AHC: Form alternate/new ethnic groups of the world

[Gabingston]

Scotch-Indians
Location: North-Central region of the Commonwealth of America
Languages: English, Scotch-Indian Brogue
Religion: Mainly Protestant, with Catholic and Irreligious minorities, along with some syncretism with local tribal faiths.
Population: Around 500,000, as well as potentially over a million more with some Scotch-Indian ancestry but who don't identify as Scotch-Indian.
Culture: A blend of Scotch-Irish and various Amerindian cultures.
Ancestry: Descendants of Scotch-Irish fur traders and Amerindian women from various tribes (Cree, Ojibwe, Sioux etc.)

 

[sadurreira]

Shindalouites¹:

• Ancestry: Makhlouti Arabs² and Han Chinese
• Language: Shindaloui
• Region: Ardilfarran³
• Religion: Sunni Islam
• Population: 8,570,000
• History: After the conquest of Xindalu in 1056 AH (1647 CE), many Makhlouti Arabs settled in the region to secure Andalusian power in the region, mostly coming from the urban centers of the Ouyoutan Peninsula⁴. Although most of the original settlers of Xindalu converted to Islam, they were never fully Arabized. Over time, the inhabitants of Xindalu coalesced into a new ethnic group, the Shindalouites. Essentially a thoroughly Arabized group that still retains many Chinese cultural traditions, they now make up a little under 20% of the population of Ardilfarran. They speak Shindaloui, an Arabic-based creole that is highly analytic and has many Chinese loanwords. Many exhibit diglossia, due to being Muslims who live in a state with Arabic as its official language. Many feel prideful of their Chinese origins and are enthusiastic about sharing their traditions and history with others. A famous example is the current governor of Ardilfarran, Mḥammad Majnaou⁵, who went on a vacation to China with his family, and reunited with his kinsmen who had stayed in the Old World. Mḥammad claims to be a 54th-generation descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad (PBUH), as do many other Shindalouites of high social status.

Notes:
1. Comes from the Mandarin phrase 新大陸 (Xīndàlù), meaning "New World".
2. Makhlouti Arabs are the ATL equivalent of Latinos, descendants of Muslim Iberian settlers in the Americas who intermarried with indigenous Americans. Some who moved to the Malian colonies in South America might also have significant Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The name derives from the Arabic مخلوط "mixed".
3. Comes from the Andalusian Arabic phrase أرض الفرّان ('arḍ il-farrān), meaning "land of the oven". It approximately represents OTL Baja California and Alta California. The name is inspired by the proposed Old Spanish etymology of calit fornay "hot furnace" for California.
4. ATL Yucatan Peninsula, borrowed from the Tabasco Chontal phrase uyutan "listen to them talk!"
5. A Shindaloui family name derived from their eponymous ancestor Ma Zhanao (馬占鰲), a kinsman of Zheng He who converted to Islam in 1108 AH (1696 CE). He renamed himself Jamal Majanaou, turning his old given name into a surname.

 

[The_Persian_Cat]

Mormones, or Yutanos

Language: North Mexican Spanish; American English
Ancestry: Originally white American; today mixed with various Norteño (Northern Mexican) groups
Religion: Mormonism
Description: Mormonism was founded in the US state of New York, but almost immediately, the Mormons were forced to flee westward. Eventually, they settled in the sparsely-populated region of Yuta (Utah) in Mexico, founding the State of Deseret. While Brigham Young and most of his followers had intended to join the United States as a territory, the Mexican victory in the Mexican-American War made that an impossibility. However, though Mormonism was hardly more welcome in Mexico than in the US, the political upheaval in the Centralist Republic of Mexico allowed Deseret to survive -- the Central Government, various Indian groups, and various factions of Norteños (Mexicans north of the Rio Grande, e.g. Texas and California) were too busy fighting each other to tangle with the well-armed Mormon community in the middle of Yuta.
As the authority of Santa Anna's government and the Catholic Church collapsed in Northern Mexico, Mormons began evangelising to various Norteño communities -- especially those who had reason to hate the Catholic Church's support of the Central Government; or who were white supremacists, and were fighting with various indigenous communities, or wanted to maintain slavery, or whatever. Mormon missionaries were successful in part because they maintained certain connections to the United States (who still had an interest in destabilising Mexico and conquering the West), and supplied American arms to friendly factions. Mormonism never became the preeminent religion anywhere but Yuta, but Mormon communities and waystations can be found on the trails from Tejas to California. Many of the American settlers in Mexico also converted to Mormonism, though not all -- in Tejas (where anti-Central Government sentiment is strongest), the Americans generally adopted Mormonism within a couple generations, with Houston and Austin becoming Mormon strongholds; but in California, the Americans who arrived with the Gold Rush are a much more mixed bag, with many of them sticking with mainstream Protestantism or Catholicism.
Mormonism in this timeline has adopted some Mexican affectations, in addition to its inherent Americanism. For example, the idea that the Garden of Eden is in the Americas has been syncretised with the Aztec myth of Aztlán (or at least, the 19th century Mexican nationalist version of that myth). Mormonism, like Catholicism, already had a formally-organised church with a strict hierarchy-- but in Mexico, Mormons adopted a few Catholic customs like confessionals and veneration of saints. As of 1890, Mormons could conduct their liturgy in English or Spanish, but not Church Latin.

 

[sadurreira]

Khejerites:

• Ancestry: Sumerians and other peoples of Mesopotamia (Persians, Arabs, etc.)
• Language: Khejeri¹ and Khejeri Arabic
• Region: Khejer², Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Oman
• Religion: Shi'ite Islam
• Population: 31,600,000 (20,750,000 in West Asia)
• History: In this timeline, ancient Sumer survived for much longer, consolidating power in southern Mesopotamia and expanding into nearby coastal regions. It remained an independent state in Western Asia for millennia, only succumbing to Muslim forces in the 7th century. However, they gained their independence when the Ummayad Caliphate was toppled. Taking advantage of the chaos, a former Senjite priestess who had converted to Islam (Qashnanna bint Izzagan) would lead a rebellion and establish her own dynasty. Equivalent to Dihya the Berber Queen, she is a well-regarded figure in Khejeri history who laid the foundations for the country. Her dynasty would name itself the Qashnannids after her, and the rulers of Khejer from that point forward all claimed descent from her. Today, the Khejeris are a very proud people who often make mention of their long history. As one of the only peoples on Earth to have a 6,000-year history that can be proven with historical documents, there is actual merit to these claims. Khejer's territory includes OTL southern Iraq, the entirety of the coastal lands surrounding the Persian Gulf, and the eastern coast of Oman. For much of their history, they were engaged in various forms of trade, establishing outposts in many coastal cities of the Indian Ocean that are still home to ethnic Khejeris. One example is the Zanjibar Khejeris of Eastern Africa, who are also quite proud of their roots. A notable celebrity who hails from Khejer is Enanna, a musician widely known throughout the Arab world for her beautiful voice and religious piety.

