the Holy Roman Empire

As of 1930, the Holy Roman Empire is Europe's largest and most powerful NGO.

This is a stub. It will be expanded upon.

Low German

I still don't know the full extent to which Andalusada's butterflies change the evolution (and survival) of languages. I do know that Mozarabic survives, or at least evolves into a spoken language the world recognizes as "Moorish."

At least one other language survives to Andalusada's present day: Low German, in various iterations.

Kaspar Sansinger

Born: April 24, 1773

The history of 19th-century Cabralia was shaped by many great names, but rising above them all are a triumvirate that have gone down in history as the Three Wise Men. First among them, in both chronological and conventional order, is Kaspar Sansinger - military leader in the Cabralian War of Independency, statesman, and ultimately architect of the Grand Principality's descent into monarchism. This is his story.

Caliphal succession

al-Mujadid meant the Caliphate of Seville to be a hereditary monarchy, like contemporary France or England at the time. Because his designated son Ahmad went blasphemously insane, that didn't work out, and Umayyad Seville never did manage to sort out a succession system before al-Mahdi was forced into exile in 1792.

Caliph Yusuf I, significantly, didn't leave directions for the process himself, beyond specifying in no uncertain terms that there would never be a Caliph Sufyan. The original idea was probably that the Caliph of New Andalusia would appoint his successor (possibly naming him the Abdallah), who on his death or resignation would be acclaimed by the Maxaha and ascend to the throne accordingly. Once again, that didn't work out. Unlike Seville before it, though, the UCNA has evolved a formal (if mostly unwritten) policy for handling caliphal successions. This is how it works.

The Sodalite Revolt of 1830

France managed to ride out the Burning Thirties more or less unscathed. They had better things to do, like catching their breath. The House of Burgundy just finished toppling the House of Guise, driven Spain out of the Côte d'Or (with a bit of help), and hounded the Most Christian King [who?] into Roman exile. There was work to do: standardizing measures, rebuilding polders, renegotiating treaties, restoring normalcy in France.

In 1830, it had a chance to come undone - and didn't.

The Occidental French

It's been awhile since my most recent ethnicity, and [as of 11/29] I've been struck with a few days of something that's never happened before: writer's block. I honestly have no ideas to run with, at least for anything particularly new or interesting...

...but I do see some big, glaring things that need filling in. Like the UCNA's population, for instance. Where the hell do they all come from? Some are Arabs, many other are Moors, some are Mozarabs... but they have to come from somewhere. Who are they? How do they interact with each other?

Of all the ethnic groups of the UCNA, though, none has vexed me quite so much as the elephant in the room: the Catholic French Andalusians. Until tonight, I haven't written anything significant about them. Until tonight, anyways, when I named them the Occidentales. This is their story.

The Black Friars

For the first few centuries of the modern era, everybody expected the French Inquisition. Dystopian Catholic France would have it no other way. They scoured Farrellitism into paranoid French undergrounds or Occidental exile; to this day, children are terrorized into good behavior by the simple threat "Gardes ta langue": watch your tongue. When the Nestorian Epistles led to the construction of Saint-Thomas d'Indé in Paris, the Inquisitors fought it tooth and nail, driving several Syro-Indian metrans back to the Malabar Coast before the rest were built and burning one or two Heretical Heroes [who?]. During the Guise Golden Age, any thinker or writer of note expected a visit from inquisitors at some point during their career; the first visit by the Inquisition was a commemorated coming of age, like losing your virginity.

After the War of the French Succession, the Burgundian disengagement from the Catholic Church led to the decline of the Inquisition as an arm of the French state. But given how powerful it had been for those first 200 years, is it any surprise that the fear of the Inquistion has lasted to the present day?

In Andalusada, that fear has a name, a face and a mythos: the Black Friars.

