Hey guys! I haven't posted a map on here in a long time, but that doesn't mean I've stopped making them! (This is CtrlAltHistory btw, lol, name change.)
This is the map of my DnD campaign world, Palac, in the year 1250 AC (After the Calamity), all nice and digitally drawn out now that everything else is going digital. The players are on the biggest of the three "island" continents, in the mostly-human Tharling Empire (often called Tharlingia or the Tharling Confederation), represented in grey outline. Think the Holy Roman Empire, with that cyan state (Feniam, known for its culture and agriculture), that light green state (Bree, known for its well-trained but small army), and that purple state (Navonne, known for its navy, fisheries, and magical whale oil) being the major players in the Empire.
The big green state next door is the Sylvan Supremacy, an almost-exclusively Elven state that conquered its territory through slow expansionism, but hasn't touched its borders in over 800 years. Now, the Tharling Empire lives in constant militarization of its border, just in case of a sudden, capricious declaration of war by its historic enemy, still led by the same leader after all these years, Lyreisial Amadrias Aquilaen IV, often referred to simply as Dreambringer Aquilaen, or the Dreambringer. Their society is closed off to the outside world, and even trade with foreigners has long since been banned. Only select guests may enter their borders and their mysterious cities, full of wonders of arcane origins, with the exceptions of their tributary states, human societies only allowed to interact with the Supremacy, and no other state, as well as expected to give a grand tribute to the Supremacy every 50 years.
The northernmost continent is mostly populated by humans, dominated by the dual republics of Firriden and Eofirriden, former colonies of Feniam. They struggle in the cold, beset by the white dragons' wrath every spring, that brings with it terrible blizzards and cities in ruins, not to mention the prevention of usual crop-growing. And, beyond that, large swathes of land are home to roving Goliath tribes, who thirst to free their ancestral homes from these human invaders. These republics are run by their respective Elders and Moots, and rely heavily on imports from the Tharling Empire to survive. For this reason, their rocky coast is home to many pirates.
Much better off are the dwarves in Norvador and its fellow states, the brown state in the north and light brown subsidiaries and white non-affiliated states surrounding it. No dragons ravage that part of the land, long since tamed by its dwarven masters. Famed for their brilliant smithing work and love of potatoes, these dwarven kingdoms are run by an ancient clan system and loose feudal structure, even as most other states are centralizing. They don't get along well with anyone, really. Not even themselves.
The southern two continents are a bit of a mystery to my players, and aren't nearly as fleshed out. I do know that the big state the color of the United States is called Ma-Ra, and is a federal collection of states with an elected King, who lives in a literal moving capital (the famed Walking City of Iora). The big southern federation in red is a hobgoblin state with a society modeled after Imperial Japan called Shogamir, which is currently suffering under a lich problem, modelled by that green-ish-grey "fog." Between Ma-Ra and Shogamir is the sparsely-populated Dragonborn land of Vayemar, historically enemies of both of the large federations at different points, notably playing one off of the other to ensure their own safety; they are currently allied with Ma-Ra.
That gold country is a sort of Carthage-ish, Phoenicia-ish, Arabia-ish place that facilitates trade between Ma-Ra, Navonne, and the places in-between, tentatively called Pashrem. Their desert-laden land is also home to many exotic spices, hallucinogens, and an ultra-rare vein of quartz that is especially good at conducting arcane energy.
That ended up being much longer and more info-dump-y than I thought it would be, but if anyone has any questions still, I would be absolutely thrilled to answer them. It feels good to be back.
I plan on eventually making a map of the Underdark next, and maybe a real Inkscape map of the Tharling Empire....
Also, if Turkey has been so thoroughly crushed that Italy holds its south coast a la Sykes Picot, shouldn't the Greeks probably have some Anatolian irredenta as well?
@Capuleten That sounds cool! I like the Walking City of Iora. Like Mortal Engines but Tolkienesque fantasy style instead of post apocalyptic cyberpunk.
A map I made two years ago for a world of "realistic fantasy". It probably took me tens of hours or even hundreds of hours to make the whole map.
I don't have a particular name for this part of the world but it would be the main place of my universe. This region is about the size of Europe with North Africa and the Mediterranean in addition.
I had tried to remake the planet in Worlda format but I never managed to remake this map at the Worlda scale...
If you have your opinion on it or any questions I'm ready to answer.
Edit: if anyone would like to help me with the Worlda I would be very grateful.
1. France annexed the Saarland the aftermath of world war 2
2. Israel doesn't come into being and the United Arab Republic is more successfully. The republic has liberalized following the death of Nasser in 1975 but is still authoritarian(Think modern Russia). The republic's expansion is blocked by Monarchies to the West and South.
3. The Shah still rules Iran but faces growing dissent. Semi-Frequent clashes with the United Arab Republic to West and Soviet allied Afghanistan to the East.
4. The Mali federation held together. Currently under a socialist military dictatorship.
5. Biafra has successfully broken off from Nigeria, which has to the turned to the Soviet Union in response. The two nations frequently fight but the insurgency in Yorubaland against Northern and Islamic dominated government prevents any attempt to reconquer Biafra while the presences of Cuban forces prevents any invasion by Biafra to aid Yoruba separatists.
6. Large scale oil extraction along with other natural resources in the 1960s largely by French and West German companies has seen Estado Novo survive with support from the French and West German governments along with Rhodesia and South Africa. The future of the regime is in question as it faces growing democratic movement at home and insurgency in the colonies.
7. Katanga is able to secure it's Independence during the Congo Crisis
8. War makes strange bedfellows. When the Soviet-Backed Idi Amin invaded Tanzania, Portugal invaded Southern Tanzania in retaliation for Tanzanian backing of Mozambican rebels along with sending forces to fight along side the Soviet advised Ugandans in the North. Despite the Portuguese intervention Uganda made only limited gains.
9. The British ceded all Somali inhabited land under it's control to the Somalia. Country is barely holding together since it's defeat at the hands of the Dreg controlled Ethiopia.
10. Taking advantage of the collapse of the kingdom of Laos, Khmer Republic. Thailand moved in to annex parts of both countries. Still faces clashes with the communist governments of both countries and insurgency in the new territories.
