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[KaguroDraven]

Heh, maybe he is China, and Britain at the same time. Explains the ungodly numbers and the confusionism.

[Ancre]

Heh this was a great read ! I wish you good luck with the rest of the game and I can't wait to see it !

[Mr.Person]

Build banks in every city. That should give you tons of cash. Also, more cottages. Every square should be either a resource producer, cottage, forest, or mine. Or desert, but I think you don't have any deserts. However, even though I don't generally build farms, you might just have the healthiness to support lots of specialists. You should have at least a few specialists in every city. Great People will help you catch up technologically with your opponents. And really, are your workers that busy now that most of the jungle is gone?

Does Mercantalism give you bonus trade routes or was that Free Trade? With the amount of cash you're spending, you need every penny.

[Iituem]

Played to the end of the fourteenth century, half way through writing it up.  Looong update, so it's coming in two parts.  I'll give stats at the end of that post.  Not going to say much on the details because it'll be in the post.

I will say that it still took me well over two hundred years to clear the jungle (it covered about 80% of Aztlan), and about 30% of northern Britain is desert.  We have a fug-ton of deserts.  Fortunately, most of those are cut through  by rivers, making them flood plains, but nevertheless.  Fug-ton of deserts.

[Iituem]

The Age of Exploration, Part One: The Thorne Expeditions

The Fourteenth Century marked a significant change in the British worldview as a series of expeditions and advances bring them successively further from their native shores.  In 1304 the Royal College of Chartered Cartographers fielded the first Expedition Grant (funded by a mixture of Treasury support and private investment) for the mapping out of the Welsh northern coast.  Further expeditions continued in this vein over the next decade and in 1316 the RCCC started putting together an expedition out of Taffeta to investigate shores sighted near Aztlan across the Eastern Sea.



The First Thorne Expedition


Sir Andrew Thorne, Age 30

Excerpts from the Journal of Sir Andrew Thorne, RCCC

October 4th, 1319

We're leaving today.  We've stocked most of the basic supplies onto the Charlotte already and the crew are for the most part optimistic, though there will always be grumblers.  The Synod insisted on choosing the chaplain as part of the funding agreement; I've met Rabbi Shebbet McDuff thrice before in passing and he seemed a rather grave type.  My hope is that his ministry will serve to raise our spirits rather than dampen them.  Even getting from the Taffeta shipyards to Calixtlahuaca for our last set of supplies will take months.

I have precious few misgivings about this adventure, though my father seems to be carrying them all for me.  In particular I think he frowns upon my decision not to marry the McBaen girl, as the dowry would have provided additional support for him.  My only regret in that regard is that he did not have other sons, but I would not trade this opportunity for the life of a Brickfield merchant at any cost.



December 21st, 1319

We made port three days ago and I haven't had time to write since.  There was some concern about shipping the extra cargo for this leg of the journey, but the funds from the sale are much-needed to support the costs of the venture.  Since then we've been taking on plenty of fresh water and supplies, as well as switching out the few crew members who changed their minds on the journey or were simply hitching a lift to Calix.

We opted to stay the extra night for midwinter.  It's a Sabbath, so Rabbi McDuff guided our prayers and held a brief discussion of scripture as per tradition.  No synagogue has been built in Calix yet, so prayers were held aboard ship.  This done, most of the men joined in the festivities in the port.  I followed and drank wine with the rest for a time but soon tired of the excitement and returned to my cabin.



5th March, 1320

The storm that kicked up three days ago has not abated.  It is a constant battle between the crewmen and the winds to keep the rigging in order, and the waves are high as great houses.  The mood amongst the crew is subdued, and there is fear.  Rabbi McDuff has taken to helping with the deck work.  One of the men asked him why he was on deck and not leading prayers below.  McDuff told him; "When waters are calm, pray to G-d to keep them that way.  When they are not, tend to your ship."



7th March, 1320

G-d be praised, we have sighted land!  The tip of a hill or mountain on the edge of the horizon with the promise of a coast.  Willie the Dwarf spotted it first in the crow's nest and I confirmed with my telescope.  The seas are still rough, but there is sign that they may calm by the end of the day.  With luck we shall reach the shores before then.


Evening of the same day.

I am gravely concerned by what we have seen.  By G-d's grace, we found a calm beach and drew the Charlotte up alongside it.  Wullie spotted smoke in the distance and alerted us to a possible forest fire.  I examined the column of smoke myself and confirmed a fear; the smoke was not indicative of a large fire but of a small one, most likely a camp fire.  As we spread out along the beach, more and more signs became apparent; fragments of netting, a lone bare footprint in the sand and an old cloth doll half-buried.

We are not alone.



10th March, 1320

The Rabbi has not spoken a word since the argument.  It is all but certain that there are humans here, even if we have not met any.  I can understand his frustration - the Synod had taught us that since the conquest of Aztlan the United Kingdom had unified the whole world.  Men outside the sphere of the Synod's influence do not encourage that view of the world.

We have finished setting up our camp here on the beach.  The men have set up a basic fence with the tools we brought; better to be prepared in these cases.  Even if the natives are not aggressive, the same cannot be said of the wildlife.



2nd April, 1320

Rabbi McDuff has improved considerably in his temperament over the last month.  We have still sighted no other humans on this new land, though we have discovered some long-abandoned primitive tools.  The very limited grasp of technology we have seen thus far encourages the Rabbi's belief that though there might be some isolated communities, such as used to be found in the deep jungle of Aztlan, they are clearly no threat to us with our swords and crossbows.



23rd April, 1320

We found a village today, overgrown with weeds and shrubs.  Mud and straw huts, with rafters that might have once indicated thatching.  A broken down palisade.  Here and there, signs of long-dead fire.  Crewman Draven discovered three arrowheads in the dirt.  Mr Parsons found what looks like the remains of a series of pyres, and chips and shards of bone in them.  Rabbi McDuff blessed the site in the name of G-d, and we left it.



14th May, 1320

Exploration of the region continues unabated.  We have worked diligently to map out what we have found.  The region beyond the beach, save for the occasional wooded copse here and there, appears to be largely open plain and hills.  There is some indication of forest to the southeast over the horizon, and to the south there stretch long dunes reminiscent of the Scottish Wastes.  We are looking to continue out explorations east over the next week.



16th May, 1320

We were attacked in the night.  The first sign of the conflict were the flaming arrows raining into the camp, setting tent and equipment alike on fire.  I was roused by one of the guards, Mr Euchre, and we retreated to the better-fortified part of the camp by the beach.  The natives had to light campfires to set their arrows flaming for the attack, so we were able to find them and dispatch teams of swordsmen out under the darkness whilst the marksmen provided covering fire.  I would estimate perhaps half their number fell before they left whilst we suffered four casualties, all in the first five minutes of the battle.

when morning came, we counted seventeen dead from their side.  They carried shortbows of the composite style, fashioned mostly from horn.  Simple iron knives were sheathed in leather guards.  Their clothes were loose skirts, and in places fashioned with feathers to give them an almost bird-like appearance.  The overall design seemed somewhat indicative of Old Aztec culture, with a few notable changes.  Their captain, who was struck down by a sword during the battle, wore a head-dress reminiscent of an eagle or other bird of prey.

Under the ministration of Rabbi McDuff, we buried Willie the Dwarf, Parsons, Draven and crewman Karne.  One day, these people will burn for this.



