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While Europe dealt with the Mongol horde, a nation in Elysium would also discover the power of the horse archer. Up until now horses had mainly been used for civilian purposes as a beast of burden and hunting, or when they were used in war they were used as heavy cavalry reserved for nobles. Most considered fighting on foot much more honorable.

However this would change when a band of Shoshone indians discover that horses are not just good for helping them hunt buffalo. In 1290 Chief Leaning Tree began to organize the Shosane plains tribes. Within several years he had formed a formidable force that would become the scourge of the plains. The Comanche expansion began in 1300 as they quickly began to dominate the plains. The Shoshones would quickly be affectionately be given the name The Comanches or 'The Enemy' by their rivals. Their quick and light mounted combat would be unmatched by anyone. Their army moved fast. It was said they slept only on horseback and could travel 100 miles in a day, but this claim is likely exaggerated but goes to show how feared they must have been by anyone unfortunate enough to go against them.

The Comanches were the last tribe to rise to power in Elysium that did not have a writing system. Much of what we know today about the Comanches comes from what others wrote about them and from the Epic of Sigrid. Sigrid was the great grandson of a Viking warrior who moved to Reme in the 1100s. Sigrid was a mighty warrior in his own right coming to be known as 'The Cyclops' after losing an eye in a duel sometime around 1350. Sigrid became intrigued by the tales of the mighty comanche warriors and set out to meet them. Traveling with a band of 50 men he set out and traveled to their territory. It would take 5 years before he was able to learn the language and become trusted enough to be allowed to accompany a band of Comanche raiders. For seven years he traveled with them recording (and embellishing) their exploits. One of the most interesting moments in his Epic is while raiding a Mexican city they are attacked by Shamans 'with the power of fire'. He writes that they would throw clay pots that would explode when they hit the ground spraying fire and smoke around frightening the horses and the men. Many of the comanches fall off their horses in the chaos and are slew when the Mexican army emerges from the dense forest. Sigrid and around half of the Comanche party escape, defeated. What is notable about this story is that it is the first written account of gunpowder being used in war outside of China.

Sigrid would travel with the Comanches untll 1370 when he would leave and return to Reme by 1373.
Is this a dedicated story? Is there a deviantart page where there might be more maps of this?
 
Is this a dedicated story? Is there a deviantart page where there might be more maps of this?
All the maps I have made are in this thread over the last few days I have made about 6 maps or so. Just having fun with it in my free time. Feel free to offer any suggestions. Basically the idea is that Roman exiles founded a nation in America (Called Elysium in this world) founding the empire of Reme (after Remus) aka Regnum Elysium. They brought horses and also retained metal working skills which has spread to tribes all throughout 'North Elysium'. The way of life has been drastically changing with the new found tools for advanced civilizations to develop. In the Empire of Mexica gunpowder has recently been discovered, but so far as eluded here has been used mostly as grenades in clay pots. Mexica was particulary primed to develop into a powerhouse, quickly adopting advanced metalworking. They had already had ornamental copper and gold metalworking for hundreds of years, but trade from the Remeans and Norse explorers introduced steel and iron, which they have been quick to take advantage of.

Reme has also turned her attention East. Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe islands fall under her rule. the Pagan population more than happy to live under the rule of an empire that doesn't oppress their traditions which they were beginning to face under Catholic missionaries. The religion of Reme is very interesting, they have a form of polytheistic Christian mysticism that has Christ as king of the Gods. Religious freedom is similar to what it is under Rome, but recently a more formalized church has started to form with a standardized 'Remean bible' being spread throughout the lands. This bible contains many myths about Jupiter, Dispeter, Native American beliefs as well as some of the traditional Bible stories.

The Comanches rose to power specifically because of the horse. They are not urbanized like the societies in Mexica and Eastern America, but developed new techniques for warfare which allowed them to rule the plains.

At the same time Europe is in disarray, a deadly disease from the new world was brought back which decimated the population, allowing the mongols to take over nearly all of Europe. Also Mongols did not invade China yet, instead focusing efforts west. Meaning they do not have access to gunpowder or firearms.

In South America they have horses but not yet do they have advanced metal working. But simply having a beast of Burden has a changed the way of life. They are similar in powerlevel to what the Incan empire had several centuries later iotl.
 
