Deluge: A Hard Power World

(Timeline is in the same post if you want to skip my insecure rambling)

Hello all. I’ll make this an impromptu introduction and then just get into the thread quickly so we don’t have to dwell on who the hell I am for the early part of the thread.
I got into AH with the Draka about four years ago. Originally, I just read the book and took it at face value rather than caring too much about the plausibility, but reading the Tvtropes page on the Draka motivated me to track down one of the many pages that talks consistently about the timeline in the back of the book.
By chance I came across Ian’s old Gateway Alternate History website and read the Draka article on there. One critical evaluation later and I had developed an interest AH and history at large that I maintain to this day. I’m far from the idiot I was and much more critical these days, so I sure as hell am not going to emulate the Draka here. I’m kind of fixated on it though, so just excuse that. Deluge is supposed to be sort of the anti-Draka world.
I like to think that I’m well informed on history but not terribly well educated. I probably made a lot of mistakes on this timeline, none of them glaring, I hope, at least. I have a bit of an inferiority complex so I did go over it quite a bit and try to check it with people, but given the area I live in I don’t have very many peers capable of looking it over and pointing out flaws, and I wasn’t part of any online communities that could have provided feedback either.
Honestly, I rely on my ability for exposition to try and justify something if I had the wrong impression. That doesn’t always work I’m aware and sometimes it’s the worst thing to do, so I try to be cautious with it, but I have a tendency to use it as a crutch.
I also tend to have a pessimistic interpretation of humanity, so my interpretations of countries probably act more violent than they did in real life. I try to keep things realistic of course and I believe I’ve mostly succeeded but just keep in mind that countries will go to war a lot in this setting.
As a disclaimer, something that might offend people is my very poor grasp of Serbo-Croatian. I mean no harm, but I lack the time it would take to learn the language and given the backwater area I live in no institution teaches it anyway. I did have a Russian friend who tried his best to help me with the basic construction of Slavic languages but he knew little about the Balkans so there wasn’t a whole lot he could do. Sorry if I’ve butchered your language, it’s the best I was able to do with online translators and reference pages.
Just be gentle, is all I’m asking. I’m kind of new at writing big settings like this, and I don’t believe this timeline should be taken anywhere near as seriously as say, Decades of Darkness, for example.

If hard pressed, I’d say the goal of Deluge is more mechanical than plausibility, though I still maintain the events that happen are *possible* but unlikely. I’ve tried my best to be accurate, of course, but the objective was to explore various warfare doctrines and how an aggressive, “hard power” world would look.
Simply enough, I also wanted to create an interesting setting, which is why I jimmied a few things in directions they’d probably have been unlikely to go in, because everybody has already done their take on Russia, England, the Ottomans, Byzantium, China and so forth. I’m not saying that putting a timeline together around one of those countries is clichéd or something; it’s just that I feel like there’s nothing I could add and so I need a new direction.
That said, I do have to use some shortcuts somewhere. Yes, a lot of real world events still happen in this timeline even though there were multiple points of diversion hundreds of years earlier. Its not as bad as say, the Nazis still coming to power, but there are still various major events and I do still use a lot of monarchs that probably wouldn’t actually show up in the position they’re in.
Part of this is the fact that I can’t micromanage every inch of history, and part of this is that the world still has to be somewhat recognizable, given how extremely different it will look by 1800. I still try to put a unique spin on some of the stuff that I’m ripping off from real history, and the outcome may end up being different.
Also, it may look like I tend to gloss over colonization because I end wars when serious organized resistance ends and only some countries get any details, but unless a rebellion actually shakes up the sociopolitical situation to some extent it isn’t mentioned because this timeline really does not have the scope to handle all of them. Just assume that colonization is just as horrific and brutal in this timeline as it is/was in real life, aside from other methods that will be presented, which I go out of my way to detail.
Things that happen exactly as they were in real history or are only slightly altered will not be discussed. This will be indicative of the Middle Ages mostly, as it’s such a massive span of time to cover and the lack of information about some of it makes it very difficult to string things together. That said; where things turn out slightly different, there will be an acknowledgement of that.
This thread will just start with a straight timeline and go from there. I wrote a ton of fake internet articles in the vein of Cracked or other webshows and article sites I follow so those can supplement while I work on actual stories, which currently only exist as outlines, characters and concepts. Despite having worked on this since April, I’ve focused more or less on the information.

Last note, the timeline is very long. I’ve written most of the info beforehand to make sure it would be presentable when I decided to publish it on the internet. It’s crested 70 pages already and its missing a few consistency events. It’s technically mostly finished but I’m editing it and adding events to try and maintain its coherence, so even though it’s basically *finished* you won’t see it all at once.

Without further rambling (I doubt any message of mine will ever be this long again), I give you the opening salvo of Deluge:

1. Fragmentation, Dinaria 1066-1350

Invasions of Britain – 1066-1078
A combination of difficult ocean conditions and poor, muddy weather divided the landing forces of both William the Conqueror and King Harald Hardrada. Forces intermittently met each other and the English defenders in a long, protracted campaign that resulted in heavy losses due to near constant skirmishing. The moment one leader would attempt to rally their forces; they would find that fragments of enemy forces were within their ranks and causing more chaos.
By the end of the conflict, England was reduced to nearly half its original size and held by what remained of William’s forces, despite the fact that William had died in 1070 of a stray arrow. King Harald had been run down and killed in the countryside.
The Scots to the north took advantage of the fragmentation and laid claim to some of the border territories, and much of the fragmented countries were left as a buffed between the battered Normans and Scotland.

War of Croatian Succession – 1089-1109
Dmitar Zvonimir, the King of Croatia, died in 1089 lacking any male heirs to his throne. The nobility of Croatia assembled a regency council and began the daunting task of deciding who would control Croatia next.
Dmitar’s daughter, Claudia, was unmarried at the time[1], and the regency council decided whoever would marry her would inherit the throne. Numerous suitors arrived to attempt to sway Claudia, but she wanted little to do with any of them.
The bards had fun romanticizing Claudia’s situation at first, but the regency rapidly grew impatient with the young woman and sent a loyal noble to force a marriage with her.
After an attempt at winning her over, the noble decided enough was enough and attempted to beat her. By chance, Claudia managed to grab a candlestick and bash him over the head with it.
Claudia did not keep quiet about the incident, and revolts rapidly spread throughout the Kingdom. The populace loved King Dmitar, and the brutality that the regency had tried to inflict on his daughter was unacceptable.
Nobles who were loyal to the old king began to pledge themselves to Claudia so the regency council could be toppled. The regents were far larger in number however, with many nobles splitting off into splinter factions using the political intrigue for their own gains.
Claudia’s army was small and had only a few loyal nobles and officers to marshal it. In a desperate attempt to gain more soldiers, she convinced the loyalists to begin conscripting droves peasants into their armies, including children from age ten and even women, anyone that could fight.
With just barely enough forces assembled, Claudia and her loyalists dug in as the regent armies marched out of Knin. Despite their large size and better training, they were disorganized and more focused on pillaging the countryside rather than hunting down Claudia’s armies, which blended in well with the peasantry and knew the terrain. Claudia kept her forces from counter attacking, instead moving them into wrecked villages and manors to recruit more soldiers.
Burning with hatred from the stories the new recruits had to tell, Claudia’s armies began focused counter attacks, using the mountains[2] defensively and luring the gullible noble armies into traps and slaughters. Claudia’s armies were swift and brutal, and executed all prisoners that they took due to lack of supplies to care for them.
When stories of Claudia’s resistance swept down from the mountains, regent forces began to desert their posts. In an attempt to restore order through fear, the regents burned the most rebellious villages, but their actions only made the situation worse.
Claudia’s forces began marching down from the mountains. The regent forces were already in disarray and every subsequent battle turned into a rout. The last major resistance from the regents came at the capital of Knin. The regents proved more tenacious than before when they defended their capital, and to permanently end their threat, Claudia ordered the use of any means necessary.
Knin was completely destroyed in the ensuing fighting, and most of the nobility that had pledged loyalty to Claudia had died leading the under equipped and poorly trained peasant armies. All that remained after the battle were her growing peasant forces.
The King of Hungary, upon hearing that Knin had been destroyed, prepared an expeditionary force and marched into Croatia himself to oust his granddaughter from the throne and restore order.
Claudia’s forces met Hungary at the Dunav and suffered heavy losses. The remainder of the nobility and officers in Claudia’s army had been killed. Claudia replaced them with hastily promoted marshals, a sparse few of whom were even female.
The marshals pulled their forces back from the Dunav and into the Dinaric Mountains. Hungary’s forces eagerly chased them, expecting a quick victory, but the marshals repeated the tricks they had learned fighting Croatia’s regency, using traps and starvation to whittle down the enemy. The King of Hungary himself was run down and forced to surrender the fight before being returned to Hungary with a broken nose.
King Ladislaus did not attempt to invade Croatia again. It’s believed that he spoke with Claudia when he was taken prisoner and her words convinced him to call the affair off, if only because of the threat that he would be killed. It’s also likely that the losses he suffered were simply not considered worth the effort of taking an insignificant territory like Croatia.
Croatia had succeeded and kept its freedom, but at a horrific cost. A large portion of the male population had died in the regent armies, and nearly every single noble in Croatia’s court was dead, the survivors having fled to other lands. Much of Croatia’s cropland had been razed, and numerous villages and towns had been destroyed, some areas would not be repopulated for the next one hundred years.
Croatia began the long road to reconstruction. Apocryphally, it’s said that Claudia and some of her advisors ordered the peasantry to use the numerous corpses that littered the landscape as fertilizer.

