Map Thread XIX
- Thread starter water123
- Start date
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It says “32,643 million,” so 32.6 billion. Not sure how it managed to get above the US TTL (well, there’s one obvious advantage over OTL, but I won’t bother getting into it), but maybe the US doesn’t exist, either.
The OP did say that the map was based off of a recent EU4 game.
Ah, that explains it. Now we need to see an ASB world where the laws of physics prevent the existence of any number that 32-bit processing can’t handle.
The point of départements being named after geographical stuff was done deliberately in order to break with the traditions of and ties people had with the old holding of the Ancien Régime. That means that names such as Flandre and Hainaut would not be picked. Flandre would probably be either départment Mer-du-Nord or Lys or even Yser and Hainaut would most likely be département Escaut maybe even Haine.
Or maybe I may call Flandre department of Nord and Hainaut department of Sambre no?
It actually happened another time recently in a Vietnam War thread.
It's interesting to me that you did not include (independent) Luxembourg in this France.
It also has a population of 15 million (far less than OTL 2020) which gives it a per capital GDP of over $2 million with an economy based (judging from the exports on the pie chart) mainly on tropical raw materials. I suspect @Cattette just isn't too concerned with the wonkish 'statistical' details of the scenario (which is fine)
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To set things back on track, here's a new map! The DeviantArt version is here.
Mad Max, a classic franchise from Australian cinema, needs little introduction. And hopefully though this, you might learn a little bit about the setting and lore. As much as possible, I used elements from the various films, from the original to Fury Road (with a big smacking of The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome for good measure), as well as creator George Miller's remarks about the latest movie being around 45 years after the end of civilization and Max's tales being more "James Bond" like in continuity's sake. Granted, there've been some new additions on my end, and some creative liberties, though as much as possible, they don't overshadow the main elements.
At any rate, this is a work of fiction. All rights, including Mad Max, belong to their respective owners.
All that being said, may you ride into Valhalla, shiny and chrome.
My life fades, the vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember the road warrior, the man we called Max. To understand who he was we have to go back to the other time. When the world was powered by the black fuel, and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away....
- An elder of the Great Northern Tribe recounting his testimony to a History Man on the Fall.
No knows for certain what specifically brought down the civilized world. From what's survived, the late 20th Century A.D. provided various causes, which boiled over by the dawn of the 21st. While much has been muddled in both wasteland myth and common knowledge, enough could still be ascertained. At some point, a war in the Middle East had broken out. Backed by the superpowers, few expected what had been a local squabble to touch off a blaze that engulfed them all. The conflict escalated to the point that within a year, the entire region was left desolate and destitute, sparking a collapse of the global economy. The "Peak Oil" fears of experts, over the scarsity of what's come to be called "guzzoline," was only the beginning, however.
Combined with climate change and growing instability, this led to a series of Oil and Water Wars across the globe as the old status quo crumbled. As politicians continued to bicker on, and soldiers died on battlefronts inching closer to home, social unrest intensified. People who once enjoyed more than enough to have their fill soon found themselves wanting even basic necessities. Protests became riots, which in turn became more widespread. Nowhere was really safe, as even in countries like Australia, largely spared from the worst fighting, chaos came anyway. The government resorting to increasingly desperate measures to maintain order, from coupons and rationing to deploying the military in the tumultuous cities. In the Outback, the Main Force Patrol was established to keep the peace over the towns and highways, but strapped for funding its officers could only do so much against the biker gangs and nihilistic mobs rampaging about. It's during this time, the beginnings of the "white-line nightmare" as is sometimes called, that a copper called Max Rockatansky first entered the annals of legend, exacting revenge on those brutal criminals.
