Medieval America Mark III

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    Flashman

    Medieval America Mark III
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    What is it?
    Medieval America begins with an observation, and then a question: "America never experienced a 'Middle Ages.' What would and American Middle ages look like?"

    Medieval America is a collaborative project which seeks to explore a world in which the United States and the world at large has regressed to Medieval levels of technology. The genesis of this project came with "The Atlas of Medieval America", a project by the amazing writer Matthew White to explore this concept himself. The project itself was rather silly and tongue-in-cheek at times, with such fun features as Scientologist Pharaohs rulings over California, an eco-maniac Pacific Northwest, and a Voodoo Louisiana - and yet, it still managed to maintain a sense of realism. Despite the tremendous amount of effort put into it, White never completed this project.

    This led to this discussion on the project in 2007. In 2009, this blog emerged to try and expound upon the world (and it has done an absolutely marvelous job of just that). This was followed by the Medieval America Co-op Project. While wonderful and well worth a read, it was subject to thread drama and disorganization, prompting a reboot into the likewise wonderful Medieval America Tk II, moderated and expanded by the user jmberry, who set out a standard of rigor that ensured high quality and consistency. Unfortunately, this thread petered out after a string of disorganized and improbable entries. Thus, due to popular demand, this third (and, hopefully, final) iteration has been launched.

    Guidelines
    What caused the Regression?
    This won't be answered. Period. Matt White doesn't go into it, Jord839 refused to let it be discussed, and that will continue for this thread. Suffice to say, it didn't involve a nuclear war or an alien invasion or some such. Rather, it was a largely gradual but somewhat chaotic regression. There are few artifacts in common circulation from the Old World. The nature of the Regression raises a lot of questions. One of the most common ones is "What happened to the steel in skyscrapers? Are old cities the new mines?' The answer is for the most part no. If we were to be realistic, there should be plenty of surviving industrial tech and society should be based on harvesting the resources of the Old World. But that's not really the point. Generally speaking, just don't think about the Regression too hard.

    When was the Regression?
    Matt White said the Regression occurred 'over 900 years' ago. For the record, I tend to presume the Regression occurred in 2012, and the setting itself is sometime before the dawn of the 31st century.

    What is the tech level?
    Based on the '900 years' comment, I've assumed the tech is roughly equivalent to the 1300s OTL - this is the High Middle Ages, just before the Renaissance proper.

    What is canon?
    This project has gone through so many iterations and so many ideas have been thrown out there that it can at times be confusing to figure out what's canon and what's not. Here's the simple rule: The Atlas of Medieval America is canonical in its entirety, unless someone has good grounds to challenge one of White's suppositions. Neither the blog nor the Co-op project are canonical unless a specific entry is submitted and deemed acceptable. They should be looked to only as inspiration. Only specified entries from Tk. II are canonical, as listed below.

    Beyond that if you wish to submit a post, all you have to do is write it up, put a good deal of effort into it, and post it here. It will be read and discussed by the participants, who will point out strengths and weaknesses and ensure that it is consistent with pre-established lore and the tone we're trying to cultivate. Taking all of this into consideration, I'll decide whether or not to put it into the Table of Contents, thus canonizing it. It's fairly rare that a post doesn't get canonized, and if it doesn't you can always re-write it.

    Required & Recommended Reading
    The only truly required reading is the original site. Beyond that, before posting we would ask that you have a decent familiarity with both the current iteration and Medieval America Tk II. We also would like to very strongly recommend the Feudal America blog, which while not canon is a great source of inspiration and has a lot of great ideas for the setting. If you have the time, I would advise that you read through the original Medieval America Co-op Project - though not even a little canon and deeply flawed, it also has a lot of great content and, again, can serve as a useful source of inspiration.

    Beyond these directly related projects, I would also recommend reading Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. While Miller envisions a radically different Medieval America to White, it captures a lot of the same vibe.

