Foreign and military relations of the Republic of California
Part 2 (of 6): The East
The East, the lands beyond the Sierra Nevada, is home to the quintessential barbarians. The deserts are peopled only by small clans of nomads whose language and way of life mark them as vastly inferior to the civilized standard of the Republic. Beyond the deserts are the empires in Deseret to the west and Arizona to the southwest - barren, uncouth empires whose people practice arcane religions that mark their subjects, too, as barbarians. The Republic essentially has only one gateway to this vast country, the Donner Pass, the main conduit for trade. Smaller passes and less-traveled trade routes cross the mountains in other spots. All of these points are both barriers for keeping out invaders and zones of contact where Californians and outsiders meet for trade and diplomacy.
The Nevadans
The desert clans are the quintessential barbarians. In the rugged but fertile parts of the Sierra Nevada, the people live in scattered self-reliant villages, practicing small-scale horitculture but also heavily relying on the abundant wild produce of the land. Out in the desert, things are more primitive. There, people live in small, mobile kin groups, have a bare-bones material culture, and engage in seemingly endless rounds of petty warfare. Despite these differences, living side by side for centuries has led to a symbiotic relationship between California and the Nevadans, as the outsiders are called.[1]
Religion
Most tribes in the eastern mountains and the nearer deserts have adopted Scientology, after their own fashion. The extremely hierarchical nature of the religion has adapted itself to the less rigid social structure of the Nevadan clans in the form of a female priestly order of Operating Thetans that exists in parallel with the male chiefs and bosses[2] who are the titular clan leaders. Nevadan priestesses come from favored matrilineages that comprise the Nevadan aristocracy, such as it is, and which form the backbone of religious life in the eastern wilds. In many ways they provide most of the day-to-day leadership within the clans, the men coming to the lead only in times of war, which do happen frequently. The scientology practiced in desert camps by illiterate kin groups of tribal priestesses is a long way from the bureaucratic state-run scientology in Sacramento, but the shared heritage gives Californians and Nevadans a common worldview, a common religious vocabulary, and a common identity.
Clientage
Most Nevadans, and other tribes of the region, are linked with the California Republic in some form or another of clientage. Most mountain villages are nominal subjects of the Republic; their political autonomy, really a result of their remoteness, is framed as a special privilege granted by the Governor. Many of these villages pay taxes to Sacramento in the form of a tribute payment collected once or twice a year. Many of the men spend their youthful years serving in auxiliary army units patrolling smaller, less-used passes through the mountains. THese patrols keep the mountains safe from bandits, and when veterans return home they have the skills they need to run the local watch. This security and training justify the tax payments to California, and the system generally works well for everyone. Once in a while, somebody - the Governor, the Guardian, some officials in the bureaucracy - looks around and decides California should do something to rein in these unruly villagers, and forces will move in to impose Gubernatorial law and Republican values. This never ends well for anyone. The villagers relocate to the woods and wage guerrilla war on the invaders; towns are depopulated; soldiers die; and the result is an inevitable return to the status quo ante. Things stay pretty stable in the mountains, because the fact is that the mountain Nevadans are proud to be Californian, but equally proud of the freedoms they enjoy.
The desert clans are even more unruly, but they too have many political links with the Republic. The tribes that cluster near the entrance to Donner Pass, the main route by land into California, are generally loyal clients. They are responsible for much of the carrying trade between California and Utah (see below). In return for this lucrative trade, they are expected to defend California's far eastern frontier. The rowdy desert town of Reno, right at the entrance of the pass, is a central gathering point for these tribes, as well as other caravan traders from further east. A small garrisson of California regulars is there to keep the peace, but clan rivalries flare up every now and again.
FUrther away, most clan chiefs and bosses are nominally clients of the Governor or the Guardian, but these relationships get more tenuous the further out in the desert you go. Many pay small amounts of tribute to the Republic, usually either in kind (meat and milk for the frontier garrissons at the larger oases) or in labor (defending the frontier and occasionally raiding the Republic's enemies). When the Republic is in a weaker state, it must pay these tribes for their help - and this almost always degenerates into paying them for the privelege of not being attacked.