The I.C.&Cie. Modeste AR

The world's most famous tierseur is also its least respected. In the market ecology of tierseurs, the Modeste's niche is to be the pariah, the untouchable, the one that all other customers sniff their noses at. The Modeste exists as a designated inferior for all others in the industry to be better than in every way. It also exists because a valid market niche exists for such a device.

Before 1895, the tierseureries coexisted in peace. Oh, there was drama between the tierseureurs - what artistic medium isn't without its petty feuds and legendary rivalries? - but the industry, such as it was, was governed by a rigid unspoken code of honor. Each tierseurerie was distinct, and they made a point of not stepping on each other's toes.

In 1895, Innocent Cauvigne et Cie. introduced their own interpretation of the tierseur. No sooner had the first order been shipped than the Calais firm was buried under a dozen lawsuits from outraged tierseureries, each and all striving to destroy the upstart.

The Shimoga man-eaters

The events described in this post are nothing historical. No lines on maps were redrawn because of it, no wars fought, no great men created and only a few notable ones [who?] destroyed. If I had never thought of it, if it had never been written, Andalusada would look no different. In no way does this significantly change the overall flow of history.

This post is parerga. And yet it is legendary parerga. This post is a symptom of imperial France in its decline, a post of a story that's become etched in the French consciousness as surely as Jaws is in ours.

Background to the Shimoga man-eaters

Since it hasn't been mentioned in awhile, southern India is a French colony. L'affaire de Chimogue was entirely a colonial affair, taking place in French Malenadu - specifically in the vicinity of Shimoga, home to a fairly large and young coffee latifonde.

• The War of the French Succession left the Empire perilously close to fiscal collapse; the next generation had been spent trying to rebuild it. Fortunately for them, the Iberian coffee monopoly had cracked with the collapse of Umayyad Seville thirty years earlier; since the price of New World coffee stayed high (between limited Mexican production and Cabralia's war-shaken economy), the French colonies were able to make it a lucrative cash crop, leading to the Oriental Company's latifundism.
• From the 1880s, the spread of coffee rust blight from Africa started seriously impacting the global coffee market. French India, which had thus far managed to avoid the coffee blight, was thus even more profitable than it had ever been before.
• About a generation later [when?], tiger-hunting become the sport of choice for a certain type of cosmopolitan noble twit. Guns in hand (many totally inadequate for the task; many Frenchmen gave their lives before the black-powder cat-gun was sorted out), they managed to devastate the Malabar tiger population, which led to some interesting side effects, such as...
• ...the collapse of tiger-hunting, and with it preparation for dealing with tigers.
• ...the collapse of a lot of former tiger habitats, as growing populations along the Malabar Coast began expanding outward, pushing back the tree coverage that the tigers needed to move and progressively driving them north.
• ...a period of about a decade in which so few tiger hunts were successful that the tables began to turn: every year during this period [when?], Malabar tigers killed more humans than humans could find tigers to kill. (This was chalked up to the tigers being more aggressive rather than any environmental changes.)

French colonial policy had thoughtlessly prepared a perfect storm. Early in the 20th century [when?], that storm hit.

Tierseur

Tierseur, n. French. A third-bore rifle, esp. used for the hunting of dangerous game.

In the French Empire, no hunt is more revered or mythologized than the tiger hunt. And just as no iconic Great White Hunter IRL is complete without a big-bore double rifle, no great French hunter is great without his weapon of choice: a tierseur.

The Remarkable Mahr

No Muslim marriage is complete without a mahr: a mandatory expenditure (4:4 aside, it's not a "gift") that the husband owes to his wife, without which the entire nikah is void. I'm saying it here because you, dear reader, might not know it already: Andalusada (where the survival of Moorish Spain has left most of Europe much more exposed to Moorish interpretations of Islamic cultural norms) already does.

In fiction, of course, simply paying in cash isn't gonna cut it. A mahr is an opportunity for the author to say something important about the bride-to-be, and just like the chance for anyone opposed to speak now or forever hold their peace, it's too good to pass up. Any creative works that involve a mahr will, almost of necessity, involve a Remarkable Mahr.