    Table of Contents

    General Information
    Atlas of Medieval America
    Medieval North America Map
    East Map
    West Map
    Western History Map
    Cities and Nations Map
    Population Map
    Government Map
    Trade Map
    War Zones Map
    Population and Race
    Climate and Culture
    Littoral Zones
    Alphabets of North America
    Language Map
    Titles
    Artifacts
    Ghosts and other Monsters of Folklore
    The Plains
    Nomadic Herdsmen
    New Israelite
    Cowboys and Trade
    The Anderson Territory
    An Image of the Anderson Territory
    The Rizzini Territory
    The Black Hills Stampede
    Some Notable Cowboys
    The Cowboy Messiah
    The Hell's Angels
    The Account of Chief Hawken
    Here There Be Monsters: The Jackalope
    Here There Be Monsters: The Cursed Depths
    The Desert
    Irrigation
    Hydraulic Empires
    The Californias
    The California Republic: View from the Top
    Foreign and Military Relations of the Republic of California I II III IV V VI
    The Free Zone's Government
    The Church of Scientology
    Tales from the Galactic Gate
    The Clarises
    Languages in California
    Map of the Southwest and Noroeste
    Bajo Colorado & Baja California
    Far Southern and Baja California
    Hawai’i in Medieval America
    State of Deseret
    The Mormons Post-Regression
    Flag of Deseret
    Map of the State of Deseret and the Yellowstone Colonies
    Stakes of Deseret: Utah
    Stakes of Deseret: Idaho
    Stakes of Deseret: Wyoming
    Yellowstone (Western Montana)
    Hilljacks
    An Account of the Mormon Victory-Feast at Fort Bridger
    Confederacy of New Mexico
    Confederacy of New Mexico: Internal Relations I
    New Age
    The New Age: An Era of Progress and Faith
    A Brief History of the Age of Aquarius
    Preface of an anonymous compendium of hemp-scrolls, thought to be written by Deejay Agustin of Gila
    New Mexico Timeline
    Here There Be Monsters: The Grey
    Here There Be Monsters: Skinwalkers
    Lost Vegas I II III IV
    The History of Kuluradu
    Colorodo
    The Burned Men
    Terra Incognita
    The Pacific Northwest
    History of the Pacific Northwest
    Northwesterners
    Map of Cascadia
    An Image of the SALISH SEA
    The Pacific Ideal: Government in the Northwest
    Cities and States and City-States: Cascadia
    City States of the Pacific Northwest: The Puget Sound Cities; Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia
    City States of the Pacific Northwest: Seattle
    City States of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver
    City States of the Pacific Northwest: Portland
    City States of the Pacific Northwest: The Willamette Valley; Salem and Eugene
    City States of the Pacific Northwest: Victoria
    Forcasey
    Victoria Island and the Fractured Coast
    Eco-Buddhism
    The Cascadian Lama
    The High Cascades, Ascendant and Pure
    The Twelve Zodiacs of Cascadia
    The Order of Starbuck
    The Order of Cobain
    Here There Be Monsters: The Sasquatch
    The Columbian Order
    The Columbian Crusade
    The District of Columbia
    The Sith of Columbia
    Beelem (Eastern Oregon): The High Desert
    The Lands of Laska
    The Laskan Republic
    The Laskan Lifestyle
    The Laskan Orthodox Church
    Laskan Folk Religion
    Ostar: The Rabbit King of Spring
    Transoceanic Contact: East Asia and the Pacific Northwest
    The Feudal Core
    Political Overview
    The Great Midwestern War: Night of Burning Ships
    Commonwealth of Ohio
    The Toledo Road
    Iowa Territory
    Histories of the Old State of Illinois: The Conquest of Iowa
    State of Wisconsin
    Allegheny County
    State of West Virginia
    Pope-Gallatin County
    Dyer County
    Shelby Free County
    The Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks
    The Mackinaw League
    The Freer the Trade, the Freer the Folk: Structure of the Mackinaw League
    Commonwealth of Michigan
    Genesee County
    State of New York
    The Northern Border: State of Ontario, Petersborough County, Hastings County, and Frontenac County
    Chicagoland
    The Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks
    The Humble Canoe
    Dar-as-Salam: Muslim Merchants of the Great Lakes
    The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: A Great Lakes Sailor's Ballad
    The Mushmush
    Here There Be Monsters: The Dogman
    Dixie
    Race in the South
    That Most Peculiar Institution: Southern Society and Economics
    The First Heresy: American Evangelism
    Secretarial States
    Gulf-Carribean Trade
    State of Louisiana (N'awleens)
    Commonwealth of Georgia
    The Heresy of Stone
    Commonwealth of Mississippi
    State of Florida
    State of Missouri
    Red River Territory
    Arkansas Territory
    Arkansas & Red River Map
    The Noble Brothers of the Ark
    State of Tennisy (Tennessee)
    State of Alabama
    Free County of Montgomery
    The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor
    The State of South Carolina
    The Georgian Lord's Prayer
    Here There Be Monsters: The Skunk-Ape
    The United States of America
    Government of the USA: The First Session
    Government of the USA: The Senate
    The Government of the USA: The Electoral College and House of Representatives
    The CIA
    The American Non-Denominational Church
    Federal Privilege
    The Great Church of the East: The Triple Crown
    The History of the FBI
    State of North Carolina
    State of Virginia
    The State of Pennsylvania
    The Amish
    Medieval Richmond

    New England, Quebec & Beyond...
     
