[Insert usual glyph of apology for long delay in responding; life is, alas, busy enough that I'm wondering when I will ever find the time to write the next chapters both for this and ITWP.]
What's the thing about wattle bark, by the way?
It's used industrially today for a variety of purposes: leather tanning and adhesive manufacturing, for instance, and also in preserving products (ropes, nets etc) and in dyes. Wattle gum also has a lot of similar functions to gum arabic. Polyphenols and proanthocyanidins (tannins) from abundant wattle bark will have all sorts of applications once Aururians figure out how to make sulphuric acid on an industrial scale, which they will do about the same time, or maybe slightly earlier, than Roebuck did in Britain in OTL.
Was atemporal reincarnation established as a pan-Gunnagal belief?
It was in the background, but not given a great deal of attention since I never ended up writing a full chapter on pan-Gunnagalic mythology. It, together with other aspects of sharing a common conceptual universe, is why early Plirism spread more easily amongst Gunnagalic regions than non-Gunnagalic parts of Aururia (e.g. the Atjuntja, Yadji and Bungudjimay).
It also makes it far harder for the traditional view of time to survive as is, because as you mention, people experience time only one way, and overtime they're more likely to lose their belief in this belief as opposed to any other practical belief (there being a fertility goddess in important rivers, Thor striking the clouds to create thunder, etc.), cultural drift notwithstanding. It only really takes someone to ask "can we prove that time works this way?" This sort of thinking, exacerbated by how time is cognitively experienced and the large population which subscribes to the belief, would erode faith in the traditional view.
I'm not so sure about that. There are a variety of mystics today who are comfortable with the idea of non-linear reincarnation. None of them are major religions, granted, but I don't think it's inherently implausible that a major religion
could come up with the concept. There are plenty of possible rationalisations for it, and no doubt different ones would spring up in different areas. Variants of the
Novikov self-consistency principle would be one popular choice, I expect.
That didn't necessarily conflict with how everyday people experienced the world. They believed in an omnipotent God, and knew that their actions were free so that they may be judged on them, it's hardly as doublethink-y as keeping a very unintuitive view in your head which goes against anything anyone experiences, amongst that many people over that great a period of time.
The doublethink in non-Plirite non-linear reincarnation is only that at the moment of rebirth, they happen back into the past. It doesn't have the same sense of "consequences flowing everywhere" that Plirism does, hence it's less of a big deal. Once they travel to the past, they just live their lives from that point. Plirism gives more of a headache because of the focus on consequences.
There are some dances that are meant as exercise and physical training before getting into the actual martial arts practice. There are examples in China, and in Indonesia. These technically weren't part of the martial arts and their moves mostly weren't used in actual fighting, except perhaps in show-sparring IIRC.
Likewise in the Aururian ones, then. I haven't thought this through in great detail yet, but perhaps a performance tradition sitting alongside a more practical tradition, unified by the belief that working on both enhances both mind and body.
There were massive spats on chat over BDSM which I'm sure some under-18's participated in. I'd think that just a little more detail won't hurt, and at least there's an excuse for it.
The short version is that just about any form of sex accessory, erotic furniture, role-plays and fantasies which are feasible with their technology will be used, particularly amongst the upper classes. There's a strong overlap in the sense of sado-masochism, pain as a part of pleasure, and so forth. Their only real rule is that nothing involving animals is allowed.
Very interesting climate map I just came across.
Great find! Very useful for visualising similar temperatures and so forth. It's not complete because it doesn't cover precipitation - but still extremely helpful. Sydney as Buenos Aires (more or less).
The precipitation is something to watch out for. For instance, the western part of what they call South Africa is the Nullarbor, not a region noted for its vegetation ("no trees"), but still very helpful as a shorthand for working out climate.
Question--you had said there was Portuguese settlement in north of Aururia. Is there anything comparable to the expeditions of the bandeirantes of Brazil going on in that part? Australia is full of gold and gems, as well as the potential of getting slaves. All of which would attract the types who be bandeirantes. Despite the brutality of the bandeirantes, it seems easy to romanticise when you combine them with the expeditions to interior Australia as OTL. I'd expect these bandeirantes would be huge in exploring the red heart of Australia.
