerical advantage. As in Watya, the frontiers were
gradually rolled back and the cities of the coast found themselves having to accept something of
a subordinate role to the Musengezi – a situation which galled them, but they could do little
about in the short term.

Nedanga in general presided over a massive expansion of his empire. His horsemen achieved
the submission of many of the former exiled tribes whose migrations south had disrupted Watya.
Although his Empire was far too vast to be anything but exceedingly decentralized, its
expansion nevertheless was of increasing concern to the eastern trading powers who had
preferred the disunion and comparative disinterest in the outside world shown by Tsaibwe. The
High Round had never been threatening. It had possessed no pretensions to religious ideology
or imperial hegemony, being concerned merely with surviving and hoarding wealth. Now in two
generations its successor had begun unifying the peoples of a geographically vast region under
his thumb and binding them together with a religion that explicitly called their own gurus and
mystics false prophets and lying spirits. At the 1304 council of Siddhapura, the great merchant
princes and banking officials of the four cities gathered together and decided to formulate policy
on the "Inyati Matter" as one united polity. Henceforth they would not seek to gain advantage
over one another or strike separate treaties.

Instead, they would work to topple this new High Round.

[1] Written in a script adapted from the Kapudesa. The literate population of the Zambezi-
Limpopo region is still very small in the late thirteenth century, and amounts to merchants and
priests. However, it does exist, thanks in no small part to trade contacts with the outside world
and the necessity of writing in facilitating those contacts.

[2] In the Mwari-religion, there is no genesis. The universe has always been in some form,
although it is consistently overhauled in new “creations.”

[3] And most of the major cities of the region bear names in their language still.

[What's that you say? I'm procrastinating on writing about the Votive War? Pshhhh. Well,
anyways, time to talk about the rapid and unexpected emergence of another organized religion
in Africa.

I based most of this off of what historical writing I could find about the historical Mwari religion.
Admittedly, most of that was for a time period about 200 years after this one, but in this time
period East Africa has developed much more substantially and it seemed right that at some
point traditional cultic religion would become more organized as a proper hegemonic state
developed.

From there, I think that we can assume that said religion would emerge in no small part as a
reaction to the Hindu-Buddhist missionaries who by now are commonplace across much of East
Africa. A lot of people in the Zambezi-Limpopo region found this religion dangerous to their
traditional conception of the world and found it distasteful that the Tsaibwean High Round was
so cozy with the foreigners. In our own history, western imperialism saw indigenous religion
struggle to explain their defeat by the western powers and ultimately turn closer towards
Christianity and adopt many elements of Christianity. (While at the same time serving as a basis
for resistance against imperialism.) In this history, the heirs of old Tsaibwe see that the eastern
powers are more advanced, richer, more healthy and prosperous than them. But they also are
more powerful than said powers in their own backyard, and thus they at once embrace and
repudiate the foreigners - adopting their written script and many of their ideas about empire
while also declaring their beliefs and practices anathema.]
Oushrana

The rise of the cult of Oushrana, more commonly known as the Xasar War-God Cult was a
curious phenomenon among the insular military aristocracy of the Xasar. The martial nobles,
raised in close quarters among their peers were always more pagan and more fascinated with
mystery and fraternal practices than the common populace, whose pagan influences and deities
mixed more seamlessly with the Khotadhata school of Buddhism.

The name Oushrana seems to be cognate with the old Iranian god Varahran, an ancient deity
with Indo-Iranian roots who was ultimately reimagined as into a role in the Zoroastrian pantheon
as Bahram/Vahram. After the Eftal era, Vahram declined in popularity in favor of Sogdianized
Hindu deities such as Veshparkar, and the new expanded role granted to Mihir, who took on
many of his attributes. Furthermore, due to increased worship of Arlajna, the Eftal god of
travelers, one of Vahram’s chief historic roles was syncretized away. Vahram survived primarily
as a peasant deity, and since the peasantry of Iran became increasingly less warlike and
increasingly passive during the post-Eftal anarchy and waves of Turkic, Khardi, and Tayzig rule,
the Vahram's role in society declined as well, until rising movements such as the Nowbahar
ultimately put an end to him entirely.

Besides the Iranian peasantry, Vahram primarily survived among Iranian nomads such as the
Xasar and Sahu. The former called him Oushrana and the latter Wshran, but ultimately he
would decline in popularity, only “rediscovered” in the thirteenth century by the nobility of the
Xasar, who often seem to have invented their new deity's aesthetic whole cloth – any similarity
to the history Varahran seems almost coincidental as they designed a deity to fill what to them
was a glaring vacancy within the religious framework of their faith.

It should come as little surprise that the Xasar aristocracy popularized what was essentially their
own fraternal mystery cult, accessible primarily to the landholding soldier-gentry, as a way of
setting themselves apart from their polyglot subject peoples. The first mentions of Oushrana
appear in 1230, but the first small shrines to him and frequent references in literature and
descriptions do not appear until a generation later. Oushrana filled a unique role in the Xasar
worldview – a uniquely martial and masculine deity in a religion which otherwise had few outlets
for such urges. Military might, sexual potency, and health were his primary attributes, and he
was frequently depicted as a golden bull or with eagle’s wings – a mix of traditional Iranian and
Christian imagery that was potent to those who partook of his mysteries, unsettling to those who
were denied access, and outright satanic to the Christian populace.

Oushrana was the companion and ally of Mitra and while his divine incarnation, Atas-Oushrana
was a universal protector, Oushrana would often incarnate in human form and go forth to fight
and die and be born again in defense of the Xasar people.

While the Khotadhata Buddhist clergy took great efforts to incorporate Mitra and other Iranian
Gods, there was simply no place in their cosmology for Oushrana, whose very existence was a
response to the unique social and cultural situation of the thirteenth century. It was
inconceivable that a God could be essentially invented with such ease in earlier eras, but the
centralization and fraternization of the martial gentry allowed the idea of Oushrana to spread like
wildfire, and his mysteries became a central aspect of their isolated belief system – a belief
system which increasingly ignored Khotadhata justifications for war and violence. For the
military aristocracy such pious justifications were unnecessary complications in the simple
calculus that they were expected to fight and die in service of the state – it was only appropriate
that they design a belief system to match.

After the untimely death of Shah Ormatsidar III, his young son Arjaxa V Darasakya “the Blond”
would be given the throne at his father’s request. But he did not last long on the throne – he was
overthrown by the distinguished general Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, who had made a name for
himself in the Second Great Votive War during the fighting retreat from Italy. Crowned Shah
Kaikhuluj I, the new Shah was hailed by his officer corps as the incarnation of holy Oushrana,
and was consequently the first to make the secretive cult known to the general public.

Oushrana worship would fade into relative insignificance in the mid fourteenth century, although
military families would often keep small idols and shrines to the war god in their houses or with
them on campaign even as all signs point to a decline in the fraternal Xasar cult.

Haruniya and the Sea of Stories

Syria was the heartland of the Tayzig world. Tadmur was the birthplace of the Bakhtiyar, after all,
and her great cities boasted ancient heritages. Halava [Aleppo], Emesa, Antayukha [Antioch],
Dimaskha [Damascus] and countless other urban centers could boast of being old when Rome
was young. And yet this was not a country immune to change: Aramaic had been replaced with
Ifthal and Arabic, and Buddhist monasteries and stupa now outnumbered Christian centers of
worship many times over. The great Christian centers of the Middle East, namely Northern
Mesopotamia and Egypt, saw Syria as a lost cause. The old Patriarchal See of Antayukha was
long abandoned, and the Nowbahar counted that city as one of their strongholds.

Among the antique ruins of a thousand feuding dynasties, from the Seleucids to the Romans to
the Eftal, now the Bakhtiyar built their fortresses atop centuries of history, acutely aware of the
legacy they inherited. Here, along the wine-dark seas of the Mediterranean was a country
largely forgotten by the world in the heady rush to explore, to colonize, and to make profit.

The Syrian Bakhtiyar were rulers of an older sort. The Haruniya were not iconoclasts, but to
them Buddha should not be depicted, and the Gods, whether YHWH or Christ or Ormazd or
Mihir were illusions. The road to Nirvana was a narrow one for them, and their inspiration was
the austere and pious Theravada Buddhism of the Yemeni Arabs. They sought blessed
transcendence by degrees, and their court was renowned for its scholarship and purity of belief.
The Haruniya did not seek to overwhelm. They were an Arab dynasty, descended from Harun
al-Tadmuri, who called himself Maliksah, a blending of the Arab and Ifthal words for King that
had become increasing popular in the Bakhtiyar era.

Ruling from Emesa, where the Temple of the Holy Sun had been smashed and rebuilt as a
secular palace, and where Christ and his saints had been defiled and ground into dust by the
pagan Shah Syavush over six centuries ago, the Haruniya were, strange as it sounds, a deeply
self-aware dynasty. The writings of Maliksah Abduldarma took to heart the fact that power was
ephemeral and that their achievements would be destroyed in time. For him, living in the
aftermath of the Votive War and the ruin that it had wracked across Europe, there could be no
stopping the ineluctable truth of his mortality and the morality of the state that his ancestors had
crafted in the wake of Akhsar Mansar’s death.

And yet this was not a nihilistic philosophy or one that prompted him to inaction. He sent forth
one of the finest generals in a century, Mirdhata Yasuj to dare and to conquer. He turned the
Haruniya dynasty from a Tayzig Arab Bakhtiyar dynasty into a regional power to rival the
declining Xasar state. His vision of a polity straddling the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and
Mediterranean at once was remarkable and the speed and capacity with which he achieved it
was nothing short of miraculous. His supporters were quick to hail him as a new Akhsau, but he
denied such claims. He never sought a great title, nor did he engage in the usual pseudo-
messianic aggrandizement which soft often accompanied great leaders in the Near East.

And yet, Abduldarma had his flaws. He was reportedly the sort of man who swung through
extremes of temperament, and while he did much to build up the administrative apparatuses of
his state he was always a very detached ruler, the sort who delegated without a second thought
and trusted subordinates of varying levels of competency. In some cases, such as the brilliant
commander Mirdhata Yasuj, this paid great dividends. However, for the first half of his reign,
between 1288 and 1291 he employed a Prime Minister named Taigh Hekhima, whose primary
occupation seems to have been embezzlement at the expense of the state.

Mirdhata Yasuj reportedly never had ambitions on the crown, even after the conquest of Herat-
on-the-Euphrates in 1301 left him with a territory more than equivalent to that of the Syrian
Kingdom and an army deeply loyal to him. Abduldarma was fortunate to have a man such as
this whose loyalty was unimpeachable, and whose commitment to the crown was tremendous.
However, he was equally fortunate to see the Ansara Suf grow into a mighty, but primarily
eastward focused dynasty and to come into power at a time when the Xasar had entered into an
unexpected decline.

The Egyptian Mansar Kings posed what was in many ways the easiest challenge for
Abduldarma’s armies. For decades, the Syrian and Egyptian dynasties had turned Palestine into
a battleground, fighting inconclusive border wars that had amounted to small changes in
territory. Cities such as Asqalan and Yerushala were subjected to repetitive sacks and the area
became depopulated and desertified – scarce worth fighting over. “A wasteland of level sand
and fortresses.” It was described in Mirdhata Yasuj’s journal. And yet the border wars continued,
until Abduldarma decided to not fight fair. Traditionally, the Bakhtiyar brother-kings let small,
indecisive engagements decide their contests amongst each other, having ritualized war to
avoid unnecessary casualties and ensure that none of them lost power to some native
insurrection or upstart dynast. As they were all intermarried and interconnected, this policy was
to everyone’s mutual benefit.

Mirdhata Yasuj, then only sixteen years old, advised the captain of the Syrian army to make a
similar “display” campaign in 1288, on the ascension of Abduldarma to the throne. However, in
secret he led a small group of Ifthal warriors around the rear of the enemy army, and when they
fell upon the Egyptian army in camp they did not take captives for ransom as was custom but
rather engaged in a wholesale slaughter of the Egyptian nobility. The Mansar Maliksah,
Khorasa, fled south across the desert with a picked band of his followers and left his regime
leaderless, at which point Egypt was annexed into the Haruniya dominion.
From there, the slow expansion of the Haruniya into Xvaristan (Mesopotamia) was perhaps
inevitable. The Ansara Suf had federates and allies in Iraq, but these polities found that as mere
buffer states they did not receive much tangible support and when they were beaten the Ansara
Suf could at best offer comfortable exile in their stately pleasure-domes and palaces in Jai-
Asvahan. A series of titanic sieges ensued: Nasivin, Hatra, Tikrit, and finally, Herat. In each
case, the petty kings realized a secret that the world was only gradually learning – against
cannon, high walls were insufficient protection. Advantage had turned in favor of the attacker,
and the defensive tactics that were beginning to become known on the Indian subcontinent
were not yet known to the Middle East. The immense earthwork fortifications that would
dominate the latter wars of the Pala and Chandratreya were as of yet an unknown innovation.

The new Tayzig Kingdom did more than encompass the whole Fertile Crescent. Their fleets had
been bolstered by the Egyptian navy, and the fact that they had inherited both Crete and Cyprus
gave them critical bases for the beginnings of campaign against the Xasar, a campaign that
would begin as the Votive Wars entered into their fourth year.

Armenia and the new Roman Emperor

Bari aragil, bakhti aragil

Aragil garnan, aragil amran
Im tan mot aprir, bari aragil
Byun hyusir dzarrin
Bardu katarin

Christendom in the East had one guardian, and he called himself the Shah of Hayastan. Ashot
VI Kamasarakan, situated his throne in the town of Shirakavan, claimed to be defender of the
faith.

To the Armenians, Christ was united in miaphysis, whatever those false Patriarchs in Rome or
Aachen said. Their Church was aligned with the Church of the Copts, who also accepted that
Christ had one nature. The falsehoods of the Nestorians were self-evident, and compounded by
the fact that their creed had diminished to near irrelevance in the face of the Buddhists while
their own faith had endured and become stronger in the face of the Eftal conquest. Of course, to
the north, in Kutatisi, the Imereti Shahs argued that Armenian Christianity had been corrupted
by Sogdian Buddhism – that their miaphysite beliefs had become little different than claiming
that men could be incarnations of Gods.

However, Armenia was the oldest Christian Kingdom and despite foreign occupation and
transformation it had never lost some essential Armenian characteristic. When the hero Tiridates
purged their mountain realm of Buddhism and restored the rightful monarchy, the rich
iconography of saints and martyrs once again decorated their cities. The nobility dropped their
Iranian affectations and shaved their beards. The hedonistic culture of the Tayzig and Bakhtiyar
was dropped almost overnight strong Xvari beer and sanja [marijuana] replaced with watered
wine.
The siege mentality that afflicted the Armenians never truly diminished. On almost all sides they
were surrounded by heathen kingdoms, save for the ambivalence of the Imereti Shahs. The
Sbarabet, or commander of the Armenian armies, was an office with almost as much power as
the King, having the authority to requisition any resource for the comfort and aid of the army.
Armenian armies might have looked somewhat quaint to outsiders – they did not utilize the
tufenj in great numbers, arming themselves with javelins and long spears primarily. Their
horsemen wore heavy chainmail armor and metal plated barding which had become less and
less vogue among the Tayzig in favor of lighter armor and greater swiftness. However, the
Armenians were primarily on the defensive, and they knew their own rivers and valleys well.

Their soldiers repeatedly gave a good account of themselves against the Azeri and the Iranians
during the Bakhtiyar border wars, and by the dawn of the fourteenth century the tufenj was well
known to them, and soldiers carried short-barreled snaplock tufenj into battle, firing an opening
volley before charging home as a bristling wall of spears and shields. Such tactics worked well
when the Armenian armies were on the defense, deep in Hayastan. However when the
Armenian army in 1273 launched an attack on the Syrian Bakhtiyar, the battle of Mayperkhit
[Martyropolis] proved that the heavy apset cavalry were too slow and unwieldy to perform as a
modern weapon of war. Their ponderous charge across the battlefield was disrupted by the
harassment of Ifthal cavalry and ended by serried ranks of tufenjmen and cannon behind a
rough earthen embankment. These sorts of humiliations saw a gradual shift toward more
modern tactics.

The Armenian-Xasar border was a remarkably peaceful place in comparison to the blood-
drenched chaos of the western Xasar frontier. The Xasar had established the Khajeh [military
district] of Koniyna, but beyond that lay a sort of no-man’s land. Prominent cities such as
Kitharizon, Vishane, and Samosata remained in the hands of local authorities. A Greek despot
ruled Kitharizon claiming the title of Roman Emperor despite the atrophied nature of his city-
state regime. Vishane was in the hands of an Alan Christian council who had fought quite
successfully to avoid falling to the Armenian sphere of influence, seeing the heretical Armenians
as a worse foe than the Xasar. Samosata, much declined from its glory days as a Roman city,
nevertheless resisted conquest by the Haruniya. Syavah Yasuj, cousin of the famed conqueror
Mirdhata, besieged the city for two years and yet was vexed, in no small part because
Samosata was able to threaten an Armenian intervention that the Haruniya could not afford to
counter with the bulk of their armies in Xvaristan.

The decline of the Xasar Empire ironically revealed Armenia’s own weakness as it became
increasingly obvious that the independence of these various border polities was not due to
some sort of pact between equals to preserve a buffer but rather the inability of Armenia to end
vexations such as the existence of Vishane. When the Despot of Kitharizon, “Emperor”
Andronikos Christodoulos conquered the Armenian cities of Ashtishat and Artalezon and
brought Samosata under his hegemony, the Armenian Kingdom was unable to respond
meaningfully. After his series of victories, he claimed the title of “Emperor of Asia and Rome,
conqueror of the Armenians, universal victor and defender of Christendom in general and
Kitharizon in particular.” Armenian letters to him still referred to him as Despot.

The Xasar Satrapy of Vontas-Sinafa, situated along the rim of the black sea, also was a place
where a substantial Greek population had survived, and still longed for the glory days of the
Asian Empire, or better still the Roman Empire. Unlike the still somewhat depopulated district of
Koniyna, a mixed region of Alan and Ifthal settlers whose culture and beliefs were, in the eyes of
the Pontic Greeks, heretical at best and Buddhist at worst, Pontus was a thorn in the side of the
Xasar, ringed by mountains and difficult to access.

In 1306, Andronikos Christodoulos marched into Pontus with some two thousand men – all he
could spare from his territories. His soldiers were a rag-tag mix of Alan horse-thieves, Greek
peasants, and a small cadre of well-equipped local aristocrats. However, on his arrival at Satala,
the Xasar garrison was butchered by the locals, who threw open the gates to him. With a
foothold established, he marched rapidly on Neokaisaria, and then downriver to Amisos – where
he encountered the local governor and miraculously defeated him. Andronikos subsequently
would establish Neokaisaria as his new “Imperial” capital. When he received word of the Greek
rebellions in Ephesis and Sardeis, he marched west in force, taking Amaseia before his way
was blocked by a far larger Syrian expeditionary force which compelled him to turn back
bloodlessly.

Two years later, he would die of old age and his son Constantine, himself an old man, would
take power. Lacking his father’s absurd ambitions, Constantine Christodoulos would receive
from the Haruniya acknowledgement of his imperial title in exchange for no further attempts at
expansion. The Second
Great Votive War

“This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the
justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will
of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is
the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

In another world, 6th August 1945 would be a date recollected with a mixture of horror and awe
by those who remembered it, and the decades that followed would be consumed by apocalyptic
fear of global annihilation. In that world, the Sassanian dynasty overcame the threat of the Eftal
and would be destroyed by the followers of a Prophet who in this world was never born. In that
world, competing political ideologies and superpowers stood on the brink of leading the world
entire into horrific oblivion.

In this world, the date of 18th July 1712 would have much the same horror. The detonation of
the first in a series of atomic weapons by the Air Force of the Gongheguo Jiangshan marked a
world-changing moment in human history. In a matter of days, what many historians considered
the first and last global war would come to an abrupt end. Millions of soldiers, shell-shocked and
weary, would lay down their arms and the world, reeling in shock at the power humanity now
held, would turn inwards, wondering how these dark materials had come to be.

But global war was not wholly without precedent. There had been several global conflicts before
1712, each more devastating than those that came before it. If they were not industrial total
wars, that was because the capacity and technology for such a conflict did not exist until the
dawning of the modern, interconnected world. However, these global wars were presaged by
the immense clash of nations that was the Second Great Votive War.

While the clash of civilizations is an outmoded and frankly atavistic notion, a narrative created
by reactionary Francien sociologists who saw all of history as an endless struggle between
beliefs, between salvation and oblivion, an unbiased observer of the wars of the fourteenth
century, and indeed all history since the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Roman
Empire, might have to admit that European history is often a struggle between East and West,
between two rival civilizations whose worldviews rarely left room for the other to exist.

In any case, the opening years of the fourteenth century were unprecedented. For fifteen years,
from April of 1301 to August of 1316, almost every major country in Europe was involved in
some way in a war that would define the very history of a continent for the ensuing centuries.

The battle lines were clear in the beginning. On one hand, the various Christian powers of
Europe, on the other, the Xasar. But the involvement of the Rusichi, whose intervention brought
Denmark into the “heathen alliance” and the conflicted loyalties of the Moravians among others
rapidly complicated the issue. Furthermore, the Xasar satrapies were torn apart with internal
discord. Shah Ormatsidar III had authorized brutal anti-Christian policies that turned the Roman
and Slavic populations of his Empire against him.

The “Heathen Alliance” as it became known began the century with seemingly every advantage.
Their armies were tested and capable, backed up by impressive logistical systems and
administrations that were far more bureaucratic and organized than their rivals. The Xasar, even
while torn apart by internal discord boasted the largest and most technologically advanced army
on the continent and the most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean. However, the Xasar
homeland of Pannonia was incredibly vulnerable to attack. Konstantikert, one of the better
defended cities in Europe, was undeniably the capital but the Carinthian march was the only
barrier protecting the Xasar people from devastation. In a war of extermination, that was not
nearly enough. Thousands of Xasar, Jews, and Sinti would flee across the straits into Anatolia, a
migration which would exacerbate tensions between the native Greek population and the
newcomers and would lead to the brutal Greek rebellions of 1307.