Notes:
1. A language directly descended from Sumerian that has been influenced by various Iranian and Semitic languages over the centuries.
2. Derived from the Arabic term خِجِرْ khijir "Khejer", from Classical Senjite 𐬑𐬌𐬘𐬌𐬭 xijir "Khejer", from Sumerian 𒆠𒂗𒄀 k-en-gi-r "Sumer, country of the noble lords".

 

[The_Persian_Cat]

Kafali

Language: Arabic, along with various South and Southeast Asian languages
Ancestry: Various; originally the descendants of migrant workers in Arab Gulf States
Religion: Islam -- majority Sunni; minority Shia (mostly just in Bahrain and Kuwait); minority Ibadi (mostly just in Oman)
Description: The Kafala System is the system used to sponsor, govern, monitor, and control migrant workers in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The system requires all migrant workers to have an in-country sponsor (usually their employer), who is responsible for their visa and legal status. This has created a human rights crisis, as employers have been able to take away their workers' passports and abuse them with little chance of legal consequence.
With the outbreak of the Sino-American War and the Second American Civil War, American troops in overseas bases were recalled, and the GCC lost not only its most important trading partner, but the most important patron of its militaries as well. As the Gulf economies collapsed and food shortages began to set in, the Kafala workers revolted. In different countries, the revolts had the assistance of various combinations of the following countries: Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Second Russian Empire, and the Russian Federation. However, make no mistake -- though it spanned six or seven countries, the Kafali Revolution was a single movement, led by a charismatic Islamic holy man named Syed Ghulam Shawkat, who issued a fatwa against Wahhabism and the capitalist greed of the Gulf Arab monarchies.
Though often considered a sideshow in the wider Sino-American conflict, the fall of the various emirates of the Gulf changed the region permanently. The state which emerged was the Kafali People's Sultanate -- a state founded by the descendants of a people in bondage, whose "sultan" is elected by an inner council. The analogy was meant to invoke the Mamluk Sultanates (both of Egypt and of Delhi).
The Kafali state is tolerant of most creeds -- though Islam is its state religion and Sharia is enforced upon its Muslim subjects, it also officially recognises Hinduism and Christianity, owing to the influence of Indian, Sri Lankan, and Filipino migrant workers among the state's founders. What it does not tolerate is Wahhabism -- Barelvi, Deobandi, and other South Asian Sufi organisations hold sway, along with Turkish and other Sufi orders.

 

[Blacklister]

Name: Dacoslavs
Language: Dacoslavic, Romanian
Religion: Eastern Orthodoxy
Ancestry: Slavs, Dacians, Romans
Phenotype: Southeastern European
Population: 300,000-400,000
Distribution: Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia
Culture: Balkan, South Slavic
History: In this timeline, instead of being abruptly abandoned by Aurelian after less than two centuries of Roman rule, Dacia Traiana remains an imperial province even after the Empire's conversion to Christianity in 380. In the fifth century, Dacia becomes the northernmost Byzantine territory, and is able to resist the invasions of the Huns and Gepids as a result, although it still subsequently falls to the Avars and Slavs. Because the Slavic invaders had conquered a well-established civilizational land instead of an unorganized barbaric one, the resultant ethnogenesis forms a unique ethnicity, a hybrid Dacian-Slavic identity distinct from the neighboring Bulgarian and Serbian ones emerges, and Dacoslavia forms as a medieval kingdom north of the Danube, albeit a vassal of Bulgaria for most of its existence. With the fall of the First Bulgarian Empire at the turn of the second millennium, a weakly defended Dacoslavia had only a few decades of existence as a truly independent state before being conquered by the Hungarians, who established a local autonomy for the Dacoslavs given their Orthodox religion and Slavic language in comparison to the Catholic faith and Uralic tongue of their new rulers. Then with the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, a second Dacoslavic state, Timochania, named for the main Slavic tribe which the Dacoslavs originated from, was created as a vassal of the Yekhe Khagan. Timochania met its unfortunate fate in 1438 when Wallachia, which had been recently vassalized by the Ottomans, was provoked by the Sublime Porte to invade and take over its western neighbor. With the Romanians now ruling over the Dacoslavs, the former enacted harsh processes of gradual assimilation and Romanianization on the latter, and as Romanian replaced Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical language of the ecclesiastical sphere in the 16th and 17th centuries, Dacoslavic language and culture further declined. When romantic nationalism spread to the Balkans in the 18th and 19th centuries, it most certainly impacted the Dacoslavs, who realized that they had to work together with the Romanians and other Balkan peoples to liberate themselves from Ottoman occupation if they wanted to survive as a people-group. After Romania unified in 1859, Dacoslavs became represented at all levels of government, and Dacoslavic writings, especially newspapers, flourished all over the community. Fast forward to the present, and Dacoslavs are the third largest ethnic minority in Romania, after Hungarians and Gypsies/Roma. The terms "Dacoslavs" (exonym) and "Timochans" (endonym) are used interchangeably by the international community to refer to the eighth South Slavic nation, and the Dacoslavic language, despite being an Eastern South Slavic tongue closely related to Bulgarian and Macedonian, is actually most similar to Torlakian, the transitional dialect with Western South Slavic (Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian).