11. A Peruvian attempt to retake land lost to Chile in the war of Pacific has backfired.
This is a map I've been working on for awhile now, it's part of series I've deciding I'm going to make about a world with no Roman Empire, instead, the Persian Empire lasts around a thousand years.
I have a detailed writeup in my thread here: Eastern Civilization
General premise though is a Persian conquest of Greece, subsequent wars with Indian tribal states and kingdoms and Carthage and Rome and a few other guys let them expand, and they facilitate a general flow of technology east that leads to us having a powerful Indonesia, some stable Pacific states, and several powerful Chinese states, while the Europeans have developed complex societies but are still basically just poking each other with sticks. The Norse and Huns are about the only real states in Europe, but the rest of Europe isn't so backwards as to be irrelevant.
More than half of the Mayaimi Confederacy's population lives in the New River Metropolitan area, and the non-native population of the Confederacy accounts for more than half of its modern population, making it a minority-native Confederacy. Non-native settlement outside of the New River Metropolitan area is strictly limited and regulated by the Mayaimi Confederacy's Constitution and Government.
This took a while; but here is Christopher Scotese's Pangea Proxima as based on National Geographic's 2018 projection. The link has some cities and their locations which might interest you! Might make a sort of 'beginning of civilization timeline' out of it.
Waters definitely need improvement though, but i'll get to that at some point.
EDIT: Also just realised that i left some of the shallows a tad large in the far east there - i'll correct that at some point
Just my usual cross-posting from the MoTF. This time with I think must be the strangest of my worlds so far, and the one I've put more effort into defining. It even contains a rudimentary conlang. Hope you like it and do comment if you have anything to say!
So, after my Mohist China for the MotM, I return to Ancient China because... cool (in my defence, I've been studying Ancient China, so that may explain why I keep going back there). After having had enough trouble imagine a China with a divergence in the 300s BC... I decided why the heck not push it a thousand years back, and explore that age-long question: what if the Proto-Indo-European migrations took over the linguistic and cultural entities of the Yellow River, as they did in Europe and in the Indus River, among other places? Caution: although I can see some interesting traits arising (in my mind it's mostly red hair and green eyes, but probably some more diversity as well) into the Han population, but they wouldn't be European-looking or whatever. If anything, I'd say they'd be genetically and aesthetically closest to the Uyghur, of all peoples living today.
This map takes us to around half a millenium after the first Indo-Europeans crossed into China, first collapsing the Shang Dynasty and its culture, and taking over the Yellow River Basin as their OTL kin did to the Indus River Valley, spending the next few centuries in a mostly-nomadic fashion, looting the rubble out of the remains of what would have been Han civilisation but, in this timeline, became a rather obscure culture, known as the Yellow River Civilisation (YRC), with only the Oracle Bones inscriptions remaining from their wealth literary culture, the last remnants of what would be Mandarin script. The location of those inscriptions is noted on the map.
The Indo-Europeans in China (who would take the endonym of Saumohou) would also start advancing against the Yue peoples in the Yangtze Rive, and, while settling in those regions, adapting to a more sedentary style, once again as their Indian kin would do across the Gangetic plains, creating small tribal kingdoms that, with time, would grow towards more powerful structures. I like to imagine they'd be developing their own scripts and holy texts as they go along it, creating their own mythology that, while having a common ground with the core-aspects of the Indo-European continuum, would have its own bent shaped by the circumstances of the Chinese country.
As you can see, in the Yangtze River the Saumohou would build pyramids. Why? Because I took some of my inspiration for them in the Tocharians, and the Tocharians had mummies, and my mind associates mummies with pyramids, so pyramids became a curious trait to put on an alien China that also showed signs of both development and sedentarization. I like to imagine that the philosophical development of this China was similar to that of India so, around three centuries before the map takes place, a sort of Buddha-like figure arises spreading a new look on the old faith. I'd like to think this new ideology would be both fiercely monoteistic and very Messianic, to make this China more divergent than OTL China. I couldn't find a way to make that reflect on the map much, however.
Well, after a while, as development rises, the inevitable happens and one of the statelets begins conquering the others, until we reach the logical conclusion of such a trend with the reign of Pusasaumos who is an analogue to Alexander the Great, Chandragupta Maurya and his grandson Asoka, with a healthy mix of the three. I could see him being the third of a generation of conquerors who finishes the conquests by annexing the region around Yekafiz, only to them fiercely embrace the faith of the Buddha-like figure and die, young and childless, leaving his empire to be fought over by a group of diadochi. And, unlike China, this empire would be the largest political entity ever to arise in the region, with fracturing happening in the History over the millenia. Empires rise, that is true, but they will also fall, without ever achieving the greatness of Pusasaumos, who would go down in History as both the greatest conqueror and the greatest missionary of what would become the main religious roots of East Asia, much farther than his temporal borders.
The Austronesian richness of Taiwan will endure in this world, although the religions of its people will quickly fade away into the missionary forces of Pusasaumos, who will make Taiwan the hot-spot of its holy literature (similar to Sri Lanka), and the Yue languages, the family of Cantonese, will be much healthier than in our world. It is a shame that the wealth of the Mandarin languages and its culture are destroyed, but one must imagine the Saumohou will build over them a great cultural wealth of its own right, with some loans even from the ancient society present in the territory they stomped over.
Which brings me to what's either the most interesting or (if I'm being frank) the most deranged thing about this entire entry: I actually went ahead and started working on the Saumohouan language. Of course, with two weeks, even the social isolation wouldn't give me time to finish, but I worked out the basics and established a good system to work with, using mostly roots coming from the Proto-Indo-European and, when those were missing (and to help choosing the right evolution of it) mostly using Sanskrit, Old Iranian, some Kurdish and some Tocharian languages. Every city and every name that appears in the map is logically consistent, having a meaning behind them and a phonetic reason to be as they are. For example, "Pusasaumos" means "Shield of men", an inspiration from Alexander, while "Saumohou" means literally "the human animal", becoming "civilised people" and then the endonym for the speakers of the language. If anyone wants to try to speak the language (I think it's quite accessible to any speaker of a Indo-European language at least), I will just warn that most y's are to be read similarly to its use in Castilian Spanish. The closest sound I remember in English would be in "Yugoslavia". I could try to decipher the rest of the toponymy for you, but honestly that seems too long and since I lost my notes on that I may even fail to do that. But it's there, I swear!