17th May, 1320

We tracked the natives' escape east along the plains, crossing the hills we had not previously covered.  We were greeted by the sight of more rolling plains, but these were not barren as those we had charted before.  Acres of tilled land stretched out to the horizon, smoke rising from more earthen huts dotted across the landscape.  In the distance we could see the snaking forms of dirt roads, carefully maintained by some unseen government.

Clearly these natives may not have been as advanced as us, but clearly also they were organised.  We shall return to the main camp and break it; the survivors may bring greater forces to bear upon us if we stay.


First landing by the Thorne Expedition


A violent first contact.



November 8th, 1320

We have settled camp again, making the fifth reconstruction of the fort since landing.  Below is the most current sketch of our exploration.

The men are angry at times, but McDuff has done well to calm them.  We have stuck where we were able to these forests, venturing out to the less settled southern grasslands and plains and occasionally to the native-controlled north.  The southern tribes, of which we have met seven now, seem much more friendly than the ones who attacked us outright on landing though we have kept weapons readied whenever first contact has been made.  They share a language, though we have had little success translating it due to the need to keep moving lest the northerners find us.

We have a name for them, though.  The southern natives call them 'Cherokee'.  I have no idea what that means, if anything.  They control the lands to the north from the beaches to the forest, bordered by the great river that snakes through this land.  We have heard the name 'Mississipi' from the natives, as well as referring to another tribe of that name.

The group remains split in two; a skeleton crew and guards to keep the Charlotte and my expeditionary force here on land.  We have designated points on the coast where we meet with the ship on the first of each month, and during this time we sometimes switch crew between the two.  The Charlotte has been instrumental in gathering information about the northern coast of this land; the coast stretches north for many miles and becomes forested.  There are herds of sheep there, some wild, some herded.   To be assured that the ship will remain at our pleasure, I have kept all the navigation equipment needed to cross the sea with me.  As loyal as my crew may be, I know some of the men wish to return home.



December 21st, 1320

Has it really been a year since the festivities in Calix?  I hope so, for if not my measure of days has gone askew.  We made camp with a friendly tribe here in the hills and celebrated the midwinter.  Rabbi McDuff led prayers, and a few of the natives showed interest.  The Cherokee no longer seem to be looking for us, so I have relaxed the requirement to keep moving.  We will stay here a while in the hills and learn more of the surrounding lands.

One additional advantage the hills give us is vantage.  From here we can see all the way to the Cherokee city.  The city lies on the beach between the Eastern Sea and a nearby lake.  Farms and roads spread out around it, and it boasts stone walls as high as Tlaxcala's once rose.  The Cherokee seem to dominate their surrounding region by force, and the existence of the wall only encourages that belief.  I feel a measure of pity for their subjects, but we must first look to our own needs.


A view from the Sioux village.



5th September, 1323

The Cherokee have found us, it seems.  We've been forced to evacuate the Sioux village that had taken us in, lest we endanger them further.  One of our guides, whose name I can best translate as Red Rock, informed us of a war party coming this way.  We packed up and moved as best we could in the dawn.  Some of the men have wives - my own is with child.  A couple of them opted to stay here in the village and risk the wrath of the Cherokee, the others convinced their wives to come with them or else agreed to separate for their safety.

The mood is dark.  Rabbi McDuff is especially upset, having made some progress in converting the Sioux to the Judaic ways.  I remember still his first efforts and how badly they went; we had to physically restrain him before things came to a fight.  A year later, he was teaching the children math and English.

My wife, Falling Flower, tries her best not to cry.  I have asked so much of her, to leave her family and all she has known to be with me.  I can only hope that one day our people will return to this place to liberate her kind from the Cherokee.



14th February, 1324

We have been forced into the sandswept hills east of Cherokee lands.  More desert here, stretching out to the distant blue sliver that marks the coast.  The guides tell us that there is supposedly verdant land to the north, but to get it we will have to cross the desert either on the flat or through the hills.



8th April, 1324

We have been forced to retreat to the hills.  The desert here is crossed by migrant tribes of the natives, very akin to the nomads in the deeper parts of the Scottish wastes.  I have taken to calling this land New Scotland for all its similarities, and its people the Red Scots for their reddish skin colour, akin to some of the Aztec peoples.

We met some of the nomads, who warned us of the heavy iron deposits in the desert.  Though the Cherokee's influence does not extend far enough to reliably manage or expand the mines, they regularly come with armed forces to extort or purchase iron from the minors.  If we try to cross the desert, we will risk running into their scouts or into nomads more inclined to help them capture us.  We traded words and food with the desert folk, including some information about the surrounding lands.  When we can get to a coast we shall await the Charlotte and tell her to investigate the southern coast properly.  We are fortunate that the Cherokee possess no navy to speak of, only small fishing boats and canoes.


The Dry Hills and the desert beyond.



24th June, 1324

We attempted to cross the upper part of the Mississipi this week, close to the source.  This is not strictly Cherokee country, but we faced an attempted raid by some archers, a ragged bunch of less than ten.  We suffered one minor wound which the Rabbi is treating and they two deaths before fleeing.  We made contact with a Red Scot shepherd two hours later whilst trying to find a ford.  He told us that the men were most likely Tuscarora, a larger tribe in these hills that is closely allied to the Cherokee.  If they reported our coming to their leaders, they would search for us here.  We asked of our chances of reaching the shore to the far south.  The shepherd said our chances were few; Tuscarora influence spread all the way across the southern plains.  If we wanted to escape, we could not go that way and expect to survive.

We have no choice, it seems.  We must risk the dry desert hills to the north.



9th November, 1324

Crossing the Dry Hills has sapped our strength and drained our resources.  There is some sickness in this desert, one I cannot explain, beyond even the extreme heat and cold.  Many of us are ill and our supplies are almost exhausted.  We need food and stable water, but more than that we need medical care that we can only get in settled lands.  There is an option, and I do not like it, but the men are threatening mutiny if we do not.

We must seek help within Cherokee lands.



21st December, 1324

The last of the fortifications are established.  We've enlisted the help of the local Diné tribe, who are ostensibly under the thumb of the Cherokee but agreed to help us resist.  There was some suspicion at first, but the Diné have been wholehearted in their efforts to aid us - they have as much to lose by aiding us if we do should this fail, but if we succeed it will buy them a measure of independence.

We have built our fortifications against the river for the added advantage in the event of attack.  Because of the natural bend of the Mississipi, the Cherokee will have to cross it to strike at us once they realised their arrows are unable to pierce our shelter.  Then we will get them.

We have held a short midwinter celebration, for those able to celebrate, and the Rabbi had led prayers.  Many are still sick or resting from injuries sustained during travel which we have scarce had time to heal.  I predict we may have to rest here for some months.



4th April, 1325

What strikes me most of all is that not once during our period of respite were we attacked by the Cherokee.  We awaited their arrows every day, and some nights I could not sleep for the fear, but the strike never came.

I spoke to the Diné chief, Athabask, last night as we completed our preparations to leave.  I asked him why the Cherokee wished to destroy us.  He told me that once, in the earliest of days, the ancestors of all their people were part of a great empire, the Empire of the Sun.  They had journeyed further and further to escape the empire's wrath, and in the end they piled into a great canoe and sailed away.  The canoe was broken apart by great waves, but the ancestors were washed up on the shores of this land.  He told me they fear that we are from that Empire of the Sun, that we are the Sun Men come to enslave them once again.

