Lands of Red and Gold
- Thread starter Jared
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So, basically TTL's Aztec Century?
Probably not quite that bad, in that this ATL series just supercharges Aururian development rather than strapping it to a Saturn V and heading lunarward.
Still, it's something which makes most of the members of the *AH.com board love to hate.
Lands of Red and Gold #40: Shaking the Branches
Lands of Red and Gold #40: Shaking the Branches
“Hope is the delusion of fools. Acceptance is the choice of wisdom.”
- Batjiri of Jurundit [Koroit, Victoria]
* * *
Picture, if you will, a plain outside a city, leading down to a gently sloping beach. The city is one which its inhabitants call Coonrura, and which another history will call Kingston [Kingston SE, South Australia]. At this time, the city is inhabited mostly by a people who call themselves the Yadilli and who follow the wisdom of the Good Man [ie Plirites], but it is ruled by the Yadji. Or it would be, if the divided Yadji could ever end their seemingly endless civil war and decide on a single Regent.
On the plain outside, an army is encamped, watched over by strange ships anchored offshore in the bay. An army unlike any which has ever been seen before in the Land of the Five Directions. A force composed mostly of men with strange, half-coloured skin as if they had been pulled out of the oven too early.
Under the command of Pieter Nuyts and his son Lauren, they have come in the name of gold. Thirteen hundred foot soldiers with arquebus and pike. Three hundred cavalry, all veterans of the long war which is slowly grinding to a halt in Europe. Not all of their horses survived the voyage here, and some of those which did are in a poor state, but still, these strange four-legged giant beasts have both impressed and terrified the Yadilli. Two dozen cannon of varying calibre, brought most astutely by the elder Nuyts, who had heard of the impression which those weapons have made among the Aururian peoples further west.
With these Raw Men march allies. Five hundred mercenaries of the Mutjing, survivors of their own people’s endless squabbling. None of the Yadilli have taken up arms yet, but Nuyts is making most valiant efforts to persuade them to join him.
The Nedlandj invasion has begun.
* * *
Founded by the teachings of the Good Man, the Plirite faith is both united and divided. United in its acknowledgement of the wisdom of its founder, divided in both polity and its interpretation of how that wisdom should be applied.
The Nangu branch of the Plirites is the most widely-known of those interpretations, thanks to being carried by the Island’s merchant venturers, but it is not universal, and not even the eldest interpretation. Another, older interpretation is cherished by the people who call themselves the Yadilli.
The Yadilli are among the most ancient of Gunnagalic-speaking peoples. Their ancestors settled on the lower reaches of the Nyalananga [River Murray] in the earliest days of Aururian agriculture. Their ancestors were quick to adopt copper-working, and were the first to learn the art of working arsenical bronze. It was the vigorous pursuit for mining that metal which led to uprising, and indirectly to the collapse of the Formative Gunnagal culture which will so puzzle future archaeologists [1].
The ancestors of the Yadilli were among those who had burned the ancient great city, triggering the Interregnum. They fled across the mighty river to the south. There they found that for days and days of travel, they were cut off from the sea by a series of long, bittersweet lakes with sand dunes beyond [2]. The water there promised fishing and waterbirds for food, but it did not offer safety for people who still feared being forced to work in mines and out of the sun.
They fled further, until they arrived at a region where the lakes disappeared, to be replaced by a wide sheltered bay with glistening white beaches, and where the shape of the coastline protected it from the worst weather of the southern ocean [3]. Here, they felt safe. Here, they settled, and would remain for a very long time.
The Yadilli have long believed themselves to be a people apart. They did not expand much further from their ancestral lands, and they have lost even legends of that far-off time when they migrated from across the Nyalananga. But they maintain a strong sense of their own identity.
The Yadilli have preserved their language and culture through more than two millennia of local and foreign rule. They survived the chaos of the Great Migrations. They endured the rule of the First Speakers. They had a short time of independence where they adopted the faith of the Good Man before being conquered by the growing might of the Yadji. For some brief periods, their lands have been claimed by the kingdom of Tjibarr, although the Yadji have ruled them for the last half-century.
Now, in the year which another continent’s calendar calls 1637, they face a new challenge...
* * *
A small scroll of wattle-bark paper is carefully unrolled. The ink markings on it [4] are clumsily-drawn, as if the writer had only rarely used a quill. Which is indeed the case, as the reader knows.