First South European War – 1189 to 1196
The Emperor of Byzantium, Isaac II Angelos, decided to pursue a policy of expansion against the damaged Croatia. Croatia had been through many decades of reconstruction, but was still not a prosperous country. The only thing that had kept further invasions away were the connections between Croatia and Hungary.
Isaac was unconvinced that Croatia and Hungary had any sort of relationship with each other beyond some heritage between Claudia and Ladislaus. Claudia’s successors had all been hand picked, and all of the Queens of Croatia had refused to reproduce or marry for fear that their suitor would cause another war of succession.
Seeing Croatia as an easy target, Isaac assembled a force of soldiers on the border and invaded Croatia with overwhelming force. Isaac’s advance was slow but utterly unstoppable. Wherever Croatia used their terrain advantages, Isaac would simply use overwhelming numbers of Greek soldiers to wipe out the defenders. He also wisely avoided pillaging towns and villages of anything except for food, and he left enough to keep the populace from starving.
Isaac’s tactics were despised by his men, but they completely undermined all of Croatia’s advantages. The new queen, Mirna Zilavost, could do little but wait anxiously in her capital of Sarajevo. When the Byzantines made too much progress, she fled as far away as possible, to the small town of Rijeka on the other side of Croatia.
When Isaac took Sarajevo, it seemed like Byzantium was going to rule Croatia once again. However, tensions simmering in Bulgaria had not been submerged by the war and came to a head when Isaac diverted some of the army away from the area. Seeing their chance, the Bulgarians seceded.
With most of their forces concentrated in Croatia, Byzantium lost ground against the Bulgarians fast. Bulgarian elements in the Byzantine invasion force also turned against the rest of the force and waged war inside Croatia.
The Croatian army took advantage of the infighting and further whittled down Isaac’s forces as they retreated to handle the far more important Bulgarian rebellion.
The Croats chased the receding Byzantine and Bulgarian forces out of their homeland, but were stalemated by the Bulgarians and eventually made peace with them. However, they made inroads against Byzantium and quickly gained control of much of the Dinaric Mountain Range. By the time Isaac decided to make peace, Croatia was in control of half of Serbia and small upper portions of Albania. Isaac was eventually deposed by his brother for his failures.
Mirna pushed her advantage as much as she could, eventually getting Alexios III to agree to let Croatia keep the territories it had taken. Bulgaria eventually exited the war two years later with the Carpathians, nearly all of Thracia and parts of Macedonia.

Dinaric Wars – 1198 to 1203
With most of the Dinaric Mountains under her control, Mirna Zilavost enacted a plan to bring the races of the mountains together. The Slavs of Serbia were more accustomed to Byzantine tradition rather than the unconventional peasant methodology of the Croats. Epirus had very small Slavic minorities, which Mirna used to justify assimilation of the territory. Serbs were tending towards the promise of an orthodox Slavic kingdom from Bulgaria, and the majority of Epirians longed to be back in the arms of their Greek brethren.
The Kingdom of Croatia, which had existed for over a hundred years and was fought for bitterly by its people, was dissolved in one fell swoop. Mirna reformed the political system radically based on the political system of the Byzantine Empire. Croatia, Slavonia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Serbia and Epirus became provinces, and Mirna changed her rank to reflect her position: Imperator.
The current residents of the country would no longer be known by their previous designations, but as “Mountain Slavs” or Dinarics, named after the mountain range that the territory currently occupied, and the Dinarics would be a united race in the eyes of the world. The country would be known as the Empire of Dinaria.
This did not sit well with various elements from many of the territories, particularly Epirus Nova. Small rebellions broke out across the new country, which Mirna dispatched mercilessly. The Kingdom of Hungary attempted to intervene once again to restore order in the territory, but they were stopped and heavily damaged in the mountains.
Hungary, despite taking heavy losses, won all of the battles they took part in. Mirna’s forces made them pay for every inch of territory taken, staging slaughters on the banks of the Dunav and in the narrow mountain passes that Dinaria took its namesake from.
With intrigues mounting on the border with Bulgaria and Byzantium making aggressive postures towards all powers in southern Europe, Hungary withdrew to consolidate its defenses.

Interlude in South Europe – 1203-1220
The four countries that each ruled a piece of southern Europe prepared their defenses as best they could. Tensions between Bulgaria and Byzantium were rapidly growing while Dinaria continued reconstructing itself from the perpetual warfare that plagued its realm. The rebels in Serbia and Epirus had become bandits, feeding off of the sparse trade caravans that made their way through the Dinaric Mountains every so often.
Byzantium often sent dummy caravans loaded with food and the corpses of dead prisoners dressed in military uniforms. The rebels would “attack” the caravan, and the caravans would be emptied while the corpses were scattered, and the Byzantine guards would join the ranks of the fighters.
Reviewing the losses her forces had taken in the Dinaric Wars against the Hungarians, Dinaria’s newest Imperator, Jeza Misljenje, made the decision to open Dinaria’s coffers and hire army officers from France as military advisors and to train her armies.
The French were amused by the offer, but ultimately wanted little to do with Dinaria. However, some retired French officers privately agreed to the deal and arrived to train Dinaria’s disorganized peasant armies.
Dinaria’s army was receiving some training, but comparatively little. Byzantium’s army was still massive and far better equipped than Dinaria’s, though Dinaria had the advantage of the treacherous mountain terrain. The Hungarians also eagerly eyed Dinaria, seeing the rich Dalmatian coast as the perfect place to begin a navy.
Jeza formed a tenuous alliance with Bulgaria, widely regarded as the spark that started the Second South European War.

Mongol-Khwarezmid Relations - 1218
Genghis Khan finished his conquest of the neighboring Khanates in Central Asia, his forces arriving on the borders of the Khwarezmid Empire. The Khwarezmids were not a simple Khanate, and Genghis decided he may have a lot to learn from them.
The Mongols organized a trade mission and sent it across the border. It arrived in a small Turkish city, and the governor eagerly accepted the goods and allowed the Mongols the right to trade[3]. He sent word to the Shah about the new arrivals.
While various conservative elements within the Empire were against consorting with the Mongols, the Shah was mostly indifferent to them, and allowed the Mongols moderate trading rights within his territory, but leaving his governors to make up their minds whether or not they wanted Mongols in their areas.
The Mongols were warned of this, and avoided the conservative provinces while trading with the ones that were more open.

Second South European War – 1220-1236
Feeling cocky after making an alliance with Dinaria, Bulgaria declared war on Byzantium in the unusually warm March of 1220. Jeza joined the war only a month later, deploying some parts of her army across the border of Byzantium.
The Bulgarians mostly held the Byzantines down while the Dinarics infiltrated positions behind enemy lines in the Dinaric mountain ranges, undermining their control of the region. The Byzantines had prepared for a Dinaric invasion but not such a subtle one. Regardless, they performed raids and attacks on the recently taken positions while the Serbian and Epirian rebels materialized behind the Dinaric lines and began destroying whatever they were close enough to.
Jeza led a force out herself, establishing a reputation as the first fighting Imperator. The southern Dinaric Mountains rapidly turned into a conflagration. Territories raided by the Epirian and Serb rebels were often populated by Epirians and Serbs, leading to dissidence in the local populations against Byzantium.
Villages began to assemble their own militias and violently defend themselves against invasion. Often, the Byzantines had to destroy the entire village just to end resistance from it. Jeza Misljenje was not far ahead of the destruction. She took advantage of the peasantry’s hatred for the invaders and drafted all able-bodied workers into her personal division.
She then evacuated and burned the villages down, along with their crops and all arable land in the area, denying the Byzantines area to live off of during the occupation. The Byzantines marched through miles of scorched earth, desperately trying to stop Jeza before she burned the next swathe of land.
The winter set in, and many of the fleeing Dinaric peasants died of starvation. However, the bandits that survived off the countryside were also mostly wiped out by the temperatures. The massive Byzantine expeditionary force was unfazed, however, and continued their advance despite heavy losses.
Jeza rallied her forces and made a brutal stand at the city of Sarajevo, unwilling to destroy it. The conscripted peasantry was slaughtered en masse by the Byzantines, and their rout flooded straight into Jeza’s more experienced forces.
The Byzantines, believing they had caused all of the Dinaric forces to panic and run, charged headlong into the crowd. Jeza’s forces descended upon them, and the Battle of Sarajevo rapidly turned into a gory and confusing melee. In the confusion, Jeza’s forces and the bulk of the Byzantine expeditionary force were decimated. After weeks of horrific fighting in the cold, both sides retreated to try and regroup.
Jeza made it back to Rijeka and rallied her reserve forces just in time for the Bulgarians to break the Byzantine defense and besiege the walls of Constantinople. The Byzantine forces lost all central control, and the Dinarics did their best to take advantage of the situation and hold onto the battered landscape.
After the first several years of fighting, the militaries of all three belligerent countries were in shambles. Dinaria’s small forces had been lost in standup fights with Byzantine expeditions, while the Byzantine territories were seething with rebellion and pitched defenses against the occasional Bulgarian incursion.
Bulgaria’s disorganized armies performed far worse against the Byzantines that Jeza had originally hoped, and their penchant for head on battles had cost them dearly. Bulgaria’s forces were mangled nearly beyond repair, although they maintained a sizable force that kept the battered Byzantines from reorganizing.
Raiders from the Middle East were beginning to take small chunks out of Byzantium’s eastern borders, and the rebellions in the Greek heartland caused the Byzantines to concede the war, losing everything except the lower reaches of Greece and Constantinople.
The Bulgarians pulled their ranks together just as Hungary stormed across the Dunav with another massive expeditionary force. Bulgaria came to the defense of its ally, marching across the border of Hungary and besieging the city of Budapest after rampaging through the Hungarian countryside. Bulgaria was suffering badly from overextension, and Jeza Misljenje’s last allotment of troops was on the verge of defeat.
However, the current Pope, Gregory IX, upon hearing of the siege of Budapest, sent orders to all three nations to halt the fighting. Bulgaria, though recently converted, was a Catholic nation, as was Dinaria. Both countries held Orthodox territory, and Gregory believed it would be in better interest of the church if the two nations were allowed to assimilate their conquered populations.
Hungary was prohibited from ever violating Dinaric territory again by papal order, and forced to make amends to both Bulgaria and Dinaria by paying large sums of money. To top it off, Gregory recognized the status of Dinaria and the ownership of lands controlled by Bulgaria, so long as Bulgaria remained Catholic.