All the same, the world fell apart. Atomic war, it's known, finally ensued as the superpowers sought to annihilate the other over who would rule the ashes. Not that it mattered. The waters receded from the droughts and nuclear winter, leading to greater famine. In Australian cities, the lights went out on Wednesday morning, and didn't come back again. There was a whirlwind of looting and a firestorm of fear as people began fleeing into the countryside. Men began to feed on men, while many among the M.F.P. and even the very soldiers who once fought to keep citizens sleeping soundly at night had themselves become marauding gangs, ensuring that no one slept soundly at all. Among the most ruthless being one Col. Joseph Moore, who deserted with his men to carve out his own twisted vision of a new world order. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive in what had become the wasteland. Those who couldn't either died, became slaves and thralls, or worse. So it was, that soon it became all that many survivors knew.
It's been 45 years since the Fall. Many of the nihilistic mobs had died or dispersed in the intervening time, a victim of their own savagery, but those that remained have left a blighted scar over the old Outback. Among the most dangerous of these is the domain under the renegade Col. Moore, who had long since renamed himself the "Immortan Joe." From his Citadel, and with the help of his comrades Maj. Kalashnikov and a demented oilman called the People Eater, he lords over a "civilization" that's part warband, and part cult, his fanatical "War Boys" a threat to even his supposed subjects. Further north, refugees and invading soldiers stranded when the end came had turned into a barbaric collective of "Buzzards," known by their spiked vehicles, a penchant for living underground and their use of Russian. They remain a potent menace to all, though it's said they still fight the last war against the neighboring Devil Dogs, descended from Polynesian and U.S. Navy remnants yet otherwise no different from their ancient enemies. Meanwhile, the children and grandchildren of the corporate executives that once dominated Papua New Guinea had intermingled with the local survivors to form the Konglora Horde, looking to exact vengeance on those who doomed their forefathers to their fate.
Not all of these wasteland "states," for lack of a better term, are brutal. The Great Northern Tribe has come far from its origins as a group of ordinary citizens huddling in a refinery during the early years of the white-line nightmare. Arriving at the coasts to the north and banding with other survivors, they carved for themselves a beacon of sanity amidst a sea of madness. Then, there are Aborigines, which managed to hold out far away from the burning cities. Of them, the Yamatji in what was once the Gascoyne region are the most successful, establishing a light for others like them, and even Whites stumbling into their villages, to follow. The most surprising of all, though, would be the so-called "City of the Lost," also known as either "Tomorrow-morrow Land" or more properly, Sydney. At some point, a group of tribal children and escaping prisoners from Bartertown, a warlord-run city-state that fell prey to either the Buzzards or the Immortan Joe, arrived at the city ruins, who then proceeded to make it a thriving hub for those seeking their way home. Curiously, many of such groups owe their survival to the aid given by the one they call Max. It's unclear how valid these tales are, as if the "Road Warrior," "Man With no Name," "Raggedy Man" and M.F.P. officer are one and the same, he would have to be into his sixties, though given mutations it wouldn't be too outlandish.
The lands in-between these pockets of relative stability, however, are anything but, with the same being said even for those nominally under the more brutal domains. Some variations might be present in what passes for law, such as the the infamous Thunderdome, in which "two men enter, one man leaves." Though more often than not, the same "rules" that dictated the old biker gangs still prevail, for only the stronger or most ruthless could survive. Even if one somehow manages to escape the roving bands or avoid survivalists driven insane by isolation, nature can be just as cruel. For those trying to eke out an existence out here, it's a constant battle against killer dust storms, drought and the ever-present threat of starvation. Gone for many, the days when people didn't act like animals and lived in.