Another blank fantasy map like the one I posted yesterday, having been drawn on paper some years ago but with me finishing to edit it just now. It shows an Europe-esque continent before and some time after a massive flooding event (think the drowning of Doggerland meets the Zanclean Floods for the scope and timespan). On the one to the left (the after), the more saturated greenish-blue is meant to represent that those areas, while permanently sea, are not that deep, and depending on the region sailing through a ruined city and sightseeing is not a unrealistic prospect. (also: the large sea to the northeast was a gigantic lake until the flooding, and due to height differences where it meets with the ocean there are some of the world's most treacherous rapids, while most of the water on it is drinkable in nature)
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Could I just doodle a little world over that ?
 
Courtesy of u/Dr_JP69 from Reddit, a map of Soviet Rome (the VCSRP - Vnio Consiliariarum Socialisticum Rerum Publicarum, or Union of Council Socialist Republics), governed by the CPQR (Consilium Populusque Romanus, or Council and People of Rome).

The Roman Empire industrialises early thanks to steam engines, primarily in the Graecia region; its history then proceeds in a similar manner to Russia (an Empire overthrown by Communist revolution). The map is dated somewhere around 800-1000 AD.
8kaj825sfua61.png
Even Communist Rome can't get past the Rhine.
 
Honestly I think that realistically they would probably have at least taken the Lowlands and fully colonized Crimea.

Maybe (to continue the analogy) Germany-beyond-the-Rhine is like Poland and broke away during the Revolution. After commie Rome helps defeat *Fascist Lithuania, it will fall back into the Roman sphere. :)
 
I have made another map, set in the same universe as my previous two. Presenting the Clouds of Venus and the Aerostatic cities that float among them:
Venus 2090.png

I do not yet have a write up for this map, though I can try to answer questions. I should note that this map only shows the large aerostats specifically built for habitation, and that there is a lot of infrastructure too small to be shown. Also, not all of these aerostats are the same size.
 

Deleted member 160141

All the maps I have made are in this thread over the last few days I have made about 6 maps or so. Just having fun with it in my free time. Feel free to offer any suggestions. Basically the idea is that Roman exiles founded a nation in America (Called Elysium in this world) founding the empire of Reme (after Remus) aka Regnum Elysium. They brought horses and also retained metal working skills which has spread to tribes all throughout 'North Elysium'. (5) The way of life has been drastically changing with the new found tools for advanced civilizations to develop. In the Empire of Mexica gunpowder has recently been discovered, but so far as eluded here has been used mostly as grenades in clay pots. Mexica was particulary primed to develop into a powerhouse, quickly adopting advanced metalworking. They had already had ornamental copper and gold metalworking for hundreds of years, but trade from the Remeans and Norse explorers introduced steel and iron, which they have been quick to take advantage of. (4)

At the same time Europe is in disarray, a deadly disease from the new world was brought back which decimated the population, allowing the mongols to take over nearly all of Europe (2). Also Mongols did not invade China yet, instead focusing efforts west (3). Meaning they do not have access to gunpowder or firearms.