This scroll has come from a listener [spy] assigned to Coonrurua. That listener knows only the basics of writing, and indeed has used far more pictographs in his message than should be properly used, including a few used incorrectly.
Still, the gist of the message is clear enough:
“Strangers have come on ships. Not Islanders or Tjibarr. Men uncooked. Led by One True Egg [5]. Some ride giant dogs. Summon thunder and throw iron balls like the breath of the Rainbow Serpent. One True Egg urges Yadilli to rise against the Neverborn. Their elders have not announced yes or no.”
With a muttered curse against the Lord of the Night, the reader rises. He wonders whether he can find another to bring this news to the prince.
* * *
The Time of Troubles, as it will later be known, or the Year of the Twisted Serpent, as the Yadji call it. Either way, it is finally nearing its end. The first full-scale civil war in the history of the Yadji Empire has been traumatic, bloody, and lengthy, but now, in the year which the visiting Raw Men call 1637, the end is in sight.
Or so it should be.
Gunya Yadji and his commanding general Bidwadjari have fought a long war. Despite superiority of numbers and force of arms, his great rival Bailgu Yadji has refused to submit under any terms. It has taken siege after long siege to bring Bailgu’s supporters into submission.
The core of the Land of the Five Directions has been cleansed of Bailgu’s taint. The greatest province, the Lake Country, is entirely cleared, while in the western province of the Red Country, two cities have recently fallen, and only one last holdout remains at Windi [Rose, South Australia]. Only in the farther reaches of the Golden Country and the even more distant White Country does Bailgu have any strong remaining presence, and even then his remaining outposts in the Golden Country are under siege.
Bidawdjari has judged that, barring the intervention of the Lord of Night [ie misfortune], most of the remaining enemy strongholds should have fallen within another year. Capturing the rest would take longer, but it is possible that seeing Bailgu facing annihilation will make his remaining royal supporters abandon him. Particularly if they can secure a pardon if they change sides; Gunya has already begun to make some efforts along those lines.
If only all of those plans had not been halted by the news out of the west.
* * *
Taken from:
The Tenth Classic
A novel by Duarte Tomás
“Report,” Lauren Nuyts said crisply.
The scout dismounted, passed the reins to a waiting attendant, and then nodded. “All as expected. The kuros [7] are encamped for the night. A few scouts for warning, but they’re not wandering far.”
“Numbers?”
“Maybe five thousand,” the scout said.
“Good work,” Lauren said, then turned on his heel and walked back into the camp.
Finding the command tent was a matter of moments, even with the gathering darkness. His father waited inside, looking composed as ever. Madjri was still beside him; Lauren thought he had never seen the local headman anywhere else since they had struck the alliance to bring down these heathen Yadji.
Not that the Yadilli creed is any better, Lauren mused. But they will be our subjects soon. Time enough after to bring them to Christ.
The head of the mercenaries was there, too, along with a few of the senior Dutch soldiers.
“Scouts are back,” he said. “Yadji army is bedded down for the night. About eight or ten thousand of them. They’ll attack tomorrow.”
“Of course they attack,” Madjiri said in his broken Dutch. “They say leave or die, you stay, they attack.”
“I’d rather know how they will attack,” his father said. “We know so little of Yadji tactics.”
“With straightforward courage,” observed Dandal – at least, that was the closest Lauren could come to pronouncing the name of the Mutjing mercenary leader. “Not all Yadji soldiers seek death, but none of them fear it. They will see that they outnumber us, and they will aim for our centre and seek to crush us.”
“Good thing they not know we have thunder, eh,” Madjiri said, the whiteness of his teeth amazingly bright against his black skin.
His father shrugged. “We have steel and horses. I would fight even without cannon.”
“But how best to use the weapons we have?” asked Colonel Michel. “Bombard them with cannon balls as they march on us, or give them a volley of muskets when they are near?”
“Your thunder will break the Yadji armies either way,” Dandal said.
“Panic is good, but with cannon, they will flee before we can close with them,” his father said. “I think that we should keep our cannon for another time. Let them feel the weight of shot and musket.”
The conversation grew intricately involved with battle plans and deployment after that. Lauren listened with only half an ear. He needed to hear these things, but he did not pretend to be a master tactician. That was why they had recruited the German and Dutch soldiers in the first place.