Dinaric-Bulgarian Land Deal – 1220-1221
Belligerents: Dinaria, Bulgaria
Despite their relative success, the Bulgarians controlled far more territory than they could possibly keep. Hoping to gain a large piece of the former Byzantine heartland, Jeza Misljenje approached the current Bulgarian Tsar, Ivan Asen II. The two formed an awkward relationship with each other, and rumors spread that they were actually lovers.
In reality, Jeza wanted the rest of the Dinaric Mountains, and Ivan lacked trust in the “Imperator” of Dinaria. Ivan, like many others, quietly believed that a woman ruling a nation was improper, but did not say anything to his only ally. Another point of contention between the two rulers was the fact that Jeza’s idea of the full range of the Dinaric Mountains varied from day to day, and the pair spent many long hours arguing over a border.
Ivan wanted to keep the lands his country had taken, but his advisors were eager to release some territory so that Bulgaria could focus on holding on to the territories they already had control of.
On one of Jeza’s good days, Ivan agreed to her interpretation of the Dinaric border, giving Dinaria all of Epirus and most of Serbia. The land issue solved, both powers retreated behind their borders to consolidate their gains and rebuild their losses.

Finnish Revolution – 1235
Ever since they had conquered their rival previously, Sweden had been brutally assimilating the Finnish population. The last of the surviving Finns that still held to their native traditions banded together and began a rebellion in Helsinki that spread quickly across Finland. The Swedish forces had been weakened heavily by resistance from the Finns and a lack of supplies during the long years, and were enveloped. The Finns destroyed the Swedish armies and marched into the Swedish heartland.
Stockholm was taken and the Finns crowned themselves as the new rulers. The Finnish leadership began to conscript more soldiers from the countryside, preparing to exact their revenge against the Swedish population.

Dano-Finnish War – 1235-1237
Knowing full well what the Finns planned to do to Sweden, Denmark quickly declared war and invaded Finland to restore order. The small Finnish peasant armies and sparse soldiers were quickly and easily wiped out by the superior Danish forces.
Sweden was a disaster zone and much of its monarchy had been destroyed, while Finland was in shambles just as the Swedes had left it. Denmark annexed both territories and created the nation of Scandinavia, ruled from Copenhagen.

Mongol Invasion of the Rus – 1223-1240
The Mongols swept through the Rus territories, rapidly consuming most of them, including the powerful Kievian Rus[4].

The Mongol Invasion of Europe – 1241-1280
The Mongol Invasion of Europe began with raids against the country of Bulgaria. Bulgaria had recovered somewhat since its devastating wars with Byzantium, but the invasion of the Mongols was horrific and excessively damaging.
Bulgaria’s depleted army could do little to stem the Mongol invasion. Though Tsar Ivan Asen II was able to defeat their first raid, consecutive raids struck deep into Bulgarian territory, piercing through the flat spots the terrain and circumvented the heavily defended mountains.
Ivan Asen won nearly every battle against the Mongols and repulsed every raid that he was able to reach before they fled back towards Mongol territory, but often the raids would simply avoid his forces and any actual combat severely wrecked his armies.
On top of this, the weaknesses in the Bulgarian army were only further incentive for the Orthodox forces inside Bulgaria’s domain to continue their resistance. The Pope’s guarantee of peace was only valid if Bulgaria held onto and continued trying to convert the Orthodox territories, and Ivan was beginning to grow weary of the treaty.
Around 1260, the Mongols began similar raids into Poland, raids which severely decimated the already fragmented country. Lithuania held up the best, providing the most resistance. To secure the Mongol flank against the Polish, Hungary was invaded and almost completely sacked.
In 1262, Jeza Misljenje began committing allotments of soldiers to Bulgaria to help their ailing ally resist the Mongolian invasion. The Dinaric forces were accomplished mountaineers, and began using the mountains as bases to conduct counter raids against the Mongols.
The Mongolians were still wise to this tactic, and avoided mountain warfare wherever they could. However, the Dinarics would often still successfully bait a stray Mongol force into the mountains and slaughter it. While entire raids were never lost this way, the Dinarics ensured heavy casualties against the enemy.
Ivan Asen was still a competent commander, but his will was beginning to decline. Realizing that Ivan was on the verge of releasing some of the Orthodox territories, Jeza sent several more allotments into Bulgarian territory to keep the peace in the Orthodox zones.
The Bulgarian Tsar was becoming anemic in his rule, and Jeza began taking advantage of it, visiting the younger man often and creating various treaties to boost the wealth of the Bulgarian Empire even as the Mongols continued their raids. While Dinaria’s financial contributions were ultimately piecemeal, they served to restore Ivan’s faith in his Catholic ally.
When Anna Maria of Hungary died in 1269, Jeza saw an opportunity and took it. She married Ivan Asen II[5], becoming Jeza Asen, much to the contempt of the officers in Dinaria.
Jeza was not foolish, however, as her forces had effective control of much of Bulgaria. The marriage was recognized as a personal union, when in reality Dinaria was essentially ruling Bulgaria.
Ivan Asen II was a sickly man, and had no male heirs, and Jeza was too old to foster children. He died lacking an heir in 1274, on the eve of another Mongol raid. Jeza conveniently returned to Sarajevo and the piecemeal force she left behind to defend the routes to Bulgaria’s capital dematerialized.
The Mongols raided Bulgaria’s capital. Though most of the nobility survived, they were broken men and ready to begin paying the Mongols tribute. Jeza stepped in. If the Bulgarians agreed to be merged into the Dinaria[6], their lands would be defended and kept safe. Jeza spent the better part of two years working to convince Bulgaria’s ruling council of the virtues of merging with Dinaria.
A tiny Mongol raiding party of 100 men sacked a town on the border in 1276, causing rumors of another massive Mongol incursion. Though the incursion never appeared, Jeza used the panic to get the Bulgarian nobility to hastily agree to the plan.
Bulgaria was dissolved, and its nobles were stripped of everything but ceremonial power. One by one, over the course of the next decade or so up until the end of her reign, Jeza picked them off or encouraged marriages to domineering Dinaric wives, reorganizing the Bulgarian holdings into more provinces.
The Mongol raids continued until 1280. Lithuania, Hungary and Dinaria all suffered heavy losses. Lithuania and Hungary suffered army losses, while the Dinarics suffered the destruction of villages along the border, particularly in Moldova. Though the Dinarics barely managed military superiority over the Mongols via use of the mountains, they couldn’t make any real progress against them.
The continuous raids were finally ended by political maneuvering via France and the Papacy. After numerous correspondences spanning almost a century, actual relations were established with the Mongols, and French diplomats managed to come to an understanding with them. Catholic Europe would be left alone, and Mongol rule would be recognized over all of the Rus.
The Mongols, more focused on their efforts in Asia due to the guidance of Kublai Khan, agreed to the pact and ended the continuous raids on the Catholic powers.

Eastern Conquests – 1301-1325
Lithuania began to take advantage of the broken a disaffected Russian principalities left behind in the wake of the receding Mongols, overtaking and merging them into the Empire. Poland partook in the same activity, though on a smaller scale. While the new territories were poorly policed, the taxes and plunder collected from them helped to rejuvenate both countries.
As well, some of the weaker principalities joined with Lithuania and Poland, but these were few and far between.

The War of the She Wolf – 1340 to 1356
Isabella of France married the Scandinavian prince Vlademar IV in 1320. She was promised to the Prince as a peace offering and to establish formal relations with Scandinavia. However, the Scandinavian court viewed the marriage unfavorably despite the fact that it went through, and France became more embroiled in its own affairs rather than bothering to improve relations with Scandinavia.
Isabella’s marriage was an unhappy one, and she sought to remove Vlademar herself to be rid of him and seize power in Scandinavia. She secretly brought together a contingent of loyal guards and killed Vlademar only a few months after his coronation as King, leaving Isabella the sole ruler due to the fact that the two had not yet conceived.
The rest of Scandinavia’s nobility was incredulous about Isabella’s story, and believed she was the culprit behind Vlademar’s death. The nobility of Scandinavia dispatched a team of soldiers to deal with her, but her royal guards made short work of them. Isabella reported to her mother that Scandinavia had betrayed her, and France declared war.
Norway joined the war on Scandinavia’s side. The French invaded Scandinavia by sea, having to contend with heavy Norwegian raids. The Scots, looking to end Norwegian piracy against Ireland once and for all, sent expeditionary forces to aid France in the North Sea. The Scots had mixed results.
The French succeeded in landing troops on Scandinavian soil. Though much of Sweden and anarchistic Finland were quickly conquered, Norwegian and Danish troops gave the French forces a tough time. Isabella held out in the palace of Copenhagen for as long as she could with her royal guards.
Eventually, the French forces made a deal with the city of Hamburg and arrived at night. Thousands of French soldiers crossed into Holstein from the south, quickly overrunning Jutland despite fierce resistance from the Danish army.
All involved powers were thoroughly exhausted by the end of the war, though the French eventually succeeded in taking Copenhagen. Norway’s tenuous power structure was also severely damaged by combating with the numerically superior French and Scottish forces, and Finland was once again restless and had begun resisting the French occupation.
The nobility of Scandinavia surrendered the war, and many of them were purged in ensuing trials to remove any threat to Isabella’s power structure. Norway was merged into Scandinavia’s holdings to form a true Scandinavia though Greenland and the Faroes went to France. Scotland was given Iceland and the Hebrides for its trouble, and the France established relations with Scotland that would eventually flourish into a tenuous alliance.
 
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I've skimmed it a bit, it looks pretty thoughtful.