Moorish phratries

When Abu Talha Rais first sighted the northern coast of Cabralia in 1484, he had no illusions that he'd reached India. (He did, however, name Hispaniola al-Waqwaq, whence its current name "Guaquaquite.") Instead, he categorically named everything on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean the Bilad al-Aqsa: "the Farthest Land." Later maps would declare the continents to be "America" and "Cabralia," and the water between them and Florida Algeciras to be "Caribby," but in Arabic none of that mattered. For the Moorish world, the New World was always al-Aqsa.

For most of the Five Families era, the Arabs weren't terribly interested in colonizing it. It was simpler to let the Isidorans ease their demographic pressures by moving abroad, converting the New World to (Isidoran) Catholicism and making them administrators of the dhimma. Come 1700, though, Umayyad Seville changed that forever. And when in 1792 al-Mahdi was driven into Maghrebi exile, things changed forever again.

Zahra

Life: 1887-present.
Position: Calipha of the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia
Preceded by: [who?]

The electoral side of the UCNA's history is justifiably a sausage party: as of 1930, women's suffrage is still something that needs campaigning for. The monarchic side of the UCNA's political history is, at this point, a sausage party too, and it shouldn't be. Presumably the caliphs have no shortage of wives and daughters, but who are they? What are they doing?

As of tonight, I'm only really familiar with the current calipha of New Andalusia; I'm not even sure about her family name yet. What I know is that, in several spellings, her name is Zahra, devoted wife of Caliph Yusuf III. This is her story.

The Backbiting Journalists

This is the golden age of newspapers. They're everywhere, and so are their employees; any newspaper reporter could be a stock character - in fact, most of them are, because Andalusada recognizes the same News Tropes and uses them in the same basic ways.

When you have two of them, however, they transform into a world-specific trope worth talking about on its own: the Backbiting Journalists. Very much like Buddy Cops, Backbiting Journalists come in pairs; what makes them so tropey is the huge variety of ways their relationship (between each other and the rest of the cast) can be explored by any halfway-decent author. Where any other character archetype can show up, the Backbiting Journalists can too, and probably have at some point.

This trope is big, moreso than anything yet discussed.

Yusuf III

Dates: January 20, 1891-present.

The Caliphate in New Andalusia is no stranger to unexpected successors; they're pretty much inevitable when congenital madness runs in the family, the (Jewish) maître d' has rights over each step of the acclamation process, and there are half a dozen collateral lines waiting in the wings. In the 19th century, those unexpected successors went down in history as "the six weak caliphs." In the 20th century, one of them turned out famously well. Only one of them, however, has been judged a bad caliph. His name is Yusuf III, and this is his story.

Andalus

The very first draft of what is becoming Andalusada was written as a GURPS Infinite Worlds setting on the SJG forums. (You can read it here, if you're so inclined.) Even by my current standards, it's embarrassingly bad, but I do believe it's worth reposting, just so I can link to it within this blog more easily.

Exiled and penniless, Rodrigo Diaz spent the winter of 1080 in Barcelona, falling out with its lords and weighing his options. In 1081, he caused this worldline's history to diverge when he turned south for Seville, whose armies awaited his order to march west. The taifas fell like dominos; Badajoz in 1082, Cordoba in 1083, and Toledo in 1085. When the Berbers invaded (in a desperate Granadan bid for power), he led the coalition that drove them back from Gibraltar and laid the siege that would capture Granada nine months later. A terrified Alfonso VII recalled his general from exile in 1087 (aborting a planned campaign on Barcelona), but the damage was already done; by the time Valencia fell in 1110, all land south of the Duero and Ebro belonged to the Abbadids, and the cause of Christendom in Spain had been set back 300 years.

Current Events

1930: With war on the horizon and a perilous world economy, the last Muslim superpower is looking for allies and preparing for its first move.