 

[SpaceRome]

Name: Dragoumani
Language: Dragouman Creole, Greek/Hebrew (Liturgical), rarely Turkish or Armenian.
Ancestry: A mix of many groups native to the east Mediterranean - mostly Greeks and Jews, but also Arabs, Turks and Cilician Armenians.
Religion: Orthodox Christianity 55%, Rabbinic Judaism 35%, Sunni Islam 5%, Other 5%.
Appearance: Eastern Mediterranean, with olive skin and brown eyes and hair. Blonde hair is uncommon, but not extremely.
Population: 3-4 Million, mostly concentrated around the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Small communities in Italy and North America.
Culture: The Dragoumani are a hybrid formed out of the rich cultural Milieu of the Eastern Mediterranean. Their clothing is an evolution of the traditional ottoman merchant class, with a specific penchant to brightly-colored shoes. The use of body paint -called 'renk-i-Lishan' - was once mandated by ottoman authorities to distinguish Dragoumani, and has since become a cultural marker and point of pride. Dragoumani music is held in high esteem across the middle east and southeast Europe, and the traditional Dragouman Maqam can be found well past their own music. However, due to being an inherently nomadic people, the Dragoumani do not possess a particular style of architecture; their homes are constructed in the local style.
Description: In the aftermath of the anti-Ottoman revolts of the 16th century, the Porte began taking steps to regulate and standardize its control over the vast territories of the ottoman empire. For that purpose, Ottoman authorities began employing the use of a distinct class of middlemen, burghers and traders, to aid the administration of burdensome territories. These middlemen often came from the profession of the Dragomans, interpreters who had already played a key role in the multiethnic Ottoman empire.
The 16th century reforms made these positions hereditary, and soon this burgher-bureaucrat class became culturally distinct from the people they ruled over. The required fluency in Arabic, Persian and Turkish transformed the Dragouman language into today's Dragouman creole, and their near monopoly on intra-Ottoman trade made them fabulously wealthy and powerful. The largest contributors to the Dragouman community were Greeks, Sephardic Jews (especially from Thessaloniki), and Armenians.
The Dragoumani played a significant role in Ottoman policy over much of the empire's history, vying for control of the Porte against the other assorted factions of the empire.
But when the Ottoman empire collapsed, the Dragoumani found themselves rejected by many of the new countries they now inhabited. Viewed with suspicion and hostility by the people they long ruled over, several pogroms against Dragoumani communities erupted during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the balkans where they were viewed as Ottoman collaborators. The Dragoumani concentrated around two centers in this period - most of the Greek and Armenian Dragoumani fled to the new Kingdom of Greece, which accepted the highly-skilled migrants with open arms; most of the Sephardic Dragoumani fled to Palestine, where they played a key role in bridging the gap between the Arab population and the Jewish newcomers from Europe. After the second Great War, most balkan countries - now under Socialist rule - decreed that their Dragoumani communities may return from exile, if they were willing to shed their 'Bourgeoisie lifestyle' and assimilate. Surprisingly, few took their offer until the collapse of the USSR.

 

[An Thuong]

Name: Eugense
Ancestry: The 'nucleus' of the Eugense nation was drawn from Western Germany and the Low Countries. However, they have subsequently inducted people from every race and almost every part of the planet.
Language: Eugense (a constructed language with a base of Limburgish vocabulary, a strange 'hyper-logical' grammar based on that of the Slavonic languages and heavily suffused with vocabulary taken from many major languages including Latin, Greek, Akkadian, Sanskrit and Mandarin.)
Religion: (de facto) Scientism. The Eugense leadership frown on participation in traditional religions.
Appearance: Varies widely in terms of racial characteristics. What they share in common is a fairly tall average height and a set of Aesthetic standards. There are minimum and maximum BMIs for members, musculature is encouraged and most body modifications prohibited. Their strict dietary requirements also mean that Eugense people typically have bright white teeth and are said to maintain a youthful appearance much later into life than the 'dysgense' (a catch-all word referring to anybody who is not Eugense.)
Population: 11,420,000 worldwide. North America, Western Europe, Latin America and Oceania contain the majority of Eugense people, however in the past fifty years they have spread rapidly across the rest of the world, particularly in East Asia.
Culture: Eugense culture is highly ruthless, competitive and cut-throat. For instance, children born to Eugense families are raised within the community with all its benefits. However, if they fail their induction tests when they turn eighteen, their families are expected to abandon them to the 'Dysgense World'. Eugense communities delight in sports and games and affect high culture from across the world.
Brief History:
The concept of the 'Eugense nation' was dreamt up in the 1880's and 90's by Constanz Bauer. Bauer was a staunch critic of German Unification, Nationalism and most especially of Prussia's leading role in both. Bauer's family had once been prominent burghers in his native Aachen, who's privileged role was gradually eroded by the city's incorporation first into Napoleonic France, then subsequently into Prussia and finally the German Reich.
Feeling alienated from the Reich and any sense of belonging to a greater German folk, Bauer instead began to envision a new nation; formed consciously by its members upon a rigid set of ideals rather than through the happenstance of a shared history and geography.
In 1895 Bauer published 'The Eugense: Folk of the Future'. The book was both a repudiation of contemporary romantic nationalism and a manifesto for the creation of a new nation; which he termed the 'Eugense'. It outlined the physical and intellectual standards for entry into such a group; the seemingly contradictory need for both internal competition and outward solidarity within this nation; and a highly ritualistic attitude to self-care and personal development.
By the end of the year a few dozen people had been inducted into the first Eugense community in Aachen. They were drawn from the city's middle classes, many with remote ancestry from the formerly great families of the Free City. To be inducted, one had to pass a physical examination which determined them to be of a 'healthy build' followed by tests which supposedly determined intelligence. Roughly a third of those who applied were inducted, though Bauer and his disciples maintained that as few as 3-5% of the ordinary population were capable of passing.
The German Authorities were hostile to the Eugense due to their rejection of Nationalism and immediately sent some of their brightest agents to act as moles within the group. However, an alarming number of agents defected to the Eugense or else were discovered. The few genuine reports which filtered through to the state revealed a group that while fledgling, had a staggering degree of internal cohesion and loyalty.
The Eugense were careful not to draw too much attention to themselves and typically only actively prosletysed among certain social classes and professional groups. They moved slowly into the cities of the Rhine and Low Countries. Bauer was eager to establish cross-border communities and not merely become a cult of the German Middle Class.
By the beginning of the First World War there were approximately one million inducted Eugense people across the world. They were established on five continents; with their farthest flung community located in Auckland. They continued to draw most of their members from the middle classes, lacking the cultural capital to appeal to the truly wealthy, while little interested in reaching the majority of people.
The Eugense leadership, with an ageing Bauer still at the helm, were highly critical of the war, which they deemed pointless. Dying for one's country was considered a mark of stupidity rather than valour and the Eugense were encouraged to avoid military service in any way possible. If service was unavoidable, the Eugense were encouraged to take up non-combatant roles and failing that to deliberately pick up small injuries which would take them away from the trenches.
Weimar Germany proved a fertile breading ground for a rapid spurt in membership. Many former Aristocrats, resentful at the liberal republic in which they now found themselves, were suddenly amenable to the aims of the Eugense. This spurt in membership was also seen in Britain, France and increasingly in the Americas throughout the twenties.
When the Nazis came to power the German Eugense began to flee en masse. While sharing an inclination towards Eugenics, the Eugense's anti-nationalism made them targets of the Nazis. However, many former members of the Eugense nation abandoned it in favour of Nazism. By the time of the war, Eugense people were considered a 'metropolitan bourgeois cult in league with the Jews' and persecuted thusly. Of nearly one and a half million Eugense people in Germany in 1932, around a million left in the earliest years of the Nazi Regime, some 400,000 officially denounced the Eugense in favour of National Socialist Germany and around 90,000 stalwarts were rounded up and sent to the camps.
Despite their antipathy towards the Nazis, the post-war atmosphere across the Western World had become actively hostile to the elitist nature of the Eugense. Between the mid 1940s and early 1980s the Eugense either stagnated or declined in number year on year; even with relatively high birth rates. Eugense-born people of the baby boomer generation were the most likely to abandon the group; which seemingly faced eventual annihilation.
However, the triumph of Thatcherism, Reaganism and Neo-liberalism in the 1980s provided the remaining Eugense with an amenable cultural landscape in which to survive and eventually thrive. A booming Japan also provided a first foothold into Asia; from which they subsequently pushed into Taiwan, Korea and SEA over the next twenty years.