There is bitter irony to this.  Our people, our kingdom, already conquered the Sun Men.  The empire they feared is no more.  They were wrong to fear my men; we possess none of the capability to conquer them, even with our advanced peoples we are too few in number.  But they were right to fear our kingdom.  I have not forgotten the four men who died on the day of first contact, and I swear that it will be a better world with the Cherokee destroyed.

I have instructed the Charlotte to meet us north of here, lest she suffer interference by the Cherokee near their shores.  It's time we go home.



25th April, 1325

I know why they did not attack the fort now.  They have been laying ambushes.  Mr Euchre pointed out the tracks and we sent a scout to investigate.  We cannot use the beach to the north, we will have to go around and meet them further along the coast.



4th June, 1325

We have been hounded by Cherokee scouts and archers for over a month, always on our tail.  This is starting to remind me of our first encounters with them.  The woods to the north are thick with them, and our only chance is to try and get to a cove on the eastern coast that Mr Morgan spotted.



9th June, 1325

Home.  The ship rocks constantly and my wife and son are seasick, but it's home.  I've had a wash, drank a bottle of wine that was still in the smuggler's hatch beneath my desk and had a close shave with a proper razor for the first time in months.  Had another close shave before it.

We reached the cove about three hours before the Red Scots did.  Unfortunately, we also got there before the Charlotte.  Two hours of waiting later, we started getting ready for a pitched battle when Yadder spotted the sails on the horizon.  We started dumping the firewood, spare clothes, anything we could possibly find to build up the signal fire and sure enough it got the Charlotte's attention.  Regrettably, it got the Cherokee's too.  She pulled up and we got the crew on in three trips with the rowboat, but the last one was close.  No sooner did we get on deck the Red Scots got into the cove and started firing on us.  We gave them a few parting shots back but mostly just sailed away from that G-d forsaken place as quickly as we could.

Home.  We're going home.


The escape from Morgan's Cove


Historian's Note

After the return of the Charlotte to Taffeta, the crew was rounded up by the Synod and marched to the synagogue for the reports of their mission.  The Synod representatives were so disturbed by the news of a hostile, organised civilisation beyond their borders that they barred the entire crew from speaking about their experiences and ensured private annuities for each of them to ensure that this remained the case.

It was Rabbi Shebbet McDuff who broke the silence.  In 1338, twelve years after the expedition, on his deathbed, he revealed to various members of the nobility and other rabbis the location of his personal diary of the expedition, a diary that even Sir Andrew Thorne himself was only dimly aware of.  McDuff's diary rivalled Thorne's own in detail of New Scotland and its inhabitants and coincided with the Guild Riots of that year, sparking heavy backlash against the Synod and worsening the disorder of the ensuing period.  When the nation restabilised around 1344, Thorne had become something of a celebrity and found enough backers to finance his second expedition.



Merik Harkuf, Guilds and the Branston and Brickfield


The Bradford and Brickfield in operation.

The financial centres of England, Branston and Brickfield, continued to grow in power throughout the early fourteenth century, sponsoring the development of granaries and theatres in Tlaxcala, Texcoco and Calixtlahuaca during the early 1320s and prompting something of a north Aztec revival.  Branston and Brickfield merchants also financed the major irrigation project that drove canals from the freshwater Lake Tiperrary down towards Teotihuacan and eventually across the whole of Aztlan.  The primary channel of the effort, given its connection between Texcoco and Teotihuacan, came to be known as the Texteo Canal.

As strong professional classes developed in England between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the more capable and influential members of said professions began to form the first guilds.  The early guilds formed a support network for the exchange of information and to avoid members interests overlapping too closely.  Guilds began regulating the standards of their members' work, ensuring that only work of a sufficient quality came out of guildmember's forges, workshops or drafting rooms.  Craftsmen whose work did not measure up (or perhaps did not have the right connections) were barred entry or expelled.  The idea of standardisation of quality may seem trivial today, but prior to the advent of guilds work could vary wildly between three different craftsmen even in the same city, or one craftsman's work from job to job.  This improvement of basic quality appealed greatly to the nobility and rising middle class (themselves professionals and perhaps guildsmen), who supported the guild endeavours.

The first guild charter (if we discount the College of Cartographers, who did not until later in the century take on the operations of a guild) was awarded in 1332 by the Duke of Edinburgh to the stonemasons' guild and later ratified by a letter patent from the king.  The letter patent granted the guild an exclusive monopoly over stone construction within the borders of Edinburgh.  Within five years, guilds all over the country were clamouring for letters patent and the same rights.  Many of them were granted the letters, profiting greatly from the necessary inclusion of anyone who wanted the legal right to practice their craft.  There are numerous instances where these monopolies were challenged and the English courts ruled in the favour of the monopoly-holders.

It is during this time that Merik Harkuf rises to prominence.  Not himself a guildsman but profiting immensely from their rise, Harkuf was a leading merchant and financier in Branston.  Although not the inventory, Harkuf is credited for spreading the double-entry accounting system throughout Britain and noted for the formation of the first major financial institution; the Branston and Brickfield Bank.  Harkuf, using his own money and investment from other merchants in the city, employed the bank to patronise many of the guilds in their early years and reaped rich rewards thereafter.  as well as being accredited with the foundation of modern banking, Harkuf was a staunch proponent of what would later be known as mercantilism.

Harkuf, using the immense wealth and power commanded by the Branston and Brickfield, intervened heavily in regional and national politics to assure that his guilded allies and sponsors achieved the rights they so desired.  As the guild system spread rapidly from city to city legal disputes between independent workers and guilds, and between the rights of guilds and other guilds boiled over into protests, rioting and open war.  The November Fire of 1341 in Brickfield was a result of an attack upon the Brewer's Guild by the Innkeepers over the right to brew beer, setting alight one of the chief breweries of the city and spreading into the neighbouring districts.

Not all of the conflicts of the 'Guild War' were as open or as disastrous as this, but the effects on the nation's economy essentially stymied taxation and production for years before order was restored.  The last major court cases were settled in 1344 and any remaining violence subsided, marking an end to the instability.

Restrictive as the guilded system was, it expanded the professional classes across the continent.  Scholars, merchants and artists plied their crafts as they could not have managed before, leading to an age of greater development and prosperity overall throughout Britain.  Naturally the benefits were shifted towards the better-developed northern counties where the libraries and great markets were established; Aztlan was still extremely underdeveloped.  Many Aztec cities did support guilds of actors or artists supported by noble patronage, but some Aztec 'guilds' (such as that of Tlatelolco, an otherwise booming city in terms of population) were merely organised urban workforces.

Great Merchants, like other Great People, can settle as a super-specialist or discover a technology.  They also have their own special ability; travelling to a foreign city and conducting a trade mission.  This generates a one-off lump sum of several thousand gold, enough to run a war on.  Since Britain has contact with no other nations, I expended Harkuf to instantly research Banking. 

This allowed me to switch to the Mercantlism civic, which after the requisite anarchy gives you a free specialist in every city you have at the price of no foreign trade routes.  Since I can't have foreign trade routes until I discover Astronomy any way, this is not a concern, and spread over the dozen or so cities England controls this benefit really stacks up.  The only problem is that most of those cities are in Aztlan and lack the infrastructure (libraries, markets etc) to support specialists other than labourers or artists.  Ah well.