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  • Index

    • jmberry

    Just so that there's no confusion, I have no opposition to this project, although I likely won't be an active contributor to it.
     
    Stuyvesant

    Stuyvesant

    I had sketched out some ideas for the Hudson-Mohawk-Erie Canal zones a while back
    Medieval New York.png

    A. Nations B. De Jure language, C. De facto language.
     

    245

    hopefully we can talk about what music and pop culture could be like in this world and also see what the rest of the world is like.
     
    tehskyman

    tehskyman

    Banned
    In terms of regions we could go from north to south. Starting with Canada and working our way down. There's nothing but tribes to the north so it makes it simpler to start. Also we kinda stagger the important nations over time, first Quebec and Ontario, then Michigan, Wisconsin, Upstate New York, Allegheny County etc.
     
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    Flashman

    Flashman

    tehskyman said:
    In terms of regions we could go from north to south. Starting with Canada and working our way down. There's nothing but tribes to the north so it makes it simpler to start. Also we kinda stagger the important nations over time, first Quebec and Ontario, then Michigan, Wisconsin, Upstate New York, Allegheny County etc.
    Click to expand...
    I was thinking we continue the West-East trend of the old thread.

    The Northwest was never expounded upon in any detail, and the plains still feel somewhat incomplete.
     

    teg

    Has there been any discussion about the state of the north-east? I think New York City will still be a prominent center because of its incredibly secure position and could either be the capital of a large empire or a city state akin to the Italian trading cities. If that is the case, then presumably Boston, Bangor, Halifax and Baltimore could also be major powers in the north-east.

    teg
     

    HonestAbe1809

    Flashman said:
    I was thinking we continue the West-East trend of the old thread.

    The Northwest was never expounded upon in any detail, and the plains still feel somewhat incomplete.
    Click to expand...
    How about a state based around the Salish Sea in the Northwest that's equal parts Canadian and American? With either a monarch, President, or President-for-life ruling over the country. "Oregon" could work for the country since it'd be a reference to the historic Oregon Country.

    Would it be possible to update the timeline so that the "Regression" happened in 2017? That way it'd be possible to include references to culture and events that happened between 2012 and 2017.
     
    Flashman

    Flashman

    HonestAbe1809 said:
    How about a state based around the Salish Sea in the Northwest that's equal parts Canadian and American? With either a monarch, President, or President-for-life ruling over the country. "Oregon" could work for the country since it'd be a reference to the historic Oregon Country.
    Click to expand...
    Well, White has explicitly lain out the region as a series of independent city-states, with the only major polity being the "District of Columbia". Now, this is fine, if done in an interesting and well-reasoned fashion we can invalidate White's original work. But what is the reasoning here? The Salish Sea is designed in such a way, fertile and full of mountains, forests and sea channels, that it'sdifficult for one state to predominate, but easy for all to prosper. This was essentially the case in pre-Columbian America, and would likely continue to be the case in Medieval America.

    HonestAbe1809 said:
    Would it be possible to update the timeline so that the "Regression" happened in 2017? That way it'd be possible to include references to culture and events that happened between 2012 and 2017.
    Click to expand...
    Certainly.
     

    HonestAbe1809

    Flashman said:
    Well, White has explicitly lain out the region as a series of independent city-states, with the only major polity being the "District of Columbia". Now, this is fine, if done in an interesting and well-reasoned fashion we can invalidate White's original work. But what is the reasoning here? The Salish Sea is designed in such a way, fertile and full of mountains, forests and sea channels, that it'sdifficult for one state to predominate, but easy for all to prosper. This was essentially the case in pre-Columbian America, and would likely continue to be the case in Medieval America.
    Click to expand...
    Then how about the District of Columbia being the Canadian-American hybrid culture? They'd be polite badasses who live by Teddy Roosevelt's creed of "speak softly and carry a big stick". Though honestly I just repurposed my idea for Florida for the region with Canadian and American replacing American and Cuban.

    What would medieval Americans think of the various theme parks dotting the country?
     
    tehskyman

    tehskyman

    Banned
    HonestAbe1809 said:
    How about a state based around the Salish Sea in the Northwest that's equal parts Canadian and American? With either a monarch, President, or President-for-life ruling over the country. "Oregon" could work for the country since it'd be a reference to the historic Oregon Country.
    Click to expand...
    There is a city there called Bellingham around that area. About halfway between Vancouver and Seattle. It would probably be another city state, switching allegiances between Seattle and Vancouver depending on how the wind blows.
     

    Byz

    I'd be interested to see such a project touch on the Midwest, as it seems like it was mostly ignored in the past. It's an area well suited to agriculture, so it's likely to support significant populations, but seems very glossed over in the original project.
     