Warfare and Invasions
The threat of war is never far away on the eastern frontier. Most of the time this is a small-scale affair between California's client clan chiefs and their rivals, or perhaps with tribes sponsored by Deseret. Sometimes the garrisons posted to remote oases get involved, but even many of these forces are likely to be auxiliary units recruited from the mountain villages, rather than full-time professional Californian units. Nevertheless, Californians greatly fear the idea of a barbarian invasion from this direction. The regime uses the specter of barbarians at the gates to frighten its subjects into obedience and aquiescing to large taxes for defense.
But the truth is that any tribal confederation strong and disciplined enough to enter the central valley would not be interested in raiding and booty alone, but in taking over the Republic. The origins of the current ruling dynasty lie in just such an invasion. The Scoro clan, recently arrived in the area from parts to the southeast, took advantage of internal strife in the Republic and conspired with the Guardian of the East to attack the capital. The Scoro entered the central valley with several groups of allied warriors. They spent two or three weeks camped just north of Sacramento, but the best evidence shows that they did not engage in wanton rape, pillage and plunder, taking only whatever food from the countryside they needed to feed themselves (which admitedly may have been quite ruinous to local farmers). But the Scoro had their eyes on a bigger prize. Working with various discontented nobles and eunuchs in the city, they entered Sacramento, killed the Governor, and put their own chief in his place. The Scoro spent the next ten years working themselves in to the Republic's aristocracy through grants of land and offices. Within a generation they had put aside most of their tribal traditions and become like any other Californian dynasty, and indeed they were strengthening California's border defenses and frightening their new subjects with tales of the barbarians' cruelty.
The Scoro and earlier barbarian invaders have left some marks on Californian society. Most notable is that the Republic's state church has parallel male and female priesthoods. It is said that all leading Operating Thetans in the Republic were male until the Scoro installed their own leading women as a coequal branch of the church.
Deseret
Trade
Beyond the desert nomads is California's most important eastern rival and trading partner: Deseret, or Utah. Californians consider Deseret to also be a barbarian state because of its turbulent history and foreign religion. California and Deseret maintain a low-volume but lucrative overland trade. The main function of the trade is to meet the Deseret rulers' demand for luxury goods that they cannot produce in their desert home: wine, fruit, fine textiles, clocks, furniture, musical instruments, and other fine things to increase the comfort of the elite. The Desereti lords mostly pay for this with money made from the eastern salt trade; it has little else to offer California.
Slaves are the only commodity that can balance the trade a little; these are mostly captives from the mountains surrounding Deseret or rebels from Wyoming. Eastern slaves fill an important niche at the very bottom of Californian society, and a steady supply of them is necessary as older slaves buy or bargain for their freedom. The military once featured all-slave units, some of them with rather elite training. This changed when one order of army troops, the Byiners (named for their indentures of one billion years), mutinied and seized the throne for a short while. Since then, enslaved troops are divided among regular units of the army and navy.
Warfare
The third governor of the Scoro dynasty, not yet entirely out of touch with his father's barbarian past, got it in his mind to launch a war against Deseret to conquer it for California. He rode east with his army, gathered units of barbarians on the way, and burst into Deseret with fire and sword. The Californian army was successful, but supply lines were too long. The campaign, supposed to be a conquest, became a raid, and the Californians turned back to get home before the heat of summer, laden with captured booty. This was the last time California or Deseret tried to invade each other, and it is generally looked on as a folly, because the spoils barely covered the cost of the campaign. However, the two empires do have confrontations every so often. This stems from California's projecting its power over the desert through its client clans and small oasis garrisons. Inevitably, this infringes on lands or peoples that Deseret considers its own. Proxy wars and desert skirmishes are therefore quite common. Occasionally, at least once in a generation, a round of fighting will be disruptive enough to prompt the Governor to ride forth and deal with it himself. These little wars rarely achieve much but they allow the Governor to put up monumental columns and walls showing him smiting the barbarians and wisely arbiting between allied chiefs and bosses.