The Second Thorne Expedition

Excerpts from the Diary of Sir Andrew Thorne

4th June, 1346

She still feels the same.  It's been over twenty years since I stood on her deck, but the Charlotte hasn't changed.  There's new woodwork here and there, the timbers have been resealed, but the old girl feels as full of life and promise as she did two decades ago.  I wish I could say the same for me.

A new crew, a new chaplain.  All much younger men, on a younger man's adventure.  I really should my son on this, but it seems he aspires to the very profession I fought so hard to avoid in my youth.  Well, whatever makes him happy.  Despite all the furore that eruped when McDuff released his journals, the Synod is backing me on this venture.  They really want us to find some uncolonised land.  Let's just hope we're lucky this time around.



9th November, 1346

G-d be praised, we have had none of the upsets of my last voyage!  We landed smoothly, in calm waters, and found no trace of human habitation on the beach.  The waters here are clear and blue, and there are reefs of coral thick with fish and shellfish.  We have set up camp and are prepared to explore at our leisure.


Crossing the Golden Straits


8th February, 1347

Ronald reports back from the north with good news; herds of wild goats roam the hills there, with luxurious wool to be sheared should we claim it.  More shellfish by the coast, particularly oysters in abundance.  There is plenty enough forest stretching on to the south, and we have taken to calling this place Shetland, in honour of the old rabbi Shebbet.  I freely admit that our pace here is somewhat luxurious, but when I think of the chaotic journeys we made in New Scotland I can hardly complain.  We should be easily able to complete our surveys by the next year without rushing.



17th September, 1347

I joined the survey crew on the western edge of the land to hear their most troubling report.  A ship had been sighted on the horizon, of no recognisable make.  We feared that the events of New Scotland might repeat themselves, but it has not shown since.  I have allayed their fears somewhat with the reminder that the Golden Straits are known to occasionally be troubled by pirates.  Just because we saw one ship does not indicate the presence of natives.

I just hope that I am right.


Pirate Sighting on the West Shetland coast



14th November, 1347

I was wrong, and for once I am pleased to be so.  We made contact with the natives two days ago, and blessedly they seemed surprised but not alarmed by our presence.  We speak no common tongue, but by means of gestures we were able to communicate our peaceful nature.  We laid down our crossbows and swords, they their spears.  They led us back to their village, one of only a few in this deep forest, and there we were welcomed as kings.

These are the first men we have seen in Shetland, and there is no indication anywhere else of expanded settlement.  As far as I can tell, these people have never felt the need to stray from the forest.  With little competition for resources or overlapping territory, the different villages maintain an easy peace and their weapons are aimed at hunting rather than war.  It must be a wonder to live in such a place.


Sighting of the native Shetlanders



21st December, 1347

For some reason, some of my best memories are of midwinter.  The locals celebrate it too, and the men and I joined in the celebrations.  One of the effects of the long peace they have enjoyed here is the luxury to develop their culture without the need of making war.  They dance, they perform plays to remember their history but most impressive of all is their music.  It seems that half the tribe can play an instrument and the other half can sing.  For the festival, all the people gathered together and played songs to the beat of an elder with a stick, conducting the assembled musicians.

Oh that we should have half such a heritage at home!  The melodies call out to the majesty of G-d, they sing the beauty of Earth and Sea.  They do not write as we know it in this tribe, but they record the melodies of their song by notation on bark and stone.  One of the cabin boys, a fellow by the name of George Handel, has taken a particular interestin their system of notation and is trying to learn some of the instruments.  I have given him leave to do so, I reckon we will still be around for a good few months yet.

All that being said, I'm glad to have taken this last voyage.  It's shown me that the world beyond our borders isn't all horror and slavery, and that there is beauty to be had even in the most humble of places.



Historian's Note

Thorne returned in late 1348 with extensive maps of Shetland and news of the largely uninhabited tracts of land.  He spoke often of the native Shetlanders and their ways of peace in the following year before dying suddenly one night in his sleep.  He was accorded a funeral of some honour, attended by his close friends and members from both his expeditions.  Handel brought back the Shetlander music to England and founded the first conservatoire in Brickfield, starting a long-lasting tradition of music in that city that continues to today.

The explorers found a rare native village in Shetland.  The Shetlanders were kind enough to provide them with a free technology; Music.

Part Two of the Age of Exploration coming soon: Queen Mary!

[Ancre]

Most of the images on your last post don't work for me Still, it was a great read. Also, what does music do ?

Edit : Well, they do now. My computer behaves oddly it seems.

[Heron TSG]

Sounds like someone found a new place for colonies to abound!

[Mr.Person]

Subjugate the natives! Enslave the weak!

[Iituem]

The Age of Exploration, Part Two: Queen Mary


Her Royal Majesty, Protector of the Faith and Scion of Aztlan, Queen Mary

Foreign Contact

Queen Mary ascended the throne in December 1349 at the tender age of 16.  Given her age and her status as a woman, the country was ruled by a Regency Council in her stead for the first six months of her reign.  One courtier from the time wrote that "[the] Queen possesses a frightful interest in the politics of the Council and the running of the country, most unbecoming in a woman."

In June 1350, the British worldview was challenged when evidence of a major, sufficiently adviced civilisation to rival the United Kingdom was presented in the form of emissaries arriving by a light ship (similar to the English caravels) on the Yorkshire coast.  The emissaries spoke a completely different language and were of a race never seen before, but their detailed clothes spoke of a well-established textiles industry and they carried swords and longbows of unknown make at the time.

The Regency Council was all set to sink the caravel and put an end to the invaders when the majority of members were arrested on a plethora of charges dating back for months or years that suddenly seemed to spring up overnight.  The remaining members fled and, as no courtier was willing to sit on the Council again, Queen Mary took the throne in earnest.  She instructed her courtiers to welcome the foreigners, to allow six of their number to travel in a closed carriage to London and to bar any more than twelve of them to set foot on the coast at one time.  She also instructed men to keep a watch on the caravel and deny it passage through English docks.


The German ambassador meets the British for the very first time.


The German caravel.

All this aside, diplomacy proceeded relatively smoothly.  Translators on both sides arose to discern the other's language and within two years members of the court were able to speak German with varying degrees of fluency.  It soon enough became clear tha the German states followed similar organisation to the United Kingdom; rule beneath a hereditary Kaiser, a vassalised feudal structure and an organised religion based around a faith none of the British had ever heard of; Hinduism.  Discussions revealed that unlike Judaism, Hinduism followed many gods in a pantheon, not unlike the religion of early Aztlan.  Instead of a system of landed serfs the Germans still relied upon the practice of slavery, which although still legal in the UK was increasingly becoming frowned upon.  A small German embassy was allowed to operate in York and the Caravel to resupply by rowboat, but borders were not yet opened to the Germans.



Alfred Alhazen in his later years.

Alfred Alhazen

Queen Mary was a keen student of history, particularly of her great-grandfather Robert II.  She understood the importance of strength when dealing with others and in light of a potential threat sought to redoubled England's economic strength, favouring the guild system and encouraging tuition of her courtiers and their kin in a wider variety of subjects.  Between 1360-1368, her policies allowed massive deforestation in zones not protected by the law to fuel the fires of industry in the cities.  Branston and Brickfield saw further development of their guildhalls to the point where the Grocers' guilds (also including the Bakers, Butchers etc) of the cities were powerful institutions, able to sponsor schools, synagogues and the like for their members and further burgeoning the wealth of the two cities.