The general circumstances of these times do little to disprove the perception of a broken world. Even in the more benevolent wasteland states, society has regressed to tribal lines in various respects. The average denizen may look the part as well, usually donning animal skins, makeshift fashions and armor, or the ragged remains of old clothes. The English language itself has already begun changing with each regional slang or corrupted phrase mutating it into increasingly unrecognizable forms. Meanwhile, combat has largely devolved to raids or running "road wars" along the crumbling highways, usually fought with crossbows and melee weapons, often made from repurposed tools or scrap. The battered, weathered vehicles often seen in such battles, whether run by the black fuel or jury-rigged to run on biofuels, are seen as highly valuable, with the most "prosperous" of warlords being known for how ostentatious their customized bikes, armored cars or "War Rigs" can be. Of course, there are those with the means to scavenge or manufacture guns and ammunition to any significant degree, most notably seen with Maj. Kalashnikov's "Bullet Farm," giving them a key advantage. To say nothing of those who possess still-functional refineries, skilled mechanics and for those holding onto sanity, crucial knowledge and wisdom from a time long gone. Still, after all this time, guzzoline and water remain as hotly fought over and defended as in days of the Oil and Water Wars.
This much is known, for there are still actual beacons of proper civilization left unbeknown to most, if not all in the wasteland. Among the plans launched by the old leadership before the Fall was Operation Atlantis, or as some derisively called it, "Abbott's Folly." This involved ordering any military and M.F.P. assets still active in the Outback, or rather those who hadn't gone rogue, to fall back to defensible safe zones, and await further orders. The real purpose, however, was to buy time for the wholesale evacuation of the government to Tasmania, which had been been relatively isolated untouched by the chaos. Alongside these officials were loyalist elements of the Australian Army and those citizens deemed "useful" for one day restoring order across the nation. If there were any misgivings among those who took part, few expressed them openly when the end finally came.
Indeed, Australia still breathes, albeit in changed form. Tasmania remains the beating heart of the nation. While it's largely downsized to technological standards comparable to the 1950s, and its population seems constantly at risk of inbreeding, the so-called "Last Bastion" is the most advanced in the known post-apocalyptic world, with access to agriculture, sophisticated energy systems, military-grade equipment and some of the last functional communication arrays in all of Oceania. While most citizens enjoy freedoms on paper, in practice the Australian Army still wields significant influence over people's lives, touting the need to stand above the degenerates beyond as a new Eden, no matter the costs. Meanwhile, the Redoubts in what was Western Australia have held firm, if only paying lip service to the authorities in Hobart. The remnants of the Royal Australian Navy and local police forces fended off the gangs and mobs, creating a peculiar blend of 19th Century pioneer nostalgia and feudalism in all but name, in which the officers have become the new nobility, yet no single "commander" or fief lords over the others. Still, a rugged individualism and a semblance of the pre-Fall world endures here, its homesteads and vestigial highways held together through a reconstituted M.F.P.
While both of these enclaves of another age still long to reclaim their forefathers' country, they've long but given up on resorting to using aggressive means. In earlier years, the Last Bastion sought to turn decrepit overlords against each other, whether through covert missions deep into the wasteland or sending in deep-cover agents to prop up those who could be turned against other threats. Originally meant to deter would-be invaders from discovering their sanctuaries and minimizing undue risk on their military forces, it became clear that this was backfiring, as seen with the Immortan Joe, and that simply waiting for the hordes to wipe each other out was a fool's errand. Still, unwilling to either sterilize the landmass with their weapons or reveal themselves too soon, Commissioner Macaffee II came up with an audacious plan. Educated explorers, disguised as wanderers with information-laden tattoos all over their bodies, would work their way through the wasteland and establish a guild to spread knowledge where none existed. Occassionally, they would report back through radio to convey their findings, but whether or not the reclamation proceeds as planned, their aim to help lay the groundwork for a fallen world to begin again, using the more benevolent tribes as their proxies, has been bearing fruit.
Perhaps it's through those efforts that the tales of Max continue to spread. We know enough that even with the more fanciful stories, there really was such a man, for his exploits could not have been something fabricated wholly out of thin air. Even if he did exist only in the memories of those who claimed to have seen him, giving hope to a land in desperate need of one may perhaps be his greatest legacy.