 

[Blacklister]

Name: Caucaso-Romanians, Caucasian Vlachs
Language: Caucaso-Romanian, Caucasian languages, Turkic languages
Religion: Eastern Orthodoxy, Sunni Islam, Shia Islam
Ancestry: Romanized paleo-Balkanites, native Caucasians, Turkic peoples
Phenotype: Southeastern European, Northwest Asian
Population: 500,000-1,000,000 (many of them don’t speak their native language and are assimilated into other Caucasian ethnicities)
Distribution: Caucasus, Eastern Turkey, Iranian Azerbaijan, Romania
Culture: Caucasian, Eastern Romance
History: The Latin presence in the Caucasus dates all the way back to antiquity with the expansion of the Roman Empire in the region, although it was quite limited compared to other parts of Southern Europe. Nevertheless, the initial Roman-era Latin speakers survived Byzantine Hellenization, although they did eventually convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. However, it wouldn't be until the 11th century that the Romance population in the region really started to emerge, with the Byzantines frequently deporting Vlach slaves from the Balkans and resettling them in the Caucasus as punishment for rebellions and insurrections. The deported Vlachs were welcomed by the Georgians with open arms, and greatly contributed to the Georgian war effort against the Seljuks and other Muslim invaders. Another wave of Vlachs took an alternative voluntary migratory route by first going north to Ukraine and then moving south to the Caucasus, essentially migrating along the northern coastline of the Black Sea, although successive Bulgarian, Pecheneg, and Cuman rule as well as frequent conflict with settlers from Kievan Rus played a huge part in pressuring these shepherds to search for a new homeland. Eventually both Vlach groups intermarried over the centuries, resulting in the ethnogenesis of the Caucaso-Romanians, and many of them converted to Islam during Ottoman and Safavid rule, settling in Turkey and Iran. Caucaso-Romanians played a big role in converting some of the Circassians to Christianity, and until the 1800s were subject to the jurisdiction of the Georgian Orthodox Church. With the Russian conquest of the Caucasus and subsequent persecution and deportation of many Caucasian Muslim groups, Aromanians from the Balkans were invited to fill the population gap, who very easily assimilated into the Eastern Romance society already living there. Thousands of Caucaso-Romanians were expelled to Siberia during the Soviet era, and thousands more have been immigrating to the West in search of better economic opportunities since 1991. Contemporary Caucaso-Romanian society is an Eastern Orthodox village-oriented one where familial, clannish, and tribal affiliations trump the concerns of the ethnic group as a whole. Traditional Caucaso-Romanian costume is no different from that of the other Caucasian peoples, with wool hats, leather coats with bullet pockets, and daggers attached to waists being the standard. Unfortunately, after centuries of separation from the Balkan Romance languages, Caucaso-Romanian is no longer mutually intelligible with Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, nor Istro-Romanian, with its grammar and vocabulary heavily influenced by that of the neighboring Caucasian and Turkic languages.

 

[Blacklister]

Name: Kucheans, Kuchans
Language: Kuchean, Uyghur, Mandarin
Religion: Mahayana Buddhism, Sunni Islam
Ancestry: Ancient Tocharians, Indo-Iranian peoples, Turkic peoples, Sino-Tibetan peoples
Phenotype: Eurasian, Central Asian, East Asian, sometimes Southeast Asian, occasionally European
Population: 100,000-200,000
Distribution: China, Central Asia, Mongolia, Russia, India
Culture: Central Asian, East Asian, Tocharian
History: Essentially the premise of this ethnic group is that the ancient Tocharians are not completely assimilated by the medieval Turkic expansion and remain a Buddhist island in a Muslim sea. Over the centuries the survivors of the Tocharians, who would eventually become the contemporary Kucheans, would prove to be faithful and loyal to their Uyghur overlords, forming a unique highly-skilled and well-trained warrior class that was useful in fighting the Tibetans, Chinese, Mongols, and other adversarial neighbors. Eventually just like the Uyghurs the Kucheans would inevitably fall to Qing, Early Chinese Republican, and ultimately PRC rule, suffering from successive waves of Han migration into their autochthonous lands as a result. In the present day, the Kucheans, despite being one of the 57 officially recognized ethnic groups in China, unfortunately suffer from forms of persecution no different than what other minorities in China are currently going through, and the ongoing “Kuchean genocide” has sparked international condemnation and protests, especially from the West, India, Mongolia, and Turkic countries.