    Flashman

    Flashman

    HonestAbe1809 said:
    Then how about the District of Columbia being the Canadian-American hybrid culture? They'd be polite badasses who live by Teddy Roosevelt's creed of "speak softly and carry a big stick". Though honestly I just repurposed my idea for Florida for the region with Canadian and American replacing American and Cuban.
    Generally speaking, Canadian culture as such doesn't seem to exist. As it stands today, it is already dangerously close to the mainstream of American culture, and by White's indications, it has been subsumed by the American mainstream outside of Quebec. Toronto is a center of the Non-Denominational Church, and Ottawa is marked as culturally a part of America.
    Click to expand...
     
    Cascadian Buddhism
  • Index
    • Flashman

    Flashman

    Cascadian Buddhism

    BuddhistFlag3.png


    The pre-Regression Pacific Northwest was, in many ways, a land bereft of faith. In the Pacific Northwest, more people than in any other region in the nation would respond on surveys as regarded their religious affiliation that they had no religion to speak of. While atheism did not predominate in the region as a whole, it certainly did among the urban elite of Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.

    While it may have been bereft of faith, it was certainly not bereft of spirituality. Indeed, Cascadia was full of esoteric and semi-"spiritual" traditions. Orientalism and pseudo-Buddhist thought was just as popular here as it was anywhere where urban whites had too much time on their hands, alongside various minor neo-pagan traditions. One social phenomenon, while not strictly a religion as such, comes very close to it. Three of the top ten environmentally friendly cities in the nation were located in the Northwest, and it was the region that gave us Green Peace. The region's strong feelings to the environment are natural- after all, Cascadia is literally a rainforest, one of the lushest environments in the Americas.

    When civilization fell, however, these eclectic traditions did not form a cohesive whole, not at first. Christianity, surprisingly, did not make a strong resurgence. Those few faithful in the backwoods lost faith in a religion that had not saved them from the Regression, and the urban elite were still strongly inclined to culturally oppose Christianity. This is not to say atheism predominated. Atheism is largely untenable in a Medieval world, where the workings of the universe are seldom understood, and people are left at the seemingly random and capricious nature of the world.

    Instead of true religion, a series of folk traditions emerged amongst a nominally atheist populace. Half-remembered environmentalist ideas were applied to the world at large alongside a few pagan and Orientalist ideas. Environmental balance was seen as a must, with humans never overtaking nature, as well as the fundamental oneness of all peoples.

    Environmentalism was uniquely possible in the Northwest for a Medieval civilization. In the age of the Native American, the environment was so lush and bountiful that entire sedentary towns could be supported upon hunting and gathering without destroying the local environment. In the new Medieval Ages, this has allowed careful and concerted efforts to preserve nature alongside farms and villages.

    Increasing contact with California, both before and after the Scientology War, was extremely important in the development of Cascadian religion Asian-Californians who held on to their faith who were displeased with the spread of Scientology.

    A unified creed began to emerge two hundred years post-Regression. A hermit (generally termed "druids" by the Cascadian populace) named John Amadi descended from his isolation in the Olympic mountains to the town of Olympia. Here, he preached a very strange form of Buddhism, one that combined a variety of Oriental ideals with environmentalism and Christianity and, most revolutionary, remnants of Communist ideology.

    If the West Coast was the left coast, the Salish Sea was its pinky finger, the leftmost, held up high, and that didn't change in Medieval times. Most cities were run by corrupt unaccountable councils, and Amadist Buddhism preached their overthrew to be replaced with enlightened councils of Druids.

    Amadist Buddhism combined so many traditions into a cohesive whole that appealed to the general public. Despite this, its rise was still extremely unlikely. It likely would've been killed in the cradle, were it not for some extreme social upheaval that occurred among the Cascadian city-states. A simultaneous invasion by sea-raiders from the Lands of Laska allowed Amadism to spread rapidly in the chaos.

    The creed of Amadist Buddhism holds these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal. That a fundamental force links together all living things. That the Regression came about as a result of mankind's overtaking nature. That Buddha, Christ, Cobain and Mohammad were wise, enlightened teachers. That Nirvana can be attained only through study and meditation. And that it is the duty of all Amadists to spread the word, and liberate their brethren across the world from oppression.

    A hybrid of the Western and Chinese horoscope system exists, with the Druids employing it along with natural signs to predict the future. There is a strong belief in animal spirits, especially of this Zodiac, and an entire series of mythological stories has risen up around these archetypal characters, with different towns having different heroes and stories unique to them. The Pisces, the Lung-Dragon, the Sasquatch, they are very much real in the Pacific Northwest.

    The Druids generally serve as sages and advisers, living in the monasteries where they fulfill specific roles, from the book-binders of Portland to the Warrior-Priests of Columbia.
     
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