No, what intrigued him more was how the Yadji would react after they were defeated. They were here to conquer an empire, after all, as Cortes and Pizzaro had done before them. Winning the battles was important, but more would need to be done afterward.
In time, the soldiers settled on a battle plan which would require the Dutch troops to hold a solid centre and face the main Yadji charge. The Mutjing mercenaries would protect the left flank, while the cavalry would be on the right flank with the most open ground and the chance to pursue the enemy when they broke. The Yadilli militia were to be held in reserve. His father explained that this would be for pursuit, too, but the unspoken message was that the Yadilli would not yet be trusted.
Once the battle plans were settled, Lauren asked Dandal to translate his words into a form which the Yadilli would understand; he did not trust Madjiri’s broken Dutch for these questions.
Via Dandal, he asked, “With the Yadji defeated here, what will they do next? Will their emperor submit?”
Madjiri laughed. “Were you not listening? Yadji will not fear death, but welcome it. To them, this invasion will be part of the end of the world, when they must fight utterly until their over-powered god is released.”
Of his own initiative, Dandal added, “Prince Gunya is a man of great drive. He has fought his brother for ten years and more. He will not stop until he has no armies left.”
Not the most cheering of thoughts, Lauren mused.
*
Smoke still hung over the field of battle. The air hung still and hot, with no waft of breeze to clear the haze or mask the noises. Lauren’s ears still brought him the sound of screams, and more distant shots and shouts as the cavalry and Dutch infantry pursued the remaining karos.
Before him, though, was a more urgent problem.
A couple of hundred Yadji had surrendered, whether through lack of courage or injury. Some of the Yadilli militia had been assigned to guard them while his father oversaw the pursuit.
Madjiri said, “What good keep Yadji alive? No need prisoners. That not...” He went back and forth with a Mutjing mercenary who was assigned as an interpreter. “Lack decisiveness.”
“You can’t just kill prisoners,” Lauren said. Well, it could be done sometimes, depending on the bitterness of the fighting. Such a wholesale bloodlust struck him as excessive, though.
“Not kill all of them,” Madjiri said. “Spare... one in hundred, send back to tell of their defeat. Rest must die – only way to bring balance.”
Lauren started to argue, then stopped. These Yadilli had been only half-hearted supporters until now. Some had agreed to join to fight, yes, but many more had stood aside. Victory now would inspire the rest. No need to antagonise them over this when the Dutch needed local allies.
“So be it,” he said.
* * *
[1] See post #6.
[2] This is a series of lakes along the coast of modern south-eastern South Australia, which are an extension of the Murray Mouth, and separated from the sea by a long series of sand dunes created by silt deposited by the Murray. They are a mixture of fresh and salt water, depending on the balance of rainfall and river flow. The nature of the coastline makes settlement by the sea itself difficult, although it makes for very good fishing.
[3] This is Lacepede Bay, which is not a completely sheltered harbour, but whose geography protects it from most weather except when the wind is blowing directly out of the west.
[4] Mostly irrelevant aside which didn’t fit into any earlier post: the ink which the Aururians use is made from a combination of soot (from burnt wattle wood) mixed with wattle gum (as a binding agent – much as gum arabic was used elsewhere in the world). The Yadji take this one step further by writing on a kind of paper made from the boiled inner bark of wattles. Wattles: The Trees with One Thousand and One Uses.
[5] By one of those coincidences of allohistorical linguistics, the name Pieter Nuyts, to Junditmara speakers, sounds like the words for “one true egg”, and hence his name has been rendered that way.
[6] See post #16 for a description of the Yadji provinces, or see the map here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/decadesofdarkness/EasternAustralia(1618).png
[7] Kuro, an allohistorical Dutch term for Aururian peoples, was first used by Pieter Nuyts and his son Lauren. It is derived from the Japanese word for black; the two Nuyts learned that term during their imprisonment in Japan, and use it to distinguish dark-skinned Aururians from even darker-skinned Africans.
* * *
Thoughts?
P.S. I know this update is a lot shorter than some of the previous instalments. I’m experimenting with more frequent, shorter updates, rather than longer less frequent ones.
“Hope is the delusion of fools. Acceptance is the choice of wisdom.”
- Batjiri of Jurundit [Koroit, Victoria]
* * *
Picture, if you will, a plain outside a city, leading down to a gently sloping beach. The city is one which its inhabitants call Coonrura, and which another history will call Kingston [Kingston SE, South Australia]. At this time, the city is inhabited mostly by a people who call themselves the Yadilli and who follow the wisdom of the Good Man [ie Plirites], but it is ruled by the Yadji. Or it would be, if the divided Yadji could ever end their seemingly endless civil war and decide on a single Regent.
