If Las Vegas collapses two centuries earlier in the 2500s, when does Las Vegas subjugate the Anasazi as they are supposed to do so in the 2500s.
Medieval America Mark III
- Thread starter Flashman
- Start date
Reading about the Afrikaners. It's interesting to see how closely they have actualized the sort of caricature the Cowboy tribes are built on-- the wandering cowherds who find the Israelites' story explains their existence and speaks to their problems/fears/hopes as no other text does.
Of course, the transformation of the Cowboys has been a sight more dramatic-- and although factors like the shock of the apocalypse, the passage of nine hundred years, and the vast distances can explain how prior structures fell apart to the part of allowing as radical a change as Jewish conversion... these same factors also make it hard to believe that this transformation could be so uniform across the entire region. This isn't sedentary, centralized California after all.
We could say that there would be three main groups of Cowboys. These wouldn't be stages of a linear evolution, but contemporaneous categories reflecting an uneven pattern of change, both cause and effect of diffuse authority on the plains.
- An "illiterate" group that pretty much doesn't keep any written texts, and has defaulted to an almost pre-Buddhist Mongolian type of religion-- a vague devotion to the heavens as the source of fated events (if not necessarily as creator and lawgiver) and a more direct connection to shamans, who can be counted on to influence fate more directly. They are also the most flexible in interpreting others' beliefs in light of their own.
- A "bookkeeper" group that preserves texts of the Bible but consider themselves part of the new covenant, mostly governing themselves like the Afrikaners' Reformed Church did-- local preacher as co-ruler of his community, kept together through congresses.
- A "lawkeeper" group that resembles Lamaist Mongolia-- religion is invoked consistently to justify political moves (although politics will take the leading role more often than not). Most prone to the religiously-inspired immolations and massacres mentioned in canon. While the previous two groups' leaders are more honest about being khans and warlords, this group considers its leaders as prophets, and compete with neighboring political/religious authorities on that basis. Just as the Khalkha Mongols considered their leader to be a reincarnation of a lama, and therefore superior to both the Manchu and Dzungar leaders that otherwise outclassed the Khalkha in every field.
Of course, the transformation of the Cowboys has been a sight more dramatic-- and although factors like the shock of the apocalypse, the passage of nine hundred years, and the vast distances can explain how prior structures fell apart to the part of allowing as radical a change as Jewish conversion... these same factors also make it hard to believe that this transformation could be so uniform across the entire region. This isn't sedentary, centralized California after all.
We could say that there would be three main groups of Cowboys. These wouldn't be stages of a linear evolution, but contemporaneous categories reflecting an uneven pattern of change, both cause and effect of diffuse authority on the plains.
- An "illiterate" group that pretty much doesn't keep any written texts, and has defaulted to an almost pre-Buddhist Mongolian type of religion-- a vague devotion to the heavens as the source of fated events (if not necessarily as creator and lawgiver) and a more direct connection to shamans, who can be counted on to influence fate more directly. They are also the most flexible in interpreting others' beliefs in light of their own.
- A "bookkeeper" group that preserves texts of the Bible but consider themselves part of the new covenant, mostly governing themselves like the Afrikaners' Reformed Church did-- local preacher as co-ruler of his community, kept together through congresses.
- A "lawkeeper" group that resembles Lamaist Mongolia-- religion is invoked consistently to justify political moves (although politics will take the leading role more often than not). Most prone to the religiously-inspired immolations and massacres mentioned in canon. While the previous two groups' leaders are more honest about being khans and warlords, this group considers its leaders as prophets, and compete with neighboring political/religious authorities on that basis. Just as the Khalkha Mongols considered their leader to be a reincarnation of a lama, and therefore superior to both the Manchu and Dzungar leaders that otherwise outclassed the Khalkha in every field.
I could see that...but uh...they're probably up against big sedentary Zulu, Xhosa and Bantu states that have the same iron weapons and better fortifications and established wealth. So they're probably nomadic by need, moving when they get on the wrong side of the neighbors who have legends on how their ancestors oppressed them with apartheid.