 

[Blacklister]

Based on the OTL Yugoslavs and this post:
Name: Zaposlavs
Language: West Slavic languages (Lechitic, Czechoslovak, Sorbian), Zaposlavic (a modernized form of Old Church Slavonic with heavy Polish and Czech influences)
Religion: Roman Catholicism, various forms of Protestantism, rarely Eastern Orthodoxy
Ancestry: Slavs, Germanics, Celts, Balts, Magyars
Phenotype: Central European, Eastern European, sometimes Southeastern European
Population: 600,000-700,000
Distribution: Poland, Kashubia, Silesia, Czechia, Moravia, Slovakia, Sorbia, former East Germany, former Soviet Union, diaspora in Anglo-Saxon countries and Ireland
Culture: Central European, Eastern European, West Slavic
History: Zaposlavs are a West Slavic ethnic group whose national consciousness lies in the former multinational union of Zaposlavia, a federation of the West Slavs who had been oppressed by various Russian, German, Lithuanian, and Hungarian states for centuries. Despite Zaposlavia ceasing to exist after the fall of communism, certain older individuals still hold “Zaponostalgia”, or longing for the glorious past when all West Slavic nations were one and the same. Nevertheless, so-called self-identified Zaposlavs remained a minority in the overall population of Zaposlavia, never reaching more than 2% of the total population; however their numbers were inflated due to historical immigration to the Anglosphere. The origins of Zaposlav identity, or a panethnicity being the merger of seven Slavic peoples (Poles, Kashubians, Silesians, Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks, Sorbs), goes all the way back to the medieval Slavic empire of Great Moravia in the 9th century, which laid at the conflicting frontlines between the Latin Catholic and Hellenic Orthodox worlds. Although the famed inventors of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets, the Byzantine monks St. Cyril and Methodius, attempted to convert the Great Moravians to Orthodoxy by employing liturgy in the Old Church Slavonic language, based on the vernacular of the Thessalonikian Slavs, Frankish-Germanic and Papal pressure ensured that Latin would remain the liturgical language, and that Catholicism would be the Great Moravian state religion. Ultimately Great Moravia fell by the 10th century with the Magyar invasions into Europe and expansion of the Holy Roman Empire, with the ancestors of the Slovaks falling to the former’s rule, while the forefathers of the Czechs and Moravians were subjugated by the latter. Up north, the Polabian Slavs (whom the Sorbs are descended from) were gradually conquered and assimilated by the Germans of the HRE in the 11th and 12th centuries, while at the same time Poland (predecessor state of the Poles, Kashubians, and Silesians) emerged as one of the remaining bastions of paganism in Europe, fiercely resisting any and all Christianization attempts, whether they be Catholic or Orthodox. Come around the 13th century, and we have the Teutonic Order conducting Crusades all over the Baltic Sea to convert the remaining European pagans. While what would become the modern Estonians, Livonians, and Latvians were subjugated by this knightly monastic order, those that would become the contemporary Lithuanians fortunately were powerful enough to resist conquest, and the Old Prussians would become all but extinct in the present as a result of the subjugation. Unfortunately, Poland wasn’t as strong as Lithuania in resisting the Teutonic Order, and it too became no different than modern-day Estonia or Latvia as a fellow German colony. The rise of Lithuania in the 14th and 15th centuries led to Eastern Poland being transferred from Teutonic to Lithuanian rule, while Western Poland (predominantly populated by Kashubians and Silesians) remained under the control of Prussia, and thus grew culturally closer to the German-speaking world (and in turn to Bohemia and Hungary) than to its eastern counterpart (mostly full of Poles). Speaking of Bohemia and Hungary, the Czechs and Moravians in Bohemia remained an integral part of the HRE for 1000 years, while the Slovaks spent a millennium inhabiting Hungary’s northern frontier. Slovaks were temporarily subject to the Ottoman yoke in the 16th and 17th centuries, while Poles formed one of the many constituent nations of the multicultural Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth. By the 18th century, Lithuania-Ruthenia was swallowed up by the rising power of Russia (formerly Moscow), and romantic nationalism was emerging in the Habsburg and Hohenzollern realms. 19th century West Slavic intellectuals envisioned a union of the German-ruled Kashubians, Silesians, and Sorbs, the Austro-Hungarian-ruled Czechs, Moravians, and Slovaks, and the Russian-ruled Poles, free from foreign domination after centuries, called “Zaposlavia”, which became a reality in the 20th century at the end of the Great War and the fall of the three aforementioned empires. However, the new union of Zaposlavia was unstable and rife with corruption, assassinations, and numerous plots by the military to take over the country, including the murder of King Bronislaw I Poniatowski by an agitated member of the German minority, who was provoked by the Nazis in Germany. WWII saw the temporary dissolution of Zaposlavia, occupation of all the constituent kingdoms but Slovakia (which was made into a Nazi puppet state), and killings of millions of Zaposlavs. Fast forward to the 21st century, when Zaposlavia went through several decades of communism as a Socialist Federal Republic and a violent breakup which involved Poland failing to maintain control of the other six republics through genocide, and you have Kashubia, Silesia, Czechia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Sorbia being independent countries free from de facto Polish domination, despite the fact that the union theoretically promised equal representation for all seven ethnicities. Today, the seven countries of the former Zaposlavia have no desires to reunite, as their peoples all realize that being independent but friendly to each other is better for all of them.

 

[Declan]

Name: Yaskinanans, Yaskunanans
Language: Yaskinanan
Religion: Islam(Sunni)
Ancestry: English
Phenotype: Western European(English)
Population: 200,000 -150,000
Distribution: The Yaskinana region of the United States. This region is split by the North-South Carolina border in the eastern part of both states and extends all the way to the Atlantic coast.
Culture: Mostly a mixture of English and Turkish, with some unique cultural innovations
History: In the 1600s, the Ottoman Empire decided to open at outpost in the New World. They built the outpost in 1674 after a brief war with the natives. It was named Yaskınana, in modern Turkish. Anglicized as Yaskinana or Yaskunana. The Ottoman still regarded the New World with complete irrelevance. Yaskinana was only built to have some presence there if the need arised. Consequently they didn’t bother to settle it. They hired British mercenaries to protect it and used migrants from the Virginia colony for labour in the port. Only a handful of Turks, in administration, remained. Secondly, they viewed Yaskinana as a launchpad for Islamic preaching in the New World. Preachers went to all the New World colonies; but the English ones, with their more liberal freedom of religion, were the easiest to operate in.

