The Red River Territory
System of Government: Sovereign Monastic State
Head of State: Imperial Wizard of the Red River Territory, appointed by predecessors and confirmed by their high council
Population: 2,488,750
Religion: American Non-Denominational Church
Totemic Symbol: Alligator
Among the westernmost reaches of eastern civilization, the Red River Territory is a Crusader State, forged in battle against the New Israelite Cowboys of the Plains and maintained by a fearsome array of lancers, horse archers, and macheteros. It is also, however, a land sitting at a crossroads, between the Secretarial States of the Caribbean, the Feudal States of the East, and the Nomadic States of the Plains, and has drawn upon elements of all three in its development. On maps in the east, it and Iowa share the dubious honor of being the final states fully inked before the lands of heathens and barbarians, and the strange countries beyond.
The Red River Territory has it’s roots in the Southern Crusades, a series of wars between the American Non-Denominational Church and the various cowboy lords of the region. For generations, the cowboys had ruled over what was known as Cajunland. The pre-Crusade Cajuns had originated closer to the coast, but as the caribbean, voodoo-worshipping population grew along the coast, many Cajuns migrated inland, forming communities around Natchez, Monroe, Alexandria, and the greatest of them all, Shreveport. Religion was mixed in Cajunland, with some practicing a form of Non-Denominationalism, while others practiced a deeply altered form of Catholicism. Some one hundred and fifty years ago, the region was ruled by the Plauchet Family, a tributary offshoot of the Andersons to the west.
This all changed with the declaration of the Non-Denominational Crusade for Shreveport. This event was spurred on by two factors. The first was the arraying of an unprecedented alliance of Southern District Supervisors in the Supreme Court, who managed to break the Northeast’s traditional hold on evangelical power, and who had greater interest in the expansion of the church in the south. This was coupled with the rise of the Sons of the South, a military order seeking to curb the excessive honor killings occurring amongst southern nobles by directing their energies outwards. The Crusade was declared, and a host joined battle under the banner of the Sons of the South, composed largely of Mississippians, Georgians, Tennesseans, and Carolinians. The lancers of the Crusade overran the Plauchet defenses, and with some Cajun support for their co-religionists, captured Shreveport. The massacre within was brutal, with crusaders killing Israelite, Non-Denom, and Voodoo without discrimination. When it was done, the back of the Plauchets was broken, and the collected lords bestowed upon the Imperial Wizard of the Sons of the South a crown and a banner, depicting the totemic symbol they had selected; the alligator.
The Red River Territory is blessed with natural borders: the Pine Belt to the west, the Mississippi River to the east, the Ouachita Mountains to the north, and the Gulf to the south. However, all of these borders have proven to be more porous than one might hope, and raids from all four directions are common. As a result, the nobility of the Red River Territory is highly militarized. The nobles of the Territory have never forgotten their origins as the Sons of the South, and thus many still wear the blue X pins which denoted membership in that organization, and drill in the most well-organized army in Dixie. Nevertheless, an army composed solely of lancers has proved insufficient, and as such the nobles of the territory have adapted. Some fight as horse archers; most as the Mississippi-style lamellar archers, but many as cowboy-style light horse archers as well. Others arm their peasant levies as pikemen in the style of Louisiana, creating pike formations which can ward off attacks by light cavalry.
Though it was once known as “Cajunland,” the Red River Territory is not uniformly Cajun in character. Cajuns tend to be concentrated in the cities and in the swampy south-east, while the rest of the territory is divided between Texans and Arkansans, who have much more cowboy influence than southern. Of course, the rule by the Sons of the South has imparted much of a Southern aristocratic culture, and the plantations of the Red River Territory do resemble those further east to a large degree. But there are also nomadic clans loyal to Shreveport who guard the Pine Belt, free villages who populate the foothills of the Ozarks, and of course, the burghers and merchants of the major cities of the Red River Territory.
Shreveport is certainly no N’awlins or Houston, but it is nevertheless an important center of trade and commerce unlike anything in the southeast save Augusta. Shreveport serves as the gateway to the southern portion of the Prairie, with a grand caravansary welcoming distant caravans from inner Texas and Oklahoma. Locally-produced goods are also loaded onto either caravans or ships from Shreveport, most notably leatherwork and sugarcane; the former goes south and east, to the Caribbean or Feudal Core, while the latter goes west, with sugar and other foodstuffs, to the wealthy amongst the plains. Alexandria and Monroe see the same things play out on smaller scales; they are wealthy and prosperous towns, but consistently overshadowed by Shreveport.
Leadership-wise, the Sons of the South and the Red River Territory have become one and the same, even if some successor organizations remain scattered across Dixie. The Territory, and organization, is led by the Imperial Wizard and his deputy, the High Dragon. High Dragons are selected by the reigning Imperial Wizard and confirmed by his council of deputies; they are then confirmed again upon the Wizard’s death, before taking up the scepter of the Imperial Wizard. The lines of crusaders still claim membership in the order and rule vast swathes of territory, though increasingly there has been intermarriage between the ruling class and the Cajuns or Texans they rule. Of course, the nature of the several cultures ruled by the Territory means that not everywhere is ruled by installed southern landlords; in the west, Non-Denominational nomadic clans of horsemen patrol the Pine Belt, and their chiefs pay tribute to Shreveport. In the north, among the mountain foothills, live tough villages of Arkansans whose village elders serve a similar role.
The process of ruling this territory has led to cultural elements blending together. The Red River aristocracy has taken to speaking Cajun, and their cuisine has adopted such Cajun elements as alligator meat, blends of carrots, celery, onions, and green peppers, and rice, as opposed to the black beans, pork, corn, and tomatoes that characterize traditional southern cuisine. Beef, too, has been brought in through the cattle herds managed by the cowboys and those descended from them. Alcohol, too, is far less common in Red River than it is elsewhere in the south, owing to a lingering sense of the New Israelites' ban on alcohol - after all, there's no harm in picking up an extra abstention from a vice, right? The presence of cities and towns has also led to peasants generally being freer in the Red River Territory than elsewhere in the south, with the freeman pike organizations being a direct result of this change.
While Cajun and Texan cultural practices have been tolerated, and in some cases even adopted, such as with Cajun cuisine and the Cajun language, the Red River Territory has remained staunchly Non-Denominational. The Cajun population, having already practiced a form of Non-Denominationalism, was easily incorporated into this new structure, but the New Israelites to the west and the Voodoo practitioners to the south have both proved more troublesome. Purges and expulsions have led to trouble with both Louisiana and the Anderson Territory, but active conversion attempts continue. Interestingly, the Red River Territory does not have a District Supervisor, and is thus locked out of power with the Supreme Court. Despite repeated attempts by the Red River Territory, no Supreme Court has broken with tradition and created a new District Supervisor.
The Red River Territory today remains a curiosity among many members of the American Non-Denominational Church; this crusader kingdom follows no hereditary kingship, rules over a strange people seemingly with as much in common with the Caribbeans and Cowboys as with easterners, yet who worship their same faith, and who trade with the cowboys and as far away as the Mormons and New Agers. Cajun culture, blended with Southern culture and Texan culture through the Sons of the South and the Red River Territory, is emerging as a polyglot society on the edge of the Feudal Core.