Anyway, this was a rather interesting project to do, Indo-European China is an idea that frequently crossed my mind and since, again, seems like a nightmare to actually research enough to do a TL on it (a timeline starting on the 2nd millenium BC, ha) I thought a map might be a nice way to give tribute to this idea, or at least keep it from rotting my brain. Given time, I might have thought of how this world, this civilisation and language would advance further in History, but two weeks gave me this.
On the map itself, I used an old old map as a base, to give me that gorgeous coastline, since I wanted to really put the "ancient" in "Ancient Chinese POD". Using old map bases are fun and all, until you get to the part of actually using the map to extract information. So there I was, trying to find out through a mixture of archaic French names and Google Maps which city was which on the map and I noticed that the mapmaker had forgotten to trace the last part of the Yellow River, making it be a bit incovenient for a Yellow River Civilisation map. But I was able to eventually get this done, which was good. I also wanted to make a map that had a lot of landscape markers. My maps usually don't even include rivers, and I decided this was a good time to start developing my skills at depicting rivers and mountain ranges and all... While at the same time thinking about the social development of an entire civilisation and its language. Fun, right?
Well, this was a very fun project to develop and God knows that, while this damn isolation lasts, I'll have lots of free time on my hands to make up this kind of thing. So I wouldn't be too surprised if I returned to Ancient Chinese mapmaking, because so far that has proven to be my get-go whenever I decide to challange myself. Cheers
A map I made two years ago for a world of "realistic fantasy". It probably took me tens of hours or even hundreds of hours to make the whole map.
I don't have a particular name for this part of the world but it would be the main place of my universe. This region is about the size of Europe with North Africa and the Mediterranean in addition.
I had tried to remake the planet in Worlda format but I never managed to remake this map at the Worlda scale...
If you have your opinion on it or any questions I'm ready to answer.
Edit: if anyone would like to help me with the Worlda I would be very grateful.
This took a while; but here is Christopher Scotese's Pangea Proxima as based on National Geographic's 2018 projection. The link has some cities and their locations which might interest you! Might make a sort of 'beginning of civilization timeline' out of it.
Waters definitely need improvement though, but i'll get to that at some point.
EDIT: Also just realised that i left some of the shallows a tad large in the far east there - i'll correct that at some point
This is fantastic. I tried my hand at making a similar map a year or so ago, which was terrible, so I'm excited someone else had a go at it! Just short of a climate map, now.
Hey all, given the amount of time I have right now, I decided it would be fun to put together an ISOT WI of a rather romanticized but really kinda unknown period, with massive amounts of inspiration taken from @XFE's fantastic ISOT works. It's my first time doing something like this and boy was it hard! Hope y'all enjoy.
~
Different eras, different places; no matter what happened, however happened, whats known is of nations and fleets have been simultaneously dropped on what appeared to be a virgin earth. Government duties slowed to a complete stop, ships arrived at places that didn’t exist anymore, and for a while it seemed the tumultuous relent of the sea was quiet and tranquil, if only for a moment.
Then the guns and scalbards were picked up.
No Prey, No Pay: A Piracy ISOT
1. The Eyalet of Tripolitania, the Regency of Algiers, the Beylik of Tunis, the Alouite Kingdom of Morocco, the Spanish territories of Melilla and Ceuta and all Barbary pirate fleets from 1715
2. The Republic of Pirates and all Caribbean pirate fleets from 1715
3. The Portuguese possession of Macau, the city of Canton, and Ching Shih's Pirate Confederacy from 1808
4. The Shiekhdoms of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Kalba, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, the tribes in Qatar and Bahrain, and all Persian gulf pirate fleets from 1817
From the ends of the Atlas to the oasises of the Fezzan, the Barbary Coast covered a massive area and was a truly hard region to tame, with its melting pot of ethnicities, blazing climate, and of course, indomitable Sahara desert. However, even on the coast and in the seas where the mild Mediterranean climate breezed through came a new (and arguably worse) danger, and those of the Barbary corsairs. The endless razzias, raiding and campaigning against coastal settlements, made the pirates the Frenchman's hex and the Spaniard's bane.
When the Great Relocation (was what most people called it) happened, Morocco had been under a weak Alaouite Ismail bin Sharif, whose support of any Bedouin or Berber tribe he had none. It was dark times for Morocco for the first few decades; its said his rule was extinguished when a single Berber gentleman simply trotted to Fez and assassinated bin Sharif on the spot. His large slave population, the one that had supported his feeble rule, dispersed, and Morocco fell into factions of the once-again powerful tribes, and one man needed to stand up.
That man was Ahmed ben Abdellah ad-Dila'i. Being the grandson of a rival sultan of Ismail, he had been cast into exile into the Sahara Occidental, but came along with the Relocation. Seeing this as a godsend, ad-Dila'i and his already forged alliance of Sanhaja tribes painstakingly rallied other disparate tribes under his banner and became famous for brokering peace among hostile clans. Seeing how now bin Sharif's sons rivaled for the throne, ad-Dila'i decided to strike when the iron's hot. It came when Abdallah, the last son remaining, had shakily claimed title of Sultan with very little legitimacy, Ahmed stormed Fez what he had least expected it, and the conflict was qualmed. Ahmed knew to be more open-minded with the still-strong tribes and granted them large amounts of autonomy, a practice that still persists to this day.
Ahmed's reunification resonated with the other polities that had came along with the ride. Moroccoan pirates, now without villages to plunder, willingly joined as part of his navy to explore and see what else was there (though certainly not privateers, government employed pirates; there was no one else to raid but the Ottomans to the east, and the Ottoman territories that came along could swiftly crush Morocco still if they banded up). The Spanish cities of Melilla and Ceuta (the latter of which was in a month-long siege during the Relocation) heard reports of their home country vanishing, and the Spaniards, along with the Spanish armada stationed at Ceuta, fled north to try to create an emergency government. Ahmed, being still the renowned peace-broker, allowed the Spanish to take refuge near the northern Iberian coast, while the rest of Iberia would be under Moroccoan nominal control.
Things were quite different in the Ottoman realms. For one, the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire proper was very concerning for the Ottoman officials, and whats more now they were at the mercy of three large and very unforgiving states that was still barely under Ottoman control. Even so, life continued; the remaining Turks, now very paranoid of their legitimacy in the realms, called for a reconstruction of Istanbul. However, the economy dipped hard as the corsairs began came back empty-handed with empty shackles and no slaves to count.
