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POD: In the 6th to 9th centuries AD, the proto-Yakuts get an early push north, courtesy of aggressive neighbors. They suffer terrible losses in adapting to the harsh tundra, but as they did in OTL, they survive, and the technological advantage provided by iron and horses enables them to occupy the lower Lena basin.

By the 13th century, they are many and strong: too many, in fact, to easily survive the pressures of the Little Ice Age. They need new territories, and individual clans begin moving east. About 1350 to 1375, they reach the Kolyma.

On the other side are mountains, which are nothing - they've crossed mountains before. But there are also the Chukchi, a warlike people who in OTL were able to stand off the Russians during the 18th century, and who won't simply stand aside for the Yakuts in TTL.

The Yakuts lose the first few battles - they may be better acclimatized than the Russians, but they're also less numerous and less well-armed. But their technology is attractive to the Chukchis, and after a few false starts, Yakut traders begin a process of cultural assimilation. Or maybe a Yakut adventurer manages to install himself as head of a Chukchi clan, and with the aid of loyal supporters, becomes head of a Yakutized Chukchi empire with Yakut blood strong among the upper class. Regardless, the Yakut cultural package reaches the Bering Strait by the end of the 15th century, although the people who carry it there are as much or more Chukchi as Yakut.

Summer, 1519: Aytal crouches in the prow of the boat, cursing his cousin who usurped the clan leadership from him. The winds are strong, the seas heavy and the sky forbidding, and the men are nearly as terrified as the horses and calves trussed in the bottom. But anything would be preferable to living - or more likely dying - under his cousin's rule, and ahead is the eastern land that he has heard of from fishermen. Surely there will be something for him there...

All right, is the above at all plausible, and if so, where does it go from there? Thoughts?
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