The Great Hanate of Russia, as it was known to Europe, was something of an enigma. At once
connected to the Eastern and Western worlds, it was vast and insular and strange, a mixture of
Norse, Slavic, Turkish, and Iranian cultures. From the Sahu steppes to the frozen shores of the
Baltic, the Hanate was an astonishing achievement of political power and will, an autocracy that
was at once despotic and bureaucratic, at once rural and urban, particularistic and universal. A
polity based on its own glaring contradictions, its slow but relentless eastward expansion was
more a matter of fate and unconscious impulse than any designed plan. The Rusichi ruled by
Kresivies IV, had the potential, through the “Assembly Troops” to raise an even larger standing
force than the Xasar maintained. This deep well of manpower would later become critical.

By contrast, the reliance of the European state on the “retainer system” of slaves and
mercenaries meant that they had limited strategic reserves and low manpower. Their armies
were elite but comparatively small – at least at first. The Votive War would permanently break
any notion that the retainer system was sustainable. Antique laws regulating the levy of local
militias would be reinstated with increasing desperation as the war wore on. The mass of
European peasantry would be called to take up arms for God in vast numbers. In some parts of
Christendom, this was familiar. Germany in particular had a longstanding tradition of levies, and
these soldiers were quite capable. By contrast, the Francien peasantry lived as tenants on
immense plantations and had never held weaponry in their lives.

The war historically, has been broken up into several main phases. The first phase was the
Xasar against the world, and in that conflict they gave a strong account of themselves.
Burgundian, Neustrian, and Aquitanian armies plunged into Italy in the earliest years of the war,
scoring numerous early victories and reducing the Xasar to a few sparse outposts while a
Ravennan exile lord declared himself King of Italy and welcomed the Pope back to Rome in a
grand ceremony. Tensions between the main belligerents grew rapidly, especially when it
became clear the Pope was willing to acknowledge the Ravennan exile, Giannio di Florentia, as
King. Aquitaine and the slave soldiers of the Nesutrian King Ptolemei came to blows on several
occasions, and the war stalled. Meanwhile, the German Votives suffered a string of humiliating
defeats. Nurnburg itself was sacked and Xasar soldiers, better equipped and armed, swept
through the countryside burning and pillaging. The Two Africas were defeated at sea, and the
Khajeh of Sicily, Norsiy Darasakya, actually led a series of successful raids against the Mauri
cities there, wreaking havoc with a numerically inferior force.

In summary, despite some early victories, Europe was thrown on the back foot. For the next two
years, Xasar troops established permanent footholds across southern Germany and burnt and
pillaged wherever possible. Their successes, however, would be their downfall. Having seen his
old enemies in the Landstag annihilated by the Xasar and scattered to the winds, King Claudius
I of the United Crowns decided there could be no better time to intervene and cast himself as
the savior of Europe. He marched south with a highly disciplined militia army whose forces were
unwearied. Scoring a series of major victories, King Claudius forced the Xasar to withdraw from
Germany back to their defensive fortresses along the frontier.

Xasar soldiers, despite the best efforts of the South Italian Satrap Osrasidar Surenavaiy, were
barely holding on in the boot of Italy and the Xasar were becoming incredibly overstretched in
Europe. The arrival of the capable Xasar commander Kaikhuluj Arslanzade and fifteen thousand
reinforcements in Italy saw the Xasar briefly retake Rome, only to lose it again as Ptolemei led a
fresh slave army south.
Shah Ormatsidar III would die in 1304, just as the tide had begun to turn against the Xasar. His
young son, Arjaxa V Darasakya, was given the throne per the Shah’s dying order, but it would
not last. No sooner did Kaikhuluj Arslanzade return to Konstantikert than he killed the boy king
and placed himself on the throne, a decision that seems to have enjoyed the broad support of
the military. A child monarch was a liability in a time when the Xasar aristocracy believed
themselves to be fighting an existential battle for survival. And yet, Kaikhuluj’s coup d’état was
the death blow to Xasar imperial ambitions. In the ensuing decade, countless rebellions would
wrack the Empire, even more expansive and dangerous than those small insurrections they had
contended with in the past three years.

By the time German soldiers broke through into the soft underbelly of the Xasar world, the
Empire was in full-scale collapse. Only the entrance of the Rusichi into the war would shift the
tide once more. Three columns of “Assembly Troops,” each with approximately forty thousand
men, would plunge into Poland, Moravia, and Pannonia.

The Great Han would no longer be a mere regional player.

[I've begun thinking increasingly about the "modern" White Huns world, and I think it's showing.
While I usually am averse to that sort of predetermined element, I think that situating current
events in relation to modern history is actually becoming a good thing. Also at this point I have a
roadmap for the future that's becoming clear. I refuse to lock myself in to all but the most
general details, but on the other hand there are so many things that I'm beginning to decide
about what this world will look like.

I have a lot of hopes for the "Present Day" of the White Huns. If I succeed, I will be creating a
world that is at once utterly alien and strikingly familiar, bizarre and yet normal. It will not
necessarily be a utopia or a dystopia, which is in my opinion one of the most tired althistory
cliches, and one I've struggled to avoid. It will just be different, for better or worse.

Also, I want to thank everyone who's voting for me in the Medieval Turtledove category. Despite
the fact that this timeline has essentially nothing in common with any other contestant in its
category (really it's almost more of an "Early Modern Era" theme at this point), it seems to be
enjoying remarkable success. I'm once again awed and humbled by the turnout. You guys are
great!
And I also want to again give a shoutout to everyone who's provided ideas, advice, and
mapmaking skills to me. You guys are also great.]

The theme of the last map might have been "unity"; the theme of this one would then be
"fragmentation". A muse struck me regarding that theme, and with PL's approval, I've written
some descriptions of some of the many new statelets and small provinces that have popped up:
L - The city of Bolzano, or Bolzen to its large German minority, once grew rich off trade through
the eastern Alps, taxing Italian ceramics and wine and grain coming from the Balkan marches in
exchange for metals, weapons, and textiles going south. With the Xasar conquest of first
Croatia, then Italy, it is a city that has swollen in population while shrinking in purpose. The
Xasar reconquest first saw a steady stream of Carinthian and Croatian refugees, which turned
into a flood after the Xasar took over all of Italy. It is now a veritable Babel in the mountains,
which, while owing nominal allegiance to the King of Bavaria, maintains a high degree of
independence (some would say lawlessness). Since the collapse of trans-Alpine trade plunged
the city's economy into a deep depression, the old burgher nobility has been supplanted by a
new regime led by a Carinthian emigre named Adolpho Radica, whose power belies his
unassuming title of "Guildmaster". Guildmaster Radica has directed the establishment of a
collectivized system of "drafted" labor in return for food and clothing. This has been funded
primarily through liquidation of the assets of the old nobility, who are understandably unhappy
about this. Bolzano's dubious masters in Bavaria, and their neighbors in the loose alliance of
mountain shires (gau) calling itself the Rhaetian Confederation, eye the alpine passes to
Bolzano in wary anticipation of the day this barrel of tufenj powder explodes on their doorstep...

U - While the Exarchate of Provence has seen better days... significantly better days... it can
say more than many of the states in Italy in that it survived the Xasar onslaught, if only as a
shadow of its former self. In truth this Exarchate is nothing much like the old one: after the death
of Exarch Ottocaro XVI and his heir Roberto-Ottocaro in battle during a futile attempt to retake
Nisa, the long line of the d'Boso exarchs of Provence came to an end, and much of Provence's
remaining territory was usurped by Burgundian nobles. In Marsela, the title and what little power
remained with it was usurped by a group of merchant nobles led by the Paulici family. (The new
Exarch Antonino would later claim that he was a direct descendent of Marcelo Paulici, who
along with this brother Luigu had written the travelogue which was still the West's seminal work
on the Eastern world. Later historians, however, have found some (sometimes conflicting)
pieces of evidence that he was descended from an entirely different family of the same name).
This new state, a republic in all but name, has forged careful alliances with the nearby County of
Barcino, the republic on Corsica (which came to exist in a similar fashion after the collapse of
Frankish authority), and the Kingdom of Aquitaine, in hopes of fending off both Xasar and
Burgundian aggression alike.

G- The Bishopric of Trigs (Troiqes to its Neustrien residents, or Troyes to the residents of some
strange other world) is one of the larger of the statelets that make up the patchwork that is
greater Lothringen, or Lorraine. Indeed naming everything in two languages is a must here, as
elsewhere in the region: most inhabitants are fluent in both a very Germanic-influenced variety
of Neustrien and a very Romance-flavored dialect of Fraconian Deutsch. The bishopric was
stably a part of the Imperial Demesne for centuries, and under the patronage of Aloysius VIII, a
large monastery was founded by the Marconian Order, which would eventually come to control
most of the land in the region. Following the model of their founder St. Marco of Mantova, the
Marconian order strove for lives of simple Godly work and tending to the needs of the poor, and
the monks commanded a special place in the heart of the peasantry. The social support system
(including hospitals) set up by the Order would cause Trigs to weather the Flowering Flesh and
then the collapse of the Frankish state relatively well compared to much of the surrounding
region, and the library at the Abbey of St. Marco would later prove to be a treasure trove for
historians documenting the terminal Frankish period. Gradually, Trigs fell into orbit of the
Ventomei kings of Neustria, though its Bishop-Abbot welcomed the arrival of the Pope to
Aachen with pleasure. Bishop-Abbot Julian de Aube would use the occasion of the slave army
revolt in Paris to swear formal vassalage to the newly coalescing Papal state. While the new
King Ptolomei has more or less accepted this loss of a longtime Neustrian territory as a
condition of Papal support, particularly after receiving Papal blessing to make the neighboring
County of Niverne his vassal, this remains perhaps the one point of contention that might have
remain between King and Pope as the Votive War began...

R- The Voivodate of Sarima is not called that by its inhabitants, who prefer to call its constituent
islands by their Norse name, Osel. Indeed, Osel and neighboring Darmagard on the Estonian
mainland may well be the strongest holdouts of the old Gardaveldi culture remaining. While the
Gardaveldi of the east have grown closer to their Slavic neighbors in custom and speech due to
their constant trade and communication via the Hanate's great rivers, Osel and Darmagard have
remained oriented to the Baltic Sea, and to Denmark and Sweden. This is not to say, however,
that they are not content subjects of the Great Han. After the collapse of old Gardaveldi Wheel-
Realm, the residents of Osel were ruled, for a time, by a rather dictatorial Norse chieftain calling
himself the "Thorfinn the Wheel-Prince". Upon his death, his oldest son took power, but
immediately had to face an insurrection led by his younger half-brother (and backed by
Sweden). To maintain his throne, the eldest son sought out support from Denmark, and the civil
war soon turned into a proxy war between the two powers for control of the islands, each
repeatedly sending detachments of housecarls to reinforce the two sides in the war. Finally,
after three years of inconclusive fighting, a peasant revolt against the foreign troops took place,
whose leaders negotiated a diplomatic coup: In exchange for becoming part of the lands of the
Great Han and paying a small yearly tribute, the Rusichi would guarantee local governance
through a Folkthing along the lines of neighboring Gotland. Rusichi troops, under a new
"Voivoda of Sarima", quickly evicted the squabbling housecarls and established the Han's law.
While Sarima pays a tithe of grain and dried fish to support the Hanate's troops, the Folk-thing
adjudicates legal disputes and runs most daily affairs, and thus the hand of the Rusichi state
has little to exert itself with here. For long decades after, the position of Voivoda of Sarima would
most often be filled by relatives whose presence at court had annoyed the Great Han.

D- Danseke, Danzig, Gdansk, Kdansca... this Free City is known by many names. There had
long been a little port of sorts at the mouth of the Gdania river, but only the arrival of Veletian
German settlers had transformed the river mouth into a real town. Given the Polish paranoia
about German encroachment, which had persisted even as Polish-German border conflicts
were settled, the city government had been given rather weak autonomy and was heavily taxed,
and so the town was overshadowed by other trading centers like Tvangste and Ikskile further to
the north. The "Proposal of Solomon" during the collapse of Frankish authority then came as a
blessing to them: Denmark assumed control over the Baltic ports and their coastal hinterlands,
while Poland extended control inland as far as the border of Saxony. Now, this city found itself
part of a network of ports extending as far as the New World. The conquest of their old northern
rivals by the Rusichi would come as a boon to them when Danseke (as it is now known
overseas) became a center of Danish and Swedish smuggling to evade the Great Han's tolls.
The Great Crane of Danseke now unloads cargoes from around the world, growing particularly
rich off the trade in naval timber and pitch, which are increasingly in demand in the West these
days. Meanwhile, Danseke is the major point of contact between Eastern Europe, Transuralic
Asia, and the Anglo-Norse world, including the fractious lands of Solvia. Thus, after the some
tuberous New World crops were spread to Francia and then Angland by Aquitainian and Breton
sailors, it was only a matter of time (1293 to be exact) until an unsung hero (His name was
Torben Hvida) returned from overseas and brought some Batats (as they came to known, from
the Taino word "Batata") to introduce to his family farm (actually a major estate; Torben was
something of the rambling black sheep of the Hvida family). Torben's family would never really
appreciate him for what he did, but the generations of full-bellied steppe-dwellers to come after
him sure would. A crop that grows underground? Where roving raiders can't just take it? Which
grows really well in the cold? Their cuisine would never be the same...

Y - The Satrapy of Ifirush (Or Epirus as the Hellenes call it) is typical of the increasingly sullen
provinces made from the latter-day Xasar conquests. Despite some conversions to Buddhism
by the Arbeni hill tribes (who have increasingly migrated into the province), the Sklaveni and
Rumana peasants and Hellenic city-dwellers have been mostly resistant to the Buddhist creed
of the Shahdom, which remains weak outside the aforementioned Arbeni hill villages and the
capital city of Dyrriakhu. Dyrriakhu, also known as Dyrrhachion or Drach depending on whether
you're talking to a Xasar, Hellene, or Sklavene, has undergone major expansion under Xasar
rule, becoming the Xasar gateway to the Adriatic, the Western Mediterranean, and stranger
lands to the west, and in addition to a Xasar-built port complex it also includes a large garrison
district. The Xasar state has made efforts to employ a divide-and-conquer approach by
recruiting large numbers of Arbeni skirmishers into its military, by settling retired Xasar and
converted Slav soldiers in the province, and by promoting the local power of assimilated natives
(including taking the step of raising an Arbeni general, Mitar Azemi, to the position of Satrap).
Satrap Mitar (formerly Pitar, before his conversion to Buddhism) has enforced the recent anti-
Christian policies with a convert's zeal (and an Arbeni's memory of grudges against theirn old
Sklaveni overlords). He has, in fact, gone a bit further, organizing what has essentially become
an inquisitorial witch hunt against "Subverters of the Dharma" who are accused of consorting
with spirits of disorder (The Christian God chief among them) to undermine the Xasar state.
These "magicians" were believed to gain sinister powers by drinking the blood of their dark god,
including the ability to spread disease, cause crop failures, and raise the dead as bloodthirsty
ghouls called Shtriga or Dhampir (their own God was known to have returned from death, after
all). The fact that this witch hunt has disproportionately targeted prominent Hellenic and
Sklaveni citizens, whose wealth and lands have been placed in the hands of their (Arbeni and
Xasar) accusers, has been a great source of grievance to the Christian population. In one
particularly infamous incident, an entire Sklavenian village was put to the sword after a series of
brutal attacks on passing Xasar merchants were blamed by a superstitious Arbeni commander
on Shtriga-raisers (in actual fact these attacks were most likely carried out by a particularly
sadistic band of hill bandits). News of this incident would spread like wildfire and further inflame
the Christian population. Ifirush would be the site of a major revolt during the Great Votive War,
and Satrap Mitar would wind up having a stake hammered through his heart in a deliberately
Karmic punishment after Dyrriakhu fell to the rebellions during the middle phase of the war...

Z - In most of Europe, the nobles have knights. In the Polmark, it is said, the knights have
nobles. Indeed major estate holders are thin on the ground, aside from the Markgraf himself
(who is himself chosen by an assembly of these petty nobles). The Polmark is a land where
knightly feudalism is in full blossom, and along with the neighboring Margravate of Lipzig, it has
the highest density of martial gentry in all the German lands. The fertile fields between the Oder
and Elbe provide many places to plant a fruitful farm, but these small landholders are, of course,
expected to know the sword as well as the scythe. This society was birthed by frontier
settlement and the perennial warfare with Poland from which the region got its name, and even
now that the Poles are Christian, old grudges still remain. The Flowering Flesh devastated the
area, parts of which reverted to forest, but the collapse of central Frankish authority did not
perturb them perhaps as much as other regions; they were already used to defending
themselves. However, there is always a bigger fish: in response to late 12th-century Danish
takeovers of Travemunde and other nearby ports, Polish King Markus II would launch a bold
invasion of Veletia, which would be rapidly followed by an invasion of the Polmark itself. In
desperation the Markgraf would pledge fealty to the King of Moravia (who at least was not a
Pole) and the province would end up split along an ill-defined boundary between the two
countries. The Polmarkers would agitate for northern reclamation from inside the Kingdom for
some decades; the Diet of Metz in 1231 would finally clarify the Moravian border, but would
complicate matters further when the Landstag granted Denmark's claim to the Veletian coast,
despite much of it being in the hands of Poland. Tensions flared on both sides, and the
Polmarkers eagerly anticipated the day they could ride north against a distracted Poland. They
were quite alarmed, then, when peace broke out instead: King Viktor of Poland made the
famous "Proposal of Solomon", splitting the baby in half by offering Denmark overlordship of the
Baltic coastal ports and their immediate hinterlands (which was all they really wanted, anyway)
in return for which Poland gained exemption from Danish tolls and rights to the remaining
territory (which is what THEY really wanted, anyway). King Sven II of Denmark wisely accepted,
troops were moved, the handovers were made, and this warming of relations rapidly moved
closer and closer to a real alliance, with Sven II arranging the marriage of his heir (the future
Sven III) to a Polish princess. The Polmarkers could do naught but wave their fists at such a
tragic outbreak of peaceful coexistence. By 1301, the Polmark has resigned itself to indefinite
Moravian rule, if very reluctantly. King Hadrian VI regularly receives letters from Lignitz bearing
the Markgraf's seal, urging grandiose campaigns of liberation. These are always ignored.

T - Narbo was for a long time a possession of the Count of Carcasonna, who was sworn to
Tolosa; when the lands of Tolosa were inherited into the Imperial demesne, the Count then
became a direct vassal of the Emperor, and also a rather important one, as Narbo became the
main port of the leige's own Mediterranean fleets. The Emperor would take the unusual step of
assuming direct control of the city under an Imperial Legate, for which the Count was
compensated with other lands in Tolosa. Narbo quickly boomed, benefiting from Imperially-
constructed port facilities and other Imperial largesse. As Frankish authority faded, however, the
legates stopped coming. The city was free to develop in its own direction; and their inheritance
of much of the old Imperial fleet was quite the boon for that. In the chaos of the post-Imperial
period this let them punch above their weight as a mercantile and maritime power, which they
would exploit to establish themselves as a major commercial center. Narbo would become, in
fact, something of a haven for dissenters and other nonconformists: the city has Europe's
largest population of Jews, for instance. Judaism and heresy carry less sting here than many
places in Europe; while sitting on the "Conseila" of prominent citizens ("Elders", or "Ancia") that
governs urban affairs requires communion with the Catholic Church, many prominent captains
were Tinaians or Autothiests (so long as they kept it discreet) and there were even several
Jews.

In 1261, Count of Carcassona Matieu Regisseur, citing his father's position as steward to the
last Emperor in Aachen and a distant familial link to the old Imperial ruling house, would usurp
much of the Imperial demesne's moribund southern territory and declare himself,
preposterously, "Emperor in Tolosa". By this time, however, the city had come to be quite used
to ruling itself through their assembly. "Emperor" Matieu's attempts to dissolve La Conseila in
favor of an authoritarian (and intensely anti-Semitic) Legate resulted in a revolt followed by a
seige by the "Emperor's" forces, which the Narbonese weathered with barely a disruption to
daily life thanks to their large fleet. King Raoul II of Aquitaine would happily take advantage of
the tied-up seige army to waltz into Tolosa unannounced, and nearly unopposed (a move he
would later repeat on the unfortunate Duke of Angeve during that Duke's war with Neustria).
With the bulk of his lands occupied and his family held hostage, the "Emperor" Matieu had no
choice but to accept to "voluntarily" retire to a monastery in the Pyrenees. His son Alouis would
be made a more humble vassal Count of Tolosa, and the remaining southern Imperial Demesne
would be appended to Aquitaine, instead. Narbo would then gladly accept an offer of becoming
an Aquitainian vassal in return for a guarantee of respect for the Conseila's local sovereignty.

Narbo could have much to gain from the Votive War, as it possesses the third-largest Christian
fleet left in the Mediterranean after Ispana and the Two Africas (in part thanks to a mass
defection by the Pisan navy after the conquest of Italy). However, the Vulgar Votives aroused a
distaste among many of the inhabitants, especially when they degenerated into riotous
pogroms, which in some cases led to the death of Narbonese sailors. Instead of transporting
troops, Narbonese ships, now tied in to the Aquitainian trade network, would move more
peaceful commodities around the Med, including, frequently, New World crops. The decades-
long breakdown in East-West trade, and the ruinous treatment the Xasar lands were put through
during the Great Votive War, would thus result in a demographic shot in the arm for the West:
with the exception of the batat in the north, Western states would ultimately have a roughly 50-
year head start in adopting new Solvian crops over the Eastern lands. The West, then, would
wind up bouncing back quicker in the war's immediate aftermath...