In South America they have horses but not yet do they have advanced metal working. But simply having a beast of Burden has a changed the way of life. They are similar in powerlevel to what the Incan empire had several centuries later iotl (1).
Okay, in the spirit of suggestions, I offer the following.
I'm going to go through this backwards, just to make sure everything is dealt with properly. My only major gripe is down at the bottom.​
(1) In South America, they already had well-developed bronze tools and weapons. The main problem was that they weren't made ubiquitous until the Inca performed a mass Standardization / internal deportation across the Andes.
(2) Uh... what kind of disease? I know there have been 500 years of extra contact between Americans and all the various Old World vectors of disease, but that doesn't seem like enough time to create a disease which is so out-of-left-field for European immune systems. At best, I could see it as yet another version of the plague, and that didn't destroy Europe. Also, if the Europeans got infected with it and suffered, then the minute the Mongols invaded, they should be getting it too with just as much force. The most I could think of would be syphilis, and that stuff spread rabidly across Europe without blunting its capacity for being the seat of empires.
(3)
It's a common myth that Ogedei's death saved Europe, but a quick look at the terrain map of Europe, plus a look at the traits of nomadic empires, disproves it.
The Mongols were a nomadic steppe people, and that kind of people works best on steppe, which can only be found in Pannonia and the Ukraine in Europe. This is why nomadic horse peoples basically stopped in area of Europe: because Germany was too forested and hilly to support a grazing horde.​
Any further conquests (ex. China) had to be done with local help (engineers, sappers, bureaucrats, tax men), and this same help had to be relied upon to administer the country because the nomads simply didn't know how and didn't have the numbers to constitute a dedicated bureaucratic class. In China's case, it certainly helped that Mongolia was directly north of China, and any rebellion could be easily responded to.
Mongol conquests were already taking heavy losses at the time of Ogedei's death, and they were getting kicked in the teeth in the forests of Novgorod, Poland and Germany. Even with disease ravaging the areas (which I'm highly skeptical of happening at all), I can only see the areas immediately adjacent to the steppe becoming vassal states. France and Italy are never going to pay tribute to the Khagan.​
Hell, just putting New-Old World contact back in the 11th century would already mean that everybody's already got each others' diseases, and the fact that Europeans didn't have the technology or political situation to really colonize at the time means that will be 200-400 years of getting used to the new diseases for the natives without any disturbances. By the invention of the caravel, I'd expect the Americas to be back up to capacity and for certain areas to be more technologically advanced and much more politically unified.​
(4) The moment the Mexicans (whichever group they are) got horses, they should've barrelled north like the Furies, because suddenly the wild wastes of Durango and Sinaloa are now prime ranching territory. For more info, look to this video.
They won't extend their reach very far beyond the Rio Grande, but they'll have all of Mexico under their control.
Their population should also just completely explode after this, because the minute they get horses, they get 5x faster transportation of food and a whole load of farming improvements. Historically, the Aztecs had to turn all the land out for a week's walk from Tenochtitlan into farmland and they still faced perennial famines. With the advent of horses, they'll be able to turn much, much more of the land into farmland, and their population will easily double, if not triple.
This will instantly support an explosion in artisanry and other city-based professions, as more people find themselves capable of packing up and going to the big city to find work. After this, it's almost certain Mesoamerica becomes the seat of a new empire, one based on the millennia-old Mesoamerican sacrifice culture.​

(5) Okay, two problems:
a. How did they get across the Atlantic? This isn't a trivial question; the caravel was only developed in the 15th century, and it only barely made the distance. Roman ships of any era wouldn't make it, and would have more likelihood of reaching Brazil than New England. This isn't just a question of one ship somehow surviving an unnaturally long journey, seeing the land and then somehow making that same journey except it's longer due to the effects of longitude on the currents; this is a question of people getting there, noticing the land, and then transporting an armada across it.
b. How the fuck did everybody wait around 8-5 centuries (!!) before some plains tribe got the idea to ride a horse?!!! If horses were around since the Remans established themselves, it's inevitable that some would go feral. IOTL, the Chichimeca of Northern Mexico immediately, and I mean immediately, started riding horses and raiding the Spanish in the standard steppe-nomad manner seen countless times in Eurasia. The Chichimeca did this less than a century after the Spanish arrived. Many formerly-sedentary farming tribes, especially post-Mississippi ones, immediately went nomadic after receiving horses.

For horses to only start to be used for nomadic empire-building in the 14th century, which is anywhere between 8 to 5 centuries after the Romans arrived, the natives would have to be mentally retarded!

I refuse to believe that people only get the idea of using horses for war many hundreds of years after contact with Reme.
As soon as mustangs appeared in Northern Mexico, the Chichimecas used horses to raid Spanish Mexico, and they were living right next door.​
You should be having warhorses appear much earlier somewhere right next to Reme, and for that to spread to the east and become the basis of a nomadic culture immediately.
 