It is around this time that Alfred Alhazen, a London scholar of Aztec heritage, completed his seven-volume treatise on optics, The Book of Optics.  Alhazen gained much acclaim for his studies, especially in Branston where a relatively minor cult had some following amongst its scholarly class.  Alhazen went on to propose the Theory of Vision, do work wtih mechanics, projectiles, geometry, engineering, philosophy, theology and early work on astronomy and what would later give rise to the scientific principle.  Alhazen wrote more than 200 books on various subject matters and in 1366 founded an Academy of learning in Branston, stimulating the culture of knowledge within the city for centuries to come.


The Third Thorne Expedition


Portrait of a Young Woman by Alexandre Cabanel.  Portrait of Lady Laura Thorne during her time in the Orient, Age 24

In late 1368, an expedition was put together and approved by Queen Mary for travel further than any ship had ever gone before, beyond even the known world.  This expedition was headed by the grand-daughter of the great explorer Sir Andrew Thorne, Lady Laura Thorne.  Lady Thorne had never met her grandfather (having died before her birth) but had grown up hearing tales about him.  Like Sir Andrew whose hatred of merchant banking was infamous amongst mercantile circles, Lady Thorne showed little interest in either continuing the family business or being used for political marriage.  It is perhaps a mark of great tolerance for the time on the part of her father that she was even allowed to think or speak of such things, but the presence of a Queen on the throne for her entire life had forced noble society to make some exceptions - at least where rich, powerful and potentially dangerous daughters of banking barons were concerned.

Laura Thorne enjoyed a number of tutors growing up, studying history, the natural world, geography and cartography, optics and marksmanship.  One account by a tutor in her early years mentions that she wished to learn swordplay, but no self-respecting tutor would dare bring the tarnish upon his reputation that would come from tutoring a woman.  One of Thorne's tutors was Alfred Alhazen, with whom she developed a close relationship and in whose Academy she studied for a year after its inception.  Historians differ on how close her relationship with Alhazen was, sometimes citing passages in Alhazen's diaries regarding an unnamed woman that end around the time of Thorne's departure from England.  In said passages, Alhazen desribed the woman as 'beautiful, charming and utterly insufferable'.

Talented as Lady Thorne may have been, early accounts of her paint her as no woman of great virtue.  Much as her grandfather's penchant for womanising was well known, Laura Thorne was alleged to have been overly fond of strong drink, a proficient but overenthusiastic gambler, a flirt and more than a little downright vain.  Some of her father's journals go into length about his frustration of never being able to make use of her in the business for her fondness of wasting the money on dice and cards and never being able to marry because she repeatedly led them on and insulted them.

Given her later career, it becomes apparent that something about the year-long voyage toned down many of her former excesses.



From the Diaries of Lady Laura Thorne

12th November, 1368

I cannot believe this ship still floats.  The shipyards at Taffeta must have done so much work on the old girl to keep her working all these years but here I am, standing on the Charlotte - just as sturdy as she must have been in my grandfather's day.  I tried my hand on the wheel when she got out of port and it feels so smooth to turn.  I think I'll let the navigator guide her, though, apparently I set us on course to crash into the coast.

Nobody seems too happy about a woman being aboard ship.  Bad luck, they say, though they wouldn't say it to my face.  I am the money, after all.  Still, that's the reason for bringing Gareth and Charles - I don't want any misunderstandings and two six foot tall burly men can send that sort of message well enough.  That and I packed Old Harry with me, in case of pirates on the way out.  He's only a light model, I wish I could have brought Bernard (Father's heavy scorpion) but I can barely lift the thing sometimes, let alone winch it back.



5th February, 1369

Lost a bit of money on the dice today, gained a bit on cards.  Total loss, but it's fun.  Had dinner with the chaplain again, John.  Lovely young man, but he's hopelessly weak.  Not to mention a man of G-d - tempting, but not worth the hassle.  I picked him because he's a Godwinite, vow of chastity and all.  Gives me someone to talk to who won't get the wrong ideas.

Gareth is showing a lot of interest in John, actually.  I do wonder about him, sometimes.  Still, I guess the world is full of all sorts.

Storm last night, subsided.  The men did good work keeping the ship together, so an extra ration of dried meat and whisky for everyone today.  Already sick of ship biscuits, but I'm told tolerance comes with time.  Dear G-d I hope so.



9th April, 1369

I swear Smith is cheating, what with there being five of a kind in that last game.  One of the men tried to get familiar again, had Gareth pick him up and put him down again somewhere else.  He got the message.  I can hardly blame them, though - it might be months before we hit land or they see another woman.  I just hope I don't have to crack out the lash to make a more obvious example.

We had an overflight of some sort of large gull today.  It's a bit of a waste or quarrels, but I was getting sick of fish so I took three shots with Old Harry and brought one down to much applause from the men.  Turns out they were sick of fish too.  The bird's a bit greasy, but we stewed her and the flavour has done wonders for morale.  Put Old Harry back in the cupboard with the quiver for now, it's not really fair to waste shot like that.

John made a rather clumsy attempt to kiss me today.  I guess that whole 'vow of chastity' thing isn't as strong as the Godwinites would have us believe.  I turned him down in no uncertain terms.  He's hurt, but hopefully he'll recover.



8th June, 1369

Halved the whisky rations, we're down to three months.  Not popular with the men, but I doubt no whisky will be popular either.  Ended up getting into an argument with some of them, Gareth and Charles had to break it up.  Get the strong impression I've lost some respect there, but they can just take it.  I'll need to decide soon whether we should turn back, there's been no sight of land at all since we passed New Scotland.

Kind of ironic, given I have my own bottle hidden away beneath the bed.  Best not let the men find that out.  John's being a prick lately, little comments and such amongst the crew.  I swear he's going to be trouble.



25th June, 1369

One of the crewmen broke into the stores and drank quite a bit of whisky.  Had him hauled out to be flogged, but none of the men would do it.  I think John told them about the bottle in my office.  I had Charles take care of the whipping in the end, but none of the crew seemed keen to return to work.  I threatened more lashings before they left.

Strangely enough, nobody wants to play cards with me any more.



8th July, 1369

John came into my cabin just now, told me he was speaking on behalf of all the men.  Told me it was time we turned around and went home, and if I wasn't happy with that then maybe I shouldn't be in charge.  I told him I'd consider it, then asked him to leave.  I think I'm going to have to call Charles and



9th July, 1369

It's a mess.  Gareth's dead, two of the crew and dead and a lot more are injured on both sides.  We barely have enough to guard the men in the makeshift brig, let alone crew the ship.

Shortly after John left, I heard the shouts.  Charles came into the room and told me they were coming for me; he had his knife drawn already.  I grabbed Old Harry from the cupboard and my quiver and cocked him.  Charles asked me what I planned to do, and I realised for the first time that I was expected to be coming up with plans.  Well, it hit me that the first stop the men would make would be the whisky store to get courage, and only then would they think about hitting the armoury.  Charles and I ran down into the hold and got there to find three of the men already armed with swords.

Thank G-d, they were still loyal.  One of them threw me a sword, which I still have no idea how to use (thank you for that, Father!) so I started keeping my crossbow cocked at the door until I realised they actually needed me to lead them.  I told two of them to keep guarding the armoury whilst Charles and I moved out ahead to meet the mob when it came.  I think a lot of them thought twice when they realised the girl they were going to beat down on was standing up, aiming a crossbow at them and in control of all the weapons.

