From the "Beyond the Ice Wall" setting, a pretty insane setting about land beyond Antarctica, the Earth being flat (but not really), magic being a thing since 1522 and liberal usage of alternate history to get weird results. If interested here's a discord where we work on the setting, everyone's welcome to contribute.
https://discord.gg/tuUtnuaY
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After the Mexican-American War, Mexico accepts the California Purchase, making the Rio Grande and the 37th parallel the official borders of Mexico and the United States. However, Mexico is still unable to properly secure its northern regions, leaving them with sparser settlement than its northern neighbor and largely neglected, areas like Arizona become largely lawless, with Hispanic settlers, Anglo-American immigrants and Indigenous tribes trading amongst eachother and living off of raids across the border into both the United States and other Mexican states. Despite the small economic respite given by the purchase, Mexico was still unable to pay off its debts to the French Empire (Napoleon won the Napoleonic Wars, then got shanked by the Reasoncultists, it's a long story) resulting in a French intervention and the formation of the Mexican Empire under Emperor Oréile Antoine I. Despite his best efforts, Oréile never gains much support for his rule other than from the urban elites in Mexico City, and tensions, small skirmishes and assassinations become a common ocurrence throught the 1860s, 70s and 80s. By 1889, emboldened by French defeats in Europe against the United Kingdom and the Prussian Worker's Republic, US-backed Mexican republicans in Ciudad Juárez under Venustiano Carranza rose up against the Imperial Government and quickly began taking control of several northeastern states. Almost like a house of cards, the Mexican state began collapsing, with local governors, warlords, bandidos, peasant movements and indigenous communities began rising up and taking land for themselves. In the Northwest of Mexico, four main warlord states established themselves in the largely neglected territory: The US-backed Republic of Alta California, with its capital in Los Ángeles, led by Álvaro Obregón, the republic of Baja California, the republic of Sonora, and the loose alliance of settlers, migrants and Indians called Gran Arizona (though many just referred to it as Apachería, in reference to its majority population). By 1901, the conflict between the warlord states intensified as a young José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, most commonly known as Pancho Villa, took control of the state of Sonora, pushed back on Apache raids and peacefully united with Baja California. The Sonoran troops pushed north towards the sparsely populated Alta California, whose meager garrison stood no chance against the more numerous and experienced militias, used to fighting off Indian raids and Imperial forces. As such, president Obregón requested for US help, offering the annexation of all of Alta California (adding it to the US state of California, centered around San Francisco) in exchange for repelling the bandit army. For that purpouse, the United States sent in two small army detachments towards California. 17.000 men marched in from American California, joining the beleaguered Californio forces, while another 10.000 marched from Texas through the so-called "Indian territory of Arizona", occupying the western half of Albuquerque without any resistance and expecting little to no resistance as they marched to occupy Maricopa, the largest city in the region.
They were wrong.
Led by an Apache medicine man named Jerome (Gerónimo in Spanish), Apache and Hopi forces ambushed and harassed the Americans all the way from Albuquerque to Maricopa. Years of experience raiding their neighbors, combined with knowledge of the rough, dry landscape and the refinement of Indigenous magicks ever since the Year of the Black Moon (with native clairvoyants being able to see American forces from miles away, shamans being able to lure detachments away from the main army and into traps with mirages, and the invocation of adverse weather against the invaders) made every step of the way to Maricopa hell for the Americans.
Their arrival in Maricopa wouldn't spell the end of their troubles however, as the city's locals, a combination of Hispanic settlers, American outlaws and native traders, put up stiff resistance to the American force while native guerrillas closed in from the rear. Thanks to the leadership of Joseph Wheeler, American forces were able to take Maricopa and avoid disaster, but that only meant they were now stuck inside Maricopa, besieged by a now much less loose alliance of settlers and Indians. The American invasion ended up forging an uneasy alliance between Sonora and Arizona, and Navajo raiders began moving into Alta California to assist the Sonoran forces.
With the war in California bogged down into a stalemate, Wheeler decided to risk a fighting retreat back to Texas, as help would not arrive from the west. The force was able to return, but it was hounded every step of the way by Arizonan forces, Wheeler himself being captured in an ambush, his scalp being displayed by Geronimo at the demoralized American forces as they crossed the Rio Grande.
With the Texan troops routed, the war was effectively over, the belligerants eventually signing the Treaty of Las Vegas, where the United States accepted the sovreignty of Sonora and Arizona in exchange for the concession of the ports of Los Angeles and San Diego from the Sonorans and three million dollars in compensation from past raids from the Arizonans.
One year after the signing of the treaty, the Mexican Civil War would be considered officially over, save for ocassional skirmishes between the rump Mexican Empire, the southern Democratic Federation of Mexico under one Emilo Zapata, and DFM-backed Cristero guerrillas, opposed to Emperor Oréile's Reasoncultist religion and his laicité policies.
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North America in 1805