I have an idea for something I want to write percolating in my head, or I'd give this a further read :) (If I don't write it down, I'm fairly certain it could DISAPPEAR etc.)
 

abc123

Banned
Hi Jim, about king Dmitar Zvonimir, he died OTL in about 1089. Is his death in 1098 POD for this TL or just typo?

If you need some help about Croatian or Serbian language, feel free to ask.
Some names are pretty weird. Also, Croats and other European nations didn't had surnames at the time...
 
Whoops, that is a glaring typo. Fixed. And some of the names are a mess of weird things, some of them are modern, some of them are fluff, I tried to avoid just picking generic names. Some are translated words, but I did that more for thematic flare than anything else. I had a similar issue with an eventually unpublished setting I wrote years back and ended up having to do rewrites on it to rename some of the characters, and a lot of the reference materials turned obsolete. Also, as Croatia/Dinaria annexes foreign territory and their populations mix, I add names from the other ethnicities/countries they assimilate as a sign of plurality.

The surname thing is an oversight that I figured could be passed off as Croatia/Dinaria needing to identify its leaders more specifically since their country turned into a sort of despotic leadership instead of a simple line of family secession. After all, the people showing up in leadership position aren't exactly nobodies at the time, though the existing aristocracy is mostly gone. A few of the last names at this point are just words, so it could even be assumed that they chose their surnames themselves. Its a tenuous handwave at best, admittedly.

Real world explanation is that I wanted to leave the names open in case somebody ended up getting named after a historical figure, as has happened somewhat often in history, so I needed a way to differentiate the characters other than creating some kind of elaborate title system that wouldn't be terribly economic.

If you've got the time, I'd be happy to run some things by you to make sure they mean what I think they mean. I'll send a PM along.
 
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Could you change the font? It's really hard for me and I imagine a lot of people to read. Other than that, it's a unique start and I would enjoy to look at further updates from you on this.
 
Timeline entry #2

I had a feeling the font was going to be problematic, though that was more for compression in the first post than anything else. Since I don't have a page of insecurity to tack onto future entries, they won't be written in Teenietinyeyestrainovision anymore either.

Font still isn't perfect despite my tinkering, but at least it isn't horribly tiny anymore. I did change it to Verdana but it seems the formatting of my Word docs and the formatting of the site aren't cooperating with each other. I've had this issue on forums before and never been able to resolve it.

Next piece is ready to go up:
2. Constantinople, Hussites, New World 1350-1490

Eastern Expansions – 1350-1380
Dinaria made significant inroads in the Orthodox Rus territories of the Ukraine. Though Dinaric forces could not hold all of the vast territory they were taking, much of it was divided up into provinces and subsumed into the Empire.
Lithuania also continued its conquest of the surrounding Rus territories, heavily extending its influence. In 1372, Lithuania managed to successfully seize Muscowy and bring it into the Kingdom.

Dinaric-Byzantine War – 1398-1405
Belligerents: Byzantium, Dinaria
With Dinaria ostensibly focused on absorbing Bulgaria and supporting settlers in the Rus, Byzantine emperor Manuel II decided to stage one final strike into Southern Europe to regain the lost lands of the empire.
Byzantium had endured Mongol and Bulgarian raids, and had suffered heavily in the east. However, the Byzantines had managed to bring Anatolia mostly back under their control around 1390. The Mongol hordes had mostly been held back by Dinaria at that point, and the Khwarazmids and Mamluks were more interested in conquering their Islamic brethren in the Middle East than dealing with Byzantium.
Manuel II dreamed of rebuilding the empire. His generals were weary of the idea due to the sheer amount of territory that Bulgaria had taken and the general disorder that still reigned in Anatolia. However, the Byzantine armies were numerous once more, but heavily composed of peasantry and natives. Byzantine smiths still produced fine weaponry, and Manuel II was confident that Dinaria was not all that it was cracked up to be.
His generals poured over the information they could gather on Hungary’s numerous invasions of Dinaria, and of Isaac II’s extremely successful invasion of Dinaria many years back. They understood that Dinaria’s forces were primarily geared towards defense, and that a lack of mobility was their major weakness as the Dinarics were used to defending from the mountains and harsh terrain rather than their own cities.
In 1398 Manuel II’s troops marched out of lower Greece and Thrace, directly into both the Bulgarian and Dinaric heartlands. The current Imperator, Ivana Stratcimir, was more prepared for war than the Byzantines had expected. The numerous Dinaric campaigns to quell the Bulgarian resistance over the years had made the Dinaric army sharp in urban settings.
It had been simply impossible for Dinaria to deal with any resistance while camped out in the mountains like their old tactics. Dinarics had to learn to bring the fight to the enemy. Retired French military officers had been paid handsome sums to become advisors for the Dinaric army. France was weary of the situation, but Dinaria’s diplomats had managed to keep them ambivalent about the idea. Dinaric also adopted a weapon used by the Spanish, the Falchion, as their favored arm.
The Dinaric armies did their best to stay mobile, and would use hit and run tactics whenever the Byzantines had superior numbers. Wherever the Dinarics had superior numbers, Ivana had her generals ground the Byzantine advances into pulp through long and bloody standoffs that cost thousands of lives on both sides. Dinarics died in droves, but their long tradition of recruiting peasants and lower class soldiers gave them the advantage in numbers. Experienced soldiers would hold back while serf soldiers died by the hundreds against the Byzantine ranks. Then, the experienced soldiers would flank the Byzantines and destroy them.
French officers overseeing the combat were horrified by the fruits of their labor. They had sought to teach the Dinarics civilized warfare, but all the Dinarics were concerned about was victory. Ivana herself sometimes toured battlefields strewn with corpses and oversaw the burying of the dead in mass graves. Ivana’s demeanor was noted, and she eventually became known as the Somber Imperator for the calm and detached way she viewed the mass death.
The war was uncharacteristically brutal, even for a Dinaric war. To keep the Dinaric army on the move, corpses would be left for the peasantry to deal with, especially in situations where there were far too many to deal with. Dead officers, enemies, bystanders and even decorated soldiers were given no favor and buried or burned with the rest. Some Dinarics wrote their names and home city on a piece of paper and kept it in their pockets, but often their corpse was too destroyed to be recognizable by anyone they knew and the paper would be ignored.
When 1401 rolled around, the Byzantine army had been mostly destroyed by the Dinarics. The forces that the Greeks had managed to cobble together were simply not enough, and renewed unrest in Anatolia tore the empire apart. Dinaric forces overran Greece and the upper parts of Anatolia, using the mountains to their advantage and crushing rebels and Byzantine pockets alike.
Aside from scant holdings in Thrace and the city of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire had ceased to exist. The vast areas of Anatolia not under Dinaric control shattered into independent duchies and fiefs.
Constantinople was the last thorn in Dinaria’s side. The city had survived every breakup of the empire and had been the heart of each of its revitalizations. Ivana’s forces could not break it. Dinaria signed a peace with Byzantium in 1405, leaving the Byzantines with nothing but Constantinople.

Anatolian Campaigns – 1405-1436
Dinaria ended the Byzantine conflict with all of Greece and a pat on the head from the Pope for finally shattering the Orthodox stronghold, but Anatolia was a different story. Dinaria’s victory had seen it recognized as Anatolia’s ruler by Europe, but Anatolia had been broken into numerous territories and city states. Pirates, rebels and bandits patrolled the countryside, and in Adana, ambitious nobility drew up plans to build a new empire.
Ivana Stratcimir was unwilling to allow Anatolia to be portioned, as she thoroughly believed that Dinaria would never get the chance to dominate the region again. Ivana drew up plans to bring Adana completely into the fold of Dinaria, and on a warm summer night, she launched numerous expeditionary forces, and promptly died hours later.
Her successor had been specially chosen and groomed to take over Anatolia. Bisera Kamija was hastily given the rank of Imperator in the field, not even bothering to return to Sofija as was traditional for Dinaric Imperators.
Adana could hardly resist the might of the Dinaric armies, but Dinaria had to spend two years establishing a corridor of control to funnel the required forces in to destroy Adana. The corridor was established after several annexations and fierce fighting, and eventually Adana and its tiny empire fell to Dinaria.
With the fall of Adana, many local rulers began to seek vassalization by Dinaria in order to bring some semblance of peace to the region. Dinaria agreed, but over the next two decades, they slowly picked off and absorbed their vassals.
Eventually, by 1436, the last independent Anatolian country had been absorbed, and most of the rebel groups had been destroyed. Piracy supported by Constantinople was still an issue, and Dinaria would need a navy to dispatch the Greek islands. Bisera began production of a navy in the Anatolian territories, using the jobs created by the program to keep the Anatolians occupied while she prepared for the inevitable war with Constantinople and its island satellites.

Hussite Wars – 1420-1434
Followers of Jan Huss began general uprisings after the man was burned at the stake. Bohemia’s peasantry rose up, along with much of its nobility. Hussite soldiers were organized into extremely basic infantry hierarchies, and worked in sync with each other to defeat larger armies sent by the Pope.
The Holy Roman Empire sent several armies into Bohemia to clear the Hussites out, but every time the Hussites used superior organization and tactics to rout of destroy the HRE armies.
Unexpectedly, the Teutonic Order declared itself to be on the side of the Hussites and joined in the fighting. While the Teutonic Order was a fierce enemy, they lacked the organization the Hussites had, and their battles were much more conventional.
Seizing the opportunity, the Polish declared war on the Hussites and seized most of Livonia from the order while the bulk of their forces were busy fighting in the Holy Roman Empire. The Teutonic Order was eventually surrounded and ground down to nothing in 1426. The leading Grand Master was secretly assassinated by the rest of the order, and the remaining Teutons agreed to repent and pay reparations to the Pope.
The Bohemians held out far longer than the Teutons, lasting all the way to 1431. However, the Pope had managed several major victories, and the Hussites were eventually crushed. Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire was declared King of Bohemia by the Pope, and the war tapered down. Imperator Bisera Kamija of Dinaria sent a few spies into Bohemia armed with copious amounts of money to try and find some of the Hussite Officers that had organized the resistance so effectively.
A few were found, some knew much about tactics but none were prominent. In all, only a handful could be brought back to Dinaria. Some, to protect their identities, left without their families. The Dinaric Army learned what they could of the brilliant Hussite tactics.