Algiers, whose economy depended on this lucrative trade, began to implode as overworked European slave revolts became common. Warlords began to fester on the edges of Algiers, and about six years into the Relocation saw the Ottoman presence in Algiers ejected. However, with their own Ahmed-figure, Algiers would be slowly pieced together in isolation, though to this day Algiers still sorely misses the abundance of the enslavable population in the past.
Tunis fared better than Algiers, even though part of its economy still depended on the previous cargo the corsairs bought back. A re-integration program for the former Barbary pirates was created, and numerous religious madrasas, places of religious study, was erected to preserve the word of Islam. Al-Husayn I ibn Ali, the bey of Tunis at the time, ruled until his death, and many enterprising beys came after.
Tripolitania also had its own slump, but it was by far the better place to go. Most of the administration left the southern portions of the eyalet to the tribes, who would be semi-independent under the eyalet's control. Tripolitania became the Ottoman's pet project, and was soon bolstered to be the most stable and successful. However, under the watchful and steely surveillance of Karamanli Dynasty that took more control of the eyalet, Tripoli shook away Ottoman control violently in four decades and became a fundamentalist watchful state that was mostly authoritarian in all but name.
As Tunis finally overthrew the now barely-clinging Ottoman overlords in sixty years, all the former states signed a pact with the now rump Ottoman Empire in Istanbul that a checks and balances system would now be imposed on the successor states, and Morocco had its hand forced to agree to it as well. This method, though very simple and a bit unorthodox for the realms, would work very well and stave off any civil war in any state for the forseeable future. Many of the remaining pirate corsairs were recruited into large colonization efforts coordinated by the three states (though individual colonization is still something to be figured out by the states themselves), including a massive funneling revenue into rebuilding Mecca, and one Sultanate of Egypt (created by a joint effort by the three states), who is now independent but was a great investment for merchants and farmers alike. Now as the prosperous international center for trade with the other states around the world, with the cities of Fez, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli boasting massive populations and becoming a central hub for commerce. Maybe like what Ahmed had first thought of when they were thrown onto this unforgiving world with vast potential, the Relocation really was a godsend.
In 1715 in the Bahamas had a most peculiar state: The Republic of Pirates, an anarchist confederation with its main stronghold in Nassau with some remarkable democratic tendencies. While an enterprising idea and ahead of its time, its relevance dramatically dropped following the Relocation. When the magistrate of the republic, Edward Teach, realized that the Spanish city of Havana was gone when he sailed there, immediately called for a return to Nassau as fast as possible. Relief had taken over Edward when he realized his nurtured state continued to be there, but Nassau was in chaos from the sighting of what appeared to be Spanish and British ships spontaneously vanishing in the horizon, and a small crew of scouts reported Florida was filled with lush vegetation with no traces of human activity.
Without any external pressures on the republic, the barely suppressed rivalry between Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings, two powerful pirates (the former of which having been Edward's mentor), had flared up almost immediately, and it took all of Edward's effort to mend the relations together. He proclaimed in Nassau that a civil war would indeed be the last thing the men of New Providence needed, and that new changes had to be made to how the Republic would be run. In five years, the Pirate Republic would be transformed into the Brethren's Confederacy, a loose polity that worked as a link to the various individual fleets. The once informal Code of Conduct was remolded into an Articles of Confederation-esque Constitution, majority rule for the pirate captains at the time was imposed (though Edward continued to be the loudest voice within it until his death), and a colonization program was set forth to settle the surrounding lands as their precious foreign cargo ships was no more.
More than a few fleets deserted upon hearing the new reforms, including that of Benjamin Hornigold. Hornigold still held the grudge with Jennings and had a soft spot with the British navy, something his comrades didn't share. He, along with a portion of his crew, decided to sail back to England to see if any activity was there, and if not he will start a new reign of Britain. He and his two ships and crew of 400 men left Nassau one and a half years into the Relocation, and they were never heard from again. Some say a typhoon had swept him overboard, others say rogue Barbary pirates overwhelmed and captured the ships. No matter what, there was substantial evidence that Hornigold's men never made it to Britain, and Britain itself would remain untouched until a settlement of British slave escapees is founded roughly seventy years after the Relocation near the site of London.
What followed was a slow transition from sea to land. Coastal villages are founded across the former lands of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Florida. Slavery became a general taboo slowly with descendants of African and mulatto pirates becoming equal with the whites. Some of the Jacobites within the fleets rose to leadership statuses and centralized authority. The ones who were more zealous founded colonies further inland, many of which collapsed and the survivors becoming semi-nomadic herdsmen. Some who wished to retain their old lifestyle began to loot Barbary ships coming from the east, something the Brethren's Confederacy fiercely denied had any connection with.
Today, in the diplomatic arenas, the Brethren's Confederacy is a more minor player compared to the giants of Islam in the Old World, and maybe it preferred to stay that way. The ways of life would be unrecognizable to the pirate who had ruled the seas before the Relocation; the Brethren's Confederacy now had trading and tourism as large pillars of the economy, something that would have been unheard of in the olden days. Only the eldest of men now would sit in a hookah bar or pub in Nassau or Waynetown and talk about the exploits of their ancestors. It was a much more simpler time for sure; but between trading/fishing and plundering/looting, by now most of the Caribbean could almost agree the former is the better case...
The Trucial Coast, formerly known as the Pirate Coast, found itself in a very strange situation following the Relocation. This was a time where the eternally divided emirates and tribes of the Middle East were at each other's throats and ruthless pirates, some of the worst the world has seen until the modern era, truly ruled the Persian Gulf. The British, already exasperated from dealing with depleted supplies by the the pirates, now found themselves cut off from the nucleus of operations in Bombay, and even worse, Britain. Their plans to broker a treaty with the dueling royal families of the Trucial Coast had to be done fast, but without any legitimacy now, the situation just reverted into the status quo, except with no foreign threats it turned to be much worse then before the Relocation.