H - Nowhere is the European nobility's turn to religion on greater display than in the County of
Nanzig. Count Abelard himself has forsaken the splendid old raiment of his title for a plain habit
and an iron circlet. A cynical observer might suggest that this was a pose, a way to get into the
Pope's good graces; by swearing allegiance to the Papal State, the Count could evade
Burgundy and Neustria's persistent attempts to add his lands to their realm. However, this real-
politik view would be incomplete; the Count has done many things that would be unthinkable for
a man of false devotion, most notably vacating his country estate for an austere urban
compound, so that much of his holdings could be turned over the support of the Votive
Fraternity. Nanzig has become a center of the new martial order and veteran soldiers from as
far away as Poland, Bavaria and Angland have been enticed to serve the growing demand for
martial instructors. The Pope's own Anglish Guard maintains a large presence here as the elite
core of the developing Papal military; the wave of the future, however, seems to rest with the
swelling ranks of the Pope's own slave army, which has organized several training camps on the
Count's borrowed estates. This army is composed mostly of North African slave boys purchased
in adolescence, who are then freed upon swearing a holy oath for life to serve Christ and the
Pope. Taking after the Apostle Paul, they have come to call themselves "the Slaves of Christ"
while official pronouncements call them "the Papal Host". More unofficially, they are known by
the region they were trained or based in (the Nanziger, Trevian, and Kolsch hosts would
become particularly famous); certain aristocratically elitist members of the Votive Fraternity
referred to them pejoratively as the "Bastard Brothers". Regardless, they are well-armed, well-
trained, and possessed of a fanatical discipline. Many unfortunate Xasar commanders' last
moments on earth would involve seeing a detachment of "Nanzig Boys", coming for him at a
worrying speed and, even more worryingly, singing martial hymns that would get closer... and
closer...

N - The Genevan March, on the other hand, might be more validating to the aformentioned
cynical observers. Under the Frankish dukes of Medilano and Noricum, the lands in the high
Alps had been divided into many small units, called shires or gau (in Hochdeutsch) and parishes
or parossi (in the Alpine Romance dialect). After these duchies collapsed in the wake of the end
of the Empire and fall of Italy, these places carried on much as they did before; their isolation,
ruggedness, and relative poverty made them unattractive targets to the Xasar armies, which
stopped their conquests roughly at the Alpine passes. Burgundy, on the other hand, had much
lower standards. In the wake of a disastrous foray into Italy against the Attonids, King Charles II
of Burgundy allowed his empty-handed nobles to console themselves by seizing the quasi-
independent County of Geneva and nearby lands, declaring a new March to protect
Christendom against the pagan hordes. Marcher lords, of course, need estates, and the new
Marquess (a cousin of the King) would look the other way as numerous second and third sons
appropriated land in the gau and parossi near Geneva, with the holiest of excuses. This action
alarmed the nearby cities of Bern, Basel, and Zurich, who along with most of the remaining
gaus and parossi would join together in a new "Rhaetian Confederation" to protect their lands
and sovereignty. A generation after the fact, the Burgundian marcher lords do their best to
retroactively justify their position, competing to see who can build the finest chapel, make the
most elaborate demonstrations of penitence, or, lately, raise the most troops for the new Votive
War. The Votive Fraternal Order receives significantly more noble recruits from the second and
third sons of the Genevan March than its small size would predict...

X - The Khanate of Vuyuchaistan, along with neighboring Bolgharistan, were the only two
regions left standing out after the Xasar flattened the old tribal distinctions. When the Xasars
had invaded Pannonia, a group of Khirichan tribes accompanied them. Having settled along the
banks of the Danube, the tribes would adopt the moniker of "Buyukchay", or "Great River"
Turks. While they now lived in bustling cities and spoke the same Irano-Turkic hybrid language
as the Xasars, they did so with a little more Turkic flavor and were quite boastful of their identity
as "Vuyuchai" [1]. In a similar way as the Sahu peoples of the NE Empire saw themselves as
keepers of the "Iranian heritage", the Kha'ans of Vuyuchaistan and Bolgharistan, who unlike the
satraps passed down their titles to their sons, also passed down the role of guardian of the old
Turkic traditions. Accordingly the blue-domed Temple of Tangra in Ordu [OTL Bucharest] is
noticeably more splendid than the nearby Temple of Mihir, and other Turkic dieties enjoy rather
more popularity than most other places in the Xasar realm. There are more than just tribalistic
reasons for this popularity; in Tangraist Buddhism, the roles of shaman and arhat have become
combined, leading to a deep religious belief in the linkage of physical and spiritual health. A true
holy man will promote purity in the bodies as well as the spirits of those around him; hence there
is a great emphasis on holy men as healers that led to the establishment of hospitals that would
prove their worth during the Flowering Flesh. Due to their heritage, the Vuyuchai prize their
strength as horse archers even more than your average Xasar; thus the riders of the Kha'ans
have been slower to adopt the tufenj than other parts of the Empire, with mixed results (lower
sheer lethality and shock value, higher accuracy and rate of fire).

The Kha'ans' stature as "vassal sovereigns" compared to the purely subordinate position of the
satraps had an interesting side effect: their rulers were considered just below the Shah in terms
of rank, and thus they were considered "secondary courts" for the fostering of children of
Christian aristocrats. Thus, a sizeable number of Balkan Christian aristocrats were exposed to
this Tangra-focused strain of Buddhism rather than the Mithraist official doctrine promoted in
Konstantikhert. With its emphasis on a great Father who lives in the sky and heals the sick, it
was perhaps a bit more relatable to Christians than the alien, homoerotic, and often sinister-
seeming rites of the Mithraists, and in turn there was a bit more respect for the Christian
population in the Khanates. For instance, while only a Buddhist "true Xasar" could hold the
position of Satrap, the (primarily Rumanian Christian) Satrapy of Kluch was traditionally given to
a Bolghar or Vuyuchai. The Kha'ans were apathetic enforcers of the anti-Christian directives
emanating from Konstantikhert in the run-up to the Great Votive War; accordingly, remarkably
few revolts originated there during the war, though some rebellions would inevitably spill over
into their borders...

[1] Think Texans in the US and that would be pretty close.

-
Thirteen Day Retreat (Part I)

Introduction
Few military clashes in the history of mankind have inspired as much interest and gave birth to
so many myths, war tales, poems, and, of course, historical research as did the Great Votive
War. While being clearly not the biggest conflict of modern times (and, in fact, being hardly a
single conflict at all), this series of societal shifts, intercommunal struggle, migrations, famines,
and vicious warfare gained its prominence in the historical thought of the West mostly due to the
contrasting nature of the forces it pitted against each other. In Christian Europe, it is to this day
seen as one of the last moments that defined its civilizational antagonism to the Buddho-Iranian
world. For Rusichi, this clash of civilizations wasn’t as deeply existential and bitter: the Great
Hanstvo’s campaigns in Europe left no scars in the Rusichi national psyche and left only an
imprint of pleasant awakening in the self-feeling of its ruling elite that realized the true power of
the state they represented. Yet, of all participants of this war, it is the Xasar culture that was left
the most sensitive of, most curious about, and most inspired by this great conflict. In a matter of
hardly a dozen years, the Xasar Shahdom was to suffer the biggest existential threat since its
foundation four centuries prior. In subsequent decades, it underwent most violent changes that,
as modern political philosophers state, almost put the “Xasar Project” on an entirely different
path of an etatist dystopia (or utopia, when seen from the etatist standpoint). The man that
epitomized that historical turbulence of the Xasar nation was Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, a person
described in many books as a military genius, failed lover, administrative visionary, power-
hungry warmonger, dark mystic, and, using words of a Xasar poet, “last knight of the dying past
and first soldier of the sobering tomorrow.”

While books upon books have been written about his life and interpretations of his
achievements, two particular weeks of Arslanzade’s life have attracted particular attention of
military historians and theoreticians. Known as the Thirteen Day Retreat, this lightening
campaign in the peak of the Italian Votive War pitched the best veteran force of the Xasar
Shahdom against the most determined and most zealous enemies that sprawling empire had
encountered in centuries. Not only does it capture the drama and dirt and pathos of warfare of
the early Age of Discoveries, but it also serves as a gem of military genius attributed to one of
the most brilliant generals in history.

Sources
As it often happens in history, the most interest arises among public to events often insignificant,
simply due to the fact that they’re well-documented and colorfully described by contemporaries.
The Thirteen Day Retreat is one of the greatest example of such paradox, and the source that
we owe most of our knowledge to is the “Journals of the Italian War,” written by Luiggi Lascada.

A third son in a once prominent, but now bankrupt noble family from Fiorentia, Luiggi Lascada
was an Italian interpreter on Xasar administrative pay when the Vulgar Votives broke out. From
what we know, in his youth Lascada followed his two brothers and numerous other poor nobles
into the swelling ranks of “prestatore di vita,” hired duelists who, according to the laws of most
Italian cities, were allowed to represent plaintiffs in judicial duels. His martial skill, however,
seems to have been lacking, since Luiggi had to leave that well-paying business by his mid-
twenties: after a duel that went horribly wrong he was brought to a local monastery hospital by
his brothers, a bloody gash in his shoulder and a piercing wound in his stomach. There, he
made a miraculous recovery, but the near-death experience made him reconsider his life
choices, so Luiggi Lascada decided to stay there to assist the monks in hospital duty. Still
feeling unready to withdraw from the world and dedicate his life and soul to the service of God,
he declined an offer to join monastic brothers in their solitude and dedicated his life to learning
medicine and chemistry (of course, in their relatively primitive forms known in Christian Europe).
In his journals, he later claimed to have been an apprentice of a famous Mauri physiologist
Abkhanas Rhasati during the latter’s brief period of employment by the Duke of Fiorentia.
However, it’s doubtful that Lascada had enough talent in him to reach his teacher’s level,
because after Rhasati’s departure in 1274 Luiggi wasn’t hired by any moneybag but chose to
return to his monastic hospital instead. His life would have been predetermined from that point,
had it not been for the wave of Xasar conquests that gradually absorbed Italy in a loose
amalgam of collaborating counties, military occupation zones, and vassal city-states.

Since Xasar administrators were but a thin film of experienced bureaucracy trying to control a
largely informal net of collaborating political entities, finding effective communicators was a key
for them. A scholarly man of noble descent, capable of conversing with a rich man and a
peasant equally well, was a natural choice for the unknown headhunter that invited Lascada to
serve the Shah as the “voice of Mithra.” Lascada doesn’t describe the process of his hiring in his
journals, but he does provide us with motivation that was driving him (although it’s likely that he
was merely trying to rationalize and ennoble his motives to some degree). He explains that his
life in the monastic hospital situated on the crossroad of major highways intersecting Italy from
North to South, had let him meet “fellow Italian souls of all ways of life, and nurture their bodies
and souls so that they, too, could blossom again.” That experience made him feel what in
today’s terms could be described as Pan-Italian proto-nationalism. He viewed the division of his
land as a tragic historical mistake and thought that the only good future for the “people of Italic
lands” can be found in the enlightened appropriation of all the administrative achievement of the
Xasar and, paradoxically, Isidorian Romans. While Lascada’s knowledge of the ways of the
long-deceased Isidorian Empire was superficial and clearly overly romantic, he viewed his
service to the Xasar as the only way he could learn their ways and pass them to his
contemporaries in a set of organized, detailed notes, which could someday be put to a good use
by some “Enlightened Italic Prince” (a figure clearly inspired by Ishpaxabhad [army chief]
Arslanzade himself).

That combination of relatively unbiased approach, attention to details, closeness to decision-

making, and disinterest in sensationalism and propaganda was what made Lascada’s “Journals
of the Italian War” a particularly valuable source of knowledge for modern historians. In fact, the
Journals weren’t supposed to be published at all, until one of Lascada’s distant relatives found
them more than a century after Luiggi’s death and decided to turn them into a printed
publication.

When reading Lascada’s notes, one has to be, of course, aware of their shortcomings. Lacking
any practical military knowledge and experience, the author often falls victim to naïve
rationalization of warfare, while failing to recognize the hectic, often irrational nature of
hostilities. Lascada’s description of war is one of a cruel game of chess, in which military
commanders may possess different intelligence and finesse, but nonetheless are driven by cold
calculations and reason. On the other hand, that obsession with finding rationality in everything
makes Lascada’s notes a captivating read that’s inspired thousands of young men to dedicate
their lives to officer careers, unaware of the boredom and chance and horror that war is. Also,
it’s likely that without Lascada’s military inexperience modern historians wouldn’t receive all the
little details about Xasar and their opponents’ military and administrative organization: aware of
his inability to separate meaningful details from routine facts, he took upon himself to capture
virtually everything there was to capture about the campaigns of Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, from
regimental order of battle to common foraging practices. (In some instances, that obsession with
details reaches almost comic standards. For example, the author dedicates two pages of his
book to horse grooming practices of Xasar stablemen, and in another instance he describes a
recipe of semolina oatmeal with smoked beef cooked in a field camp for a company of Xasar
foot soldiers.)

Such was the influence of “Journals of the Italian War” on the world of book publishing, that
“karash-chimiy,” (or “war notes”) became one of the popular genres in Xasar, and later, in world
literature. In fact, latest archeological findings were so close to the description of events made
by Luiggi Lascada, that some historical authors named him “the forefather of military
journalism.”

Events leading to campaign

Early Vulgar Votives were seen as a comic peculiarity by Konstantinkert. Thousands of badly
armed, undisciplined, hysterically zealous peasants and poor-fellows, crossing the Alps in blind
belief to smite their foes with the power of their faith, were indeed just a field exercise for Xasar
cavalry camped in North Italy. Time and time again, these unruly mobs were dispersed by small
squadrons of lancers and then hunted down by horse archers: the pattern repeated itself at
Centala and Vigonia (spring and summer of 1299) and near the Amiantifera lake (winter of
1300). In their dispatches, Xasar cavalry commanders contemptuously described half-starving
crowds of Frankish commoners, looking more like wandering bands of refugees than actual
armies. Satrap Ixandhar Odigesha of Ishfera Kumiy (North Italy) would then forward these
dispatches to Konstantikert with even more exaggerated details, describing clouds of flies and
miasma surrounding the hordes of peasant Votivists as the biggest obstacle his glorious cavalry
had to overcome. Odigesha was glad to depict Frankish Europe as a collapsed society, which
population is driven not as much by religious zeal or a surplus of armed men, but by a mere
desire to leave the chaos of Europe and find order in the prosperous lands of the most
benevolent Shah (which Odigesha was, of course, going to deny them). Meanwhile, Satrap
Osrasidar Surenavaiy of Ishfera Gomiy (South Italy) was not blind to the trouble brewing on
Italy’s western border, receiving plenty of disturbing intelligence from his network of spies and
Mauri merchants. Surenavaiy tried to change Odigesha’s perception of post-Frankish Europe,
but the latter one just suspected that Surenavaiy was simply envious of his military
achievements and growing prosperity. In the last ditch effort to prevent the inevitable,
Surenavaiy took it upon himself to approach the Shah directly, but by the time South Italian
Satrap’s message arrived to Konstantikert, columns of Fellow Brothers of St. Ambrose the
Alexandrian were already crossing the Alps.

When the Italian phase of the Great Votive War started, Ishpaxabhad Ixandhar Dagalujuglu was
the supreme commander of Xasar troops in Italy. A distinguished and experienced general,
Dagalujuglu was a heavyweight of Xasar military, a brilliant logistician who oversaw introduction
of gunpowder artillery to battlefields as opposed to siege-only use of the previous century.
However, he had one severe weakness that proved to be critical for his armies. A seventy-six-
year-old man with a gout, Dagalujuglu simply lacked the energy required to win that
extraordinary campaign to follow. At first, his “let them come for us” approach was clearly giving
satisfactory results. In the summer of 1301, he achieved two strong tactical victories: first, when
he let his firepower decimate a joint Angevine-Arlese column under Count Jaqius II of Nimes
near Fasana Crossing, and then three months later when a slave-soldier detachment of Bishop
of Muenster outran the main advancing force and was easily crushed in a short clash at
Cherascia. However, neither of the defeated forces was fully shattered, and both were allowed
to regroup and rejoin the main core of Francien Votive armies, led by King Charles II of
Burgundy. Dagalujuglu had a plan that in a different campaign would be rather solid: to guard
key junctions of North Italian road network and react to any Votivist attempts to break into the
Po river valley by giving them defensive field battles, in which he knew he could use his beloved
field artillery to his advantage. Destroying enemy armies in the field, indeed, was unnecessary
for him, as long as he kept them contained in the Alpine foothills, where they would quickly run
out of supply and exhaust their logistical capabilities. What he underestimated, however, was
the sheer desire of the Votivist leaders to give him a decisive battle. When the entirety of the
sixty-five thousand Votivist force was spotted on the move toward Rivola, Dagalujuglu had no
other choice than take all his available thirty three thousand troops to meet them in battle in
early summer of 1302.

As the Votivist troops were still arriving to their camp south-east of Rivola, Dagalujuglu started
bombarding them from his Grand Redoubt, provoking a reckless charge of Aquitanian nobility.
That charge was easily repulsed, only to be followed by another mass assault, this one
reinforced with large formations of dismounted Aquitanian knights and squires. For a brief
moment, all of Dagalujuglu’s splendorous artillery was under a risk of capture, but a timely
deployment of heavy pike formations and tufenj fire from the flank gave the Xasars enough time
to evacuate the artillery pieces before withdrawing from the doomed redoubt in good order.
What would look like a defeat for any other commander, however, was merely another
opportunity for the hardened Xasar general. Upon seizure of the redoubt, the Aquitanians didn’t
withdraw to the main camp (now crowded with even more reinforcements), but chose to stay
and move their own humble artillery and touphenjuirs (tufenj soldiers) to the safety of the hill
position. Seeing that the enemies had thus split their forces, Dagalujuglu quickly put together a
bold new plan of attacking the captured redoubt at the dawn in three columns, while cutting it off
from the main Votivist camp with the fourth one. The plan had good chances of success, but two
sleepless nights had put a heavy toll on the old general’s heath, and by the morning of the
following day Dagalujuglu was found dead in his tent, most likely a victim of a stroke. The
leadership passed to the second-in-command, Paxabhad [second army chief] Shainiy-
Gadahme. Obedient executor with hardly any personal initiative, Shainiy-Gadahme chose to
stick to his superior’s last order, even despite the fact that by the morning it started raining
heavily, rendering Xasar tufenj and artillery corps ineffective and making the march through the
valley between the redoubt and the Votivist camp extremely sluggish. What followed was a
disaster that didn’t result in a collapse of the entire Xasar army only due to the deteriorating
weather conditions, ironically.
Emotionally crushed by that early setback in his new role, Shainiy-Gadahme passively withdrew
to the vicinity of Pavia, effectively ceding all lands to the east of it to the enemy. Afraid to split his
troops ever again, he allowed the Votivists capture key supply depots prepared by his
predecessor for campaigning in North-Western Italy. The Xasar army still might have been able
to pull off an effective defense, but a short-living popular rebellion (a salt riot, really) in Medilano
became a “black swan” for Shainiy-Gadahme and his troops. The rioters killed Satrap Ixandhar
Odigesha and, despite being eventually suppressed, distracted the Xasar city garrison enough
to let a dashing raid by Burgundian Marshal du Fiollers to capture southern city gates in an
unlikely turn of fate. By the time the news of the salt riot reached Pavia, Medilano had already
fallen to the Burgundians, cutting the Xasar army from their largest supply depot.

The following eight months, to the spring of 1303, were known as the Long Slumber among the
Xasar troops stuck in Pavia. General Shainiy-Gadahme still believed that Pavia had to be
protected at all costs, ignoring the fact that the Votivist, disjointed and ill-disciplined as they
were, started to successively capture North Italian towns one-by-one, establishing their own
supply base and simultaneously eroding the Xasar one. By early summer of 1303 it became
evident that prolonged inactivity would be fatal, and two oxavarans (brigades) were finally
dispatched under a capable commander Kaikhuluj Arslanzade to deal with Votivist foraging
parties roaming the countryside. Despising his superior’s inactivity, Arslanzade disobeyed the
orders and instead struck two Votivist forces engaged in sieges of Xasar outposts. This resulted
in small-scale victories at Rivergara and Lodia, but relatively high losses among the victors just
persuaded Shainiy-Gadahme that the split of forces was still a bad idea.

The wake-up call would come when Piachencia became besieged the fall of 1303. Shainiy-
Gadahme’s attempt to re-establish contact with the defenders was low-energy and ineffective,
and by early winter of 1303 Piachencia had fallen. That practically turned Pavia into an armed
camp of prisoners of war: despite absence of direct siege actions by the Votivists, Shainiy-
Gadahme’s forces were fully isolated and blockaded in the town that could ill-afford feeding an
army twenty-five thousand strong throughout the winter. Another eight weeks later, an outriding
party spotted a large Neustrian force moving toward Vilatteria bridge over the Fiume river. To
Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, the message was clear: if the Votivists succeeded, the Xasar army would
be completely cut off from the rest of the Shahdom, with no chances of withdrawal. By then,
Shainiy-Gadahme was compeletely paralyzed by the enormity of the task at hands, and,
ironically, that helped Arslanzade persuade his superior to give him a single mounted oxavaran
to secure the bridge. Strategically, however, Shainiy-Gadahme’s vision of Arslanzade’s mission
stayed strictly defeatist: the rising star general was instructed to break through, escape from the
Neustrians, and bring more reinforcements in an attempt to rescue the Pavian army.

Grudgingly, Arslanzade accepted the orders. His forced march to Vilatteria bridge, however,
brought an unexpected hope: only a small detachment of light cavalry consisting of African
slave-converts protected the bridge when the Xasar oxavaran reached the river in two march
columns. Executing a quick transition to a battle formation (a maneuver Arslanzade will later
become famous for), Arslanzade led a dashing attack on the bridge and easily overwhelmed the
defensive force. Under interrogation, captured soldiers admitted that the bulk of the Neustrian
army was about three days away from the bridge. Encouraged by this news, Arslanzade sent
messengers to Pavia, begging his superior to break from stupor and immediately march toward
the only way out of the encirclement. According to a popular anecdote, the message was
worded in a laconic, yet rather sarcastic manner, and Shainiy-Gadahme refused to even
acknowledge it as a legitimate order from his subordinate. Two days later, advancing columns of
the Count of Niverne appeared in the vicinity of Arslanzade’s force, and he, seeing that the best
result of his mission was unachievable, decided to fall for the second best: escape into Central
Italia with the remainder of his tiny force.