Constantinople – 1437-1440
Bisera was adamant that the Roman Empire needed to end once and for all if Dinaria was to secure control over the vast territories it now owned. Anatolia had been mostly subjugated, but the population was still restless, Greek, and Orthodox. Bisera believed that if left to its own devices, Constantinople would be the epicenter of a new Byzantine Empire, and had to be cleared out.
In preparation, Bisera had ambassadors speak with Pope Eugene IV and get papal blessings to seize Constantinople. Bisera, like her predecessors, carefully hid behind her numerous ambassadors, knowing the church’s distaste for women and for Slavs.
Eugene IV agreed to the Dinaric proposal, eager to see Constantinople, the nucleus of Orthodoxy, brought under Catholic control. Eugene IV believed that Dinaria’s success would begin a new age of strength for the Catholics, and that the glory that Constantinople’s capture would bring to the church would be enough to help bury the Hussites and quell the restlessness in Livonia, Prussia and Bohemia.
Bisera was not as confident about conquering the city. She knew it had to be done, but viewed it more as a necessary task than a glorious mission. She had personally ridden out and viewed the walls of the city many times, and every time, she imagined the Dinaric corpses that would be piled against it. Dinarics were good defenders, ambushers and warriors. They were poorly experienced in the art of laying siege, and lacked the equipment needed to break the city. They could starve or burn the enemy, but Constantinople could withstand either.
Bisera essentially emptied the Dinaric treasuries to pay for construction of numerous cannons and guns to prepare for the siege. Rather than using strong charges and breaking the walls with a single focused attacked, Bisera’s generals knew the siege would be long, harsh and brutal. Dinaria could only slowly chip away at its foe.
An agent from Anatolia returned in 1434 with a defector from the old Adana regime. The man had a secret weapon, a formula for a material that had not been seen in centuries: Greek Fire.
Bisera was skeptical, and after demonstrations of the weapon, remained skeptical. While the mix was potent and burned intensely, it was somewhat dry, not very sticky, and had to be delivered in containers instead of siphons due to its qualities. It also did not burn on water. Bisera was not convinced the weapon was something Dinaria could use, but purchased the recipe from the man anyway.
In 1437, Bisera’s forces had assembled against the western wall of the city. As Dinaric forces charged from the woods, a spy that had secretly been planted earlier hauled one of the city’s gates open, and the Dinaric forces flooded in.
The battle turned into a frightening and bloody melee. Constantine XI commanded his armies from his quarters, but astonishingly appeared on the streets and helped defend the city himself when the tide began to turn against the Byzantines.
The Dinarics were eventually repulsed, the spy killed, and the gates shut. Bisera’s main general at the time, Mirela Aki, concentrated artillery fire on the city’s gates, pounding at them. However, the Greeks hastily barricaded the gate and then eventually cemented the existing barricade. When the gate finally crunched under the force of the attack, it was clear that ground forces could not pass through.
At first, the Greek islands attempted to aid the city, but Dinaria’s new navy sailed out of Anatolia and interdicted any efforts to bring aid to the ailing city. One by one, each of the Greek Islands fell to Dinaria, most of them surrendering due to threat of starvation.
Constantinople remained weary. Dinarics took to the walls with siege ladders, using zero-sum tactics to weaken the Byzantine defenders as much as possible. Rather than conventional weapons, Dinaric soldiers carried firebombs and bottles of noxious poison that they would smash near the defenders. Soldiers that were guaranteed to die carried spiked chains that they roped their targets with so they could pull them down with them when their death came.
Eventually, the Dinarics whittled the defenders down enough to throw lightly armored soldiers onto the walls using the conventional Dinaric falchion. The Dinarics were mistaken for Muslim soldiers due to their weaponry and lack of armor.
It is said that the turning point of the battle came when a rain of arrows and flaming projectiles hit the city, and an arrow pierced the ground next to Constantine’s foot. He ordered a contingent of soldiers to the area they had come from to return fire, but the wall had been weakened due to sustained cannon fire, and it collapsed under their weight.
Mirela seized the opportunity and ordered her soldiers forward. Mirela’s hastily shouted orders were to fight to the end, down to the last soldier. The Dinarics didn’t have to. Constantine XI tried to organize a final defense himself, but when it wouldn’t materialize he rallied whoever he could and charged into the Dinaric ranks. He met Mirela as she charged in, and nicked her temple with his sword, slicing her eye at the same time and leaving her half blind. He accomplished this a split second before her falchion came down and split the shoulder of last emperor of the Roman Empire.
The last of the Byzantines were routed, the city was taken, and miraculously, Mirela survived the battle, her gaping scar turning her into one of the most feared Dinarics in history. Bisera toured the smashed city after the battle, her boots slipping in the human fat and grease that soaked the ground outside the walls. She remarked that things were: “Somehow not what I expected, somehow worse.” The phrase became famous in Dinaric culture.
The Pope rejoiced, and rewarded Dinaria generously. A somber and uneasy Bisera personally accepted the reward in Rome. When she bowed before the Pope, he asked where her husband was. When she responded that she did not have one, Eugene IV, astonished, asked why. Unable to think of anything else, Bisera told him that “No truly pious believer takes a lover.” The onlookers at the ceremony were mostly dignitaries from other countries, some stifled laughter, some frowned in disapproval, and a few smiled at Ivana’s brazenness. Most were silent, however.
Eugene IV was somewhat alienated by Ivana’s stubborn refusal to marry, but since he was put on the spot, he choose to do nothing but respectfully nod and continue solemnly with the ceremony. It is commonly accepted that this was the point that Dinaria had broken away from the church, and that both Bisera and Eugene were aware of that fact.

Crimean Khanate – 1441
The remaining Mongol and nomadic forces that were still in Europe came together and carved the Crimean Khanate out of some of Dinaria’s holdings and the unconquered peninsula of Crimea. Dinaria was incensed, but their previous wars with Byzantium and the ongoing pacification campaigns meant that there was little they could do in the mean time.

Colonization of Sao Tome – 1450
The Scots, attempting to make their way around Africa, ran aground in Sao Tome. Their ships were too heavily damaged to continue, so they settled on the island. They were later reinforced when a single ship was able to leave and make it back to Scotland. Scotland claimed the island for the crown.

Lithuania-Novgorod War – 1470-1479
Belligerents: Lithuania, Novgorod
Lithuania, continuing its conquest of the vast Rus, invaded the massive Republic of Novgorod in 1470. The Lithuanian armies made progress but were heavily bogged down, and suffered considerable losses at the hands of Novgorod. Eventually, Lithuanian forces reached Archangelsk, and Novgorod was dissolved. However, resistance continued on for decades, bleeding Lithuania white and severely weakening the country. Their eastern expansions ended.

French Route around Africa – 1480
A French expedition made it all the way around the Cape of Good Hope and reached India, returning with ships loaded with spices and trade goods. The French begin making preparations to land expeditions at the Cape to try and control the area due to its strategic value.

Sicily Discovers Nuovo Trovato[7] – 1485
An expedition from Sicily, trying to find a different route around the world and into India, landed on an island that they claimed for Sicily and named Nuovo Trovato. They had been following old Scandinavian routes, believing that the land the Scandinavians had supposedly seen was part of Asia. When it was discovered that the island was mostly barren but contained an abundant seal population, the Italians decided to claim it for themselves[8].

New World Discovered – 1490
An expedition under a Dutch explorer, Allen Jeremiah Van Koutt, hit a small tropical island while sailing for Dinaria. Van Koutt made several return trips, believing all the while that he has landed in India. Imperator Vjekoslava Viktora, having examined exploratory maps bought from the Italians, did not believe the land is Asia but claims the island anyway, seeing potential in its climate. Van Koutt went to his grave believing he found a new route to India.


 
I like it, it's fast-paced, a welcome change opposed to most other timelines on this site.

May we have a map? Oh, and please keep Scandinavia united.

Keep up the good work!
 
On maps and such.

I have a few maps, but most of them are later because trying to depict the state of affairs until maybe 1870 or so is difficult because I'd have to either create hundreds of little duchies and fragmented territories or just draw lines over huge swathes of land and label them "disputed". To create a world with large empires, takeovers have to be gradual or you get that Draka issue of the world uniting for no apparent reason. With Dinaria's penchant for taking over their enemies, I even had to come up with a specific political mechanic to combat this later on.

Also I've got some technical issues standing in the way of posting my maps, which are positively huge, so I'll probably end up spending a day on the Help forum before we see any of them in the thread.

Edit Jan 3rd:
Next hunk of the timeline is ready to go up. Be warned that this is where I start to tip things in funny directions, if only to create a somewhat more balanced world later on. Bit of a longer entry that covers a shorter period of time, I figured that having more details is better than being short and confusing the hell out of everyone who reads the timeline.

3. Mauzer, Reformation 1501-1561

Iberian Wars – 1501-1523
With the Reconquista essentially over and the Muslims reduced to holdings in Granada, the two nations that gained the most from the struggle were Portugal and Aragon[9]. Portugal had decided to attempt to reinforce their claims against the Kingdom of Castile on Galicia. When Castile refused to hand over its territory, Portugal declared war and invaded. Aragon, allied with Castile, declared war and invaded as well.
Fighting in Castile was exceptionally brutal, though the Portuguese managed to consistently rout and destroy the weak and poorly trained Aragonese army.
Eventually, Portugal managed to win a decisive victory against Castile in Madrid, breaking the back of the Castilian army, but also taking excessive losses from the war. With Aragon collapsing and Zaragosa firmly in Portuguese hands, Portugal signed a limited peace treaty with Castile, taking only Galicia from them, but completely annexing Aragon.