It would be thirty years without any central administration in these dark times for the Trucial Coast. It was known as the "Eternal Follies" by the remaining British, who was forced to retreat into India where they built a settlement with what remained, and became a name that stuck. Now with the valuable resource-laden British ships gone, Saqr al-Qasimi, Sheikh of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah, ordered his privateer fleets to turn against the other emirates. From what was once skirmishes, now was full out war. No foreigner wanted to participate in the bloodshed that was the Trucial Coast; sheikhs could rise and be deposed in up to six times in a year.
This perpetual state of conflict meant mass migration out of the emirates. Many left to find more peaceful prospects near the Egyptian heartland, where potential was plenty. Others travelled south into the regions of Muscat and Oman which once occupied the one enemy all the emirates had, and some went into the Orient, hoping to make a fortune by starting the spice trade. This made the Arab diaspora massive, with some pirates drafted by foreign navies as mercenaries. Their traces can be found all over the world, from the Wahhabi merchant colonies in the Borneo to the notorious slave-dealers of Humaida, descendants from a powerful Qatari-Saud tribe, stationed in former Sao Tome and Principe.
A "Peacemaker" era followed as foreign embassies decided "enough was enough" and came to attempt to stop the fighting that otherwise impeded a region with much potential. At this point, only three of the original royal families remained, with the rest either completely exterminated or absorbed: Abu Dhabi, ruled by the merchant-driven and wealthy al-Nahyan dynasty; Ajman, though de-facto by the al-Nuaimi but really had the various scatterings of tribal leaders doing the work for them; and Ras al-Khaimah-Sharjah, where at this point the ruthless al-Qasimi and their dreaded pirates ruled supreme. Most of the army reserves have gone depleted for years, and the remaining royal families had planned for an armistice anyway. A series of truces followed, calling for an end to hostility and for an effort to lessen the unprecedented maritime lawlessness that defined this region. Over the years, more of the newer royal families (often breakoffs of the original dynasties or successful leaders for a well off settlement) would sign these truces, leading to a period of rather well-deserved peace within the region. Reconstruction followed, albeit painstakingly; cities like Dubai and Umm al Quwain, battered by torrents of shells, was rebuilt, and infrastructure slowly rebuilt.
Nowadays, the fruits of the reconstruction can be seen in the bustling streets of a rebuilt Dubai and other cities. Many of the al-Qasimi pirates who refused to the agreements of the truces were pacified by the other powers, and in over two centuries can ships pass the Strait of Hormuz relatively safely. From western India onward, the Emirates held the monopoly of spices and trading, bought over by the Cantonese and the Arabs. As a major stopping point for traders coming from the East, the Arab emirates have been blessed with a robust flow of goods. The dune cities of Arabia have now becoming some of the fastest growing cities in the world, and the people look hopefully for the Emirates of the Trucial Coast.
Having been an extremely important geopolitical location for trade and sea lanes, there was no doubt pirates would have taken advantage of the South China Sea. As a result, some of the world's most successful pirates have risen here, including Cheng I and his much more known bride Ching Shih, or Cheng I Sao of the Qing Dynasty. The Relocation had happened when Ching Shih was at the apex of her power, but also where she had the farthest to fall.
The presence of the then-Qing held city of Canton and the Portuguese lease on Macau was a double-edged sword; while this meant their lifeline for foreign ships could be continued for a bit longer, but the lack of the Qing dynasty in general meant the lucrative salt tax imposed on by Ching Shih was now nothing more. Adding to the friction that the Black and the Red Fleets had, times looked hopeless for Shih's Pirate Confederacy. She decided the best course of action was to offer amnesty to the Portuguese governor Bernardo Aleixo de Lemos e Faria before something like a mutiny implodes her fleet completely.
For Macau, Bernardo was not doing well with his formerly quiet possession turned inside out. Food was running out fast, and no further ships, Portuguese or otherwise, came to supply. An emergency lockdown over the city was declared by the Municipal. Canton fared even worse; the Qing mandarins had been overthrown by a very disgruntled Cantonese militia, and Macau needed as much people as possible to grow food and feed their rising population, and by this point any treaty with the rump Qing had been all but thrown out of the window. In about five years, Canton was substantially part of Macau, albeit the most unstable part of it.
Bernando next had to figure out the tricky situation of Ching Shih and her entire fleet offering sudden peace, though not without some terms that'd benefit the confederacy. At the end of the peace talks, Macau's ship armada more than doubled, and while most of the pirates joined the navy, the rest Bernando sent further inland to farm, seeing how most of them came from farming backgrounds and promised benefits that may or may not come. Some complied, but most were furious at the sudden riches to rags situation and displacement. Many of these Cantonese founded small shantytowns outside of Macau proper, and to this day their descendants live in the "Assentamentos", or the Settlements, showing the large financial inequality in Macau today. Disease followed, when a strain of the bubonic plague began spreading through the slums of Bela Vista and Adolfo Loureiro, where the smell of the death of people would characterize those neighborhoods to this day. It was barely stopped through the use of inoculation (Ching Shih had proposed the idea), but by the time it was barely stopped, 5% of people in Macau had passed, and smaller outbreaks would plague the city due to infrequent administration. The emergency lockdown would be lifted after three years, but it would remain in a substantial period of tension until reach with the outside world was made approximately fourty years after the Relocation. In this time, loose administration allowed for three polities to rise in Asia:
The Dàhǎi méngyuē (大海盟约), or the League of the Seas, was a molding of the descendants of three fleets from Ching Shih's confederacy and number of prospective traders. They are a strange reflection of the pirate confederation, but had no interest in looting and plundering and existed as a loose confederacy of coastal city-states that facilitated trade that came through the eastern hemisphere. It's ruled by a Maritime Council of Oligarchs, and is more interested in establishing trade posts across the world then penetrating further inland. There are rumors that some pirates of Chinese descent in some ports to this day are possibly connected to them, though.
The Baaifong Republic, located on the island of Ceylon, was an informal colony by Cantonese merchants following first contact with the Emirates. Almost the entirety of Macau's almost minuscule Indian population is located here, but as a stopping point for trade in the Indian sea, has made it extremely wealthy.
The Kingdom of Viet Nam was the product of the Vietnamese corsairs in the confederacy and the ethnic minority in Macau. The state is rather poor and most of its population practices sustenance farming, but it still exists from the amount of trading that goes through its ports, though its more or less propped up and under the larger Macanese umbrella.