I had an idea of religious conflict and Crusades in South America, where large Native-American states based on the Inca, Aymara have risen again in the Andes and brought back the old religions and sun worship, and a Catholic sub-papacy based in Rio De Janeiro tries to pressure its neighbors into religious Crusades to force the Church on people again. I also had the idea of neo-Amazon tribes living in the rainforest, but they are descended from the illegal loggers not the uncontacted tribes, ironically forced to take their place when the Regression stranded them there.
I had an idea of religious conflict and Crusades in South America, where large Native-American states based on the Inca, Aymara have risen again in the Andes and brought back the old religions and sun worship, and a Catholic sub-papacy based in Rio De Janeiro tries to pressure its neighbors into religious Crusades to force the Church on people again. I also had the idea of neo-Amazon tribes living in the rainforest, but they are descended from the illegal loggers not the uncontacted tribes, ironically forced to take their place when the Regression stranded them there.
Oh, you mean the actual Afrikaners. I still thought we were talking about Cowboys, like what are the Zulu doing in Nebraska?
Oh, this is fun. One thing I don't think I had in mind back in... well, any time before the Bolsonaro election is that unabashedly Protestant evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity has a pretty big niche in LatAm. Prosperity gospels, emotional intensity, thumbing one's nose at traditional authority-- can't underestimate its appeal. Especially if the End Times appear to be nigh and life as one knew it is falling apart.
As for Catholicism... if I recall, when I last talked about it I argued that it doesn't so much need a pope as it does a college of bishops, who by maintaining canon law, administering the sacraments, and recruiting new priests and bishops can maintain Apostolic Succession. Life at every level except the top can continue as normal for the most part-- but the top decides the identity of the church. Ordinarily no bishop could claim inherent superiority or a final say on debates, so if they defer to a king... well, that's just Brazilian Anglicanism. Or there's the Episcopalian option, a sort of bicameral deal where the bishops elect a Speaker of the House. (Non-Denom, which seems very Episcopalian in structure, may end up assimilating a lot more than just Catholic aesthetics. Catholic theology might be one of the dominant warring tendencies within it, along with Methodism and Calvinism, with Baptism dismissed as heresy and Lutheranism probably on its way there after association with the German-American Cowboys and Minnesotan forest-folk).
But to choose one among them as a bishop of Rome, requires creating a new Rome-- a new Patriarchate, and a new home for St. Peter*. Whether that's done by some Aeneid-like story of migration from a ruined homeland, or recreation of Rome's geography and monuments (Rio should have at least seven hills), the result wouldn't so much be a sub-papacy, keeping the seat warm for some mythical ruler of a city no one has ever seen, but a full blown papacy of its own. The fact that this would happen in a bunch of places isn't too big a problem-- most people will die within 20 miles of their birthplace so it's not like they go around shopping for which Rome's their favorite, and for the elite's preferences it's basically the same question as "Rome or Constantinople?" was for Europe's OG medieval polities.
But in the places where this consolidation fails... well, the Jesuit missions among the Guarani are a great example of "Catholic" authority that doesn't try to fit into or create any kind of universal structure-- in fact, it fought against the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies, championing local and native rights. But let's say even that isn't successful. Catholicism is then left as a body of laws and traditions without any attached leadership structure-- allowing that body of philosophy to be claimed by whoever can provide leadership and patronage for scholars. Something like the repurposing of Greco-Roman philosophy, which aspired to provide religious fulfillment, by the Abrahamic religions that abolished this "paganism" (itself an ironic position for Catholicism to be in). And a supposed "pagan revival" movemwmt ending up suspiciously similar to the systems it wants to replace (traditional religion, atheistic materialism) is more or less par for the course on how these things have turned out in LatAm and elsewhere.
Oh, and speaking of groups driven into the Amazon for safety-- FARC.