Scottish-Malacca War – 1520-1525
Led primarily by Dutch and Portuguese explorers, Scottish expeditions managed to successfully sail to Indonesia. There, they discovered that the islands were rich in spices and other resources, but that the local kingdoms were weak. They returned to Scotland with this news.
Arming a large fleet, the Scottish sailed back to Indonesia and set troops down in Malaya and Sumatra, attacking the strongest country in the area known as Malacca. The Malaccans put up as much resistance as they could, but the Scottish overwhelmed them and forced them to surrender, creating Scottish Malacca.
The Scottish would use Malacca’s territory as a base to create more vassals that would over time being incorporated into the Scottish Colonial Empire.

Dinaric Conquest of Mauzer – 1520-1600
Dinaria began more deeply exploring and mapping out the areas that had been discovered by the initial wave of explorers. One explorer in particular, Yarna Tves sailed up and down much of the Central Zapadinia coast, and had the gulf that she sailed heavily named after her.
The Aztecs were particularly hostile to the Dinarics, and the small expedition led by Adrianna Seza was unfortunately the first to discover them. Lacking reinforcements, Adrianna attempted as best she could to escape the Aztec forces, but they were quickly overrun and slaughtered. The surviving prisoners, including Adrianna herself, were taken back to Tenochtitlan and killed during religious ceremonies. Several soldiers managed to escape, and made it back to the coast to report Adrianna’s death and the horrors they had witnessed.
Word reached back to the mainland and Imperator Lyubina Naidak immediately began to prepare a large military expedition to take control of the new lands. The expeditionary forces were told to give no mercy to the enemy, as they were considered completely savage due to the horrific ways they had killed their prisoners.
The Dinaric Army landed on the coast in 1520, disembarking in the small colonial settlement of Istinitost. The small area was very unprepared for their arrival, and the expeditionary force spent two years being used as workhorses to make the area a suitable settlement to sustain them. Many died of tropical diseases and a select few even starved to death.
The expeditionary force had finally turned Istinitost into a suitable base for military operations by 1522. Reinforcements were sent from Dinaria to sure up their lines, though many of the new recruits fell prey to disease. Ultimately, the Dinaric fighting force consisted of just barely 5000 combat ready soldiers, only about 500 of which were armed with rifles.
However, the climate had done no damage to the cannons, although Dinaric artillery teams needed to be extra careful to keep the humidity from getting to the powder.
Using cannons along with the very basic form of Greek Fire than had been procured before the siege of Constantinople, the Dinarics waged a war of terror against the Aztecs. Rather than face their armies head on in combat, the Dinarics would attack outlying settlements with the dubiously useful Greek Fire and then retreat into the jungle to stage ambushes.
Any time the jungle proved more useful to the Aztecs than the Dinarics, the crude Greek Fire would be used as a defoliant. Dinaria burned up huge swathes of forest around Tenochtitlan, some of the fires managing to spread into the city itself and cause heavy damage.
Eventually, the Dinarics baited the Aztecs into a stretch of forest drenched with crude Greek Fire and ignited it, destroying most of their fleeing army with grape shot and various ambush tactics. The Dinarics then mounted an attack on Tenochtitlan in 1531 and succeeded in breaking the city’s defenses.
Tenochtitlan was sacked and mostly destroyed, and Aztec resistance fell from there, though the Dinarics found themselves heavily overstretched, new reinforcements began arriving in a steady stream.
After destroying the Aztecs, Dinaria went on a rampage, rapidly conquering or destroying any natives in the area. Wherever the natives begged for peace, their cities were sacked and destroyed. Wherever they resisted, their lands were burned and their armies slaughtered until they surrendered.
Dinaria’s brutality against the natives did not stop when they had finished conquering them. Catholic and Orthodox missionaries were disgusted with Dinaria’s treatment of the natives, but Dinaria cared very little about what the outside world thought. To Dinaria, the Aztecs were exemplary of the natives’ kind, and such savages did not deserve better treatment than the squalid conditions Dinaria forced them to live under.
Legends of a golden city hidden somewhere in the deserts of northern Zapadinia led to many expeditions into the region, though the city was never actually found. Colonists from the war torn Greek areas and particularly Anatolia arrived in droves to escape the poor conditions in their homeland and religious persecution by Catholics. These colonists made up the largest section of immigrants to the Dinaric Zapadinian colonies.

Sicily Reaches Terra Di Fuoco[10] – 1520
Sicilian explorer Segno il Siciliano made the decision to sail completely around the world to determine once and for all how intellectually sound Van Koutt’s mathematics were, and to determine if there was a better route to India than the French Africa route.
Segno’s ship did make it around the world and eventually did land in India; however it had run out of provisions much earlier and needed to make stops at various islands in the Pacific Ocean to try and regain some supplies.
Often, the crew resorted to stealing from the natives to survive. This would cost them dearly in a large island chain near Indonesia. Segno himself was killed by natives in an ineffectual last stand to attempt to buy time for his crew to make it back onto the boat. Despite his death the crew did escape and the survivors made it to India and eventually back to Sicily, ironically using the French Route to get home.
The Sicilian King claimed the islands where Segno had been killed. The islands were named after the king himself, Charles II, becoming known as the Charlenes[11].

Protestant Reformation – 1530-1573
A mostly unknown Christian monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed a series of increasingly critical issues that he had with the Catholic administration onto his local monastery. Martin Luther was quickly excommunicated and banished from his home state.
When the news spread, however, the huge swathes of the Holy Roman Empire were outraged. Martin Luther’s demands were seen as sensible in the eyes of many people, and there would be hell to pay for how he was treated. The Holy Roman peasantry, tired of constant rule by leaders they did not agree with and having to defer to religious leaders they did not understand, rose up in droves across the country.
While the Church and the Emperor fought and destroyed the peasant revolts in a bloody campaign that even Martin Luther agreed with, Martin was kidnapped in the middle of the night and brought to a secret hideout deep in the Prussian countryside.
When the bag was removed from his head, he found himself sitting in the court of the Knights of the Teutonic Order, staring the Grand Master himself in the face.
After the Knights had been broken in Prussia during the Hussite wars, they secretly reformed, their numbers being bolstered after Poland-Lithuania had destroyed the Livonian Order decades previous. Using subterfuge, the Knights controlled Prussia, Pommerania and even Brandenburg.
Martin Luther had been spirited away for his own protection, and with the encouragement of the Grand Master, he took up a pen and began writing the first German translation of the bible.
Meanwhile, the Teutonic Order mobilized. Their old ally
Bohemia had risen against the Hapsburgs and was having a tough time bringing their forces together to successfully resist the Austrian army.
Many Swiss areas had converted to Protestantism, and they quickly rose and formed the Confederacy of Switzerland to resist the Holy Roman Empire. When the Emperor had drawn his forces away from the northern part of the Empire, the Teutonic Order sprung their trap, with regiments suddenly deserting all around the empire and hundreds of knights charging out of Brandenburg, Pommerania and Prussia.
The tactics utilized by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I
managed to keep the Teutonic Knights contained, but the weaknesses they had created in the army gave Switzerland and Bohemia a chance to push back.
Elsewhere, Huguenot Protestants rose up in France, the French Army having a tough time containing them despite their smaller size. Meanwhile, pockets of Protestant resistance rose up in Dinaria. The Orthodox rebels that had remained behind rather than deserting to Mauzer Colony began to grow restless; sensing weakness within Dinaria’s regime.
Many of the Finnish mass converted to Protestantism in the dead of winter and rebelled against the Scandinavian monarchy. The entire Scandinavian army had to be called in to defeat them.
Imperator Lyubina’s options were limited. To maintain order within the Empire, Lyubina made a gamble. Believing the Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire were to be the victors, she formally severed Dinaria’s relations with the Pope. Officially, she refused to acknowledge her country’s religion as Protestant. Unofficially, Lyubina treated the Dinaric court as Secular, yielding to none of the three Christian sects. She made sure to instill this point in her prospective successors.
Italian Protestants fled to Sicily in droves for a chance to board boats to the New World to escape religious persecution. Sicily’s lack of governmental control over its colonization program resulted in rich Sicilian bankers exploiting the desperate refugees and sending fleets full of them off to the colonies.
The fighting rages unabated across Europe. Dinaria succeeds at keeping its Protestant pockets from gaining any more supporters, but the Orthodox population begins widespread revolts, seeking to rid themselves of Dinaric rule once and for all. Huguenot forces crush a full third of the mobilized French army and seize Paris as Prague is sacked by Emperor Ferdinand and the Bohemian Protestants are destroyed, their refugees fleeing across the Empire to Switzerland and to Prussia.
The Teutonic Order advances steadily through the Empire, brutally assaulting the various Dukes and Counts that control central Germany. The Holy Roman army is pushed back across the Rhine and into the Netherlands. Switzerland succeeds in destroying its invaders using the mountains creatively and begins to push outward into Baden-Swabia.