Now, Macau has become a gem of the world, boasting over 500,000 residents and has an urban sprawl that stretches from Shangchuan Island to Pinghai Point, and is one of and perhaps the most diverse cities in the world. Some of the world's major financial headquarters is stationed here, along with numerous smaller trade cantons and guilds that have backgrounds from French to Arab. Despite its location as the farthest corner of a major human civilization, it is truly a rewarding place should one take the time to reach it, and is and continues to be one of the largest cogs for this strange but promising world.
With the roughest of the decades over, humans has learned to pick itself back up and cope with each other for survival. There was still so much out there to explore, and now perhaps humanity has been blessed another chance to start anew. As this collection of states slowly reintegrate themselves as the sole proprietors of the world's economy, many see themselves finally having a breather and finally settle down. However, with the turn of a century brings yet other changes. In Tripolitania, a more open-minded younger population begins to challenge the Karamanli who have sat on their thrones for as long as they have remembered; in Macau-held Cingapura, a large populist revolt threatens Macau's only overseas territory and the safety of the Strait of Malacca; and in the deserts of Arabia, a group of miners break open a stone wall in a cave, only to find a massive rush of slick black liquid shoot at the astonished miners, perhaps a fitting metaphor for whats to come with the dawn of the new century.
Hey all, given the amount of time I have right now, I decided it would be fun to put together an ISOT WI of a rather romanticized but really kinda unknown period, with massive amounts of inspiration taken from @XFE's fantastic ISOT works. It's my first time doing something like this and boy was it hard! Hope y'all enjoy.
~
Different eras, different places; no matter what happened, however happened, whats known is of nations and fleets have been simultaneously dropped on what appeared to be a virgin earth. Government duties slowed to a complete stop, ships arrived at places that didn’t exist anymore, and for a while it seemed the tumultuous relent of the sea was quiet and tranquil, if only for a moment.
1. The Eyalet of Tripolitania, the Regency of Algiers, the Beylik of Tunis, the Alouite Kingdom of Morocco, the Spanish territories of Melilla and Ceuta and all Barbary pirate fleets from 1715
2. The Republic of Pirates and all Caribbean pirate fleets from 1715
3. The Portuguese possession of Macau, the city of Canton, and Ching Shih's Pirate Confederacy from 1808
4. The Shiekhdoms of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Kalba, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, the tribes in Qatar and Bahrain, and all Persian gulf pirate fleets from 1817
From the ends of the Atlas to the oasises of the Fezzan, the Barbary Coast covered a massive area and was a truly hard region to tame, with its melting pot of ethnicities, blazing climate, and of course, indomitable Sahara desert. However, even on the coast and in the seas where the mild Mediterranean climate breezed through came a new (and arguably worse) danger, and those of the Barbary corsairs. The endless razzias, raiding and campaigning against coastal settlements, made the pirates the Frenchman's hex and the Spaniard's bane.
When the Great Relocation (was what most people called it) happened, Morocco had been under a weak Alaouite Ismail bin Sharif, whose support of any Bedouin or Berber tribe he had none. It was dark times for Morocco for the first few decades; its said his rule was extinguished when a single Berber gentleman simply trotted to Fez and assassinated bin Sharif on the spot. His large slave population, the one that had supported his feeble rule, dispersed, and Morocco fell into factions of the once-again powerful tribes, and one man needed to stand up.
That man was Ahmed ben Abdellah ad-Dila'i, the grandson of a rival sultan of Ismail, he had been cast into exile into the Sahara Occidental, but came along with the Relocation. Seeing this as a godsend, ad-Dila'i and his already forged alliance of Sanhaja tribes painstakingly rallied other disparate tribes under his banner and became famous for brokering peace among hostile clans. Seeing how now bin Sharif's sons rivaled for the throne, ad-Dila'i decided to strike when the iron's hot. It came when Abdallah, the last son remaining, had shakily claimed title of Sultan with very little legitimacy, Ahmed stormed Fez what he had least expected it, and the conflict was qualmed. Ahmed knew to be more open-minded with the still-strong tribes and granted them large amounts of autonomy, a practice that still persists to this day.
Ahmed's reunification resonated with the other polities that had came along with the ride. Moroccoan pirates, now without villages to plunder, willingly joined as part of his navy to explore and see what else was there (though certainly not privateers, government employed pirates; there was no one else to raid but the Ottomans to the east, and the Ottoman territories that came along could swiftly crush Morocco still if they banded up). The Spanish cities of Melilla and Ceuta (the latter of which was in a month-long siege during the Relocation) heard reports of their home country vanishing, and the Spaniards, along with the Spanish armada stationed at Ceuta, fled north to try to create an emergency government. Ahmed, being still the renowned peace-broker, allowed the Spanish to take refuge near the northern Iberian coast, while the rest of Iberia would be under Moroccoan nominal control.
Things were quite different in the Ottoman realms. For one, the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire proper was very concerning for the Ottoman officials, and whats more now they were at the mercy of three large and very unforgiving states that was still barely under Ottoman control. Even so, life continued; the remaining Turks, now very paranoid of their legitimacy in the realms, called for a reconstruction of Istanbul. However, the economy dipped hard as the corsairs began came back empty-handed with empty shackles and no slaves to count.
Algiers, whose economy depended on this lucrative trade, began to implode as overworked European slave revolts became common. Warlords began to fester on the edges of Algiers, and about six years into the Relocation saw the Ottoman presence in Algiers ejected. However, with their own Ahmed-figure, Algiers would be slowly pieced together in isolation, though to this day Algiers still sorely misses the abundance of the enslavable population in the past.
Tunis fared better than Algiers, even though part of its economy still depended on the previous cargo the corsairs bought back. A re-integration program for the former Barbary pirates was created, and numerous religious madrasas, places of religious study, was erected to preserve the word of Islam. Al-Husayn I ibn Ali, the bey of Tunis at the time, ruled until his death, and many enterprising beys came after.
Tripolitania also had its own slump, but it was by far the better place to go. Most of the administration left the southern portions of the eyalet to the tribes, who would be semi-independent under the eyalet's control. Tripolitania became the Ottoman's pet project, and was soon bolstered to be the most stable and successful. However, under the watchful and steely surveillance of Karamanli Dynasty that took more control of the eyalet, Tripoli shook away Ottoman control violently in four decades and became a fundamentalist watchful state that was mostly authoritarian in all but name.