*A fun option could be something like the Virgin of Guadalupe-- instead of an image of the Virgin Mary on some Indian's cloak, it's the bones of St. Peter teleported to some new resting place. Or, a whole Brazilian transposition of Roman history-- switching out Augustus for Dom Pedro, identifying the Five Patriarchates with Brazilian cities, and denying that these events might actually have occurred on some other continent.
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Rio De Janeiro Papal State
It is said in the ancient times, the Papacy in Rome had a plan to evacuate to Rio De Janeiro in Brazil in the event of a nuclear war or other large scale catastrophe. During the Regression, this plan was put into practice as conditions deteriorated in Europe. The Vatican in Exile founded in the city managed to establish order again quickly in the chaos of the Regression dark ages in Brazil due to the heavily Catholic bent of the local Brazillian population, raising a small army to fend off marauding favela gangs and sieges of guacho hordes and riverine pirates over the years. Priests distributed food to the poor in the favelas of Rio and the Vatican-in-Exile took over government of the state of Rio De Janeiro, extending its rule over Petropolis, Nova Iguacu and other neighboring places.
In Europe, as the violence and chaos stabilized and the Holy European Union in Brussels sponsored a new Pope in Rome, the flight of a long dead pope and his cardinals and staff to Brazil was mostly forgotten and European Catholics considered the Holy See in Rome their legitimate spiritual authority, though the Holy European Union's Edicts of Toleration gave the Muslims of France, Italy and Britain and the Protestants of Northern Europe most of the same rights to avoid further religious violence than had already occurred. When word reached each Papacy through American sea traders from Nantucket, at first each considered the other Antipopes, but then an uneasy arrangement was come to where the See of Rome considered the Rio See a Vice-Papacy, and the Rio Antipope considered the Roman Pope a Cardinal and with the ocean and a long divergence, they ignored each other.
Unfortunately, the Rio Papal State has acquired much of the corruption of Old Medieval Rome. Carnivale has never lost its decadence and Rio Popes have been known to join in. Pope Joao III instituted the practice of executing those who defied him by sending them up the antique cable cars of Sugarloaf Mountain to drop to their deaths. The aristocratic Petrobras and Vale families are said to control the Papal selection process for their own corrupt profit. The thieves guilds still rule the favelas.
Recent events of note for the Rio Papal State have been the doomed Crusade against the Sun Worshippers of the Andes. In a bid to get the Imperador of Minas Gerais and the Generalissimo of the Ditadura Militar de la Sao Paulo to acknowledge his spiritual authority and temporal, Pope Matteo V called for a crusade to the west against the growing empire of the new Sapa Inca in Cusco and their allies the Aymara in Sucre, which had gone back to the Andean peoples' old religions and begun expanding into the old Brazilian states of Amazonas and Acre. The neighboring rulers were reluctant, but fear of religious uprisings by the peasantry made them agree to contribute to the army. The combined army marched towards the Andes and took barges along the rivers, only to be taken apart over months by registrador tribes and disease in the swamps and rainforests and when they turned into the old Brasilian Highlands, were met by an Inca and Aymara army near the ruins of Brasilia, where they were defeated brutally and a humiliating ransom had to paid to the Sapa Inca to free noble and church hostages by Pope Matteo V from his treasury.
It is said in the ancient times, the Papacy in Rome had a plan to evacuate to Rio De Janeiro in Brazil in the event of a nuclear war or other large scale catastrophe. During the Regression, this plan was put into practice as conditions deteriorated in Europe. The Vatican in Exile founded in the city managed to establish order again quickly in the chaos of the Regression dark ages in Brazil due to the heavily Catholic bent of the local Brazillian population, raising a small army to fend off marauding favela gangs and sieges of guacho hordes and riverine pirates over the years. Priests distributed food to the poor in the favelas of Rio and the Vatican-in-Exile took over government of the state of Rio De Janeiro, extending its rule over Petropolis, Nova Iguacu and other neighboring places.