First Papal Congress – 1540
The Pope convenes a conference to negotiate an end to the fighting. The Huguenots, in control of Paris, are unwilling to yield while the Protestants demand almost half of the Holy Roman Empire’s territory. Dinaria confirms its break from the church, and Hungary declares war on Dinaria, accusing the country of heresy. The Finns refuse to make an appearance, and the English break from the Catholic Church and declare themselves Protestant, with the Scots declaring war immediately after. The Papal Congress is a failure, and all participants leave with nothing gained.
Imperator Lyubina uses Hungary’s declaration of war to try and sooth tensions with the Orthodox rebels. Her propaganda points out the Hungary seeks to install a Catholic regime and convert them, while Lyubina agreed to an end of forced conversions and to officially recognize Orthodoxy as a religion in the Empire.
The bulk of the rebels are reluctantly swayed by Lyubina’s offer after it is formalized as the Treaty of Split in 1540. Lyubina suffers a heart attack weeks later and is succeeded by Jelka Servana. The Hungarian armies crash across the Dunav, overrunning Dinaria’s border guard in a matter of months. Jelka’s generals beg her to retreat from the mountains, but instead she pulls troops from all across the Empire and assembles them in the Carpathians, prepared to finish the fight with Hungary once and for all.
The Scandinavian army breaks the back of the Finnish resistance in 1542, but scattered forces still claim lives throughout the rebelling country. Promised support from France does not arrive.
The Scots fight the English forces across Northumbria and back and forth throughout most of Ireland. Scottish forces are fearsome, but the English are better organized and are more often the defenders than the attackers. Irish forces and leaders are stuck in the middle, and they are mostly absorbed by whichever side happens to occupy their territory.
In 1543 during the dead of winter, the fully assembled Dinaric army spills out of the Carpathians in a massive wave, striking directly into the heart of the Hungarian forces. Massive battles between thousands of soldiers take place throughout all of Dinaria proper with hundreds of casualties on every side. Defending positions are torn to shreds, towns and cities are sacked and forces indiscriminately kill prisoners and fleeing soldiers alike.
Hungarian King John II takes an arrow during the most brutal battle of the Dinaric theater, the battle of Kosovo. Dinaric forces rush the Hungarians from the Carpathians and trap them deep in the Dinaric Mountains. The much better organized and far better trained Hungarians kill three Dinarics for every Hungarian that dies during the fighting.
The Swiss push across Swabia and deep into Bavaria, brutally destroying any resistance that they come across. The Teutonic Order is in complete control of all of Northern Germany even as the Dutch forces begin to push them back from the Rhine. Austria is the final real holdout in the Empire.

Second Papal Congress – 1546
The Papacy, desperate to end the fighting before the Protestant forces gain too much ground, attempts to call another conference, even though ultimately very few powers attend. The fighting does not stop, and eventually Sicily invades and annexes the Papal States and Tuscany for the Pope’s protection.
The Huguenots are snapped in France, with French forces finally retaking Paris, and Berlin falls to the Dutch forces. The Swiss break through Tirol and tear across Austria, sacking Vienna and capturing the Holy Roman Emperor. The Teutonic Order makes a comeback in 1550, crushing the remnants of the Dutch army and storming North Germany once again. They cross the Rhine in 1554 and take Amsterdam in 1558.
Venice and Piedmont declare independence from the Holy Roman Empire to avoid capture by Protestant forces. The island of Sardinia is captured by a Sicilian landing, while the Count of Corsica sells Corsica to the French monarchy to avoid an invasion.
Hungary’s armies are completely destroyed at the expense of overall two thirds of Dinaria’s fighting force. Dinaric forces occupy Hungary in short order, and it is forced to sign a humiliating peace. Hungary becomes an effective vassal while all of Transylvania and large hunks of border territory are ceded to Dinaria. Imperator Jelka considers Hungary finished, but draws up plans to annex and integrate Hungary for her successors to use once Dinaria repairs itself.

The Congress of Bern – 1561
The Protestants are victorious in the Holy Roman Empire.
Bohemia is restored and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Wolfgang Schutzbar, is elected Holy Roman Emperor. The victorious Protestants go about the long process of converting and integrating the Catholic populations.
Scotland successfully conquers England and annexes it into their holdings. Dinaria appears at the Congress and their control of Hungary is confirmed, though the new Holy Roman Empire is wary of Dinaria due to its Orthodox influences.
Sicily retains control of Tuscany and a bitter Papacy. Both Venice and Piedmont enter into an alliance with Sicily to keep Catholic power consolidated in Italy. France signs the Edict of Paris, an accord that gives Huguenots rights under the French monarchy to keep them from revolting again. Sicily, still sore over the loss of Corsica, does not pursue an alliance with France.
France confirms its alliance with Scandinavia once again, and sends out feelers in Scotland. Scotland signs an alliance with France not long after.
 
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4. Refugees, Colonization, Recuperation 1565-1706

Just a short update, broken up from the others and kept short mostly because the events that take place here differ from the usual chaos and diplomatic snarls of the timeline. Sorry this one took a billion years, and to make up for it, this thread will be updated at least every five days.

I've got a completed novella and a second one in progress, though I'm afraid my writing might suck. I'll post it in bits in any case.

4. Refugees, Colonization, Recuperation 1565-1706

French East India Company Established – 1565
To maintain control of trade routes between France and India, the French East India Company is established.

Nessuno[13] Exploration – 1565-1620
Catholic refugees from the Holy Roman Empire fled en masse into the Italian states after the Protestant Reformation. Large numbers of these refugees were put on boats and sent out to Sicily’s new North Zapadinian colony, Nessuno, right next to their island of Nuovo Trovato. Large numbers of the refugees strayed away from the established colonies along the coast, leaving to stake large plots of land, convert native populations or in search of riches.

Ultimo[14] Exploration – 1565-1620
While numerous Catholic refugees were sent off to the northern Nessuno colony, just as many were sent to Sicily’s holdings around the bottom of South Zapadinia. They explored upwards past the desert of Patagonia and into the grassier areas of South Zapadinia. It was here that the colony of Ultimo was established, along with the smaller settlement of Urgo[15].

Scottish East India Trading Company – 1600
In order to better manage their colonial affairs in the Far East, including some new holdings around Indonesia, the Scots establish their own East India Trading Company.

Establishment of Scottish Zapadinia – 1605
Continuing with their newfound colonial expansion, the Scots make their first landing in Zapadinia, establishing a set of colonial settlements in an area known as New Scotland[16]. One of the most important areas is a city built in a natural harbor, the city of New York[17].

Capeville Established – 1620
The city of Capeville is established by the French East India Trading Company at this time.

First Marinid War – 1670-1676
Eager to recoup Catholic losses and gain access to cheap labor and possibly slaves for colonial export, Sicily declares war on the Marinid Caliphate in Africa, calling the grand expedition the Fifth Crusade. Large numbers of Catholic refugees that were not sent to Sicily’s growing colonies are drafted into the army.
Sicily’s expedition is fraught with problems and many soldiers are lost to the heat, desertion and starvation. Enemy actions only account for 1/3 of Sicily’s total losses during the campaign.
Despite this, Sicily manages to occupy Algiers and Tunis on the coast, the island of Malta and the Balearic Islands. They also managed to occupy Tangiers, but can’t crack Morocco or Casablanca. A peace treaty is hammered out, with the Marinids handing over all occupied territory plus their claims on the coast of the Sahara, giving Sicily a zone where they can initiate colonization of more of Africa.

Dinaric Invasion of Crimea – 1674-1676
Despite the fact that Dinaria successfully controlled all of Ukraine and the Volga region, the Khanate of Crimea still controlled the rich Crimean peninsula, the Sea of Azov and the port city of Odessa[18].
Dinaria invaded by land, negating Crimea’s strong pirate navy. Dinaric losses were moderate, and eventually Crimea was defeated and folded into the Dinaric Empire.

War of Castilian Succession – 1700-1712
The Hapsburg king of Castile died without heirs, and the regency council defaults to France, hoping to become a protectorate, rather than be annexed under Portugal. King Louis XIV instead announced that Castile would be annexed to France, as per the laws of feudal succession.
Portugal was furious, and demanded that Castile be annexed to them, and that France had no right nor any cultural connection to Castile that made them worthy of owning it. Louis XIV refused to yield, and Portugal declared war.
Scotland and Scandinavia joined the war on France’s side, and Portugal quickly found itself outmatched. The Portuguese navy, hopelessly outgunned, was utterly destroyed in the Atlantic and pursued to the death by Scandinavia’s fleet while Scotland set out to blockade Portugal’s massive colonies.
French forces poured into Aragon, which quickly revolted against Portugal, causing all Portuguese forces in the vicinity to completely dissolve against the French and rebel onslaught. The French repaid the rebels by destroying their peasant militia and quickly pacifying Aragon. Castile was occupied and controlled by France next while simultaneous Scottish naval assault took Lisbon by surprise.
Portugal tried one last organized defence in Cordoba, but were quickly overrun by France’s superior army and forces. The rest of Iberia was rapidly taken by French forces.
Meanwhile in South Zapadinia, the inhabitants of the Orinoco[12] region banded together and declared independence from the Brazil colony. Much of the existing garrisons in Orinoco deserted, and very little fighting took place. Orinoco occupied as much territory as it could before Scottish forces made landings in Brazil and established a defensive line to keep Orinoco from advancing any further.
Peace accords with Portugal were signed in Paris, all of Portugal and Iberia being completely annexed to France. For their assistance, the Scots receive the coastal Portuguese holdings of Mozambique, while France keeps Portugal’s bases in the Indian Ocean, Angola and Brazil.
Dinaria acts as a mediator for Orinoco, hoping to keep the newly independent country as a buffer state between France’s new colonial holdings and the Dinaric areas of South Zapadinia. Louis XIV is not a stupid man, and knows that holding all of France’s new areas will be a long undertaking even without Dinaria antagonizing Orinoco, so he agrees to Dinaria’s proposal. The Kingdom of Orinoco is officially recognized by Dinaria, France, Scotland and Scandinavia.
 
Wars of Revolution and Colonization

Took perhaps somewhat longer than I expected this time due to a couple of events I hadn't expected coming up. I wrote a fair amount of extra stuff like fake internet articles, but I can't post them until the timeline is more or less finished, which will take awhile. Until then, there's the short stories I'm working on, which are at least coming along quickly.

5. Wars of Revolution and Colonization 1706-1782

End of Lithuania – 1706
While Lithuania undoubtedly had the largest amount of territory between the two members of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, Poland possessed far more political power and more connection with Europe than Lithuania and its royal family. Backed by French and Dinaric interests, Poland launched a coup, effectively seizing control of Lithuania politically and marginalizing its royal family.
Poland primarily accomplished this through political means, but many officers in the Lithuanian army were Polish, and their status contributed the most to an easy transition.
The Lithuanian half of the union was still acknowledged in the official title of the country, the Poland-Lithuania Union, but Poland was now effectively the only half of the union that controlled the country.
Despite Lithuania’s wanton expansion making things difficult in the Rus and on the frontier, Poland remained as aggressive as ever towards the east, and signed a pact with Dinaria to secure a front against the Mongol Khans in the east.