As Tunis finally overthrew the now barely-clinging Ottoman overlords in sixty years, all the former states signed a pact with the now rump Ottoman Empire in Istanbul that a checks and balances system would now be imposed on the successor states, and Morocco had its hand forced to agree to it as well. This method, though very simple and a bit unorthodox for the realms, would work very well and stave off any civil war in any state for the forseeable future. Many of the remaining pirate corsairs were recruited into large colonization efforts coordinated by the three states (though individual colonization is still something to be figured out by the states themselves), including a massive funneling revenue into rebuilding Mecca, and one Sultanate of Egypt (created by a joint effort by the three states), who is now independent but was a great investment for merchants and farmers alike. Now as the prosperous international center for trade with the other states around the world, with the cities of Fez, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli boasting massive populations and becoming a central hub for commerce. Maybe like what Ahmed had first thought of when they were thrown onto this unforgiving world with vast potential, the Relocation really was a godsend.
In 1715 in the Bahamas had a most peculiar state: The Republic of Pirates, an anarchist confederation with its main stronghold in Nassau with some remarkable democratic tendencies. While an enterprising idea and ahead of its time, its relevance dramatically dropped following the Relocation. When the magistrate of the republic, Edward Teach, realized that the Spanish city of Havana was gone when he sailed there, immediately called for a return to Nassau as fast as possible. Relief had taken over Edward when he realized his nurtured state continued to be there, but Nassau was in chaos from the sighting of what appeared to be Spanish and British ships spontaneously vanishing in the horizon, and a small crew of scouts reported Florida was filled with lush vegetation with no traces of human activity.
Without any external pressures on the republic, the barely suppressed rivalry between Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings, two powerful pirates (the former of which having been Edward's mentor), had flared up almost immediately, and it took all of Edward's effort to mend the relations together. He proclaimed in Nassau that a civil war would indeed be the last thing the men of New Providence needed, and that new changes had to be made to how the Republic would be run. In five years, the Pirate Republic would be transformed into the Brethren's Confederacy, a loose polity that worked as a link to the various individual fleets. The once informal Code of Conduct was remolded into an Articles of Confederation-esque Constitution, majority rule for the pirate captains at the time was imposed (though Edward continued to be the loudest voice within it until his death), and a colonization program was set forth to settle the surrounding lands as their precious foreign cargo ships was no more.
More than a few fleets deserted upon hearing the new reforms, including that of Benjamin Hornigold. Hornigold still held the grudge with Jennings and had a soft spot with the British navy, something his comrades didn't share. He, along with a portion of his crew, decided to sail back to England to see if any activity was there, and if not he will start a new reign of Britain. He and his two ships and crew of 400 men left Nassau one and a half years into the Relocation, and they were never heard from again. Some say a typhoon had swept him overboard, others say rogue Barbary pirates overwhelmed and captured the ships. No matter what, there was substantial evidence that Hornigold's men never made it to Britain, and Britain itself would remain untouched until a settlement of British slave escapees is founded roughly seventy years after the Relocation near the site of London.
What followed was a slow transition from sea to land. Coastal villages are founded across the former lands of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Florida. Slavery became a general taboo slowly with descendants of African and mulatto pirates becoming equal with the whites. Some of the Jacobites within the fleets rose to leadership statuses and centralized authority. The ones who were more zealous founded colonies further inland, many of which collapsed and the survivors becoming semi-nomadic herdsmen. Some who wished to retain their old lifestyle began to loot Barbary ships coming from the east, something the Brethren's Confederacy fiercely denied had any connection with.
Today, in the diplomatic arenas, the Brethren's Confederacy is a more minor player compared to the giants of Islam in the Old World, and maybe it preferred to stay that way. The ways of life would be unrecognizable to the pirate who had ruled the seas before the Relocation; the Brethren's Confederacy now had trading and tourism as large pillars of the economy, something that would have been unheard of in the olden days. Only the eldest of men now would sit in a hookah bar or pub in Nassau or Waynetown and talk about the exploits of their ancestors. It was a much more simpler time for sure; but between trading/fishing and plundering/looting, by now most of the Caribbean could almost agree the former is the better case...
The Trucial Coast, formerly known as the Pirate Coast, found itself in a very strange situation following the Relocation. This was a time where the eternally divided emirates and tribes of the Middle East were at each other's throats and ruthless pirates, some of the worst the world has seen until the modern era, truly ruled the Persian Gulf. The British, already exasperated from dealing with depleted supplies by the the pirates, now found themselves cut off from the nucleus of operations in Bombay, and even worse, Britain. Their plans to broker a treaty with the dueling royal families of the Trucial Coast had to be done fast, but without any legitimacy now, the situation just reverted into the status quo, except with no foreign threats it turned to be much worse then before the Relocation.
It would be thirty years without any central administration in these dark times for the Trucial Coast. It was known as the "Eternal Follies" by the remaining British, who was forced to retreat into India where they built a settlement with what remained, and became a name that stuck. Now with the valuable resource-laden British ships gone, Saqr al-Qasimi, Sheikh of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah, ordered his privateer fleets to turn against the other emirates. From what was once skirmishes, now was full out war. No foreigner wanted to participate in the bloodshed that was the Trucial Coast; sheikhs could rise and be deposed in up to six times in a year.
This perpetual state of conflict meant mass migration out of the emirates. Many left to find more peaceful prospects near the Egyptian heartland, where potential was plenty. Others travelled south into the regions of Muscat and Oman which once occupied the one enemy all the emirates had, and some went into the Orient, hoping to make a fortune by starting the spice trade. This made the Arab diaspora massive, with some pirates drafted by foreign navies as mercenaries. Their traces can be found all over the world, from the Wahhabi merchant colonies in the Borneo to the notorious slave-dealers of Humaida, descendants from a powerful Qatari-Saud tribe, stationed in former Sao Tome and Principe.
