And the second part of the mapdate:
This time, we're doing the map the right way up for the sake of clarity.
Asia
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Wu China: THE GREAT WU. China has begun to rapidly re-establish its hegemony, and its army is increasingly well-equipped thanks to those weaponsmiths and armorers beginning to adopt steam trip hammers and the like. The Wu's well-equipped army has been able to make good the invasion of Dai Viet and bring it firmly into the Wu sphere, and they've managed to complete the crushing of the Neo-Khitans. The Khitans have mostly been exiled and scattered, and their Tatar allies have bent the knee to the Dragon Throne. The Tuquz Tatars are now a Chinese tributary, as are the Aceh Sultanate and the Po-Ni Kingdom in the far south along with Keng Tung on the border. At this point China is beginning to gain momentum. They do have a huge ocean-trade presence, but as far as they're concerned, there's nothing worthwhile beyond Nusantara or Japan, so they're not at risk of discovering the New World - though Chinese ships are beginning to inch further northward in search of quality furs.
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The Mezinid Shahdom: A tale of mixed fates. In the east, they have managed to gain back some territory in Baluchistan, but since then, some of their Turkic, Kurdish and Armenian Muslim subjects in the north and along the Caspian have shaken loose a little. The Cahakids, Bahanids and Altanids all recognize the Mezinids as their overlords, but they operate with de facto autonomy, mostly due to their mountainous isolation. Of these groups, the Altanids are the strongest, ruled by an Oghuz dynasty centred in Rasht. The Mezinids remain one of the strongest groups in the area, with a large army and no interest in giving the Bataids so much as an inch.
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The Steppe Khanates: The remnants of the Tabans have somewhat coalesced, but not into a single massive entity. There are two settled khanates which draw their governing class from the Golden Khan: The Khutughids of Urgench and Khwarezm, and the more powerful Menggeids of Almaliq and Samarkand. On the steppes, there are three loose nomadic confederations known as the White, Black and Red Hordes, with the Red Horde mostly being Argyns. The Tuvan element of the Horde - formerly the Blue Horde - has somewhat dispersed into Qimir and other areas. Almaliq is quite rich and has a strong army, and Khwarezm's stable, but the steppe hordes are mostly paper tigers that are likely to fold under pressure.
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The Yugra Khanate: Pushed out of their homelands by the Tabans, migrating Kyrgyz followed the Ob River up into the little pagan principalities of Yugra, subjugating several and establishing a loose hegemony. The Khanate's ruling class operate out of a camp on the Ob and are almost entirely Kyrgyz, and they hold themselves aloof from the native Khanty and Mansi people, who begrudgingly pay tribute in furs and other products to their Kyrgyz overlords. The villages here are quite prosperous due to the fur trade, and it's getting to the point that the area east of the Urals is generically becoming known as "Yugra" in places like Russia and Qimir.
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The Tarim Basin: Two states have slipped out of the post-Taban yoke here. In Aksu, a dynasty of semi-Persianized Nestorian Naimans rules over much of the area, though Kashgar remains under the Menggeids' patrol. In the east meanwhile, the Uyghurs have re-established their mostly-Buddhist state in Qocho. Both states are thriving due to the land trade between the Middle East and China.
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The Niman Sultanate: The mostly-Muslim areas of the Indus Valley have been reunified over the past couple of decades by a group called the Niman, a clade of Persianized Naimans who operated as soldiers in one of the post-Tarazid micro-emirates. The Niman are extending their hegemony over much of the north of India and clashing regularly with the Seunas, and it's not clear who has the advantage right now. The Niman are Sunni but fairly tolerant of Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in their domain.
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The Hoysala Kingdom: The Hoysalas have had a strong presence in the highlands of Karnataka for a long time, but they've gained significant strength among the southern kingdoms over the last 60 years and have expanded into the regional power along the southern tip of the Subcontinent. The Hoysalas do a lot of business with Somali merchants and are trying to expand their hegemony a bit further north and east.
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The Radha Kingdom: Experiencing something of a golden period. The Radhas have expanded down the Arakan coastline and taken some territory in Orissa, and they enjoy strong trade relationships with Tibet, China and Southeast Asia. Enormous wealth is flowing into this little Buddhist power right now - and it's to the point that they're no longer so little.
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The Seuna Kingdom: Holding their own against the advancing Nimans, but they seem to be on roughly even terms militarily - but they stand a good chance ot keeping the Muslim power penned up in the north of the Subcontinent. The Seunas come from the Deccan tradition of organizing their empire but have adopted some Persian cultural mannerisms, which mostly shows through in their architecture. They're still based at Devagiri but have sponsored large infrastructure projects across their realm, including forts and temples and port infrastructure. They are generally tolerant of Muslim traders from overseas and are content in the enormous wealth they rake in. Some of their coastal cities, like Goa, enjoy a certain level of autonomy as a consequence of their prosperity.