Having reached Ravenna, Arslanzade immediately contacted Satrap Surenavaiy of South Italy
and demanded all resources the latter could gather to be thrown to the rescue of the Pavian
army. Recognizing Arslanzade as a capable leader (or simply facing a leadership crisis),
Surenavaiy delegated to the rising star of the army extraordinary powers of military enlistment
and material acquisition. Surenavaiy also performed a “xavaniysham:” voluntary lending of a
part of personal wealth “for the good of the state.” (In more ordinary times, such an act would
have required a written agreement with the Shah and the High Treasurer, since the nature of
xavaniysham required eventual reimbursement with no interest. The nature of events in 1304
was, however, so desperate that Surenavaiy decided to surpass the necessary procedures, thus
risking to lose all donated funds if the Shah later refused to acknowledge a retrospective
application (which is exactly what eventually happened).) Once given a free hand in unoccupied
Ishfera Kumiy, Arslanzade immediately started conscription among small communes of Xasar
colonists in North Italy, majority of which were either veterans of earlier Italian conquests or
sons of such veterans. At the same time, recruiters were sent to the Balkans with an order to
hire cutthroats of any background as mercenaries and bring them to Italy on merchant ships
going for the same destination (needless to say, Surenavaiy’s donation came handy at that
task). Mistrusting local condottieri in fighting against fellow Christians, Arslanzade made a single
exception when he hired a Venetian mercenary company led by one Izidoro di Valiacci, an open
Tinanian who, as Arslanzade had figured, would have been hated by the Votivists even more
than a Buddhist ever could be. In preparation for campaigning next year, a network of supply
depots was established, with provisions being gathered by Xasar troops through extortion of
cities and often straightforward marauding of countryside.

In March of 1304, disturbing news from Pavia started reaching Toscana. Shainiy-Gadahme’s
“kidnapped army” had run out of horsemeat, and soldiers had to resort to boiling and eating their
leather boots and saddles. Realizing how desperate the situation was, Arslanzade rushed West
without waiting for his artillery train to leave Ravenna and easily dispersed several roaming
foraging squadrons and Vulgar Votivist bands. However, Brother-Judicate Renneus of the Holy
Fellowship of Spearbearers, a smart and experienced Francien commander, persuaded his
superiors to not meet the rescuing force in an open battle and not to attempt to take Pavia by
storm. Instead, he argued that all the Christians had to do was keep Arslanzade’s force away
from vicinity of the besieged army and prevent the leader of the Pavian garrison from learning
about the rescue attempt. Despite some hot debates with King Charles II of Burgundy, Renneus’
plan was accepted, and it spelled doom of the besieged army. Shainiy-Gadahme agreed to
negotiate surrender to the Aquitanian king after the latter promised to protect Xasar prisoners
from a slaughter by the Burgundian zealots. Surprisingly, upon laying down their arms, Shainiy-
Gadahme’s soldiers had indeed their lives spared, although majority of them were sold into
slavery and some were even encouraged to convert to Christianity and join the slave-convert
army of King Ptolemei of Neustria (that later became a source of great mistrust between the
Burgundians and the Aquitano-Neustrian alliance). Shainiy-Gadahme himself was taken to
Neustria as well, where Ptolemei hoped to force the Xasar commaner to serve him as a military
adviser (another display of surprising tolerance by the Votivists). Ironically, after the end of the
Great Votive War Shainiy-Gadahme would return to Konstantinkert only to be arrested and
executed for treason by the orders of newly crowned Usurper Shah Kaikhuluj Arslanzade
himself.

Having learned of the fall of Pavia, Arslanzade hurried to return to Toscana and prepare for an
aggressive summer campaign, hoping to strike separate Votivist forces in piecemeal battles,
using the fortress of Ravenna as his rear base. Howeveer, in early June of 1304, another “black
swan” changed everything for the Xasar. Ravenna rebelled, and Izidoro III, the Duke of
Toscana, previously happy with his position of the first man among the Italians, declared his
Duchy’s independence from the Satrap of Ishfera Kumiy. The latter, technically, had already
been dead, and no new candidate had been appointed from Konstantinkert still, so that
declaration of independence was done in a shady, ambiguous way that could give the Duke a
lot of situational flexibility. Within a week, though, all ambiguity had vanished: Xasar artillerists
and marines were butchered by a mob in Ancona, and the remnants of Xasar naval squadron
were forced to quickly leave the harbor. Upon briefly bombarding the city with cannons and
causing a significant fire, the squadron withdrew for the Balkan port of Sypilit, leaving
Arslanzade and his fourteen thousand troops completely cut off from any sources of support in
his army camp in Bolonna. Soon, the semi-official military dictator of North Italy learned that
three Votivist forces which combined strength neared seventy four thousand troops had crossed
the Po river and were marching in three columns, ready to cut the remaining Xasar force north
of Apennines from any retreat routes.

The stage was set for one of the most glorious campaigns in modern military history.
-
Pazudesada was not
a nation, but a collection of cities. Of those cities, one, Kintradoni, dominated her two sisters,
much as the Kintradoni Shahs might claim all were alike in dignity. Of course, the Kintradoni
Shahs also claimed to be supreme autocrats within their own sphere, and the early fourteenth
century would prove that to be a lie.

Then again, many visitors to Kintradoni felt it was not wrong that she should rule her rivals.
Kintradoni was a wondrous city to behold, “an island dangling as a pearl in the ocean” to quote
the legendary Pazudesadan poet Pijuruan Msihqi. Twin bridges connected it to the mainland,
but the central city, islanded and aloof from the mainland, was a symbol of awe-inspiring
commercial wealth, its streets carefully planned, its avenues well-regulated and well-policed by
the city guard.
The Shah of Kintradoni had become a hereditary title, a far cry from the old Sreni-backed Shahs
with their short reigns and short lives. Not long after her “sister cities” of Vayubati and Shangani
had been subdued by a subtle mixture of diplomacy and economic force, the Kintradoni Shahs
had begun manufacturing counterfeit crises to ensure a linear succession that gradually became
familial. They rarely used arms against their fellow settlers – but it was rarely necessary. The
leading families of Pazudesada were all intermarried in any case.

The distinction for them was between themselves, the insiders, and outsiders, up and comers
like the Cevirukkai, a Chandratreyan brassworkers’ guild-cum-banking institution whose tendrils
increasingly reached into Pazudesada and towards the tropical resources extracted from the
jungles and the fruits of her plantation economies. Unlike the Tamil, the Maharashtrian cities and
companies did not have easy access to the Malay, and thus often opted to become a big fish in
a small pond rather than try to outcompete their well-established rivals in the east.

For some time, Pazudesada had seen wealth and prestige slowly concentrate – unlike among
the Kapudesa, whose cities were loosely aligned at best and who frequently competed amongst
each other, Pazudesada was a more aristocratic country. It had to be to survive. For the better
part of two centuries, it had weathered migratory pressures of Nilotic peoples from the north, the
numerous Maa tribes who gradually had been brought into the fold as federates. The (primarily
Arab and Iranian) settlers who had peopled the interior had drawn back to the coastlines and
now represented little more than a thin band of loyal citizens clustered in cities. They were
primarily employed in factories and mercantile occupations rather than farming, and this
withdrawal had concentrated wealth. Small communities of farmers growing spices and food
were vulnerable to attack and not economical. Those who survived were those who had
protection of larger landholders, and such protection agreements often involved the ceding of
important political rights to said landholders.

The destruction of the inland farming colonies changed the Kintradoni military and social
structures. Obligations of citizen service were gradually replaced by a more and more
mercenary army. Arab, Iranian, and Izaoriaka soldiers were recruited and paid as professionals,
a model which mirrored that of certain Kapudesan cities who also did not have a strong interior
presence. However, the state alone did not have the wealth to maintain these armies –
especially not armies strong enough to keep the migratory Maa in check. Accordingly, over the
course of the late thirteenth century, the Shahs became ever more indebted to the Indian
companies, whose monetary authority gradually transformed into political concessions. Soon,
former “outsider” companies were gaining positions close to the Shahs and the nobles “inside”
the cities became increasingly resentful.

By the time the Maa were subdued and made vassals, their culture was deeply Hinduized and
had taken on substantial Arab and Iranian influences as well. They adopted the Pazudesada
script and many took to worshipping the Hindu Gods, especially the monotheistic cult of Ishvara.
Small Jain and Buddhist communities also existed, and one of the most prominent Maa vassal-
kings, the semi-legendary Magilani, was a Jain who encouraged his people to abstain from
harming any living thing. These policies were eventually tempered by realism, but they
nevertheless represent a stunning revival of Jain teachings, a religion which had largely passed
into obscurity on the subcontinent among the elites in favor of a new series of intellectual
philosophies such as the sensual hedonism advocated by Navacharvaka.

The “Inside” families judged the Maa to be the lesser of two evils. The Maa themselves had little
ambition to dominate the coastal cities – they were a primarily pastoral people whose slow
transition towards agriculture and plantation development never translated into maritime focus.
By making careful political alliances, the great Kintradoni families hoped to turn the Maa into a
weapon to keep the great Indian guilds, especially the Cevirukkai, at bay. Besides, the Maa had
armies, and those armies were judged to be an effective counterbalance to the mercenaries that
the Shah had long been forced to utilize.

Two major Maa clans, the Gajiok and the Gaweer, saw their patriarchs raised in power,
showered with titles and offices and permitted to dine with the Shah – a rare gift for a vassal-
king. One young man, Kuyra Raia, identified as a “captain of the Gajiok” was given
extraordinary influence and for a time even managed the affairs of state as a Vizier as a
compromise of sorts. The Shahs of Pazudesada were hamstrung in their own authority. On one
hand the companies sought a degree of control they knew they had no hope of gaining over the
Kapudesans, and on the other hand their own nobility was eagerly elevating outsider
“barbarians” to high ranking positions within the government as a way of frustrating the Indian
mercantile guilds.

It was perhaps inevitable that the Kapudesan city-state of Mzishima would become involved.
One of the oldest and most powerful of the old Kapudesan trading cities, Mzishima was one of
the few East African ports that Bharukaccha was forced by a mixture of ancient custom and
pragmatic realism to treat as an equal partner. Without the Mzishima, an agreement like the
White Elephant Concordat of 1306 would have been far more difficult to negotiate – the old
networks of alliance and patronage that connected the Kapudesans and Chandratreya were
really an alliance of two cities within greater polities.

The southern Kapudesans and the Pazudesada were longtime rivals of one another, but it was
a relatively friendly rivalry. Kapudesa’s ambitions had always been more global than her
northern neighbor, and since the coming of the Maa they had been the stronger power by far.
Traditionally, there had been no need to intervene in Pazudesadan politics.

Still, the Raja of Mzishima was a wealthy man with a substantial private army and his own
merchant fleet. He had resources and connections on the ground in Pazudesada that the
Cevirukkai could not match, and had always hoped to eliminate the threat of Pazudesada and
thus ensure that he would never have to condescend to bring them into the White Elephant
Concordat and grant them the privileges associated with such a pact.

Bharukaccha had long flirted with the idea of overthrowing local governments in the name of
some grand imperial project. They had helped bankroll the massive invasion of Ethiopia which
had been an abject failure and had led to the creation of an isolated hermit-kingdom who
stubbornly resisted the entreaties of the Hindu Kings across the sea. However, they had refined
their philosophies in that time. Instead of brute force, they now utilized more subtle means. The
large mercenary armies which had replaced the citizen-soldiers of old were quietly reminded of
who their real paymasters were. The Shah, they reminded the Kintradoni officer corps, could not
pay their salary if they were to withdraw their support.

A few weeks later, the Kintradoni Shah, Bayrom IV, perhaps having received some subtle hints
of which way the wind was blowing, removed Kuyra Raia from his position of power. A month
after that, a small fleet from the Raja of Mzishima sailed into their harbor, its decks loaded with
heavy cannons aimed at the beautiful central district of the city, where the white-walled villas of
the wealthy were located. Mass evacuation became panic as the city’s few bridges were
insufficient for the exodus and people feared to utilize river-boats given the presence of the
enemy fleet. Hundreds of the richest nobles were trampled to death in the ensuing chaos.

Shah Bayrom did not know where his own fleet was. The palace was in chaos, and a dour-faced
banker from Bharukaccha had quietly informed him that the shelling would begin tomorrow if he
did not accede to a series of 36 request. Later that afternoon, he would learn that the
mercenaries of his own fleet had mutinied, demanding a massive pay raise he was incapable of
granting without driving his own house into bankruptcy. Without the mercenary soldiers, the
sailors could not act without sailing into a massacre – and knowing this, they had judged it best
to simply return to their homes.

August 8, 1309 was a humiliating day. The treaty Shah Bayrom signed essentially made him a
prisoner in his own palace and placed a legation from Mzishima in practical control of his city.
The League was undone overnight. Vayubata and Shangani were given independence, along
with thirty other smaller towns of note. While Mzishima did not extend any formal hegemony
over them, the truth was now obvious.

It was a baffling moment for the landholding and “inside” nobility, who had assumed their power
to be on the rise. They had mistaken their alliance with the Maa vassals for security, and the
Maa, for their part, had been more than happy to adopt the culture of the coastal cities and
accepted their favors and marriages, but were too removed from the coastline. Over the next
few years, a small Gaweer rebellion would be put down by tufenj armed mercenaries belonging
to the “Shah.” The power balance would slowly solidify. The nobles learned that ultimately, the
Indian companies weren't so bad, and their sons could even get ranking positions within their
structure if they asked nicely and made the right "donations." Commerce and capital, the
lifeblood of the Indian Ocean, would continue to flow. Spices and ivory and a hundred other
valuable commodities would continue to pass from the inland kings down to the thriving quays
of Kintradoni where petty traders would fight to be heard over the din of a polyglot crowd. Naked
mystics would debate philosophy with saffron-robed monks for public spectacle, and Shah
Bayrom would become famous not for his humiliation but for the construction of a massive
university several miles south of "his" city. He would be called "blessed by Ishvara" and the
people would mourn his passing, even if some staunch traditionalists mourned the loss of their
own power.
The accretion of wealth and the colonization of the world would continue apace - and it was
never a pretty thing. As the forests of northern China were leveled to fuel charcoal fires and the
untamed jungles of the Malay Isles burnt to make way for plantations, as millions died to
disease and rapacious conquest across whole continents in the name of God and distant Kings,
the brutal, bloody process that would one day bring modernity slowly became clear.

History was not, as Christendom and the Bakhtiyar had always assumed, a story of
degradation, of past glories usurped. Slowly, some thinkers began to realize it could be a
different story - the story of a world destroyed to make way for a better future. Without the
mistakes of the past, humanity could never learn. Without suffering, there could be no liberation.

Southeast Asia in Turmoil

Dai Viet under the To dynasty was defined by the Red River. Along the coastal lands and
lowland river deltas, where farming was easy and merchant contact frequent, a distinct and
Sinicized culture developed. Uniquely for their region, they resisted the influence of the
Indosphere, an influence which penetrated even the highlands to their north, where Tai tribes
aggressively resisted the colonial resettlement and cultural assimilation projects of Chinese
ministers, tacitly approved by the Yaol Emperors in the distant north.

The great sprawl of the Khmer Empire to the south did not touch Dai Viet for matters of
geography – the independent and relatively lightly-governed highlands that delineated
Southeast Asia prevented easy overland contact, and the presence of the behemoth Kitai
Empire to the North always played a bigger role than any southern realm. Their traditional
deities were not syncretized with Indra and Brahma, and rather than the Hindicized Buddhism of
the south, their elites adopted the Taoist-Buddhism of China instead, and the common people
maintained devotional folk cults to ancestral cults and various nature gods, a system not so
different from the incorporation of Shinto worship into Japanese Buddhism. Their temples were
often pagoda tiered and decorated with brightly painted Chinese iconography, deeply distinct
from the rock-cut reliefs that ornamented the temples of the Kambuja. Both had a similar horror
vacui, a stylistic choice which in both cases worked to help visualize the divine for their
audiences.

Unlike the Khmer Empire, which was corporate and feudal at the best of times – an association
of Kambuja cities, guilds and temples bound by treaties and contracts – the Dai Viet were a
bureaucratic regime modeled off of the Chinese example, and indeed in many senses followed
the old bureacratic model more accurately than the Kitai did. The Kitai had morphed the
Chinese bureaucracy to accommodate the exigencies of their steppe empire and their regime of
outsiders. Buddhist religious orthodoxy had become a major component in the exam, and
certain ethnic quotas had been established to ensure that Kitai sons could always find a place in
bureaucracy.
By contrast, Dai Viet was a striking meritocracy, where men of any background could ascend to
great heights. The To were descended from a line of ministers and petty government officials,
and in their earlier decades (1190-1240) they deeply understood the benefit of finding capable
men and rooting out corruption. This alone would have earned them the admiration of the
peasantry, but the Exoteric Buddhist philosophies they adhered to focused on the welfare of the
farmers above all – they stockpiled grain during famines and kept a well-ordered, well run state
with numerous garrisons to defend against highland raiders.

The ascendency of the petty Shan states had thrown the Khmer into relative anarchy, and
combined with the degradation of their traditional agricultural system due to a series of
unforeseen ecological stresses, the thirteenth century saw the near-total erosion of their empire.
The Kambuja city-states began asserting more autonomy, but their constant warring led to
population collapse and opportunity for their subject peoples to begin rising up as well.

The Kingdom of Hsriwa, greatest of the Shan states, continued to win their wars after the
debacles of 1258. What had begun as mere raids and punitive expeditions conducted back and
forth along a gradually shifting border had become outright chaos. The Hsriwa Saopha (King)
Hkun Hmom struck a devastating blow against an alliance of Kambujan armies in 1278, leading
to the Hsriwa moving into what had once been the northern lands of the Dvaravati Mon, settling
there and continuing to pressure the Kambuja cities into tributary status.

Unlike Dai Viet or even the rising power of Majachaiya, Hsriwa operated along the lines of the
common model of the indigenous Indosphere empires. They were keen to establish a
hegemonic tributary state, but were less eager to actually administer territories themselves.
They kept the guilds active in regions they conquered, and rarely sacked cities outright,
preferring to ransom and establish their own rule in the place of the Khmer. They were equally
quick to begin the process of assimilation and cultural exchange, losing much of what made
them distinctive as they became comfortable lords over the ruins of the Khmer Empire.

No power in Southeast Asia was truly capable of changing the rules of statecraft as they were
known besides Majachaiya. As the Kingdom of the Radiant Tree continued to expand, their
direct rulership and tendency to annihilate native guilds in favor of their own companies became
an increasing worry to the remaining Southeast Asian polities, particularly the Champa and
Indranokura. But there was little that could be done. The Champa remained divided and the
Khmer Empire was a fiction perpetrated by a succession of puppet emperors in Angkor Thom.
The Dai Viet might have been such a transformative polity, but they were ringed on most sides
by hostile tribal peoples whose lands were marginal at best. The only clear avenue for
expansion was towards the Champa, and there they met with little success. Kauthara, the
greatest Champa city, would frequently come to the support of Indrapura and her other federate
cities when the Dai Viet attempted one of their routine invasions, utilizing their fleet to blockade
the Red River ports and deny Vietnamese merchants access to the sea, to say nothing of
frequent coastal raids and punitive attacks.
Saopha Hkun Hmom was succeeded by his nephew Hseng Kaw in 1289. In a break from the
tradition of cultivating alliances among other Shan princelings, Hseng Kaw arranged the
marriage of his young daughter to the To monarch at the time, To Doung Hoan, whose own wife
had recently died. The two leaders began making plans – Hseng Kaw was an ambitious man,
who dreamed of uniting a vast territory from the surviving Kyauske rump state to what remained
of Indranokura under his loose authority. More than a Saopha, he dreamed of being a
Chakravartin. To this end, he knew that the Dai Viet could be immensely useful – even if they
had a poor military track record, he was interested in learning the organizational techniques that
they utilized. Hseng Kaw had seen the Dai Viet capital, Thang Kinh, and he had marveled at the
wealth and the order of it. By contrast, the Saopha had no capital – rotating between his various
forts, moving the court with the changing seasons.

Still, the pact and mutual exchange of knowledge was not to be. To Doung Hoan died fighting
Tai hillmen on the border with the Kitai in a blossoming border war which by 1301 would spill
over the border and lead to an outright clash between the Kitai, their Tai vassals, and the
Southern Kingdom. Ambayhan, a half-Kitai half-Naiman commander, was tasked with leading a
forty-thousand man expeditionary army to subdue the To dynasty and bring them to heel or
annex them outright, whichever was more practical. His force was like nothing the Dai Viet
Emperors had ever faced. The Kitai had a well-ordered and professional army, with ranks of
disciplined tufenj-soldiers whose modern weapons, known as Che Dian Chong (literally
“lightning quick firearm”) could fire at a rate far superior to the Champa armies. By contrast, Dai
Viet had lagged behind in the adoption of tufenj.

If not for the fact that the traditional steppe cavalry arm, ubiquitous among major Yaol dynasty
armies, had been utterly useless in the hills and marshlands of Dai Viet, Ambayhan would have
won a crushing victory. As it was, he was reduced to a long, bloody campaign. Reinforcements,
drawn from the garrisons of the southern provinces, fought and died in futile engagements and
the To dynasty stubbornly held on in spite of everything. Finally, after five years of ineffective
fighting, the Yaol dynasty withdrew, leaving Dai Viet a devastated ruin that would be ultimately
overrun by Tai warlords from the north, fleeing the wave of persecution that the Kitai unleashed
following their defeat in Dai Viet. It was easier, ultimately, to blame subversive elements within
the state on their failure than admit that their tactics and strategies, adapted for fighting in the
comparatively open north, were disastrous in the southern hills and forests.

Five years of devastating war in the south destroyed Dai Viet, but ultimately it be hard on the
Yaol Dynasty as well. They had held the whole of China for two centuries, and the north for even
longer, but times were changing. If they had brought unprecedented prosperity and opportunity
to many, they were still foreigners, and the traditional systems of China were not easily cowed
into submission. In the aftermath of the Southern War, the cracks in their armor would begin to
become more and more evident.