In 1691, the natives when to war with the Turks again. The ensuing war ended with a Turkish victory and the displacement of the natives from their land. The Ottomans were rather ok with leaving the land unsettled. But at the behest of a convert from Virginia, Yaskinana was opened to other converts who faced harassment in the British colonies. One thing lead to another, and soon the immigration was open to all with the promise of land. This resulted in immigration of the poor from not only the colonies, but some from mainland England as well. The immigration to Yaskinana was virtually exclusively English due to a few factors, chiefly because the British colonies allowed people from Yaskinana to operate relatively freely. It included Christians as well. Despite the influx of Christians, Yaskinana maintained sharia law. As the years progressed, these laws were heightened to increase persecution of Christians, with intent of incentivizing conversion. By and large it worked, by 1770, Yaskinana was 75% Muslim.

As part of the 1691 expansion, the name “Yaskinana” was used for the entire territory and the original outpost was made into a city and renamed. In the 1770s, the Ottomans didn’t really have Yaskinana at the front of the minds. So the British used the opportunity to invade in 1774. This sparked the Anglo-Turkish War of the Americas that overlapped with the American War of Independence and ended in 1780 with the British being expelled from Yaskinana. As a reward for their service against the British, the Ottomans decided the grant autonomy to Yaskinana; in that it would be made a Sultanate under the Ottoman caliph. In 1783, the Sultanate of Yaskinana was born.

The people of Yaskinana had several unique qualities about them. Firstly, the majority spoke a creole of English and Turkish. This is because the authorities forced all migrants to learn Turkish. Towards the end of Ottoman rule, this nameless creole had become the de facto lingua franca and first language to the majority, replacing English and Turkish. Secondly, the Ottomans demanded that all writing needed to be done in the Arabic script. This undoubtedly changed the English that was spoken. As such, the English that merged with Turkish was already very different to the English spoken in a place like Virginia. In 1810, Turkish was replaced as the official language with the creole language, which was named Yaskinanan. Along with that change was the introduction of an Arabic derived script named Envleti which is more friendly to the English elements of Yaskinanan. Culturally, the Turks had introduced things like kebabs and fezzes to the English migrants. This created a mixture of the two. Under the sultanate, it promoted the refinement of the local culture. This included things like creating personal names based on the Yaskinanan language(like the O’Neill is to Irish).

It’s relations with the newly formed United States was frosty over distrust of the larger nation. But it turned bad in 1803 when an incident with some Islamic preachers in North Carolina ended up with the federal government declaring all preachers from Yaskinana as subversives. Things pretty much remained that way until WW1. When the Ottomans joined the war, Yaskinana did too. However, it was not a formal member of the Entente. When the US joined the war in 1917, in simultaneously had to declare war on Yaskinana too. This led to the Yaskinana campaign that ended in July 1917 with the complete occupation of the sultanate. The Treaty of Lyon officially ended the war with Yaskinana. It was the only treaty to not actually have any delegation or signature from the defeated party; because the treaty’s main point was the complete abolition of Yaskinana as an independent country. Its land would be ceded to the US in 1920 to be divided between North and South Carolina. The treaty also imposed harsh reparations to be taken out before annexation; this impoverished the region.

In 1920, the sultanate was annexed. However, the name “Yaskinana” remained for as a regional name for what used to be the sultanate, as the region remained distinct from the rest of the Carolinas. Attempts to assimilate the Yaskinanas ended with extreme violence that led to the governments of both Carolinas to eventually grant Yaskinanan status and allow the public schools in the region to conform to Islamic standards. However, both states enacted laws that resulted in the effective disenfranchisement of the Yaskinanas. It won’t be fully rectified until the 1960s.

In the modern age, secessionism among Yaskinanas is high. The highest among any group in the US. However there’s a growing movement for “internal secession”; the Yaskinana region to break of from either Carolina and form the 51st state. Regardless Yaskinana remains a highly distinct region, separate from Southern culture. It’s a land where the Adhan is common and most signs are in the Arabic derived, Envleti script.

 

[Blacklister]

Basically a Jewish analogue to the OTL Christian Karamanlides:
Name: Khazarlides
Language: Khazarli Turkish dialect
Religion: Khazarli Judaism
Ancestry: Khazars, Anatolian Greeks, Oghuz Turks, Sephardic Jews, Balkanites
Phenotype: Anatolian, Balkan, Caucasian, sometimes Central European
Population: Unknown due to assimilation in host countries, up to several million according to some liberal estimates
Distribution: Israel, Turkey, Balkans, Russia, Western countries
Culture: Jewish, Anatolian, Balkan, Oghuz Turkic
History: The Khazarlides (Hazarlılar) are a Jewish Oghuz Turkic people whose traditional homeland is west-central Anatolia mainly concentrated around Lake Tuz in Ankara, Konya, and smaller neighboring provinces of Turkey. Whether or not they are a subgroup of the greater Jewish nation of an entirely different ethnic group of their own is still up to debate by contemporary historians and ethnographers, but they have a unique culture which differentiates them from other Turkish people, including the unique Khazarli dialect, otherwise known as Judeo-Turkish, which is a variety of the Turkish language written in the Hebrew alphabet with considerable vocabularic borrowing from Hebrew.

Their ethnonym derives from the medieval Khazars, an Oghur Turkic people who established a powerful trading empire in Eastern Europe, the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and Ciscaucasia in the Early Middle Ages that eventually converted to Judaism to secure its independence from its neighbors, the Christian Byzantines and Muslim Arabs. Although the Khazarlides claim direct descent from the Khazars, particularly from Khazar refugees who fled to Anatolia in the 10th century following the destruction of the Khazar state by Kievan Rus, their true ethnic origins are still heavily debated to this day. Another theory conjectures that the Khazarlides are actually descended from voluntary Jewish converts among Anatolian Greeks and Oghuz Turks in the High Middle Ages, who eventually adopted the Turkish language, although this postulate too has yet to be historically confirmed.