----
It's not the RDNA-verse, but here's something that came to mind while trying to get my creative juices up and running again. And realizing that no one really made a map cover for Mad Max, why not?Mad Max, a classic franchise from Australian cinema, needs little introduction. And hopefully though this, you might learn a little bit about the setting and lore. As much as possible, I used elements from the various films, from the original to Fury Road (with a big smacking of The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome for good measure), as well as creator George Miller's remarks about the latest movie being around 45 years after the end of civilization and Max's tales being more "James Bond" like in continuity's sake. Granted, there've been some new additions on my end, and some creative liberties, though as much as possible, they don't overshadow the main elements.
At any rate, this is a work of fiction. All rights, including Mad Max, belong to their respective owners.
All that being said, may you ride into Valhalla, shiny and chrome.
----
Mad Max: Embers of theOutback Wasteland
(45 Years After the Fall)
Mad Max: Embers of the
(45 Years After the Fall)
My life fades, the vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember the road warrior, the man we called Max. To understand who he was we have to go back to the other time. When the world was powered by the black fuel, and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away....
- An elder of the Great Northern Tribe recounting his testimony to a History Man on the Fall.
No knows for certain what specifically brought down the civilized world. From what's survived, the late 20th Century A.D. provided various causes, which boiled over by the dawn of the 21st. While much has been muddled in both wasteland myth and common knowledge, enough could still be ascertained. At some point, a war in the Middle East had broken out. Backed by the superpowers, few expected what had been a local squabble to touch off a blaze that engulfed them all. The conflict escalated to the point that within a year, the entire region was left desolate and destitute, sparking a collapse of the global economy. The "Peak Oil" fears of experts, over the scarsity of what's come to be called "guzzoline," was only the beginning, however.
Combined with climate change and growing instability, this led to a series of Oil and Water Wars across the globe as the old status quo crumbled. As politicians continued to bicker on, and soldiers died on battlefronts inching closer to home, social unrest intensified. People who once enjoyed more than enough to have their fill soon found themselves wanting even basic necessities. Protests became riots, which in turn became more widespread. Nowhere was really safe, as even in countries like Australia, largely spared from the worst fighting, chaos came anyway. The government resorting to increasingly desperate measures to maintain order, from coupons and rationing to deploying the military in the tumultuous cities. In the Outback, the Main Force Patrol was established to keep the peace over the towns and highways, but strapped for funding its officers could only do so much against the biker gangs and nihilistic mobs rampaging about. It's during this time, the beginnings of the "white-line nightmare" as is sometimes called, that a copper called Max Rockatansky first entered the annals of legend, exacting revenge on those brutal criminals.
All the same, the world fell apart. Atomic war, it's known, finally ensued as the superpowers sought to annihilate the other over who would rule the ashes. Not that it mattered. The waters receded from the droughts and nuclear winter, leading to greater famine. In Australian cities, the lights went out on Wednesday morning, and didn't come back again. There was a whirlwind of looting and a firestorm of fear as people began fleeing into the countryside. Men began to feed on men, while many among the M.F.P. and even the very soldiers who once fought to keep citizens sleeping soundly at night had themselves become marauding gangs, ensuring that no one slept soundly at all. Among the most ruthless being one Col. Joseph Moore, who deserted with his men to carve out his own twisted vision of a new world order. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive in what had become the wasteland. Those who couldn't either died, became slaves and thralls, or worse. So it was, that soon it became all that many survivors knew.
It's been 45 years since the Fall. Many of the nihilistic mobs had died or dispersed in the intervening time, a victim of their own savagery, but those that remained have left a blighted scar over the old Outback. Among the most dangerous of these is the domain under the renegade Col. Moore, who had long since renamed himself the "Immortan Joe." From his Citadel, and with the help of his comrades Maj. Kalashnikov and a demented oilman called the People Eater, he lords over a "civilization" that's part warband, and part cult, his fanatical "War Boys" a threat to even his supposed subjects. Further north, refugees and invading soldiers stranded when the end came had turned into a barbaric collective of "Buzzards," known by their spiked vehicles, a penchant for living underground and their use of Russian. They remain a potent menace to all, though it's said they still fight the last war against the neighboring Devil Dogs, descended from Polynesian and U.S. Navy remnants yet otherwise no different from their ancient enemies. Meanwhile, the children and grandchildren of the corporate executives that once dominated Papua New Guinea had intermingled with the local survivors to form the Konglora Horde, looking to exact vengeance on those who doomed their forefathers to their fate.