However, China, for its part, remained prosperous and strong compared to the various polities
of Southeast Asia. The relatively peaceful world order which had endured for several centuries
under Kambuja hegemony was gone, and it was yet unclear what could replace it. Declining
population and wealth led to a dark age of sorts. Warlords and mobs were as likely to destroy
monasteries and temples as they were to found new ones, and the Shans' personal and tribal
form of politics represented a regression from the complex mandala-systems organized by the
Kambuja. As endemic warfare became commonplace, the hydraulic systems that sustained the
Kambuja finally failed outright, leading to mass famines and apocalyptic chaos.
-
Thirteen Day Retreat (Part II)

Opposing commanders
- Kaikhuluj Arslanzade

Kaikhuluj Arslanzade was a second son in a once prominent, but now nearly bankrupt Xasar
family from Tarnopshiy, a provincial town in the south-east of the Satrapy of Hrobatistan. His two
elder sisters both failed to bring fortune to their family by marrying into richer nobility (the oldest,
Nashikha, was born blind and limp, and the second oldest, Galha, was infamous for her temper
and rather scandalous connections with commoners). The failure of the sisters thus brought all
the weight of familial responsibility on Kaikhuluj and his older brother Xarxashda. By the time
future general and Usurper Shah reached his maturity, his sibling was already a prefectural
postmaster of Tarnopshiy, a humble, but promising position within the Xasar administrative
hierarchy which was gained not without a use of old boys’ network by his father (a practice quite
common in the “old” eastern Satrapies of the Shahdom). Kaikhuluj himself was also encouraged
to follow his brother’s path, since it promised much more obvious financial benefits, especially if
one was to consider some limited corruption. Kaikhuluj, a sickly young man with wicked temper,
however, challenged his father and chose a path of a military officer in a society that awarded its
soldiers with fame in greater degrees than with money or influence. (Stuck in their own semi-
isolated subculture, Xasar officers of the late 13th century were indeed alienated from the
prosperous and dynamic society they vowed to protect. Among other things, it explains why
Kaikhuluj’s angered father chose to skip his second son in his inheritance order. The old man
would die in early fall of 1301, years before Kaikhuluj Arslanzade’s name would become
chanted on every corner of Konstantinert.)

In the early days of officer training in Peshda, young Kaikhuluj was noted by his military
educators as a person of sharp mind and untamed temper. A pale, short, skinny young man of
mediocre personal martial skills, Arslanzade had earned ire of other cadets with his scathing
jokes and poems. That eventually led to a tragedy: one of the victims of Kaikhulij’s bitter humor
challenged him to a mounted archery duel (a common way of solving disputes of honor among
Xasar martial aristocracy). In the exchange of arrow shots, Arslanzade was wounded in a thigh,
but, according to the anecdote, persisted riding and shooting from the horseback. Seeing that
the insulter was quickly losing blood, Kaikhuluj’s opponent simply used an arkan (lasso) to
dismount the stubborn young man in a humiliating, but life-saving way. However, Arslanzade’s
close friend and male lover, Buleghali, immediately stood up to protect his partner’s dignity in a
follow-up duel. That exchange of arrows, sadly, ended in the latter’s death. While dueling was
quickly becoming obsolete in increasingly professional officer corps of the Xasar Shahdom, it
was still a tolerated practice, so no participants of the dual clash were formally punished.
However, for Kaikhuluj Arslanzade the twin duel and its consequences became a source of
overwhelming emotional torture. Not only was he humiliated in the eyes of his peers, many of
which were later expected to become his colleagues, subordinates, or, worse yet, his superiors.
The worst of all was the deep emotional trauma Arslanzade had suffered in that duel, and his
early poetry (a common hobby among the better educated Xasar nobles) is full of existential
questions, fatalistic imagery, and references to the “green-eyed spectre of ever-gentle
Buleghali.”

The humiliating duel became a black stain on Arslanzade’s reputation, especially ruinous in the
tightly-knit microcosm of Xasar military nobility. Soon upon leaving Peshda, the young officer
was assigned as a platoon commander in a regular oxavaran in Anatolia. The appointment was
a poor career step for the young noble: unlike the glorious wings of heavy zixabar (armored
ulhans) and highly topical artillery batteries, mobile oxavaran brigades were the working horse
of the Xasar military. Serving in one of them meant plenty of labor, constant marching, bloody
combat, and little recognition for all the effort. To make matters worse, the Khajehate of Koniyna
where Arslanzade’s unit was dislocated was famous for little besides constant intercommunal
vendettas of hillmen villages and bandit raids of Alan savages and pastoral Tayzig border chiefs.
It seemed like Arslanzade was bound to a long career of chasing robbers from a hilltop to a
hilltop on the dusty mountain roads of Anatolia.

However, Anatolian experience proved to be a great school for the young and so far unknown
officer. The Koniyna region was the place of exile of one of the most talented Xasar generals,
Davrush Sihkabaroy. A hero of early Italian campaigns and a favorite subordinate of Ixandhar
Dagalujuglu himself, Sihkabaroy was a vocal critic of the Shah’s aloofness and fragmentation of
the Xasar society in general. Despite evading any serious charges of treason, Sihkabaroy was
permanently put out of grace and out of sight in the poor and perpetually simmering region of
Anatolia, where his skill could be put to good use and where his freethinking could not infect any
influential officers (or so was it thought). Lacking the resources enjoyed by the glorious Italian
army, Sihkabaroy shaped his Koniynian forces to match the needs of mobile mountain warfare
while still building up on the principles of field artillery usage that his own teacher Ishpaxabhad
Dagalujuglu had taught him. Needless to say, as a result of Sihkabaroy’s efforts the Anatolian
army was probably (and paradoxically) the only Xasar force that resembled a dynamic,
meritocratic environment. In that environment, Arslanzade had a chance to learn new warfare of
maneuver and firepower from the perspective of a soldier, an officer, and a logistician. Over the
course of three years, the young officer steadily rose to the level of oxavaran (brigade)
commander, attracting his superior’s attention in a successful anti-partisan campaign in the
Taurus Mountains.

Kaikhuluj Arslanzade’s career, however, suffered another hit when it just appeared to be starting
to pick up. Powerful courtiers in Konstantinkert were starting to be tired of Davrush Sihkabaroy’s
defiant successes in Koniyna. That, as historians suspect, led to his poisoning in 1295, followed
by an effective dissolution of the entire Anatolian command structure he had created. Once
again Kaikhuluj had to return to his home estate, where he stayed for two years, listening to
teasing and reproaches by his father and his more successful elder brother. In 1297 he chose to
leave Tarnopshiy for the army once again, this time to join territorial forces in Ishfera Kumiy. The
timing of his return to service, however, was poor: what had been a glorious and lucrative
conquest some ten years prior, seemed like merely a mop-up operation in the late 1290s. The
ultimate irony of Kaikhuluj’s life and the entire East-European history was that the greatest
disaster in contemporary Xasar national memory would become the point of birth of
Arslanzade’s legend.

Leaving Kaikhuluj Arslanzade’s life after the Great Votive War beyond the scope of this
research, it’s still worth looking into the qualities that young Arslanzade displayed as a
commander in his service in North Italy. First of such qualities was deep comprehension and
refinement of the stratagems of battlefield and operational maneuver previously developed by
his “Koniynian Teacher,” Davrush Sihkabaroy. The early 1300s were the time of great advances
in tactics and logistics, mostly driven by mass use of firearms and resulting change in infantry
doctrine. Arslanzade was the first among contemporary military leaders to demonstrate how
bold maneuver and offensive spirit could still win the day in the age when infantry seemed
destined to dominate the battlefields and defense seemed superior to offense in most of tactical
situation. As a leader of his men, Arslanzade demonstrated contradictory features of his
character: he was at times aloof and judgmental, and could bash his officers and soldiers with
hurtful remarks (acrid sarcasm was one of the most characteristic traits of his communication);
yet, in his young years he possessed a uniquely rare combination of overwhelming self-
confidence, will to delegate to just the right people, and deep intuitive knowledge of almost all
aspects of his campaign. That, combined with a degree of luck, brought him great military
triumphs and eventually helped to shape his popular legend and made him an idol among Xasar
soldiers and especially the veterans of his Italian campaign.

- Asvashd Dughari

The person later known as “The Silver Turk” was born in the Satrapy of Klutch around 1270. A
high noble of Turkic origin, he originally was groomed by his clan patriarch to become a capitain
in the quickly expanding navy of the Shahdom. Such “diversification” of clan’s military and
administrative influence was a common thing in the eastern satrapies, and Asvashd was
supposed to become the first step toward the Dughari clan’s influence in the force that was
quickly gaining respect and weight in the modernizing empire. However, the fierce look and the
martial spirit of the young Dughari noble weren’t of much use in his training; soon after a string
of quarrels and tavern brawls that took place in the Varena city wharfs the troublemaking
aristocrat was rescued out of his disciplinary trouble by his powerful patrons and put to service
in a puxdikaban (heavy lancer) cavalry regiment in South Italy, where he could be in his element
and serve alongside with fellow aristocrats. Asvashd Dughari’s personal bravery and blunt, but
insanely energetic execution of field orders quickly helped him to gain prominence in the
victorious armies of the Italian conquests. After victoriously leading three cavalry wings totally
numbering 800 lances into an attack against 5,700 spears and arbalests of Friulian militia in the
action near the Saint-Marinus castle, Dughari was given Silver Falcon, one of the highest
military awards of the Shahdom. (After becoming one of the most decorated “Usurper Shah’s
old guard” generals later in his career, Dughari would wear his Silver Falcon on his breastplate
in all battles, thus earning his nickname, the Silver Turk).

By the time of the Vulgar Votives, Asvashd Dughari was already far ahead of Arslanzade in
prominence and effective command influence, but all of that was practically erased after the
entirety of his cavalry brigade was destroyed in the Pavian disaster. Dughari was one of the few
Xasar soldiers to escape the siege in a small sally action four days before the surrender of the
main army. The popular legend has it that the future hellbent leader of the Usurper Shah’s
cavalry arrived to Ravenna on a donkey, stripped of all armor and insignia, except his
ponderous Silver Falcon medallion. That anecdote is most likely a made-up story, but it’s
documented that it took a personal response of the Satrap of South Italy to confirm to the proud
cavalry commander that the upstart Arslanzade was indeed his superior in the campaign to
follow.

Dughari was loved by poets, artists, and biographers, as much as he was loved by his fellow
soldiers, who saw him as a fierce, blunt, but fearless and prodigal commander. His participation
in the Thirteen Day Retreat would be the first time these qualities would serve as a crude, but
deadly tool in the arsenal of his future idol, Kaikhuluj Arslanzade. Lacking much operational and
strategic wisdom, Dughari is viewed by military historians as the paragon of a “spearhead
commander” who leads his men by example in quite a literal sense of the word.

- Dorgan Shlemiciy

Little is known about the early days of this contradictory historical figure. Most of the knowledge
of his early days can be deduced from his violent adventures after the end of his service to
Kaikhuluj Arslanzade. A descendant from a commune of Iranianized Arbeni, Dorgan Shlemiciy
had learned quite early that the pacts the Xasar made with Sklavenians and Greeks were but a
thin film of rapport over the simmering heat of ethnic and religious contradictions. It appears that
his family and community were targeted by rival mountain enclaves in a sort of intercommunal
vendetta, and in rather early age Shlemiciy became a lucky survivor of a village raid, which
usually meant at the time that his only way to survive was to join the swelling ranks of Balkan
brigands and highway robbers. In 1304 he and his band were contacted by Kaikhuluj
Arslanzade’s headhunters and hired to serve in North Italy. Forced to choose between fighting a
desperate guerilla warfare against Ifirush Satrapian forces patrolling the countryside and sailing
off to an alien land toward a bloody religious conflct, the adventurer for some reason chose the
second option. That became a lucky lottery ticket for Dorgan Shlemiciy and his men, however.
The campaign in Italy would turn out to be a glorious pillaging “gig” for the Arbeni mercenaries
who were extensively used by Arslanzade for foraging duty and harassing enemy patrols, two
tasks at which they proved to be stellar. In the Thirteen Day Retreat and later Arslanzade’s
campaigns Shlemiciy rose up to a powerful status of one of Arslanzade’s finest generals, known
for his cunning and gut feeling. Even though the force commanded by Shlemciy would
eventually greatly outgrow the size and composition of the original Arbeni band, incorporating
light infantry and horse skirmish troops from the Carpathian mountains, Sklavenistan,
Vuyuchaistan, and even Slavic Moravia, his style of command would stay effectively the same
as it was during the Thirteen Day Retreat. “The Arbeni Cutthroat” with his forces would create a
dispersed fog of raiding and foraging operations surrounding the core of Arslanzade’s force and
acting to soften up enemy’s defense or divert their attacks.

After the coronation of the “Usurper Shah” in Konstantinkert, however, Shlemiciy and
Arslanzade’s ways would part. The former one would return to the Satrapy of Ifirush to use the
chaos in the Xasar Shahdom to carve out a personal domain. After many years of serving
Arslanzade, Shlemiciy would believe that his personal friendship with the Usurper Shah
essentially meant a free hand in the Balkans, and he would never outgrow his anarchic, warlord-
like mindset. That would lead to a widely known and somewhat comedic letter exchange with
the shocked Usurper Shah in 1320s, but eventually the comedy would turn into a tragedy when
the Shah would send his generals to bring Ifirush back into the Xasar fold. The subsequent
guerilla campaign would see Shlemiciy transform into a hero and a martyr of the Arbeni people,
but those events are well out of scope of this article.

- Izidoro di Valiacci

A proud citizen of the city of Ferrara and an open Tinanian Christian, Izidoro di Valiacci was a
figure for who Luiggi Lascada, the chronicler of Arslanzade’s first solo campaign, felt strongly
sympathetic. Di Valiacci was indeed a type of a proud patriot of his home commune that
Lascada viewed as a prototype for a future Italian patriot. A sixth son in a large and influential
(albeit declining) merchant family, Izidoro was known and loved by his town due to his regular
contributions to the development of the community. Such contributions were viewed separately
from the family investments into the city, because, unlike his siblings, Izidoro was a free
condottieri and quite successful at that. His condotta company was instrumental in Ferrara’s
victory over Bolonia in their trade war of 1291-1296, which Satrap Ixandhar Odigesha of Ishfera
Kumiy (North Italy) was quite happy to turn a blind eye on. Before the Great Votive War Izidoro
di Valiacci occasionally served the Xasar in short anti-banditry campaigns, which still allowed
him keep his name somewhat separated from association with the conquerors of Italy.

Di Valiacci’s service to Arslanzade is the only campaign of his of which we have a detailed
description. Given Lascada’s bias toward di Valiacci, we see the Ferraran mercenary as a
capable, clever leader who values his men’s lives and is equally humane to his defeated
enemies. Despite Lascada’s moralizing conclusions, today’s historians see such behavior as
completely in line with the mercenary ethics of Italian condottieri of that era. After all, a
successful mercenary captain was expected to treat his soldiers as valuable employees and
shareholders, and cruelty to enemies was also seen as a way to burn bridges with potential
employers.

After the campaign, di Valiacci would enjoy protection of and casual shadowy employment by
his “captor” namesake, Duke Izidoro I of Toscana, who saw the Tinanian general as a naturally
ally who would under no circumstances choose a side of the Votivist “liberators.” The short rise
of the Duchy of Toscana in the early 1300s was in many ways a result of di Valiacci’s military
and diplomatic talent – something that the Duke had to pay for with exceptional privileges to the
free city of Ferrara and mercantile advances to the di Valiacci merchant clan. Izidoro di Valiacci
himself tried to start a trade enterprise in the city of Modena, but ultimately failed and returned to
the familiar field of mercenary service. By 1313 the Duke of Toscana’s reliance on the
mercenary force led by then promoted “First Captain” Izidoro di Valiacci was so obvious that
local commoners started to refer to their state as “the rule of two Izidoros.” However, fortunes
would turn against the lucky mercenary after the Duke of Toscana’s death, and “Lady Ferrara’s
lover” would end up being lynched by a mob of Catholic zealots in 1314 during an inner city riot.

- Charles II of Burgundy

The boy that would eventually become known as the Fist of the Boddhists was an unlikely
candidate for Burgundian throne. Due to belonging to a weakened branch of the House of
Chasoiux, he and his two elder brothers were viewed as dangerous candidates to the royal
crown in the early days of the Frankish Imperial Collapse, so all three were removed by the
contemporary ruler, their great-uncle Charles I, from the court and instead placed into a
monastic environment. That, however, would turn out to be not a curse, but a blessing for young
Charles, who would survive the turmoil of the early post-Imperial years in the quiet of the
Grenoble monastery. His elder brothers, godly and humble young men, would both fall to
assassination attempts orchestrated by Charles I’s potential successors, despite having no
desire to partake in the burdens of power. That, too, would become young Charles’ saving
grace, since his remoteness in succession would not make him a formal (and uninformed)
contender for the throne until 1287, when King Charles I would be on his death bed. By then,
Queen Helenora and her cousin Antoninus were most likely successors simply due to their court
influence, but both were despised by the clergy and the martial elite alike, and 16-year-old
Charles du Chasoiux suddenly was removed from his monastic exile and presented to the court.
A string of intrigues would follow, eventually leading to Helenora and Antoninus’ downfall and,
arguably, contributing to Charles du Chasoiux’s violent and paranoid personality.

A young zealot on the throne of a powerful kingdom, Charles II became a friend of quickly
growing and multiplying religious orders. His early attempts to shake up the aristocracy in favor
of the church also eventually grew into a more pragmatic approach, which connected
aristocratic landholders’ power to their contributions to the martial orders and other crown-
sponsored quasi-religious conquests of neighbors.

Given Charles II’s personality, it comes as no surprise that he avidly supported the new Votivist
War and was the most enthusiastic of the European monarchs who joined the Italian expedition.
In his campaigning and especially in leading the Burgundian troops during the Thirteen Days
Retreat, he proved to be a contradictory leader. By the fall of Pavia, his zeal and temperament
had made him a popular figure among commoners supporting the cause, and his theological
education and closeness to the Church helped him exercise unmatched levels of political power
over independent-minded martial orders, something that no other participating monarch could
do. Aside from being a war politician, Charles II, however, turned out to be a poor leader. His
narrow-minded aggression, hubris, and self-assertiveness quickly alienated him from the
majority of his allies, and his old-fashioned approach to warfare as a string of castle sieges
leading to a general battle with the enemy was outdated in the age of military revolution. On the
battlefield, he was a classic old-school Frankish knight: more of a well-guarded and well-armed
fighter than a commander of troops. The humiliating defeat he would suffer to Arslanzade in the
peak of the Thirteen Day Retreat would, however, bring him to senses in regards to the reality of
modern warfare, and after the near-death experience of the Italian campaign would put an end
to his reckless participation in hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield.

- Renneus of Montclus

As it’s typical for historical figures of his kind, Brother-Judicate Renneus of the Holy Fellowship
of Spearbearers is a relatively obscure figure, remembered mostly as “the Usurper Shah’s first
great foe.” An experienced ex-Imperial officer with monastic background, Renneus is quite
representative of the first generation of Magisters of newly formed martial orders. Little is known
about his early life, except that after the Frankish Imperial Collapse he united a group of zealous
war veterans and low nobles and presented their service to the Archbishop of Trier. Unlike some
other martial orders (such as the Order of Saint Ambrose the Confessor of Alexandria), the Holly
Fellowship of Spearbearers was a relatively decentralized, grass-root entity, probably thanks to
the fact that the Archbishop didn’t want to look too threatening to the Papacy and thus was
happy to donate to the Fellowship and release it to their Italian adventure. During the campaign,
Renneus proved to be a wise and patient commander that was the first to understand the
gaping difference between the tactical doctrines of the Votivist army and the opposing Boddhist
force. Afraid of letting his strategic superiority melt away in a single disastrous field engagement,
he correctly calculated that the most winning strategy was to let Arslanzade have his little
tactical victories here and there, while strangling his logistics and tightening the strategic noose
around his smaller army. To Renneus’ woe, circumstances led him into an eventual direct
engagement with Arslanzade, cutting his perspective plan short.

- Ptolemei I of Neustria

A contemporary chronicler once described the king of Neustria as “a saddened foreigner sitting
on the crumbling throne of a discordant realm.” Little is known about Ptolemei’s early life and, in
fact, his original birth name was also lost to historians. What is known is that the future king of
Neustria was purchased as a slave soldier to serve to Frankish nobles in the early 1270s at the
age of 17, and was quite liked by his first “owner,” the Palatine of Verduna, for his tall stature
and good looks. Ptolemei’s growth along the command structure of the slave-convert army was
extremely fast, which should not come as a surprise, given that slave soldiers were a small,
isolated group and shortly before the Frankish collapse were often viewed as a mean of
increasing owners’ prestige instead of a pragmatic defense force.

The post-collapse power vacuum, however, made Ptolemei the only holder of a significant
military force in the entirety of Neustria, naturally leading to his unlikely ascension to the throne.
While the chaos of the later 1200s gave the new “African king” a miraculous chance to
strengthen his positions, Ptolemei was most likely quite aware of his weak position, indicated by
his lavish donations to the Holy See and his rather clever reform of fief ownership, which
allowed his vassals legally fight each other over land claims, eroding the realm’s military
strength, but at the same time ensuring that the barons were too busy squabbling between each
other to pay real attention to the “barbarian” on the throne.

However, even these measures couldn’t hide from King Ptolemei his vulnerability in the face of
the xenophobic militarism of post-Imperial Frankia. In a way, the call for the Second Votive war
became a curse and a blessing for him. On the one hand, he could join the Votivists and prove
himself as a rightful and pious ruler in the eyes of his subjects; on the other hand, he could not
simply send his generals to fight in the Boddhists, and his personal absence in Neustria was
likely to lead to a conspiracy or an opportunistic attack by his neighbors. In the end, Ptolemei
decided to cast the dice and join the great march over the Alpine passes into Italy.

Early campaigns against Dagalajuglu and Shainiy-Gadahme earned the “African king of
Neustria” and his slave-convert troops a reputation of stoic and brave Christian soldiers.
Diplomatically, his position also started to improve, because King Charles of Burgundy’s
unrestrained wroth served as a catalyst for growing rapprochement between Ptolemei and King
Hugues I of Aquitania. The latter eventually saw their compelled cooperation grow into a sincere
personal friendship, which would prove fundamental in the survival of Ptolemei’s royal regime.