On the plain outside, an army is encamped, watched over by strange ships anchored offshore in the bay. An army unlike any which has ever been seen before in the Land of the Five Directions. A force composed mostly of men with strange, half-coloured skin as if they had been pulled out of the oven too early.
Under the command of Pieter Nuyts and his son Lauren, they have come in the name of gold. Thirteen hundred foot soldiers with arquebus and pike. Three hundred cavalry, all veterans of the long war which is slowly grinding to a halt in Europe. Not all of their horses survived the voyage here, and some of those which did are in a poor state, but still, these strange four-legged giant beasts have both impressed and terrified the Yadilli. Two dozen cannon of varying calibre, brought most astutely by the elder Nuyts, who had heard of the impression which those weapons have made among the Aururian peoples further west.
With these Raw Men march allies. Five hundred mercenaries of the Mutjing, survivors of their own people’s endless squabbling. None of the Yadilli have taken up arms yet, but Nuyts is making most valiant efforts to persuade them to join him.
The Nedlandj invasion has begun.
* * *
Founded by the teachings of the Good Man, the Plirite faith is both united and divided. United in its acknowledgement of the wisdom of its founder, divided in both polity and its interpretation of how that wisdom should be applied.
The Nangu branch of the Plirites is the most widely-known of those interpretations, thanks to being carried by the Island’s merchant venturers, but it is not universal, and not even the eldest interpretation. Another, older interpretation is cherished by the people who call themselves the Yadilli.
The Yadilli are among the most ancient of Gunnagalic-speaking peoples. Their ancestors settled on the lower reaches of the Nyalananga [River Murray] in the earliest days of Aururian agriculture. Their ancestors were quick to adopt copper-working, and were the first to learn the art of working arsenical bronze. It was the vigorous pursuit for mining that metal which led to uprising, and indirectly to the collapse of the Formative Gunnagal culture which will so puzzle future archaeologists [1].
The ancestors of the Yadilli were among those who had burned the ancient great city, triggering the Interregnum. They fled across the mighty river to the south. There they found that for days and days of travel, they were cut off from the sea by a series of long, bittersweet lakes with sand dunes beyond [2]. The water there promised fishing and waterbirds for food, but it did not offer safety for people who still feared being forced to work in mines and out of the sun.
They fled further, until they arrived at a region where the lakes disappeared, to be replaced by a wide sheltered bay with glistening white beaches, and where the shape of the coastline protected it from the worst weather of the southern ocean [3]. Here, they felt safe. Here, they settled, and would remain for a very long time.
The Yadilli have long believed themselves to be a people apart. They did not expand much further from their ancestral lands, and they have lost even legends of that far-off time when they migrated from across the Nyalananga. But they maintain a strong sense of their own identity.
The Yadilli have preserved their language and culture through more than two millennia of local and foreign rule. They survived the chaos of the Great Migrations. They endured the rule of the First Speakers. They had a short time of independence where they adopted the faith of the Good Man before being conquered by the growing might of the Yadji. For some brief periods, their lands have been claimed by the kingdom of Tjibarr, although the Yadji have ruled them for the last half-century.
Now, in the year which another continent’s calendar calls 1637, they face a new challenge...
* * *
A small scroll of wattle-bark paper is carefully unrolled. The ink markings on it [4] are clumsily-drawn, as if the writer had only rarely used a quill. Which is indeed the case, as the reader knows.
This scroll has come from a listener [spy] assigned to Coonrurua. That listener knows only the basics of writing, and indeed has used far more pictographs in his message than should be properly used, including a few used incorrectly.
Still, the gist of the message is clear enough:
“Strangers have come on ships. Not Islanders or Tjibarr. Men uncooked. Led by One True Egg [5]. Some ride giant dogs. Summon thunder and throw iron balls like the breath of the Rainbow Serpent. One True Egg urges Yadilli to rise against the Neverborn. Their elders have not announced yes or no.”
With a muttered curse against the Lord of the Night, the reader rises. He wonders whether he can find another to bring this news to the prince.