Not all of these wasteland "states," for lack of a better term, are brutal. The Great Northern Tribe has come far from its origins as a group of ordinary citizens huddling in a refinery during the early years of the white-line nightmare. Arriving at the coasts to the north and banding with other survivors, they carved for themselves a beacon of sanity amidst a sea of madness. Then, there are Aborigines, which managed to hold out far away from the burning cities. Of them, the Yamatji in what was once the Gascoyne region are the most successful, establishing a light for others like them, and even Whites stumbling into their villages, to follow. The most surprising of all, though, would be the so-called "City of the Lost," also known as either "Tomorrow-morrow Land" or more properly, Sydney. At some point, a group of tribal children and escaping prisoners from Bartertown, a warlord-run city-state that fell prey to either the Buzzards or the Immortan Joe, arrived at the city ruins, who then proceeded to make it a thriving hub for those seeking their way home. Curiously, many of such groups owe their survival to the aid given by the one they call Max. It's unclear how valid these tales are, as if the "Road Warrior," "Man With no Name," "Raggedy Man" and M.F.P. officer are one and the same, he would have to be into his sixties, though given mutations it wouldn't be too outlandish.
The lands in-between these pockets of relative stability, however, are anything but, with the same being said even for those nominally under the more brutal domains. Some variations might be present in what passes for law, such as the the infamous Thunderdome, in which "two men enter, one man leaves." Though more often than not, the same "rules" that dictated the old biker gangs still prevail, for only the stronger or most ruthless could survive. Even if one somehow manages to escape the roving bands or avoid survivalists driven insane by isolation, nature can be just as cruel. For those trying to eke out an existence out here, it's a constant battle against killer dust storms, drought and the ever-present threat of starvation. Gone for many, the days when people didn't act like animals and lived in.
The general circumstances of these times do little to disprove the perception of a broken world. Even in the more benevolent wasteland states, society has regressed to tribal lines in various respects. The average denizen may look the part as well, usually donning animal skins, makeshift fashions and armor, or the ragged remains of old clothes. The English language itself has already begun changing with each regional slang or corrupted phrase mutating it into increasingly unrecognizable forms. Meanwhile, combat has largely devolved to raids or running "road wars" along the crumbling highways, usually fought with crossbows and melee weapons, often made from repurposed tools or scrap. The battered, weathered vehicles often seen in such battles, whether run by the black fuel or jury-rigged to run on biofuels, are seen as highly valuable, with the most "prosperous" of warlords being known for how ostentatious their customized bikes, armored cars or "War Rigs" can be. Of course, there are those with the means to scavenge or manufacture guns and ammunition to any significant degree, most notably seen with Maj. Kalashnikov's "Bullet Farm," giving them a key advantage. To say nothing of those who possess still-functional refineries, skilled mechanics and for those holding onto sanity, crucial knowledge and wisdom from a time long gone. Still, after all this time, guzzoline and water remain as hotly fought over and defended as in days of the Oil and Water Wars.
This much is known, for there are still actual beacons of proper civilization left unbeknown to most, if not all in the wasteland. Among the plans launched by the old leadership before the Fall was Operation Atlantis, or as some derisively called it, "Abbott's Folly." This involved ordering any military and M.F.P. assets still active in the Outback, or rather those who hadn't gone rogue, to fall back to defensible safe zones, and await further orders. The real purpose, however, was to buy time for the wholesale evacuation of the government to Tasmania, which had been been relatively isolated untouched by the chaos. Alongside these officials were loyalist elements of the Australian Army and those citizens deemed "useful" for one day restoring order across the nation. If there were any misgivings among those who took part, few expressed them openly when the end finally came.