I have no idea how I managed it, I think it was something about the way I said it that worked.  I remember the way Father used to talk to the lesser clerks or the servants, how it wasn't kind but they still followed orders because he always seemed to know what he was doing and what the score was.  Maybe it was that.  I told them that I was in charge and that that was not changing.  I told them that I was a servant of the Queen, and to stand against me would be to stand against Britain.  I told them I would give each of them once chance to come over to my side and escape the punishment that would be coming if they did not.

Some of them actually crossed over.  Granted, not the majority I had hoped for, but it gave us a chance.  John was there at the head of the other side, and I could tell he had roused most of them.  He started trying to offer a speech of his own when the real force behind the mob stepped forward and charged.  Gareth.  Gareth had betrayed me.

I felt precious little remorse when I let loose the bolt that hit him in the chest, and for a moment the only sound was his gurgling, then the thud as he hit the floor.  That's when we loyalists started fighting a retreat back to the armoury.  The fight was vicious, bloody, and it was a bloody miracle I got out of it with only a broken arm - and not even my writing arm to boot.  My men back at the armoury came out with more swords and tipped the scale, and soon enough the rebels were surrendering.  We forced them into a part of the hold we quickly converted into a brig and chained the door shut.  We've shifted the dead up to the deck for now and those of us with steady hands have been assisting the ship's carpenter in surgery on the wounded.



10th July, 1369

Three more of the men died, but the rest seem stable enough.  John refused to say the rites for them, which shocked me from a man of the cloth.  I am starting to believe he has gone mad with rage.  I performed the funerals myself before we laid them out to rest at sea and I do regret their passing, even Gareth's.  We need crew to keep the ship going, though, and I must decide how to deal with the remainder of the men.



12th July, 1369

I had the whisky keg brought in to the brig where the men were all sitting, hands bound.  I showed them the whisky bottle, full and the seal on the cork unbroken.  I opened the bottle and made of show of pouring the whole of its contents into the barrel.  I told them that I struggle as they struggle, that we have all suffered, but that if we cannot operate as a ship we will fail and we will die.  I told them that I can use loyal crewmen, but I have no room on my ship for the rebellious.

So I gave them an offer.  Swear an oath to the Queen, to Britain and to me to serve.  They were to receive the freedoms they had before, but I would take each of their little left toes to remind them of the price of disobeying me, and that I would take something more precious to them if they did so again.  All but one swore and lost a toe as punishment.

John.  Whatever shall I do with you?



15th July, 1369

I feel very uneasy about it, especially a holy man, but I can see no other way.  If I free him, he will oppose me at every turn.  If I imprison him, he can still speak to his gaolers and turn them against me.  I cannot send him home, I cannot afford to feed him, and I cannot spare a rowboat and supplies in the hope that he will make it to a shore.



16th July, 1369

It's done.  I read out his rites while he was there to see him, and pardoned him in the name of G-d and the Queen, and then we clubbed his head and forced him over the side.  Better than letting him swim for hours before drowning, that it come suddenly and him unaware.  There is a great tightness in my stomach over it all, a sense of unease.  Did grandfather ever have to take measures such as these?  I hope not, for his sake.

They may still dislike me, but the men fear and respect me now, and a captain doesn't have to be liked.  She has to be obeyed, for the good of the whole ship.  That said, I'm having Charles train me with the sword now.



6th February, 1370

The spotter has sighted land.  There is green on the horizon, and it stretches a fair way in either direction, so we are on course for more than an island.  We'll approach and see what it holds.


Afternoon of the same day.

Ships!  Not as big as ours, they look like sailing boats and they're full of these little yellow-skinned men, but ships!  We've sighted a harbour as well, so we're going to try and aim for it.



7th February, 1370

What a day.  Not surprisingly, as soon as we reached the harbour we were greeted by a cadre of longbowmen and swordsmen, so we stayed aboard ship and they shouted at us in a language we could not understand, probably to surrender.  Some of the men shouted back, and predictably they could not understand us either.  I managed to dissolve the tension somewhat when I tried speaking in German instead; looks like they've met our erstwhile ambassadors before.

I came down with four of my men and left the rest on the ship, now that we had worked out a common language to speak in.  Having explained our situation as peaceful explorers, my party and I were whisked away to what I can only assume is the capital of their country; China.  What luck to have landed here, of all places!  We travelled through well-tilled fields and well-kept roads, then through jungle and eventually to a managed forest before reaching the city itself, a thriving expanse on the level of Nottingham or Brickfield.  The architecture here is unique; I can see some very superficial resemblances to Confucian designs, but only in the way that a vulture is the same as a sparrow.

We were brought to the palace of their Emperor, using the closest German equivalent, a man perhaps anywhere from his twenties to his forties (it is so hard to tell with this race) with an impressive long thin beard and wearing robes of what I can only assume is a form of very soft, very impressive cotton, richly dyed and with cloth of gold sewn into it.  The Emperor, whose name I think is Ming, asked us some questions in fluent German about our mission, where we had come from and our intents.  I replied that we had come from the distant island nation of Britain (technically true, if you count a continent as an island) and that we were seeking new lands and new peoples to trade with and learn more about. 

The Emperor took a long time thinking about what I had said and at one point an advisor of his tried to speak up, presumably to offer his advice, but Ming signalled for him to be quiet.  When he had finished thinking, he told us that we were welcome as guests in our lands if his own emissaries would be welcome in ours.  Not really being able to ask anyone back home, I accepted.  I think the Queen will understand.


Emperor Ming's chief mandarin meets the expedition.


The Charlotte lands at Beijing.


27th April, 1370

Nearly three months in Beijing now.  Fantastic city, and I am finally getting the hang of Mandarin, the imperial speech.  Turns out they have at least a dozen different dialects around here.  I shouldn't be too surprised; sometimes I can barely understand what Yorkshiremen say.  They have street vendors here, as in London, and I have been trying different kinds of food wherever possible.  I have composed a report home on what we have observed and now that the crew is refreshed those not inclined to stay with the new embassy will return home, carrying our Chinese counterparts.

We have much in common with China.  The Emperor inherits by succession, as with our Queen, and various provincial lords operate under a system of vassals.  The well-tilled fields we passed through are maintained by landed serfs as back home, and they follow an organised religion of the same type as the Germans; Hinduism.  Despite a difference in religion, the only real difference to us is that they lack the advantages of our system of guilds; it is difficult to get standardised equipment here.  Similarly, they lack the ordered government to produce a standing army of macemen or the machine knowledge to produce crossbows, but their longbows are suitably impressive and they train with them regularly.  Nevertheless they are militarily inferior, so given our similarities I have recommended to the Queen to develop stronger relations with them to our ultimate benefit.  If we should ever need to establish a foothold in this land, we might need allies.



9th May, 1372

I had my first official meeting with the Spanish ambassador, an utterly dislikable woman of the worst kind - a zealot.  The Spaniards it seems are not only Hindus like the Chinese and Germans, they are the founding country of the faith and utterly devout as a result.  As far as I can tell they live in some sort of G-d forsaken ice-hole to the north, which sounds suspiciously like Wales.  What is it about cold, inhospitable places that seems to give rise to dominant religions?

