It is the year 1800, and this is a world where Columbus never sailed west, for a lack of financing. It is far different, particularly in the Americas where only isolated European settlements exist, and most of the land remains Terra Incognita, from darkest Mer Douce [1] to the rumored lands of the Inka, or perhaps the fabled cities of the Shocolteca, where the streets run red with blood for their heathen god, or the Great River said to longer then most seas are wide.
To the northwest of Baccaliue[2] A small group of European settlements crowd around the Gulf of Beotuk, trapped the powerful Nine fires confederacy and their own complacency. Mostly a stop for the cod fishermen and some odd religious radicals now that the fur trade has dried up, they're slowly sinking into obscurity, particularly now that the French have been isolated and are mostly unable to expand.
Southwards, the colonies of Cabrolia[3] (for North and South Americaare not thought to be connected or related, as expeditions to Mesoamerica have been fought with failure and rare) are more profitable rich with the sugar industry, if also isolated by the highlands and the strange dark forests of the Mer Douce basin. The Portuguese were the original settlers, a stopping point for those heading to Africa, but once the Sugar industry became profitable the French and Dutch both settled colonies. Today, they are strange lands, mostly used for sugar and a stopping point for those trying to go under Cabrolia and northwards across the Pacific to the rich and distant Asia.
Deep in the halls of Muscovy, the Tsar broods and thinks over the new information just received. His finest scholars have lined far distant Alyeska, a colony he has triumphed in recent years after the defeats in the west and for their rich trade in furs and good land,to the strange lands of Baccalieu, from new maps his finest explorers have made. If this is true then his great eastern continent may be far larger then he ever imagined and perhaps far richer.
And all the while the natives grow stronger, gaining guns and immunity to the western diseases. The Horse Lords of the Plains face their greatest enemy in the kingdom of the Natchez, who receive guns and swords from their northern neighbor, the unified Huron and Iriqouis, while to the south the great Empire of Xocol has risen from the ashes of plague and disease, ready to conquer the world in the name of their terrible Sun and Fire god, wielding Bronze and the strange explosive devices from the North. The Tawantinsuyu[4] has united itself, with the Quechua rising to fill the empty lands of the plague their hands raised in adoration to their Emperor, whose lineage was free from disease for the entirety of the dark years[5], and who now carefully controls access to the strange White Men from the South, odd and irregular visitors but with the most fascinating technology...
[1]The Amazon, the 'sweet sea' because it's so large and freshwater
[2]North America, a corrupted version of "the land of cod" so named because the cod fishermen got there first.
[3]Named for Cabral, their discoverer.
[4]land of the four Quarters, the incan Empire to OTLers.
[5]If not from sudden random deaths when strange spots appeared, but....