Indeed, Australia still breathes, albeit in changed form. Tasmania remains the beating heart of the nation. While it's largely downsized to technological standards comparable to the 1950s, and its population seems constantly at risk of inbreeding, the so-called "Last Bastion" is the most advanced in the known post-apocalyptic world, with access to agriculture, sophisticated energy systems, military-grade equipment and some of the last functional communication arrays in all of Oceania. While most citizens enjoy freedoms on paper, in practice the Australian Army still wields significant influence over people's lives, touting the need to stand above the degenerates beyond as a new Eden, no matter the costs. Meanwhile, the Redoubts in what was Western Australia have held firm, if only paying lip service to the authorities in Hobart. The remnants of the Royal Australian Navy and local police forces fended off the gangs and mobs, creating a peculiar blend of 19th Century pioneer nostalgia and feudalism in all but name, in which the officers have become the new nobility, yet no single "commander" or fief lords over the others. Still, a rugged individualism and a semblance of the pre-Fall world endures here, its homesteads and vestigial highways held together through a reconstituted M.F.P.
While both of these enclaves of another age still long to reclaim their forefathers' country, they've long but given up on resorting to using aggressive means. In earlier years, the Last Bastion sought to turn decrepit overlords against each other, whether through covert missions deep into the wasteland or sending in deep-cover agents to prop up those who could be turned against other threats. Originally meant to deter would-be invaders from discovering their sanctuaries and minimizing undue risk on their military forces, it became clear that this was backfiring, as seen with the Immortan Joe, and that simply waiting for the hordes to wipe each other out was a fool's errand. Still, unwilling to either sterilize the landmass with their weapons or reveal themselves too soon, Commissioner Macaffee II came up with an audacious plan. Educated explorers, disguised as wanderers with information-laden tattoos all over their bodies, would work their way through the wasteland and establish a guild to spread knowledge where none existed. Occassionally, they would report back through radio to convey their findings, but whether or not the reclamation proceeds as planned, their aim to help lay the groundwork for a fallen world to begin again, using the more benevolent tribes as their proxies, has been bearing fruit.
Perhaps it's through those efforts that the tales of Max continue to spread. We know enough that even with the more fanciful stories, there really was such a man, for his exploits could not have been something fabricated wholly out of thin air. Even if he did exist only in the memories of those who claimed to have seen him, giving hope to a land in desperate need of one may perhaps be his greatest legacy.
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For some added info, the crumpled texture used is taken from here.
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The Confederation of New Burgundy (an EU maintained formula compromise without much power):
-Catholic State of Flandern Brabant (Catholic, Nationalist, Prosperous)
-Republic Socialiste Wallonie (Left Socialist, Bitter Revanchism, contemplates joining France)
-Grand Duchy of Greater Luxemburg (Pleasant, boring, wealthy, too smug for national strive, still recheived the Trier and Bitburg districts to prevent it from becoming too french)
-Bruxelles (most of its hinterland in Wallone-Brabant joined to avoid socialism, some border communities forcefully annexed)
-Utrecht (conservative clavinists and pre 1970 Kingdom of the NEtherlands nostalgics)
-Community of Holland (urban, hip, properous, cosmopolitan, liberal)
-United Friesian Republic (protesant, old style social democratic, mind your own business)
It's actually just a per capita GDP of over 2000$, to be precise 2176.2$, I think, which is in a far more reasonable realm
Nord for Flandre is indeed an option, Sambre for Hainaut would be an excellent second choice but Escaut would remain the principal river so would probably more likely be the pick imo
Sea Water Freezes Over
Sometimes, reform is frowned upon. Other times, it is loved. Often, what seems to be a curse becomes a blessing. And what a blessing the reformations of Charlemagne were for the Frankians. The beginning of Feudalism was no great improvement, however in the modern age the development has proven to have given way to the current Mercantile system, which one must agree is far better than the primitive ideas held in Europe beforehand. They also saw a very large change to diplomacy when it came to heirs, seeing the laws to doing with the inheritance of the empire being codified by Louis the Pious. While Charlemagne only had one son, his son, Louis, had 3. The division of the dominion he and his father had worked so hard on would surely have changed the history of Europe, and indeed, the world profusely. Would Europe have remained divided up until the 1800s of modernity? Would the Byzantine Empire have continued down their descent and fallen to the Saracen horde which so often appeared at the gates of the Theodosian walls? Would the Pyrenees have finally stopped holding back the Andalusians and the Moors, and could all of the Occident fall as well? We may never know.