Following their emergence in Asia Minor in the 11th century, the Khazarlides eventually abandoned their original Khazar language for Medieval Greek and Old Anatolian Turkish, transitioning from Oghur to Oghuz Turkic, although they refused to convert to Christianity or Islam, retaining their Jewish faith. Despite being religiously Jewish, culturally they assimilated into Seljuk, Rum, and later Ottoman society, adopting many customs of the Oghuz Turks and militarily contributing to the eventual conquest of the Byzantine Empire. In the early modern era, a wave of Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisitions in Iberia came into contact with the Khazarlides, with some Sephardim eventually assimilating into their host Judeo-Turkish population. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, the Khazarlides, along with the Sephardim, Greeks, and Armenians were the richest and most loyal minorities in the Ottoman Empire, controlling much of the commerce, finance, and trade of the Sublime Port, and it was during this time that many of them settled in the Balkans and Crimea, mixing with Ashkenazim/Romaniotes in the former and Karaites/Krymchaks in the former.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire and the spread of romantic nationalism from Western Europe led to a national revival among the Khazarlides, who looked to a glorious medieval past in their ancestral state of Khazaria when they were the masters of the steppe. Many Khazarlides immigrated to Russia, particularly the North Caucasus, which they believed to be a spiritual return to their homeland, in turn living alongside and culturally borrowing from the Cossacks, Circassians, Vainakhs, Mountain Jews, and other North Caucasian peoples, although the vast majority of them remained in the Balkans and Anatolia. Others were some of the first Eastern European immigrants to the United States, in a time when African-Americans didn't even have full rights and non-Protestants were believed to be inherently biologically inferior. And of course, Zionism swept across the Karamanlides like wildfire, with thousands of them taking part in the initial Jewish settlement of Palestine.

Come around the Great War, and with the Ottomans being on the losing side, the Central Powers, mass migrations of Khazarlides from the Balkans to the newly-established Republic of Turkey took place, even if many of them had been peacefully there for hundreds of years. Come around the Second World War, and the Nazi conquests led to even more mass migrations to Turkey. To say nothing of Stalin's brutal deportations of Khazarlides in the North Caucasus to Siberia and Central Asia, as well as the massive aliyah of Soviet Jews to Israel after of the fall of the Iron Curtain at the end of the 1980s. All in all, the Khazarli people had it really rough in the 20th century, being forced to move around all over the place by necessity of the harsh regimes that they lived under.

Today, Khazarlides are well integrated in most if not all countries they live in, whether it be Israel, Turkey, the Balkans, Russia, or their immigrant communities in Western countries. They have a rich cultural heritage stretching back centuries with lots of stories to tell, and have traditions of hospitality where in some cases they treat foreigners even better than they treat themselves!

 

[Byzantion]

Tatarvolk

After the last Mongol invasion by Mönke and Batu Khan into Western Europe the Horde was eventually beaten in a tremendous decade long fight and fell into factions. The Mongols had been raiding deep into Europe even reaching the Atlantic ocean. Lost Mongol contigents rode through European lands, eventually when their horses died off settled down and moved with wagons from one place to another. They slowly started to integrate and survived as small merchants. The Mongol raiders mixed with European folk, their language evolved alongside their ethnogenesis. These wandering ex Mongol troops had been known as ,Tatarvolk' especially in German lands. They evolved a distinct language and culture. They couldn' stay long time in settled places but had been tolerated on marketdays around towns and settlements.

Language: Tatarwelsh (Turkic-Germanic genesis)
Appearance: Central Asian to somewhat European
Religion: Crypto Islamic
Distribution: All parts of HRE, England, France, Burgundy, Spain

 

[Gabingston]

Anglo Africans
Location: Mainly in an alternate Anglophone South Africa (settled by England instead of Netherlands in 17th Century), with smaller populations in other parts of Africa like OTL's Kenya.
Language: English
Religion: Mainly Protestant, with smaller Catholic and Secular minorities.
Population: Somewhere in the range of 50-75 million.
Culture: Derived from various groups of British settlers, whether indentured servants, merchants, Puritans and Scots-Irish, with contributions from both non-British European (mainly French Huguenot) and non-European groups.
Ancestry: Mostly European (90-95% on average), largely from the British Isles but with some amount from continental Europe (in large part the aforementioned Huguenots), with the rest coming from Indian, Southeast Asian, Khoisan and Bantu sources.

 

[The_Persian_Cat]

Amazons
Location: Scythia, Colchis, Pontus, Asia Minor
Language: Amazonian (an Iranian language similar to Scythian, but with a heavy Greek influence on vocabulary)
Religion: Amazonian polytheism, Amazonian Zoroastrianism
Description: The Amazons of Greek mythology -- a nomadic tribal culture from the Pontic Steppes, whose women are wilder than their men. According to legend and lore, the Amazons are the descendants of Ares, but in fact their most important dieties are Artemis and Aphrodite Areia. For the minority of Amazons who are Zoroastrian, they tend to emphasise Anahita (the goddess of water) over Ahura Mazda (the chief god, and god of fire). There are few Amazonian cities -- most Amazons are organised into nomadic hordes, who move from pasture and between cities depending on the season, grazing their flocks, trading, raiding, and extracting tribute. The great exceptions to this are Themiscyra and Sinope -- Greco-Amazonian colonies in Pontus; sort of like what Bukhara and Samarkand would be for the Islamic Turco-Persians. Aside from that, there is Colchis -- a kingdom in modern-day Georgia under Amazonian suzerainty, whose ruling classes have been influenced by their Amazonian overlords (overladies?), and likewise whose culture influences the Amazons (think of how Greek culture influenced the Romans, or how Chinese culture influenced the Mongols).

 

[The_Persian_Cat]

