#kingawa

The continent of HESPERIA lacks much in the way of domesticable animals, but there was one key exception—camelops celeris, which the Bay would call ’espeli (plural ’espelik) but most of the world would come to call nayoomee. Large and llama-like, the nayoomee would provide meat, wool, and perhaps most importantly a suitable mount. Camelops c. occidentalis, the variant found on the western coast of Hesperia, would come to be used by the ancient Hokan pastoral peoples, giving them an edge against the Yok-Utian agriculturalists…at least at first. It would also give the ancient Inawemaaganic [Algonquian] tribes on what another history would call the Columbia Plateau a key boost in their expansions across the continent to the west.

It is with these people—or with a descendant people, the Nnu [Mi’kmaq]—that the next stage of the story takes place. Because in the year 1000, a ship came from the northeast of the world, bearing warriors from a faraway land, a strange faith, strange new animals—and strange diseases. Smallpox in particular did a lot of damage—tore the Wóšnathípi Empire to pieces, ended the cult of the Bird-Men, nearly destroyed the power of the Turtle Cities of the Great Lakes, and left piles of burning corpses brightening the night in the Bay, among other effects. Key to all this, though, is that the people of the urban civilizations of Hesperia survived. And those who did now had a boost against the sicknesses of the Other World.

The story continues in 1251, when a group of Tau raiders—whom another history would call the Inuit—made their way across the Strait and traded with Japan and China. North China, anyway; the Mongol Conquest was still ongoing at the time. Unfortunately, the Tau brought a disease of their own with them, which English speakers would come to call alcom: a herpesvirus causing diarrhea, spots, and febrile seizures, and then, as little as four months or as much as five years later, inflammation of the body—including fatal encephalitis. It was this sickness, also called the Red Death, which among other things stopped the Yuan from getting all the way south, saved the city of Baghdad (by forcing a recall of the armies), ensured the presence of Christian kingdoms in Palestine and Muslim principates in Iberia for centuries to come, and meant that the population had already dropped by a full fifth across Eurasia when bubonic plague came along not too long later.

It would be a much more haggard, somewhat more fervent, world which was set to unite in 1485, when Kuroda Kiyoshi, frustrated at the Mongol omnipotence in trade, was granted permission by the Emperor Go-Tenji (Yamahito) to seek an alternative trade route with the faraway land of Europe. After being at sea for thirty-nine days, on the fortieth they came to a great bay, filled with sacred islands and surrounded by cities of stone and mud.

In keeping with a time-honoured tradition across the multiverse, he deemed it France.

***

Hesperia will have had three and a half thousand years of recognizable “civilization” (large-scale agriculture, cities, literacy, metallurgy, epidemic disease, war) by the time the worlds collide. The countless cultures to have risen and fallen in that time could fill a book—and in this world and ours they already have. But for simplicity’s sake, let us divide the world into six portions.

KAWIINI, the “centre-world”, marks the western coast of the continent, along the edge of the Assinotie Mountains (which another history would call the Rockies). This is where the nayoomee was first domesticated; this is where tule reed was first stamped into paper scrolls; this is where the first outbreak of alcom occurred; this is where one of the continent’s three major religions, HOYOHHA, would develop. The region of Lokloni, the “Great Valley”, contains four great powers constantly one-upping each other in trade and warfare. The KOCHACHI, whom another history would call the Miwoks, hold sway here, the Earth-King and Water-King in Hulpu-Mni (our Sacramento) controlling the massive river valley to the north and (more importantly) four of the Seven Cities around the Bay. The other powers worth mentioning are the SHUURVITAM [Tongva and nearby Takic peoples] to the south, whose great city of Iyáanga would later be described as a “Babylon in Paradise”, and the TAU, Hesperia’s first intercontinental empire.