Shortly before the Thirteen Days Retreat, Hugues of Aquitania was forced to leave Italy and
return home to supervise suppression of a series of conflicts with coastal trade towns that
threatened to collapse home economy of Southern Frankia. The departure of the only reliable
ally put Ptolemei in a somewhat vulnerable position, as now he had no truly trusted allies in
Italy, and his Neustrian holdings were growing ever more vulnerable. It’s safe to speculate that
it, among other factors, contributed to Ptolemei’s half-hearted performance in the Thirteen Day
Retreat, as he was reluctant risking his only reliable army in a fight against seemingly desperate
Xasar force – a force that seemed to be the only factor still holding King Charles of Burgundy
from returning home and turning against “the Neustrian usurper.” From this political point of
view, Ptolemei’s defeat to Arslanzade may be considered a very positive strategic outcome,
allowing him to save the most of his force and freeing him up to return home and consolidate his
rule over Neustria.
[I've attached a map of Southeast Asia circa 1311. Majachaiya is on the rise, but her conquests
of Dammacraya and Kataha are not yet complete. Dammacraya for its part is at the peak of its
power and prestige, and will eventually be reduced to a federation of highland tribes holding on
against the Majachaiya juggernaut. The Isyana rump state will fall at the end of the year. Dai
Viet is in ruins but hasn't yet been overrun by the Tai. Daksinakhand (Australia) has not yet
received any permanent colonists worth noting on the map. Over the next generation Kyauske
will fall more completely and be reduced to coastal cities and nothing more.

The choice to make all the Shan the same color is because their states at this juncture are
pretty fluid and amorphous. They all have many vassals who at any point could rise up and take
over as a major player in the story.]
He who has highest
Bhakti of Deva,
just like his Deva, so for his Guru,
To him who is high-minded,
these teachings will be illuminating.

- Shvetashvatara Upanishad

The City and the City

This is a tale of two cities:

One was called Punaka, a new-built imperial capital. Punaka was a series of incredible,
decadent palaces seated atop a growing manufactory-hub. Like so many imperial capitals it had
been created whole cloth. It was a statement of vanity by a new-crowned monarch: like a god
he could carve a city from the hills and create an image of one of the heavens on Earth. Even in
the Kaliyuga such splendor was possible!

The other, Kachka, was a declining merchant city slowly overtaken by nearby rivals. While the
wharves of Bharukaccha shuttered, her rivals to the south grew fat. Bharukaccha had been the
city of the tortoise, ancient and indomitable. Now she was dying.

Known in the vulgar dialect of her half-a-million denizens as Kachka, the shortening of the city’s
name, increasingly attested in official documents, became somewhat synonymous with the
failing of her great institutions. Over the thirteenth century the major banking centers relocated
their most important hubs to either Suryapura or Thana [OTL Mumbai], a rapidly growing city on
the coast. At first this transition was slow and subtle; it went unremarked by many of the
prominent associations and government officials keeping records at the time. However by 1300,
the city was undeniably on the decline, turning to strategies such as the White Elephant
Concordat to maintain its power. While few outsiders noticed the decline, to the ruling families of
the city it was an ineluctable fact.

In Chandratreya, republican sentiments had always been muted. There was no notion of the
equal-kingdom employed on any scale larger than the city-state. Villages could appoint
headmen, but governance had always been top-down; governance had always been a series of
uneasy compromises between Kings and Tribunals, Kings and nobles, Kings and Assemblies,
and most recently, Kings and the Companies. Still, at the center of all this was the symbol of the
monarch, protector and ruler.

The golden court of the Maharajadhiraja had been moved in the latter years of the Chandratreya
Empire to Punyavishaya [more commonly called Punaka], a growing town that was more
centrally located. The decision to relocate the capital seems to have been one occasioned by
increasing danger on the frontier and the unmartial character of the latest series of rulers. As
armies grew larger and larger, spurred on by radical changes in technology and the increasing
impotence of the traditional cavalry arm in the face of elephant-drawn cannon and massed
ranks of tufenj, warfare settled into a series of indefinite sieges and static defensive campaigns
whose devastation was visited across large swathes of the countryside. [Such wars will be
featured somewhat down the road.]

Punaka was a city of contrasts – dingy manufactories set not so far from the glittering palaces of
a trading empire to rival the Kalapirar to the south. In those contrasts resentment grew, slowly
but surely – not of the working class, who were used to nobles in opulent palaces and more
commonly than not accepted their place, happy to be healthy and working in a royal metropolis
– but of the newly enriched commercial class, who resented the landed nobility and court of
Brahmin ministers who they saw as having produced remarkably little for the state.

As Punaka grew to encompass all the grandeur and contradiction of the latter Chandratreya
Maharajadhirajas the royal authorities, newly coastal and newly concerned with the affairs of
cities they had long been content to simply tax, became very interested in the decline of
Kachka. It would not be an understatement to claim they harbored some antique resentment
against the ministers of Bharukaccha and many of the other arrogantly autonomous cities along
their periphery. A series of military triumphs abroad would grant them the freedom to act as they
did in 1311 – replacing the sangha of Bharukaccha with an unelected goptri, or royal governor.
At the same time, Thana was able to graduate from having an uparika, or provincial viceroy, to
having a sangha of its own granted by royal charter – a symbol of the changing times but also a
clear demonstration that authority came directly from the monarch.

It was the latest blow in a long series of clashes between the states of the interior and the
commercial polities of the periphery or perhaps more generally between universalism and
particularism. However, under a series of deliberately incompetent governors, Kachka would
proceed into further decline, with administration after administration refusing to allocate funding
to repair the harbor until the silting was terminal and the city gradually became an inland village
among many.

This would be a slow process, of course. The fourteenth century saw Bharukaccha remain a
player for quite some time – but its decline began to weaken the White Elephant Concordat as a
Bharukacchan tool and would directly lead to the 1328 Second Concordat – in which the
Chandratreyan monarch would send his own embassy, rather than relying on the Bharukacchan
sangha.

The Chandratreyan Maharajadhirajas sought to transcend the mandala politics that had
characterized their early rule. In no small part they managed this because of the mass levy. As
warfare had changed, new sources of manpower were required. Small and elite cavalry forces
could be butchered by huge conscript forces equipped with tufenj. The Pala and Chandratreya
alike proved that as they drove the Sahputi from their subcontinent and reordered the polities of
the subcontinent to their liking. What this meant, however, was that as the two states descended
into internecine war, they needed ever more soldiers. Paid soldiers would form the core of
immense levied armies, both as the officers needed to bring order and as the elite corps of both
sides’ forces.
The development of a distinct Maharhattakar identity was a slow process, in no small part
because of the imperial and multiethnic nature of the Chandratreya state, but it nevertheless
began to take place as early as the ninth century. Maharhatta prakit was growing in popularity
even among the government. It was an era of fervent protonationalism for the peoples of the
interior – the common classes had to be motivated to war against the Pala, and appealing to a
sense of common history and culture remained a potent motivator. Unlike in Europe, religion
was not a sufficient motivator – while the Pala were Buddhist and the Chandratreya best
described as Hindu-Buddhists who dabbled in numerous esoteric philosophies, this divide was
seen as largely irrelevant by the common people, for whom Buddha was a holy avatar of
Vishnu, and the gradual rapprochement between the two faiths that had been taking place over
the better part of half a millennia made it impossible to now place a meaningful sectarian divide
into the religious order of things.

That is not to say that various parties did not try. Certain of the more conservative Brahmin were
eager to put a stake in the Buddhist faith, but these were the same ministers who argued that
crossing the “black water” was a sin that erased one’s caste. They simple were not compatible
with a modern society where the two religions lived more or less alongside one another, offering
alternative but not competing spiritual paths. As Hinduism had become more universalist, the
pantheon of deities had receded to the realm of ritual and tradition. The Maukhani had promoted
philosophers who declared that there was but one supreme being, the Svayam Baghavan, of
whom all other supreme beings were merely manifestations.

Despite their best attempts, no supreme being had ever really stuck. With the exile of the Bhakti
movement, and its subsequent reinvention in Africa, “Middle Hinduism” as it became known
focused increasingly on Advaita teachings and rejected the notion that any one god could serve
as a perfect allegory for the divine.

There is a prominent theory among certain heterodox historians that Bhakti might have gained
some level of prominence if Christianity had achieved more success in the Middle East, as it
seemed poised to before the coming of the Sveta Huna [Eftal]. Personal devotion to God was a
prominent theme of Christianity, and one that is largely missing from Dharmic religion –
excepting where it came into contact with Christianity. If a “faith of Abraham” had penetrated the
Subcontinent, it is possible that Bakhti religion would have achieved far more success. Certainly
it had no shortage of philosophers - they simply failed to find a willing audience.

With PL's approval, I

have a nice little treat for you... a map of the New World, or at least part of it, and an update! I'm
mapping Solvia and working my way south... Gulf Coast will be next.
*The Vinlandic League is a Thing of Things: a loose consortium of various settlements bound
together by Norse origins and maritime economies whose representative meet at the Althing bi-
yearly at Nythvedi [Corner Brook, Newf.]. The League is also something of a fur cartel: they
ensure that all non-Vinlandic fur traders passing through their waters pay the "fur-tithe". As the
major naval power of Anglo-Norse America, they can enforce this... sporadically. As Anglo-Norse
settlement has grown larger and more diverse, the League has also been joined by settlers from
further afield such as Skotland, Eirland and Britanny. Bretonsey Isle [OTL Cape Breton Isle]
would become a major port and settlement for Breton fishers and whalers in the Grand Banks,
but they soon fanned out into the mainland villages and steadings, and blended into the larger
melting pot of Vinlandic and Greenlandic culture.
Vinland claims dominion of the whole Northern Passage, up to the Uttermost Lake (the Anglo-
Norse thought the Crow Lakes were quite more extensive than the really are), but this is purely
theoretical. They do retain notional authority over Hvitland along with a desolate outpost at
Auðnskyli. Hralfi of Erikhus, notional leader of the league due to his post as the elected Jarl,
would wind up devoting serious effort to traverse the farthermost reaches of the Arctic Sea,
though instead of a route to the East and limitless riches, they found limitless frozen islands and
tundra. The Norse Explorers had found near Vinland a land populated by men who ate nothing
but seals, derogatorily termed Selspitters, [Dorset culture] who told tales of giant invaders to the
west... further travels would prove the Jotunn [Inuit] to be merely tall, at least compared to the
Selspitters, but the name would stick...

*The Kingdom of Greenland is the descendant of Haakon Thorfinnson's ambitions: ruled in a

more or less traditional Norse style by his grandson Haakon III, its energetic young ruler has
inherited his grandfather's spirit. The Kingdom functions in a semi-feudal manner with many
settlements, clans, and tribes sworn to the King in Haakonsholm [Montreal], enjoying rights and
privileges on a nearly ad hoc basis. The King's subjects thus enjoy rather loose-handed and
disorganized rule. King Haakon III intends to hammer the country into a true polity, however. As
of 1301, whether he can suceed remains to be seen...Population growth is booming as is
expansion: Norse raiders have recently conquered the Finger Lakes region and driven out the
hostile Onondaga and Ganienke [Mohawk], while the Onaita, who have sworn allegiance to the
King, have claimed much of their old territory. Now, Old Worlders in search of newfound
independence wander farther and farther out beyond the bounds of the settlements of
Greenland, and ever more frequently stay there...

*The Hotinnasunni League or Seven Nations, is an analogue of the Iroqouis League of OTL.
OTL the Iroquois league was formed around 1100. The arrival of the Norse blew plenty of
butterflies into things, and no such league formed in the depopulated aftermath of European
arrival. With their recovery, and the threat posed by the simultaneous expansion of the
Greenlanders, the Six Nations of the Hotinnasunni (Seneka, Kajuga [Cayuga], Wenro, Erelro
[Erie], Tiundat [Petun/Tabacco], and Chonton [Neutral]), led by the Seneka chief called
Deganawida ("Peacemaker"), banded together to form a council of clan and village chiefs to
govern the six tribes as a confederacy in 1251. Recently, a Seventh nation, the Onondaga, have
joined the League after migrating away from Greenlandic raiders; the tribe has relocated to the
west, across the Oniagara Falls (the League's traditional meeting place). The League has
hostile relations with their rival confederation the Windut [Huron], and friendly relations with the
Ganasunni and Mengve. Norse trappers and traders are tolerated, and there are Norse outposts
in Oniagara and the island of "Handelgarda" [OTL Grosse Ile, MI]. Some intermarriage has
occurred, but not on a large scale. A few white-faced Hotinnasunni live among them as adopted
captives; the Hotinnasunni have a practice of adopting war prisoners to replace tribe members
killed in battle and to assimilate smaller tribes, a measure which was instrumental in their
relatively quick recovery from the plagues. The Norse recognize kindred spirits in the far-ranging
and warlike Hotinnasunni people, but also have ambitions to spread to the uttermost shores of
the Crow Lakes, and so relations with Greenland remain frosty.

*The Ganasunni Confederation consists of people who could only find common ground in Anglo-
Norse America. Anglo-Norse fur trappers would frequently venture from Greenland and Storr
Island up the River Beorn [Hudson] to ply their trade; many found native wives, and stayed. In
time this half-breed culture would come to be called the Ravens, or Ravnen. The Ravens as a
group maintain a fierce pride, sense of independence, and Norse/Ganienke/Mahikan creole
derived from their native origins; yet still maintain links to the wider Anglo-Norse world. When
the Ganienke [Mohawk] were driven east from their homelands by Greenlanders, a conflict
might have caught fire between them and the Ravnen as they entered the lands the Ravens
claimed. Instead, seeing the ways the wind was blowing, the Ravnen offered to form a
confederation for mutual protection between them, the Ganienke, and also the Mahikan. All
three accepted. Now an anarchic Thing meets at the Longhouse built at the meeting of the
Beorn and the Ganienke Rivers [OTL Albany, NY]. Reconciling Norse and native customs has
taken a heroic effort, but none of the Ganasunni (Ganienke for "People of the Longhouse")
peoples have any shortage of grit and ingenuity. The intersection of patrilineal Norse and
matrilineal native inheritance laws has made for some rather interesting power couples,
including the current leaders of the league, the Ravnen-Jarl Erik Bear-Shirt and his wife
Degonwadonti, clan mother of the Ganienke Deer Clan....

*The Council of the Three Fires (or, as its people call it, Niswi-mishkodewin) is a loose
association of the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and Otawa tribes around the chorse of the Crow Lakes.
Meetings at the ceremonial site of Michillimackinac, while still irregular, have become more
frequent. The Arrival of the Old Worlders has trigerred a number of tribes to begin moving
westward. Many of them are fellow Anishinaabe tribes bearing the stamp of their common
heritage... whether these migrants would be friends or foes to the councilm though, was yet to
be determined in 1301. Relations with the Hotinnasunni are those of open hostility due to
constant back-and-forth raiding over Lakes Hotinnasunni [Erie] and Gidgigomi [Superior]. The
Norse have made themselves known as famed explorers have passed through, but as a matter
of fact the Council is too distant to have much of an opinion on the Norse, at least as of yet. The
trading post on Handelgarda is tolerated, for the sake of the Norsemen's superior tools...

*When the Skottish explorer Beorn Maelkumson was the first Old Worlder to pass throught the
Mikila [Long Island] Sound in 1160, he called the island to his east Storr Island, for it was "big"
indeed, gave his name to the Beorn River [Hudson], and his father's to the smaller island at its
mouth. 1230 would see his great-grandson Torven Jonson be among the leaders of a band of
settlers of Icelandic, Eirish and Skottish origin who would plant a new colony in Cape Trosc. All
of them sought the Solvian Dream: that any man who could hold a sword and till a plow could
be freeholder of his own land. Another settler was Haruld Hackondson. Haruld was much
intrigued by the excellent natural harbor in the Bay of Beorn, and the size of the great island
peopled by nothing but a few sparse Lenape foragers... so much intrigued that he established a
homestead on the eastern tip of the island. This would in time develop into the small village of
Haruldsteft [Southampton, NY], until such a time as he was informed of a matter of inheritance.
Haruld, as a matter of fact, was part of the Ashe Clan that ruled Eirinn from Vetherfyord...
though he himself was from its Brykstow branch (actually, the original stem) who were sworn to
the King of Angland. As a second-born nephew of the Aeldurman of Brykstow, he was not
expected to inherit, and would not have, had his brother, the Aelderman's two sons, and his
other cousin Jon all perished in an epidemic of typhoid fever that swept through Anglish ports in
1256. The current Aeldurman Ralf, his uncle, commited suicide in despair shortly thereafter.
Haruld, now the Aeldurman, now embarked for a place he hadn't been for 26 years and never
expected to return. Aeldurman Harald would ultimately arrange the sale of most of his ancestral
lands to King Edvard of Angland, who in return agreed to sponsor a small flotilla of ships to use
at his discretion to establish a new settlement on Storr Island. Using his family connections with
the Ashes of Eirinn, he was able to recruit large numbers of Eirishmen to join the initial Anglish
settlers of Beornsvick [Brooklyn, NY]. Soon thereafter, after overtures to the mostly Icelandic
settlers already on the island, it would become a popular destination for Icelandic and
Norwegian settlers, and he was not inclined to turn away the handful of Diets [Dutch] who
showed up. Haruld knew Solvia, and knew he needed to rule his new domain with a light hand.
So, the Thing of Storr Island was established, with the "appointed" office of a lifetime Aeldurman
whose power blurred the line between ceremonial and actual (the fact that he remained by far
the largest landholder on the island helped...). Haruld's force of personality was enough to
sustain this fuzzy relationship for much of his very long life. Haruld's son Tursten would succeed
him to the office on his death in 1283... though he had little of Haruld's original measured
bearing and persuasiveness, he was not to last long. He died in a shipwreck in 1286 at the age
of 45, and the office would then be given to a candidate who was seen as most like Haruld: his
Eirish partner Patrik U'Nial. This was not to be the end of the Ashe clan in Storr Island's history,
however...

Storr Island and Cape Trosc are claimed by the Twin Crowns as with much of the Eastern
Seaboard. The fact that they continue to be filled with independent Anglo-Norse statelets is a
matter of vexation for them... though since the Twin Crowns have only been in the area in
anything like large numbers since the last 20 years or so, there is not much they can do about it.
Should the Diets one day develop the will to send its fleets west, perhaps they would
acknowledge their grandiose claims...

*New Vlaanderen is a miserable mudhole. Well, perhaps that is uncharitable. It is a royal

mudhole now, seeing as King Boudewijn's brother Mariss has taken up residence in a wooden
"palace" in New Ghent [Newport News, VA]. Mariss, disgraced at court by a failed attempt at
minor embezzlement, would at first see little opportunity to enact his monetary, and political,
ambitions in the land. The lands around the Koningszee [Chesapeake Bay] were rich in shellfish
and fertile land, but this was not the stuff fortunes were made of. Attempts at establishing fur
trading as a major endeavor would see the founding of outposts at Breukelen [roughly south of
OTL Baltimore, MD] and Marissburg [Philadelphia, PA]. This brought in some profits, but the
Diets were not very experienced trappers. The natives, on the other hand, were. After the
plagues and subsequent disruptions, with many migrations and uprootings of peoples, many of
the tribal boundaries in the greater Ohio Valley began to dissolve and fuse together. The
Wolves, or Wulfur as the Norse called them, were one result. Taking their name (and, as they
themselves would tell it, their spirit) after their totemic animal, the Wolves consisted of the mixed
remnants of Souian and Algonquian peoples living in the Jessan [Appalachian] Mountains,
leavened with a small admixture of enterprising Norse and Diets trappers... the half-Skraeling
descendants of these Norsemen would impart this tribe perhaps more worldly wisdom when
dealing with Europeans. The Wolves quickly established themselves as suppliers of furs to the
Diets, in return for European goods, especially tools. A position as middlemen was not quite
what "King" Mariss was after, yet he was frustrated by his attempts to make the colony even pay
for itself. After a brief period of gold mania sparked entirely by rumors, the loosely-scattered
Diets settlers have mostly eked out a living as subsistence farmers, which many of the
previously urban inhabitants took some time to develop a feel for. Lately, some of the younger
and more daring men of the colony have picked up the habit of smoking a foul herb called
Nickinnick [From the Ashinaabe Kinnikinnik] from some of their Wulfur partners...Mariss himself,
who was congenitally incapable of backing down from a challenge, has been among the people
to try this, during a ceremony marking a peace treaty with the neighboring Tuscaroren Solvians.
He found the effects... interesting, to say the least. Relaxing, really. As a rather energetic but
unfocused man, he enjoyed how it simultaneously dulled his sharp edges and sharpened his
dull edges. The establishment of the first European Nickinnick farm on the outskirts of New
Ghent would be the forbear of an industry to change a continent and the world.

New Vlaanderen itself has about as many settlers as Storr Island, spread over a much larger
territory. As such, its claims to the Island and the Cape are quite the joke among their newly
settled inhabitants. The area between them is a contested no-man's land inhabited by the
unfortunate Lenns [Lenape], who now have to contend with Old Worlders in both the north and
south. The Mengve [Susquehannock], whose name comes from a Lenn insult meaning "Those
Without Penises", have also taken to raiding their neighbors. The Mengve are loosely allied with
the Hotinnasunni and Gansiunni, but freely raid everyone else; the Storr Islanders and New
Flemish have both seen raids on outlying settlements by the Mengve.
God
commands the annihilation of possession. God commands the annihilation of wealth. God
commands the annihilation of sin.

- Agnostic Catechism

Forty-seven days we journeyed over the formless ocean. Death lay behind us, but heaven lay
ahead.

- Saint Martin of Yoric, “On Coming to New Found Land”

Cataclysm

This had to be the end of times.

Fifteen years from 1301 to 1316 had left the better part of Christendom and Xasaria alike a
pitted ruin. Kaikuluj Arslanzade was still Shah in Konstantikert, a bitter shell of a man. His city,
like so many others, was flooded with refugees from the Pannonian plain, refugees who in many
cases had no intention of leaving. The old certainties were gone. Anatolia, once safe behind
frontiers both manmade and natural, had become the playground of Constantine Christodoulos,
who dreamed of restoring the Roman Empire and Abduldarma Haruniya, who claimed both the
mantle of the old Bakhtiyar and, more intoxicating to the warriors who followed him, dreamt of
restoring the Eftal Empire in its antique glory.