Alexandrines (aka Franco-Egyptians, Napoleonites, "Nabilyun" (Arabic: "Napoleonic"))
Location: Egypt and the Levant
Language: Napoleonic Arabic (a dialect of Arabic with a heavy French influence over vocabulary, plus a few ancient Egyptian words thrown in)
Religion: Majority Sunni Islam; the minority who remained Catholic tend to be found in the ports of Alexandria, Jaffa, and Beirut, where there was a larger European presence anyway.
Description: When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he overthrew the unpopular Mamluk and Ottoman beys, and courted the support of the Egyptian Arab/Coptic majority. He also went out of his way to accomodate Islam -- for example, adopting the name "Ali Bonaparte" and celebrating Mawlid (the Prophet (SAW)'s birthday) with Egyptian Muslim clergy, and allowed rumours to circulate that he was considering conversion to Islam. This never came to pass OTL, and Napoleon was defeated in Egypt -- though he would return to France in glory, crown himself emperor, and embark on campaigns across the continent.
In this timeline, Napoleon finds himself stymied by other ambitious men in France, but gloriously triumphant in Egypt. Seeing no path to career advancement in France, and having established a base for himself in Egypt, Napoleon converts to Islam in earnest, proclaims himself Sultan of Egypt, and is recognised as Caliph of Islam & Commander of the Faithful by the Ulema of Cairo. Like Muhammad Ali Pasha in OTL, he introduces a number of French-style reforms such as a professional army, a standardised tax code, and Western-style education reforms, while also spreading Enlightenment ideals like universal male suffrage. Napoleon, in this timeline, does what Bernadotte did OTL -- he "went native," creating an independent but (mostly) French-aligned state of his own. France in this timeline remains a republic, and one closely tied to the Bonaparte Caliphate, while the Ottomans move closer to Britain in this timeline. Notably, Napoleon receives bay'ah from a few Muslim leaders who are either aligned with France/him, or are anti-Ottoman -- such as Tipu Sultan or the Sharif of Mecca.
Napoleon's French and Italian soldiers largely followed him in converting to Islam, and took Egyptian wives. Their children spoke French and Arabic. These people came to be called "Alexandrines," both for Napoleon's landing at Alexandria, and for Napoleon likening himself to Alexander the Great. Meanwhile, Napoleon patronised the European craze for Egyptology within Egypt itself -- presenting himself not just as a restorer of Islam, but a restorer of Egypt's Classical glory as well. This was controversial (Muslims do not have high opinions of pharaohs and god-kings), but Napoleon's cult of personality (in both Europe and the Arab world) allowed him to get away with a revival of Ancient Egyptian aesthetics, and a renovation of Alexandria in Classical Greco-Egyptian style. His tomb in the Grand Mosque of Alexandria reflects this -- modeled after the Temple of Isis at Philae, with its minarets styled to look like ancient Egyptian columns, and its walls adorned with Qur'anic text in Arabic, French, Greek, and Demotic Egyptian (hieroglyphs being too iconographic for a mosque).

 

[Hayatgheibi]

Not an entirely new ethnic group but WI Melungeons consolidated into an ethnic identity:
Language: Melungeon Creole (based on English w/Native American and African influence)
Ancestry: British, African, Native American
Appearance: Variable, but combines traits of their ancestry
Religion: Protestant Christianity with African/Native American folk beliefs
Culture: Same mixture as their ancestry, but also shares similarities with other Americans
Region: Appalachians of West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee
Population: 1.4 million, of which 2/3rds live in their native region

Descendents of early African and European migrants to the Appalachians who intermarried Native Americans, the Melungeons proved a challenge to the rigid categorizations of Jim Crow. Considered neither white nor black, they largely kept to their own delapidated settlements at the margins of society. Those who could not live off of subsistence or their own communities worked in menial jobs, but pressure from white unions kept them out of the industrial and mining sectors. During the mid-20th century, many villages were demolished under the pretense of slum clearance, forcing some to live an itenerant lifestyle as migrant workers or move to inner-city areas. The Civil Rights movement and War on Poverty brought some improvement to Melungeon communities and enabled some to seek higher education and better jobs. However, the resulting outflux has led to the decline of many settlements. Those who stayed behind have attempted to revitalize their communities through tourism, and some have sought tribal recognition in order to open casinos.

 

[Byzantion]

Sirpski (North-Sea Slavs)

A West Slavic Wendish tribe that settled far West on the Dutch and German North Sea Coasts after a lot of Germanic tribes left in the Great Migration Period. The Sirpski had been known for fishing on shores and living in round villages. During the dark ages the different Sirpski groups and settlements started to develop a common society and sociological system. They eventually adapted a system of rule by noblemen who ruled over the settlements and occasionally met for the Dumowina-Council.
The Sirpski had a common ,Thing' the Dumowina. The Sirpski prayed to their wooden Gods in a pantheon. The main Goddess had been Siva like in many other Polabian tribes.

The Sirpski had to endure reoccuring slave raids by Scandianvian Vikings, eventually their warriors gained a fierce reputation and even counterraided Viking settlements like Haithabu in Schleswig.

Language: Sirpski (West Slavic language with heavy Germanic impact in loan words and grammar

Religion: Traditional Slavic belief system
Location: Dutch and Nothern German Atlantic Coasts
Population: 20.000-30.000

Culture: West Slavic Wendish culture. Fishing and seafood played a major role in their culture.

 

[The_Orthobilly]

Oferlander

• Language: Oferlander Anglish (a dialect of Old English with Irish Gaelic loanwords).

• Ancestry: Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon, with Irish and (some) Cherokee ancestry.

• Religion: Western Rite Orthodox Christianity

• Culture: A communitarian, clannish system centered around tight-knit familial units incorporating aspects of Anglo-Saxon and Irish culture. They maintain a runic alphabet and have their own leader, titled a “Cyning.”

• Space: The modern Appalachian Mountain range, concentrated in the southern region (Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, etc.)

History: The most commonly accepted theory about the ethnogenesis of the Oferlander people is that the group is descended from a group of Anglo-Saxons from the old kingdom of Northumbria who fled the area at the time of William the Conqueror. After first settling in Scotland, the tribes migrated to Ireland where they settled amongst the Irish clans, eventually being recorded in Irish historical annals as “Christians of Saint Cuthbert.” Most peculiar of this ethnoreligious group is their rejection of the Papacy following the Schism of 1054, placing them among the Eastern Orthodox churches in Constantinople and Russia.

During the English conquest of Ireland, the so-called “Irish Saxons” became something of a intermediary group between the conquering English and the native Irish, though their religious inclinations led to conflict with both groups. In time with the settlement of British America, the “Irish Saxons” began a mass migration to the New World and settled in the craggy hills of what they called “Oferland,” but would better be known as “Appalachia.” It was during this time that one Phillip Ludwell III would hear rumors of those in the mountains who carried on the legacy of “Orthodox Britain,” and sought the sect out. It was through his contact with the clans that the Russian Church would further contact them, eventually receiving the disparate tribe into communion with the formal church, even ordaining them a “Ethnarch” to serve them specifically.

The clans eventually would crown a King following American Independence, a war veteran who had taken part in the Battle of Yorktown. This would establish a line that would recognized as equal to Indigenous chieftains, and would serve as a rallying point for the Oferlanders in times of distress.

By the present, the Oferlanders have established themselves as a semi-sovereign nation within the borders of the United States. Thanks in part to lending their men to fight in America’s wars and spearheading the fight against the Coal Barons in the mountains, the clans have become a staple of America’s cultural patchwork, and have heavily contributed to the unique cultural identity of the Appalachian mountain region.