Tatar War – 1719-1742
Belligerents: Poland and Dinaria vs. Tatar Khanate
Poland declared war on the Tatar Khans first, Polish King August II declared that “The Urals are the gates to the east!” Polish armies marched dead straight into the mountains, obliterating the unprepared Tatar hordes that were still mostly divided and warring amongst themselves.
Dinaria, believing the Tatars had a trap prepared, advanced far more slowly, only taking the lower parts of the Urals. Poland eventually encountered serious resistance and lost several thousand troops deep in the Urals, but by then it was too late. Most of the mountain range had been taken, and the organized resistance was quickly smashed and routed by the Polish army while Dinaric Mountaineer divisions trapped and slaughtered the survivors.
In 1723 the holdings of the Tatar Khans were divided between Dinaria and Poland, but the war would continue for much longer due to pockets of Tatar resistance within the vast Urals. This resistance was never organized, but it utilized hit and run tactics effectively, to the point that Dinaria and Poland had to deploy large amounts of soldiers to the east to keep the raids from causing any real damage.

Mauzer Revolution - 1746-1750
After living under an oppressive hegemony from an Empire that did not even worship the same religion officially, the population of Mauzer organized under revolutionary Nikola Kalivas and declared independence from Dinaria. His first act as President-Governor was to abolish all slavery and indentured servitude in Mauzer.
Mauzer’s population was wholly unified against Dinaria, the only loyalists being collaborators and ethnic Dinarics that did not have any native Zapadinian or Greek blood in them. Mauzer’s actions against the loyalists were swift and brutal, breaking their resistance and taking as many of them prisoner as possible.
Dinaria had very little time to prepare a counter attack. As many soldiers as possible were herded onto transport ships and escorted by two thirds of the Dinaric navy. Imperator Marijana Banica refused to allow Mauzer to leave Dinaria’s control, and as many resources as possible would be poured into retaking the colony.
Nikola Kalivas had an ace up his sleeve; however, the brilliant Hue Alexander, a German, was put in charge of Mauzer’s ragtag navy. The vast majority of Mauzer’s navy were cargo ships or extremely old galleons that had been hastily equipped with the few guns and cannons that the country could scrounge up. They were worthless against the comparatively powerful Dinaric fleet.
Hue was undaunted. He ordered the ships loaded with dried leaves, rotted timber and other flammable materials. Then, he had crews paint every inch of them with the crude Greek Fire that Dinaria had used to conquer Mauzer.
He used the few actual warships to lure the Dinaric fleet into the Antilles where Van Koutt had landed centuries ago. In the tight towheads and banks around the islands, Hue sprung his trap, sending his fire ships careening into the Dinaric fleet.
Knowing that Nikola’s ground forces could handle the arriving Dinaric army, Hue aimed primarily for gunboats, and succeeded in nearly crippling Dinaria’s fleet. He then sailed his warships into battle against the wrecked and disorganized Dinaric navy.
Hue’s warships could not stand up to much, but his six ragtag warships sunk an amazing twenty Dinaric gunboats until their ammunition was used up. At that point, only Hue’s flagship, the Constantine Terror, was afloat. He rammed the ship into another Dinaric warship, sinking it, and then brought the ship around and crashed it into another.
The Constantine Terror’s back was broken at this point, and Hue led the charge aboard. The charge cost him almost his entire crew, but they successfully took the ship and set scuttling charges in its lower sections to bring yet another Dinaric ship down to the depths. Hue and what was left of his crew escaped on the life boats.
Hue’s daring defense had destroyed every single ship Mauzer had at its disposal, but had cost the Dinarics nearly a thirty ships. Their offensive navy had been utterly destroyed, and the troop transports that did manage to make it ashore and release their cargo didn’t accomplish much, as Nikola Baros used the Mauzer army to run down any Dinaric forces.
The Dinarics fought to death, having been raised on old stories of what the savage Aztecs did prisoners. Nikola only managed to take handfuls of prisoners, and did his best to treat them well, but many committed suicide, fearing that they would have their hearts cut out.
Mauzer was victorious, though, and Nikola declared the Savezni Tipican, or Federal States, of Mauzer, and was elected its first president by the founding council.

Repercussions – 1750-1770 (roughly)
Mauzer’s revolution set off a wave of other revolts all across Zapadinia. Ultimo revolted in 1750, Nessuno followed three years later, and New Scotland revolted in 1761. Also, democratic revolts exploded in Orinoco in 1752. There were isolated revolts in Brazil and a few in the various African colonies, but they were all easily put down.
Sicily, their attention divided between three fronts, tried to put down all of the revolts at once rather than focusing on them one at a time. This gave Ultimo and Nessuno the advantage, as the Sicilians attacked with only a fraction of the firepower they could have brought to bear all at once. Mauzer provided as much support as it could to its new democratic brothers, but Nikola Boras was busy negotiating a land treaty with Dinaria to determine how much control each country would get over Zapadinia.
Ultimo had roundly defeated the Sicilian loyalists and dug in, preparing for Sicily’s main siege. When it arrived, it was far too weak, and Ultimo’s simplistic navy was able to harass it enough to lure it into a trap. The Sicilian troops landed on the coast, in Ultimo’s supposed capital. However, all of the revolutionaries had left, and all that remained behind was the bulk of Ultimo’s militia and organized troops.
The Sicilians were routed and most of them taken prisoner. Ultimo then mounted a naval expedition and took the Aquila[19] Islands, off the coast of Patagonia. In 1755, Urgo declared its own independence to keep from being conquered by Ultimo. Mauzer acted quickly and recognized Urgo, then guaranteed its independence, a guarantee Mauzer couldn’t have backed up, but it was enough posturing to convince Ultimo not to invade.
Nessuno suffered several horrific defeats at the hands of the Sicilians, and their poorly organized militia drew back to the cities to try and garrison them. It seemed that Sicily had won the day, but the particularly harsh winter of 1758 set in, and thousands of Sicilian troops starve or freeze to death in the empty Nessuno wastelands.
By the time spring rolls around in July, Sicily’s expeditionary forces are crippled, and Nessuno managed to beat them back to the coast. Mauzer’s peace treaty with Dinaria is signed in 1761, and Mauzer begins to mobilize to protect Nessuno from another Sicilian invasion. With the threat of Mauzer looming over the war, Sicily backs off, signing a full peace treaty with Nessuno 1762, but keeping Nuovo Trovato.
Mauzer next turns its attention to New Scotland, and sends a large amount of troops and supplies to keep the Scottish occupied. The Zapadinian Scots fight a long war, but Scotland’s heart isn’t in it, and the near universal loss of Zapadinia by all countries involved in it makes them lose confidence in keeping their wayward colony.
Scotland signs a peace with New Scotland in 1767. New Scotland immediately dissolves and is replaced by the United States of Allena. The United State of Allena quickly distances itself from Mauzer and the other revolutionary states, avoiding political talks and diplomatic meetings.
The revolts in Orinoco finally taper off in 1770. Despite Mauzer’s support, the revolutionaries fail to gain enough followers, and many are too afraid that instability will lead to Orinoco being consumed by France.

Mongol Wars – 1776-1782
With the painful loss of Mauzer and the Dinaric navy still throbbing like an old wound, new Imperator Valerija Korzha approached the hawks in Poland and began to stir them up towards the Mongols. Despite the horrific losses against the Tatars, the Polish remained blind to just exactly what the Mongols could do.
King Stanislaw II was impressed with Korzha’s tenacity, and began to prepare Poland’s armies for a massive push into Mongol territory.
In 1776, Dinaric and Polish armies stormed the eastern frontier, Poland marching into the massive but piecemeal Sibir Khanate and Dinaria charging into the Kazakh Khanate. The Caucasian vassals of Kazakh fell quickly, and soon Kazakh itself was overrun by the Dinaric forces.
Poland made massive gains in Sibir. Both countries ignored the borders between their target countries and the Chagatai Khanate. In one fell swoop, the Chagatai Khanate lost its entire northern half. In desperation, the Chagatai turned to the strongest remaining Mongol country, Yuan China[20].
Yuan China threatened war in the Polish and Dinaric continued their advance, and called an emergency meeting of all of the remaining Mongol Khans. The Yuan Khan proposed a radical solution: A Mongolian Confederation, with all five surviving Khans holding power dependent on how many people their Khanates hold.
Doomed if they disagreed, Chagatai and Sibir agreed to the plan, and the Amur Khan decided he liked the idea. Only the Khan of Honshu[21] was opposed, but he felt that his Khanate was isolated enough to avoid being absorbed by the Yuan Khan and joined anyway.
With unanimous agreement, the Mongol Confederation was formed, and it instantly threatened Dinaria and Poland with all-out war. Not fancying their chances against millions of Mongol hordes, and with Stanislaw II doubtful that they could hold so much territory even if they could take it, the war was called off. Dinaria and Poland would keep their gains, however.
The war had somewhat bankrupted Dinaria. Though the Empire still had enough money to pay its officials and keep from dropping into debt, if they paid their soldiers in actual money it would completely collapse the economy. Not wanting to slow down Dinaria’s expansion to fix the economy, the territories acquired during the war were divided up into small fiefs and doled out to soldiers as payment, along with just barely enough money for them to buy food with.
The tactic worked, as most of the soldiers were able to at least somewhat work the land that was given to them and many were overjoyed to actually own a plot of land rather than needing to go back to living in the provinces. The land reward did have an interesting side effect however, but one that would not be noticed for another thirty years.

New Edinburgh Established – 1780
The first settlement on the continent of Australia is established by the Scottish Empire.
 
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