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The Lavo Kingdom: On the path of expansion, making gains among the remnants of the Khmer and up towards Bengal a little ways as well as into Malaya to form a rough informal border with the Aceh Sultanate. While there is a Muslim population in the lower peninsula, by and large the Lavo are Buddhist and in no hurry to change that. Their army operates under a pretty standard Thai model: There's a core of royal guard, with the rest of the army consisting of citizen-soldiers forced into service periodically through a system of corvee labour. While this kingdom is pretty traditional and conservative, it's also extremely wealthy, with spectacular architecture. Lavo - what we know as Lopburi - is a great regional city, with spectacular architecture and liberal use of gold plating on certain cultural monuments, like pagodas. It's colloquially known as the City of Gold, in fact.
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The Aceh Sultanate: Hemmed in on both sides by surlier powers. Lavo wants control of the southern part of the Malay Peninsula; the Janggala Kingdom wants that too, along with control of the entire Malacca region. Aceh is the only Muslim state in the region, but despite territorial losses in wars with the Janggalas, they've held out thanks to the patronage of the Wu, who don't want a powerful kingdom controlling both Malacca and all of Nusantara. The Wu see themselves as having a key interest in Aceh because it is, in fact, weaker than its neighbours. The alternative is trying to fight a naval war over the strait with the Janggalas, who are a thalassocracy and could give them a fight.
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The Janggala Kingdom: Look who's got most of the islands! The Janggalas are a mixed Hindu-Buddhist kingdom and have stubbornly resisted giving more than lip service to the Dragon Throne even as they've extended their hegemony to various kinglets throughout the Nusantaran island chain. Coastal Borneo is mostly looking like theirs, though the inland jungles remain stubbornly impenetrable. Key to the Janggalas' success so far is that they have a very strong navy, mostly consisting of
jongs carrying Chinese-inspired blackpowder guns that are actually more sophisticated than what's being fielded in Andalusia right now. These
cetbang-carrying
jongs are why the Wu don't want to get into a brawl with the Janggalas: While the Wu would probably win, the Janggalas would make it filthily expensive, and the Wu are more comfortable waging land wars than mass naval action. For now, the Janggalas are filthily rich and control a lot of key spice-growing lands, and they're experiencing a broad flourishing of culture, architecture and science. Future Nusantarans will look back at the Janggala period as something of a golden age.
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The Gapi Kingdom: Based in Ternate, it is a Buddhist kingdom, and it's managed to win tribute from the various micro-kinglets in the Halmahera Sea islands. Gapi is the world's leading producer of cloves and is currently absolutely rolling in gold. Some of that gold is West African gold: Andalusian merchants have found Ternate and are pouring money down the ol' trade chute in the hopes cloves will come out the other end.
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The Miura Shogunate: The Miura have finally gotten around to doing something about the Ainu to their north. They've conquered a big chunk of the southwestern coast of Ezochi, but it's been harder for them to push inland. The Ainu are continuing to resist, but they're outnumbered and outgunned. Most of the conquest in this area is being taken on by the Nanbu clan. This annoys the Miura somewhat: The Miura are a Taira clan with their power base concentrated around Kamakura, while the Nanbu are a northern Minamoto-descended clan with their power base in Honshu. The Nanbu are nominally loyal daimyos, but they don't always get along swimmingly with the Miura. There's a lot of political tension in Japan right now in general, really - feuding daimyos, high taxes, a couple of rotten harvests and an unpopular central government. It's not unfeasible that things could change here.
Subsahara
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The Simala Emirate: On a rapid track to development thanks to the arrival of New World crops. Life in Senegambia has been revolutionized by the arrival of crops we know OTL as cassava, peanuts, potatoes, amaranth, tomatoes, chili peppers and cacao, on top of the Asian rice already introduced by the Andalusians years before the Crossing. The Dahab/Senegal River area has blossomed into a veritable breadbasket, where Arab agricultural techniques are used to offset the capricious and rain-reliant climate of West Africa. With this greater availability of food has come a population explosion, a surge in urbanization and a rapid consolidation of once-tribal powers into a bona fide young nation. The Serer remain the ruling class, though a Fulani military caste has begun pulling more and more of the levers of power. With Fulani people basically scattered everywhere, the prospect of a Fulani takeover of Simala raises the prospect of a Fulani Empire emerging in the near future. The other fun factor here is that the Simala are beginning to build ships of their own.
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Ubinu: On the way up, largely due to an influx of two things: Gold from the pepper trade, and crops from the Farthest West. The Niger delta has proven to be a great place for growing cassava and potatoes, and as a result, the number of Edo people has rapidly increased, and the size of the city of Benin has grown. Not only is birth rate filling up the city, so is trade, with a number of Berbers and Andalusis taking up residence there as preachers. Ubinu is on its way to adopting Islam: The current ruler, the Oba, has openly converted, along with most of his retainers, and the noble and merchant class are solidly Muslim. The commons are still a mix of Muslims and pagans, though this is sliding towards the Muslims.