* * *
The Time of Troubles, as it will later be known, or the Year of the Twisted Serpent, as the Yadji call it. Either way, it is finally nearing its end. The first full-scale civil war in the history of the Yadji Empire has been traumatic, bloody, and lengthy, but now, in the year which the visiting Raw Men call 1637, the end is in sight.
Or so it should be.
Gunya Yadji and his commanding general Bidwadjari have fought a long war. Despite superiority of numbers and force of arms, his great rival Bailgu Yadji has refused to submit under any terms. It has taken siege after long siege to bring Bailgu’s supporters into submission.
The core of the Land of the Five Directions has been cleansed of Bailgu’s taint. The greatest province, the Lake Country, is entirely cleared, while in the western province of the Red Country, two cities have recently fallen, and only one last holdout remains at Windi [Rose, South Australia]. Only in the farther reaches of the Golden Country and the even more distant White Country does Bailgu have any strong remaining presence, and even then his remaining outposts in the Golden Country are under siege.
Bidawdjari has judged that, barring the intervention of the Lord of Night [ie misfortune], most of the remaining enemy strongholds should have fallen within another year. Capturing the rest would take longer, but it is possible that seeing Bailgu facing annihilation will make his remaining royal supporters abandon him. Particularly if they can secure a pardon if they change sides; Gunya has already begun to make some efforts along those lines.
If only all of those plans had not been halted by the news out of the west.
* * *
Taken from:
The Tenth Classic
A novel by Duarte Tomás
“Report,” Lauren Nuyts said crisply.
The scout dismounted, passed the reins to a waiting attendant, and then nodded. “All as expected. The kuros [7] are encamped for the night. A few scouts for warning, but they’re not wandering far.”
“Numbers?”
“Maybe five thousand,” the scout said.
“Good work,” Lauren said, then turned on his heel and walked back into the camp.
Finding the command tent was a matter of moments, even with the gathering darkness. His father waited inside, looking composed as ever. Madjri was still beside him; Lauren thought he had never seen the local headman anywhere else since they had struck the alliance to bring down these heathen Yadji.
Not that the Yadilli creed is any better, Lauren mused. But they will be our subjects soon. Time enough after to bring them to Christ.
The head of the mercenaries was there, too, along with a few of the senior Dutch soldiers.
“Scouts are back,” he said. “Yadji army is bedded down for the night. About eight or ten thousand of them. They’ll attack tomorrow.”
“Of course they attack,” Madjiri said in his broken Dutch. “They say leave or die, you stay, they attack.”
“I’d rather know how they will attack,” his father said. “We know so little of Yadji tactics.”
“With straightforward courage,” observed Dandal – at least, that was the closest Lauren could come to pronouncing the name of the Mutjing mercenary leader. “Not all Yadji soldiers seek death, but none of them fear it. They will see that they outnumber us, and they will aim for our centre and seek to crush us.”
“Good thing they not know we have thunder, eh,” Madjiri said, the whiteness of his teeth amazingly bright against his black skin.
His father shrugged. “We have steel and horses. I would fight even without cannon.”
“But how best to use the weapons we have?” asked Colonel Michel. “Bombard them with cannon balls as they march on us, or give them a volley of muskets when they are near?”
“Your thunder will break the Yadji armies either way,” Dandal said.
“Panic is good, but with cannon, they will flee before we can close with them,” his father said. “I think that we should keep our cannon for another time. Let them feel the weight of shot and musket.”
The conversation grew intricately involved with battle plans and deployment after that. Lauren listened with only half an ear. He needed to hear these things, but he did not pretend to be a master tactician. That was why they had recruited the German and Dutch soldiers in the first place.
No, what intrigued him more was how the Yadji would react after they were defeated. They were here to conquer an empire, after all, as Cortes and Pizzaro had done before them. Winning the battles was important, but more would need to be done afterward.
In time, the soldiers settled on a battle plan which would require the Dutch troops to hold a solid centre and face the main Yadji charge. The Mutjing mercenaries would protect the left flank, while the cavalry would be on the right flank with the most open ground and the chance to pursue the enemy when they broke. The Yadilli militia were to be held in reserve. His father explained that this would be for pursuit, too, but the unspoken message was that the Yadilli would not yet be trusted.
Once the battle plans were settled, Lauren asked Dandal to translate his words into a form which the Yadilli would understand; he did not trust Madjiri’s broken Dutch for these questions.
Via Dandal, he asked, “With the Yadji defeated here, what will they do next? Will their emperor submit?”