The Turko-Iranian world was perhaps at its lowest ebb. The atrocities that Votivist armies had
unleashed upon their settlements would leave long-lasting demographic scars – a generation
not so much conquered and beaten as born into bloody terror. Their steppe cousins were
increasingly Rusichified, brought into a distinctly different world. But if they had suffered, Europe
had fared no better.

There were few victors in Christendom. Ispana, Scandinavia, the Anglisch, and the Twin Crowns
had done the best for themselves. Their commitments had been largely marginal or naval.
Mercenary and mercantile interests had long defined the policies of the Anglisch throne, and
their contributions to the Votive War more often than not came in the form of clever words to the
Papacy. Someone had to fight the greater hosts of heathens in the New World after all. The
Twin Crowns were much the same.

And so did the German and the Frencien Kingdoms bear the greater brunt of the fighting. Their
slave soldier and mercenary armies provided a critical early bulkwark, but training slaves and
raising mercenary hosts was expensive and time consuming. The Germans quickly turned to
the freemen of their towns and villages – but that was not always an option. In Francien there
were few freemen. The line between noble and indentured serf was clear and the urban
peoples, though numerous, were unskilled in war. As the old heartland of a vast Empire, its
people lacked a sense of martial necessity – much as the old Romans had drawn armies from
their frontiers, so too had the Francien.

In Aquitaine, where the old noble caste remained strong, little changed at first. But the slave-
kingdom of Neustria saw no issue with arming peasants. Their cause, after all, was righteous.
Soon the practice spread, a levied serfs were increasingly drilled in the use of pike, musket, and
crossbow. None considered the risk when these men returned as veterans. Their need was too
dire.

Germany suffered. Although Xasar armies only trampled their soil early in the war, no sooner
were the Xasar exhausted than the Rusichi came down in fresh numbers. Many of the great old
cities of Germany were sacked. Even Koln fell to their vicious assaults, although they never
reached the gates of Aachen. The front lines continually shifted with the passing of years and
seasons. For a time the Xasar seemed they might win back Italy entirely from the Burgundian
forces who kept it, a mixture of levies and the slave-armies of old. But this dream was dashed
and the Xasar were ultimately reduced to a few coastal forts, an ironic twist of fate given how
complete their dominion had been a mere decade ago.
It was the Rusichi, perhaps, who were the true winners of continental war. It was their army,
professional and disciplined, that the European forces drew the most inspiration from. Great
Russia, as they were known to the Europeans, was a feared and hated foe. Their levied infantry
was well-drilled and accustomed to low-intensity steppe warfare, where raiding was a necessity
and one must always be prepared for unexpected reversals. Their cavalry was the very terror of
the earth, striking swiftly and decisively. They rarely gave pitched battle, preferring to torch crops
and launch hit-and-run raids. When they did give pitched battle, however, they typically gave
excellent accounts of themselves.

The Xasar warrior-nobility was near annihilated by the end. Not without reason was 1316 called
the “Year of the Heirs” – for the last great flower of Xasar martial chivalry was decimated on the
fields of Trebica, in Great Moravia during the final battle of the war. Kaikuluj himself was not
present, struggling against the hit-and-run tactics of “Emperor” Constantine the Restorer, who
drew him into an ambush several months later, a battle which he barely escaped with his life.
Those who survived those twin final disastrous battles would preserve that ancient heritage, but
some of their distinctiveness would fade. Oushrana, their warlike god, would at once diminish
and become the public deity of warriors as they were forced to draw more and more common
sons into their fraternity to accommodate the grievous losses they had suffered.

This was the end of times.

Fifteen years had been sufficient to make a new Europe. The Papacy returned to Rome in
splendor, their exile declared over by the relatively young and charismatic Pope Boniface V, a
nephew of the King of the United Provinces whose ascent had been a matter of no little
controversy, primarily instigated by King Ptolemei of Neustria, who had been left cripple after his
disastrous attempt to relieve the Siege of Koln. Armed bands of levied men were everywhere.

Furthermore, the serfs of Europe were united by common experiences. While armies often
remained distinctly national, this Votive War marked the first time many of the common people
had embarked on substantial journeys across a Europe in flames. The political unity of the
continent might have been shattered, but this was a time for the communion of ideas – often
radical religious and political ones. The old heresies of the elite, such as Tinanism blanched at
the mad and egalitarian notions proposed by some peasant radicals in the aftermath of the
Great War.

The Votive War had perished in carnage. If it seems at a glance as if they won, one must
consider the cost in lives and wealth brought down upon them by innumerable famines,
plagues, and atrocities. Italia-Burgundy emerged as a new power, unified under Charles II, who
bowed before the Papacy and accepted his throne with the great Votive Orders at his back,
most notably the twin warlike slave orders of Saint Francis and Saint Peter.

Still, the world reeled in shock. Warfare, for Christendom, had marked the perpetual contest to
maintain and defend the borders of their world against the devil-worshippers who besieged
them. It was a holy contest, one associated with the great Frankish dynasts, who themselves
could claim descent from the Virgin Mary. It was a righteous thing, and one which was
intrinsically necessary. God called on his knights to defend the common people, and on the
common people to defend their world. There was a unique sort of justice in warring against the
heathen. There were Christians suffering and dying under the Boddhist yoke across the Holy
Lands and in Egypt, where Christ had once fled and where the Hebrews had been kept as
slaves.

As Christ had shed his blood for the redemption of mankind, so too could they shed their blood
in imitation. One might lose their life and in doing so gain salvation.

For the Xasar elite, it had not been much different. The bosom of Oushrana welcomed the
victors. Mihir smiled at the victories of his people, and wondering they would be drawn into his
pure heaven where neither pain nor torment existed. They would sing his songs as dying they
were dragged from the field of battle and then in a heartbeat be reborn pure. For the Rusichi,
Votan was still the lord of the gallows. He had dangled upon a tree for nine nights, gored by a
holy spear and there he had learned the old mysteries, the magic known to the Buddhas and
the Gods. He had used this knowledge to become father of all divinity – but he was a war god
too, glad of sacrifice and bloodshed. He had smote Perun and taken up his thunderbolt.

And so did two worlds gladly march into a fifteen year conflict to decide who would rule.
Collective exhaustion had been the only answer, it transpired.

The Votive War cannot be so simply explained. To even attempt to constrict it to some
apocalyptic clash of civilizations is the work of the very revisionist Francien historians who
dreamed of repeating that clash, who visualized themselves as the ideological vanguard of the
Lord’s Chosen Army. There were many reasons for the Votive War, many of which are well
known and well understood. The Xasar were aggressive – their expansion was ideologically
motivated but also the growing-pains of an Empire which had developed an avaricious taste for
plunder and victory. They sought to maintain their stranglehold on Eastern trade and by
conquering the cities of Italy eliminate all rivals. This in turn created a situation which Europe
could not tolerate.

But this view overlooks the demographic changes in Europe which explain not only the Votive
War but the changes to come. Europe had experienced, up until the fourteenth century,
protracted peace and substantial population growth. However, wealth had become increasingly
stratified in the late Empire. An increasingly small and powerful noble class had increasingly
consolidated land to themselves, pushing aside the traditional nobility. Ultimately they were able
to make themselves monarchs in their own right and utilize slave soldiers and mercenaries to
perform the duties their feudal vassals had once accomplished. In turn, institutions crumbled.
The “lesser houses” of old Francia had diminished, often turning to the Church – one of the few
remaining institutions with any prestige after the collapse of the Frankish Empire. Slaves and
mercenaries were both foreign and hated. The Kings of the new Christian order depended upon
them to keep the peace at their peril.

The violence that followed the Great War is explained by overpopulation. The nobility sought the
Votive War as an outlet, but ultimately the vast indentured classes, both rural and urban, armed
by the nobles who sought to oppress them and trained in war, would pose a far greater threat
than the heathen Xasar. The Xasar, though the Francien called them sodomites and heathens,
were at least a known quantity. They could be reasoned with.

The peasants, by contrast, might just show up at night and put your villa to the torch.

Interlude

When the young boy had first sought to climb to the eagle’s nest, his hands had been like
papyrus. Soft and malleable. Skin had wicked away when his hands glided over rope or stone,
leaving reddened blisters beneath. His feet had been soft too, his skin pale as one who never
suffered the heat of the sun.

His muscles had ached for exertion. He had trained for days in camp, and his father’s tutors had
always been harsh. He had not imagined there was greater suffering than that, greater exertion.
But the cliff was a cruel mistress, devoid of obvious holds. How many times he had thought to
scale it only to plummet until the rope arrested his fall, or have to painstakingly descend once
again.

Still he never surrendered. His father had a hunting lodge in the desert that was his favorite, a
short ride to the yet unconquered outcropping. When he grew a little older, he took hashish and
zanj drink, to numb his nerves and give him strength. He learned new techniques and enlisted
the help of some other children his father was responsible for protecting. The desert eagles
whirled overhead. He smiled at the sight of them, dangling as if on wires from the firmament
above. He envied their grandeur, their sublimity. He envied flight, the gift denied to man.

If any god or thinking mind had created the world, he assumed it to be a cruel one, to deny man
the greatest gift at all. His father was Emperor of all the world from Iran to Konstantikert, and he
could not conceive of real suffering.

When he was on the cusp of his sixteenth year he summited the cliff for the first time. The
eagles he had sought as a boy were gone, fled from the place, but they had left bones and other
ornaments of their passing which he gathered as a thirsty man might gather water. He would
help his friends ascend later. He would pass the long watches of the night atop the eagles nest
with Najela, who would later become his lover. They would share pomegranates there together,
and one night she would climb atop him and they would be joined in the ecstasy of young
passions.
Ten years later, after a campaign against the Ansara Suf, he would return to that place. Najela
was among the finest of his concubines, and he was a man known for his hedonism in a country
that had always been austere. The Ifthal might have celebrated his decadence, and known it for
a mark of divinity, but the Tayzig had taken a narrower road. Moderation in all things. The road
to enlightenment, father's hoary monks told him with dour expressions, was a straight path and
difficult. Even something as innocent as images could be a profane threat. So he shed his
concubines one summer evening, though Najela wept and his sons by her lost their meager
inheritance. He was a grown man, heir to his unwarlike father. The house of Yasuj, whose
victories had won him his empire, had been murdered as traitors and dissidents.

He didn’t know if he expected to survive the fall. During a rare time of peace, when the Romans
were not warring on the frontier and the Xasar did not plot against him, he commissioned his
architects to build him a great apparatus by which he might attain flight. They built it of floating
wood, linen and the glue used to make recurve bows.

That was when he chose to leap from the edge. That was when he flew.
All prelude

The heartland of Indian civilization, insomuch as an entire continent can be said to have a single
civilization or a single heart, is somewhere along the Indo-Gangetic plain. The Painted Grey
Ware civilization and Vedic culture had its roots along the sprawling back of fecund and holy
Ganga. The Kuru Kings, if they ever lived, did their rites of horse-sacrifice along her banks. The
Maurya and Gupta and Maukhani alike dwelt along her silted shores and based their empire off
the vast population she sustained.

Thus, it was obvious to the Pala, the heroic savior kings who had driven the Sahputi to ruin and
chased them to the very gates of Balkh, recovering the old universities of Takasashila and the
fertile banks of the Indus, that they should come to rule the whole continent. However, after their
triumphs against the Sahputi, they quickly realized that this would be more difficult in practice.

Starting in 1324, the Chandratreya and Pala would square off on an immense scale. The Pala
by this point were an established dynasty. They had taken Pataliputra in 1230, and their first on-
and-off wars with Utkaladesha had begun in 1247, although these had typically ended in
humiliation for Pala arms, despite their strong cavalry arm and mass levies. Their military was
not lacking necessarily – their armies were simply yoked to impossible objectives – at all times a
substantial portion of their forces were posted on the Sahputi frontier, where Gandhara and the
Pajcanada remained restive and were often threatened by Turkic tribes besides. Attempts to
secure parts of Afghanistan similarly saw whole armies annihilated in mountain ambushes –
especially as the Tayzig Ansara Suf expanded their grip on the region and won over the local
princes to their regime.

Saktipala, the latest King of the Pala dynasty, ascended to the throne in 1320, around the time
that his Chandratreya rival, Dharapatta, was reorienting his state around the new and safer
capital of Punyavishaya [Punaka]. Both men saw the other as a weak monarch – in truth, both
were correct in their assessment of the other, and yet simultaneously blind to their own flaws –
blind in particular to their constant dependence on their courtly bureaucracies and expansive
professional armies. The cost of maintaining such forces was astronomical and yet neither side
could afford to reduce their forces. The cause of Empire demanded enormous fleets and
enormous armies. The Chandratreya in particular had established for themselves countless
overseas commitments, largely on behalf of the coastal merchant aristocracy whose influence
they depended on. These merchants had a substantial disinterest in their landward borders,
only barely checked by the army and bureaucracy.

The Pala had no such mercantile influence, for better or worse. The state that Dharmapala had
first established had been little more than a warlord state. By annihilating the Askunu and
reclaiming their similarly exploitative regime, he had been forced to turn to the atrophied but still
present goshthi for support. With the ayats of the Indo-Gangetic plain crushed and broken, it
was these secret communities of scholars who remained the last governing institution in a
region which was otherwise feudal and oppressive at best. A hundred years on however, the
goshthi had created their ideal state – a monarchy bound by laws, where the sovereign existed
distinct from the bureaucracy and the judiciary – but also one where republicanism and notions
of the equal-kingdom were thoroughly quashed.

From roughly the fourteenth century onwards, the goshthi of the Pala Kingdom would have to
find new goals. Idolizing the splendor and military prestige of the Gupta, if not their laissez faire
style of governance, and the artistic and cultural achievements of the Maukhani state, they
dreamed of using the Pala kings as a vehicle to recreate that.

Thus were the Pala inexorably drawn into a war they did not want or need, with a power whose
interests rarely clashed with theirs. At first, this was represented as clashes between buffer
states. The Gurjar might raid the Indus, or the Chandela might strike against Utakaladesh, but
these were normal border conflicts. What they presaged was something far more dramatic. Only
the very south of the subcontinent would not be drawn into the hundred-odd years of warfare
which were to come – the massed clashes of levied armies that would ultimately bring down
both the Chandratreya and Pala alike by 1411, as mutual exhaustion claimed both sides once
and for all.

The first stage of these wars lasted about twenty years, and consisted primarily of rapidly
escalating proxy conflicts. In the second, both sides began striking directly at one another. This
was perhaps the most destructive to the polities of the subcontinent. For fifty years, on-and-off,
both empires would launch expansive assaults against the other, maintaining armies numbering
in the hundreds of thousands. It was a time of brutal violence and incredible technological
advancement. Both sides needed massive quantities of firearms and were forced to turn to new
technologies to supply their need. Both sides were forced to cope with the cannon – digging
fortresses with trenchlines and angled walls to better defend their soldiers against flying
cannonballs and rocket attack.
Unlike the Votive War, there was something languid about the subcontinent’s warfare. Europe
fought its great conflict of the early modern era in a frenzied rush, both sides considering it an
existential threat to their very existence. The Chandratreya and Pala, by contrast, did not see it
as such, at least at an elite level. To them, this was a great game, fought at the cost of millions
of human lives, but a game nonetheless. There were rules and there was strategy. When
beaten, you made peace. When victorious, you were generous and merciful. Within this, of
course, countless millions lost their lives for living in communities that happened to lie in the
path of armies. Countless states whose sole crime was standing in the way of an advancing
host were crushed into nothingness.

It is not unreasonable to call this conflict the last great Indian flirtation with Universal Empire.
Henceforth, the empires built by the subcontinent would tend to face outwards and look
outwards. After the fall of the Chandratreya and Pala, the states that took their place would
generally be nations, or padajana, unified by cultural and linguistic lines rather than dynastic
states. Conquerors would emerge and nations would rise and fall, but never again would any
one state come so close to dominating the whole subcontinent.

The Pala army in its latter heyday was an achievement of logistics and planning. Hundreds of
thousands of soldiers might be fielded at any moment, sustained off of forage and an intricate
system of supply depots and caravans. Every army needed food to march, but the
transportation of food in the premodern era was a substantial exertion of energy. The transport
of food thus required food itself – fodder for pack animals and food for the logisticians and
engineers who trailed the army in their own separate quarters, ensuring that the vast beast that
was the Pala legions did not go without hunger. They commanded immense resources – the
authority to decide who was fed and who went hungry, the authority to command the royal
elephant logistical corps, the authority to serve as judges and magistrates over issues of law
and order within the ranks, especially when it came to disputes between different battalions.

The Chandratreya force was no less impressive, especially as Pala innovations demanded the
bureaucratization of militaries – a step that necessarily portended the professionalization. No
longer were aristocratic soldiers, paid with land, sufficient, and thanks to the increasing
profitability of newly global commercial ventures, both sides began to establish truly professional
armies – forces were soldiering was a career that were nevertheless not mercenary in nature.
Even drafted levies could expect a stipend, used to support their families and buy additional
equipment. Huge factories expanded around imperial manufactories, designed to mass produce
the keibir-style muskets which were favored for their resilience to the damp and tropical
conditions.

The Young Pope

The first Pope to return to Rome, Boniface V, would become famous and hated for many things,
chief among them mongering spies. As a Cardinal in Koln, he had always been a despised
figure, hated by Boudewin III as well as by Ptolemei and his slave-zealot state. As a young man,
back when he was named Claudius after his uncle, he had maneuvered – some said
blackmailed – his way into the Cardinalship over Koln – conveniently close to the seat of the
new Papacy. From there he was able to use his powers of negotiation and manipulation to seize
greater strength still. With the Votive War raging and Europe on the back foot against repeated
Rusichi invasions, he was able to manipulate the frightened cardinals of Europe into supporting
him in a vision of a Europe united – not squabbling princes destroyed by piecemeal fighting
against the infidel but one strong force, backed by Papal Legates, the Iudicates, and the Sworn
Brothers.

Just as Constantine had donated the Roman Empire to the Papacy, he argued, so too had the
Frankish Emperors returned that title to the Church. While it was absurd for a Pope to also be
an Emperor – it was not unthinkable for a Pope to act in a more decisive and aggressive way. It
just so happened that the Church had incredible resources as well – Church military forces had
by providence and good generalship been spared some of the greater annihilations that had
befallen Christendom. The Kings of Europe and their hoary aristocracies reeled, but zealous
peasants were easy to find in any time of crisis.

Still, it took a rare visionary to yoke these mobs behind the legates and make Kings tremble in
fear.

The first to see it was, ironically, Ptolemei Optime, a middle-aged man but a cripple by the end
of the war, one who feared losing his throne to another slave soldier more than anything. His
own legitimacy was nonexistent, backed by the power of a small but fanatical corps of African
slaves whose numbers were difficult to replenish. By the end of the war he was flush with
recruits but lacked desperately even a fraction of the soldiers in fighting shape he would need to
maintain a hold on Neustria – and that was before the famine set in and several of his marcher
lords found themselves fleeing their ancestral villas.

The power structures in much of the old Roman Empire were unstable, and as Boniface V rode
into Europe, the “Spymonger Pope” with his bottomless ambition faced challenges but also
opportunities.

Only Northern Europe – Angland, the Norse Countries, the Twin Crowns, and (to a far lesser
extent) Germany would be able to escape much of the conflict that embroiled Europe. While
Sweden was on the brink of their off-and-on contest over the Baltic with the Rusichi and
Pommerania, and the Twin Crowns certainly sent soldiers, these states by and large had been
less effected by the war and the various plagues and famines that followed. Their aristocracies
were generally weaker and less entrenched, their societies both more mercantile and more
democratic. Italia and Germania had suffered the desperation of being ravaged by war, and thus
despite not subscribing to the Franco-Ispanian “sickness” as some historians have termed it,
they nevertheless were gripped by peasant rebellions, zealotry, and superstition.

Settling in Rome, Boniface first faced the threat of the Burgundian King, the clever and war-
hardened Charles II. His contest with the old “Fist of the Boddists” – a wily zealot whose rise to
power in some superficial ways mirrored Boniface’s own. Charles had, perhaps more than any
other Great Name of Europe, won his throne by popularity. He was one of the greatest crowned
heads of Europe, and now his soldiers had almost every major city and fortress in Italy, save
Ravenna and the Xasar and African outposts. Even Rome had a garrison, although he was
compelled to withdraw it rather quickly when the Pope softly hinted to the local Palatine,
Tancred of Macon, that he would not be able to restrain the Italian mob if they decided to expel
him. Tancred of Macon, being a clever man, saw that a few hundred mounted soldiers would be
poorly suited in the cities, and withdrew to a fortified villa outside the city – a relic of the Xasar
rule. That was enough for now.

Next, the Pope hinted to the King that he would be willing to conduct a formal coronation of
Charles II, granting him rule over Italy formally in a way that “certain figures” had never enjoyed.
Few monarchs, after all, could claim that the Pope had given them their diadems…

Charles II was quick to accept, and slowly it became apparent to the ailing monarchies of
Europe that they had unleashed a monster.
Church of the East and the New
Romans

Before the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, one might have been forgiven for assuming
Christianity and Greek culture were both on the ascendant in the Fertile Crescent. The
Sassanian Empire was clearly weaker than her western rival. Though old and calcified and in
many ways a shadow of her former glory, Rome could call upon substantial resources. Her
cities and monasteries were the center of intellectual life - her art and cultural achievements
were yet unrivaled by the Latin West. From her palace the Emperor was ensconced in
undiminished glory – the idea of a Greco-Italian dynasty restoring the Empire in the West
seemed absurd to the magistrates and officers clustered around the Imperial throne.

Iran, for her part, had fallen substantially since its heyday. The civil wars that led to Firuz I falling
captive to the Eftal were just the latest symptom of a declining state – and the arrival of steppe
peoples on the doorstep of the Fertile Crescent was nothing new. The Eftal and their
innumerable allies, such as the Kidarites, were just the latest in a long line of new conquerors.
Rome for her part was well accustomed to dealing with barbarians at the gates. The frontiers
were strengthened and new armies and fortresses raised.