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NiKongo: Another story of New World crops and the slave trade. The NiKongo have embraced Islam and experienced a population surge due to Asian rice, though cassava's a bit further behind. This has led to the expected cycle of warring, consolidation and state formation. The NiKongo ruling class is solidly Sunni, though the commons is less so. They raid extensively inland and trade pagan slaves to the Moors, much to the consternation of inland groups.
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Kanem-Bornu: About to receive a bad time, courtesy of the Afro-Hilalian Addi tribe. Settled in central Africa just a few years ago, the Addi have heard about the culture and prosperity of Kanem-Bornu and decided they'd rather take it for themselves than eke out a living along a few marginal stream systems. Kanem-Bornu has grown somewhat lazy over the past few years, and they're utterly unprepared for an invasion by well-armed nomads from their southeast. It's likely that their kingdom will fall within the next year or two and become subsumed into the post-Hilalian world, though it remains to be seen if the Addi will remain Shia or if they'll convert and trade cheerily with the Sunni Edo and Hausa peoples near them.
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The Hlubi Kingdom: Not the biggest or the most prosperous kingdom, but the first organized state in the deep south Sudan. The Hlubi are a tribe of Nguni Bantus who have established a few stone towns, from which they trade gold, copper, ivory and other items. They collect gold from rivers and streams, they mine iron, salt, tin, copper and soapstone, they collect ivory and they do some farming. As a key supplier of raw materials to the Swahili cities, the Hlubi get goods traded in from the other end: They'll get, for instance, spices or bananas from Nusantara. The Andalusians know the Hlubi are here but have not bothered to mess with their paradigm in a negative way, since Kilwa's mostly-Muslim cities are allies to them.
The Farthest West
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The Otomi Alliance: The Otomi are slowly helping the Valley of Mexico claw its way out of the pit of disease-induced mass death, a task made easier by their embrace of Islam and acceptance of aid from the Moors. Umayyad acknowledgment and Hizamd-Asmarid assistance has ensured that the Otomi were the only central authority to survive virgin-field epidemic spread even marginally intact. They have extended their protection beyond the valley and taken the remnants of the Purepecha under their wing, along with a number of Nahua cultures. The Otomi military has adopted the horse, largely through emulation of
kishafa who have moved in and become a powerful military caste - most of these are inland Berber fortune-seekers. While the Otomi ruling class is Muslim and has outlawed human sacrifice, many pre-Islamic religious practices continue, among them lighting a candle under a full moon as a throwback to their worship of Huehueteotl and the Otomi moon goddess.
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Anawakan Warlords: The thing with unleashing
kishafa on the New World is that a lot of cities are badly weakened and a lot of Berbers want gold. In a few places, groups of
kishafa have simply conquered individual cities in the periphery of the Otomi world. These cities operate as basically gold farms for the Berbers, but aren't individually very strong and tend to be subordinated to the local Makzan or the Otomi in practice.
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The Chichimecas: Getting horses off the Berbers was the best thing that ever happened to the Guachichil. They've adopted horseback riding, and they've learned how to both breed them and obtain them - first by setting traps for riders, later by befriending religiously conservative Berbers and developing religious ties. The Guachichil leadership are nominally Kharijites but have mostly just superimposed a thin Islamic veneer on pre-Islamic practices, and they use their horses to regularly raid the Valley of Mexico and other settled areas. They're constantly fighting the Otomi's frontiersmen in running battles over territory. Other Chichimeca groups are also part of the confederation - the Tecuexe are noted as being particularly dangerous, and still very much pagan, while the Mexihca are a threat to the Xalisco Kingdom - but the Guachichil are the core of the group and the most amenable to outsider ideas. They're a threat, but their numbers are also fairly few.
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Tututepec/Yucu Dzaa: Hanging in there mainly through distance, but diseases have done a number on them. The Andalusians tend to have regular contact with the Mixtecs (the Arabic name for them is the
al-Nuwjabi, after the names the Mixtec use for themselves) through overland trade and visits from Sufis. A small Muslim population has sprung up here but the ruling class has not yet converted.
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Iskantinsuyu: Epidemic diseases and internal strife took their toll on Chimore, knocking it out around the turn of the 1400s. In its place, the city-state of Qusqu is ascendant, but slow to expand. Smallpox and typhus have swept through the western mountains and killed countless people here, and into the vacuum stepped the Quechua, who have taken the Aymara around Lake Titicaca under their wing. The ensuing state is sparsely-populated, but beginning a slow, difficult clawback from the depths of an unfathomable mass die-off. Iskantinsuyu means "the Two Regions," referring to the mostly Quechua north and the mostly Aymara south. It is unlikely to expand much farther, but it at least provides a foundation for a future rebound in the area.
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The Iroquois: More properly, the Five Nations. Five tribes along the Great Lakes have assembled together and formed the first semblance of a semi-settled polity in North America, complete with longhouses and squash farming. At the moment the Iroquois are a growing regional power, but with Andalusian explorers beginning to nose around the North American coast by way of Barshil, it seems likely that disease is just around the corner.