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Crossposting the newest map from my TL, A Horn of Bronze.
Below is a map of the Wayamese Empire in the year 1205--here Wayam is effectively at its height. Portrayed is a rough approximation of the five provinces (as later historians might try to reconstruct from mythology and primary sources) within Wayam (denoted by colour) and the prefectures within those provinces (denoted by the borders). Areas where Wayamese control is light are also portrayed--these areas make up the majority of the empire and are usually up of several independent towns and city-states subjugated to Wayamese rule and subsequently grouped together for ease of administration, although the actual degree of Wayamese controls varies. As this is over a year into the reign of Tsanahuutimna's successor Aanwaakutl, some rearrangement and partitioning of new provinces has occurred. Portrayed are numerous towns and cities referenced in the text as well as some yet to be mentioned. This map includes only Wayam. The empty areas near Wayam are mountainous areas (OTL's Cascades and Blue Mountains) full of mostly-subdued tribes the Wayamese consider barbarians. They are occasionally traveled through but Wayamese control tends to be light outside the mountain passes.
i4I55Vh.png
 
I have made another map, set in the same universe as my previous two. Presenting the Clouds of Venus and the Aerostatic cities that float among them:
View attachment 624844
I do not yet have a write up for this map, though I can try to answer questions. I should note that this map only shows the large aerostats specifically built for habitation, and that there is a lot of infrastructure too small to be shown. Also, not all of these aerostats are the same size.
What is the total population of venus? And why were there settlements on venus originally?
 
Okay, in the spirit of suggestions, I offer the following.
I'm going to go through this backwards, just to make sure everything is dealt with properly. My only major gripe is down at the bottom.​
(1) In South America, they already had well-developed bronze tools and weapons. The main problem was that they weren't made ubiquitous until the Inca performed a mass Standardization / internal deportation across the Andes.
(2) Uh... what kind of disease? I know there have been 500 years of extra contact between Americans and all the various Old World vectors of disease, but that doesn't seem like enough time to create a disease which is so out-of-left-field for European immune systems. At best, I could see it as yet another version of the plague, and that didn't destroy Europe. Also, if the Europeans got infected with it and suffered, then the minute the Mongols invaded, they should be getting it too with just as much force. The most I could think of would be syphilis, and that stuff spread rabidly across Europe without blunting its capacity for being the seat of empires.
(3)
It's a common myth that Ogedei's death saved Europe, but a quick look at the terrain map of Europe, plus a look at the traits of nomadic empires, disproves it.
The Mongols were a nomadic steppe people, and that kind of people works best on steppe, which can only be found in Pannonia and the Ukraine in Europe. This is why nomadic horse peoples basically stopped in area of Europe: because Germany was too forested and hilly to support a grazing horde.​
Any further conquests (ex. China) had to be done with local help (engineers, sappers, bureaucrats, tax men), and this same help had to be relied upon to administer the country because the nomads simply didn't know how and didn't have the numbers to constitute a dedicated bureaucratic class. In China's case, it certainly helped that Mongolia was directly north of China, and any rebellion could be easily responded to.
Mongol conquests were already taking heavy losses at the time of Ogedei's death, and they were getting kicked in the teeth in the forests of Novgorod, Poland and Germany. Even with disease ravaging the areas (which I'm highly skeptical of happening at all), I can only see the areas immediately adjacent to the steppe becoming vassal states. France and Italy are never going to pay tribute to the Khagan.​
Hell, just putting New-Old World contact back in the 11th century would already mean that everybody's already got each others' diseases, and the fact that Europeans didn't have the technology or political situation to really colonize at the time means that will be 200-400 years of getting used to the new diseases for the natives without any disturbances. By the invention of the caravel, I'd expect the Americas to be back up to capacity and for certain areas to be more technologically advanced and much more politically unified.​
(4) The moment the Mexicans (whichever group they are) got horses, they should've barrelled north like the Furies, because suddenly the wild wastes of Durango and Sinaloa are now prime ranching territory. For more info, look to this video.
They won't extend their reach very far beyond the Rio Grande, but they'll have all of Mexico under their control.
Their population should also just completely explode after this, because the minute they get horses, they get 5x faster transportation of food and a whole load of farming improvements. Historically, the Aztecs had to turn all the land out for a week's walk from Tenochtitlan into farmland and they still faced perennial famines. With the advent of horses, they'll be able to turn much, much more of the land into farmland, and their population will easily double, if not triple.
This will instantly support an explosion in artisanry and other city-based professions, as more people find themselves capable of packing up and going to the big city to find work. After this, it's almost certain Mesoamerica becomes the seat of a new empire, one based on the millennia-old Mesoamerican sacrifice culture.​