In Europe, as the violence and chaos stabilized and the Holy European Union in Brussels sponsored a new Pope in Rome, the flight of a long dead pope and his cardinals and staff to Brazil was mostly forgotten and European Catholics considered the Holy See in Rome their legitimate spiritual authority, though the Holy European Union's Edicts of Toleration gave the Muslims of France, Italy and Britain and the Protestants of Northern Europe most of the same rights to avoid further religious violence than had already occurred. When word reached each Papacy through American sea traders from Nantucket, at first each considered the other Antipopes, but then an uneasy arrangement was come to where the See of Rome considered the Rio See a Vice-Papacy, and the Rio Antipope considered the Roman Pope a Cardinal and with the ocean and a long divergence, they ignored each other.
Unfortunately, the Rio Papal State has acquired much of the corruption of Old Medieval Rome. Carnivale has never lost its decadence and Rio Popes have been known to join in. Pope Joao III instituted the practice of executing those who defied him by sending them up the antique cable cars of Sugarloaf Mountain to drop to their deaths. The aristocratic Petrobras and Vale families are said to control the Papal selection process for their own corrupt profit. The thieves guilds still rule the favelas.
Recent events of note for the Rio Papal State have been the doomed Crusade against the Sun Worshippers of the Andes. In a bid to get the Imperador of Minas Gerais and the Generalissimo of the Ditadura Militar de la Sao Paulo to acknowledge his spiritual authority and temporal, Pope Matteo V called for a crusade to the west against the growing empire of the new Sapa Inca in Cusco and their allies the Aymara in Sucre, which had gone back to the Andean peoples' old religions and begun expanding into the old Brazilian states of Amazonas and Acre. The neighboring rulers were reluctant, but fear of religious uprisings by the peasantry made them agree to contribute to the army. The combined army marched towards the Andes and took barges along the rivers, only to be taken apart over months by registrador tribes and disease in the swamps and rainforests and when they turned into the old Brasilian Highlands, were met by an Inca and Aymara army near the ruins of Brasilia, where they were defeated brutally and a humiliating ransom had to paid to the Sapa Inca to free noble and church hostages by Pope Matteo V from his treasury.
Tawantisuyu/New Inca Empire
The Incan people were numerous and proud enough they never quite assimilated into Spanish New World colonial society. Some of them resisted for nearly a century after Pizzaro seized their original capitol. The Quechua language survived when many other tongues did not. So it made sense when the Regression happened and the cities of Venezuela were afire between guerillas and stranded American marines and Buenos Airies sat in a terminal blackout abandoned by starving city dwellers, that the Andean peoples might see a chance for a comeback. A leader who claimed to be the Sun God Inti returned to lead the people to survive the Regression, and reject Spanish culture and Catholicism arose and seized control of Cusco, Lima and other major cities in Peru. His children became the new Sapa Inca rulers.
This new empire is not a direct copy of the old. Incan warriors use crossbows and chainmail armor and ride horses as well as llamas and alpacas, though horses still aren't much use at high altitudes. Too much knowledge of quipu had been lost and they still use the Achahala variant of Latin alphabet for writing Quechuan language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_alphabet. There has been debate about bringing human sacrifice back in any form, with the Sapa Incas forbidding it, but some experimenting with it.
It took a few generations to consolidate and now expansion has begun at the expense of Spanish and Portuguese speaking Catholic neighbors. The Atacama Desert is their southern border, and attempts to cross it to conquer into Chile lead to the disappearance of the army sent in.
Their largest ally is the Aymara chiefdom of Bolivia. La Pas was destroyed by violence and abandoned in the Regression and their capitol is Sucre. They also control the old mountain silver mine of Potosi and still mine it, making them wealthy, and this the main reason their Incan neighbors have not annexed them directly. Since the Aymara rejected Catholicism and went back to their native religion during the Regression and are Native-American mostly, they are allies, though there is tension. The Incan empire would like to eventually annex or vassalize them, but is too focused on other rivals and needs their aid, so it holds off. An Aymara princess is married to the current Sapa Inca and they hope to use this to slowly take them over.