Divergence Point

1080: El Cid is hired as a mercenary general by the taifa of Seville, derailing the Reconquista and setting the stage for Islamic Spain as a European power.

Major Civilizations

Western-Islamic (empire), Western (empire with rivals), Orthodox (empire with rivals), Japanese (empire with satellites.)

Great Powers

Umayyad Caliphate of New Andalusia (feudal representative democracy, CR3 for Muslims, CR4 for everyone else); Greater German Empire (dictatorship, CR4); Great Britain (anarchic representative democracy, CR4 and rising); French Fourth Republic (representative democracy, CR3 and falling); Empire of Japan (clan-based oligarchy with democratic traits, CR4-6); Russian SFSR (socialist oligarchy, CR4-5); Turanian SFSR (socialist oligarchy, CR5) Alaskan RFSR (socialist republic, CR3-4); Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (feudal theocracy, CR2-4)

Worldline Data:

TL: 6 Mana Level: Low
Quantum: 4 Infinity Class: P9
Centrum Zone: Inaccessible

The Lisbon Meridian

The equator's position is fixed and determined by geography and mathematics. The prime meridian's position is not only not fixed, it's utterly arbitrary. It took until 1851 for most of the world to establish the Greenwich meridian as their standard, and several nations (France most notably, but also the Empire of Brazil) didn't accept it for decades.

Andalusada, ever the disorganized one, has reduced its own mess of meridians to three. And unlike IRL, the dominant one is based not in England-Scotland but in Lisbon.

The Maud Missionary

The Missionary Sisters of the Office have such a widespread colonial presence that they've become a stock character of their own, as recognized as the Great White Hunter. Or, at least, the fully-ordained Sister has become a stock character, the Maud Missionary - inevitably a white-hat character.

Unlike other female stock characters, the Maud Missionary is universally acceptable. Her vow of celibacy desexualizes her even as it locks her into the traditional femininity of a woman religious, and her vow of obedience puts no stress on Andalusada's glass ceiling. Those same vows that establish her femininity, however, also make her a Missionary, a daughter of Holy Mother Church whose job is to go to exotic, dangerous non-Western places and prevent folk Catholicism from forming. Even in environments where proper women have no business appearing, the Maud Missionary not only has an excuse to show up - she isn't necessarily a burden on the men. This ability to go anywhere, and thus fill "feminine" roles anywhere, is a big part of what's established the Maud Missionaries in popular fiction.

Eugen Karl Orff

By the end of the Great Realignment, the Electorate and Archduchy of Saxony had become a notable player in the Mediterranean, mostly through their control of Malta [details?] and, more lastingly, through majority ownership of the half-completed, half-assed Egyptian Canal. Saxon money and Saxon engineers saw that crumbling vanity project to its conclusion, cementing Saxon importance not only in the Mediterranean but the Levant as well.

Nearly a century after its completion, however, most of the names of that great work have passed into history. Only historians know the original builders of the Canal before it was abandoned. Only economists know the names of the diplomats who acquired the rights to the site, or the engineers who redesigned it. Even the Egyptians have forgotten the names of their own who toiled and died bringing that national folly to fruition.

One name, remains common knowledge, and is given far more credit for the completion of the Canal than even he was willing to accept. Even if they know nothing about what he did to earn that name, everybody knows "Eugen of Egypt": gunfighter, financial wizard, the man involved (somehow) with the Canal, and infamous apostate.

Eugen of Egypt was baptized Eugen Karl Orff. This is his story.

The Ryalkirk rifle

Late in the second round of the Northern Wars [when?], the armed forces of New Britain - which had heretofore struggled against those of the Anglo-Scottish north, New Andalusia, and assorted aboriginal nations [details?] - fielded something fairly commonplace by our standards, but unheard of at the time: a repeating bolt-action rifle. It was named Ryalkirk, after the armory it was first built in [where?], and it changed military history forever.