TUUWAQATSI is slightly to the east, in the Assinoti Mountains themselves. Cliff-cities were being built here before almost anywhere else on the continent; the arrival of the nayoomee, and more importantly domesticated bighorn sheep, did wonders for the local economy, as did goosefoot and sunflowers and, later, maize, beans, and squash. Currently most of the land—and a good chunk of the plains to the east—is under the control of the TINTA IMPERIUM, whose dominant inhabitants call themselves the Nemi and are called the Shoshone in our timeline. Of mention are the DINÉ, the Navajo, who have maintained a reasonable presence despite the efforts of the Eight Mayors, and the ÂSHINI [Zuñi] and HOPI, both of whom are considered de facto independent peoples within the Tinta Imperium thanks to the prominence of their cities.

ÑÍTA is what our world would call the Mississippi River Basin, with much territory on the eastern coast and the western plains; perhaps it would be fairer to call it the home of the Mississippian Cultures instead. Here grow sunflowers and goosefoots, amaranth and squash; here a species of dwarf bison was domesticated for meat and wool, becoming immensely valuable; here rose the cult of the Bird-Men, in recent centuries overthrown. Currently the ancient city of Omašté, ruled as ever by the ancient WAPKÁTXUNGWANG (called the Lakota in our own timeline), has recovered most of its former territories after the Scabbing (smallpox epidemic). But further to the south the OKLA (Choctaw) have begun spreading their own faith, HVSHI ANOWA, along with their Horsemen, uniting the Riverlands by something other than mercantile cunning or brute strength. Ugedaliyv, homeland of the ANIYVWIYA’I [Cherokee], has broken away, seemingly for good—so long as the Ongweh’onweh (Iroquois) don’t make a move in their direction. And as always, there are the SEA COUNTRIES: Aphópkee, Hótvlee-Tv’lwv, Chitkohòki, and Kuht’hanut, caught between too many powers and just wanting a relatively quiet life.

AKIIWAN is actually a ridiculously large region, from the Atlantic to the Arctic, and almost all of it is Cree. NĒHIRAW, that is; they are perhaps the oldest continuous INAWEMAAGANIC culture, keeping to their ancestral patterns of semi-nomadic migration from buried city to buried city, all across the northern grasslands and into the taiga. But although the largest, they’re by no means considered the most influential. No, that would be the circuits of GAMEEN, the land around the five Great Lakes which would come to be known as Gameen in time. The BII’WEG, our Ojibwe or Anishinaabeg, were the first to domesticate lake rice, and the first to smelt arsenic bronze, and the second to adopt ironworking. Their main religion, NANDOWIN, has spread far across the continent; most of the Nēhiraw have synchronized to it, and even the arrival of the Vinlanders couldn’t stop the NNU from seeking the Answers they wanted. The VINLANDERS themselves have all but fully integrated into Nnu society; both their language and that of the Nnu are spoken equally at the great Althing in Kyrvik/Welta’qase’g (and most places have two names, too). Their trading (and raiding) empire stretches as far north as Nucho, Baffin Island in another time, and as far south as the Bawa Sea. And they’ve come at last to an uneasy truce with the Bii’weg, at least until the whole mess with the ONGWEH’ONWEH [Haudenosaunee] is sorted out.

The tropical BAWA SEA has long been dominated by the TAÍNO, whose ship-building has moved from dugout canoes to junk-like ships with cotton sails and mahogany hulls. The cacicazgos of the four main islands have a strict policy of peace on land. …and technically on water, too, but normally they just end up hiring Huasteca, Carib, Tupi, Okla, or Vinlandic pirates to capture each others’ ships. Captured Taíno are ransomed; captured pirates are sold, or brought back to work on plantations. For the Taíno, thanks to the Tupi, are now Hesperia’s main source of KYE, an extract of stevia rebaudiana up to 300 times sweeter than sugar. People in the north will pay a small fortune for the chance at even a taste; it is small wonder that when Malinese explorers come this way, they will name it the Digeji—the Sea of Honey.