Madjiri laughed. “Were you not listening? Yadji will not fear death, but welcome it. To them, this invasion will be part of the end of the world, when they must fight utterly until their over-powered god is released.”
Of his own initiative, Dandal added, “Prince Gunya is a man of great drive. He has fought his brother for ten years and more. He will not stop until he has no armies left.”
Not the most cheering of thoughts, Lauren mused.
*
Smoke still hung over the field of battle. The air hung still and hot, with no waft of breeze to clear the haze or mask the noises. Lauren’s ears still brought him the sound of screams, and more distant shots and shouts as the cavalry and Dutch infantry pursued the remaining karos.
Before him, though, was a more urgent problem.
A couple of hundred Yadji had surrendered, whether through lack of courage or injury. Some of the Yadilli militia had been assigned to guard them while his father oversaw the pursuit.
Madjiri said, “What good keep Yadji alive? No need prisoners. That not...” He went back and forth with a Mutjing mercenary who was assigned as an interpreter. “Lack decisiveness.”
“You can’t just kill prisoners,” Lauren said. Well, it could be done sometimes, depending on the bitterness of the fighting. Such a wholesale bloodlust struck him as excessive, though.
“Not kill all of them,” Madjiri said. “Spare... one in hundred, send back to tell of their defeat. Rest must die – only way to bring balance.”
Lauren started to argue, then stopped. These Yadilli had been only half-hearted supporters until now. Some had agreed to join to fight, yes, but many more had stood aside. Victory now would inspire the rest. No need to antagonise them over this when the Dutch needed local allies.
“So be it,” he said.
* * *
[1] See post #6.
[2] This is a series of lakes along the coast of modern south-eastern South Australia, which are an extension of the Murray Mouth, and separated from the sea by a long series of sand dunes created by silt deposited by the Murray. They are a mixture of fresh and salt water, depending on the balance of rainfall and river flow. The nature of the coastline makes settlement by the sea itself difficult, although it makes for very good fishing.
[3] This is Lacepede Bay, which is not a completely sheltered harbour, but whose geography protects it from most weather except when the wind is blowing directly out of the west.
[4] Mostly irrelevant aside which didn’t fit into any earlier post: the ink which the Aururians use is made from a combination of soot (from burnt wattle wood) mixed with wattle gum (as a binding agent – much as gum arabic was used elsewhere in the world). The Yadji take this one step further by writing on a kind of paper made from the boiled inner bark of wattles. Wattles: The Trees with One Thousand and One Uses.
[5] By one of those coincidences of allohistorical linguistics, the name Pieter Nuyts, to Junditmara speakers, sounds like the words for “one true egg”, and hence his name has been rendered that way.
[6] See post #16 for a description of the Yadji provinces, or see the map here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/decadesofdarkness/EasternAustralia(1618).png
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[7] Kuro, an allohistorical Dutch term for Aururian peoples, was first used by Pieter Nuyts and his son Lauren. It is derived from the Japanese word for black; the two Nuyts learned that term during their imprisonment in Japan, and use it to distinguish dark-skinned Aururians from even darker-skinned Africans.
* * *
Thoughts?
P.S. I know this update is a lot shorter than some of the previous instalments. I’m experimenting with more frequent, shorter updates, rather than longer less frequent ones.
So this scene is from an unreliable storyteller. That makes it a little uncertain how to react. I wonder if Lauren has made the right decision for himself.
Thande
Donor
Dutch Conquistadores FTW! Similar in more ways than one, too: as with the Aztecs, it rather helps if you're fighting a people whose own mythology foretells the end of the world in such a way. Of course it's not quite as neat as with the Aztecs, with their legend of Quetzalcoatl coming in the form of a white-skinned man and Cortes being able to exploit that--but then I suspect if you wrote that as an AH scenario and showed it to the people of an ATL, everyone would dismiss it as ridiculous.
I liked the touch of Nuyts and his son using Japanese terms to describe the natives: I imagine they might make use of the language so as to talk without their Dutch soldiers knowing what they're discussing.
Also about Nuyts' name sounding like something in the local language--that reminds me of the war against Bengal after the Black Hole of Calcutta in OTL. The enemy Nawab of Bengal's name was "Siraj ud-Daulat", and the British troops, being unable to pronounce that, rendered it as "Sir Roger Dowlett"
Given that these soldiers are Thirty Years' War veterans, I doubt many of them would bat an eyelid at killing prisoners.
