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Old 08-31-2018, 12:12 PM   #3601
GreatWyrmGold
 
Join Date: Oct 2011
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

On the other side of the world, the same general beats of history played out. Christianity survived and prospered after the destruction of the Second Temple, and became the dominant religion of a great Mediterranean/European empire before half of it collapsed; Europe became a fractured land, full of marauding tribes looking for a place to settle and settlements trying to drive off marauders, eventually settling into countless little fiefs which slowly coalesced into larger kingdoms. There were, of course, differences; over the course of the Middle Ages, tobacco became a valuable commodity from the Orient alongside the likes of silk and porcelain, with tobacco being available to only the most obscenely rich Europeans.
So imagine the surprise of a group of Norse colonists, stuck on Greenland, when they sailed a bit south and discovered a powerful, centralized Beothuk (well, technically not Beothuk, but I can't find a name for the ancestors of the Beothuk) proto-state in OTL's Newfoundland. These were not the wretched scraelings our Greenland Norsemen met; they were more organized and numerous, with horses, plows, and iron weaponry. The initial meeting with the Beothuk went about as well as OTL's version, but the aftermath went even worse for the Greenlanders; the Norse were better sailors than the Beothuk and had better ships, but this didn't stop the enraged Beothuk from going north and searching for signs of these pale, craven beasts.
Eventually, a party of Beothuk discovered the location of Greenland Norse settlements, and sent a small army up there to avenge the deaths of their kinsmen. The Greenland Norse were a colony of Scandinavia's poorest country, just getting off the ground and struggling with no shortage of issues; they were no match for the wrath of the Beothuk army. Norse Greenland surrendered, with many of its people (including Lief Erikson and the local priest) being taken back to Vinland as prisoners or slaves.
The news shook Europe. First of the fact that there was a land beyond the setting sun; then the fact that its inhabitants had defeated a (mostly) Christian settlement and taken its clergy prisoner; and finally, that it had tobacco. (It wasn't common in Vinland, but since it was imported from kingdoms down the coast rather than having to travel through several feuding empires around 2/3 or so of the globe, it was much more common there than in Europe.) A "Northern Crusade" was organized to free the Christian captives, get vengeance on those heathen bastards, and also establish an easier trade route to get tobacco.
The Northern Crusade went...better than the People's Crusade. More crusaders were brought to Greenland than supplies, causing no shortage of conflicts between them and the local Greenlanders. Before anyone could organize more supply ships to be sent, thousands of crusaders were killed from starvation, fighting with locals, and fighting with each other. But they eventually made it to their destination, managed to more or less come out ahead overall (thanks to good commanders, steel, and metal armor being more common among crusaders than Beothuk), and didn't accidentally start a millennium of organized anti-Semitism.
The Northern Crusade didn't establish any lasting states in the region like the then-recent First Crusade had; it was too far from Europe, with too many hostile heathens around. But some of them who weren't sick of the cold and wanted to shield Greenland from further such incursions (or get some land) set up fortresses in and near the Greenland settlements, which were surrounded by farms and pastures which they had claimed.
While early relations between the native Americans and native Europeans were...rocky, things got better. The Northern Crusade forced the Beothuk to accept trading vessels from Greenland, but they swiftly discovered this to be a boon; the Europeans had many valuable goods which could be traded to southern traders at great profit. The trade made the Beothuk wealthy and powerful, and did the same for Greenland and Iceland. In the 12th century, the Beothuk accepted Christian missionaries, converting many (including their leaders). Of course, tensions remained; some descendants of the Northern Crusaders harbored a grudge against the Beothuk and their ilk, which was mirrored by some descendants of the Crusade's victims.

It's the early 13th century, and times are a-changing. In the Pacific, Suzushigai has recently lost much of their support from Japan, a fact which Shuten is looking to exploit; already, some of Suzushigai's inland allies have defected to Shuten. Meanwhile, the Beothuk are looking to expand their power and influence further; newly-baptised firebrands are calling for crusades of their own, to force their neighbors to accept Christianity and the new Beothuk way of life. But Europe has interesting changes as well; the Northern Crusade taught Europe the importance of logistics and supply, lessons which are being used by British and Scandinavian kingdoms (with their impressive navies, funded by the tobacco trade) to flex their muscles in European politics.
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