None could have predicted that over the course of a series of cataclysmic wars and migrations
across the Danube and into Anatolia and Syria, the Roman Empire would collapse. The slow
decline of the Chalcedonian East was thus written in stone. Deprived of its state support, heresy
would grow slowly but surely. The fact that the various patriarchates were often left vacant or
propped up with puppets only exacerbated this trend. In the city of Rome, the last autonomous
patriarch was too distant to effectively enforce doctrine.

By the time of the Xasar Empire, there were a dizzying array of Christian sects in the place of
one single orthodoxy. Monophysitism and Nestorianism both enjoyed periods of active state
sponsorship, and smaller sects emerged with alacrity. “It must be wearying” quipped one Eftal
lord “to have so many natures as your Christ does” – referencing the multiplicity of
contemporary opinions as to the divinity of Jesus. It is said that a monk responded by asking
how the universe could be eternal if it proceeded through cycles of increasing decline – throwing
the Eftal lord’s courtiers into a period of fierce debate and revealing their own theological
divisions.

Eastern Christianity in its myriad forms was perhaps best represented by the Nestorian Church.
It had been making headway even - expanding among the Aramaic and Arab peoples
consistently throughout the era. However, it too suffered a great reversal. The Church of the
East was centered on the old cities of Mesopotamia, so many of which were devastated by
plagues, increasing salinity and desertification, and the collapse of old irrigation lines. Famines
and plagues routinely reduced the population of the region and by the time of the Khardi
restoration, the Asorig peoples were easily brushed aside, replaced wholesale in many cases in
acts of vicious and genocidal warfare.

Thus the Church of the East was forced to find new outlets. And find them it did. The Asorig had
long been in contact with other peoples. Mercantile lines of trade had brought them in contact
with India and Kitai beyond the waters, and their missionaries always could find adherents. In
imitation of their lord and God, they reached out to the poor and downtrodden, establishing
hospitals and tending to those who were left behind in the traditional social structures of their
homelands. They found ready adherents, in spite of sporadic Buddhist persecutions and the
vibrant religious and cultural life of the region. They maintained frequent contact with the
Christians among the Malayalam of Kannada – where there were several major Christian banks
and guilds who were more than happy to work alongside their correligionists.

Even wealthy royal Chandratreya ports like Mangalapura on the Karnatic coast played host to
substantial minority Christian population. The “House of the Nine Lions” as it was known was
but one example of a Christian banking house who managed to thrive and enjoy royal
patronage. For their part, the Chandratreya Emperors were famously disinterested in matters of
religion – allowing any sect so long as they paid their taxes and did not set themselves apart too
greatly.

The Arab contingents of the Bakhtiyar also occasionally professed Christian faith, although this
was usually tempered by peculiar desert mysticism. Saihism had died but its ideals were not
forgotten. The notion of the feminine divine pervaded portrayals of the blessed virgin, and for a
time there was even a Tayzig Arab sect that believed heaven was synonymous with nirvana,
and being cast into the “pit” akin to reincarnation – a halfhearted but sincere blending of two
ancient religions that more often than not warred against each other for their alien
incompatibility. It was sufficiently pervasive that Akhsau Mansar never quite took a stand against
Christianity, despite attempting to cast himself as a redeemer/prophet figure in a distinctly
Iranian/Saihist pagan mold.

Christianity however, would steadily lose its majority status in many parts of the Near East.
While Anatolia and Egypt would see the religion maintain a majority well into the fourteenth
century, Syria and Iraq were long lost. Eftal tolerance had given way to Nowbahar devastation
and Khardi genocides, and these body-blows were felt heavily in the loss of records and history
as well as untold lives. The Arabs of Muharraq, however, had preserved what they could. The
Patriarch of the Church of the East relocated to Muharraq in 1284, in no small part because of
the increasing violence along the border with the Ansara Suf and the fact that Muharraq had
grown from a small seaside village into a coastal town of no little wealth, brimming with rich
manufactories and profiting greatly from the sale of dyes and keibir muskets.

If not in absolute numbers, the Church expanded many times over in terms of geography, with
congregations from China to Cape Watya. The Asorig in their time would gain a reputation not
unlike a more proselytizing form of Jews or Sinti – a wandering people with their own customs,
often merchants and traders in the wake of their exodus from Babylon at the hands of the
Khardi. Their own mythos would grow to reflect this in time. Muharraq played host to beautiful
temples of imported marble. It was an islanded jewel in a vast desert, a teeming and polyglot
city but one where Christ ruled – a rarity in the Buddhist Near East.

Nestorianism, however, had substantial rivals. Egypt and Armenia, with their own localized
churches and autonomous organizations were the prime examples. If Armenia had largely
eschewed proselytism, seeing their religion as a distinct part of their national character, the
Coptic Church had gone forth time and again into Africa, sending missions at times with the
royal license of the assimilated Arabo-Eftal dynasty who ruled them. Kanem was perhaps the
greatest convert, but distance and the attenuate caravan lines across the desert quickly made
their religion into a vicious pastiche of the faith they received, an autocratic tool for imperial
expansion.[1]

By the fourteenth century, the independence of Armenia saw their church prospering – a beacon
of eastern Christendom. By contrast, the Coptic Church in Egypt had largely lost the cities. If it
maintained a strong following in the countryside, that following did little for the prestige of the
religion. The Bakhtiyar factions had little interest in patronizing Christian religious expression as
the old Eftal might have, and saw little reason to convert for the loyalty of vast tracts of disarmed
peasants. The martial and scholarly class of Egypt could not be further from Christ – a mix of
Arab, Eftal, and Khardi that is perhaps described as authentically Bakhtiyar – iconoclastic and
Buddhist, a collection of alien peoples bound together by the shared fact of their alienation from
the majority society.

For the Khardi, and the Bakhtiyar successor-states, renunciation of Christianity was generally
an accepted part of the process to rise to high local office. This more than anything ensured that
the learned and literate classes slowly gave themselves over to the alien religion or at least kept
their true faith relatively secret. While Christian monasteries and churches certainly remained
staffed, exclusion from the political and social elite gradually made the idea of any Christian
resurgence in Egypt improbable. This situation can easily be contrasted with Armenia, where
few nobles ever converted to Buddhism, and those who did quickly renounced their prior faith
and returned to Christ after the independence of the nation. The wholesale replacement of the
Egyptian elite with foreigners and the “yippokupti” collaborators in no small part contributed to
the ease with which the Bakhtiyar ruled Egypt, despite being transplanted oppressors by most
metrics. There was quite simply no symbol to rally around, and a few scattered peasant
rebellions could be easily dismissed by Bakhtiyar heavy cavalry thundering across the desert.

Chalcedonian belief persisted as well. The Melkite branches of Syrian and Egyptian believers
survived, especially along the coasts and in the cities, where Greek language and culture
persisted as a most visible minority. The Ifthal, in contrast to many other Iranian peoples such as
the Khardi, had always been fond of Greek civilization and culture. It was the Ifthal after all who
created the Rhom Shahdom and first sought to restore the glory of Constantinople, and when
they built their palaces across Syria they took inspiration from Hellenic architecture as often as
they did from their own East Iranian roots. It was thus little surprise that Greek peoples survived
in the coastal cities, visible minorities who enjoyed a prosperous, if tenuous, existence
alongside their Asorig brethren. The Tayzig of Palestine and Southern Syria, unlike their more
settled cousins in Syria proper and Egypt tended to eschew the old coastal cities in favor of
inland towns and fortified places. Accordingly, by the time of the Bakhtiyar the Greeks were
often tax collectors and low level magistrates within the Bakhtiyar state, a position they held by
dint of their relative impartiality and limited numbers compared to the factionalized state of the
Near East.

In Anatolia, at the borderline between the Near East and “Christendom” proper, Chalcedonian
Christianity had no real rivals for the affection of the populace. Heresies existed, particularly as
many churches became more insular and cut off from the reforms and changes experienced by
their western cousins, but the Xasar, ever a legalistic people, had codified the rights of their
Christian subjects and although they took the sons and daughters of wealthy landowners and
merchant magnates and forced them to be raised worshipping Mihir, the lesser urban wealthy
were able to escape this hostage-taking practice and sustain their own faith with ease.

However, there were substantial divisions under the surface. While Chalcedonian religion
survived, it was deeply split over the matter of the Patriarch. Many churches were inclined to
ignore the puppet Patriarch in Konstantikert, seeing him as a foreign tool and a mark of their
oppression. Many others refused to bow to a Latin Pope, especially after the Xasar swept
through Italy and the “Babylonian Captivity” created a Papacy in Aachen and yet another puppet
in Rome. While there could be no official split on the matter (because doing so would invariably
involve Xasar bureaucrats) under the surface the dispute often led to open brawls between
groups of monks and bishops who felt, not wrongly, that the whole future of their faith was at
stake. They were perhaps more aware of the trends of history than many, and saw how so many
subjected Christian Churches had ultimately been destroyed. The Asorig, scattered across the
Near East and deprived of their ancient wealth and grandeur, were a perfect example, to their
minds, of what happened to those who made their beds with the heathen. So too were the
neutered Copts and their own subjugated aristocracy.

Thus it could be little surprise that when a new Roman emerged in the figure of Constantine
Christodoulos, Vontas-Sinafa was quick to become Pontos anew. Whispers of a new Equal-of-
the-Apostles had a tremendous and immediate cultural impact. He became something of a folk
hero, all the more alluring for his illicit and rebellious nature. The Xasar were quick to punish
those who spread tales of him, especially during the height of the Great Votive War, when he
was seen as little more than a Frankish catspaw and fifth columnist seeking to erode their
Empire from within. Treason always carried with it the penalty of death, but this did not stop the
dissemination of secret tales and accounts of his victories, nor of his handsome son,
Nikephoros Christodoulos, whose regime warred with the Votive armies of Ikramihira ibn
Abduldarma, one of the greatest of the Haruniya.

Ikramihira was a curious figure, one of the rare historical figures who has always presented an
enigma to those studying him. He would marry into the Ansara Suf after warring with them,
winning peace by arms and diplomacy on his eastern frontier. To satisfy his court he would set
aside a number of beautiful concubines and his own beloved bastard sons, but yet he also
murdered the entirety of the popular Yasuj family[2] on a whim. While he had the battle record of
a skilled tactician and a brilliant general from a young age, the court historians who recorded his
exploits speak primarily of hedonism and drunkenness – drinking unwatered wine and heady
beer in great excess. Handsome and athletic, he also had a great obsession with mechanism –
ever fascinated by the geared instruments merchants would bring him from Kitai and beyond.
He loved to play with little mechanical songbirds and other such trinkets, and according to
historical legend he was the first man to ever fly in a glider. It was not until centuries later, when
the alleged designs were tested and found to be functional, than any credence was given to this
claim. [Although the claim that countless slaves were left crippled or slain as a result of failed
tests was always easier to believe].

As a foe of the resurgent Romans, he provided the perfect antagonist – the decadent oriental
despot, obsessed with infernal machines and tufenj. He was the diabolic Samirgulla come again
– the rival of Presbyter Savus in the old stories, and indeed the Christodoulids referred to him as
such. Nikephoros, never a poor general, well accustomed to leading small bands of men to
surprising victories, was able to cast himself as Savus in turn, especially when his ambassadors
toured the palaces of Europe, begging for aid.

[1] Kanem and Africa in general is in dire need of fresh updates.

[2] Of course, Mitradata Yasuj won the Haruniya their entire empire. His ultimate repayment
would be the murder of himself and every male member of his family out to a couple steps
removed for “treason.” So it goes.
Western Buddhism

The development of Western Buddhism has little in common with the eastern traditions such as
the Chan-Jingtuzong (Exoteric) and the Mijiao (Esoteric) Schools. Where the conflict between
these competing trains of thought went on the define the history of Sinospheric Buddhism, they
were both little known in the West, and indeed even in the Indosphere, where Buddhist thought
was inseparable from Hinduism outside of a few outlier regions such as Sri Lanka and the
Vanga. South Asia was the house of the Theravada school, where Tantric and Esoteric traditions
blurred with local Hindu and Animist rituals.
The primary driver of Buddhist conversion in the Iranian West was missions from the Tarim
Basin and Gandhara. The Eftal had a long history of interaction (and occasionally conquest) of
these two regions, and their city-dwelling kings often saw monastic life as a mark of civilization.
Their own religion was a hodgepodge of ideas and customs, with individuals and families often
holding wildly different beliefs. The mainstream was something akin to an Indo-Iranian
paganism, a belief system nurtured and developed by their proximity to Sassanian
Zoroastrianism and the various Indian philosophies and religions.

It thus should be no surprise that once they conquered Iran and Mesopotamia the early Eftal
Kings patronized Buddhist monasteries and thinkers much as they had in Gandhara. Christianity
in its myriad incarnations had some appeal, but at an elite level it failed to catch on. Historians
have long debated the reason for this. Many suppose the Christian population of the East was
seen as a fifth column for Roman machinations. Others have suggested that the Eftal, inheriting
Sassanian bureaucracy, simply followed blindly its habit of persecuting those who didn’t
subscribe to state orthodoxy (even in the absence of state orthodoxy). Still others have
supposed that Eftal religious philosophy was already sufficiently developed, even in that era,
that Christianity was simply incompatible with their worldview. This latter theory lacks substantial
evidence, but among certain modern national groups it retains a fanatic group of supporters.

The lack of state patronage of Zoroastrianism spelled, to a large degree, the doom of that
ancient religion. Apart from a few millennialist uprisings and a tradition of rural insurgency, it
could not compete with the new faith. Christianity, by contrast, remained vibrant in many parts of
the Middle East for quite some time and indeed many thriving Christian communities have
survived into the modern era – despite rarely being the faith of the local elites.

Eftal Buddhism in its earliest, nonsectarian form is very much an enigma, due to a paucity of
primary texts in comparison to other regions. It was based on the Khotanese schools such as
the Dharmaguptaka and Sarisvastivada. However, in this early era arhathood was
deemphasized and the role of gods was strongly emphasized – contemplation of various
divinities was considered critical to building merit. In turn this would lead to the development of
the Nowbahar, a movement which has already been covered in no little depth by earlier posts.
To the Sogdian School of Buddhism, temples and monasteries were one and the same –
laymen could go to venerate Ohrmazd while monks prayed. While there was emphasis on
places of monasteries as educational centers, this highly syncretic form of Buddhism was
analogous to how Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese deities had been treated by Buddhists –
prisoners of samsara, but still puissant beings in their own right.

The Nowbahar, or so-called “New Temple” school by contrast was based on Theravada
teachings. By the time of their ascendency, missionaries from South India and Vanga were
commonplace and Khotan had by comparison declined as a center of Buddhist scholarship.
This new, more austere movement seems to have developed as these new missionaries saw
and condemned Eftal Buddhism for its “perverse distraction” and its focus on attachment to
patron deities. The Sogdian school treated deities as almost coequal with Buddhas and Arhats.
For all their fanaticism and their tendency to destroy Zoroastrian temples and sacred fires, the
Nowbahar were nevertheless deeply intellectual as a movement. They published innumerable
texts, most of which are exegeses on the Pali Canon and various Khotanese sutras which made
up the background of Iranian Buddhism. Their scholarship would come to define all later Iranian
Buddhist movements irrespective of their origins – only the Sogdian School kept their own
independent scholarship, but by the Bakhtiyar era the Sogdian school could boast few
monasteries indeed – and “Sogdian” had become a term for those old fashioned Eftal who clung
to their pagan rites.

However, the Nowbahar had many enemies. The Khardi continued to worship their traditional
polytheism, adhering only to the aesthetic of Buddhism – a fact which galled the Nowbahar and
led to no end of military conflicts. Many of the old Eftal maintained their antique form of
Buddhism, and in this they found many allies. For the Theravada, laymen could not easily attain
the same status as monks – and thus accordingly many Theravada societies were largely based
around the monastery and monastic life to a large degree. This passed on into South Arabian
life largely seamlessly, but had limited appeal to the Tayzig and Bedouin peoples of the interior,
whose own cultures depended on the family group as a key unit of societal organization.
Retreating from domestic life was akin to suicide in the clannish world of interior Arabia.

For these peoples, another school bridged the gap between the Eftal “Sogdian School” and the
Nowbahar’s austerity. For the Tayzig and Arab peoples, as well as many Iranians, the Sogdian
school’s traditional Iranian polytheistic elements had little appeal – the gods of the Sogdian
school were foreign to them, especially to those who still incorporated Saihist ritual and whirling
meditation into their daily life. The Apasavandi, or School of Holy Water, bridged the gap
between these two extremes – and was notable, especially in Arabia, for the paramount role it
afforded women. Apasavandi, somewhat uniquely among Buddhist schools, offered lay
practitioners, and especially educated women, a position alongside monks and nuns, and
encouraged them to study scripture and meditate.

The Bakhtiyar states often sought to patronize certain schools – typically the Nowbahar or the
Theravada missions from the Southeast – in an effort to align their practices with the broader
world. In their courts, a sort of agnostic approach towards divinity was most commonly taken.
The presence of gods was immaterial to what human beings could do to break free from the
world. If gods existed, they were beyond human understanding and little worth considering.
Perhaps if one achieved Buddhadom they could be reasoned with, or even educated, but that
was scarcely worth their time.

North of the Black Sea, Buddhism was initially transmitted not by the Eftal or their descendants
but by the Sahu, a people who had long interactions with the Khotanese and other peoples of
the Tarim basin, to the point of adopting their script and tongue as a religious language.
Accordingly they belong to the broader umbrella of the Mahayana world, venerating a collection
of arhats and Bodhisattvas from ancient India and even in some cases China.
It was this religion which blended with the Rusichi paganism, creating the Iazhati School,
founded by the wandering mystic Mitraslav. As his name would suggest, the foundation of the
Iazhati was more a codification of existing trends in Rusichi religion – particularly the synthesis
of Slavic and Iranian deities – based on exegesis of traditional Rusichi texts. Unlike the Iranians,
the Iazhati sought to decontextualize their former deities. Mitra and other gods, including Otan
[Odin] became worshipped as Bodhisattvas. Otan would be revered for a time as a principal
figure – the bringer of “Darmahujr” or the “drive for order” among the barbarous peoples of the
world, inspiring them to live in correct and harmonious ways and teaching them the old magic.

Monastic life was not a huge part of the Iazhati world – although monasteries certainly did exist.
Rather, the forest mystic, or Ghovorbogi, was the primary form of monasticism. Although they
ultimately took on a strange and rather animistic air, their order would not have been unfamiliar
to the courtly monks of Central Asia or the forest monks of Khmer, reciting the Prajnaparamita
Sutras. Their work would inspire the Gardaveldi form of literature which would be called the
“Confessional” – texts focusing on the avoidance of the Three Diabolical Poisons of delusion,
attachment, and aversion.

From these roots, the Sahu and Rusichi came into contact with other missionaries from Iran and
Syria, where the Apasavandi school was flourishing. Translated roughly into Sviatovochi, the
Apasavandi school established a more familiar and more stable pattern of monastic life. The
arhat Ashkan, born as a slave in Syria, would become one of the most famous originators of the
school in Rusichi, and it is from him that we have some of our most detailed writings about the
life of common Rusichi in this time period. The Apasavandi offered what they claimed was a
more pure and more authentic religious experience, one more aligned with the broader world
and in particular India (which was revered as a sort of holy land). Since the Khotanese had long
since declined and the Rusichi had few contacts with other schools of thought, many were
persuaded to set aside their idols. Statues to Perun and other deities were slowly but surely
traded out for statues of the Buddhas, commonly depicted in a long-bearded Rusichi style.

However, authenticity of practice and concern for orthopraxy only went so far. The Xasar had
their own school of thought, an outgrowth of the Sogdian School brought by Eftal bandits and
warlords to the Rhom, and adopted by the pagan Xasar. A group of Eftal monks from Syrazur,
according to legend established the “Great Refuge” in the Carpathian mountains, in a site long
since lost to history. It was their missions to the Xasar and Avar princes, who then were Iranian
and Turkish polytheists, circa 800 AD that led to the first major conversions. Their beliefs were
part of the overarching Mahayana tradition, but specifically they were of the Sogdian School. In
time, they would call themselves the Khotadhata, or the God-Derived School.

Syncretism was thus here again the order of the day – and unlike in Rusichia and Arabia and
Iran, the divinities did not lose their importance. In part, this can be attributed to the proximity of
Christianity. There were no warring factions among the Xasar in terms of religious adherence –
the Xasar were not consumed by sectarian squabbles – they simply could not afford to be.
There was always a sort of siege mindset in their culture, a notion that they were inheritors of an
ancient political order. The fact that this political order was fabricated wholesale and that the
Xasar courtly culture was a blend of assimilated Roman and Iranian culture mattered little.

So here, uniquely, Mihir and Ohrmazd and a vast pantheon of deities retained their prominence.
Mihir was commonly portrayed in a style that would not have been so alien to the Christian
chapels of the time – a bearded figure haloed and resplendent, sitting in glory, surrounded by
virtuous arhats, their serene faces looking down from the interior shadow of domed tabernacles.
The construction of stupa and monasteries was always mixed with the erection of shrines, often
on a very fundamental level.

The pursuit of Nirvana emerges frequently in sacred texts penned during the height of the Xasar
Empire, and even in the aftermath of the Great Votive War. But before the Votive War, when
headstrong confidence defined the ascent of the Xasar, nonreligious documents frequently
discuss truth and righteousness in a more Iranian, more Zoroastrian sense – or possibly in a
sense designed to mirror that of the Christians. The Xasar were in a sense votivists in their own
right – their doctrine of warfare was based in the notion that other models of civilization were
wrong and it was their duty to bring them towards the light.

In the aftermath of the Votive War, these martial models diminished somewhat. The military
aristocracy of the Xasar Empire had taken a series of crippling blows from which it would be
slow in recovering. The center of Buddhist scholarship in the Far West shifted from the
indefensible plains of Pannonia to the mountainous Balkans and Carpathians. The heart of their
civilization was slowly but surely moving north, to where the Rusichi-Sahu world was producing
beautiful manuscripts that subtly questioned the foundation of the Khotadhata. Anatolia was in
chaos, torn apart by Christian uprisings and marauding Bakhtiyar. The Xasar would have to turn
inwards for a time.