The Guardian
The man responsible for all of California's dealings in the east is a powerful official called the Master and Guardian of the Eastern Mountains and Deserts, or more simply, the Guardian of the East. He is responsible for carrying out the Republic's foreign and military policy toward Deseret, the Nevadans, and other eastern barbarians. He has wide authority to make decisions, subject always to the governor's veto.
Installations and Personnel
The Guardian's base is the Donnerfort, a vast fortification high in the Sierra Nevada spanning the Donner Pass. The fortress is believed to be impregnable. No one has ever passed through it who was not invited to do so. From the Donnerfort, the Guardian sends out patrols and raiding parties to defend the Republic from any who might disturb its peace. Just as important, he engages in constant rounds of diplomacy with allied clan leaders, who are often peevish and difficult to please. Generous gifts to favored tribes, along with the bestowal of grandiose titles, are important tools of the trade and keep the Nevadans connected in friendship with California.
Besides the Donnerfort, the Eastern Mountains and Deserts include a number of smaller strong places that are of far less importance. These include forts in some of the lesser passes across the mountains, little used except by local hunters and herders. Most of these are manned by auxiliaries. Also included are the small forts in certain oases and caravanserais along the trade route to Deseret. These are remote, lonely stations whose forces generally serve for terms of two years before being replaced and reassigned to the mountains.
All in all, the eastern army represents close to 50% of the Republic's military strength on land. Adding the nomadic warriors probably puts it at more than 50%. Most units are a mix of aristocratic officers, well-trained Lifers from the peasant class, auxiliary attachments for scouting and reconaissance, enslaved Byiner soldiers with elite training, enslaved laborers, a handful of eunuch officials to manage logistics, and a staff of professionals who assist them drawn from the lower aristocracy and ambitious middle-class families. The exact composition of a unit varies depending on its location and purpose. Desert garrisons consist of at least 50% auxiliaries with some attached nomadic warriors; desert patrol groups are almost entirely made up of nomads with a few officers and Lifers who join them occasionally.
Authority
The Guardian has the responsibility to recruit, maintain, and supply all of these troops and fortifications. He has the authority to enlist troops from designated districts that amount to nearly half of the southern valley. During times of unrest on the borders, he must increase these levies considerably. It is interesting to note that whenever the peasants protest unreasonably large troop levies, they almost always appeal to the Governor to rescue them from the tyrannical actions of the Guardian; the system allows the Governor himself to avoid blame for costly defense projects. The Guardian also is the Republic's main representatives to its subjects dwelling in the free mountain villages of the Sierra Nevada. He collects tribute and coordinates recruitment from these villages for his auxiliary forces.
The one area where the Guardian does not have much independent authority is finance. California's taxes are collected and allocated based on careful central planning in Sacramento. Past Guardians who handled their own finances either allowed the defenses to go into disrepair, or else amassed large private armies and used them to threaten the capital. Therefore, today the central government handles the money to keep the Guardian under control. However, a new Guardian at the start of his term is expected to dip into his own wealth to provide gifts to favored client chiefs. This show of generosity is considered essential to keep the loyalty of tribes who have build strong personal ties with the outgoing Guardian and may be suspicious of the newcomer. Though he has all the power of the Californian state behind him, much of a Guardian's influence comes down to these personal relationships.
Notes
[1] As Californians use it, the name "Nevadans" refers to eastern peoples who practice Scientology, whether they live in the mountains or the desert, and whether they live inside the old borders of Nevada or not. Other more recently arrived tribes who inhabit the land of Nevada but come from different religious traditions are not called by that name.
[2] Boss and Chief are formal terms in Californian diplomacy and indicate chieftains of different ranks.