A "Peacemaker" era followed as foreign embassies decided "enough was enough" and came to attempt to stop the fighting that otherwise impeded a region with much potential. At this point, only three of the original royal families remained, with the rest either completely exterminated or absorbed: Abu Dhabi, ruled by the merchant-driven and wealthy al-Nahyan dynasty; Ajman, though de-facto by the al-Nuaimi but really had the various scatterings of tribal leaders doing the work for them; and Ras al-Khaimah-Sharjah, where at this point the ruthless al-Qasimi and their dreaded pirates ruled supreme. Most of the army reserves have gone depleted for years, and the remaining royal families had planned for an armistice anyway. A series of truces followed, calling for an end to hostility and for an effort to lessen the unprecedented maritime lawlessness that defined this region. Over the years, more of the newer royal families (often breakoffs of the original dynasties or successful leaders for a well off settlement) would sign these truces, leading to a period of rather well-deserved peace within the region. Reconstruction followed, albeit painstakingly; cities like Dubai and Umm al Quwain, battered by torrents of shells, was rebuilt, and infrastructure slowly rebuilt.
Nowadays, the fruits of the reconstruction can be seen in the bustling streets of a rebuilt Dubai and other cities. Many of the al-Qasimi pirates who refused to the agreements of the truces were pacified by the other powers, and in over two centuries can ships pass the Strait of Hormuz relatively safely. From western India onward, the Emirates held the monopoly of spices and trading, bought over by the Cantonese and the Arabs. As a major stopping point for traders coming from the East, the Arab emirates have been blessed with a robust flow of goods. The dune cities of Arabia have now becoming some of the fastest growing cities in the world, and the people look hopefully for the Emirates of the Trucial Coast.
Having been an extremely important geopolitical location for trade and sea lanes, there was no doubt pirates would have taken advantage of the South China Sea. As a result, some of the world's most successful pirates have risen here, including Cheng I and his much more known bride Ching Shih, or Cheng I Sao of the Qing Dynasty. The Relocation had happened when Ching Shih was at the apex of her power, but also where she had the farthest to fall.
The presence of the then-Qing held city of Canton and the Portuguese lease on Macau was a double-edged sword; while this meant their lifeline for foreign ships could be continued for a bit longer, but the lack of the Qing dynasty in general meant the lucrative salt tax imposed on by Ching Shih was now nothing more. Adding to the friction that the Black and the Red Fleets had, times looked hopeless for Shih's Pirate Confederacy. She decided the best course of action was to offer amnesty to the Portuguese governor Bernardo Aleixo de Lemos e Faria before something like a mutiny implodes her fleet completely.
For Macau, Bernardo was not doing well with his formerly quiet possession turned inside out. Food was running out fast, and no further ships, Portuguese or otherwise, came to supply. An emergency lockdown over the city was declared by the Municipal. Canton fared even worse; the Qing mandarins had been overthrown by a very disgruntled Cantonese militia, and Macau needed as much people as possible to grow food and feed their rising population, and by this point any treaty with the rump Qing had been all but thrown out of the window. In about five years, Canton was now substantially part of Macau, albeit the most unstable part of it.
Bernando next had to figure out the tricky situation of Ching Shih and her entire fleet offering sudden peace, though not without some terms that'd benefit the confederacy. At the end of the peace talks, Macau's ship armada more than doubled, and while most of the pirates joined the navy, the rest Bernando sent further inland to farm, seeing how most of them came from farming backgrounds and promised benefits that may or may not come. Some complied, but most were furious at the sudden riches to rags situation and displacement. Many of these Cantonese founded small shantytowns outside of Macau proper, and to this day their descendants live in the "Assentamentos", or the Settlements, showing the large financial inequality in Macau today. Disease followed, when a strain of the bubonic plague began spreading through the slums of Bela Vista and Adolfo Loureiro, where the smell of the death of people would characterize those neighborhoods to this day. It was barely stopped through the use of inoculation (Ching Shih had proposed the idea), but by the time it was barely stopped, 5% of people in Macau had passed, and smaller outbreaks would plague the city due to infrequent administration. The emergency lockdown would be lifted after three years, but it would remain in a substantial period of tension until reach with the outside world was made approximately fourty years after the Relocation. In this time, loose administration allowed for three polities to rise in Asia:
The Dàhǎi méngyuē (大海盟约), or the League of the Seas, was a molding of the descendants of three fleets from Ching Shih's confederacy and number of prospective traders. They are a strange reflection of the pirate confederation, but had no interest in looting and plundering and existed as a loose confederacy of coastal city-states that facilitated trade that came through the eastern hemisphere. It's ruled by a Maritime Council of Oligarchs, and is more interested in establishing trade posts across the world then penetrating further inland. There are rumors that some pirates of Chinese descent in some ports to this day are possibly connected to them, though.
The Baaifong Republic, located on the island of Ceylon, was an informal colony by Cantonese merchants following first contact with the Emirates. Almost the entirety of Macau's almost minuscule Indian population is located here, but as a stopping point for trade in the Indian sea, has made it extremely wealthy.
The Kingdom of Viet Nam was the product of the Vietnamese corsairs in the confederacy and the ethnic minority in Macau. The state is rather poor and most of its population practices sustenance farming, but it still exists from the amount of trading that goes through its ports, though its more or less propped up and under the larger Macanese umbrella.
Now, Macau has become a gem of the world, boasting over 500,000 residents and has an urban sprawl that stretches from Shangchuan Island to Pinghai Point, and is one of and perhaps the most diverse cities in the world. Some of the world's major financial headquarters is stationed here, along with numerous smaller trade cantons and guilds that have backgrounds from French to Arab. Despite its location as the farthest corner of a major human civilization, it is truly a rewarding place should one take the time to reach it, and is and continues to be one of the largest cogs for this strange but promising world.
With the roughest of the decades over, humans has learned to pick itself back up and cope with each other for survival. There was still so much out there to explore, and now perhaps humanity has been blessed another chance to start anew. As this collection of states slowly reintegrate themselves as the sole proprietors of the world's economy, many see themselves finally having a breather and finally settle down. However, with the turn of a century brings yet other changes. In Tripolitania, a more open-minded younger population begins to challenge the Karamanli who have sat on their thrones for as long as they have remembered; in Macau-held Cingapura, a large populist revolt threatens Macau's only overseas territory and the safety of the Strait of Malacca; and in the deserts of Arabia, a group of miners break open a stone wall in a cave, only to find a massive rush of slick black liquid shoot at the astonished miners, perhaps a fitting metaphor for whats to come with the dawn of the new century.