I liked the touch of Nuyts and his son using Japanese terms to describe the natives: I imagine they might make use of the language so as to talk without their Dutch soldiers knowing what they're discussing.
Also about Nuyts' name sounding like something in the local language--that reminds me of the war against Bengal after the Black Hole of Calcutta in OTL. The enemy Nawab of Bengal's name was "Siraj ud-Daulat", and the British troops, being unable to pronounce that, rendered it as "Sir Roger Dowlett"
Given that these soldiers are Thirty Years' War veterans, I doubt many of them would bat an eyelid at killing prisoners.
Thande
Donor
OTL suggests this is the case, with any handful of escaped Old World animals soon proliferating across the country. Of course the impact of agriculture and civilisation on Aururia might mean its own animal population is a bit better placed to resist Old World encroachment than OTL Australia, but horses make sense anywhere.
In fact I seem to recall reading that in the early explorations of OTL Australia, a few horses escaped from Botany Bay and then when the explorers crossed the Great Dividing Range a few years later, they found a massive population of wild horses that were all derived from those few escapees.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
The U.S. Camel Corps hired an Arab camel wrangler named Hadji Ali whose name was promptly changed to "Hi Jolly" by the soldiers.Also about Nuyts' name sounding like something in the local language--that reminds me of the war against Bengal after the Black Hole of Calcutta in OTL. The enemy Nawab of Bengal's name was "Siraj ud-Daulat", and the British troops, being unable to pronounce that, rendered it as "Sir Roger Dowlett"
.
And so it begins! I rather like the shorter updates as my time commitments make reading the longer ones in a single sitting problematic.
The Sandman
Banned
On the other hand, this would seem to make it even more likely that the civil war is called on account of a need to unify the nation in order to fight the apocalypse.
I wonder if they'd try to hire mercenaries via Nagasaki. Nuyts doesn't like the Japanese, and vice-versa, but he doesn't have to like them to be able to use them as disposable soldiers. I'm sure there would be a supply of them available, since the Tokugawa shogunate is likely to head into a period of instability as the Marnitja and blue-sleep epidemics hit, and they're probably the only place outside of Aururia itself where he could theoretically get mercs without the VOC shutting him down with ease.
The fact that they aren't separating out officers in order to ransom them later would raise some eyebrows, though. And for that matter, the number of prisoners as compared to the number of soldier under Nuyts' command would make killing all the prisoners trickier than it might be if he had a larger force; assuming he wants to preserve his powder (and shot, but especially powder since shot he can probably get locally if necessary), the butchery is going to have to be done with melee weapons, and that means that the prisoners might try to make a fight of it as they die.
Which makes me think of something else: the English are likely to be the real beneficiaries of Nuyts' invasion, since the Yadji are going to have to come to them if they want weapons to match what the invaders have.
Fascinating. However, considering the poor ecological state of much of Australia, I worry they might cause significant environmental damage, although I'm not sure.
I'm not so sure how similar this is to the Aztecs, certainly the military technology is greatly increased. Also the drive for complete victory or defeat on the Yadji side, is quite different, I don't see them doing anything similar to the Aztec's agreement with the Spanish. I think it seems more like the Incas, due to the passage of plague, the fight right after a civil war, and the more centralized system of warfare. I wouldn't be surprised if the initial Dutch victories end with a long series of rebellions and on and off warfare at the edges of control.
We shall see.
Merci.
This is like what I did for most of DoD - where all sources were at least potentially biased - but with one extra level of interpretation added.
In general, while the exact words which the ATL author has attributed to the various people, it's a reasonably accurate representation of most of what happened. Although both the elder and younger Nuyts sound more intelligent than they actually were, and the motives attributed to them are somewhat more pure.
Time will tell, as it so often does.
If anything, the Yadji apocalyptic mythology only makes matters worse for the Dutch. The Yadji expect a hard, bitter fight, and are prepared for initial defeats and high casualties.
Not just their Dutch soldiers, either; note that the leaders of the Mutjing know a reasonable amount of Dutch, too. Even the Yadilli have picked up a little bit by now, and will learn more.
Also about Nuyts' name sounding like something in the local language--that reminds me of the war against Bengal after the Black Hole of Calcutta in OTL. The enemy Nawab of Bengal's name was "Siraj ud-Daulat", and the British troops, being unable to pronounce that, rendered it as "Sir Roger Dowlett"
Classic.