(5) Okay, two problems:
a. How did they get across the Atlantic? This isn't a trivial question; the caravel was only developed in the 15th century, and it only barely made the distance. Roman ships of any era wouldn't make it, and would have more likelihood of reaching Brazil than New England. This isn't just a question of one ship somehow surviving an unnaturally long journey, seeing the land and then somehow making that same journey except it's longer due to the effects of longitude on the currents; this is a question of people getting there, noticing the land, and then transporting an armada across it.
b. How the fuck did everybody wait around 8-5 centuries (!!) before some plains tribe got the idea to ride a horse?!!! If horses were around since the Remans established themselves, it's inevitable that some would go feral. IOTL, the Chichimeca of Northern Mexico immediately, and I mean immediately, started riding horses and raiding the Spanish in the standard steppe-nomad manner seen countless times in Eurasia. The Chichimeca did this less than a century after the Spanish arrived. Many formerly-sedentary farming tribes, especially post-Mississippi ones, immediately went nomadic after receiving horses.

For horses to only start to be used for nomadic empire-building in the 14th century, which is anywhere between 8 to 5 centuries after the Romans arrived, the natives would have to be mentally retarded!
1. Fair point. I did not know that metal working was developed pre-Incan Empire in the south. I knew that in Mexico they had those technologies early on.
So maybe the South American empires should be a little more advanced than I had made them, I'm going to incorporate that thank you.

2. So the disease is basically just a hemorrhagic fever. Basically super ebola, but with a bacterium instead of virus. I took some creative liberties with it, but basically the idea was the Plague of Cyprian was caused by some bacteria that died out in otl, but in this traveled to the new world and eventually back to a Europe wholly unprepared for such a disease. I think it is possible for something like that disease to exist. I was also trying to write from the point of view of someone in this timeline writing about how its theorized this outbreak happened. It could be some disease that was under the ice in Iceland for millennia and when some unlucky Norseman drank the glacial water he contracted it. Similar to how we don't really know exactly were the black plague came from for certain.

It also wasn't mentioned but it is possible that small pox would have been introduced by the Romans. It seems to be unknown from my research if it was in Britain at the time they would have left, with some sources saying yes and others saying no.

3. The Mongols most definitely are not going to hold onto the area in the same way that the Golden Horde and other successor states were able to survive. I am aware of the logistical issues. The map in 1300 is the Mongols at the height of control, their hold is tenuous at best. It is definitely at the extremes of what I think the Mongols could have in the best case scenario accomplished. I set the Mongol peak 2 generations after their peak in otl, assuming that they had less disastrous successions and had several different campaigns over a few decades before finally taking France and Germany, if only for a short moment. This probably was too unrealistic though.

4. They will be expanding north shortly. :) I am definitely setting them up to be a very powerful civilization. I was not sure how long it would take them to develop a horse drawn plough. I figured it would take a few generations to really take off. And then there were setbacks from the Comanches raiding south.

5.
a. Definitely a case of handwavium for the sake of story. Personally I don't mind having the jumping off point be an astronomically slim chance, but I want to limit the astronomically unlikely events to just the hook. So my initial starting point was, if this were to somehow happen, what would be the result?

b. They have had horses since around ~1000 AD. Horses were limited to Newfoundland for a long time, and I was having the Remeans deliberately only trade castrated horses to the mainland to protect their trade. Eventually overtime, greedy traders defying this order, or just lazy ones introduced breeding horses to the mainland. So around 750 AD east of the Appalachians there was a significant breeding population of horses. So I was thinking that it would take until around 1000-1100 for there to be wild horses on the plains and around that time there were also Norse and Remean explorers checking out Mexico and Cuba so that was when they were introduced there. This might honestly be way too long of time for that to happen. I was trying to be reasonable with it, but may have went too far into the other direction.

Edit: I was thinking maybe what I could change is horses get to the plains sooner and their are warrior cultures, but the first to really conquer the entire plains and be able to reach across the Mississippi and the Rio Grande are the comanche band around 1300. I think that would make way more sense than my initial write up.