The Spaniards follow a vassal-based heirarchy as we have come to expect, but they lack the stability of an inherited throne.  As far as I can tell there must be periodic short, brutal wars of succession every time one of their rulers dies or else they must be individually nominated by the last ruler and supported by the feudal lords.  They employ serfs over slaves like the Chinese and their Hindu church is strictly organised but surprisingly not to the point of exclusion, and they lack any particularly developed economy.

I cannot say I like or approve of the Spanish if the attitude of their ambassador is typical of their people, and I get the impression the feeling is likewise.  I will recommend avoiding outright conflict with a power that holds such influence over our existing contacts for now, but I fear it may come eventually.


The Spanish prove difficult to relate to.



23rd August, 1374

My slow tour of China is progressing southward and I am forever astounded at the sheer range of food available in this country.  There is a kind of corn called maize, which resembles wheat but with much thicker and fleshier grains; a sort of reed or cane which is as sweet as honey, without the hassle of bees; a fleshy sort of jungle fruit called a banana, which is bright yellow when ripe and the skin can be peeled away like an onion's top layer to reach the flesh below; and in particular large herds of what they call a cow which is somewhat like a cross between a pig and a horse and gives milk in the manner of goats.  I have asked to send samples of all these fruits and meats back to England for Her Majesty's court.

The Chinese seem to be concentrated in three primary states on the coast, all focused around large, well-developed cities; Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing.


The wide variety of foodstuffs found in China.


9th September, 1374

I met with the ambassador of a nearby nation called Arabia today, bordering China to the southeast.  The Arabs practise a different religion to the Hindus, Buddhism, and Arabia is its founding country.  Buddhism bears some similarities to Confucianism in that whilst it recognises the existence of the Hindu gods it places far more emphasis on personal development and spiritualism.  Nevertheless our clear differences in faith will sour relations, as the Arabs appear to be as devout as the Spaniards.  To the credit of the Arabic ambassador he was far more polite in his manner than the Spanish diplomat managed and we were at least able to maintain somewhat civil discussions.


The Arabic ambassador.



8th May, 1376

I am feeling much at home with the Russian ambassador, who can hold his drink surprisingly well and has been introducing me to some of the dice games of his country.  We were treated to a cavalry display by the Russian ambassador, conducted through a game called 'polo' which is likely to be of some interest to our horsemen back home.  It turns out that they did not invent the game themselves but inherited it from another empire far to the south whom we have not yet met; the Golden Horde.  The ambassador is not really willing to talk specifics about his homeland (and neither are we) but we have learned that they follow the feudal structure we have come to expect in this part of the land and approve of our own feudal tendencies.


The Russians prove somewhat welcoming.



9th October, 1376

The Russian ambassador introduced me today to his counterpart from the nation of France.  As is swiftly becoming common, a feudal system under Buddhist government.  They bear a stronger resemblance to the Germans than any others I have seen yet, suggesting they may have once been the same people.  The French ambassador, who is rather quite charming, has offered to take the embassy on a tour of France.


The French ambassador.



20th October, 1376

We have set up a temporary embassy here in Chengdu; I have left someone to act in my stead in Beijing for now.  The first thing that strikes me about this city is its strong resemblance to those of China, especially with the older buildings.  I ask and my guide confirms that France and China have indeed been at war in the past but are presently on good terms with one another.  Given the size of the city I can only assume it has either been under French government for many decades or it was as large as the other Chinese cities when it was taken.

The ambassador tells me that when summer is over (and the idea of summer during October is very strange) he will take me to Lyons, the largest city in their kingdom.


The Franco-Chinese border near Chengdu.



2nd February, 1382

Lyons, Chartres and now Paris!  We were taken to see the temple of an ancient prophet or soothsayer, the Oracle, from centuries ago.  I readily confess that our six year tour may seem leisurely, but we have spent much of it carefully mapping out the territory of France for our dispatches back home.  Of particular interest to those back home will be the wide variety of spices encountered here, used much in Oriental cooking.  Also the native fruit, the grape, which grows readily in the French plains and is pressed and fermented into a drink they call wine that often puts beer and sometimes whisky to shame.  I have taken somewhat to the distilled form of this drink, brandy, which is served in large goblets to allow the smell to circulate before drinking.

To the north my counterparts have been allowed to explore along the coast of Russia, where they have noted two large ports of interest; Yekaterinberg and Rostov.  Near Rostov, whales are regularly sighted in what appear to be breeding grounds and they have made something of an industry of their capture for meat and blubber.  There are rumours that somewhere within Russian lands is a great library devoted to the collection of all the works of knowledge in the continent.


Paris and the River Seine.



8th December, 1386

A package has arrived that has changed the course of our mission here.

A map.




Paper and Prosperity

Whilst the Third Thorne Expedition was conducting diplomacy in the Far East, the German embassy finally secured an open borders agreement with the UK for their emissaries to travel beyond the initial restrictions of the embassy.  Given the Thorne Expedition's presence near possible German soil, the court at the time judged it prudent to open as many doors as possible and sent word to the Orient for the embassy to secure similar agreements with as many nations as possible.  Eventually only Spain and Arabia would decline due to their opposition to the Synod.

In 1376 the Old Aztec-inspired temple of Chichen Itza was completed in York.  Originally intended to be finished for the 25th anniversary of Queen Mary's coronation, Chichen Itza's construction was delayed due to a lack of funding and completed two years after schedule by a new backer, a former military advisor to the king.  Although military matters were now mostly concerned with piracy, the existence of other powerful nations had been known for over twenty-five years by this point and soldiers had wisely begun to train in old ground combat techniques in anticipation of possible warfare.  Chichen Itza was used both as a temple and a military academy in which soldiers and captains were schooled in the philosophy of defence.  Itzan tacticians became reknowned throughout Britain both for improving existing defences and establishing new ones.  The development of a trained soldier class fundamentally independent from feudal obligations (beginning in its first true form with Itzan tacticians) laid the foundation for military reforms in the coming century.

1380 saw the rapid expansion and dominance of Harkuf's Branston and Brickfield, symbolised in the construction of the B&B's central vault and banking house in Brickfield, commanding finance almost without rival across the whole of Great Britain.  The B&B continued to sponsor ventures across the country, leading to one of their greatest successes; the Paper Mill of Hanno.

George Hanno was a merchant and a manufacturer of papyrus, parchment, ink and bound books for scholars across the continent.  In 1386 he established in Taffeta a mill for the production of his greatest invention - Paper, a commodity we take for granted now but which upon its invention exceeded all of its competitors in price of manufacture, strength and longevity.  Cotton alone suffered difficulty keeping ink, papyrus was prone to crumbling, as was parchment which suffered fading of ink over time.  Stone and clay were simply impractical for everyday use.  With the advent of paper, a medium created from wood pulps mixed with strands of cotton for strength (Hanno's chief contribution to the composition), writing and accountancy across the world would be revolutionised with a cheap, plentiful and stable medium for the recording of information.

One such application was the creation of maps.  The German ambassadors, seeing some of the new maps brought to show the court, were very impressed and claimed that if they had access to such a material their own maps would be much improved.  Although the secrets of paper themselves were not offered, a furious negotiation took place thereafter between the embassy and the Royal College of Chartered Cartographers.  The German embassy expressed great interest in the organisational structure of the guilds and ordered civil service of Britain, but both were deemed too militarily important for trade.  The ambassadors were particularly impressed by the culture of music and drama in Britain and after much deliberation finally agreed to provide full and extensive drafts of their own maps in exchange for sending a team of musicians and playwrights back to Germany to teach their own people the ways of British culture.