Both empire have remnant Spanish speaking Catholic or Pentecostal populations, though living under suspicion and paying high taxes. The Aymara make Spanish speakers captured in war work as slaves mining in Potosi, which has lead to at least one revolt put down with considerable difficuty.
The Incan people were numerous and proud enough they never quite assimilated into Spanish New World colonial society. Some of them resisted for nearly a century after Pizzaro seized their original capitol. The Quechua language survived when many other tongues did not. So it made sense when the Regression happened and the cities of Venezuela were afire between guerillas and stranded American marines and Buenos Airies sat in a terminal blackout abandoned by starving city dwellers, that the Andean peoples might see a chance for a comeback. A leader who claimed to be the Sun God Inti returned to lead the people to survive the Regression, and reject Spanish culture and Catholicism arose and seized control of Cusco, Lima and other major cities in Peru. His children became the new Sapa Inca rulers.
This new empire is not a direct copy of the old. Incan warriors use crossbows and chainmail armor and ride horses as well as llamas and alpacas, though horses still aren't much use at high altitudes. Too much knowledge of quipu had been lost and they still use the Achahala variant of Latin alphabet for writing Quechuan language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_alphabet. There has been debate about bringing human sacrifice back in any form, with the Sapa Incas forbidding it, but some experimenting with it.
It took a few generations to consolidate and now expansion has begun at the expense of Spanish and Portuguese speaking Catholic neighbors. The Atacama Desert is their southern border, and attempts to cross it to conquer into Chile lead to the disappearance of the army sent in.
Their largest ally is the Aymara chiefdom of Bolivia. La Pas was destroyed by violence and abandoned in the Regression and their capitol is Sucre. They also control the old mountain silver mine of Potosi and still mine it, making them wealthy, and this the main reason their Incan neighbors have not annexed them directly. Since the Aymara rejected Catholicism and went back to their native religion during the Regression and are Native-American mostly, they are allies, though there is tension. The Incan empire would like to eventually annex or vassalize them, but is too focused on other rivals and needs their aid, so it holds off. An Aymara princess is married to the current Sapa Inca and they hope to use this to slowly take them over.
Both empire have remnant Spanish speaking Catholic or Pentecostal populations, though living under suspicion and paying high taxes. The Aymara make Spanish speakers captured in war work as slaves mining in Potosi, which has lead to at least one revolt put down with considerable difficuty.
I like this idea of periodically flinging armies into a kind of extended mega-Chaco from western Paraguay to Brasilia. Just the kind of contest that leads to dramatic imperial double-suicides-- the Byzantine and Sasanid one comes to mind.
I like this a lot, can you explain what some of stuff are. Eg. Ditadura Militar de la Sao Paulo or Registrador
Ditadura Militar was the term for the Brazilian military junta in the 60s. I figure an army detachment took over the state and the commander became the Generalissimo and started a royal line. Registrador is the Portuguese word for logger. Tribes descended from illegal loggers who got stuck out in the rainforests and became cannibalistic or adopted the survival techniques of the native tribes they were attacking for logging profits until recently.
Other ideas are a Colombian kingdom whose heraldic symbol is a hippopotamus from Escobar's hippos, a Welsh kingdom in Chubut, guacho nomad horde on the Argentine Pampas. And a more violent form of football/soccer as jousting.
Other ideas are a Colombian kingdom whose heraldic symbol is a hippopotamus from Escobar's hippos, a Welsh kingdom in Chubut, guacho nomad horde on the Argentine Pampas. And a more violent form of football/soccer as jousting.
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I do think that the Neo Inca would eventually convert to Catholicism. Since all of their neighbors are and most likely a good portion of their subjects would be Catholic too.
I like this a lot
There isn't enough Welshmen for a Welsh kingdom in Chubut. The best is a Welsh influenced Spanish on that small island off the coast (or is it a peninsula, I don't remember). Regarding football, that would be best as an alternative melee
We've been outdone.
Something very post-apocalyptic about all this, trying to preserve several sets of stories at once by interpolating them...
Perhaps not. I'd look at wikipedia to see ball games in the past