This was an era when attitudes were starting to change. The Peace of Westphalia which ended the 30 Years War included the first general (European) agreement that prisoners should be repatriated to their home country at the end of hostilities.
Certainly prisoners were killed on some occasions, but there was still a growing concept of fair treatment of prisoners (if only because it was sometimes your own soldiers who might suffer from it, too).
Certainly horses are going to escape and go feral in Aururia eventually. It may take a while, though, and escapees from heavily-settled Yadji lands are probably not the best way to do it. Any wandering horse is almost likely to be seen by humans, who as likely as not will assume that it's lunch and dinner for the next week.
Escapee horses would do better on the fringes of settled territory, like parts of the *Eyre Peninsula. From there, they could escape more readily.
The lack of Australian megafauna, and especially non-human predators, means that pretty much any large Eurasian mammal which escapes and avoids human hunters will do rather well for itself. That hasn't really changed much from OTL.
Could happen ITTL easily enough, in an area where there's only hunter-gatherers. Areas with lots of farmers who also do hunting on the side, though, might mean that the horses get recaptured in pursuit of a large meal.
The U.S. Camel Corps hired an Arab camel wrangler named Hadji Ali whose name was promptly changed to "Hi Jolly" by the soldiers.
Nice. I'm sure that there will be other corruptions of Aururian names by the Europeans, too.
Certainly there aren't going to be as many of the monster posts like those which were used to introduce the Yadji or the Atjuntja. There still might be circumstances which merit them (eg the recent Christmas special), but on the whole there's probably going to be more shorter posts from now on.
That one could go either way. Gunya now believes that he is close enough to winning the civil war that he might try to quash the Euro invasion on his own, since it would give him enough cred that most of Bailgu's remaining supporters would abandon him. That would end the civil war, too, and on his terms.
Interesting possibility! I hadn't though of the Japanese. I doubt he would use them for his initial attack, but if he gets established, Japan would certainly be a tempting possibility for recruitment of more supporters. Especially since he wouldn't be short of gold or silver to hire them.
Japanese ronin in Aururia. Now that could be fun.
Lack of ransom is one problem, as is the generally greater willingness to take prisoners which I mentioned upthread.
Re the actual massacre, Nuyts is letting the local Yadji militia do it. With melee weapons, of course. That may well mean that a few of them die, but that doesn't worry Nuyts all that much. He wants local allies, of course, but they can hardly complain if a few of them get killed carrying out a massacre which they launched at their own request.
If the Yadji win, then yes, the English are in a very good position. Of course, there's an important matter which would need to be addressed first.
There is still the small English outpost near Gurndjit (*Portland) at the moment, but they don't have that many weapons. They couldn't help that much in the meantime.
All sorts of European animals will cause environmental damage. So, for that matter, has Aururian agriculture, but nowhere near as much as damage as European animals are likely to do. Especially rabbits and foxes, if they get released, with a side order of Felis big-appetitus.
The Yadji military technology is an order of magnitude higher than anything the Aztecs had, yes. They have iron, in sufficient quantity to equip tens of thousands of troops. Of course, the European technology has improved by this point too - the guns and cannon are better, as is their metalworking.
Put it this way: if the Dutch were fighting alone, they would be screwed in short order. If they can acquire enough local allies, though, they can use their own superior technology and (especially) horses as a force multiplier.
Quite. If the Dutch want to beat the Yadji, they will have to do it through a number of successful battles, and by recruiting enough local (ie non-Junditmara) allies to give them the numbers they'll need.
That's certainly a possibility, but for the Dutch to get even that far they would need to have obtained enough local allies to police their new domains. The Yadilli are likely to be supportive, of course, but they would need more than that.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
have any European imports(pigs,donkeys,cats,etc) established feral populations by this point?
Valdemar II
Banned
I doubt the local even would be able to see the difference between them and the Dutch.
It was states that rats and cats both run amok among the Atjunja, I believe.
Thande
Donor
Given the content of an upcoming update for LTTW, I suspect that you and I are going to end up in a "Looniest Place to Send Japanese Ronin as Mercenaries" contest pretty soon...
I really doubt that. If they can distinguish the Dutch and Spanish, I think they'd realize the Japanese were another form of foreigner.
The Nangu who had visited the East Indies might note a mild resemblance to the peoples there.
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