The information received saved decades of exploration and quickly alerted the British to the existence of a supercontinent even larger than their own.  The existence and locations of three new empires were revealed; the Golden Horde, Persia and Mali, bringing the total number of known nations in the world to ten.  Although power on the supercontinent certainly seemed balanced enough, the threat of a single nation able to rival English supremacy was apparent should these countries ever join together.

After consultations with the Oriental embassies it became clear that two names for the supercontinent were popular amongst its residents; either Europa or Asia.  English mapmakers thus titled the continent Eurasia thereafter.

With the knowledge that the world could be encircled completely by ship, definitive proof was finally obtained for the ancient belief that the world was shaped like a sphere.  A revolution in nautical engineering would arise from this that would forever cement Britain's superiority on the seas.


A copy of the original German maps of Eurasia as presented in the exchange of 1386.

With 1390, we hit the 1 year/turn segment of the game.  Even if this does not increase any further, this means a good 650 or so turns remain of play.

Also, 'circumnavigating the globe' gets us a permanent +1 to ship movement.  We did not actually circumnavigate the glove as such, we travelled to Eurasia and hit the western coast, but as the Germans had come from the eastern coast it completed our map of the world and counted for the purposes.  I suspect that had be actually shared our map for theirs, they might have managed the achievement first.

The End of an Age

Queen Mary's reign continued for a further thirteen years, during which time the country continued to prosper financially and in terms of population - the newly formed Grocers' guilds in Edinburgh reported in a private statement in 1394 that the city's population exceeded 3,270,000 people. 

The Thorne expedition officially met the Persians at the border of their lands, deep in the heart of Eurasia.  A Buddhist state, what intrigued the Thorne expedition most of all was their representative system of government in which the various lords of the land made decisions in a united assembly rather than the unofficial politicking that ruled the English court.  Thorne was granted passage into the city of Gordium to meet with officials where in addition to the now-familiar bananas the emissaries were greeted by the terrifying and astounding sight of elephants.  Thorne wrote in her report;

"A huge beast, taller than three men on one another's shoulders and as thick as a house, it flaps its ears madly when angered and sports great white teeth that sprout from its mouth as spears.  Most pecular is its nose, as long as its legs, which it uses to suck up water from ponds and deposit the fluid in its mouth.  I have seen men ride these on high saddles and hear tales of their use in war.  I can only imagine how terrifying such a beast must be in combat."

 
Left; The wealth of Persia.  Right; The ambassador from the Golden Horde.

During the final years of the thirteenth century and Queen Mary's reign, a case grew that should ships capable of crossing the ocean with sizeable cargoes be built, trade with the Orient must occur.  The wide varieties of foodstuffs already across the ocean were cited, along with the tales of gems in Persia, of incense and vast deposits of gold in the hills belonging to the (aptly named) Golden Horde.  Queen Mary disagreed.

But Queen Mary never saw the fifteenth century.  She died of pneumonia after nearly fifty full years on the throne.  Having no direct heirs the throne passed to the Earl of Branston, who narrowly beat the Duke of Edinburgh in the succession because of strong political support.  The fifteenth century saw the beginning of the reign of King James' family; the House of Stewart.

[Iituem]

Urgh.  One of the great risks of heavy characterisation here is ending up with a Mary Sue.  Hopefully I avoided the worst of that with Thorne, but I prefer personalised reports over the dry forms of textbook-style writing.  Unfortunately, Thorne does confirm to the Mary Sue form - girl in a man's world, special amongst her kind yadda yadda yadda.  I just hope I managed to communicate the sense of alienation the rest of her own society gave her for acting like that.

On the other hand, in the original version her experiences on the ship were so much worse they were actually cliche and unbearable, so there's a trade off.

[Heron TSG]

Actually, the characterization wasn't all that bad. I got a slight Mary Sue vibe, but it was worth it for the fact that I was reading a five paragraph story about moving a ship northwards. That part was pretty rad. As for beating out the nations of Eurasia, I think we need to expand into Shetland.

[Sheb]

Shetland and new Scotland. Also try to establish a city in Eurasia, as a beachhead for future invasions.

[Iituem]

Also, because I completely forgot to do it earlier; it's Questions and Answers Time!

So what's the deal with the demographics?  Is Britain China?

Britain is totally China.  China, oddly enough, is Britain.  As of 1420AD, the demographics are as follows.

GNP (million gold): 122.  Rival best 93, rival average 64.

Mfg Goods (million tons): 273.  Rival best 121, rival average 81.

Crop Yield (million bushels): 490.  Rival best 248, rival average 148.

So we're nearly twice as rich as our rivals, three and a half times as productive and just under three and a third times as fertile.  Of course, the main reason for this is:

Land Area (sq km): 455,000.  Rival best 275,000, rival average 191,444.

Population: 22,558,000 (of which about six and a half million are in London and Edinburgh).  Rival best 5,816,000, rival average 2.756,000.

Thanks mostly to northern Britain (Aztlan is still pretty underdeveloped and will continue to be so until I get Universal Suffrage), we actually have a higher population density, mostly located in the big metropolises (London, Edinburgh, Branston, Brickfield, Taffeta, maybe York).  On the other hand, compare our standing armies;

Soldiers: 411,000.  Rival best 363,000, rival average 265,888.

Even if our rival with the largest army also has the largest amount of land (almost certainly Russia), this means their soldier density per land is 1.32 soldiers/sq mile.  The rival average is actually higher at 1.38 soldiers/sq mile.  Britain's army, although technically ranking highest in size, has a density of 0.9 soldiers/sq mile.  We are actually comparatively demilitarised compared to everyone else we know.  We do have a technological and training edge, though; most of our soldiers are macemen and marksmen.  Even so, we're not mounting an invasion on Eurasia until we damn well have guns.

Approval Rate: 57%.  Rival best 77%, rival average 72%.

Life Expectancy (years): 55.  Rival best 76, rival average 64.

Imports/Exports (million gold): 0/0.  Rival best 48/0, rival average 38/38.

For all our wealth and glory, the British government is the most outright hated authority in the world, the British have a shorter lifespan by 17 years on average to anyone else on Earth and our strictly mercantilist policies (not aided by our isolationism) give us a completely insular economy.  On these three final scores we rank last, last and dead in the middle.

We have four of the top five cities in the world (London, Tenochtitlan, York and Branston) but #4 on the list is Persepolis, in no small part because the Persians have the Great Pyramids.  This is why they have a representative government when everybody else is making do with a hereditary monarchy.  Wonders we don't own include the Sistine Chapel (Persia), Angkor Wat (Russia), the Great Library (Russia), the Great Lighthouse (Golden Horde), the Pyramids (still Persia) and the Oracle (France).  In fairness, the only one of those we could not have built at some point was Angkor Wat because I've been delaying research into philosophy in favour of other endeavours.

[KaguroDraven]

I say take Shetland and New Scotland, get more land, more cities, and build more useful wonders. Focus research on getting modern weapons as fast as possible. Semi-on topic about that, has anyone ever had a game of Civ4 where they had modern, or futureistic, weapons while the enemy still was in the dark ages? If so, how laughibily easy is it to finish them off?

[Sheb]

Is there still more empires to discover?

Anyway, that could be a funny things to do: research better ships, blocade Eurasia ('cause the Synod don't want those other religions to spread in Britain) and watch them while you improve, only to wipe them out by raining nuke on their knights.