Another problem I have been contemplating is the type of horse that would have been brought to the Americas. It likely would have been Roman war horses. How long would it take for draft/work horses to be bred? I am honestly not sure on this.
 
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Aurantiacis

Gone Fishin'
1. Fair point. I did not know that metal working was developed pre-Incan Empire in the south. I knew that in Mexico they had those technologies early on.
So maybe the South American empires should be a little more advanced than I had made them, I'm going to incorporate that thank you.

2. So the disease is basically just a hemorrhagic fever. Basically super ebola, but with a bacterium instead of virus. I took some creative liberties with it, but basically the idea was the Plague of Cyprian was caused by some bacteria that died out in otl, but in this traveled to the new world and eventually back to a Europe wholly unprepared for such a disease. I think it is possible for something like that disease to exist. I was also trying to write from the point of view of someone in this timeline writing about how its theorized this outbreak happened. It could be some disease that was under the ice in Iceland for millennia and when some unlucky Norseman drank the glacial water he contracted it. Similar to how we don't really know exactly were the black plague came from for certain.

It also wasn't mentioned but it is possible that small pox would have been introduced by the Romans. It seems to be unknown from my research if it was in Britain at the time they would have left, with some sources saying yes and others saying no.

3. The Mongols most definitely are not going to hold onto the area in the same way that the Golden Horde and other successor states were able to survive. I am aware of the logistical issues. The map in 1300 is the Mongols at the height of control, their hold is tenuous at best. It is definitely at the extremes of what I think the Mongols could have in the best case scenario accomplished. I set the Mongol peak 2 generations after their peak in otl, assuming that they had less disastrous successions and had several different campaigns over a few decades before finally taking France and Germany, if only for a short moment. This probably was too unrealistic though.

4. They will be expanding north shortly. :) I am definitely setting them up to be a very powerful civilization. I was not sure how long it would take them to develop a horse drawn plough. I figured it would take a few generations to really take off. And then there were setbacks from the Comanches raiding south.

5.
a. Definitely a case of handwavium for the sake of story. Personally I don't mind having the jumping off point be an astronomically slim chance, but I want to limit the astronomically unlikely events to just the hook. So my initial starting point was, if this were to somehow happen, what would be the result?

b. They have had horses since around ~1000 AD. Horses were limited to Newfoundland for a long time, and I was having the Remeans deliberately only trade castrated horses to the mainland to protect their trade. Eventually overtime, greedy traders defying this order, or just lazy ones introduced breeding horses to the mainland. So around 750 AD east of the Appalachians there was a significant breeding population of horses. So I was thinking that it would take until around 1000-1100 for there to be wild horses on the plains and around that time there were also Norse and Remean explorers checking out Mexico and Cuba so that was when they were introduced there. This might honestly be way too long of time for that to happen. I was trying to be reasonable with it, but may have went too far into the other direction.

Edit: I was thinking maybe what I could change is horses get to the plains sooner and their are warrior cultures, but the first to really conquer the entire plains and be able to reach across the Mississippi and the Rio Grande are the comanche band around 1300. I think that would make way more sense than my initial write up.

Another problem I have been contemplating is the type of horse that would have been brought to the Americas. It likely would have been Roman war horses. How long would it take for draft/work horses to be bred? I am honestly not sure on this.
Do you think you can create a TL thread in the pre-1900 forum for this? It is a good idea, but it would be better for this to have its own separate thread so discussion about it can go into there.
 
Courtesy of u/Dr_JP69 from Reddit, a map of Soviet Rome (the VCSRP - Vnio Consiliariarum Socialisticum Rerum Publicarum, or Union of Council Socialist Republics), governed by the CPQR (Consilium Populusque Romanus, or Council and People of Rome).

The Roman Empire industrialises early thanks to steam engines, primarily in the Graecia region; its history then proceeds in a similar manner to Russia (an Empire overthrown by Communist revolution). The map is dated somewhere around 800-1000 AD.
8kaj825sfua61.png
Apparently Tunis was just a minor town during Roman Empire, so they would either call the region Byzacena or Zeugitana. As for Baetica, I see little reasoning why the regions of Sevilla have been chopped away from them. Also ,do we have a Castille already?
 
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