The succession of the Carolingian dynasty continued. Louis gave way to Lothair, who gave way to a very important (although weak-willed) king, Louis the second. Louis had a strange love for the Eastern Roman Empire. It was a very, very intense love, so much so that the king thought it wise to scrap all historical agreements with the pope and recognise Constantinople as the seat of the continuation of the Roman Empire. While this did anger the Holy See, there was definitely a much, much bigger concern on the horizon for both Rome and Constantinople.
When Islam suddenly exploded into the scene of geopolitics in the early 7th century, no nation knew how to respond. Even today among the most virulent and extreme revanchists, there is still a dream of abolishing the teachings of the Seal of the Prophets, and a true and wider restoration of the Roman Empire. This was a pipedream in the 1200s, when it was first attempted, and it is still a pipe dream now. The Rashidun Caliphate opened the gates to a wider Islamic sphere, however the Umayyad Caliphate was the real shock to the system- the real disturbance in the force that was the Christian world order which had dominated the Mediterranean in the few centuries prior had come from the Umayyads. When they crushed the Visigoths and began to make trans-Pyrenees excursions, it was beginning to seem as if the Papacy was in dire straits. And when the city of Rome was transferred back to the Romans, they were able to use their influence to force the Pontif’s hand and declare a crusade.
The crusade was not very successful. The troops were murdered by the millions, dashed against the Pyrenees, and slaughtered in Syria. The religious fervour had attracted people from all walks of life, from the rich to the poor, peasant to the landlord. They had no military training, so when the soldiers of Rome marched down upon the Abbasid Empire, they found themselves utterly unable to even put a dent in the far more elegant and precise soldiers of the Arabs. While Syria fell back under Christian lands for a time, and even Jerusalem found itself under siege as Baghdad itself began to strain under the immense pressure of the holy war that was taking place. However, the war was fated to not succeed. It was poorly thought out, and more of a power play by the Roman Emperor if anything else- intended to show themselves as the true messengers of the lord, merely advising the Pope on the true desires of the holy father.
The Abbasids were victorious, but they did not find their way out of the war unscathed. The Andalusians, on the fringes of the empire, had no quarrel with the Christians, believing it right and wise and holy to forgive the Christians. And why shouldn’t they? These infidels could not be blamed for believing in a more primitive understanding of the lord Allah- they had never seen the light to begin with. The Iranians, also, began to take up criticism of the court in Baghdad, still blatantly nationalistic and hating the rich Mesopotamians they resided under. A bloody civil war saw the empire fracture- the Iranians flat out left, but the Egyptians and the Andalusians agreed to give at least lip-service to the Caliph (although, most historians call the state of Abbasid Arabia at this point a Sultanate, as the idea of the Caliph having any real temporal power waned into him being more of a figurehead of Islam, outside of Iran, who was too busy converting Indians and being incredibly holier-than-thou). Slowly, the Mediterranean began to settle down, as the conflict between the two sides became more of a competition than anything else. Battle became more antiquated each year, and by 1200 the vicious battle had cooled into minor skirmishes happening every now again at the Byzanto-Arab border. New discoveries were being made, however, as the pillars of Hercules would soon prove to not be the gates to the end of the land after all…
- Status