Winnabago
Banned
To understand this next entry, I’ll need to provide a bit of exposition on Tule culture.
When the Awkarites first arrived under Awkar the Magnificent, it was, you might remember, seen as a victory of the Tule gods (read: diseases) over the invading gods, giving the Tule a bit of godliness themselves.
Because of this, it was considered duty to use this power and make Tule and Tule gods great. But the Tule did not honor the gods by building henges or mounds, like other civilizations were intent to do: no, under Nusagandi they built ships. Priests became powerful merchants with cults of workers to cut down the jungles for boats.
When Awkarite sailors, having abandoned their religion, wandered into the Tule villages, it was seen as highly strategic to have one in your employ. We’ll call them “strategos”. This relationship took three forms (yay, history lessons!):
-A business partnership: as one writer put it, “I pay the gods, and my strategos pays me back”.
-A master-slave relationship
-A patron-client relationship
-A few rare situations in which one sailor played both roles.
This relationship also offered considerable power to women, many of whom could rally a labor force for building ships, as many women were heads of cults (like Nasagundi quickly became).
These highly paid jobs required much education and skill, which meant more demand for strategos as teachers, which meant the strategos were more highly paid, which meant more demand, etc. until the strategos were very wealthy indeed, and knowledge passed through the whole of Nasagundi’s empire well. The weakening of the strategos as more and more people became educated in the art of trade is thought to have contributed to Kuna’s end.
When the empire was reborn as the Tule empire, the strategos again rose to political power, but under a slightly different job: they were proto-accountants, managing the affairs of wealthy traders, and almost none of them were black or Muslim, though everyone knew the best ones were.
So the Crusaders arrived to a prosperous system with a powerful class structure, divided between cultists and what was becoming a thinking upper class. Trade with Hakame brought kola nuts and coca leaves to Tule priests, merchants, strategos, and philosophers, most of whom were allowed to continue to trade under Hakamite rule.
In Columbia, and the other jungle coasts of South America, a new confederation declares war on the Crusaders. Led by the deft Arawak strategos Hairoun, the Western Confederacy launched the first known attempt of guerilla warfare at sea.
Founding the movement known as the Nuchus of Amazonia, his gangs of zealots would board ships and fight to the death. Famously psychopathic and tough, these berserkers utilized every weapon possible at their disposal, and often bit and clawed enemies when they boarded their ships. The Nuchus rendered most of the jungle impossible to conquer, but they were not what defeated the Crusaders: rather, it was the strategos.
The strategos, in fits of patriotism after the capture of Tule, immediately began using their sparse resources deftly and well. Nuchus and other zealots were sent on suicide missions to drill holes in enemy ships. Whenever sailors came to port, the strategos made sure to have at least one sailor be knifed. In popular ports, sharpened tree trunks would be placed underwater to puncture enemy ships. In a word, they fought dirty.
The Hakamites soon began to realize that they were fighting the Vietnam War, and quickly gave up. The fighters marched into Tule to crowds cheering at the liberation of Native America, until they found out exactly what had liberated them: a bunch of fucking scary people.
Tule grumbled, but settled back down into the routine of cultists and scholar-merchants, but the culture’s original fullness was over.
When the Awkarites first arrived under Awkar the Magnificent, it was, you might remember, seen as a victory of the Tule gods (read: diseases) over the invading gods, giving the Tule a bit of godliness themselves.
Because of this, it was considered duty to use this power and make Tule and Tule gods great. But the Tule did not honor the gods by building henges or mounds, like other civilizations were intent to do: no, under Nusagandi they built ships. Priests became powerful merchants with cults of workers to cut down the jungles for boats.
When Awkarite sailors, having abandoned their religion, wandered into the Tule villages, it was seen as highly strategic to have one in your employ. We’ll call them “strategos”. This relationship took three forms (yay, history lessons!):
-A business partnership: as one writer put it, “I pay the gods, and my strategos pays me back”.
-A master-slave relationship
-A patron-client relationship
-A few rare situations in which one sailor played both roles.
This relationship also offered considerable power to women, many of whom could rally a labor force for building ships, as many women were heads of cults (like Nasagundi quickly became).
These highly paid jobs required much education and skill, which meant more demand for strategos as teachers, which meant the strategos were more highly paid, which meant more demand, etc. until the strategos were very wealthy indeed, and knowledge passed through the whole of Nasagundi’s empire well. The weakening of the strategos as more and more people became educated in the art of trade is thought to have contributed to Kuna’s end.
When the empire was reborn as the Tule empire, the strategos again rose to political power, but under a slightly different job: they were proto-accountants, managing the affairs of wealthy traders, and almost none of them were black or Muslim, though everyone knew the best ones were.
So the Crusaders arrived to a prosperous system with a powerful class structure, divided between cultists and what was becoming a thinking upper class. Trade with Hakame brought kola nuts and coca leaves to Tule priests, merchants, strategos, and philosophers, most of whom were allowed to continue to trade under Hakamite rule.
In Columbia, and the other jungle coasts of South America, a new confederation declares war on the Crusaders. Led by the deft Arawak strategos Hairoun, the Western Confederacy launched the first known attempt of guerilla warfare at sea.
Founding the movement known as the Nuchus of Amazonia, his gangs of zealots would board ships and fight to the death. Famously psychopathic and tough, these berserkers utilized every weapon possible at their disposal, and often bit and clawed enemies when they boarded their ships. The Nuchus rendered most of the jungle impossible to conquer, but they were not what defeated the Crusaders: rather, it was the strategos.
The strategos, in fits of patriotism after the capture of Tule, immediately began using their sparse resources deftly and well. Nuchus and other zealots were sent on suicide missions to drill holes in enemy ships. Whenever sailors came to port, the strategos made sure to have at least one sailor be knifed. In popular ports, sharpened tree trunks would be placed underwater to puncture enemy ships. In a word, they fought dirty.
The Hakamites soon began to realize that they were fighting the Vietnam War, and quickly gave up. The fighters marched into Tule to crowds cheering at the liberation of Native America, until they found out exactly what had liberated them: a bunch of fucking scary people.
Tule grumbled, but settled back down into the routine of cultists and scholar-merchants, but the culture’s original fullness was over.