There's Portuguese
contact with northern Aururia. How much settlement there is, I'm not sure exactly, but not a lot. The climate and soil is not at all suited to European farming, and that's about the only part of Aururia where malaria is natively present. There are Portuguese missions, at least, and a trading route to the gems of the Gemlands (eventually), but this is not a place for wide-scale settlement.
As such, I'm not sure whether an analogue to the
bandeirantes could spring up. Not as much of a local market to bring things back to, and apart from the coastal fringe, this is
not the kind of terrain where you want to piss off the natives. Anyone venturing into the outback who annoys the local population will find themselves dead very quickly - even finding food or water without them is difficult.
So,
bandeirantes as
prospectors, certainly. Whether they'll be slavers I'm much less sure.
I'd love to see them interact with The Hunter. They might despise him--they need a market for those slaves after all, and the Nuttana seem as good as any.
I have some prospective encounters planned between the Hunter, or his forces, and the Portuguese. I didn't specifically have
bandeirantes in mind, but I might see what I can work in.
I suppose the Nuttana too, amongst others, would have their own brave explorers and prospecters with tales of their own to tell; tales which can become legend. I don't think that it'd be the Portuguese or really any other Europeans who'll be putting in the most vis-á-vis exploration of the Outback.
The Nuttana, oddly enough, may be less inclined to go into the interior. They tend to seek out coastal markets where they can trade, and leave the inland trade networks to others. Unlike Europeans, the Nuttana already have some idea of what's in the outback (i.e. lots of desert and not much else), so will see less value in going prospecting in there. They're more inclined to reach into areas where there's an established population they can trade with. So, some competition for the Portuguese for missions along the coast, a few wandering priests into the interior, but not as much else.
I suspect that major inroads into the Outback will come a bit later, and it's very likely that there won't be many Portuguese explorers then. There also isn't any Portuguese settlement nearby for the explorers to originate from, unlike in Brazil.
The Portuguese do have the narrow camel-road to the Gemlands, and a decent trade in muskets with the Hunter, but that was along the eastern, more fertile fringe of the outback, not the depths of the red heart. About the largest Portuguese settlement is at the Gulf of Carpentaria end of that "gem road".
I signed up to AH.com to read this timeline and it's associated threads in full, and to say I was not disappointed would be somewhat of an understatement. The careful consideration you have put into this TL, Jared, is quite simply breathtaking. The bare excellence of the TL itself aside, your use of the forum format as more than just a string of text dumps is exemplary. My hat of course goes off to all the long-users who have engaged Jared in discussion over the years (or weeks, as it has been from my perspective). LoRAG is not just a magnificent work, but sports a magnificent paratext!
Glad you like it.
It's oddly gratifying that the Gunditjmara (or *Gunditjmara, at any rate) are finally getting — in some sense at least — the recognition they deserve. I remember at the age of 14 or 15 being taken to see the ruins of their stone buildings and the water works of Lake Condah, at a time when every history book I had ever seen propounded that no indigenous Australian group built permanent dwellings, that all were nomadic hunter-gatherers, and that if not right, it was vaguely inevitable that they would eventually have been displaced by white settlers. A few years after that someone started fish farming down near Narrawong. The irony was not lost on me.
Lake Condah is very much on my need-to-see list, although I haven't really had much chance to get into the vicinity yet, alas.
This seems like a useful visualization tool for those of use who can't be bothered pouring over tables of rainfall and temperature data (read: me). I can personally attest to the similarity in climate between Portland and San Francisco, although I do wonder if Fremont gets as hot as Melbourne is wont to in late summer.
I'd be interested in some comparisons of precipitation too, both total and time of year, and also year-to-year variability. (It's the year-to-year variability which means that northern Australia is much less farmable than it seems from an annual precipitation chart. Whether there's summer or winter rains can make a lot of difference to which crops can grow, too.
I think it has great utility in figuring out what crops can Aururians import based on their climate (and other factors like soil quality which aren't pictured). In the early age of globalization, it'd be interesting to see the Nuttana for instance importing Indian crops for their own use.
Indian crops would probably amongst the best suited, at least those in the monsoonal belt - which is also a monsoonal climate in northern Aururia. Not as much in the north-eastern seaboard, which is wet but not as pronounced a monsoonal climate.